"Well, honey, yo' took so much of my time mashin' your old nuts dat my work got put behind. Dinner'll come on after a while; it's mos' ready." Patty went back to the parlour, laughing. "If anybody can hurry up Mancy," she said, "they're welcome to try it. I didn't realise it was so late, and I'm awfully sorry; but I guess we'll have dinner pretty soon, now." "Don't be sorry we're going to have it soon," said Frank; "none of the rest of us are, I assure you." Although served about an hour late, the dinner was a great success. It had been carefully planned; Mancy's cooking was beyond reproach, and Pansy Potts proved a neat-handed and quick-witted, if inexperienced, Phyllis. Encouraged by the general excellence of the courses, as they succeeded one another, Patty began to hope that her gorgeous dessert would turn out all right after all. Seated at the head of her own table, she made a charming little hostess, and many a glance of happy understanding passed between her and the gentleman who presided at the other end. "I say, Patty, it's right down jolly, you having a house of your own," said Frank. "Except that we miss you awfully over home," added Uncle Charley. "I don't see how you can," said Patty, smiling; "as I took breakfast there this morning, you haven't yet gathered round your lonely board without me." "No, but we shall have to," said Uncle Charley, "and it is that which is breaking my young heart." "Well, _this_ is what's breaking _my_ young heart," said Patty, as she watched Pansy Potts, who was just entering the room with a dish containing a most unattractive-looking failure. "I may as well own up," she said bravely, as the dessert was placed in front of her. "My ambition was greater than my ability." "Don't say another word," said Aunt Alice. "_I_ understand; those spun-sugar things are monuments of total depravity." Patty gave her aunt a grateful glance, and said, "They certainly are, Aunt Alice; and I'll never attempt one again until I've made myself perfect by long practice." "Good for you, my Irish Pat," said Frank; "but, do you know, I like them better this way. There's an attraction about that general conglomeration that appeals to me more strongly than those over-neat concoctions that look as if they had sat in a caterer's window for weeks." But, notwithstanding Frank's complimentary impulses, the dessert proved uneatable, and had to be replaced with crackers and cheese and fruit and bonbons. CHAPTER IX A CALLER It was quite late in the evening before the Elliotts left Boxley Hall; but after they had gone, Patty and her father still lingered in the library for a bit of cosey chat. "Isn't it lovely," said Patty, with a little sigh of extreme content, "to sit down in our own library, and talk over our own party? And, by the way, papa, how do you like our library; is it all your fancy painted it?"