"I may be a believer in votes for women," she said solemnly, clasping her vanity case so hard that she unconsciously shattered its clasp. "I may be a yellow suffragist, as Judy calls me, but I must say, men can make things mighty comfortable for you."
There was a shout of amazed laughter, but Patricia persisted:
"Look at us last fall before we discovered David; look at us now; look at Miss Jinny; look at Elinor's canvas--which she couldn't have dreamed of doing if Miss Auborn had been chaperoning her! I tell you, men have ways of doing things that hit _the spot_, and I think it's a shame they don't get the credit for it."
Bruce cocked his head mischievously at her.
"Are you going to promulgate that doctrine at the Suffrage League?" he asked, beginning to turn the knob.
"Yes, I am--if I ever go there," returned Patricia with great spirit. "But I shan't have time for a long while. I'm going to raise chickens with Miriam Halden this summer, and I've got to start in right away with the plans for the houses and yards."
"Well, we're turning another page of our lives," he said with a backward glance at the rooms where they had been so busy and so happy. "Who can say what will be written there?"
"That gives me the creeps," she remonstrated. "I don't like it. It sounds like funerals and ghosts----"
Patricia broke in on her dismal forebodings with a rippling, silvery laugh.
"It sounds like wedding bells to me!" she cried, gayly. "You and I don't hear alike, Ju. It sounds like wedding bells, and commencement essays, and checks for stories, and--and--and----"
"What, else?" demanded Judith, whose color had been rising at the alluring forecast. Patricia made a despairing little gesture. "I can't think of anything that will fit poor me," she confessed with mock dejection. "I'm so everlastingly commonplace that I don't sound at all."
"Yes, you do, too!" cried Judith ardently, flinging out a masterpiece. "You sound like a _syncopated opera_; doesn't she, Bruce?"
Patricia started as the grotesque words sank deep.
"You just wait till _I_ try my real wings," she said with a queer little catch in her throat. "I've forgotten all about my dear music in these three riotous months, but I'll soon be ready to begin again."