And there were the girls. She would have to say good-by, with no opening
day in the fall--and Priscilla lived in California and Georgie in South
Dakota and Bonnie in Kentucky and she in New England, and they were the
only people in the world she particularly cared to talk to. She would
have to get acquainted with her mother's friends--with chronically
grown-up people, who talked about husbands and children and servants.
And there would be men. She had never had time to know many men; but
some day she would probably be marrying one of them, and then all
_would_ be over; and before she had time to think, she would be an old
lady, telling her grandchildren stories about when she was a girl.
[Illustration: I have just run away from you, Bishop Copeley]
Patty gazed mournfully down on the campus, almost on the verge of tears
over her lost youth, when a step suddenly sounded on the gravel path,
and she looked up with a startled glance to see a churchly figure
rounding the hill. Involuntarily she prepared for flight; but the bishop
had spied her, together with a little rustic seat under a tree, and he
smiled upon the one and dropped down upon the other with a sigh of
content.
"A beautiful view," he gasped; "but a very steep hill."
"It is steep," Patty agreed politely; and as there seemed to be no
chance of escape, she resumed her seat and added, with a laugh: "I have
just run away from you, Bishop Copeley, and here you come following
along behind like an accusing conscience."
The bishop chuckled. "I've run away myself," he returned; "I knew I
should have to be introduced to a hundred or so of you after service,
so I just slipped out the back way for a quiet stroll."
Patty eyed him appreciatively, with a new sense of fellow-feeling.
"I should like to have run away from church as well," he confessed, with
a twinkle in his eye. "Out of doors is the best church on a day like
this."
"That's what I think," said Patty, cordially; "but I had no idea that
bishops were so sensible."
They chatted along in a friendly manner on various subjects, and
exchanged lay opinions on the college and the clergy.
"It's a funny thing about this place," said Patty, ruminatingly, "that,
though we have a different preacher every Sunday, we always have the
same sermon."
"The same sermon?" inquired the bishop, somewhat aghast.
"Practically the same," said Patty. "I've heard it for four years, and I
think I could almost preach it myself. They all seem to think, you know,
that because we come to college we must be monsters of reason, and they
urge us to remember that reason and science are not the only things that
count in the world--that feeling is, after all, the main factor; and
they quote a little poem about the flower being beautiful, I know not
why. That wasn't what yours was about?" she asked anxiously.
"Not this time," said the bishop; "I preached an old one."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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