"Patty," called Priscilla, from her bedroom, "you'll have to hurry if you want me to fasten your dress.
I have to go to choir rehearsal."
Patty turned back with another sigh, and began slowly unhooking her collar.
Then she sat down on the edge of the couch and stared absently out of the window.
A vigorous banging of bureau drawers in Priscilla's room was presently followed by Priscilla herself in the doorway.
She surveyed her room-mate suspiciously. "Why aren't you dressing?" she demanded.
"I'll fasten my own dress; you needn't wait," said Patty, without removing her eyes from the window.
"Bishop Copeley's going to preach to-day, and he's such an old dear; you mustn't be late."
Patty elevated her chin a trifle and shrugged her shoulders.
"Aren't you going to chapel?"
Patty brought her gaze back from the window and looked up at Priscilla beseechingly. "It's such a lovely day," she pleaded, "and I'd so much rather spend the time out of doors; I'm sure it would be a lot better for my spiritual welfare."
"It's not a question of spiritual welfare; it's a question of cuts.
You've already over-cut twice.
What excuse do you intend to give when the Self-Government Committee asks for an explanation?"
"'Sufficient unto the day,'" laughed Patty. "When the time comes I'll think of a beautiful new excuse that will charm the committee."
"You ought to be ashamed to evade the rules the way you do."
"Where is the fun of living if you are going to make yourself a slave to all sorts of petty rules?" asked Patty, wearily.
"I don't know why you have a right to live outside of rules any more than the rest of us."
Patty shrugged. "I take the right, and every one else can do the same."
"Every one else can't," returned Priscilla, hotly, "for there wouldn't be any law left in college if they did.
I should a good deal rather play out of doors myself than go to chapel, but I've used up all my cuts and I can't.
You couldn't either if you had a shred of proper feeling left.
The only way you can get out of it is by lying."
"Priscilla dear," Patty murmured, "people in polite society don't put things quite so baldly.
If you would be respected in the best circles, you must practise the art of equivocation."
Priscilla frowned impatiently. "Are you coming, or are you not?" she demanded.
"I am not."
Priscilla closed the door—not quite as softly as a door should be closed—and Patty was left alone.
She sat thinking a few minutes with slightly flushed cheeks, and then as the chapel bell rang she shook herself and laughed.
Even had she wished to go it was too late now, and all feeling of responsibility vanished.
As soon as the decorous swish of Sunday silks had ceased in the corridor outside, she caught up a book and a cushion, and, creeping down by the side stairs, set gaily out across the sunlit lawn, with the deliciously guilty thrill of a truant little boy who has run away from school.
From the open windows of the chapel she could hear the college chanting:
"Lord, have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law."
She laughed happily to herself; she was not keeping laws to-day.
They might stay in there in the gloom, if they wanted to, with their commandments and their litanies.
She was worshiping under the blue sky, to the jubilant chanting of the birds.
She was the only person alive and out that morning, and the spring was in her blood, and she felt as though she owned the world.
The campus had never seemed so radiant.
She paused on the little rustic bridge to watch the excited swirling of the brook, and she nearly lost her balance while trying to launch a tiny boat made of a piece of bark.
She dropped pebbles into the pool in order to watch the startled frogs splash back into the water, and she threw her cushion at a squirrel, and laughed aloud at its angry chattering.
She raced up the side of Pine Bluff, and dropped down panting on the fragrant needles in the shadow of a tall pine.
Below her the ivy-covered buildings of the college lay clustered among the trees; and in the Sunday quiet, with the sunlight shining on the towers, it looked like some medieval village sleeping in the valley.
Patty gazed down dreamily with half-shut eyes, and imagined that presently a band of troubadours and ladies would come riding out on milk-white mules.
But the sight of Peters, strolling to the gateway in his Sunday clothes, spoiled the illusion, and she turned to her book with a smile.
Presently she closed it, however.
This was not the time for reading.
One could read in winter and when it rained, and even in the college library with every one else turning pages; but out here in the open, with the real things of life happening all about, it was a waste of opportunity.
Her eyes wandered back to the campus again, and she suddenly grew sober as the thought swept over her that in a few weeks more it would be hers no longer.
This happy, irresponsible community life, which had come to be the only natural way of living, was suddenly at an end.
She remembered the first day of being a freshman, when everything but herself had looked so big, and she had thought desperately,