“It’s one minute past eleven-thirty, and no busses. I’m going to find out what is the matter.” Robin made the low-toned announcement to Phil and Barbara with an air of desperation. “I’m going to ’phone Sabini’s garage where the busses are kept. I can’t imagine what can have happened to make them late. I wish you two would keep a sharp lookout for them. If they should come while I am ’phoning you can hurry back to the ’phone booth and let me know.”
“Suppose they shouldn’t come. What then?” Barbara regarded Robin with lively apprehension.
“Don’t ask me.” Robin raised a hand as though to ward off such a catastrophe. “Let’s not suppose anything quite so harrowing,” she added in a more hopeful tone.
Ten minutes later she emerged hastily from the telephone booth. Her expression was one of acute dismay. She made hurried way, in and out among the crowded company of girls, to where Phil and Barbara were anxiously keeping up a watch at one of the big front windows.
“One of the busses has broken down!” she cried excitedly. “The other bus is out somewhere. The man at the garage who answered me doesn’t know where. I tried to hire cars from the garage. There are none to be had. How are we going to land the dormitory girls at Baretti’s by one? And we can’t ask Signor Baretti to serve the dinner later!”
“What an awful state of affairs!” Barbara echoed Robin’s consternation. “We’ll have to do something very suddenly to offset it. What about hiring the station taxicabs; all of them, if we can get them.” was her quick suggestion.
“We might do that,” Phil hailed the idea eagerly. “There are five or six of them. With our car and Lillian Wenderblatt’s we could carry the gang to the inn at one trip. Go ahead, Robin, and ’phone Mariani’s garage. I’ll ’phone Lillian.”
“You’re a wonder and a comfort to my distracted old age, Phil.” Robin showed grateful relief. “Watch me start on the trail of those taxies. Never mind the expense.” She darted back to the telephone booth she had recently left. Phil followed her; slipped into an adjoining booth and proceeded to call Lillian Wenderblatt on the telephone.
Among the waiting company of girls a loud buzz of dismayed conversation had now risen concerning the non-appearance of the busses. Anna Towne, Florence Wyatt and Marian Barth, seniors and members of the new Travelers’ sorority, were anxiously discussing the situation with a group of their particular friends.
At least a third of the off-campus students who had lived in the old houses, which had been demolished to make place for the dormitory, now in process of building, were seniors. While they, with the students of the lower classes, had been familiarly termed by the Travelers among themselves as the “dormitory girls,” they hardly hoped to have the pleasure of living even a few weeks in the dormitory before their graduation from college. Far from being disappointed at this prospect they did not stop to consider themselves but showed only the utmost satisfaction in the good fortune which would fall to the other two-thirds of the off-campus contingent.