Patty smiled reassuringly.
| "A little flunking now and then |
| Will happen to the best of men." |
"But I've heard they send people home, drop them, you know, if they flunk more than a certain amount. Is that so?" Lady Clara inquired in hushed tones.
"Oh, yes," said Patty; "they have to. I've known some of the brightest girls in college to be dropped."
Lady Clara groaned. "I'm awfully shaky in geometry, Patty. Do they flunk many girls in that?"
"Many!" said Patty. "The mere clerical labor of writing out the notes occupies the department two days."
"Is the examination terribly hard?"
"I don't remember much about it. It's been such a long time since I was a freshman, you see. They picked out the hardest theorems, I know—things you couldn't even draw, let alone demonstrate: the pyramid that's cut in slices, for one,—I don't remember its name,—and that sprawling one that looks like a snail crawling out of its shell: the devil's coffin, I believe it's called technically. And—oh, yes! they give you originals—frightful originals, like nothing you've ever had before; and they put a little note at the top of the page telling you to do them first, and you get so muddled trying to think fast that you can't think at all. I know a girl who spent all the two hours trying to think out an original, and just as she got ready to write it down the bell rang and she had to hand in her paper."
"And what happened?"
"Oh, she flunked. You couldn't really blame the instructor, you know, for not reading between the lines, for there weren't any lines to read between; but it was sort of a pity, for the girl really knew an awful lot—but she couldn't express it."