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.

She explained it to Pellams during the drive. To his surprise, he
learned that he had been hopelessly ill-bred to ask her at all; that had
the invitation not been given before the other girls he should have
driven away alone. As it was, she was in for no end of criticism. She
discouraged any conversation upon the subject of cayenne pepper.
Furthermore, she declared herself in full accord with Florence Meiggs
as regarded love affairs; she believed in them as little as her elder
sister; good-fellowship, without sentiment, was possible and quite
sufficient. Pellams, having resolved upon the utmost good-nature during
the drive, put the pride of the livery stable through her best paces and
allowed his companion to declare her views unquestioned. Toward the end
of the afternoon, he deposited her at the Roble door with a pleasant
feeling that he had done his duty and was through with co-eds forever.

A wild uproar filled the Rho dining-room when the gallant came in to
dinner, late. With an exasperating readiness of conclusion, the crowd
congratulated him upon his change of heart, they welc