an empty pocket.

"You'll have to charge it. I've used up all my ready money."

The spring sun was warm, the fountain was splashing, the wind was
sprinkling the pavilion floor with white magnolia petals. Patty helped
herself to marmalade with a happy sigh of contentment.

"The most fun in the world is to run away from the things you ought to
do," she pronounced.

He acknowledged this immoral truth with a laugh.

"I suppose you ought to be working?" she asked.

"There are one or two little matters that might be the better for my
attention."

"And aren't you glad you're not doing them?"

"Bully glad!"

She held out her hand.

"Give it back."

The cent returned to her pocket, and the meal progressed gaily. Patty
was in an elated frame of mind, and Patty's elation was catching.
Escaping from bounds, trespassing on a private estate, planting onions,
and picnicking in the Italian garden with the head gardener--she had
never had such a dizzying whirl of adventures. The head gardener also
seemed to enjoy the sensation of offering sanctuary to a runaway school
girl. Their appreciation of the lark was mutual.

As Patty, with painstaking honesty, was dividing the last of the
gingerbread into two exact halves, she was startled by the sound of a
footstep on the gravel path behind; and there walked into their party a
groom--a crimson-faced, gaping young man who stood mechanically bobbing
his head. Patty stared back a touch apprehensively. She hoped that she
hadn't got her friend into trouble. It was very possibly against the
rules for gardeners to entertain runaway school girls in the Italian
garden. The groom continued to stare and to duck his head, and her
companion rose and faced him.

"Well?" he inquired with a note of sharpness. "What do you want?"

"Beg pardon, sir, but this telegram come, and Richard says it might be
important, sir, and he says for me to find you, sir."

He received the telegram, ran his eyes over it, scribbled an answer on
the back with a gold pencil which he extracted from his pocket, and
dismissed the man with a curt nod. The envelope had fluttered to the
table and lay there face up. Patty inadvertently glanced at the address,
and as the truth flashed across her, she hid her head against the back
of the stone seat in a gale of laughter. Her companion looked
momentarily sheepish, then he too laughed.

"You have enjoyed the privilege of telling me exactly how rude you think
I am. Not eve