"I supposed you knew it.
Her father's an artist or something of the sort.
She's lived in Italy all her life; that's what makes her so queer."
Patty had once spent a sunshiny week in Sorrento herself, and the very memory of it was intoxicating. "Where is she?" she asked excitedly. "I want to talk to her."
"I don't know where she is.
Out walking, probably.
She goes off walking all by herself, and never speaks to any one, and then when we ask her to do something rational, like golf or basket-ball, she pokes in the house and reads Dante in Italian.
Imagine!"
"Why, she must be interesting!" said Patty, in surprise, and she turned back to the themes.
"I think these are splendid!" she exclaimed.
"Sort of queer, I think," said Lady Clara. "But there's one that's rather funny.
It was read in class—about a peasant that lost his donkey.
I'll find it"; and she rummaged through the pile.
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.