Some of the rooms were used for graduate work, or small classes of men students; and Patricia could hear Professor Donnell’s voice quite distinctly as she passed down the corridor to the reference department. Three-quarters of an hour later, having secured the necessary information, she was just approaching the outside doorway when Professor Donnell’s class came out of its room, right behind her. Patricia was rather shy with strangers, and hurried a bit to keep well ahead of the men going down the steps. In her haste, she failed to notice, on a step part way down the flight, some matted, damp leaves. Her heel slipped on one of them, and she rolled to the bottom of the flight. Eighteen men promptly sprang to her assistance, but the long legs of a thin dark boy brought him first upon the scene.
“Are you hurt?” he asked, raising Patricia to her feet.
Patricia looked up into solicitous blue eyes, bent anxiously upon her, and shakily replied that she didn’t think so.
“That was a nasty fall,” continued the boy, still carefully holding her by the arm as if he feared she might collapse any minute.
The other men had gathered about her in a semi-circle, and Patricia’s color came back with a rush, and flushed her face to a scarlet which matched the little hat which had fallen off during her descent and which one of the men now presented to her.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
“Lucile would say, if she could see me now, that I fell purposely,” thought Patricia, adjusting the gay little hat with shaking fingers. Then an awful thought occurred to her. Maybe these men thought the same thing! People resorted to all kinds of tricks to meet celebrities, and Jack Dunn’s acquaintanceship was much sought after.
“I don’t know how I happened to fall,” she said, trying to laugh. “I’m not usually so careless.”
“There were some wet leaves on one of the steps,” explained her rescuer, bending his head protectively over her.
It was a fine shaped head, topped by wavy brown hair flung back from a broad, very white forehead. The hands on her arm were shapely, and the fingers long and slender. A thoroughbred, thought Patricia.