Priscilla treated this outburst with the silence it deserved, and Patty turned back to her perusal of the rain-soaked campus.
"I wish something would happen," she said discontentedly. "I think I'll put on a mackintosh and go out in search of adventure."
"Pneumonia will happen if you do."
"What business has it to be raining, anyway, when it ought to be snowing?"
As this was unanswerable, Priscilla returned to her frogs, and Patty drummed gloomily on the window-pane until a maid appeared with a card.
"A caller?" cried Patty. "A missionary! A rescuer! A deliverer! Heaven send it's for me!"
"Miss Pond," said Sadie, laying the card on the table.
Patty pounced upon it. "'Mr. Frederick K. Stanthrope.' Who's he, Pris?"
Priscilla wrinkled up her brows. "I don't know; I never heard of him. What do you suppose it can be?"
"An adventure—I know it's an adventure. Probably your uncle, that you never heard of, has just died in the South Sea Islands, and left you a fortune because you're his namesake; or else you're a countess by rights, and were stolen from your cradle in infancy, and he's the lawyer come to tell you about it. I think it might have happened to me, when I'm so bored to death! But hurry up and tell me about it, at least; a second-hand adventure's better than no adventure at all. Yes, your hair is all right; never mind looking in the glass." And Patty pushed her room-mate out of the door, and, sitting down at her desk again, quite cheerfully pulled her discarded paper out of the waste-basket and began re-reading it with evident approval.