derstand is why a peaceable citizen who desires only to gang his ain
gait should, upon the reception of an entirely unsolicited invitation,
suddenly find it incumbent upon him to put on his best dress and his
best hat and gloves in order to call upon people he barely knows."

"Your genders," said Priscilla, "are a trifle mixed."

"That," said Patty, "is the fault of the language. The logic, I think,
you will find correct. You can see what would happen," she pursued, "if
you carry it out to its logical conclusion. Suppose, for instance, that
every woman I have ever met in this town should suddenly take it into
her head to invite me to a dinner. Here I--perfectly unsuspicious and
innocent of any evil, because of a purely arbitrary law which I did not
help to make--would not only have to sit down and write a hundred
regrets, but would have to pay a hundred calls within the next two
weeks. It makes me shudder to think of it!"

"I don't believe you need worry about it, Patty; of course we know
you're popular, but you're not as popular as that."

"No," said Patty; "I didn't mean that I thought I really _should_ get
that many invitations. It's only that one is open to the constant
danger."

During the progress of this conversation Georgie Merriles had been
lounging on the couch by the window, reading the "Merchant of Venice" in
a critically unimpassioned way that the instructor in Dramatic Theory
could not have praised too much. The room finally having become too dark
for reading, she threw down the book with something like a yawn. "It
would have been a joke on Portia," she remarked, "if Bassanio had chosen
the wrong casket"; and she turned her attention to the campus outside.
Groups of girls were coming along the path from the lake, and the sound
of their voices, mingled with laughter and the jingling of skates,
floated up through the gathering dusk. Across the stretches of snow and
bare trees lights were beginning to twinkle in the other dormitories,
while nearer at hand, and more clearly visible, rose the irregular
outline of the president's house.

"Patty," said Georgie, with her nose against the pane, "if you really
want to get that call out of the way, now's your chance. Mrs. Millard
has just gone out."

Patty dashed into her bedroom and began jerking out bureau drawers.
"Priscilla," she called in an agonized tone, "do you remember where I
keep my cards?"

"It's ten minutes of six, Patty; you can't go now."

"