"Why not?" asked Patty. "Having heard so many sequels, they naturally wanted to hear the last." Priscilla laughed. "But yours doesn't happen to be the last. I know a still later one." "Later than Patty's?" the table demanded. "Yes, later than Patty's. It isn't really a sequel; it's just an appendix. I shouldn't tell you, only you'll find it out, so I might as well. Miss McKay has invited two men for the junior party, and both have accepted. As two men are hard to manage, she has (by request) asked me to take care of one of them--namely, Mr. Frederick K. Stanthrope." Patty sighed. "I see a whole series of sequels stretching away into the future. It's worse than the Elsie Books!" VII In Pursuit of Old English "Hello, Patty! Have you read the bulletin-board this morning?" called Cathy Fair, as she caught up with Patty on the way home from a third-hour recitation. "No," said Patty; "I think it's a bad habit. You see too many unpleasant things there." "Well, there's certainly an unpleasant one to-day. Miss Skelling wishes the Old English class to be provided with writing materials this afternoon." Patty stopped with a groan. "I think it's absolutely abominable to give an examination without a word of warning." "Not an examination," quoted Cathy; "just a 'little test to see how much you know.'" "I don't know a thing," wailed Patty--"not a blessed thing." "Nonsense, Patty; you know more than any one else in the class." "Bluff--it's all pure bluff. I come in strong on the literary criticism and the general discussions, and she never realizes that I don't know a word of the grammar." "You've got two hours. You can cut your classes and review it up." "Two hours!" said Patty, sadly. "I need two days. I've never learned it, I tell you. The Anglo-Saxon grammar is a thing no mortal can carry in his head, and I thought I might as well wait and learn it before examinations." "I don't wish to appear unfeeling," laughed Cathy, "but I should say, my dear, that it serves you right." "Oh, I dare say," said Patty. "You are as bad as Priscilla"; and she trailed gloomily homeward. She found her friends reviewing biology and eating olives. "Have one?" asked Lucille Carter, who, provided with a hat-pin by way of fork, was presiding over the bottle for the moment. "No, thanks," returned Patty, in the tone of one who has exhausted life and longs for death. "What's the matter?" inquired Priscilla. "You don't mean to say that woman has given you another special topic?" "Worse than that!" and Patty laid bare the tragedy. A sympathetic silence followed; they realized that while she was, perhaps, not strictly deserving of sympathy, still her impending fate was of the kind that might overtake any one. "You know, Pris," said Patty, miserably, "that I simply _can't_ pass." "No," said Priscilla, soothingly; "I don't believe you can."