She was making lists of good things to be ordered for the feast on New Year's day; and, as it was her first unaided experience with such memoranda, she wore an air of great importance and a deeply puckered brow.

Mancy, with her arms comfortably akimbo, stood before her young mistress ready to suggest, but tactfully chary of advice.

They were not yet living in the new home, but all the furniture was in place, the furnace fire had been started, and the palms arranged in the little conservatory.

So Patty spent most of her time there, and some of the Elliotts were usually there with her.

But this morning she was alone with Mancy, struggling with the all-important lists.

"I'll make the salad myself," she remarked, as she wrote "olive oil" on her slip of paper.

"Yas'm," answered Mancy, rolling her eyes with an expression of dubious approval. "Does yo' know how, missy?"

"Oh, yes," said Patty confidently; "I can make most beautiful salad dressing. Only it does take quite a long time, and I shall have a lot to do Thursday morning. Perhaps I'd better leave it to you this time, Mancy. Can you make it?"

"Laws, yes, honey; and yo'd better leave it to me. Yo'll have enough to do with yo' flowers and fixin's, and dressin' yourself up pretty. I'll 'tend to the food."

"Well, all right, Mancy; I wish you would. And, now, just help me with this list. I'll read it to you, and see if you think of anything that I've forgotten."

"Yas'm," said Mancy, who was most anxious to help, but who had already learned that Patty was a little inclined to resent unasked advice.

They were deep in the fascinating bewilderments of grocers' and greengrocers' wares, when Pansy Potts appeared in the doorway.

"Miss Patty," she said, "I've done all the things you told me to do; and I watered the palms, and I've poked around that bunchy rosebush, but I'm 'most sure it's going to die; and now, if you please, when can I be let to fix up my own room?"

"Sure enough, Pansy," said Patty; "we must get at that room of yours, and we'll fix it up as pretty as we can."

"Mine, too," said Mancy; "I wants my room fixed up nice. I fetched a lot of pictures to liven it up some, but I reckon I ain't got no time to put 'em up to-day."

"Oh, yes, you have, Mancy," said Patty, rising; "and, anyway, we'll go right up and look at those rooms; then I can tell what we need to get for them."

"Mine won't need anything," said Pansy, "except what's in it already, and what I've got to put in it myself. I brought my decorations over this morning."

"Oh, you did?" said Patty. "Well, bring them along, and we'll all go upstairs together."

"I'll get mine, too," said Mancy, shuffling toward the kitchen.

The servants' rooms were in the third story. They had been freshly papered and neatly and appropriately furnished, though Patty had not, as yet, added any pictures or ornaments.

And, apparently, she would have no occasion to do so; for, as she went up to these rooms, she was immediately followed by their future occupants, each of whom came with her arms full of what looked like the most worthless rubbish.

"What is all that stuff, Pansy?" exclaimed Patty, as she beheld her young waitress fairly staggering under her load.

"They're lovely things, Miss Patty, and I hope you don't mind. This is a hornet's nest, and this is a branch of an apple tree, with a swing-bird's nest on it."

"A branch! It's a big limb,—a bough, I should call it. What are you going to do with it?"

"I thought I'd put it on the wall, Miss Patty. It makes the room look outdoorsy."

"It does, indeed! Put it up, if you like; but will you have room then to get in yourself?"

"Oh, yes," said Pansy cheerfully; "and I've got a big tub over home that I want to bring; it has an orange tree planted in it."

"With oranges on?"

"Oh, no, not oranges; indeed, it hasn't any leaves on, but I think maybe they'll come."

"It must be beautiful!" said Patty. "But if it hasn't any leaves on, it's probably dead."

"Oh, no, Miss Patty, it isn't dead; and it had leaves a-plenty, but my little brother he picked the leaves all off. That's one reason I wanted to come here, so's to get my orange tree away from Jack."

"Well, bring it along," said Patty good-naturedly. "What else are you going to have? A grape-vine, I suppose, trained over the headboard of your bed."

"No, Miss Patty, I haven't got no grapevine, but I've got a wandering-jew-vine in a pot, that I want to set on the mantel."

"All right," said Patty, "bring your wandering-jew, and let him wander wherever he likes. You'll have to keep your door shut, or he'll wander out and run downstairs. What's in that bag?"

"Rocks, Miss Patty."

