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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Molly Brown's Freshman Days, by Nell Speed
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Molly Brown's Freshman Days
+
+Author: Nell Speed
+
+Illustrator: Charles L. Wrenn
+
+Release Date: July 10, 2011 [EBook #36684]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MOLLY BROWN'S FRESHMAN DAYS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Stephen Hutcheson, Rod Crawford, Dave Morgan,
+eagkw and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "I think my trunk is on this train," she
+said.--_Page 7._]
+
+
+
+
+  MOLLY BROWN'S
+  FRESHMAN DAYS
+
+  By
+  NELL SPEED
+
+  _WITH FOUR HALF-TONE ILLUSTRATIONS
+  BY CHARLES L. WRENN_
+
+  NEW YORK
+  HURST & COMPANY
+  PUBLISHERS
+
+
+
+
+  Copyright, 1912,
+  BY
+  HURST & COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  CHAPTER                                            PAGE
+
+      I.  WELLINGTON                                    5
+
+     II.  THEIR NEIGHBOR                               19
+
+    III.  THE PROFESSOR                                32
+
+     IV.  A BUSY DAY                                   46
+
+      V.  THE KENTUCKY SPREAD                          62
+
+     VI.  KNOTTY PROBLEMS                              75
+
+    VII.  AN INCIDENT OF THE COFFEE CUPS               86
+
+   VIII.  CONCERNING CLUBS,--AND A TEA PARTY           99
+
+     IX.  RUMORS AND MYSTERIES                        115
+
+      X.  JOKES AND CROAKS                            130
+
+     XI.  EXMOOR COLLEGE                              140
+
+    XII.  SUNDAY MORNING BREAKFAST                    152
+
+   XIII.  TRICKERY                                    164
+
+    XIV.  AN INSPIRATION                              177
+
+     XV.  PLANNING AND WISHING                        188
+
+    XVI.  THE MCLEAN SUPPER                           204
+
+   XVII.  A MIDNIGHT ADVENTURE                        216
+
+  XVIII.  THE FOOTBALL GAME                           230
+
+    XIX.  THREE FRIENDS                               241
+
+     XX.  MISS STEEL                                  255
+
+    XXI.  A BACHELOR'S POCKET                         266
+
+   XXII.  CHRISTMAS--MID-YEARS--AND THE WANDERTHIRST  276
+
+  XXIII.  SOPHOMORES AT LAST                          291
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  "I think my trunk is on this train," she said.    _Frontispiece_
+
+                                                              PAGE
+  "I wish you would tell me your receipt for making friends,
+  Molly," exclaimed Nance.                                      51
+
+  "I'm scared to death," she announced. Then she struck a
+  chord and began.                                              60
+
+  It was quite the custom for girls to prepare breakfasts in
+  their rooms.                                                 152
+
+
+
+
+Molly Brown's Freshman Days
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+WELLINGTON.
+
+
+"Wellington! Wellington!" called the conductor.
+
+The train drew up at a platform, and as if by magic a stream of girls
+came pouring out of the pretty stucco station with its sloping red
+roof and mingled with another stream of girls emptying itself from the
+coaches. Everywhere appeared girls,--leaping from omnibuses; hurrying
+down the gravel walk from the village; hastening along the University
+drive; girls on foot; girls on bicycles; girls running, and girls
+strolling arm in arm.
+
+Few of them wore hats; many of them wore sweaters and short walking
+skirts of white duck or serge, and across the front of each sweater was
+embroidered a large "W" in cadet blue, the mystic color of Wellington
+University.
+
+In the midst of a shouting, gesticulating mob stood Mr. Murphy, baggage
+master, smiling good naturedly.
+
+"Now, young ladies, one at a time, please. We've brought down all the
+baggage left over by the 9.45. If your trunk ain't on this train, it'll
+come on the next. All in good time, please."
+
+A tall girl with auburn hair and deep blue eyes approached the group.
+There was a kind of awkward grace about her, the grace which was hers by
+rights and the awkwardness which comes of growing too fast. She wore a
+shabby brown homespun suit, a shade darker than her hair, and on her
+head was an old brown felt which had plainly seen service the year
+before.
