The conviction of the Misses Cabot that youthful manhood was dangerous and to be shunned like the plague Mary soon discovered was not shared by the majority of the young ladies. If Miss Priscilla and Miss Hortense had had their way Harvard University and the Institute of Technology would have been moved forthwith to some remote spot like the North Pole or San Francisco. There were altogether too many “cousins” or “sons of old family friends” calling at the school to deliver messages from parents or guardians or the said friends. These messengers, young gentlemen with budding mustaches and full-blown raiment, were rigidly inspected and their visits carefully chaperoned: but letters came and were treasured and the cheerful inanity of their contents imparted, in strict secrecy, to bosom friends of the recipients.
Mary received no such letters. No cousins or family friends called to deliver messages to her. No photographs of young fellows in lettered sweaters were hidden among her belongings. Her friends in the school thought this state of affairs very odd and they sometimes asked pointed questions.
Miss Barbara Howe, whose home was in Brookline and whose father was the senior partner of an old and well-known firm of downtown merchants, was the leading questioner. She liked Mary and the latter liked her. Barbara was pretty and full of spirits and, although she was the only child, and a rather spoiled one, in a wealthy family, there was no snobbishness in her make-up.
“But I can't see,” she declared, “what you have been doing all the time. Where have you been keeping yourself? Don't you know ANYBODY?”
Mary smiled. “Oh, yes,” she replied, “I know a good many people.”
“You know what I mean. Don't you know any of the fellows at Harvard, or Tech, or Yale, or anywhere? I know dozens. And you must know some. You know Sam Keith; you said you did.”
Mary admitted that she knew Sam slightly.
“Isn't he fun! Sam and I are great chums. Doesn't he dance divinely!”
“I don't know. I never saw him dance.”
“Then you've missed something. Do you know his friend, the one on the football team—Crawford Smith, his name is—do you know him?”