"Rocks? What in the world are you going to do with those?"

"I'm going to make a rockery, ma'am, by the window. They're just beautiful. Miss Powers has one in her parlour, and I always wanted one, but mother wouldn't let me have it, 'cause she says it clutters."

"But, what is it?" said Patty. "How do you make it?"

"Oh, you just pile the stones up in a heap, and you stick dried grasses, and autumn leaves and things, in them; and, if ever you have any flowers, you know, you stick them in, too."

"I see; it must be very effective; and sometimes I can give you flowers for it, I'm sure."

"Thank you, Miss Patty; I hope you will. Oh, I'll be so glad to have it; I've been saving these stones for it for years. You see, they're beautiful stones."

Pansy Potts was on her knees arranging the stones, many of which were jagged pieces of quartz shining here and there with mica scales, into a symmetrical pile, which somehow had the effect of a Pagan altar.

"Well," said Patty, as she watched her, "I don't think you'll need any of the decorations I expected to give you."

"Oh, Miss Patty," said Pansy earnestly, "please don't make me have pictures, and pincushions, and vases, and all those things; I like my own things so much better."

"You shall fix your room just as you choose," said Patty kindly; "and if I can help you in any way, I'll be glad to do so. How are you progressing, Mancy?"

Patty stepped across the hall to her cook's room, and found its stout occupant rather precariously perched on a chair, tacking up a picture. She had evidently improved her time, for many other pictures were already in place, and, what is unusual in either a public or private art-gallery, the pictures were all exactly alike. They were large, very highly coloured, unframed, and, in fact, were nothing more or less than advertisements of a popular soap. The subject was a broadly-grinning old coloured woman, washing clothes, that were already snow-white, in a sea of soapsuds.

"For goodness' sake, Mancy!" exclaimed Patty. "Who said you might drive tacks all over these new walls, and where did you get all those pictures of yourself?"

"They does favour me, don't they, missy?" exclaimed Mancy, beaming with delight, as she took another tack from her mouth, and pounded it into place. "I got 'em from de grocer man, and co'se I has to tack 'em, else how would dey stay up?"

"But you have so many of them."

"Laws, chile, only a dozen; youse got mo'n that on the libr'y wall."

"But ours are different; these are all alike."

"Co'se dey's all alike! I des nachelly gets tired of lookin' at different pitchers. It 'stracts my head."

"I should think these would distract your head. I feel as if I were in a kinetoscope."

"Does that mean art-gal'ry?"

"Not exactly; but tell me, Mancy, did you get all these pictures because they looked like you? And was the grocer willing to give you so many?"

"Yas'm. But I 'spects I'll hab to confess a little about dat, Miss Patty. You see, I dun tole him I was gwine t' work for yo', and dat's huccome he guv 'em to me."

"That's all right, Mancy. After he gets that long order we made out this morning, I'm sure he'll feel he was justified in favouring us; but get down out of that chair. In the first place, you'll fall and break your neck, and if you don't, you'll break the chair. Get down, and I'll tack up the rest of your pictures."

"Thank you, missy, do; and I'll hand you the tacks. There's only six more, anyhow. I 'llowed to have three over the mantel, and two over that window, and one behind the door."

"But you can't see it; that door is usually open."

"No'm; but I'll know it's there jes' the same."

"All right; here goes, then," and soon Patty had the rest of the gaudy lithographs tacked into their designated places.

"Now, Mancy," she said, as she jumped down from the chair for the last time, "you don't want any other pictures, do you? It would interfere with the artistic unities to introduce any other school."

"Laws 'a' massy, chile; I don't want to go to school! Miss Patty, sometimes you does cert'nly talk like a Choctaw Injun. Leastways, I can't understand you."

"It doesn't really matter," said Patty, "and we're even, anyway; for I can't understand why you want those fearful posters in your room, instead of the nice little pictures I had planned to give you."

"Oh, yes; I knows yo' nice little pictures! with a narrow black ban', jes' about the size ob a sheet of mo'nin' paper! No, thank you, missy, no black-bordered envelopes hanging on my wall! Give me good reds and yallers and blues; the kind you can hear with yo' eyes shut. That is, ef yo' don't mind, missy. Ef yo' does, I'll take 'em all right slam-bang down."

"No, no, Mancy; it's all right. In your own room I want you to have just exactly what you want, and nothing else. Now, let's go and see how Pansy's getting along."

