Patty's Friends. Wells Carolyn

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СКАЧАТЬ were soon said, and in the Hartleys’ carriage Patty was taken away to her first visit in an English home.

      CHAPTER II

      RIDDLES AND GAMES

      Much to Patty’s satisfaction Mabel Hartley was in the habit of dining with her elders and was not condemned to “schoolroom tea.”

      The family was not large, consisting only of Mrs. Hartley, her mother, Mrs. Cromarty, her two sons, and Mabel. The sons, Sinclair and Robert, were big, stalwart fellows, a few years older than Mabel.

      Patty liked them at once, for they were cordial and hearty in their greetings, and quite at ease in their conversation.

      “I say, Mater,” began Bob, after they were seated at dinner, “there’s a stunning garden-party on at Regent’s Park next week. Don’t you think we can all go? Tickets only two shillings each.”

      “What is it, my son? A charity affair?”

      “Yes. Rest cure for semi-orphans, or something. But they’ve all sorts of jolly shows, and the Stagefright Club is going to give a little original play. Oh, say we go!”

      “I’ll see about it,” answered Mrs. Hartley. “Perhaps, if we make up a party, Miss Fairfield will go with us.”

      “I’d love to,” said Patty. “I’ve never seen a real English garden party.”

      “Oh, this isn’t a real English garden party in the true sense,” said Sinclair. “To see that, you must be in the country. But this is a public London garden party and typical of its sort. You’ll like it, I’m sure. Will you go with us, Grandy?”

      At first it seemed incongruous to Patty to hear the dignified Mrs. Cromarty addressed by such a nickname, but as she came to know her better, the name seemed really appropriate. The lady was of the class known as grande dame, and her white hair and delicate, sharply-cut features betokened a high type of English aristocracy. Her voice was very sweet and gentle, and she smiled at her big grandson, as she replied:

      “No, my boy; I lost my taste for garden parties some years ago. But it’s a fine setting for you young people, and I hope Emmeline will take you all.”

      “Mother said she’d see about it,” said Mabel, “and that’s always the same as ‘yes.’ If it’s going to be ‘no,’ she says, ‘I’ll think it over.’”

      “It’s a great thing to understand your mother-tongue so well,” said Patty, laughing; “now I shouldn’t have known those distinctions.”

      “We have a wonderful talent for languages,” said Sinclair, gravely. “Indeed, we have a language of our own. Shall I teach it to you?”

      “You might try,” said Patty, “but I’m not at all clever as a linguist.”

      “You may not learn it easily, but it can be taught in one sentence. It consists in merely using the initial of the word instead of the word itself.”

      “But so many words begin with the same initial,” said Patty, bewildered at the idea.

      “Yes, but it’s ever so much easier than you’d think. Now listen. Wouldn’t you understand me if I said: ‘D y w t g t t g p?’”

      “Say it again, please, and say it slowly.”

      Sinclair repeated the letters, and Patty clapped her hands, crying: “Yes, yes, of course I understand. You mean ‘Do you want to go to the garden party?’ Now, listen to me while I answer: Y I w t g i i d r.”

      “Good!” exclaimed Mabel. “You said: ‘Yes, I want to go, if it doesn’t rain.’ Oh, you are a quick pupil.”

      “But those are such easy sentences,” said Patty, as she considered the matter.

      “That’s the point,” said Bob, “most sentences, at least, the ones we use most, are easy. If I should meet you unexpectedly, and say H d y d? you’d know I meant How do you do? Or if I took leave, and said G b, you’d understand good-bye. Those are the simplest possible examples. Now, on the other hand, if I were to read you a long speech from the morning paper, you’d probably miss many of the long words, but that’s the other extreme. We’ve talked in initials for years, and rarely are we uncertain as to the sense, though we may sometimes skip a word here and there.”

      “But what good is it?” asked Patty.

      “No good at all,” admitted Bob; “but it’s fun. And after you’re used to it, you can talk that way so fast that any one listening couldn’t guess what you are saying. Sometimes when we’re riding on an omnibus, or anything like that, it’s fun to talk initials and mystify the people.”

      “D y o d t?” said Patty, her eyes twinkling.

      “Yes, we often do that,” returned Bob, greatly gratified at the rapid progress of the new pupil. “You must be fond of puzzles, to catch this up so quickly.”

      “I am,” said Patty. “I’ve guessed puzzles ever since I was a little girl. I always solve all I can find in the papers, and sometimes I take prizes for them.”

      “We do that too,” said Mabel; “and sometimes we make puzzles and send them to the papers and they print them. Let’s make some for each other this evening.”

      After dinner the young people gathered round the table in the pleasant library, and were soon busy with paper and pencils. Patty found the Hartleys a match for her in quickness and ingenuity, but she was able to guess as great a proportion of their puzzles as they of hers.

      After amusing themselves with square words and double acrostics, they drifted to conundrums, and Bob asked:

      “Which letter of the Dutch alphabet spells an English lady of rank?”

      “That’s not fair,” objected Patty, “because I don’t know the Dutch alphabet.”

      “That doesn’t matter,” said Mabel, “you can guess it just as well without.”

      “Indeed I can’t, and besides I don’t know the names of all the English ladies of rank.”

      “That doesn’t matter either,” said Sinclair, smiling; “it spells a title, not a name; and one you know very well.”

      “I can’t guess it, anyway,” said Patty, after a few moment’s thought. “I give it up; tell me.”

      “Why, Dutch S,” said Bob, and Patty agreed that it was a good catch.

      “Now, I’ll catch you,” said Patty. “You all know your London pretty well, I suppose, and are familiar with the places of interest. Well, Mabel, why is your nose like St. Paul’s?”

      Mabel thought hard, and so did the boys.

      “Is my nose like St. Paul’s, too?” asked Bob, thoughtfully, stroking his well-shaped feature.

      Patty looked at it critically. “Yes,” she said, “and so is Sinclair’s. But why?”

      At last they gave it up, and Patty said, triumphantly, “Because it is made of flesh and blood.”

      They СКАЧАТЬ