“M.—Jim, Amherst—fine lot of information,” murmured Katherine.
There really didn’t seem to be much that could be done, so the girls went to recitations as on other days. But they could not help the feeling that they had really stumbled upon the very person they had made it the business of their year to find, and so their answers to the professors’ questions were often somewhat vague and wandering, and once when the mathematics teacher asked Peggy to draw a right angle triangle, she said she hadn’t studied her mandolins to-day, and sat blushing furiously throughout the rest of the lesson.
It was late in the afternoon when one of the maids called Peggy to the telephone. She ran down the stairs with a wild and unaccountable hope in her heart—if she should only have the opportunity to find out everything so that Katherine wouldn’t have so much cause to be ashamed of her—if she could only ask him if he did have a mandolin—
“Hello,” she was saying breathlessly into the mouth-piece. “Hello—?”
“Miss Parsons—” a laughing voice came over the wire and Peggy instantly framed her lips to her question. It should not get away from her this time—all this news that she must have.
“I called up Mrs. Forest and asked if the young lady I rescued from the storm was all right after her chill. I told her I was the one who had been fortunate enough to be there, and she said, quite politely, that Miss Parsons wasn’t hurt in the least by the experience. That’s how I got your name.”
But all this while Peggy was interpolating wildly: “Do you play the mandolin? Do you play the mandolin?”
And now that the voice was pausing for her answer, her words came clear and distinct, “Do you play the mandolin?”
“Do I what?” in astonishment.
“Do you play the mandolin?” monotonously.