"No," smiled the bishop, "it was not Priscilla. The young woman of whom I am speaking is the president of your Student Association, Catherine Fair."
"Yes, it's true," said Patty, critically. "Cathy Fair hits straight from the shoulder."
"And wouldn't you like to go out with that reputation?"
"I'm really not very bad," pleaded Patty, "that is, as badness goes. But I couldn't be as good as Cathy; it would be going against nature."
"I am afraid," suggested the bishop, "that you do not try very hard. You may not think that it matters what people think now that you are young, but how will it be when you grow older? And it will not be long," he added. "Age slips upon you before you realize it."
Patty looked sober.
"You will soon be thirty, and then forty, and then fifty."
Patty sighed.
"And do you think that a woman of that age is attractive if she deals in subterfuges and evasions?"
Patty squirmed a trifle, and dug a little hole in the pine-needles with her toe.