"We're all liable to make mistakes," Patty murmured soothingly.
"Do you know," said Georgie, "I begin to think it's all a hallucination,
and that there really isn't any Kate Ferris. It's strange, of course,
but not any stranger than some of those cases you read about in
psychology."
"Hallucinations don't send flowers," said Priscilla, hotly; and she
stalked out of the room, leaving Patty and Georgie to review the
campaign.
"I'm afraid it's gone far enough," said Georgie. "If she bothers the
office very much there'll be an official investigation."
"I'm afraid so," sighed Patty. "It's been very entertaining, but she is
really getting sensitive on the subject, and I don't dare mention Kate
Ferris's name when we're alone."
"Shall we tell her?"
Patty shook her head. "Not just now--I shouldn't dare. She believes in
corporal punishment."
A few days later Priscilla received another note directed in the hand
she had come to dread. She threw it into the waste-basket unopened; but,
curiosity prevailing, she drew it out again and read it:
DEAR MISS POND: As I have been obliged to leave
college on account of my health, I inclose my
resignation to the German Club. I thank you very
sincerely for your kindness to me this year, and
shall always look back upon our friendship as one
of the happiest memories of my college life.
Yours sincerely,
KATE FERRIS.
When Patty came in she found Priscilla silently and grimly scratching a
hole into the roll-book where Kate Ferris's name had been.
"Changed her mind again?" Patty asked pleasantly.
"She's left college," Priscilla snapped, "and don't you ever mention her
name to me again."
Patty sighed sympathetically and remarked to the room in general: "It's
sort of pathetic to have your whole college life summed up in a hole in
the German Club archives. I can't help feeling sorry for her!"
VI
A Story with Four Sequels
It was Saturday, and Patty had been working ever since breakfast, with a
brief pause for luncheon, on a paper entitled "Shakspere, the Man." At
four o'clock she laid down her pen, pushed her manuscript into the
waste-basket, and faced her room-mate defiantly.
"What do I care 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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