“No, I don’t mean that they acted like lovers, but I could see that they are well acquainted, and I remember several things that happened last year. Don’t you remember, Betty, that time when we were with her and she had a letter ‘from a dear friend,’ she said, and was blushing over it? And she spoke of a ‘Mr. Norris’ who was in school with her and was getting his doctor’s degree. Then I’m sure that it was this man’s face in the photograph that she had out on her bureau and wouldn’t tell when we teased her to tell. I wondered why his face seemed so familiar, and then it came to me that it was the man of the photograph. He looks older, though. Probably that was the picture he gave her when they were in college.”
“She wears a ring this fall, did you notice it?” asked Betty.
“Yes; I noticed it at dinner last night. It sparkled very prettily and I thought that Patty was a little—well—conscious that she had it on. Several of the girls called each other’s attention to it, I saw. But suppose we say nothing about it.”
“Patty will manage it. I suppose he has to get money enough to get married on. Do they pay good salaries here?”
“I don’t know, Helen,” answered Hilary, “but he has to get experience somewhere first.”
“He’ll get it here, all right,” said Juliet.
“Why, Juliet, this is a fine school!” exclaimed Cathalina.
“Nobody knows that better than I, but I wouldn’t teach anybody chemistry, physics and the things he has, let alone a lot of girls in a girls’ school. Won’t it be a disappointment to the collegiates when they find that he is ‘taken’?”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” said Cathalina. “Do you suppose any of them will fall in love with him?”
“Don’t worry, Cathalina. It won’t be our fault if they do. It’s up to Patty to look out for that.”