le less gently."

"Patty," exclaimed Priscilla, as a sudden thought struck her, "do you
happen to remember that you are on the reception committee of the
Dramatic Club cotillion to-morrow night? What will Mrs. Richards think
when she sees you in evening dress, receiving at a party, on the very
day your fiance has been buried?"

"I wonder?" said Patty, doubtfully. "Do you really think I ought to stay
away? After working like a little buzz-saw making tissue-paper favors
for the thing, I hate to have to miss it just because my brother's bull
pup, that I never even _liked_, is dead.

"I'll go," she added, brightening, "and receive the guests with a forced
and mechanical smile; and every time I feel the warden's eyes upon me I
shall with difficulty choke back the tears, and she will say to herself:

"'Brave girl! How nobly she is struggling to present a composed face to
the world! None would dream, to look at that seemingly radiant
creature, that, while she is outwardly so gay, she is in reality
concealing a great sorrow which is gnawing at her very vitals.'"

IX

Patty the Comforter

It was on the eve of the mid-year examinations, and a gloom had fallen
over the college. The conscientious ones who had worked all the year
were working harder than ever, and the frivolous ones who had played all
the year were working with a desperate frenzy calculated to render their
minds a blank when the crucial hour should have arrived. But Patty was
not working. It was a canon of her college philosophy, gained by three
and a half years' of personal experience, that the day before
examinations is not the time to begin to study. One has impressed the
instructor with one's intelligent interest in the subject, or one has
not, and the result is as sure as if the marks were already down in
black and white in the college archives. And so Patty, who at least
lived up to her lights, was, with the exception of a few points which
she intended to learn for this period only, conscientiously neglecting
the "judicious review" recommended by the faculty.

Her friends, however, who, though perhaps equally philosophic, were less
consistent, were subjecting themselves to what was known as a "regular
freshman cram"; and as no one had any time to talk to Patty, or to make
anything to eat, she found it an unprofitable period. Her own room-mate
even drove her from the study because she laughed out loud over the book
she was reading; and, an exil