CHAPTER XII ON DUTY
"Oh, come on, Pats!" urged Betty, impatiently.
"It's heaps of fun to hear the tryouts," added Anne; "more than seeingthe plays themselves, sometimes."
The football season was over. The Greystone game had resulted in a closevictory for Granard, in a hard-fought battle. Jack had covered himselfwith glory and made the final score for his college in the last fewminutes of play. Tut had come down with a heavy cold--so it was said--andhad gone home for the Thanksgiving recess a few days early; so he wasabsent not only from the line-up, but also from the game. All rumorsregarding Jack had died a natural death, and now were nearly forgotten;so rapidly does one event follow another, and a fresh excitement take theplace of its predecessor, in college life. The present and the future arethe only tenses the college student knows anything about.
Dramatics now held the center of the stage.
The Alley Gang was standing on the corner of Wentworth Street and CollegeAvenue after leaving Horton Hall, and were discussing a coming productionof the dramatic club.
"And we'll all go to 'Vans' afterward and get something decent to eat,"proposed Frances enthusiastically. "That dinner we just had was fierce!"
"_Dinner_, did you say?" inquired Hazel scornfully.
"Why won't you go, Pat?" asked Jane, clasping Patricia's armaffectionately.
"Because my theme for English III is due tomorrow, and--"
"But not until afternoon," objected Hazel. "You'll have plenty of timeto--"
"That's just what I won't have," contradicted Patricia. "French test andHistory review both in the morning; and with Yates' lab period early inthe afternoon. I don't know when you people do all your work, I'm sure."
"We don't do it," laughed Mary, shifting rapidly from one foot to theother to keep warm; for the night was cold.
"Well, let's go somewhere," grumbled Lucile, sinking her head deeper intoher big fur collar, "before we all freeze."
Patricia bit her tongue to keep back an angry response to Lucile'sunpleasant tones. She and Lucile had never hit it off very well, and shehad wondered more than once how the other girls managed so nonchalantlyto put up with Lu's uncertain moods. Clarice, the "black sheep," wasnoisy and indiscreet, but at least she was accommodating andgood-natured.
"You'll be all alone in the alley, except for Clarice," warned Anne."It's her night on the Black Book."
"I can work in peace and quiet, then," replied Patricia; "with all of you'hyenas' out of the way."
Dodging a threatened blow from Katharine's sturdy arm, Patricia ranquickly down Wentworth Street, while the rest of the crowd started forthe auditorium. It was hard to leave the girls and go back alone to workin the lonely dormitory; only a strong sense of obligation to her unknownbenefactor saved Patricia from giving in to the pleas of her pals and letthe theme slide. When she entered the hall she was surprised to findRhoda still on duty.
"Why, where's Clarice?" she asked.
"She hasn't come in yet," replied the maid, looking up from some fancywork she was doing.
"You'll be awfully late for your dinner, Rhoda. You'd better go. I'llstay here until Clarice comes."
"That's very kind of you," responded the girl gratefully, beginning tofold up the long scarf and lay aside her silks. "The chef is always soput out when the help come in late."
"I suppose he wants to get his work finished, and go somewhere; we alldo. It is only stern necessity for work on an essay that brought me backhere tonight. The others have all gone to the tryouts."
Patricia slipped into the chair which Rhoda vacated, and watched the maidput on her hat and coat, thinking how little, after all, they really knewabout her in spite of their association with her, day after day.
"Good night, and thank you," said the girl softly, as she opened thedoor.
"Good night, and you're welcome," laughed Patricia.
A couple of minutes later, the telephone rang.
"Yes?" answered Patricia.
"Rhoda?" demanded a thin, sharp voice.
"No; she has just gone. Is there any message?"
"There is not," was the curt response, as the woman at the other end ofthe line hung up noisily.
"Now where in the name of fortune have I heard that voice before?" musedPatricia aloud. "Those thin high tones sound oddly familiar. I know! Itwas Mrs. Brock! But why should she telephone Rhoda?"
Patricia was still puzzling over the question when the door opened toadmit Clarice in a dull rose dinner gown and a black fur jacket, followedby Mrs. Vincent, closely wrapped in a long, grey coat, her face drawnwith pain.
"Clarice," the chaperon was saying, as they paused to close the door,"tell Ivan when he comes that I'm sorry to break my engagement with him,but that I'm ill and have gone to bed."
