T was Saturday, and Patty had been working ever since breakfast, with a brief pause for luncheon, on a paper entitled "Shakspere, the Man." At four o'clock she laid down her pen, pushed her manuscript into the waste-basket, and faced her room-mate defiantly.
"What do I care about Shakspere, the man? He's been dead three hundred years."
Priscilla laughed unfeelingly. "What do I care about a frog's nervous system, for the matter of that? But I am writing an interesting monograph on it, just the same."
"Ah, I dare say you are making a valuable addition to the subject."
"It's quite as valuable as your addition to Shaksperiana."
Patty dropped a voluble sigh and turned to the window to note that it was raining dismally.
"Oh, hand it in," said Priscilla, comfortingly. "You've worked on it all day, and it's probably no worse than the most of your things."
"No sense to it," said Patty.
"They're used to that," laughed Priscilla.
"What are you laughing at, anyway?" Patty asked crossly. "I don't see anything to laugh at in this beastly place. Always having to do what you don't want to do when you most don't want to do it. Just the same, day after day: get up by bells, eat by bells, sleep by bells. I feel like some sort of a delinquent living in an asylum."