the yard back of here. As I got to the step up into this yard, I heard the sound of a typewriter in Big House. It surprised me; for I understand Mrs. Brock is quite elderly. I glanced carelessly up at the lighted windows, and there in a second floor room facing this way, sat our unknown blond friend.”
“Maybe he’s her son,” proposed Katharine.
“Son, nothing! Grandson more likely,” contradicted Hazel. “Maybe the girls will meet him. Why didn’t more of us go?”
Jane laughed. “You all had a chance, but you didn’t make the most of it.”
At this moment the front door opened quietly, closed again, footsteps were heard coming along the hall, and Patricia and Clarice entered.
“Tell us just everything,” ordered Anne, making places on Jane’s bed for the newcomers.
“Well,” began Patricia slowly, “a maid led us into the living room, which is that room in front where the big bay window is; and there, before the fire, sat a tiny, white-haired old lady with the keenest brown eyes I have ever seen.”
“They bored right through one,” contributed Clarice.
“She never said a word to us, only looked up, and then tried to quiet her white Spitz which began to bark his head off at us.”
“I should think she’d be used to noise, if she has one of those,” observed Hazel; “they sho’ do bark.”
Just then Mrs. Vincent slipped into the room, and, sitting down beside Clarice, slid an arm around her, while the girls exchanged significant glances.
“When Mrs. Brock got the dog quieted down,” continued Patricia, “I said that we had come to represent the girls on our floor, and apologize for the excessive noise tonight; that we had not intended to annoy anyone, and had not even thought of it as a possibility; we were only having a little party among ourselves.”
“‘Drinking party, I suppose!’ she snapped, looking us over from head to foot, for she hadn’t asked us to sit down.”
“I’ll bet she knows how many buttons are on my blouse, and even where one buttonhole is torn,” observed Clarice.
“‘We had only orangeade,’ I replied, as good-naturedly as I could; for it certainly was annoying to be addressed in the tones she used,” went on Patricia.
“‘Are you sure of that?’ she demanded, fixing her brown eyes on me, like crabs. ‘I distinctly heard some one singing a song about wanting a drink.’”
A burst of laughter from the girls interrupted Patricia’s story, while Jane ruffled Hazel’s curls.
“Then I took a hand,” announced Clarice.
“‘You did,’ I told her, ‘and we had several; but they were all made of oranges, just as Patricia has told you. We may be noisy, but we’re not liars!’”
“What did she say?” asked Jane eagerly.
“Nothing; she just glared at me, and turned back to Pat,” replied Clarice.
“‘Aside from the personal annoyance,’ she went on,” continued Patricia, “‘I consider it highly detrimental to the reputation of college women to have such yelling and noise emanating from a supposedly respectable dormitory.’ Before we could answer, fortunately, perhaps, for I didn’t know what to say next,” went on Patricia, “she pressed a bell near her chair, and almost immediately we heard footsteps on the stairs, the heavy portieres between the living room and the hall were pushed aside, and there stood—”
“The good-looking young blond!” finished Hazel, excitedly clasping and unclasping her hands.
“Why, how did you know?” demanded Patricia in surprise.
“I saw him over there in the window last night, and the girls were just saying that perhaps you would meet him,” replied Jane. “But please go on.”
“‘Norman Young, my secretary,’ said the old lady, looking inquiringly at us. Clarice supplied our names, and the youth bowed gravely. ‘Norman,’ she asked, ‘did you type the letter I dictated earlier this evening?’
“‘Not yet, Mrs. Brock,’ he said.
“‘You need not write it. That’s all,’ she added curtly, as the young man lingered a moment, eyeing Clarice. As soon as he had disappeared, she turned to us again. ‘You may go too,’ she announced abruptly; ‘and don’t let me hear such a rumpus over there again.’ Then Clarice spoke up. ‘Mrs. Brock, we told you we were sorry, and we are; but we can’t promise never to make another sound, when we have parties, or at any other time. There are forty-five girls in the house, and it’s unreasonable to expect us to be as quiet as deaf-mutes.’ Before she could get her breath to annihilate Clarice, which I thought she would do, I broke in and said that perhaps she’d like us and understand college life better if she came over to Arnold Hall some time and got acquainted with the girls and see how we live.
“‘Maybe I should,’ she replied slowly, and really her face changed so that I thought she was going to smile.”
“Now you have done it, Pats,” groaned Anne.
“Whatever possessed you to say that?” complained Betty.
“Who in creation is she, that she thinks she can take such a hand in our affairs?” demanded Katharine hotly.
“Well, I felt sorry for her,” contended Patricia stoutly. “She’s old, and all alone in that big house—”
“Oh, no, Pats, not alone; think of that attractive youth,” protested Hazel.
“And I think she’s longing for human contacts,” continued Patricia.
“She seems to be,” remarked Lucile sarcastically.
“And that’s why she is annoyed by our fun, kind of an outsider envying those who are on the inside; like a kid who’s not invited to a party, and so wants to break it up,” concluded Patricia.
“Sentimental Pat!” scoffed Lucile.
“I’m sorry you are all annoyed about it,” said Patricia, flushing, “but I suddenly felt so sorry for her that I spoke before I thought. I never dreamed you’d object to her. Probably she won’t come, anyhow.”
“I think,” said Jane emphatically, “that you handled the matter in the best possible way. What would we gain by fighting with her? Putting aside of any question of kindness, it’s much wiser for us to be friendly with her, if she will let us.”
“I agree with you, Jane,” said Mrs. Vincent, speaking for the first time, and getting up to go back to her own room. “Now get to bed as quickly as possible,” she added, as the clock struck eleven.
There were three people in the college colony who were wakeful that night: Patricia tossed from side to side, as she kept going over in her mind the inexorable circumstances which continued to involve her in strange situations with Norman Young. Directly above her, on the third floor, Rhoda the maid was shedding tears as she worried over the affairs of one near and dear to her. In his room across the two back yards, Norman
