“Who’s going to the Greystone game?” asked Hazel, as part of the Alley Gang was walking back to the Hall after lunch one crisp sunny day in October.
“I am,” replied Anne.
“Ted?” queried Patricia, curiously.
Anne nodded, adding with a broad grin, “Katharine and Professor Boyd are going with us.”
Oliver Boyd was a young instructor, who had been engaged for the History Department that fall, a slim, attractive youth, whose big brown eyes looked shyly out from behind octagon glasses, and whose dark skin made the girls, when they wanted to tease Katharine, say he must have Indian blood in his veins. A melodious voice with a southern accent completed an ensemble that had proved most intriguing to the women of Granard. All the girls smiled upon him, and the registration in History V was unusually heavy that term. That he was girl-shy had been the consensus of opinion until one day Katharine happened to run across him in the Varsity Book Shoppe; and a discussion, begun from the talkative Katharine over the respective merits of note book covers No. 1 and No. 3, had been the beginning of the most talked-of of college romances.
“Now just wouldn’t a retiring daisy like Professor Boyd pick a roughneck like Katharine?” commented Lucile disgustedly. “I should think she’d scare him to death.”
“You’re just jealous!” retorted Hazel, quick to come to the support of her room mate.
“Indeed I’m not,” contradicted Lucile promptly; “but you can’t deny that they’re no more suited to each other than—”
“Oh, but opposites attract,” interrupted Betty; “remember your psychology, or was it physics?”
“Who else is going to the game?” inquired Jane, returning to the original topic of conversation in an attempt to check the friction.
“Francie and I are driving down,” replied Patricia, smiling down at the round-faced little girl beside her. For several weeks now, Patricia had been the proud possessor of the car which her father had bought for her.
“Where’s the Boy Friend?” asked Hazel curiously, turning to look at Frances.
“On the outs,” was the quick reply.
“How come?” inquired Lucile.
“Well, Joe said he wished Tut Miller would get a chance to play in the Greystone game—”
“Oh—oh!” protested her companions in chorus.
“Yes, that’s just the way I felt,” asserted Frances; “so we promptly had a row.”
“But why,” protested Jane, “should he want Jack Dunn to be taken out of the lineup. He’s a far better player than Tut.”
“I know, but I figured it out this way: Joe and Tut were at Huron Prep together, and Joe’s got an awful case on Tut. When football practice started, Tut went over big until Jack began to show what he was made of.”
“And naturally Joe sizzled when Jack got on the regulars and Tut was his sub,” finished Jane.
“Jack’s the better of the two, of course,” agreed Anne; “but I don’t fall for him the way the rest of you do. He seems to me to be rather too sure of himself.”
“Who has a better right?” asked Lucile sharply. “He’s been the absolute idol of this college and town ever since he made the team.”
Before this challenge could be taken up, there was a sound of running footsteps behind them, and Clarice violently pushed in between Jane and Anne.
“What do you think?” she cried, noisily.
“We don’t think,” retorted Lucile crisply. “We leave that for you.”
“What is the excitement, Clarice?” inquired Jane quickly, trying to cover Lucile’s unkind thrust at Clarice’s poor scholarship.
“You’d never guess with whom I am going to the Greystone game.”
“Then tell us quickly,” said Frances, “before we all die of suspense.”
“Norman Young! He asked me in Physics Lab this morning, and—”
“Physics Lab,” repeated Betty in puzzled tones. “How did he happen to be there?”
“Didn’t you know that he registered late, and is a special student here!” asked Jane in surprise.
“No; I—”
“Where have you been all this term?” demanded Hazel in disgust.
“Betty is more interested in certain people from home than she is in Granard students,” explained Lucile in significant tones.
“I am not!” contradicted Betty promptly.
“Don’t bother; she’s only trying to tease you,” said Jane soothingly, flinging an arm across Betty’s shoulder. “If I had a devoted boy friend who wrote me letters every other day, and came down to spend week ends here, I shouldn’t know all the college gossip either.”
Meanwhile Anne was whispering to Patricia: “Wonder how Lucile likes Clarice’s walking off with Norman.”
“Why?” said Pat. “I didn’t know that she considered him her special property. She’s been going around with Tut.”
“I’m not sure that she does, only I feel it in my bones, someway, that the meeting at ‘Hill Top’ on the day we arrived was not all chance. I do know that she pricks up her ears whenever he is mentioned.”
They had reached the library, and Pat reluctantly left her companions.
“I’m due here, kids,” she called from the third step, as Jane demanded why she was deserting them. “Something I’ve got to look up. See you later.” Waving her hand gaily, she ran up the long flight of steps and entered the old grey building.
Some of the rooms were used for graduate work, or small classes of men students; and Patricia could hear Professor Donnell’s voice quite distinctly as she passed down the corridor to the reference department. Three-quarters of an hour later, having secured the necessary information, she was just approaching the outside doorway when Professor Donnell’s class came out of its room, right behind her. Patricia was rather shy with strangers, and hurried a bit to keep well ahead of the men going down the steps. In her haste, she failed to notice, on a step part way down the flight, some matted, damp leaves. Her heel slipped on one of them, and she rolled to the bottom of the flight. Eighteen men promptly sprang to her assistance, but the long legs of a thin dark boy brought him first upon the scene.
“Are you hurt?” he asked, raising Patricia to her feet.
Patricia looked up into solicitous blue eyes, bent anxiously upon her, and shakily replied that she didn’t think so.
“That was a nasty fall,” continued the boy, still carefully holding her by the arm as if he feared she might collapse any minute.
The other men had gathered
