ege."

Patty's face flushed a trifle and she drew away half sheepishly. "You'd
best postpone your felicitations until to-morrow," she laughed, "for I
may think of some good excuse in the night. Good-by."

She was greeted in the study with a cry of welcome.

"Well, Patty," said Priscilla, "I hear you've been taking a walk with
the bishop. Did you tell him you'd cut chapel?"

"I did; and he said he wished he might have cut, too."

"She's incorrigible," sighed Georgie; "she's even been corrupting the
bishop."

"You'd better be careful, Patty Wyatt," warned Bonnie Connaught.
"Self-Government will get you if you don't watch out, and _then_ you'll
be sorry when they take you off the Senior Prom."

Patty sobered for a moment, but she hastily assumed a nonchalant air.
"They have got me," she laughed, "and I'm already off--or, at least, I
shall be as soon as they have a meeting."

"Patty!" cried the room, in a horrified chorus. "What do you mean?"

Patty shrugged. "Just what I say: deprived of my privileges for cutting
chapel."

"It's a shame!" said Georgie, indignantly. "That Self-Government
Committee is going a little too far when it takes a senior's privileges
away without even hearing her case." She grasped Patty by the arm and
started toward the door. "Come on and tell Cathy Fair about it. She
will fix it all right."

Patty hung back and disengaged her wrist from Georgie's grasp. "Let me
alone," she said sulkily. "There's nothing to be done. I told her myself
I hadn't any excuse."

"You told her?" Georgie stared her incredulity, and Bonnie Connaught
laughed.

"Patty reminds me of the burglar who crawled out the back window with
the silver, and then rang the front door-bell and handed it back."

"What's the matter, Patty?" Priscilla asked solicitously. "Don't you
feel well?"

Patty sighed. "I'm getting old," she said.

"You're getting what?"

"Old. Soon I'll be thirty, and then forty, and then fifty; and do you
think any one will love me then if I deal in subterfuges and evasions?
Character, my dear girls, is a plant of slow growth, and the seeds must
be planted early."

"You went and told the committee voluntarily,--of your own
accord,--without even waiting to be called up?" Georgie persisted,
determined to get at the facts of the case.

"I'm getting old," repeated Patty. "It's time I was getting good. As I
said before, character is a plant--"

Georgie looked at the others and shook her head in be