Priscilla tossed the note to Patty with a groan, and getting out the
roll-book, she turned to the F's and reënrolled Kate Ferris.
Patty sympathetically watched the process over her shoulder. "The book
is getting so thin in that spot," she laughed, "that Kate Ferris is
actually coming through on the other side. If she changes her mind many
more times there won't be anything left."
"I'm going to ask Fräulein Scherin about her," Priscilla declared.
"She's made me so much trouble that I'm curious to see what she looks
like."
She did ask Fräulein Scherin, but Fräulein denied all knowledge of the
girl. "I have so many freshmen," she apologized, "I cannot all of them
with their queer names remember."
Priscilla inquired about Kate Ferris from the freshmen she knew, but
though all of them thought that the name sounded familiar, none of them
could exactly place her. She was variously described as tall and dark
and small and light, but further inquiry always proved that the girl
they had in mind was some one else.
Priscilla kept hearing about the girl on all sides, but could never
catch a glimpse of her. Miss Ferris called several times on business,
but Priscilla always happened to be out. Her name was posted on the
bulletin-board for having library books that were overdue. She even
wrote a paper for one of the German Club meetings (Georgie was not a
facile German scholar, and it had required a whole Saturday); but owing
to the fact that she was suddenly called out of town, she did not read
it in person.
A month or two after Kate Ferris's advent, Priscilla had friends
visiting her from New York, for whom she gave a tea in the study.
"I am going to invite Kate Ferris," she announced. "I _insist_ upon
finding out what she looks like."
"Do," said Patty. "I should like to find out myself."
The invitation was despatched, and on the next day Priscilla received a
formal acceptance.
"It's strange that she should send an acceptance for a tea," she
remarked as she read it, "but I'm glad to get it, anyway. I like to
feel sure that I'm to see her at last."
On the evening of the tea, after the guests had gone and the furniture
had been moved back, the weary hostesses, in somewhat rumpled evening
dresses (a considerable crush results when fifty are entertained in a
room whose utmost capacity is fifteen), were reëntertaining one or two
friends on the lettuce sandwiches and cakes the obliging guests had
failed to consume. The company and the clothes having passed in review,
the conversation flagged a little, and Georgie suddenly asked: "Was Kate
Ferris here? I was so busy passing cakes that I didn't look, and I
wanted to see her especially!"
"That's so!" Patty exclaimed. "I didn't see her, either. She's the most
abnormally inconspicuous person I ever heard of. What did she look like,
Pris?"
Priscilla knit her brows. "She couldn't have come. I kept watching for
her all the evening. It's strange, isn't it?--when she was so careful
to send an acceptance. I'm growing positively morbid over the girl; I
begin to think she's invisible."
"I begin to think so myself," said Patty.
The next morning's mail brought a bunch of violets and an apology from
Kate Ferris. "She had been unavoidably detained."
"It's positively uncanny!" Priscilla declared. "I shall go to the
registrar and tell her that this Kate Ferris is neither down in the
catalogue nor the college directory, and find out where she lives."
"Don't do anything reckless," Georgie pleaded. "Take what the gods send
and be grateful."
But Priscilla was as good as her word, and she returned from the
registrar's office flushed and defiant. "She insists that there isn't
any such person in college, and that I must have made a mistake in the
name! Did you ever hear anything so absurd?"
"That seems to me the only reasonable explanation," Patty agreed
amicably. "Perhaps it is Harris instead of Ferris."
Priscilla faced her ominously. "You read the name yourself. It was as
plain as printing."
"We're all liable to make mistakes," Patty murmured soothingly.
"Do you know," said Georgie, "I begin to think it's all a hallucination,
and that there really isn't any Kate Ferris. It's strange, of course,
but not any stranger than some of those cases you read about in
psychology."
"Hallucinations don't send flowers," said Priscilla, hotly; and she
stalked out of the room, leaving Patty and Georgie to review the
campaign.
"I'm afraid it's gone far enough," said Georgie. "If she bothers the
office very much there'll be an official investigation."
"I'm afraid so," sighed Patty. "It's been very entertaining, but she is
really getting sensitive on the subject, and I don't dare mention Kate
Ferris's name when we're alone."
"Shall we tell her?"
Patty shook her head. "Not just now--I shouldn't dare. She believes in
corporal punishment."
A few days later Priscilla received another note directed in the hand
she had come to dread. She threw it into the waste-basket unopened; but,
curiosity prevailing, she drew it out again and read it:
DEAR MISS POND: As I have been obliged to leave
college on account of my health, I inclose my
resignation to the German Club. I thank you very
sincerely for your kindness to me this year, and
shall always look back upon our friendship as one
of the happiest memories of my college life.
Yours sincerely,
KATE FERRIS.
When Patty came in she found Priscilla silently and grimly scratching a
hole into the roll-book where Kate Ferris's name had been.
"Changed her mind again?" Patty asked pleasantly.
"She's left college," Priscilla snapped, "and don't you ever mention her
name to me again."
Patty sighed sympathetically and remarked to the room in general: "It's
sort of pathetic to have your whole college life summed up in a hole in
the German Club archives. I can't help feeling sorry for her!"