PATRICIA BRENT, SPINSTER

BY
HERBERT JENKINS

HERBERT JENKINS LIMITED
3 YORK STREET, LONDON S.W.1
1918

A
HERBERT
JENKINS'
BOOK

Fifteenth printing completing 153,658 copies

MADE AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
PURNELL AND SONS, PAULTON (SOMERSET) AND LONDON

CONTENTS

WHAT THIS STORY IS ABOUT

Patricia Brent is a "paying guest" at the Galvin House Residential Hotel. One day she overhears two of her fellow "guests" pitying her because she "never has a nice young man to take her out."

In a thoughtless moment of anger she announced that on the following night she is dining at the Quadrant with her fiancé. When in due course she enters the grill-room, she finds some of Galvin Houseites there to watch her. Rendered reckless by the thought of the humiliation of being found out, she goes up to a young staff-officer, and asks him to help her by "playing up."

This is how she meets Lt.-Col. Lord Peter Bowen, D.S.O. The story is a comedy concerned with the complications that ensue from Patricia's thoughtless act.

PATRICIA BRENT, SPINSTER

CHAPTER I

PATRICIA'S INDISCRETION

"She never has anyone to take her out, and goes nowhere, and yet she can't be more than twenty-seven, and really she's not bad-looking."

"It's not looks that attract men," there was a note of finality in the voice; "it's something else." The speaker snapped off her words in a tone that marked extreme disapproval.

"What else?" enquired the other voice.

"Oh, it's—well, it's something not quite nice," replied the other voice darkly, "the French call it being très femme. However, she hasn't got it."

"Well, I feel very sorry for her and her loneliness. I am sure she would be much happier if she had a nice young man of her own class to take her about."

Patricia Brent listened with flaming cheeks. She felt as if someone had struck her. She recognised