ON DUTY
“Oh, come on, Pats!” urged Betty, impatiently.
“It’s heaps of fun to hear the tryouts,” added Anne; “more than seeing
the plays themselves, sometimes.”
The football season was over. The Greystone game had resulted in a close
victory for Granard, in a hard-fought battle. Jack had covered himself
with glory and made the final score for his college in the last few
minutes of play. Tut had come down with a heavy cold—so it was said—and
had gone home for the Thanksgiving recess a few days early; so he was
absent not only from the line-up, but also from the game. All rumors
regarding Jack had died a natural death, and now were nearly forgotten;
so rapidly does one event follow another, and a fresh excitement take the
place of its predecessor, in college life. The present and the future are
the only tenses the college student knows anything about.
Dramatics now held the center of the stage.
The Alley Gang was standing on the corner of Wentworth Street and College
Avenue after leaving Horton Hall, and were discussing a coming production
of the dramatic club.
“And we’ll all go to ‘Vans’ afterward and get something decent to eat,”
proposed Frances enthusiastically. “That dinner we just had was fierce!”
“_Dinner_, did you say?” inquired Hazel scornfully.
“Why won’t you go, Pat?” asked Jane, clasping Patricia’s arm
affectionately.
“Because my theme for English III is due tomorrow, and—”
“But not until afternoon,” objected Hazel. “You’ll have plenty of time
to—”
“That’s just what I won’t have,” contradicted Patricia. “French test and
History review both in the morning; and with Yates’ lab period early in
the afternoon. I don’t know when you people do all your work, I’m sure.”
“We don’t do it,” laughed Mary, shifting rapidly from one foot to the
other to keep warm; for the night was cold.
“Well, let’s go somewhere,” grumbled Lucile, sinking her head deeper into
her big fur collar, “before we all freeze.”
Patricia bit her tongue to keep back an angry response to Lucile’s
unpleasant tones. She and Lucile had never hit it off very well, and she
had wondered more than once how the other girls managed so nonchalantly
to put up with Lu’s uncertain moods. Clarice, the “black sheep,” was
noisy and indiscreet, but at least she was accommodating and
good-natured.
“You’ll be all alone in the alley, except for Clarice,” warned Anne.
“It’s her night on the Black Book.”
“I can work in peace and quiet, then,” replied Patricia; “with all of you
‘hyenas’ out of the way.”
Dodging a threatened blow from Katharine’s sturdy arm, Patricia ran
quickly down Wentworth Street, while the rest of the crowd started for
the auditorium. It was hard to leave the girls and go back alone to work
in the lonely dormitory; only a strong sense of obligation to her unknown
benefactor saved Patricia from giving in to the pleas of her pals and let
the theme slide. When she entered the hall she was surprised to find
Rhoda still on duty.
“Why, where’s Clarice?” she asked.
“She hasn’t come in yet,” replied the maid, looking up from some fancy
work she was doing.
“You’ll be awfully late for your dinner, Rhoda. You’d better go. I’ll
stay here until Clarice comes.”
“That’s very kind of you,” responded the girl gratefully, beginning to
fold up the long scarf and lay aside her silks. “The chef is always so
put out when the help come in late.”
“I suppose he wants to get his work finished, and go somewhere; we all
do. It is only stern necessity for work on an essay that brought me back
here tonight. The others have all gone to the tryouts.”
Patricia slipped into the chair which Rhoda vacated, and watched the maid
put on her hat and coat, thinking how little, after all, they really knew
about her in spite of their association with her, day after day.
“Good night, and thank you,” said the girl softly, as she opened the
door.
“Good night, and you’re welcome,” laughed Patricia.
A couple of minutes later, the telephone rang.
“Yes?” answered Patricia.
“Rhoda?” demanded a thin, sharp voice.
“No; she has just gone. Is there any message?”
“There is not,” was the curt response, as the woman at the other end of
the line hung up noisily.
“Now where in the name of fortune have I heard that voice before?” mused
Patricia aloud. “Those thin high tones sound oddly familiar. I know! It
was Mrs. Brock! But why should she telephone Rhoda?”
Patricia was still puzzling over the question when the door opened to
admit Clarice in a dull rose dinner gown and a black fur jacket, followed
by Mrs. Vincent, closely wrapped in a long, grey coat, her face drawn
with pain.
“Clarice,” the chaperon was saying, as they paused to close the door,
“tell Ivan when he comes that I’m sorry to break my engagement with him,
but that I’m ill and have gone to bed.”
