Patty's Success Part 39

She snapped at the servants; she was short of speech to Patty; she found fault with everything, from the coffee to the cat.

After breakfast they went to the sunny, pleasant morning room, and Patty made up her mind to a hard day.

Then she had an inspiration. She remembered how susceptible Mrs. Van Reypen was to flattery, and she determined to see if large doses of it wouldn't cure her ill temper.

"How lovely your hair is," said Patty, apropos of nothing. "I do so admire white hair, and yours is so abundant and of such fine texture."

As she had hoped, Mrs. Van Reypen smiled in a pleased way.

"Ah, Miss Fairfield, you should have seen it when I was a girl. It was phenomenal. But of late years it has come out sadly."

"You still have quant.i.ties," said Patty, and very truthfully, too, "and its silvery whiteness is so becoming to your complexion."

"Do you think so?" said Mrs. Van Reypen, smiling most amiably. "I think it's much wiser not to colour one's hair, for now-a-days so many people turn gray quite young."

"Yes, they do. I've several friends with gray hair who are very young women indeed."

"Yes," agreed the other, comfortably, "white hair no longer indicates that a woman is advanced in years. You speak very sensibly, Miss Fairfield."

Patty smiled to herself at the success of her little ruse, "And, after all," she thought, "I'm telling her only the truth. Her hair is lovely, and she may as well know I appreciate it."

"Have you ever tried," she went on, "wearing it in a coronet braid?"

"No; I've thought I should like to, but I've worn puffs so long I don't know how to change."

"Let me do it for you," said Patty. "I'm sure I could dress it to please you. At any rate, it would do no harm to try."

So up they went to Mrs. Van Reypen's dressing room, and Patty spent most of the morning trying and discussing different modes of hair-dressing.

Mrs. Van Reypen's maid was present, and she admired Patty's cleverness and deftness at the work.

"You have a touch," declared Mrs. Van Reypen, as she surveyed herself by the aid of a hand-mirror. "You're positively Frenchy in your touch. Where did you learn it? Have you ever been a lady's-maid?"

"No," said Patty, suppressing her smiles, "I never have. But I've spent a winter in Paris, and I picked up some French notions, I suppose."

"You certainly did. You are clever with your fingers, I can see that. Can you trim hats?"

"Yes, I can," said Patty, smiling to herself at the recollection of her experiences with Mme. Villard.

"Humph! You seem pretty sure of yourself. I wish you'd trim one for me, then; but I don't want you to spoil the materials."

"I'll do my best," said Patty, meekly, and Mrs. Van Reypen instructed her maid to bring out some boxes.

"This," she said, taking up a finished hat, "is one my milliner has just sent home, and I think it a fright. Now here's a last year's hat, but the plumes are lovely. If you could untrim this first one, and transfer these plumes, and then add these roses--what do you think?"

Secretly Patty thought the new hat was lovely just as it was, but her plan that morning was to humour the testy old lady and, if possible, make her forget her neuralgic pains.

So she took the hats, and sat down to rip and retrim them.

Meantime, Mrs. Van Reypen instructed her maid to practise dressing her hair in the fas.h.i.+on Patty had done it.

But the maid was not very deft in the art, and soon Patty heard Mrs. Van Reypen shrilly exclaiming:

"Stupid! Not that way! You have neither taste nor brains! Place the braid higher. No, not so high as that! Oh, you _are_ an idiot!"

Deeming it best not to interfere, Patty went on with her work.

Also, Mrs. Van Reypen went on with her scolding, which so upset the long-suffering maid that she fell to weeping and thereby roused her mistress to still greater ire.

"Crying, are you!" she exclaimed. "If you had such a painful neck and shoulder as I have you well might cry. But to cry about nothing! Bah!

Leave me, and do not return until you can be pleasant. Miss Fairfield, will you please finish putting up my hair?"

Patty laid down her work, and did as she was requested. She was sorry for the maid and incensed at Mrs. Van Reypen's injustice and disagreeableness, but she felt intuitively that it was the best plan to be, herself, kind and affable.

"Oh, yes, I'll do it!" she said, pleasantly. "Your hat is almost finished, and we can try it on with your hair done this way. I'm sure the effect will be charming."

Mollified at this, Mrs. Van Reypen smiled benignly on her companion, and also smiled admiringly at her own mirrored reflection.

"Now," said Patty, as, a little later, she brought the completed hat for inspection, "I will try this on and see how it looks."

Mrs. Van Reypen seated herself again in front of her dressing mirror, and with gestures worthy of Madame Villard herself, Patty placed the hat on her head.

"It's most becoming," began Patty, when Mrs. Van Reypen interrupted her.

"Becoming?" she cried. "It is dreadful! It is _fearful_. It makes me look like an old woman!"

With an angry jerk she s.n.a.t.c.hed the offending hat from her head and threw it across the room.

Patty was about to give a horrified exclamation when the funny side of it struck her, and she burst into laughter. Mrs. Van Reypen was really an elderly lady, and her angry surprise at being made to look like one seemed very funny to Patty.

But in a moment she understood the case.

She had thought the hat in question of too youthful a type for Mrs. Van Reypen, and in retr.i.m.m.i.n.g it had made it more subdued and of a quieter, more elderly fas.h.i.+on.

But she now realised that she had been expected to make it of even gayer effect than it had shown at first. This was an easy matter, and picking up the hat she straightened it out, and hastily catching up a bunch of pink roses and a glittering buckle, she said:

"Oh, it isn't finished yet; these other tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs I want to put in place while the hat is on your head."

"Oh," said Mrs. Van Reypen, only half-convinced.

But she sat down again, and Patty replaced the hat, and then adjusted the roses and the buckle, giving the whole a dainty, pretty effect, which though over-youthful, perhaps, was really very becoming to the fine-looking old lady.

"Charming!" she exclaimed, letting her recent display of bad temper go without apology. "I felt sure you could do it. This afternoon we will go out to the shops and buy some materials, and you shall make me another hat."

They did so, and, though it meant an afternoon of rather strenuous shopping, Patty didn't mind it much, for Mrs. Van Reypen couldn't fly into a rage in the presence of the salespeople.

And so the days dragged by. Patty had hard work to keep her own temper when her employer was unreasonably cross and snappish, but she stuck to her plan of flattering her, and it worked well more often than not.