“I—I beg your pardon?” he stammered. “I didn't just catch—”
“The mad girl has sent us three telegrams,” said Mrs. Kent, “in which there was only one sensible thing, the reference to yourself. Her other remarks, about cooks and soccer and injured limbs, were quite over our heads.”
With a dull sense of pain Blair felt Kathleen's bright eyes on him.
“Yes, Mr. Blair, is she ragging us? Or have the girls at Maggie Hall taken up soccer?” said a clear voice, every syllable of which seemed so precious and girlish and quaintly English that he could have clapped his hands.
He blessed her for the clue. “Maggie Hall!”—in other words, Lady Margaret Hall, one of the women's colleges at Oxford. So “Joe” was (in American parlance) a “co-ed!”
“Why—er—I believe they have been playing a little,” he said desperately. “I think he—er—something was said about having his—hum—her—arm—hurt in a rough game.”
“Her leg, too,” said Mr. Kent. “In my time, young girls didn't send telegrams about their legs. In fact, they didn't send telegrams at all.”
“Well, we are quite nonplussed,” said Mrs. Kent. “Kathleen says Joe must have had a rush of humour to the head. She wired for us to send Fred down to her. Of course she has sent wires to Fred before, as a joke; but she must have known we couldn't send him so far alone. I suppose Joe has told you all about Fred? He's quite one of the family.”
“Yes,” said the distracted Oxonian. “He must be a fine fellow. I'm very anxious to meet him.”
There was a ring at the front door bell, and in a kind of stupor Blair realized that something—he hardly knew what—was about to happen.