"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.
Suddenly, in the midst of the conversation, the ten-o'clock bell rang,
and Patty recalled her errand with a start.
"I suppose," she said, "you are wondering why I came."
"I was hoping," said Miss Prescott, with a smile, "that it was just to
see me, without any ulterior motive."
"It will be the next time--if you will let me come again; but to-night I
had another reason, which I'm afraid you'll think impertinent--and," she
added frankly, "I don't know just what's the best way to tell it so that
you _won't_ think it impertinent."
"Tell it to me any way you please, and I will try not to think so,"
said Miss Prescott, kindly.
"Don't you think sometimes the girls can tell more of one another's
ability than the instructors?" Patty asked. "I know a girl," she
continued, "a freshman, who is, in some ways, the most remarkable person
I have ever met. Of course I can't be sure, but I should say that she is
going to be very good in English some day--so good, you know, that the
college will be proud of her. Well, this girl has flunked such a lot
that I am afraid she is in danger of being sent home, and the college
simply can't afford to lose her. I don't know anything about your rules,
of course, but what seems to me the easiest way is for you to give her
another examination in geometry immediately,--she really knows it,--and
then tell the faculty about her and urge them to give her another
trial."
Patty brought out this astounding request in the most matter-of-fact way
possible, and the corners of Miss Prescott's mouth twitched as she
asked: "Of whom are you speaking?"
"Olivia Copeland."
Miss Prescott's mouth grew firm, and she looked like the instructor in
mathematics again.
"Miss Copeland did absolutely nothing on her examination, Miss Wyatt,
and what little she has recited during the year does not betoken any
unusual ability. I am sorry, but it would be impossible."
"But, Miss Prescott," Patty expostulated, "the girl has worked under
such peculiar disadvantages. She's an American, but she lives abroad,
and all our ways are new to her. She has never been to school a day in
her life. Her father prepared her for college, and, of course, not in
the same way that the other girls have been prepared. She is shy, and
not being used to reciting in a class, she doesn't know how to show off.
I am sure, Miss Prescott, that if you would take her and examine her
yourself, you would find that she understands the work--that is, if you
would let her get over being afraid of you first. I know you're busy,
and it's asking a good deal," Patty finished apologetically.
"It is not that, Miss Wyatt, for of course I do not wish to mark any
student unjustly; but I cannot help feeling that you have overestimated
Miss Copeland's ability. She has really had a chance to show what is in
her, and if she has failed in as many courses as you say--The college,
you know, must keep up the standard of its work, and in questions like
this it is not always possible to consider the individual."
Patty felt that she was being dismissed, and she groped about wildly for
a new plea. Her eye caught a framed picture of the old monastery of
Amalfi hanging over the bookcase.
"Perhaps you've lived in Italy?" she asked.
Miss Prescott started slightly. "No," she said; "but I've spent some
time there."
"That picture of Amalfi, up there, made me think of it. Olivia Copeland,
you know, lives near there, at Sorrento."
A gleam of interest flashed into Miss Prescott's eye.
"That's how I first came to notice her," continued Patty; "but she
didn't interest me so much until I talked to her. It seems that her
father is an artist, and she was born in Italy, and has only visited
America once when she was a little girl. Her mother is dead, and she and
her father live in an old villa on that road along the coast leading to
Sorrento. She has never had any girl friends; just her father's
friends--artists and diplomats and people like that. She speaks Italian,
and she knows all about Italian art and politics and the church and the
agrarian laws and how the people are taxed; and all the peasants around
Sorrento are her friends. She is so homesick that she nearly dies, and
the only person here that she can talk to about the things she is
interested in is the peanut man down-town.
[Illustration: Olivia Copeland]
"The girls she rooms with are just nice exuberant American girls, and
are interested in golf and basket-ball and Welsh rabbit and Richard
Harding Davis stories and Gibson pictures--and she never even _heard_ of
any of them until four months ago. She has a water-color sketch of the
villa, that her father did. It's white stucco, you know, with terraces
and marble balustrades and broken statues, and a grove of ilex-trees
with a fountain in the center. Just think of _belonging_ to a place like
that, Miss Prescott, and then being suddenly plunged into a place like
this without any friends or any one who even knows about the things you
know--think how lonely you would be!"
Patty leaned forward with flushed cheeks, carried away by her own
eloquence. "You know what Italy's like. It's a sort of disease. If you
once get fond of it you'll never forget it, and you just can't be happy
till you get back. And with Olivia it's her home, besides. She's never
known anything else. And it's hard at first to keep your mind on
mathematics when you're dreaming all the time of ilex groves and
fountains and nightingales and--and things like that."
She finished lamely, for Miss Prescott suddenly leaned back in the
shadow, and it seemed to Patty that her face had grown pale and the hand
that held the magazine trembled.
Patty flushed uncomfortably and tried to think what she had said. She
was always saying things that hurt people's feelings without meaning to.
Suddenly that old story from her freshman year flashed into her mind. He
had been an artist and had lived in Italy and had died of Roman fever;
and Miss Prescott had gone to Germany to study mathematics, and had
never cared for anything else since. It sounded rather made up, but it
might be true. Had she stumbled on a forbidden subject? she wondered
miserably. She had, of course; it was just her way.
The silence was becoming unbearable; she struggled to think of something
to say, but nothing came, and she rose abruptly.
"I'm sorry to have taken so much of your time, Miss Prescott. I hope I
haven't bored you. Good night."
Miss Prescott rose and took Patty's hand. "Good night, my dear, and
thank you for coming to me. I am glad to know of Olivia Copeland. I will
see what can be done about her geometry, and I shall be glad, besides,
to know her as--as a friend; for I, too, once cared for Italy."
Patty closed the door softly and tiptoed home through the dim corridors.
"Did you bring the matches?" called a sleepy voice from Priscilla's
bedroom.