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.