Miss Pat at School.

by Pemberton Ginther.

CHAPTER I

THE TWO NEW STUDENTS

"Isn't it jolly--to be here in a real Academy of Fine Arts, just like all the famous artists when they were young and unknown? Doesn't it make you feel all excited and quivery, Norn?" asked Patricia, as she fitted her key into the narrow gray locker with an air of huge enjoyment. "I don't see how you can look so cool. You are as calm and refrigerated as a piece of the North Pole."

Elinor smiled and her shining eyes traveled down the wide dim corridor with its rows of battered gray lockers, past the confusion of chairs and easels that cl.u.s.tered around the big screen of the composition room, straight into the farthest nook of the great bare work rooms beyond, where an array of heroic-sized white casts loomed conspicuous in the cold north light above the clutter of easels, stools and drawing-boards that encompa.s.sed the silent, intent workers.

"I'm not half so calm as I look, Miss Pat," she said, seriously. "I'm more excited than I ever was in my life. It's too deep to come to the surface, I guess. I haven't any words for it."

Patricia nodded approval.

"That's your 'sensitive, artistic temperament,' as Mrs. Hand calls it.

It must be awfully trying, though, not to be able to babble when you're pleased. It's such a relief to get it out of your system. I'd simply burst if I tried to keep quiet when I felt excited."

Elinor smiled absently, and then burst out fervently, "Isn't it all gloriously workmanlike--the bare walls and smudged doors and the painty smell, too? It's so serious. Outside, the people regard a picture as a mere luxury, but in here, _here_," she said, exultantly, "it is absolutely the necessary thing in life."

Patricia shut her door with a snap and turned to her sister with a glowing face, sweeping her stray tendrils back with an eager gesture.

"I know it!" she cried. "It makes even me feel as though I could turn off masterpieces _instanter_. Merely to look at those lumps of clay in the modeling room made me simply _ache_ to get my hands into them. I was enchanted the moment I came in here with you this morning, never dreaming that I should be so lucky as to be one of the ill.u.s.trious band myself. You're a perfect duck, Norn, to let me tag along after you here."

"You might as well do that as anything else," said Elinor, rather absently. "The best of it is that we shall be together. It will be such fun to see how we each get along."

"'We!'" echoed Patricia. "You mean how _you_ get along. I shan't count at all. I may have to give up when I actually get at it." Then with a swift change of spirit she added: "All the same, if I couldn't do better than some of those smudgy celebrities in the modeling room were doing, I'd feel pretty sorry for myself. Such forlorn, lop-sided caricatures of human beings I never saw. I don't see how they can do them."

Elinor's soft laugh rippled out. "It's clear that you haven't tried to do it, or you'd see how easy it is to make caricatures instead of portraits," she said. "I didn't think they were so very bad."

"I'd be ashamed to have anyone see them if I'd done them," declared Patricia, unconvinced. "They seemed quite c.o.c.ky over them, poor idiots. I hope some of them do better than that, or I shan't learn much."

"It would be wonderful if you did make a success of it," said Elinor, beginning to put her newly acquired implements into her locker. "How surprised Bruce will be that you are studying here, too."

"Don't tell him, for the world!" cried Patricia, her brow wrinkling at the thought of that noted artist's surprise. "I shouldn't have dared to take the course if he was ever to see anything I did! I'm only going into it for fun, and I shouldn't have dreamed of doing it if it hadn't been the cheapest course in the whole school. You know I shouldn't have, Elinor dear, so please don't tell."

Elinor gave her a rea.s.suring squeeze. "Don't be afraid, Miss Pat. I won't give away your dark secrets to anyone till you want me to.

You'll tell David, won't you?"

Patricia pondered a moment. "I don't believe I'll tell anyone until I see what I can do," she decided. "I'd love to surprise Francis Edward David Carson Kendall, otherwise known as Frad, but I'll wait till I know whether it is to be the sort of surprise he'd welcome before I spring it on him. He wouldn't appreciate a hideous fizzle, like some of those we saw, and I'd hate to inflict a newly discovered twin brother with anything of that sort myself."

"I don't believe Fra--David would be very critical; he's so good natured," said Elinor. "Isn't it hard to get used to him as our brother, after knowing him as David Carson for a whole summer? I can't ever feel sure of what is his right name now. We knew him as David Carson for so long, and now that he wants to be called by his real name, I simply get more twisted all the time."

"That's why I call him Frad," said Patricia, with a twinkle. "Combines the whole and is entirely original, and so suited to his situation. I don't think he ought to drop all the Carson name, particularly while we're all living comfortably on the Carson money. It seems sort of ungrateful to me."

"But you know Mrs. Carson always wanted him to take his own name if he ever found it," said Elinor, closing her locker and dropping the key into her bag.

"Well, he's dear with any name, and I'm glad Judy discovered him when she did, money or no money," said Patricia seriously. "He was so disappointed when Madam Blitz said my voice needed another year to grow in, that I'm awfully glad I've hit on something to do that will fill in the time, and keep me learning. That's really the great thing, isn't it, after all?"

