When Patty Went to College (9 page)

Patty read it soberly, and Lady Clara watched her with a shade of disappointment.

"Don't you think it's pretty good?" she asked.

"Yes; I think it's one of the best things I ever read."

"You never even smiled!"

"My dear child, it isn't funny."

"Isn't funny! Why, the class simply roared over it."

Patty shrugged. "Your appreciation must have gratified Olivia. And here it's February, and I've barely spoken to her."

The next afternoon Patty was strolling home from a recitation, when she spied Olivia Copeland across the campus, headed for Pine Bluff and evidently out for a solitary walk.

"Olivia Copeland, wait a moment," Patty called. "Are you going for a walk? May I come too?" she asked, as she panted up behind.

Olivia assented with evident surprise, and Patty fell into step beside her. "I just found out yesterday that you live in Sorrento, and I wanted to talk to you. I was there myself once, and I think it's the most glorious spot on earth."

Olivia's eyes shone. "Really?" she gasped. "Oh, I'm so glad!" And before she knew it she was telling Patty the story of how she had come to college to please her father, and how she loved Italy and hated America; and what she did not tell about her loneliness and homesickness Patty divined.

She realized that the girl
was
remarkable, and she determined in the future to take an interest in her and make her like college. But a senior's life is busy and taken up with its own affairs, and for the next week or two Patty saw little of the freshman beyond an occasional chat in the corridors.

One evening she and Priscilla had returned late from a dinner in town, to be confronted by a dark room and an empty match-safe.

"Wait a moment and I'll get some matches," said Patty; and she knocked on a door across the corridor where a freshman lived with whom they had a borrowing acquaintance. She found within her own freshman friends, Lady Clara Vere de Vere and Emily Washburn. It was evident by the three heads close together, and the hush that fell on the group as she entered, that some momentous piece of gossip had been interrupted. Patty forgot her room-mate waiting in the dark, and dropped into a chair with the evident purpose of staying out the evening.

"Tell me all about it, children," she said cordially.

The freshmen looked at one another and hesitated.

"A new president?" Patty suggested, "or just a class mutiny?"

"It's about Olivia Copeland," Lady Clara returned dubiously; "but I don't know that I ought to say anything."

"Olivia Copeland?" Patty straightened up with a new interest in her eyes. "What's Olivia Copeland been doing?"

"She's been flunking and--"

"Flunking!" Patty's face was blank. "But I thought she was so bright!"

"Oh, she is bright; only, you know, she hasn't a way of making people find it out; and, besides," Lady Clara added with meaning emphasis, "she was scared over examinations."

Patty cast a quick look at her. "What do you mean?" she asked.

Lady Clara was fond of Patty, but she was only human, and she had been frightened herself. "Well," she explained, "she had heard a lot of stories from--er--upper-classmen about how hard the examinations are, and the awful things they do to you if you don't pass, and being a stranger, she believed them. Of course Emily and I knew better; but she was just scared to death, and she went all to pieces, and--"

"Nonsense!" said Patty, impatiently. "You can't make me believe that."

"If it had been a sophomore that had tried to frighten us," pursued Lady Clara, "we shouldn't have minded so much: but a senior!"

"Now, Patty, aren't you sorry that you told us all those things?" asked Emily.

Patty laughed. "For the matter of that, I never say anything I'm not sorry for half an hour later. I'm going to get out a book some day entitled 'Things I Wish I Hadn't Said: A Collection of
Faux Pas
,' by Patty Wyatt."

"I think it's more than a
faux pas
when you frighten a girl so she--"

"I suppose you think you're rubbing it in," said Patty, imperturbably; "but girls don't flunk because they're frightened: they flunk because they don't know."

"Olivia knew five times as much geometry as I did, and I got through and she didn't."

Patty examined the carpet in silence.

"She thinks she's going to be dropped, and she's just crying terribly," pursued Emily, with a certain relish in the details.

"Crying!" said Patty, sharply. "What's she crying for?"

