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 ou