rday); but owing
to the fact that she was suddenly called out of town, she did not read
it in person.

A month or two after Kate Ferris's advent, Priscilla had friends
visiting her from New York, for whom she gave a tea in the study.

"I am going to invite Kate Ferris," she announced. "I _insist_ upon
finding out what she looks like."

"Do," said Patty. "I should like to find out myself."

The invitation was despatched, and on the next day Priscilla received a
formal acceptance.

"It's strange that she should send an acceptance for a tea," she
remarked as she read it, "but I'm glad to get it, anyway. I like to
feel sure that I'm to see her at last."

On the evening of the tea, after the guests had gone and the furniture
had been moved back, the weary hostesses, in somewhat rumpled evening
dresses (a considerable crush results when fifty are entertained in a
room whose utmost capacity is fifteen), were reentertaining one or two
friends on the lettuce sandwiches and cakes the obliging guests had
failed to consume. The company and the clothes having passed in review,
the conversation flagged a little, and Georgie suddenly asked: "Was Kate
Ferris here? I was so busy passing cakes that I didn't look, and I
wanted to see her especially!"

"That's so!" Patty exclaimed. "I didn't see her, either. She's the most
abnormally inconspicuous person I ever heard of. What did she look like,
Pris?"

Priscilla knit her brows. "She couldn't have come. I kept watching for
her all the evening. It's strange, isn't it?--when she was so careful
to send an acceptance. I'm growing positively morbid over the girl; I
begin to think she's invisible."

"I begin to think so myself," said Patty.

The next morning's mail brought a bunch of violets and an apology from
Kate Ferris. "She had been unavoidably detained."

"It's positively uncanny!" Priscilla declared. "I shall go to the
registrar and tell her that this Kate Ferris is neither down in the
catalogue nor the college directory, and find out where she lives."

"Don't do anything reckless," Georgie pleaded. "Take what the gods send
and be grateful."

But Priscilla was as good as her word, and she returned from the
registrar's office flushed and defiant. "She insists that there isn't
any such person in college, and that I must have made a mistake in the
name! Did you ever hear anything so absurd?"

"That seems to me the only reasonable explanation," Patty agreed
amicably. "Perhap