It was after twelve o’clock when Patty reached home, and she found Nan, with her wraps on, rather anxiously awaiting her.

“Patty! Wherever have you been all this time?” she cried, as Patty came in with her big bundle.

“Laying the foundations of my great career; and, oh, Nan, it was pretty awful! I’m in for it, I can tell you!”

“What a goose you are!” But Nan smiled affectionately at the rosy, excited face of her stepdaughter.

“Well, I’m going out on a short errand, Patty. I’ll be home to luncheon at one, and then you must tell me all about it.”

Patty ran up to her own room, and, flinging off her hat and coat, sat down to open her bundle of work.

It was appalling. The portion to be embroidered looked larger than it had done in the shop, and the pattern was one of the most intricate and elaborate she had ever seen.

“Thank goodness, they’re all alike,” thought poor Patty. “After I do one, the others will be easier.”

She flew for her embroidery hoops and work-basket, and began at once on one of the centrepieces.

The pattern was a floral design, tied with bow-knots and interlaced with a conventional lattice-work. The shading of the blossoms was complicated, and showed many shades of each colour. The bow-knots were of a solid colour, but required close, fine stitches of a tedious nature, while the lattice-work part seemed to present an interminable task.

Patty was a skilful embroiderer, and realised at her first glance that she had a fearful amount of work before her.

But as yet she was undismayed, and cheerfully started in on the flowers.

She selected the right silks, cut the skeins neatly, and put them in thread papers.

“For,” she thought, “if I allow my silks to get tangled or mixed up, it will delay me, of course.”

At one o’clock, Nan came to her room.

“Didn’t you hear the luncheon gong?” she said.

“No,” replied Patty, looking up. “Is it one o’clock already?”

“For goodness’, gracious’ sake, Patty! What are you doing? Is that your ‘occupation’?”

“Yes,” said Patty, proudly displaying a wild rose, beautifully worked, and carefully tinted. “Don’t I do it nicely?”

“Indeed you do! Your embroidery is always exquisite. But are you going to work that whole centrepiece?”

“No, only a section,—see, just this much.”

Patty indicated the portion she was to work, but she didn’t say that she had thirty-five more, carefully laid away in a box, to do within the week.

“Well,” agreed Nan, “that’s not such a terrific task. But will they give you fifteen dollars for that piece?”

“No,” said Patty, smiling a little grimly; “but there are others.”

“Oho! A lot of them! A dozen, I suppose. They always give out work by dozens. Well, girlie, I don’t want to be discouraging, but you can’t do a dozen in a week. Come on down to luncheon.”

At the table, Patty gave Nan a graphic description of her morning’s experiences.

Though more or less shocked at the whole performance, Nan couldn’t help laughing at Patty’s dramatic recital, and the way in which she mimicked the various people.

“And yet, Nan,” she said, “it’s really pathetic; they all seemed so busy and so tired. The woman who gave me the work was like a machine,—as if she just fed out centrepieces to people who came for them. I’m sure she hasn’t smiled for fourteen years. The only gay one in the place was the red-headed boy; and he talked such fearful slang it cured me of ever using it again! Father will be glad of that, anyway. Hereafter I shall converse in Henry James diction. Why, Nan, he said, ‘Pipe de guy wit’ de goggles’!”

“What did he mean?” asked Nan, puzzled.

“Oh, he meant, ‘observe the gentleman wearing spectacles.’”

“How did you know?”

“Intuition, I suppose. And then, he pointed to the man in question.”

“Patty, you’ll get more slangy still, if you go among such people.”

“No, I won’t. There’s no cure like an awful example. Watch the elegance of my conversation from now on. And besides, Nan, you mustn’t act as if I associated with them socially. I assure you I was quite the haughty lady. But that slangy boy was an angel unawares. I’d probably be there yet but for his kindly aid.”

“Well, I suppose you’ll have to carry this absurd scheme through. And, Patty, I’ll help you in any way I can. Don’t you want me to wind silks, or something?”

“No, ducky stepmother of mine. The only way you can help is to head off callers. I can do the work if I can keep at it. But if the girls come bothering round, I’ll never get it done. Now, this afternoon, I want to do a lot, so if any one asks for me, won’t you gently but firmly refuse to let them see me? Make yourself so entertaining that they’ll forget my existence.”

“I’ll try,” said Nan, dubiously; “but if it’s Elise or Clementine, they’ll insist on seeing you.”

“Let ’em insist. Tell ’em I have a sick headache,—for I feel sure I shall before the afternoon’s over.”

“Now, Patty, I won’t have that sort of thing! You may work an hour or so, then you must rest, or go for a drive, or chat with the girls, or something.”