+
+But knotted at her neck was a tie of burnt-orange silk which seemed to
+draw attention away from the shiny seams and frayed hem and to cry
+aloud:
+
+"Look at me. I am the color of a winter sunset. Never mind the other old
+togs."
+
+Surely there was something very brave and jaunty about this young girl
+who now pushed her way through the crowd of students and endeavored to
+engage the attention of the baggage-master.
+
+"I think my trunk was on this train," she said timidly. "I hope it is.
+It came from Louisville to Philadelphia safely, and when I re-checked it
+they told me it would be on this train."
+
+Now, Murphy, the baggage master, had his own peculiar method of
+conducting business, and it was strictly a partial and prejudiced one.
+If he liked the face of a student, he always waited on her first,
+regardless of how many other students were ahead of her; and, as he told
+his wife later, he "took a fancy to that overgrown gal from the fust."
+
+"I beg your pardon, but Mr. Murphy is engaged," put in a haughty looking
+young woman with black eyes that snapped angrily.
+
+"Now, Miss Judith," said the baggage master, who knew many of the
+students by name, "don't go fer to git excited. I ain't made no promises
+to no one. It's plain to see this here young lady is a newcomer, and, as
+sich, she gits my fust consideration."
+
+"Oh, please excuse me," said the girl in shabby brown. "I'm not used
+to--I mean I haven't traveled very much."
+
+Judith turned irritably away.
+
+"I should think you hadn't," she said in a low voice, but loud enough to
+be overheard. "Freshies have a lot to learn and one is to respect their
+elders."
+
+The new girl put down her straw suit case and leaned against the wall of
+the station. She looked tired and there was a streak of soot across her
+cheek. The trip from Kentucky in this warm September weather was not the
+pleasantest journey in the world. While she waited for Mr. Murphy to
+return with news of her trunk, her attention was claimed by two girls
+standing at her elbow who were talking cheerfully together.
+
+"Yes," said one of them, a plump, brown-eyed girl with brown hair,
+a slightly turned-up nose and a humorous twitch to her lips, "I have a
+room at Queen's cottage. It's the best I could do unless I went into one
+of the expensive suites in the dormitories, and you know I might as well
+expect to take the royal suite on the Mauretania and sail for Europe as
+do that."
+
+The other girl laughed.
+
+"You'd be quite up to doing anything with your enterprising ways, Nance
+Oldham," she exclaimed.
+
+"Oh, are you going to Queen's cottage?" here broke in the girl in shabby
+brown. "I'm there, too. My name is Molly Brown. I come from Kentucky. I
+feel awfully forlorn and homesick arriving at the University station
+without knowing a soul."
+
+There was a kind of ringing note to Molly Brown's voice which made the
+other girls listen more closely.
+
+"I wonder if she doesn't sing," thought Nance Oldham, giving her
+a quick, scrutinizing glance. "Yes, I am at Queen's cottage," she
+continued aloud, "but that's about all I can tell you. I feel like a
+greeny, too. We'll soon learn, I suppose. This is Miss Brinton, Miss
+Brown."
+
+Caroline Brinton was rather a nondescript young person with dreamy eyes
+and an absent-minded manner. She came from Philadelphia, and she greeted
+the new acquaintance rather coldly.
+
+"Your trunk ain't here, yet, Miss," called the baggage master. "Like
+enough it'll come on the 6.50."
+
+Molly looked disturbed, while the black-eyed Judith standing nearby
+flashed a triumphant smile, as much as to say:
+
+"It only serves you right for pushing in out of turn."
+
+"What are we to do now?" she asked of her new friends, rather
+helplessly.
+
+"Take the 'bus up to Wellington," said brisk Nance Oldham. "I know that
+much. There's one filling up now. We'd better hurry and get seats."
+
+The three girls crowded into the long, narrow side-seated vehicle
+already half filled with students. Even at this early stage in their
+acquaintance, the bonds of loneliness and sympathy had drawn them
+together.
+
+"I'm a stranger in a strange land," Molly Brown had confided to the
+listening ear of Nance Oldham. "I had made up my mind not to be
+homesick. I really didn't know what the feeling was like, because I have
+never had a chance to learn. But I know now it's a kind of an all-gone
+sensation. I suppose little orphans have it when they first go into an
+orphan asylum."
+
+"Oh, you'll soon get over it," answered Nance. "It's because you live so
+far away. Kentucky, didn't you say?"
