ise?" she returned, also under her breath.

"Had to come. Aunty telephoned for me."

"Oh!"

Then Mrs. Van Reypen awoke.

"Who's here?" she cried out. "Oh, Philip, you!"

She heartily kissed her nephew, and then rang for lights and tea.

"Miss Fairfield," she said, not untimidly, but with decision, "you are
weary and I'm not surprised at it. Go to your room and rest until dinner
time! I will send your tea to you there."

"Yes, Mrs. Van Reypen," said Patty, demurely, and, with a slight
impersonal bow to Philip, she left the room.

"Oh, I say! Aunty Van!" exclaimed the young man, as Patty disappeared,
"don't send her away."

"Be quiet, Philip," said his aunt. "You know you don't like her, and she
needs a rest."

"Don't like her!" echoed Philip. "Does a cat like cream? Aunty Van,
what's the matter with you, anyway? Who is she?"

"She's my companion," was the stern response, "my hired companion, and I
do not wish you to treat her as an equal."

"Equal! She's superior to anything I've ever seen yet."

"Oh, you rogue! You say that, or its equivalent, about every girl you
meet."

"Pooh! Nonsense! But I say, aunty, she'll come down to dinner, won't
she?"

"Yes--I suppose so. But mind now, Philip, you're not to talk to her as if
she were of your own class."

"No'm; I won't."

Reassured by the knowledge that he should see her again, Philip was most
affable and agreeable, and chatted with his aunt in a happy frame of
mind.

Patty, exiled to her own room, decided to write to Nan.

She filled several sheets with accounts of her doings at Mrs. Van
Reypen's, and gloated over the fact that there were now but four days of
her week left.

"I shall win this time," she wrote, "and, though life here is not a bed
of roses, yet it is not so very bad, and when the week is over I shall
look back at it with lots of funny thoughts. Oh, Nan, prepare a fatted
calf for Thursday night, for I shall come home a veritable Prodigal Son!
Of course, I don't mean this literally; we have lovely things to eat
here, but it's 'hame, hame, fain wad I be.' I won't write again, I'll
probably get no chance, but send Miller for me at four o'clock on
Thursday afternoon."

After writing the letter Patty felt less homesick. It seemed, somehow, to
bring Thursday nearer, to write about it. She began to dress for dinner,
and, in a spirit of mischief, she took pains to make a most fetching
toilette.

Her frock was of white mousseline de soie t