"Not the shadow of one. Just stayed away because I didn't feel like going."
"But you must give me some reason," remonstrated Cathy, in distress, "or I'll have to report it to the committee and you'll be deprived of your privileges. You can't afford that, you know, for you're chairman of the Senior Prom."
"But I didn't have any excuse, and I can't make one up," said Patty. "I will soon be thirty, and then forty, and then fifty. Do you think a woman of that age is attractive if she deals in subterfuges and evasions? Character," she added solemnly, "is a plant of slow growth, and the seeds must be planted early."
Cathy looked puzzled. "I don't know what you're talking about," she said, "but I suppose you do. Anyway," she added, "I'm sorry about the chairmanship; but I'm—well, I'm sort of glad, too." She laid a hand on Patty's shoulder. "Of course I've always liked you, Patty,—everybody does,—but I don't believe I've ever appreciated you, and I'm glad to find it out before we leave college."
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 bewilderment, and Bonnie Connaught laughed and murmured to the room in general: "When Patty gets to heaven I'm afraid the Recording Angel will have some trouble in balancing his books."