Page:Carolyn Wells - Patty Fairfield.djvu/80



winter slipped away, and as Patty was a little girl who always looked on the bright side of things, she really had very good times at Villa Rosa.

She became a favorite with the Elmbridge boys and girls, and her unfailing good nature kept her from quarreling with her cousins, though she was often sorely tried by them.

Lessons were a very uncertain quantity. Sometimes there would be none at all for a week or two weeks, and then perhaps school would keep regularly for a few days, only to be followed by another interruption.

Patty found it only too easy to fall into these careless ways, and if she had stayed all her life at Villa Rosa, I fear she would have become indolent and selfish, for the rule of the whole 68