Stanford Stories: Tales of a Young UniversityIrwin, Will
General
Stanford Stories: Tales of a Young University
Irwin, Will
College stories, American; Short stories; Stanford (Calif.) -- Fiction; Stanford University -- Fiction
"I believe he's coming to take Florence to drive!" said a mischievous
Theta Gamma, looking toward Miss Meiggs, who sat frowning at the
approaching buggy.
"He ought to," laughed Katharine Graham's roommate, "for not telling her
how much red pepper she had put on her rarebit while she was absorbed in
talking to him!"
"If he's coming for me," said the Senior grimly, "I shall not disappoint
him."
"What!" cried Katharine; "you wouldn't go with him, Florence! Why, we
none of us met him until last night."
"Last night I was unfortunately absent-minded," answered Miss Meiggs,
"and I did not say all I wanted to. It wouldn't be a pleasant drive!"
"He would have you at his mercy--you shan't go!" laughed another girl,
"it would be flying in the face of Providence as well as of Propriety!"
"I can't imagine whom he's coming for," said Katharine, who was sure
that he was coming for her. She thought out the severe little refusal
she should make him when he had drawn her aside.
The stranger scraped his buggy wheels delicately along the curbing of
the Roble walk. The group of girls on the steps was an unexpected
ordeal. He caught sight of the amused faces behind the curtains above
him and almost lost his nerve.
"Rubber!" he growled. He had made many a clever entrance in the student
theatricals, but to-day in climbing out of the buggy he got badly
tangled in the reins. In spite of his desperate will, his face was
growing red. With painfully fixed gaze he came up the steps toward the
Theta Gammas; standing uneasily before them, he blurted out, with no
preliminaries whatever:
"Miss Graham, would you like to go driving?"
Katharine straightened and looked at him coolly. One of the girls gave a
little gasp at his impertinence.
"It isn't customary, I believe," said Katharine, "to ask to go driving
with a girl you have met once, at a supper."
"Isn't it?" faltered Pellams. There was not a vestige of his usual
bravado about him. Katharine met his honest gaze, hesitated, then said:
"But I shall be delighted to go, just the same. Will you come in and
wait till I get my things?"
They curved round the Dormitory lawn and away toward the La Honda
redwoods, leaving the astounded young women on the porch to discuss, as
women sometimes do, the peculiar behavior of their departed sister.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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