"'Moored sheep drifting!' Patsy, how on earth did you ever make Hoppy's English?"
Pat giggled down to the depths of her stocky body. "'Moored sheep,' is going some, but honestly they were worse. I told one bewildered old party a dozen times if I told him once, that all exercises were scheduled for out of doors and nothing was taking place in the coal-cellar of North Hall. He had a perfect obsession on the cellar. Wandered into it every time I turned my back."
"Well? How was he to know that everything was being managed—'with an executive precision never before equaled in the handling of so large a class'?"
"Get out. It's all right for you to talk when you wouldn't be on a committee to oblige the President of the United States."
"I would not. Of all the piffling rubbish! If you all feel as badly as you pretend to do at getting out of the cage, why don't you just go and get your diplomas and sneak away to weep in private? And if you're not sorry to get out, and feel like this—this mess of jubilation, why don't you say so? Conventional sentimentality! It makes my tummy turn over."
"You ought to be all turned over and spanked, Jean. Some day you're going to be found frozen stiff in your own logic."
"Pat Farnsworth, I wouldn't mind beginning instanter. I never was so hot in my life. Me for tea. On a day like this my English grandparent bellows for his tea."
"Bellow on, George III. I'll get it. I've been cooling off for an hour." Pat started for the kitchen with the same vigorous efficiency that ran her many committees, paused, and with an almost shy smile at Jean, crossed to the front door and locked it. "We don't want any one butting in, do we?"
Jean had risen and now she put her arm about Pat's shoulder.
"Oh, Patsy," she whispered, "when you're gone——"