The president of "Christians" had been called up for cutting chapel.
The shark of the class had flunked her ethics, and even failed to get through on the "re."
Cathy Fair was an own cousin of Professor Hitchcock's, and called him "Tommy" to his face.
These, and far worse, were becoming public property; and even personal fabrications in regard to the faculty, intended solely for undergraduate consumption, were reaching the ears of the faculty themselves.
One day Patty dropped into an under-classman's room on some committee work, and she found the children, in the manner of their elders, regaling themselves on dainty bits of college gossip.
"I heard the funniest thing about Professor Winters yesterday," piped up a sophomore.
"Tell it to us.
What was it?" cried a chorus of voices.
"I'd like to hear something funny about Professor Winters; he's the solemnest-looking man I ever saw," remarked a freshman.
"Well," resumed the sophomore, "it seems he was going to get married last week, and the invitations were all out, and the presents all there, when the bride came down with the mumps."
"Really?
How funny!" came in a chorus from the delighted auditors.
"Yes—on both sides; and the clergyman had never had it, so the ceremony had to be postponed."
Patty's blood froze.
She recognized the tale. It was one of her own offspring, only shorn of its unessential adornments.
"Where in the world did you hear any such absurd thing as that?" she demanded severely.
"I heard Lucille Carter tell it at a fudge party up in Bonnie Connaught's room last night," answered the sophomore, stoutly, sure that the source was a reputable one.
Patty groaned. "And I suppose that every blessed one of that dozen girls has told it to another dozen by this time, and that it's only bounded by the boundaries of the campus.
Well, there's not a word of truth in it.
Lucille Carter doesn't know what she is talking about.
That's a likely story, isn't it?" she added with fine scorn. "Does Professor Winters look like a man who'd ever dare propose to a girl, let alone marry her?" And she stalked out of the room and up to the single where Lucille lived.
"Lucille," said Patty, "what do you mean by spreading that story about Professor Winters's bride's mumps?"
"You told it to me yourself," answered Lucille, with some warmth.
She was a believing creature with an essentially literal mind, and she had always been out of her element in the lofty imaginative realms of local color.
"I told it to you!" said Patty, indignantly. "You goose, you don't mean to tell me you believed it?
I was just playing local color."
"How should I know that?
You told it as if it were true."
"Of course," said Patty; "that's the game.
You wouldn't have believed me if I hadn't."
"But you never said it wasn't true.
You don't follow the rule."
"I didn't think it was necessary.
I never supposed any one would believe any such absurd story as that."
"I don't see how it was my fault."
"Of course it was your fault.
You shouldn't be spreading malicious tales about the faculty; it's irreverent.
The story's all over college by this time, and Professor Winters has probably heard it himself.
He'll flunk you on the finals to pay for it; see if he doesn't." And Patty went home, leaving a conscience-smitten and thoroughly indignant Lucille behind her.
About a month before the introduction of local color, Patty had entered upon a new activity, which she referred to impartially as "molding public opinion" and "elevating the press."
The way of it was this:
The college, which was a modest and retiring institution craving only to be unmolested in its atmosphere of academic calm, had been recently exploited by a sensational newspaper.
The fact that none of the stories was true did not mitigate the annoyance.
The college was besieged by reporters who had heard rumors and wished to have them corroborated for exclusive publication in the
"Censor" or
"Advertiser" or
"Star."
And they would also like a photograph of Miss Bentley as she appeared in the character of Portia; and since she refused to give it to them, they stated their intention of "faking" one, which, they gallantly assured her, would be far homelier than the original.
The climax was reached when Bonnie Connaught was unfortunate enough to sprain her ankle in basket-ball.
Something more than a life-size portrait of her, clothed in a masculine-looking sweater, with a basket-ball under her arm, appeared in a New York evening paper, and scare-heads three inches high announced in red ink that the champion athlete and most popular society girl in college was at death's door, owing to injuries received in basket-ball.