CHAPTER III THE TEA CLUB "Well I should think you'd better stay in Vernondale, Patty Fairfield, if you know what's good for yourself! Why, if you had attempted to leave this town, we would have mobbed you with tar and feathers, or whatever those dreadful things are that they do to the most awful criminals." "Oh, if I had gone, Polly, I should have taken this club with me, of course. I'm so used to it now, I'm sure I couldn't live a day, and know that we should meet no more, as the Arab remarked to his beautiful horse." "It would be rather fun to be transported bodily to New York as a club, but I'd want to be transported home again after the meeting," said Helen Preston. "Why shouldn't we do that?" cried Florence Douglass. "It would be lots of fun for the whole club to go to New York some day together." "I'm so glad Patty is going to stay with us, I don't care what we do," said Ethel Holmes, who was drawing pictures on Patty's white shirt-waist cuffs as a mark of affection. "I'm glad, too," said Patty; "and, Ethel, your kittens are perfectly lovely, but this is my last clean shirt-waist, and those pencil-marks are awfully hard to wash out." "I don't mean them to be washed out," said Ethel, calmly going on with her art work; "they're not wash drawings, they're permanent decorations for your cuffs, and are offered as a token of deep regard and esteem." The Tea Club was holding a Saturday afternoon meeting at Polly Stevens's house, and the conversation, as yet, had not strayed far from the all-engrossing subject of Patty's future plans. The Tea Club had begun its existence with lofty and noble aims in a literary direction, to be supplemented and assisted by an occasional social cup of tea. But if you have had any experience with merry, healthy young girls of about sixteen, you will not be surprised to learn that the literary element had softly and suddenly vanished away, much after the manner of a Boojum. Then, somehow, the social interest grew stronger, and the tea element held its own, and the result was a most satisfactory club, if not an instructive one. "But," as Polly Stevens had said, "we are instructed all day long in school, and a good deal out of school, too, for that matter; and what we need most is absolutely foolish recreation; the foolisher the better." And so the Saturday afternoon meetings had developed into merely merry frolics, with a cup of tea, which was often a figure of speech for chocolate or lemonade, at the close. There were no rules, and the girls took pleasure in calling themselves unruly members. There were no dues, and consequently no occasion for a secretary or treasures. Patty continued to be called the president, but the title meant nothing more than the fact that she was really a chief favourite among the girls. No one was bound, or even expected to attend the meetings unless she chose; but, as a rule, a large majority of the club was present.