t 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