“I hope they stay even till Christmas, for though I want the prize, I don’t want to take it away from Lorraine.”
“Don’t be silly; you’re not taking it away from her any more than you are from the rest of us.”
“I suppose not; but it seems so, when our marks are just even.”
After Patty went home she thought the matter over seriously. It seemed to her that she had so much happiness in her life, and Lorraine had so little, that Lorraine ought to have the prize for that reason. “If I miss a lesson or two,” thought Patty, “that will throw her marks ahead, for I’m sure she won’t miss any. But even then, I’m afraid I’ll get ahead of her on my Themes. I wonder if it would be right for me to lose some marks on purpose that she may get the prize. I don’t know, I’m sure. And I hate to ask papa anything like this, for it sounds so silly, and so as if I thought myself ‘noble,’ like Sentimental Tommy. I do hate to pose as a martyr. And anyway it isn’t that sort of a spirit at all. It’s only just a fair question of proportion. I have so much to make me happy, and Lorraine has so little, that she really ought to have the prize. She’s trying awfully hard to be cheery and pleasant, and to get the general prize would help her along a lot. So I think it’s right for me to manage to have her get it, if I can do it without actual deceit.”
The more Patty thought it over, the more she felt herself justified in purposely losing the prize. It seemed to be a question entirely between Lorraine and herself. She reasoned that if she didn’t win the prize, it must necessarily go to Lorraine, and though she felt sorry to give up her hope of it, yet she knew she would be more truly pleased for Lorraine to have it. Of course she would never tell anybody the truth of the matter, for that would look like a parade of her unselfishness, and Patty was honestly single-minded in her intent.
But as she thought it over further, she realised that it would take a continuous and systematic missing of lessons to be sure of reducing her average sufficiently. This was not a pleasant outlook, and a shorter way to the same end immediately suggested itself.
If she were marked a total failure on her Theme, just for once, it would set back her record farther than many missed lessons. Now, obviously the only way to get a total failure for a Theme was not to have any. For without undue egotism, Patty knew well that her Themes were better than the other girls’, and of course were marked accordingly. Purposely to write a poor Theme would be silly, and so the only thing to do would be to have no Theme. To accomplish this, it would be necessary to stay away from school some Friday. For to be there without a Theme would be unprecedented and inexplicable. And, too, an absence of a whole day would mean no marks for the day in any lesson, and thus the end desired would surely be attained.
As Patty’s Theme on the “Spirit of Happiness” was beyond all doubt the best one she had ever written, she concluded that that Friday was the day to put her plan in operation.
So on Thursday evening she casually asked her father if she might not stay at home from school the next day.
“Why, are you ill, child?” said Mr. Fairfield, in sudden alarm at this most unusual request.