“I will, other days, Nan. But to-day I want to put in the solid afternoon working, so I’ll know how much I can accomplish.”

“Have you really a dozen of those things to do, Patty?”

“Yes, I have.” Patty didn’t dare say she had three dozen. “And if I do well this afternoon, I can calculate how long the work will take. Oh, Nan, I do want to succeed. It isn’t only the work, you know, it’s the principle. I hate to be baffled; and I won’t be!”

A stubborn look came into Patty’s pretty eyes,—a look which Nan knew well. A look which meant that the indomitable will might be broken but not bent, and that Patty would persevere in her chosen course until she conquered or was herself defeated.

So, after luncheon, she returned to her task, a little less certain of success than she had been, but no less persevering.

The work was agreeable to her. She loved to embroider, and the dainty design and exquisite colouring appealed to her Æsthetic sense.

Had it been only one centrepiece, and had she not felt hurried, it would have been a happy outlook.

But as she carefully matched the shades of silk to the sample piece, she found that it took a great deal of time to get the tints exactly right.

“But that’s only for the first one,” she thought hopefully; “for all the others, I shall know just which silks to use. I’ll lay them in order, so there’ll be no doubt about it.”

Her habits of method and system stood her in good stead now, and her skeins, carefully marked, were laid in order on her little work-table.

But though her fingers fairly flew, the pattern progressed slowly. She even allowed herself to leave long stitches on the wrong side,—a thing she never did in her own embroidery. She tried to do all the petals of one tint at once, to avoid delay of changing the silks. She used every effort to make “her head save her hands,” but the result was that both head and hands became heated and nervous.

“This won’t do,” she said to herself, as the silk frazzled between her trembling fingers. “If I get nervous, I’ll never accomplish anything!”

She forced herself to be calm, and to move more slowly, but the mental strain of hurry, and the physical strain of eyes and muscles, made her jerky, and the stitches began to be less true and correct.

“I’ll be sensible,” she thought; “I’ll take ten minutes off and relax.”

She went downstairs, singing, and trying to assume a careless demeanour.

Going into Nan’s sitting-room, she said:

“Work’s going on finely. I came down for a glass of water, and to rest a minute. Any one been here?”

“No,” said Nan, pleasantly, pretending not to notice Patty’s flushed cheeks and tired eyes. Really, she had several times stolen on tiptoe to Patty’s door, and anxiously looked at her bending over her work. But Patty didn’t know this, and wise Nan concluded the time to speak was not yet.

“No, no one came in to disturb you, which is fortunate. You’re sensible, dear, to rest a bit. Jane will bring you some water. Polly want a cracker?”

“No, thank you; I’m not hungry. Nan, that’s awfully fine work.”

“Yes, I know it, Patsy. But remember, you don’t have to do it. Give the thing a fair trial, and if it doesn’t go easily, give it up and try something else.”

“It goes easily enough; it isn’t that. But you know yourself, you can’t do really good embroidery if you do it too rapidly.”

“‘Deed you can’t! But you do such wonderfully perfect work, that I should think you could afford to slight it a little, and still have it better than other people’s.”

“Nan, you’re such a comfort!” cried Patty, jumping up to embrace her stepmother. “You always say just the very right thing. Now, I’m going back to work. I feel all rested now, and I’m sure I can finish a lot to-day. Why, Nan Fairfield! for goodness’ sake! Is it really four o’clock?”

Patty had just noticed the time, and was aghast! Two solid hours she had worked, and only a small portion of one piece was done! She hadn’t dreamed the time had flown so, and thought it about three o’clock.

Slightly disheartened at this discovery, she went back to work. At first, the silks went smoothly enough, then hurry and close application brought on the fidgets again.

Before five o’clock, she had to turn on the electric lights, and then, to her dismay, the tints of the silks changed, and she couldn’t tell yellow from pink; or green from gray.

“Well,” she thought, “I’ll work the bow-knots. They’re of one solid colour, and it’s straight sailing.”

Straight sailing it was,—but very tedious. An untrue stitch spoiled the smooth continuance of the embroidery that was to represent tied ribbon bows. An untrue stitch—and she made several—had to be picked out and done over, and this often meant frayed silk, or an unsightly needle hole in the linen.

Long before Patty thought it was time, the dressing-gong for dinner sounded.

She jumped, greatly surprised at the flight of time, but also relieved, that now she must lay aside her work. She longed to throw herself down on her couch and rest, but there was no time for that.

However, after she bathed and dressed, she felt refreshed, and it was a bright, merry-faced Patty who danced downstairs to greet her father.

If he thought her cheeks unusually pink, or her eyes nervously bright, he made no allusion to it.

