Page:Carolyn Wells - Patty Fairfield.djvu/194

 I will come and kidnap my own daughter and carry her off with me for a Christmas present"

"What a dear, wise father I've got," mused Patty, after reading this letter, "and how he understands everything, even without my telling him. I will try not to grow heedless ind rattle-pated, though it's hard to be any other way in this house."

One morning in August, Mrs. Barlow said to her husband, "Ted, you know the Carletons are coming this afternoon to stay several days, and I want you to go over to the three o'clock train to meet them. Don't forget it, will you? And you'll have to engage a stage to bring them over, for there'll be Mr. and Mrs. Carleton and four children, and perhaps a nurse. I don't know where we're going to put them all to sleep, but we must stow them away somehow. Patty, would you mind giving up your room for a time?"

"Not a bit, Aunt Grace. Put me wherever you like."

"That's a good girl. Well, suppose you sleep with Bumble. She has only a three-quarter bed, but if you don't quarrel you won't fall out."