She hadn't come!
There was a lady in the gig with Daddy; but--
Patricia turned sharply, and regardless of her shoes ran swiftly back up
the driveway and through the garden to the meadow beyond; never stopping
until she dropped, a little breathless heap, beside the brook.
Custard barked excitedly, thinking it some new move in this grandmother
game; then suddenly he poked his cold black nose in under the tossed
thatch of Patricia's brown curls. For Patricia was crying--and doing it
quite as earnestly and as thoroughly as she did most things.
At last she sat up, dabbing her eyes.
"She didn't come! And we were all ready--and now it can't be just the
same--when she does come. Custard, do you suppose it's a--a judgment
on me, for taking the punchbowl?"
Custard looked sober.
"I'll go put it right back. Oh, dear, I do hope that other person hasn't
stayed to supper!"
Patricia went back to the house, forlorn, bedraggled; very different
from the Patricia whom Sarah had sent downstairs not an hour before,
imploring her to "try and keep smarted up for once."
On the back porch she met her father.
"Patricia," he asked, "what does this mean? Why did you run away when
you saw your grandmother coming?"
Patricia gasped.
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