"Hello, Patty! Have you read the bulletin-board this morning?" called
Cathy Fair, as she caught up with Patty on the way home from a
third-hour recitation.
"No," said Patty; "I think it's a bad habit. You see too many unpleasant
things there."
"Well, there's certainly an unpleasant one to-day. Miss Skelling wishes
the Old English class to be provided with writing materials this
afternoon."
Patty stopped with a groan. "I think it's absolutely abominable to give
an examination without a word of warning."
"Not an examination," quoted Cathy; "just a 'little test to see how
much you know.'"
"I don't know a thing," wailed Patty--"not a blessed thing."
"Nonsense, Patty; you know more than any one else in the class."
"Bluff--it's all pure bluff. I come in strong on the literary criticism
and the general discussions, and she never realizes that I don't know a
word of the grammar."
"You've got two hours. You can cut your classes and review it up."
"Two hours!" said Patty, sadly. "I need two days. I've never learned it,
I tell you. The Anglo-Saxon grammar is a thing no mortal can carry in
his head, and I thought I might as well wait and learn it before
examinations."
"I don't wish to appear unfeeling," laughed Cathy, "but I should say, my
dear, that it serves you right."
"Oh, I dare say," said Patty. "You are as bad as Priscilla"; and she
trailed gloomily homeward.
She found her friends reviewing biology and eating olives. "Have one?"
asked Lucille Carter, who, provided with a hat-pin by way of fork, was
presiding over the bottle for the moment.
"No, thanks," returned Patty, in the tone of one who has exhausted life
and longs for death.
"What's the matter?" inquired Priscilla. "You don't mean to say that
woman has given you another special topic?"
"Worse than that!" and Patty laid bare the tragedy.
A sympathetic silence followed; they realized that while she was,
perhaps, not strictly deserving of sympathy, still her impending fate
was of the kind that might overtake any one.
"You know, Pris," said Patty, miserably, "that I simply _can't_ pass."
"No," said Priscilla, soothingly; "I don't believe you can."
"I shall flunk _flat_--absolutely _flat_. Miss Skelling will never have
any confidence in me again, and will make me recite every bit of
grammar for the rest of the semester."
"I should think you'd cut," ventured Georgie--that being, in her
opinion, the most obvious method of escaping an examination.
"I can't. I just met Miss Skelling in the hall five minutes before the
blow fell, and she knows I'm alive and able to be about; besides, the
class meets again to-morrow morning, and I'd have to cram all night or
cut that too."
"Why don't you go to Miss Skelling and frankly explain the situation,"
suggested Lucille the virtuous, "and ask her to let you off for a day or
two? She would like you all the better for it."
"Will you listen to the guileless babe!" said Patty. "What is there to
explain, may I ask? I can't very well tell her that I prefer not to
learn the lessons as she gives them out, but think it easier to wait and
cram them up at one fell swoop, just before examinations. That _would_
ingratiate myself in her favor!"
"It's your own fault," said Priscilla.