“Well, Puss, how goes the ‘occupation’?” he said, patting her shoulder.

“It’s progressing, father,” she replied, “but if you’d just as leave, we won’t talk about it to-night. I’ll tell you all about it, after I finish it.”

“All right, Pattykins; we business people never like to ‘talk shop.’”

And then Mr. Fairfield, who had been somewhat enlightened by Nan as to how matters stood, chatted gaily of other things, and Patty forgot her troublesome work, and was quite her own gay, saucy self again.

Kenneth dropped in in the evening, to bring a song which he had promised Patty. They tried it over together, and then Patty said:

“Would you mind, Ken, if I ask you not to stay any longer, to-night? I’ve something I want to do, and——”

“Mind? Of course not. I rather fancy we’re good enough friends not to misunderstand each other. If you’ll let me come and make up my time some other night, I’ll skip out now, so quick you can’t see me fly!”

“All right,” said Patty, smiling at his hearty, chummy manner. “I do wish you would. I’m not often busy, as you know.”

“’Course I know it. Good-night, lady, I’m going to leave you now,” and with a hearty handshake and a merry smile, Kenneth went away, and Patty went to her own room.

“I can work on that bow-knot part, to-night,” she said to herself; “and then to-morrow, I’ll get up early and do the rest of the flowers before breakfast.”

Her task had begun to look hopeless, but she was not yet ready to admit it, and she assured herself that, of course, the others would go much more rapidly than the first.

She took down her hair and braided it into a long pigtail; then she put on a comfortable kimono and sat down to work.

She stitched, and she stitched, and she stitched, at the monotonous over and over bow-knots. Doggedly she kept on, though her shoulders ached, her eyes smarted, and her fingers trembled.

With a kind of whimsical pathos, she repeated to herself Hood’s “Song of the Shirt,” and said, under her breath, “‘Stitch, stitch, stitch, till the cock is crowing aloof,’ or whatever it is!”

Then she saw by her watch that it was eleven o’clock.

“I’ll just finish this bow,” she thought, “and then, I’ll stop.”

But before the bow was finished, there was a tap at her door.

“Who’s there?” said Patty, in a voice which carried no invitation to enter.

“It’s us,” said Nan, firmly, if ungrammatically, “and we’re coming in!”

Mr. and Mrs. Fairfield entered, and Patty, trying to make the best of it, looked up and smiled.

“How do you do?” she said. “Take seats, won’t you? I’m just amusing myself, you see.”

But the tired voice had a quiver in it, for all at once Patty saw that she had failed. She had worked hard all the afternoon and evening, and had not finished one of her thirty-six pieces! It was this discovery that upset her, rather than the unexpected visit from her parents.

“Girlie, this won’t do,” began her father, in his kindest tones.

“I know it!” cried Patty, throwing down her work, and flinging herself into her father’s arms. “I can’t do it, daddy, I can’t! I haven’t done one yet, and I never can do thirty-six!”

“Thirty-six!” exclaimed Nan. “Patty, are you crazy?”

“I think I must have been,” said Patty, laughing a little hysterically, as she took the great pile of centrepieces from a wardrobe, and threw them into Nan’s lap.

“But,—but you said a dozen!” said Nan, bewildered.

“Oh, no, I didn’t,” returned Patty. “You said, did I bring a dozen, and I said yes. Also, I brought two dozen more.”

“To do in a week!” said Nan, in an awe struck voice.

“Yes, to do in a week!” said Patty, mimicking Nan’s tones; and then they both laughed.

But Mr. Fairfield didn’t laugh. His limited knowledge of embroidery made him ignorant of how much work “three dozen” might mean, but he knew the effect it had already had on Patty, and he knew it was time to interfere.

“My child——” he began, but Patty interrupted him.

“Don’t waste words, daddy, dear,” she said. “It’s all over. I’ve tried and failed; but remember, this is only my first attempt.”

The fact that she realised her failure was in a way a relief, for the strain of effort was over, and she could now see the absurdity of the task she had undertaken.

She had reached what some one has called “the peace of defeat,” and her spirits reacted as after an escape from peril.

“I must have been crazy, Nan,” she said, sitting down beside her on the couch. “Just think; I’ve worked about six hours, and I’ve done about half of one piece. And I brought thirty-six!”

This statement of the case gave Mr. Fairfield a clearer idea, and he laughed, too.

“No, Patty; I think I need say nothing more. I see you know when you’re beaten, and I fancy you won’t touch needle to that pile of work again! I hope you can settle matters with your ‘employer’; if not, I’ll help you out. But I want to congratulate you on your pluck and perseverance, even if,—well, even if they were——”

“Crazy,” supplemented Patty.