about Shakspere, the man? He's been dead three hundred
years."

Priscilla laughed unfeelingly. "What do I care about a frog's nervous
system, for the matter of that? But I am writing an interesting
monograph on it, just the same."

"Ah, I dare say you are making a valuable addition to the subject."

"It's quite as valuable as your addition to Shaksperiana."

Patty dropped a voluble sigh and turned to the window to note that it
was raining dismally.

"Oh, hand it in," said Priscilla, comfortingly. "You've worked on it all
day, and it's probably no worse than the most of your things."

"No sense to it," said Patty.

"They're used to that," laughed Priscilla.

"What are you laughing at, anyway?" Patty asked crossly. "I don't see
anything to laugh at in this beastly place. Always having to do what you
don't want to do when you most don't want to do it. Just the same, day
after day: get up by bells, eat by bells, sleep by bells. I feel like
some sort of a delinquent living in an asylum."

Priscilla treated this outburst with the silence it deserved, and Patty
turned back to her perusal of the rain-soaked campus.

"I wish something would happen," she said discontentedly. "I think I'll
put on a mackintosh and go out in search of adventure."

"Pneumonia will happen if you do."

"What business has it to be raining, anyway, when it ought to be
snowing?"

As this was unanswerable, Priscilla returned to her frogs, and Patty
drummed gloomily on the window-pane until a maid appeared with a card.

"A caller?" cried Patty. "A missionary! A rescuer! A deliverer! Heaven
send it's for me!"

"Miss Pond," said Sadie, laying the card on the table.

Patty pounced upon it. "'Mr. Frederick K. Stanthrope.' Who's he, Pris?"

Priscilla wrinkled up her brows. "I don't know; I never heard of him.
What do you suppose it can be?"

"An adventure--I know it's an adventure. Probably your uncle, that you
never heard of, has just died in the South Sea Islands, and left you a
fortune because you're his namesake; or else you're a countess by
rights, and were stolen from your cradle in infancy, and he's the lawyer
come to tell you about it. I think it might have happened to me, when
I'm so bored to death! But hurry up and tell me about it, at least; a
second-hand adventure's better than no adventure at all. Yes, your hair
is all right; never mind looking in the glass." And Patty pushed her
room-mate out of the door, and, sitting down at