* * *

WHEN Patty returned to her room that night, she found Georgie and
Priscilla surrounded by grammars and dictionaries, doing German prose.
Her appearance was hailed with a cry of indignant protest.

"When _I_ have a man," said Priscilla, "I divide him up among my
friends."

"_Especially_ when he's a curiosity," added Georgie.

"And we dressed up in grand clothes, and stood in your way coming out of
chapel," went on Priscilla, "and you never even looked at us."

"Englishmen are so bashful," apologized Patty; "I didn't want to
frighten him."

Priscilla looked at her suspiciously. "Patty, I hope you didn't impose
on the poor man's credulity."

"Certainly not!" said Patty, with dignity. "I explained everything he
asked me, and was most careful not to exaggerate. But," she added with
engaging frankness, "I cannot be responsible for any _impressions_ he
may have obtained. When an Englishman once gets an idea, you know, it's
almost impossible to change it."

IV

A Question of Ethics

Patty's class-room methods were the result of a wide experience in the
professorial type of mind. By her senior year she had reduced the matter
of recitation to a system, and could foretell with unvarying precision
the day she would be called on and the question she would be asked. Her
tactics varied with the subject and the instructor, and were the result
of a penetration and knowledge of human nature that might have
accomplished something in a worthier cause.

In chemistry, for example, her instructor was a man who had outlived any
early illusions in regard to the superior conscientiousness of girls
over boys. He was not by nature a suspicious person, but a long
experience in teaching had inculcated an inordinate wariness which was
sometimes out of season. He allowed no napping in his classes, and those
who did not pay attention suffered. Patty discovered his weakness early
in the year, and planned her campaign accordingly. As long as she did
not understand the experiment in hand, she would watch him with a face
beaming with intelligence; but when she did understand, and wished to
recite, she would let her eyes wander to the window with a dreamy,
far-away smile, and, being asked a question, would come back to the
realities of chemistry with a start, and, after a moment of ostentatious
pondering, make a brilliant recitation. It must be confessed that her
moments of abstraction were rare; she was far too oft