+
+Molly nodded and looked the other way. The memory of an old brick house
+with broad piazzas and many windows blurred her vision for a moment.
+But she resolutely pressed her lips together and began to watch the
+passing scenery, as new and strange to her as the scenery in a foreign
+land.
+
+The road leading to Wellington University skirted a pretty village and
+then plunged straight into the country between rolling meadow lands
+tinged a golden brown with the autumn sun. And there in the distance
+were the gray towers of Wellington, silhouetted against the sky like
+a mediaeval castle.
+
+Molly Brown clasped her hands and smiled a heavenly smile.
+
+"Is that it?" she exclaimed rapturously.
+
+"It must be," answered Nance, who also felt some quiet and reserved
+flutterings.
+
+"It is," said Miss Brinton. "I came down to engage my room, so I know."
+
+In the meantime, there was a busy conversation going on around them.
+
+"I'm going to cut gym this year. It interferes too much," exclaimed
+a tiny girl with birdlike motions and intelligent, beady little eyes as
+bright and alert as the eyes of a little brown bird.
+
+But evidently Molly was not the only person who had noticed this
+resemblance, for one of the students called out:
+
+"Now, Jennie Wren, you must admit that gym never had any charms for you
+and it's a great relief to give it up."
+
+"Of course she must," put in another girl. "The only exercise Jennie
+Wren ever takes is to hop about on the lawn and prune her feathers."
+
+"Never!" cried Jennie Wren. "I never wear them, not even quills. I
+belong to the S. P. C. A."
+
+"Is there much out-of-door life here?" asked Molly Brown, of a tall,
+somewhat older girl sitting opposite her.
+
+"This new girl may have timid manners," thought Nance Oldham; "but
+she is not afraid to talk to strangers. I suppose that's the friendly
+Southern way. She hasn't been in Wellington a quarter of an hour and she
+has already made three friends,--Caroline and the station-master and
+me. And now she's getting on famously with that older girl. What I like
+about her is that she isn't a bit self-conscious and she takes it for
+granted everybody's going to be kind."
+
+"Oh, yes, lots of it," the older girl was saying to Molly kindly. "If
+you have a taste for that kind of thing, you may indulge it to your
+heart's content. There is a splendid swimming pool attached to the gym,
+and there are golf links, of course. You know they are quite famous in
+this part of the world. Then, there are the tennis courts, and we'll
+still have some canoeing on the lake before the weather gets too cold
+and later glorious skating. Besides all that, there are perfectly
+ripping walks for miles around. The college has several Saturday
+afternoon walking clubs."
+
+"But don't these things interfere with--with lectures?" asked Molly, who
+was really quite ignorant regarding college life, although she had
+passed her entrance examinations without any conditions whatever.
+
+The older girl laughed pleasantly. She was not good looking, but she had
+a fine face and Molly liked her immensely.
+
+"Oh, no, you'll find there's plenty of time for everything you want to
+get in, because most things have their season, and most girls
+specialize, anyhow. A golf fiend is seldom a tennis fiend, and there are
+lots of walking fiends who don't like either."
+
+Molly's liking for this big girl and her grave, fine face increased as
+the conversation progressed. She had a most reassuring, kindly manner
+and Molly noticed that the other girls treated her with a kind of
+deferential respect and called her "Miss Stewart." She learned afterward
+that Miss Stewart was a senior and a member of the "Octogons," the most
+coveted society in the University. She led in all the athletic sports,
+was quite a wonderful musician and had composed an operetta for her
+class and most of the music for the class songs. It was whispered also
+that she was very rich, though no one would ever have guessed this
+secret from Mary Stewart herself, who was careful never to allude to
+money and dressed very simply and plainly.
+
+The omnibus now turned into the avenue which led to the college campus
+and there was general excitement of a subdued sort among the new girls
+and greetings and calls from the older girls as they caught glimpses of
+friends strolling on the lawn.
+
+"Queen's Cottage," called the driver and Molly stood up promptly,
+shrinking a little as twenty pairs of eyes turned curiously in her
+direction.
+
+Then the big girl leaned over and took her hand kindly.
+
+"Won't you look me up to-morrow?" she said. "My name is Mary Stewart,
+and I stop at No. 16 on the Quadrangle. Perhaps I can help you get
+things straightened out a bit and show you the ropes."
