Part 46

He knocked the ashes from his pipe and rose.

"And now," he suggested, "should you like me to show you the Italian garden?"

"Oh, yes," said Patty, "if you think Mr. Weatherby wouldn't mind."

"I'm head gardener. I do what I please."

"If you're head gardener, what makes you plant onions?"

"It's tiresome work--good for my character."

"Oh!" Patty laughed.

"And then you see, when I have a tendency to overwork the men under me, I stop and think how my own back ached."

"You're much too nice a man to work for him!" she pronounced approvingly.

"Thank ye, Miss," he touched his hat with a grin.

The Italian garden was a fascinating spot, with marble steps and fountains and clipped yew trees.

"Oh, I wish Conny could see it!" Patty cried.

"And who is she?"

"Conny's my room-mate. She's awfully interested in gardens this year, because she's going to get the botany prize for analyzing the most plants--at least, I think she's going to get it. It's between her and Keren Hersey; all the rest of the class have dropped out. Mae Van Arsdale is working against Conny, to spite me, because I wouldn't stay in an old secret society that she started. She gets orchids from the 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."