CHAPTER X.
PATTY'S PRANKS Somehow the time passed quickly in Boston; in fact, the Fleming family seemed fairly to push it along, they hurried so.
At any rate they wasted none of it, and after a few weeks, Patty fell into the ways of the household, and hurried along with the rest.
Indeed she had to do so, or be left behind, for her cousins were like Time and Tide, and waited for no man, or little girl either.
She went to school with Ruth, but found herself far behind the New England girl in her studies, so she took her place in a lower class, and Ruth kindly helped her with her lessons at home.
Patty did not know what to make of Ruth; she had never seen a girl like her before.

Of course Ruth was pleasant and amiable, but she was so very quiet, seldom talked and almost never laughed.
Patty joked with her, and told her funny stories, but at most she received only a faint smile in response, and sometimes a blank stare.
She wrote to her father: "Ruth is the queerest girl I ever saw, and I believe she is all out of proportion.

She studies so hard that she has crowded all the fun out of herself.

You know 'all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,' and I verily believe Ruth is the dullest girl in the world." But Ruth almost always won the prizes offered at school, and was accounted the best of Miss Goodman's pupils.
Patty liked the school, and she liked Miss Goodman, the principal, but the hours, from nine to one, seemed very long to her, and she would often get restless and mischievous.
One day she thought she would clean her ink well.

Ruth shared her desk, and as the ink well was intended for the use of both, it was a good-sized one, and chanced to be full of ink.
So Patty must need find something to hold the ink while she washed the inkstand.