As she spoke a gong sounded from beyond the closed door of a nearby cla.s.s room; there was sound of movement and subdued voices, then the door swung grudgingly and a number of students of various ages with smudged hands and soiled ap.r.o.ns came straggling out into the dim corridor, laden with canvases and drawings to be stowed in the long line of lockers that stretched on either side of the hallway.

Elinor looked at them with a little quick sigh of excited envy.

"They are all so used to it," she said, with a note of humility in her sweet voice. "They make me feel so _green_!"

"Poof! You needn't care," said Patricia, breezily. "If Bruce Haydon says you can draw, you shouldn't mind a lot of sloppy students. Wait till you've been here a month--you'll be rearing your crest as high as any."

Elinor shook her head. "To tell the truth, Miss Pat dear, I almost wish Bruce hadn't gotten me into the life and portrait cla.s.ses without the regular term in the antique rooms. I shouldn't feel half so shivery about going in there and drawing from those big casts, for I know they are all more or less beginners there."

"Stuff!" protested Patricia stoutly. "You know you've been simply crazy to get here. Why spoil it all by _squibbling_? I think it's perfectly gorgeous. I'm wild to begin myself, and I'm about as green as any old shamrock. Besides, it's a mighty poor way to show your grat.i.tude to Bruce for putting you right slap into the highest cla.s.ses without slaving your life out for years, perhaps. I'll tell him----"

"Indeed, you'll do no such thing!" cried Elinor, the color rushing to her cheeks and her authority as eldest sister a.s.serting itself promptly. "I don't intend that Bruce shall hear a word until I've had my first good criticism."

Patricia smiled to herself at the effect of her ruse. "All right.

I'll be good," she promised. "Now, to come down to earth again--where are we going to feed? I wish we could find the lunch room. It would be such fun to look our future cla.s.smates over while we browse."

"I think it's in the bas.e.m.e.nt," said Elinor dubiously, "but I don't believe we can buy things there. We'd have to go out, anyway, I'm afraid."

A blue-ap.r.o.ned girl who had been packing her materials in an adjoining locker turned civilly.

"Are you speaking about the lunch room?" she asked in a pleasant contralto voice. "I can show you where it is, but you'll have to bring your lunch with you. There are gas stoves to cook on in the back room, and tables and chairs in the front one, if you're not too late to get a place."

Elinor thanked her cordially, while Patricia almost dislocated her neck trying to get a glimpse of the big canvas that protruded from the locker while still keeping far enough behind Elinor for her curiosity to pa.s.s unnoticed.

"It is down a little iron stairway behind that screen," said the girl, tucking a paper parcel into the capacious pocket of her blue jean paint dress, "and it's only for girls. The men have one on the other side of the building. Come down as soon as you can, for it's fearfully crowded later on."

Patricia watched her disappear behind the big screen of the composition room, and then she turned excitedly to Elinor.

"Isn't she nice?" she asked admiringly. "She's so c.o.c.k-sure of herself and so calm about it. I like the way her eyebrows meet over her haughty nose, and that superior kink in her nice, crinkly lips. I know she's going to be worth while when we know her."

"For goodness' sake, don't be jumping into admirations wholesale, Miss Pat, darling," said Elinor, gently pulling Patricia's arm through hers as they pa.s.sed into the narrow entrance to the dressing room. "Don't rush at it so, ducky. You can't know the right people at once, and it saves a lot of bother not to get too familiar with the wrong ones."

"Just as you say, Miss Solomon," rippled Patricia, too happy to be depressed by anything. "I'll be as frigid as you like, and if any of these frivolous young things try to sc.r.a.pe an acquaintance with me, I'll snub them good and hard."

She lowered her voice as two newcomers entered--one a slender, faded young woman with near-sighted pale eyes, and the other a blond girl with a dazzling skin and glorious shimmering hair wound around a shapely head. Both were in ap.r.o.ns, but the younger wore a dull green that set off her fair beauty to perfection, while the checked gingham of the other proclaimed a hopelessly downright taste.

Patricia, at the mirror, paused in the act of pinning on her hat, her eyes riveted on the vision in dull green.

"Isn't she lovely?" she demanded in a thrilling whisper of Elinor, who had slipped into her things and was already at the door.

The girl unmistakably caught the words, for she turned a brilliant, measuring, half-approving look on her while she slowly began to divest herself of the alluring green ap.r.o.n. She was so evidently used to admiration that her smooth cheek showed no change of color, though the panic red of swift confusion flamed on Patricia's bright face.

Pinning on her hat hastily, she fled after Elinor, feeling that she must seem most inexperienced and childish in the eyes of this fascinating creature who at once had eclipsed all previous claimants to her admiration.

"I wonder if she is in the modeling cla.s.s?" she said as she caught up with Elinor in the composition room. "I don't suppose there's any such luck as that. She looks too clean----"

Elinor interrupted her with a little shake. "You hopeless little goose," she said, in laughing despair. "You've just promised me not to, and here you are it, hammer and tongs, under my very eyes."