When Patty Went to College by Jean Webster Read Free Book Online Page A

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.
    Priscilla returned before she had finished. "He didn't ask for me at all," she announced. "He asked for Miss McKay."
    "Miss McKay?"
    "That junior with the hair," she explained a trifle vaguely.
    "How disgusting!" cried Patty. "I had it all planned how I was going to live with you in your castle up in the Hartz Mountains, and now it turns out that Miss McKay is the countess, and I don't even know her. What did the man look like, and what did he do?"
    "Well, he looked rather frightened, and didn't do anything but stammer. There were two men in the reception-room, and of course I picked out the wrong one and begged his pardon and asked if he were Mr. Stanthrope. He said no; his name was Wiggins. So then the only thing left for me to do was to beg the other one's pardon.
    "He was sitting in that high-backed green chair, with his eyes glued to his shoes, and holding his hat and cane in front of him like breastworks, as if he were preparing to repel an attack. He didn't look very approachable, but I boldly accosted him and asked if he were Mr. Stanthrope. He stood up and stammered and blushed and looked as if he wanted to deny it, but finally acknowledged that he was, and then stood politely waiting for me to state my business! I explained, and he stammered some more, and finally got out that he had called to see Miss McKay, and that the maid must have made a mistake. He was quite cross about it, you know, and acted as if I had insulted him; and the other man--the horrible Wiggins one--laughed, and then looked out of the window and pretended he hadn't. I apologized,--though I couldn't for the life of me see what there was to apologize for,--and told him I would send the maid for Miss McKay, and backed out."
    "Is that all?" Patty asked disappointedly. "If I couldn't have a better adventure than that, I shouldn't have any."
    "But the funny thing is that when I told Sadie, she insisted that he had asked for me."
    "Ha! The plot thickens, after all. What does it mean? Did he look like a detective, or merely a pickpocket?"
    "He looked like a very ordinarily embarrassed young man."
    Patty shook her head dejectedly. "There's a mystery somewhere, but I don't see that it affords much entertainment. I dare say that when Miss McKay came he told her he hadn't asked for her at all; he had asked for Miss Higginbotham. The only explanation I can think of is that he is insane, and there are so many insane people in the world that it isn't even interesting."
    Patty recounted the story of Priscilla's caller at the dinner-table that night.
    "I know the sequel," said Lucille Carter. "The other man, the Mr. Wiggins, is Bonnie Connaught's cousin; and he told her about some young man who came out in the car with him, and asked for Miss