Miss Pat at School Part 19

"I'll never learn to be composed and considerate," she sighed as she crept in beside the slumbering Judith. "I'm crazy for Elinor to finish that lovely study of hers, and yet I'd wake her up just for my silly whims. She's got to get it done tomorrow if she can. Wish I could help her. Thank goodness, mine's done at last," and she drifted off to sleep with a jumble of prize designs and golden dreams for the future mingling with that recurring memory of Doris Leighton's hardening face as she spoke of her study for the library panel.

The next afternoon when Elinor, completely restored after a day's rest, took out her drawing-board and began to work, Patricia brought out her own study for a final criticism before laboriously lugging it up to the Academy.

Elinor and Judith were very enthusiastic over the intent, studious figure that bent over its book in such lifelike fas.h.i.+on.

"It's that air of real hard study that makes it so good," said Elinor, twirling the stool to catch every view of the figure. "I don't know how you managed to get it so well."

"Well, Ju was studying hard and not merely posing," returned Patricia seriously. "Somehow it gets into the work. There isn't anything that tells the truth so straight as our sort of work, Norn. You simply can't fake. Judy deserves part of the credit. And then, I liked it so, I couldn't help getting on with it. It's so fearfully jolly to a _producer_."

Judith gave her pale locks a toss. "Why, we're all doing it!" she crowed. "You two in the Academy, and I at home here in my diary and my stories! Aren't we a talented lot!"

"_Stuff!_" said Patricia disgustedly. "You and I needn't brag yet a while, Judy. Elinor's the only one that's got a ghost of a showing.

You've a long lane to run before you can even be considered, and I'm just common, every-day stuff like everyone else. This is just a flyer I'm taking in the company of my betters," and she gave a whimsical glance at Elinor with the insight that was occasionally hers in brief glimpses. "I can't fly far, I warn you, but it's simply ripping while I'm on the wing!"

"Judy likes to see herself go by in the mirror," smiled Elinor leniently. "I suppose that's the literary mind."

"Literary grandmother!" exclaimed Patricia scornfully. "She's a conceited chicken that thinks she's a nightingale because she can peep louder than some. Wait till you've had some of your stuff printed, Judy, before you boast. Anyone can scribble----"

"You'll hurt her feelings, Miss Pat," protested Elinor, as Judith's dignified back disappeared into her own room and the door closed firmly. "She doesn't mean to be boastful."

"Nonsense! I'm her only hope," returned Patricia with spirit. "She won't amount to a row of pins if she goes on this way. Don't you worry about her feelings. She's got sense enough to know I'm right. Come along over to the Academy with me now. The walk will do you good, and I'll feel more respectable with a good-looking escort while I'm lugging this huge thing."

They met Doris Leighton coming out of the students' door, and after a few inquiries found that she had just accomplished the same errand that Patricia was bent on. Her study for the prize panel was safely stowed away in the office of the curator.

"What was it like?" eagerly demanded Patricia. "It doesn't matter now, you know, if you tell. We won't tell, and it's too late, anyway, to make any difference."

Doris hesitated, undergoing again that subtle change that Patricia had seen before.

"I think I'll wait till they're all in," she replied softly. "It will be better for us all to be able to say truthfully that we had no idea of what the others were like till after ours were in. Don't you think so?"

"Of course it will," agreed Elinor heartily. "I'm glad you thought of it. I'd much rather not know. Mine isn't finished yet, and I'm so new at the work that I might be influenced."

"I thought about that," said Doris with veiled eyes on Elinor's pale face. "I know how the same thought wave will pa.s.s through peoples'

minds when they're working together, and I feel that one should be very careful not to influence another, particularly in a case like this."

"I'm not so sure that it makes a bit of difference," said Patricia carelessly. "I've heard of people miles apart having the same idea at the same time. Patents are always being duplicated, you know."

"Indeed they are!" cried Doris with singular fervor. "But the one who gets the idea first is always the real inventor. The jury wouldn't hesitate to decide on that, I'm positive, if anyone was so unfortunate as to turn in a duplicate of any of the studies."

After she had said good-bye and they Were waiting at the curator's desk, Elinor spoke musingly.

"I wonder," she said, wrinkling her brows, "if Doris Leighton was afraid I'd garnish my panel with any of her ideas; she was so unnaturally stirred up about it."

Patricia, with her mind wholly on her own absorbing business, gave scant attention.

"She's rattled for fear she won't take the prize as usual," she said, gayly. "I bet she opens her eyes when she sees yours, Norn. Hers may be lots better done, but it simply can't be as lovely and as _different_."

