Fairfield a good idea, and they at once made arrangements for
future sittings.
Patty was greatly pleased.
"Won't it be fine, papa?" she said. "It will be an ancestral portrait to
hang in Boxley Hall and keep till I'm an old lady like Miss Daggett."
When they reached Library Hall, where the play was to be given, Patty,
going in at the stage entrance, was met by a crowd of excited girls who
announced that Florence Douglass had gone all to pieces.
"What do you mean?" cried Patty. "What's the matter with her?"
"Oh, hysterics!" said Elsie Morris, in great disgust. "First she giggles
and then she bursts into tears, and nobody can do anything with her."
"Well, she's going to be Niobe, anyway," said Patty, "so let her go on
the stage and cut up those tricks, and the audience will think it's
all right."
"Oh, no, Patty, we can't let her go on the stage," said Frank Elliott;
"she'd queer the whole show."
"Well, then, we'll have to leave that part out," said Patty.
"Oh, dear!" wailed Elsie, "that's the funniest part of all. I hate to
leave that part out."
"I know it," said Patty; "and Florence does it so well. I wish she'd
behave herself. Well, I can't think of anything else to do but omit it. I
might ask papa; he can think of things when nobody else can."
"That's so," said Marian, "Uncle Fred has a positive genius for
suggestion."
"I'll step down in the audience and ask him," said Frank.
In five minutes Frank was back again, broadly smiling, and Mr.
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