"Why, because," said Katharine, "the clairvoyant woman said that she saw a young man in a college room playing a mandolin,--you remember? And he answers all the rest of her requirements, the walking in the cold, the meeting the girl--you, and the rose-tree incident. Now, Peg, did you think to ask him if he played the mandolin?"
"No," said Peggy contritely, gingerly testing the cold floor with her bare feet, "no,--and how are we going to find out now?"
"You're a fine Sherlock," cried Katherine, "but, then, it's always the Watsons of this world that do the real work while the Sherlocks get the credit."
"I have just one clue," sighed Peggy humbly.
"The boys at the tea house called him Jim."
"_Jim!_" repeated Katherine in keen disappointment and disgust. "Not an H in it!"
"No," Peggy agreed, "and there are so many Jims."
"M.--Jim, Amherst--fine lot of information," murmured Katherine.
There really didn't seem to be much that could be done, so the girls went to recitations as on other days. But they could not help the feeling that they had really stumbled upon the very person they had made it the business of their year to find, and so their answers to the professors' questions were often somewhat vague and wandering, and once when the mathematics teacher asked Peggy to draw a right angle triangle, she said she hadn't studied her mandolins to-day, and sat blushing furiously throughout the rest of the lesson.
It was late in the afternoon when one of the maids called Peggy to the telephone. She ran down the stairs with a wild and unaccountable hope in her heart--if she should only have the opportunity to find out everything so that Katherine wouldn't have so much cause to be ashamed of her--if she could only ask him if he _did_ have a mandolin--
"Hello," she was saying breathlessly into the mouth-piece. "Hello--?"
"Miss Parsons--" a laughing voice came over the wire and Peggy instantly framed her lips to her question. It should not get away from her this time--all this news that she must have.
"I called up Mrs. Forest and asked if the young lady I rescued from the storm was all right after her chill. I told her I was the one who had been fortunate enough to be there, and she said, quite politely, that Miss Parsons wasn't hurt in the least by the experience. That's how I got your name."