"Because she feels bad, I suppose. She'd been out walking, and got caught in the rain, and she didn't get back in time for dinner, and then found those notes waiting for her. She's up there lying on the bed, and she's got hysterics or Roman fever or something like that. She told us to go away and let her alone. She's awfully cross all of a sudden."

Patty rose. "I think I'll go and cheer her up."

"Let her alone, Patty," said Emily. "I know the way you cheer people up. If you hadn't cheered her up before examinations she wouldn't have flunked."

"I didn't know anything about her then," said Patty, a trifle sulkily; "and, anyway," she added as she opened the door, "I didn't say anything that affected her passing, one way or the other." She turned toward Olivia's room, however, with a conscience that was not quite comfortable. She could not remember just what she
had
told those freshmen about examinations, but she had an uneasy feeling that it might not have been of a reassuring nature.

"I wish I could ever learn when it is time for joking and when it is not," she said to herself as she knocked on the study door.

No one answered, and she turned the knob and entered. A stifled sob came from one of the bedrooms, and Patty hesitated.

She was not in the habit of crying herself, and she always felt uncomfortable when other people did it. Something must be done, however, and she advanced to the threshold and silently regarded Olivia, who was stretched face downward on the bed. At the sound of Patty's step she raised her head and cast a startled glance at the intruder, and then buried her face in the pillows again. Patty scribbled an "engaged" sign and pinned it on the study door, and drawing up a chair beside the bed, she sat down with the air of a physician about to make a diagnosis.

"Well, Olivia," she began in a business-like tone, "what is the trouble?"

Olivia opened her hands and disclosed some crumpled papers. Patty spread them out and hastily ran her eyes over the official printed slips:

Miss
Copeland
is hereby informed that she has been found deficient in
German
(
three
hours).

Miss
Copeland
is hereby informed that she has been found deficient in
Latin prose
(
one
hour).

Miss
Copeland
is hereby informed that she has been found deficient in
geometry
(
four
hours).

Patty performed a rapid calculation,--"three and one are four and four are eight,"--and knit her brows.

"Will they send me home, Patty?"

"Mercy, no, child; I hope not. A person who's done as good work as you in English ought to have the right to flunk every other blessed thing, if she wants to."

"But you're dropped if you flunk eight hours; you told me so yourself."

"Don't believe anything I told you," said Patty, reassuringly. "I don't know what I'm talking about more than half the time."

"I'd hate to be sent back, and have my father know I'd failed, when he spent so much time preparing me; but"--Olivia began to cry again--"I want to go back so much that I don't believe I care."

"You don't know what you're talking about," said Patty. She put her hand on the girl's shoulder. "Mercy, child, you're sopping wet, and you're shivering! Sit up and take those shoes off."

Olivia sat up and pulled at the laces with ineffectual fingers, and Patty jerked them open and dumped the shoes in a squashy heap on the floor.

"Do you know what's the matter with you?" she asked. "You're not crying because you've flunked. You're crying because you've caught cold, and you're tired and wet and hungry. You take those wet clothes off this minute and get into a warm bath-robe, and I'll get you some dinner."

"I don't want any dinner," wailed Olivia, and she showed signs of turning back to the pillows again.

"Don't act like a baby, Olivia," said Patty, sharply; "sit up and be a--a man."

Ten minutes later Patty returned from a successful looting expedition, and deposited her spoils on the bedroom table. Olivia sat on the edge of the bed and watched her apathetically, a picture of shivering despondency.

"Drink this," commanded Patty, as she extended a steaming glass.

Olivia obediently raised it to her lips, and drew back. "What's in it?" she asked faintly.

"Everything I could find that's hot--quinine and whisky and Jamaica ginger and cough syrup and a dash of red pepper, and--one or two other things. It's my own idea. You can't take cold after
that
."

"I--I don't believe I want any."

"Drink it--every drop," said Patty, grimly; and Olivia shut her eyes and gulped it down.

"Now," said Patty, cheerfully bustling about, "I'll get dinner. Have you a can-opener? And any alcohol, by chance? That's nice. We'll have three courses,--canned soup, canned baked beans, and preserved ginger,--all of them hot. It's mighty lucky Georgie Merriles was in New York or she'd never have lent them to me."

