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[Illustration: Patty]


When Patty Went to College

By

Jean Webster

          With Illustrations
          by C. D. Williams

[Illustration]

          New York
          The Century Co.
          1903

          Copyright, 1903, by
          THE CENTURY CO.

          Copyright, 1901, 1902, by TRUTH CO.

                 *       *       *       *       *

          _Published March, 1903_

                 *       *       *       *       *

          THE DEVINNE PRESS

          TO
          234 MAIN AND THE GOOD
          TIMES WE HAVE HAD THERE




Contents


                                                            PAGE
             I  PETERS THE SUSCEPTIBLE                         1
            II  AN EARLY FRIGHT                               21
           III  THE IMPRESSIONABLE MR. TODHUNTER              39
            IV  A QUESTION OF ETHICS                          57
             V  THE ELUSIVE KATE FERRIS                       73
            VI  A STORY WITH FOUR SEQUELS                     89
           VII  IN PURSUIT OF OLD ENGLISH                    103
          VIII  THE DECEASED ROBERT                          121
            IX  PATTY THE COMFORTER                          133
             X  "PER L'ITALIA"                               147
            XI  "LOCAL COLOR"                                177
           XII  THE EXIGENCIES OF ETIQUETTE                  203
          XIII  A CRASH WITHOUT                              215
           XIV  THE MYSTERY OF THE SHADOWED SOPHOMORE        237
            XV  PATTY AND THE BISHOP                         257




List of Illustrations


                                                         FACING PAGE

  Patty                                                 _Frontispiece_

  Men know such a lot about such things!                      18

  Mr. Algernon Vivian Todhunter, gingerly sitting on the
    edge of a chair                                           54

  What's the matter, Patty?                                  110

  Olivia Copeland                                            172

  I have just run away from you, Bishop Copeley              266




I

Peters the Susceptible


"Paper-weights," observed Patty, sucking an injured thumb, "were
evidently not made for driving in tacks. I wish I had a hammer."

This remark called forth no response, and Patty peered down from the top
of the step-ladder at her room-mate, who was sitting on the floor
dragging sofa-pillows and curtains from a dry-goods box.

"Priscilla," she begged, "you aren't doing anything useful. Go down and
ask Peters for a hammer."

Priscilla rose reluctantly. "I dare say fifty girls have already been
after a hammer."

"Oh, he has a private one in his back pocket. Borrow that. And,
Pris,"--Patty called after her over the transom,--"just tell him to
send up a man to take that closet door off its hinges."

Patty, in the interval, sat down on the top step and surveyed the chaos
beneath her. An Oriental rush chair, very much out at the elbows,
several miscellaneous chairs, two desks, a divan, a table, and two
dry-goods boxes radiated from the center of the room. The floor, as it
showed through the interstices, was covered with a grass-green carpet,
while the curtains and hangings were of a not very subdued crimson.

"One would scarcely," Patty remarked to the furniture in general, "call
it a symphony in color."

A knock sounded on the door.

"Come in," she called.

A girl in a blue linen sailor-suit reaching to her ankles, and with a
braid of hair hanging down her back, appeared in the doorway. Patty
examined her in silence. The girl's eyes traveled around the room in
some surprise, and finally reached the top of the ladder.

"I--I'm a freshman," she began.

"My dear," murmured Patty, in a deprecatory tone, "I should have taken
you for a senior; but"--with a wave of her hand toward the nearest
dry-goods box--"come in and sit down. I need your advice. Now, there are
shades of green," she went on, as if continuing a conversation, "which
are not so bad with red; but I ask you frankly if _that_ shade of green
would go with anything?"

The freshman looked at Patty, and looked at the carpet, and smiled
dubiously. "No," she admitted; "I don't believe it would."

"I knew you would say that!"