Jean Webster - When Patty Went to College

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. 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?"