She hurried to her room, without even a glance at Patricia.
"How gay you are tonight," observed Patricia, eyeing the rose-coloredgown admiringly as the girl came over to the table.
"Isn't the dress darling?" inquired Clarice, opening her jacket todisplay more fully the charms beneath it. "My father just sent it to me.You see," perching on the corner of the table, and swinging her feet,"he's just crazy for me to make good here, and graduate; and so long as Imanage to stick, he'll send me pretties every once in a while. On theother hand, if I'm flunked out," with a careless laugh, "he threatens tosend me off into the country to live with some old maid cousin whom I'venever seen."
While Patricia was searching for a suitable reply to this unusualconfidence, the doorbell rang, and Clarice flew to answer it. A short,dark youth with bold black eyes, which were everywhere at once, steppedfamiliarly in as soon as the door was opened.
"Oh, Mr. Zahn," said Clarice, without preamble, "Mrs. Vincent is sorry;but she has a bad tooth, and has gone to bed. So _she_ won't be able togo out with you."
There was the faintest accent on the word _she_, as Clarice smiledmischievously upon the young man. Without a moment's hesitation, hecaught the suggestion and replied suavely:
"Then perhaps you would take her place?"
"Oh, I've got to work tonight," laughed Clarice, "unless--" turning toglance inquiringly at Patricia, "are you going to be here all theevening?"
"Yes," was the brief reply, as Patricia turned over the pages of amagazine, trying not to listen in on the conversation going on near thedoor.
"Then you wouldn't mind taking my place, would you?" begged Clarice,clattering noisily across the polished floor on her high-heeled roseslippers to lean on the table and smile coaxingly at Patricia. "I'll dothe same for you some time."
"All right," replied Patricia, without enthusiasm, for she did not at allapprove of Clarice's going off with Mrs. Vincent's friend; yet did notfeel at liberty to try to dissuade the girl.
"Thanks, darling!" was Clarice's grateful response. A hasty kiss on thetip of Patricia's nose, a dash across the hall, the opening and closingof a door, and they were gone.
"I hope to goodness Mrs. Vincent doesn't come out and ask for Clarice! Idon't know what I'd ever tell her," said Patricia to herself, as shesettled down to work.
An hour later when she went to her room for a note book, she paused tolook out of the window at the big snowflakes which were floating lazilydown from a partly clouded sky. To her intense surprise, she saw a manslinking along the path beside the dormitory, glancing up at its windowsas he passed. A grey hat was pulled so far down on his head that shecould not get a good look at his face; but his size, clothing, andgeneral make-up led her to believe it was Norman Young. Since she had notturned on her light, it was safe to watch the man until he crossed theback yard and disappeared among the trees on Mrs. Brock's lawn. Thatpractically settled his identity.
Catching up the note book from her desk, she hurried back to the hall.What was Norman doing out there? Why did he look up at all the windows?Was there any connection between his actions and the mysterious telephonecall earlier in the evening? No satisfactory ans
wers presentedthemselves; so Patricia tried to force the troublesome problem out of hermind by settling to work in real earnest on the essay.
Half an hour later the sound of a door knob turning made her jump soviolently that she knocked a big reference book onto the floor. Mrs.Vincent had opened her door and was crossing the hall.
"Now I'm in for it," thought Patricia, stooping to pick up the heavyvolume; but the chaperon seemed oblivious to the change of girls at theBlack Book.
"My tooth is so bad," murmured Mrs. Vincent, pressing her hand to herright cheek, "that I'm going over to my cousin's,--he's a dentist,--tosee what he can do for it. I'll be back as soon as I can." Withoutwaiting for a reply, she hurried out.
"Well," thought Patricia, "now I certainly _am_ alone here. The girls onthe third floor are all up at Fine Arts making scenery for the play; andthose from the second are ushering at the concert--all except Tiny."
A little black-haired girl, whose size and delicate features suggestednothing so much as a lovely doll, had promptly been nicknamed by thegirls of Arnold Hall. Nobody ever thought of calling her by her rightname, Evelyn Stone.
"Seems to me I heard someone say she was ill. If I get this finished intime, I'll run up and see her. No, I can't either. I'll have to stay withthe Book and the telephone," thought Patricia, writing rapidly.
Presently she stopped, sat up straight, and sniffed.
"I smell smoke!" she said aloud, getting up from the table and walkingdown the hall.