"We can't allow ourselves to be exploited. Singly, we are no match for you, but together, we can dictate our own terms. Because two or three of us can keep up the pace you set, is no reason why we should allow the others to be overworked. It is our duty to stand by one another against the encroachments of our employer. We women are not so advanced as men. But we are learning. Upon the solidarity of labor depends the life of Rosalie. In case you refuse to meet our demands, the Virgil class will be obliged to go out on strike."
Patty pronounced her ultimatum, and leaned back with folded arms.
A moment of silence followed. Then Miss Lord spoke. The class went down in hopeless, abject terror before the storm. Miss Lord's icy sarcasm was, in moments of intensity, lightened by gleams of fire. She had Irish ancestors and red hair. Patty alone listened with head erect and steely eyes. The red blood of martyrs dyed her cheeks. She was fighting for a cause. Weak, helpless, little Rosalie, sniffling at her elbow, should be saved—the cowardice of her comrades put to shame. She, single-handed, would fight and win.
Miss Lord finally drew breath.
"The class is dismissed. Patty will remain in the schoolroom until she has translated perfectly the last twenty lines. I will hear her read them after luncheon."
The girls rose and pressed in a huddled body toward the hall, while Patty turned into the empty schoolroom. On the threshold she paused to hurl one contemptuous word over her shoulder:
"Scabs!"
The lunch bell rang, and Patty at her desk in the empty schoolroom heard the girls laughing and talking, as they clattered down the tin-covered back stairs to the dining-room. She was very tired and very hungry. She had had five hours of work since breakfast, with only a glass of milk at eleven o'clock. Even the pleasurable sensation of being abused did not quite offset the pangs of hunger. She listlessly set about learning the morrow's lesson in French History. It dealt with another martyr. Louis the Ninth left his bones bleaching on the plains of Antioch. The cause was different, but the principle remained. If she was not to be fed until she learned the Latin—very well—she would leave her bones bleaching in the schoolroom of St. Ursula's.
An insistent tapping sounded on the window. She glanced across an angle, to find Osaki, the Japanese butler, leaning far out from his pantry window, and extending toward her a dinner plate containing a large, lone slab of turkey.