"What!" cried Katharine; "you wouldn't go with him, Florence! Why, we none of us met him until last night."
"Last night I was unfortunately absent-minded," answered Miss Meiggs, "and I did not say all I wanted to. It wouldn't be a pleasant drive!"
"He would have you at his mercy—you shan't go!" laughed another girl, "it would be flying in the face of Providence as well as of Propriety!"
"I can't imagine whom he's coming for," said Katharine, who was sure that he was coming for her. She thought out the severe little refusal she should make him when he had drawn her aside.
The stranger scraped his buggy wheels delicately along the curbing of the Roble walk. The group of girls on the steps was an unexpected ordeal. He caught sight of the amused faces behind the curtains above him and almost lost his nerve.
"Rubber!" he growled. He had made many a clever entrance in the student theatricals, but to-day in climbing out of the buggy he got badly tangled in the reins. In spite of his desperate will, his face was growing red. With painfully fixed gaze he came up the steps toward the Theta Gammas; standing uneasily before them, he blurted out, with no preliminaries whatever:
"Miss Graham, would you like to go driving?"
Katharine straightened and looked at him coolly. One of the girls gave a little gasp at his impertinence.
"It isn't customary, I believe," said Katharine, "to ask to go driving with a girl you have met once, at a supper."
"Isn't it?" faltered Pellams. There was not a vestige of his usual bravado about him. Katharine met his honest gaze, hesitated, then said: