Just Patty by Jean Webster (best romance ebooks txt) 📗

The Latin situation was explained.

"Oh, it's awful the way Lordie works us! She would like to have us spend every moment grubbing over Latin and sociology. She--"

"Doesn't think dancing and French and manners are any good at all," sobbed Rosalie, mentioning the three branches in which she excelled, "and I think they're a lot more sensible than subjunctives. You can put them to practical use, and you can't sociology and Latin."

Patty emerged from a moment of revery.

"There's not much use in Latin," she agreed, "but I should think that something might be done with sociology. Miss Lord told us to apply it to our everyday problems."

Rosalie swept the idea aside with a gesture of disdain.

"Listen!" Patty commanded, springing to her feet and pacing the floor in an ecstasy of enthusiasm. "I've got an idea! It's perfectly true. Eighty lines of Virgil is too much for anybody to learn--particularly Rosalie. And you heard what the man said: it isn't fair to gage the working day by the capacity of the strongest. The weakest has to set the pace, or else he's left behind. That's what Lordy means when she talks about the solidarity of labor. In any trade, the workers have got to stand by each other. The strong must protect the weak. It's the duty of the rest of the class to stand by Rosalie."

"Yes, but how?" inquired Priscilla, breaking into the tirade.

"We'll form a Virgil Union, and strike for sixty lines a day."

"Oh!" gasped Rosalie, horrified at the audacity of the suggestion.

"Let's!" cried Conny, rising to the call.

"Do you think we can?" asked Priscilla, dubiously.

"What will Miss Lord say?" Rosalie quavered.

"She can't say anything. Didn't she tell us to listen to the lecture and apply its teaching?" Patty reminded.

"She'll be delighted to find we have," said Conny.

"But what if she doesn't give in?"

"We'll call out the Cicero and Cæsar classes in a sympathetic strike."

"Hooray!" cried Conny.

"Lordy does believe in Unions," Priscilla conceded. "She ought to see the justice of it."

"Of course she'll see the justice of it," Patty insisted. "We're exactly like the laundry workers--in the position of dependents, and the only way we can match strength with our employer, is by standing together. If Rosalie alone drops back to sixty lines, she'll be flunked; but if the whole class does, Lordie will have to give in."

"Maybe the whole class won't want to join the union," said Priscilla.

"We'll make 'em!" said Patty. In accordance with Miss Lord's desire, she had grasped some basic principles.

"We'll have to hurry," she added, glancing at the clock. "Pris, you run and find Irene and Harriet and Florence Hissop; and Conny, you route out Nancy Lee--she's up in Evalina Smith's room telling ghost stories. Here, Rosalie, stop crying and dump the things off those chairs so somebody can sit down."

Priscilla started obediently, but paused on the threshold.

"And what will you do?" she inquired with meaning.

"I," said Patty, "will be labor leader."

The meeting was convened, and Patty, a self-constituted chairman, outlined the tenets of the Virgil Union. Sixty lines was to constitute a working day. The class was to explain the case to Miss Lord at the regular session on Monday morning, and politely but positively refuse to read the last twenty lines that had been assigned. If Miss Lord proved insistent, the girls were to close their books and go out on strike.

The majority of the class, hypnotized by Patty's eloquence, dazedly accepted the program; but Rosalie, for whose special benefit the union had been formed, had to be coerced into signing the constitution. Finally, after a wealth of argument had been expended, she wrote her name in a very wobbly hand, and sealed it with a tear. By nature, Rosalie was not a fighter; she preferred gaining her rights by more feminine methods.

Irene McCullough had also to be forced. She was a cautious soul who looked forward to consequences. One of the most frequently applied of St. Ursula's punishments was to make the culprit miss desserts. Irene suffered keenly under this form of chastisement; and she carefully refrained from misdemeanors which might bring it upon her. But Conny produced a convincing argument. She threatened to tell that the chambermaid was in the habit of smuggling in chocolates--and poor harassed Irene, threatened with the two-fold loss of chocolates and dessert, sullenly added her signature.

"Lights-out" rang. The Virgil Union adjourned its first meeting and went to bed.

* * * * *

Senior Latin came the last hour of the morning, when everyone was tired and hungry. On the Monday following the founding of the Union, the Virgil class gathered outside the door, in growing perturbation as the actual time for the battle approached. Patty rallied them in a brief address.

"Brace up, Rosalie! Don't be a cry-baby. We'll help you out if the last lines come to you. And for goodness' sake, girls, don't look so scared. Remember you're suffering, not only for yourselves, but for all the generations of Virgil classes that come after you. Anyone who backs down now is a COWARD!"

Patty established herself on the front seat, directly in the line of the fire, and a slight skirmish occurred at the outset. Her heavy walking boots were conspicuously laced with pale blue baby ribbon, which caught the enemy's eye.

"That is scarcely the kind of shoe laces that a lady adopts. May I ask, Patty--?"

"I broke my other laces," Patty affably explained, "and since we didn't go shopping on Friday, I couldn't get any more. I don't quite like the effect myself," she conceded, as she stuck out a foot and critically surveyed it.

"See that you find some black ones immediately after class," Miss Lord acidly suggested. "Priscilla, you may read the first ten lines."

The lesson progressed in the usual manner, except that there was a visible tightening of nerves as each recitation was finished, and they waited to hear the next name called. Conny's turn ended with the sixtieth line. No one had gone beyond that; all ahead