She hurried to her room, without even a glance at Patricia.
“How gay you are tonight,” observed Patricia, eyeing the rose-colored
gown admiringly as the girl came over to the table.
“Isn’t the dress darling?” inquired Clarice, opening her jacket to
display more fully the charms beneath it. “My father just sent it to me.
You see,” perching on the corner of the table, and swinging her feet,
“he’s just crazy for me to make good here, and graduate; and so long as I
manage to stick, he’ll send me pretties every once in a while. On the
other hand, if I’m flunked out,” with a careless laugh, “he threatens to
send me off into the country to live with some old maid cousin whom I’ve
never seen.”
While Patricia was searching for a suitable reply to this unusual
confidence, the doorbell rang, and Clarice flew to answer it. A short,
dark youth with bold black eyes, which were everywhere at once, stepped
familiarly in as soon as the door was opened.
“Oh, Mr. Zahn,” said Clarice, without preamble, “Mrs. Vincent is sorry;
but she has a bad tooth, and has gone to bed. So _she_ won’t be able to
go out with you.”
There was the faintest accent on the word _she_, as Clarice smiled
mischievously upon the young man. Without a moment’s hesitation, he
caught the suggestion and replied suavely:
“Then perhaps you would take her place?”
“Oh, I’ve got to work tonight,” laughed Clarice, “unless—” turning to
glance inquiringly at Patricia, “are you going to be here all the
evening?”
“Yes,” was the brief reply, as Patricia turned over the pages of a
magazine, trying not to listen in on the conversation going on near the
door.
“Then you wouldn’t mind taking my place, would you?” begged Clarice,
clattering noisily across the polished floor on her high-heeled rose
slippers to lean on the table and smile coaxingly at Patricia. “I’ll do
the same for you some time.”
“All right,” replied Patricia, without enthusiasm, for she did not at all
approve of Clarice’s going off with Mrs. Vincent’s friend; yet did not
feel at liberty to try to dissuade the girl.
“Thanks, darling!” was Clarice’s grateful response. A hasty kiss on the
tip of Patricia’s nose, a dash across the hall, the opening and closing
of a door, and they were gone.
“I hope to goodness Mrs. Vincent doesn’t come out and ask for Clarice! I
don’t know what I’d ever tell her,” said Patricia to herself, as she
settled down to work.
An hour later when she went to her room for a note book, she paused to
look out of the window at the big snowflakes which were floating lazily
down from a partly clouded sky. To her intense surprise, she saw a man
slinking along the path beside the dormitory, glancing up at its windows
as he passed. A grey hat was pulled so far down on his head that she
could not get a good look at his face; but his size, clothing, and
general make-up led her to believe it was Norman Young. Since she had not
turned on her light, it was safe to watch the man until he crossed the
back yard and disappeared among the trees on Mrs. Brock’s lawn. That
practically settled his identity.
Catching up the note book from her desk, she hurried back to the hall.
What was Norman doing out there? Why did he look up at all the windows?
Was there any connection between his actions and the mysterious telephone
call earlier in the evening? No satisfactory answers presented
themselves; so Patricia tried to force the troublesome problem out of her
mind by settling to work in real earnest on the essay.
Half an hour later the sound of a door knob turning made her jump so
violently that she knocked a big reference book onto the floor. Mrs.
Vincent had opened her door and was crossing the hall.
“Now I’m in for it,” thought Patricia, stooping to pick up the heavy
volume; but the chaperon seemed oblivious to the change of girls at the
Black Book.
“My tooth is so bad,” murmured Mrs. Vincent, pressing her hand to her
right cheek, “that I’m going over to my cousin’s,—he’s a dentist,—to see
what he can do for it. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” Without waiting
for a reply, she hurried out.
“Well,” thought Patricia, “now I certainly _am_ alone here. The girls on
the third floor are all up at Fine Arts making scenery for the play; and
those from the second are ushering at the concert—all except Tiny.”
A little black-haired girl, whose size and delicate features suggested
nothing so much as a lovely doll, had promptly been nicknamed by the
girls of Arnold Hall. Nobody ever thought of calling her by her right
name, Evelyn Stone.
“Seems to me I heard someone say she was ill. If I get this finished in
time, I’ll run up and see her. No, I can’t either. I’ll have to stay with
the Book and the telephone,” thought Patricia, writing rapidly.
Presently she stopped, sat up straight, and sniffed.
“I smell smoke!” she said aloud, getting up from the table and walking
down the hall.