Trumbull shouted the question at Larry Kirkland, who, arrayed in his best garments, was trying to slip out of the house and around the corner unobserved.
“Going fussing again?” called Winans. “Shame on you—and the big game with Golden only ten days off.”
“You fellows are only jealous,” called Larry, hurrying away. “I’ll be home early.”
“I thought something was up when he rushed away as soon as we quit practicing,” said Winans, kicking his feet into the air. “I wonder what the attraction up at St. Gertrude’s is? This is calling evening, isn’t it?”
“Girl from up his way,” volunteered Trumbull. “I saw him hiding a photograph when I went into his room the other day and he blushed until I was afraid he’d set the curtains afire.”
Meantime the “attraction,” Helen Baldwin, was waiting nervously in the reception room at St. Gertrude’s Seminary for Larry Kirkland. She had telephoned to him earlier in the day, asking him to be sure to keep his promise and call, and he was hastening to respond to the request.
During the term he had found himself more and more interested in the pretty cousin of his enemy and her friendship had become so important a part of his life that he found himself thinking of her frequently during the week and longing for the arrival of Thursday evening. That the girl found pleasure in his calls he was certain. Twice she had told him how lonely and homesick she was and had hinted that by representing himself as her cousin he could call more than once a week. The suggestion, made in half jest, half earnest, had worried him, and when he protested that such a thing would be dishonorable, she had laughed it off and said she was joking.
The telephone message that had been left for him, set him a-flutter with excitement and he had hurried away as quickly as possible from his comrades.
He found the girl cuddled into the corner of a big divan, her fair hair piled with studied carelessness upon her small head and her high-colored, rounded face was marred by a petulant, pouting expression.
“I was so afraid you wouldn’t come,” she said. “The person who took my message did not seem able to understand anything.”