The rockery was completed, and was a most imposing structure. Wheat ears and dried oats were sticking out from between the stones, and pressed autumn leaves added a touch of colour. At the base of the rockery were a large pink-lined conch-shell and several smaller shells. On the walls were various branches of different species of vegetation; among others a tangle of twigs of the cotton plant, from which depended numerous bolls.

Pansy was struggling with a lot of evergreen boughs, which she was trying to crowd into a strange-looking receptacle.

"How do you like it, Miss Patty?" she asked, as Patty stood in the doorway and gazed in.

"I like it very much, for you, Pansy," replied Patty. "If this is the kind of room you want, I'm very glad for you to have it; only, I don't know whether to call it 'First Course in Mineralogy,' or 'How to Tell the Wild Flowers,'"

CHAPTER VIII
AN UNATTAINED AMBITION

To say that Boxley Hall was in readiness for the party would be stating it very mildly. It was overflowing,—yes, fairly bursting with readiness.

New Year's day was on Thursday, and Patty had decreed that on that day none of the Elliotts should go to Boxley Hall until they came as guests.

Dinner was to be at two o'clock, and in the morning Patty and her father went over to their new home together.

"Just think, papa," said Patty, squeezing his hand as they went along, "how many times we have walked—and run, too, for that matter—from Aunt Alice's over to our house; but this time it's different. We're going to stay, to live, really to reside in our own home; and whenever we go to Aunt Alice's again, it will be to visit or to call. Oh, isn't it perfectly lovely! If I can only live up to it, and do things just as you want me to."

"Don't take it too seriously, Pattikins; I don't expect you to become an old and experienced housewife all at once. And I don't want you to wear yourself out trying to become such a personage. Indeed, I shall be terribly disappointed if you don't make ridiculous mistakes, and give me some opportunity to laugh at you."

"You are the dearest thing, papa; that's just the way I want you to feel about it; and I think I can safely promise to make enough blunders to keep you giggling a good portion of the time."

"Oh, don't go out of your way to furnish me with amusement. And now, how about your party to-day? Is everything in tip-top order?"

"Yes, except a few thousand things that I have to do this morning, and a few hundred that I want you to do."

"I shall see to it, first, that the carving-knife is well sharpened. It's the first time that I have carved at my own table for a great many years, and I want the performance to be marked by grace and skill."

"It will be, if you do it, papa; I'm sure of that," and by this time they had reached the gate, and Patty was skipping along the path and up the steps, and into the door of her own home.

Mancy and Pansy Potts were already there, and, to a casual observer, it looked as if there was nothing more to do except to admit the guests.

Patty had set the table the day before, and, to the awestruck admiration of Pansy Potts, had arranged the beautiful new glass and china with most satisfactory effects. Pansy had watched the proceedings with intelligent scrutiny and, when it was finished, had told Patty that the next time she would be able to do it herself.

"You'll have a chance to try," Patty had answered, "for in the evening we'll have supper, and you may set the table all by yourself; and I'll come out and look it over to make sure it's all right."

But, as Patty had said, there was yet much to be done on Thursday morning, even though there were eight hands to make the work light.

Boxes of flowers had arrived from the florist's, and these had to be arranged in the various rooms; also, a few potted plants in full bloom had come for the conservatory, and these so delighted the soul of Pansy Potts that Patty feared the girl would spend the whole day nursing them.

"Come, Pansy," she called; "let them grow by themselves for a while; I want your help in the kitchen."

"But, oh, Miss Patty, they're daisies! Real white daisies, with yellow centres!"

"Well, they'll still be daisies to-morrow, and you'll have more time to admire them then."

Patty's ambitions in the culinary line ran to the fanciful and elaborate confections which were pictured in the cook-books and in the household periodicals; especially did she incline toward marvellous desserts which called for spun sugar, and syllabubs, and rare sweetmeats, and patent freezing processes.

For her New Year's dinner party she had decided to try the most complicated recipe of all, and, moreover, intended to surprise everybody with it.

Warning her father to keep out of the kitchen on pain of excommunication, she rolled up her sleeves and tied on a white apron; and with her open book on the table before her, began her proceedings.

Pansy Potts was set to whipping cream with a new-fangled syllabub-churn, and Mancy was requested to blanch some almonds and pound them to a paste in a very new and very large mortar.