Olivia, to her own astonishment, presently found herself laughing (she had thought that she would never smile again) as she sipped mulligatawny soup from a tooth-mug and balanced a pin-trayful of steaming baked beans on her knee.

"And now," said Patty, as, the three courses disposed of, she tucked the freshman into bed, "we'll map out a campaign. While eight hours are pretty serious, they are not of necessity deadly. What made you flunk Latin prose?"

"I never had any before I came, and when I told Miss--"

"Certainly; she thought it her duty to flunk you. You shouldn't have mentioned the subject. But never mind. It's only one hour, and it won't take you a minute to work it off. How about German?"

"German's a little hard because it's so different from Italian and French, you know; and I'm sort of frightened when she calls on me, and--"

"Pretty stupid, on the whole?" Patty suggested.

"I'm afraid I am," she confessed.

"Well, I dare say you deserved to flunk in that. You can tutor it up and pass it off in the spring. How about geometry?"

"I thought I knew that, only she didn't ask what I expected and--"

"An unfortunate circumstance, but it will happen. Could you review it up a little and take a reëxamination right away?"

"Yes; I'm sure I could, only they won't give me another chance. They'll send me home first."

"Who's your instructor?"

"Miss Prescott."

Patty frowned, and then she laughed. "I thought if it were Miss Hawley I could go to her and explain the matter and ask her to give you a reëxamination. Miss Hawley's occasionally human. But Miss Prescott! No wonder you flunked. I'm afraid of her myself. She's the only woman that ever got a degree at some German university, and she simply hasn't a thought in the world beyond mathematics. I don't believe the woman has any soul. If one of those mediums should come here and dematerialize her, all that would be left would be an equilateral triangle."

Patty shook her head. "I'm afraid there's not much use in arguing with a person like that. If she once sees a truth, you know, she sees it for all time. But never mind; I'll do the best I can. I'll tell her you're an undiscovered mathematical genius; that it's latent, but if she'll examine you again she'll find it. That ought to appeal to her. Good-night. Go to sleep and don't worry; I'll manage her."

"Good night; and thank you, Patty," called a tolerably cheerful voice from under the covers.

Patty closed the door, and stood a moment in the hall, pondering the situation. Olivia Copeland was too valuable to throw away. The college must be made to realize her worth. But that was difficult. Patty had tried to make the college realize things before. Miss Prescott was the only means of salvation that she could think of, and Miss Prescott was a doubtful means. She did not at all relish the prospect of calling on her, but there seemed to be nothing else to do. She made a little grimace and laughed. "I'm acting like a freshman myself," she thought. "Walk up, Patty, and face the guns"; and without giving herself time to hesitate she marched up-stairs and knocked on Miss Prescott's door. She reflected after she had knocked that perhaps it would have been more politic to have postponed her business until the morrow. But the door opened before she had time to run away, and she found herself rather confusedly bowing to Miss Prescott, who held in her hand, not a book on calculus, but a common, every-day magazine.

"Good evening, Miss Wyatt. Won't you come in and sit down?" said Miss Prescott, in a very cordially human tone.

As she sank into a deep rush chair Patty had a blurred vision of low bookcases, pictures, rugs, and polished brass thrown into soft relief by a shaded lamp which stood on the table. Before she had time to mentally shake herself and reconstruct her ideas she was gaily chatting to Miss Prescott about the probable outcome of a serial story in the magazine.

Miss Prescott did not seem to wonder in the least at this unusual visit, but talked along easily on various subjects, and laughed and told stories like the humanest of human beings. Patty watched her, fascinated. "She's
pretty
," she thought to herself and she began to wonder how old she was. Never before had she associated any age whatever with Miss Prescott. She had regarded her much in the same light as a scientific truth, which exists, but is quite irrespective of time or place. She tried to recall some story that had been handed about among the girls her freshman year. She remembered vaguely that it had in it the suggestion that Miss Prescott had once been in love. At the time Patty had scoffingly repudiated the idea, but now she was half willing to believe it.