“Now, now, Bumble,” remonstrated Patty, “don’t do so,—it isn’t done! Here, I’ll fix it for you.”
But Helen only laughed, and nimbly twisted up her tousled locks, and thrust hairpins in to hold them in a hard and unbecoming knot at the back of her head.
“It doesn’t look a bit nice,” Elise warned her. “Better let Patty rearrange it.”
“Nope, I don’t care,” and the wilful girl kept on playing and laughed as she shook her head. The shaking sent her hair down again, and this time Patty determinedly went to her and dressed it for her.
“Sit still, you naughty!” she said, herself shaking with laughter. “Oh, Bumble, you haven’t grown up a bit!”
Patty did up her cousin’s hair prettily and skewered it firmly into place with many hairpins, and it didn’t come down again.
“And are you going down to Washington, too, Chick?” Daisy Dow asked.
“Sooner or later, yes. That’s the road to all war glory.”
“You nor I nor nobody knows. You see, Daisy, in war affairs nobody knows anything and if they do they’re not allowed to tell it.”
“But just among us,—we wouldn’t tell anybody.”
“The walls have ears,” said Chick, mock-dramatically.
“And Rumour has a thousand tongues,” added Farnsworth, “it’s a dangerous combination.”
A week later the two went to Washington. Sent for nearly at the same time, Farnsworth and Channing were to go to Washington, though their work there was widely different.
The night before their departure, there was a gathering of the clan at Patty’s home.
Farnsworth begged her not to have others there on their last evening together, but Patty’s wise little head thought it better to have a party.
“You see,” she said to Nan, “if I spend the evening alone with my Billee Boy, he’ll be so sad and blue, and I’ll be so weepy and red,—we’ll have an awful time! It’s a whole lot better to have the crowd here and let him go off in a blaze of glory! Patriotism is good for homesickness.”
And, too, Patty was trying to entertain Helen pleasantly, and so she made many little parties for her.
The plan of entertaining the other soldiers was postponed until they could do no more for their own friends, and the little party to speed their parting, though small, was gay and festive.
“A dance,” Patty decided. “I don’t want just a sit-around, woeful, sighful time. A good, lively dance, and a nice supper, and then——”