ules?" asked Patty, wearily.

"I don't know why you have a right to live outside of rules any more
than the rest of us."

Patty shrugged. "I take the right, and every one else can do the same."

"Every one else can't," returned Priscilla, hotly, "for there wouldn't
be any law left in college if they did. I should a good deal rather play
out of doors myself than go to chapel, but I've used up all my cuts and
I can't. You couldn't either if you had a shred of proper feeling left.
The only way you can get out of it is by lying."

"Priscilla dear," Patty murmured, "people in polite society don't put
things quite so baldly. If you would be respected in the best circles,
you must practise the art of equivocation."

Priscilla frowned impatiently. "Are you coming, or are you not?" she
demanded.

"I am not."

Priscilla closed the door--not quite as softly as a door should be
closed--and Patty was left alone. She sat thinking a few minutes with
slightly flushed cheeks, and then as the chapel bell rang she shook
herself and laughed. Even had she wished to go it was too late now, and
all feeling of responsibility vanished. As soon as the decorous swish of
Sunday silks had ceased in the corridor outside, she caught up a book
and a cushion, and, creeping down by the side stairs, set gaily out
across the sunlit lawn, with the deliciously guilty thrill of a truant
little boy who has run away from school.

From the open windows of the chapel she could hear the college
chanting: "Lord, have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this
law." She laughed happily to herself; she was not keeping laws to-day.
They might stay in there in the gloom, if they wanted to, with their
commandments and their litanies. She was worshiping under the blue sky,
to the jubilant chanting of the birds.

She was the only person alive and out that morning, and the spring was
in her blood, and she felt as though she owned the world. The campus had
never seemed so radiant. She paused on the little rustic bridge to watch
the excited swirling of the brook, and she nearly lost her balance while
trying to launch a tiny boat made of a piece of bark. She dropped
pebbles into the pool in order to watch the startled frogs splash back
into the water, and she threw her cushion at a squirrel, and laughed
aloud at its angry chattering. She raced up the side of Pine Bluff, and
dropped down panting on the fragrant needles in the shadow of a tall
pine.

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