She pushed her bulky package carefully across the curator's counter, with an eager request that it be tenderly treated, and that official rea.s.sured her as to its entire safety by placing it at once in the locked ante-room where the modeling compet.i.tion studies were stored.

"When will the prizes be announced?" she asked breathlessly, as the door clicked in its lock. "Shall we have to wait long?"

The curator smiled at her eagerness. "The library panel will be announced at noon on Tuesday in the first antique room," he said. "And the modeling cla.s.s will be notified immediately before, while the cla.s.s is still in session."

Patricia s.h.i.+vered with excited antic.i.p.ation as they closed the heavy outer door of the Academy after them.

"_Jiminy_, I wish Tuesday were here and over!" she said fervently.

"I'm scared stiff when I think of my poor little study with all those artists focusing their eagle eyes on it."

"It does seem ages to wait," agreed Elinor. "After I turn mine in tomorrow morning, I'll be consumed with curiosity to see the others--particularly Doris Leighton's."

CHAPTER XI

THE LITTLE RIFT

"What do you think?" cried Patricia radiantly, swooping down on Elinor as she came slowly out of the portrait room at high noon on the momentous Tuesday. "What _do_ you think, Elinor Kendall? I've gotten 'Honorable Mention' for my silly little old head! Isn't it wonderful?

I'm so stunned I can't talk. I never dreamed it could have the ghost of a show," she rattled on ecstatically. "Miss Green was paralyzed, and Naskowski kept nodding till I thought he'd loosen his brain, and Griffin--she got first prize you know--cheered right out loud before them all. I was simply too limp for words, and I rushed out to tell you right away."

Elinor's eyes filled with a glad light, and she took Patricia in her arms. "It's perfectly glorious, Miss Pat, darling," she said with a rapturous squeeze. "I'm so delighted I can't help kissing you on the spot," and she did it with a heartiness that made Patricia wriggle.

"Ouch, that's my loose wisdom-tooth you're pus.h.i.+ng against!" she protested plaintively. "You've wobbled it all out of place, you reckless thing. There goes the crowd into the first antique. Come along or we'll be too late!"

The doors of the exhibition room were pushed quickly open as Mr. Benton led the expectant band of students in for their first sight of the prize designs, and Patricia's heart beat fast with the thrilling hope that Elinor's might be among the first in rank.

Her eyes swept one wall and then the other, searching for the familiar canvas, but all in vain, until she lifted them to the screen which stood in the center of the room, and where three canvases were hung, Elinor's below the other two.

"There it is!" she whispered eagerly, nudging Elinor to make her see.

"It's on the screen. Oh, Norn, it _must_ have----"

"Hus.h.!.+" said Elinor in an undertone. "Don't make a fuss. There's Doris Leighton waving to us from the model stand. She looks awfully well, doesn't she? Her little vacation----"

But Patricia was impatiently deaf. "Why doesn't he get on?" she whispered testily. "We know all about the conditions of the prize.

What we want to know is--oh, Elinor, I'm horribly disappointed. I was afraid Doris Leighton would get it, but you ought to have had Honorable Mention. Griffin's isn't half so good as yours; she said so herself.

Can you see what their canvases are like? I'm just so that the light glares on them for me. What's that he's saying now? He's talking about your study."

The words cut the air with an incisive clearness that left no shadow of a doubt, though Patricia could scarcely credit her own ears.

"I regret to say that the third study on the screen," said Mr. Benton, toying with his eyegla.s.s ribbon, "is merely placed there as a warning to students of all cla.s.ses to stick to their own ideas and imaginations, and not to attempt the hazardous task of copying stronger and more experienced workers. This canvas shows so much delicacy of appreciation of the subject that, had no other of absolutely the same design been previously turned in earlier, the jury should have given it the prize. Miss Leighton's cleverly executed study of precisely the same subject, while more finished in treatment, is far below this one in feeling, and it is a matter of regret to me that the student who executed it should not have possessed more originality and self-reliance. Miss Leighton will please come forward to receive the Roberts prize."

Of what followed--the bestowing and graceful acceptance of the pretty purse with the hundred dollars, the congratulations and murmurs of surprise that ran about the a.s.sembly--Patricia had little knowledge.

Those astonis.h.i.+ng words of Mr. Benton had so stung and bewildered her that the room swung about her dizzily and she clutched the back of a chair for support. Elinor's stricken face faded in the blurred background of all the other faces, as she flung out vain hands of protest.

"Oh, it isn't fair--" she broke out, but the words that boomed so loudly in her ears were only a faint whisper, and she staggered blindly for a moment.

When she recovered herself in the dim corridor, Elinor, calm and rea.s.suring, was on one side of her, while her other arm was in the firm grip of the cheery Griffin.