Jean Webster

“ It makes me shudder to think of it!"
"I don't believe you need worry about it, Patty; of course we know you're popular, but you're not as popular as that."
"No," said Patty; "I didn't mean that I thought I really should get that many invitations. It's only that one is open to the constant danger." ”

“ Suppose, for instance, that every woman I have ever met in this town should suddenly take it into her head to invite me to a dinner. Here I—perfectly unsuspicious and innocent of any evil, because of a purely arbitrary law which I did not help to make—would not only have to sit down and write a hundred regrets, but would have to pay a hundred calls within the next two weeks. ”

“ Prexy—annually invited the seniors to dinner in parties of ten. Patty, whose turn had come a short time before, owing to an untoward misfortune, had been in the infirmary at the time; but, though she had missed the fun, she now found it necessary to pay the call. ”