"Concealment was no longer possible," pursued Patty, warming to her subject. "I threw myself upon her mercy and confessed the whole damning truth. What kind of ice-cream is that?" she demanded, leaning forward and gazing anxiously after a passing maid. "_Don't_ tell me they're giving us raspberry again!" "No; it's vanilla. Go on, Patty." "Well, where was I?" "You'd just told her the truth." "Oh, yes. She said she'd always wanted to meet the college girls informally and know them just as they are, and she was very glad of this opportunity. And there I sat, looking like a kaleidoscope and feeling like a fool, and she taking it for granted that I was being perfectly natural. Complimentary, wasn't it? At this point dinner was announced, and she invited me to stay--quite insisted, in fact, to make up, she said, for the one I had missed when I was ill in the infirmary." Patty looked around the table with a reminiscent smile. "What did you say? Did you refuse?" asked Lucille. "No; I accepted, and am over there at present, eating _pate de foie gras_." "No, really, Patty; what did you say?" "Well," said Patty, "I told her that this was ice-cream night at the college, and that I sort of hated to miss it; but that to-morrow would be mutton night, which I didn't mind missing in the least; so if she would just as leave transfer her invitation, I would accept for to-morrow with pleasure." "Patty," exclaimed Lucille, in a horrified tone, "you didn't say that!" "Just a little local color, Lucille," laughed Priscilla. "But," objected Lucille, "we'd promised not to play local color any more." "Have you not learned," said Priscilla, "that Patty can no more live without local color than she can live without food? It's ingrained in her nature." "Never mind," said Patty, good-naturedly; "you may not believe me now, but to-morrow night, when I'm all dressed up in beautiful clothes, swapping stories with Prexy and eating lobster salad, while you are over here having mutton, _then_ maybe you'll be sorry." XIII A Crash Without "I love the smell of powder," said Patty. "Gunpowder or baking-powder?" As Patty at the moment had her nose buried in a box of face-powder she thought it unnecessary to answer. "It brings back my youth," she pursued. "The best times of my life have been mixed up with powder and rouge--Washington's Birthday nights, and minstrel shows, and masquerades, and plays at boarding-school, and even Mother Goose tableaux when I was a--" Patty's reminiscences were interrupted by Georgie, who was anxiously pacing up and down the wings. "It's queer some of the cast don't come. I told them to be here early, so we could get them all made up and not have a rush at the end."