city and gives them to Keren."

"H'm," he frowned over this tangle of intrigue. "Is it entirely fair for
the rest to help?"

"Oh, yes!" said Patty. "They have to do the analyzing, but their friends
can collect and paste. Every time anybody goes for a walk, she comes
back with her blouse stuffed full of specimens for either Conny or
Keren. The nice girls are for Conny. Keren's an awful dig. She wears
eye-glasses and thinks she knows everything."

"I'm for Miss Conny myself," he declared. "Is there any way in which I
could help?"

Patty glanced about tentatively.

"You have quite a number of plants," she suggested, "that Conny hasn't
got in her book."

"You shall take back as many as you can carry," he promised. "We'll pay
a visit to the orchid house."

They left the garden behind, and turned toward the glass roofs of the
conservatories. Patty was so entertained, that she had entirely
forgotten the passage of time, until she came face to face with a clock
in the gable of the carriage house; then she suddenly realized that St.
Ursula's luncheon had been served three quarters of an hour before--and
that she was in a starving condition.

"Oh, goodness gracious! I forgot all about luncheon!"

"Is it a very grave crime to forget about luncheon?"

"Well," said Patty, with a sigh, "I sort of miss it."

"I might furnish you with enough to sustain life for a short time," he
suggested.

"Oh, could you?" she asked relievedly.

She was accustomed to having a table spread three times a day, and she
cared little who furnished it.

"Just some milk," she said modestly, "and some bread and butter
and--er--cookies. Then, you see, I won't have to go back till four
o'clock when they come from the station, and maybe I can slip in without
being missed."

"You just wait in the pavilion, and I'll see what the gardener's cottage
can supply us."

He was back in fifteen minutes, chuckling as he lugged a big hamper.

"We'll have a picnic," he proposed.

"Oh, let's!" said Patty joyously. She did not mind eating with him in
the least, for he had washed his hands, and appeared quite clean.

She helped him unpack the hamper and set the table in the little
pavilion beside the fountain. He had lettuce sandwiches, a pat of
cottage cheese, a jug of milk, orange marmalade, sugar cookies, and
gingerbread hot from the oven.

"What a perfectly bully spread!" she cried.

He held out his hand.

"Another penny!"

Patty peered into