“Yes,” was the brief reply, as Patricia turned over the pages of a magazine, trying not to listen in on the conversation going on near the door.
“Then you wouldn’t mind taking my place, would you?” begged Clarice, clattering noisily across the polished floor on her high-heeled rose slippers to lean on the table and smile coaxingly at Patricia. “I’ll do the same for you some time.”
“All right,” replied Patricia, without enthusiasm, for she did not at all approve of Clarice’s going off with Mrs. Vincent’s friend; yet did not feel at liberty to try to dissuade the girl.
“Thanks, darling!” was Clarice’s grateful response. A hasty kiss on the tip of Patricia’s nose, a dash across the hall, the opening and closing of a door, and they were gone.
“I hope to goodness Mrs. Vincent doesn’t come out and ask for Clarice! I don’t know what I’d ever tell her,” said Patricia to herself, as she settled down to work.
An hour later when she went to her room for a note book, she paused to look out of the window at the big snowflakes which were floating lazily down from a partly clouded sky. To her intense surprise, she saw a man slinking along the path beside the dormitory, glancing up at its windows as he passed. A grey hat was pulled so far down on his head that she could not get a good look at his face; but his size, clothing, and general make-up led her to believe it was Norman Young. Since she had not turned on her light, it was safe to watch the man until he crossed the back yard and disappeared among the trees on Mrs. Brock’s lawn. That practically 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 telephone call earlier in the evening? No satisfactory answers presented themselves; so Patricia tried to force the troublesome problem out of her mind by settling to work in real earnest on the essay.
Half an hour later the sound of a door knob turning made her jump so violently 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 heavy volume; but the chaperon seemed oblivious to the change of girls at the Black Book.
“My tooth is so bad,” murmured Mrs. Vincent, pressing her hand to her right cheek, “that I’m going over to my cousin’s,—he’s a dentist,—to see what he can do for it. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” Without waiting for a reply, she hurried out.