Though the good-natured Mancy was more than willing to help her young mistress through what threatened to be somewhat troubled waters, yet she had the more substantial portions of the dinner to prepare, and there was none too much time.

As Patty went on with her work, difficulties of all sorts presented themselves. The cream wouldn't whip, but remained exasperatingly fluid; the sugar refused to "spin a thread," and obstinately crystallised itself into a hard crust; the almonds persisted in becoming a lumpy mass, instead of a smooth paste; and the gelatine, as Patty despairingly remarked, "acted like all possessed!"

But, having attempted the thing, she was bound to carry it through, though it was with some misgivings that she finally poured a queer and sticky-looking substance into the patent freezer.

Pansy Potts had declared herself quite able to accomplish the freezing process; but, as she was about to begin, she announced in tragic tones that the extra ice hadn't come.

"Oh!" exclaimed Patty, in desperation, "everything seems to go wrong about that dessert! Well, Pansy, you use what ice there is, and I'll telephone for some more, right away."

But when Patty called up the ice company she found that their office was closed for the day, and, hanging up the receiver with an angry little jerk, she turned to find her father smiling at her.

"I see you have begun to amuse me," he said; "but never mind about my entertainment now, Puss; run away and get dressed, or you won't be ready to receive your guests. It's half-past one now."

"Oh, papa, is it so late? And I have to get into that new frock!"

"Well, scuttle along, then, and make all the haste you can."

Patty scuttled, but during the process of making all the haste she could, she very nearly lost her temper.

The new white frock was complicated; the broad white hair-ribbons were difficult to tie; and, as it was the first time that she had made a toilette in her new home, it is not at all surprising that many useful or indispensable little articles were missing.

"Pansy," she called, as she heard the girl in the dining-room, "do, for mercy's sake, come up and help me. I can't find my shoe-buttoner, and I can't button the yoke of this crazy dress without it."

Pansy came to the rescue, and just as the Elliott family came in at the front gate, Patty completely attired, but very flushed and breathless from her rapid exertions—flew downstairs and tucked her arm through her father's, as he stood in the hall.

"I'm here," she said demurely, and trying to speak calmly.

"Oh, so you are," he said. "I thought a white cashmere whirlwind had struck me. I hope you didn't hurry yourself."

"Oh, no!" said Patty, meeting his merry smile with another. "I just dawdled through my dressing to kill time."

"Yes, you look so," said her father, and just then the doorbell rang.

"Oh, papa," cried Patty, her eyes dancing with excitement, "isn't it just grand! That's the first ring at our own doorbell, our own doorbell, you know; and hasn't it a musical ring? And now it will be answered by our own Pansy."

Without a trace of the hurry and fluster that had so affected her young mistress, Pansy Potts, in neat white cap and apron, opened the door to the guests.

Patty nudged her father's arm in glee, as they noted the correct demeanour of their own waitress, and then all such considerations were drowned in the outburst of enthusiasm that accompanied the entrance of the Elliotts. The younger members of the family announced themselves with wild war-whoops of delight, and the older ones, though less noisy, were no less enthusiastic.

"I like Cousin Patty's house," announced Gilbert, sitting down in the middle of the floor. "I will stay here always. Where is the Pudgy kitty-cat?"

"I'll get her for you, right away," said Patty. "She is fatter than ever; but, first, let me make grandma comfortable."

Taking Mrs. Elliott's bonnet and wraps, Patty led the old lady to a large easy-chair, and announced that she must sit there for a few moments and rest, before she made a tour of inspection around the house.

Grandma Elliott had not been allowed in the new house while it was being arranged, lest she should take cold, and so to-day it burst upon her in all its glory. By this time Frank and Marian were investigating the conservatory, and little Edith was announcing that Cousin Patty had a "Crimson Gambler."

"She means Crimson Rambler!" exclaimed Patty; "or, as Pansy calls it, 'that bunchy rosebush.'"

Although the guests had been invited to a two-o'clock dinner, yet when the clock hands pointed to nearly three, the meal had not been announced.

There was so much to be talked about that the time did not drag, but Aunt Alice looked at Patty a little curiously.

Patty caught the glance, and excusing herself, went out into the kitchen.

"Mancy!" she exclaimed; "it's almost three o'clock. Why don't you have dinner?"

"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.