But before Judith could add her rejoicings the bright look had died into a quieter expression and Patricia said, "I was forgetting that you weren't going to be there. I wish, oh, I wish you could go." "Well, I can't and there's an end of it," said Judith calmly. "And I hear Rita beginning to get things ready. We're going to make fudge, so I'll have to be off." She was at the door before she remembered. "Constance told me she'd stop on her way down for you if you changed your mind about going late," she said briskly. "She wants you to see her dress, anyway, before anything happens to it. She says she's sure to wreck it. She's so used to good tough stuff that she'll walk right through this one." Patricia nodded brightly and Judith hurried off across the hall, where Rita's welcome reached Patricia's ears. "Dear old Ju," she thought fondly. "She's always doing the right thing. She's such a comfort." Then she smiled to herself at Constance's message. "It's good of her to come away over here, when the ball-room is so near her," she said gratefully. "I'll be glad to see her dress. She's been so secret about it." Her face grew wistful as she thought of the dance. "I'll have a good time, I suppose," she said slowly. "Rosamond will sing, and that will make me remember I'm a failure. But Bruce and Elinor and Constance will be there, and I can have the fun of showing Doris to Mr. Long without her knowing it." This brought the light into her eyes again, and she held up her golden head very bravely. "I'll have a good time," she said again, with a nod at the mirror. "I may be a failure as a singer, but I needn't be as a human critter, as Hannah Ann calls us." CHAPTER XVI THE DOOR OPENS AGAIN Patricia had got into her apple-blossom dress and had smiled at herself with a good deal of real satisfaction. "You do look very nice," she said to the girl in the mirror. "If you were only a little bit less addicted to yourself, my child, you'd not be half bad. That's a thing you're going to get over, though, so I won't scold you tonight about it." She shut off the light and sat down by the window to watch the first arrivals. The night was warm, even for spring, and the window was open. "It's just like being at the play," she told herself, smiling into the warm darkness. "I'm glad I had to wait for Doris." The courtyard was light with torches and the entrance was ablaze with torches and the windows across the quadrangle she could see figures moving to and fro, shadows fell on the curtained oblongs and inside the open ones she saw girls who were late in dressing getting frantically ready, others who were putting on their gloves, and still others with their guests even making ready to go down to the ball-room, which was the transformed tea-room not to be seen from Patricia's point of vantage.