+
+"Oh, thank you," said Molly, with that musical ring to her voice which
+never failed to thrill her hearers. "It's awfully nice of you. What time
+shall I come?"
+
+"I'll see you in Chapel in the morning, and we'll fix the time then,"
+called Miss Stewart as Molly climbed out, dragging her straw telescope
+over the knees of the other passengers, followed by Nance Oldham, who
+had waited for her to take the initiative.
+
+As the two girls stood watching the disappearing vehicle, they became
+the prey to the most extreme loneliness.
+
+"I feel as if I had just left the tumbrel on the way to my execution,"
+observed Molly, trying to laugh, although the corners of her mouth
+turned persistently down.
+
+"But, anyway, I'm glad we are together," she continued, slipping her arm
+through Nance's. "Queen's Cottage does seem so remote and lonesome,
+doesn't it? Just a thing apart."
+
+The two girls gazed uncertainly at the rather dismal-looking shingled
+house, stained brown and covered with a mantle of old vines which
+appeared to have been prematurely stripped of their foliage. It was
+somewhat isolated, at least it seemed so at first. The next house was
+quite half a block on and was a cheerful place, all stucco and red roof
+like the station.
+
+"Well, here goes," Molly went on. "If it's Queen's, why then, so be it,"
+and she marched up the walk and rang the front door bell, which
+resounded through the hall with a metallic clang.
+
+"Shure, I'm after bein' wit' you in a moment," called a voice from
+above. "You're the new young ladies, I'm thinkin', and glad I am to see
+you."
+
+There was the sound of heavy footsteps down the stairs and the door
+was opened by Mrs. Murphy, wife of the baggage master and housekeeper
+for Queen's Cottage. She was a middle-aged Irish woman with a round,
+good-natured face and she beamed on the girls with motherly interest
+as she ushered them into the parlor.
+
+"Since ye be the fust comers, ye may be the fust choosers," she said;
+"and if ye be friends, ye may like to be roommates, surely, and that's
+a good thing. It's better to room with a friend than a stranger."
+
+The two girls looked at each other with a new interest. It had not
+occurred to them that they might be roommates, but had not they already,
+with the swiftness peculiar to girls, bridged the gulf which separates
+total strangers, and were now on the very verge of plunging into
+intimate friendship? Would it not be better to seize this opportunity
+than to wait for other chances which might not prove so agreeable?
+
+"Shall we not?" asked Molly with that charming, cordial manner which
+appeared to win her friends wherever she went.
+
+"It would be a great relief," answered Nance, who was yet to learn the
+value of showing real pleasure when she felt it. Nevertheless, Nance,
+under her whimsical, rather sarcastic outer shell, had a warm and loyal
+heart.
+
+Thus Molly Brown and Nance Oldham, quite opposites in looks and
+temperaments, became roommates during their freshman year at Wellington
+College and thus, from this small beginning, the seeds of a life-long
+friendship were sown.
+
+The two girls chose a big sunny room on the third floor looking over a
+portion of the golf links. Molly liked it because it had blue wallpaper
+and Nance because it had a really commodious closet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THEIR NEIGHBOR.
+
+
+Molly Brown was the youngest member of a numerous family of older
+brothers and sisters. Her father had been dead many years, and in
+order to rear and educate her children, Mrs. Brown had been obliged to
+mortgage, acre by acre, the fine old place where Molly and her brothers
+and sisters had been born and brought up. Every time anybody in the
+Brown family wanted to do anything that was particularly nice, something
+had to go, either a cow or a colt or a piece of land, according to the
+needs of the moment. A two-acre lot represented Molly's college
+education--two perfectly good acres of orchard.
+
+"If you don't bring back at least one golden apple in return for all
+these nice juicy ones that are going for your education, Molly, you are
+no child of mine," Mrs. Brown had laughingly exclaimed when she kissed
+her daughter good-bye.
+
+"I'll bring back the three golden apples of the Hesperides, mother, and
+make the family rich and happy," cried Molly, and from that moment the
+three golden apples became a secret symbol to her, although she had not
+decided in her mind exactly what they represented.
+
+"But," as Molly observed to herself, "anybody who has had two acres of
+winter sweets, pippins and greenings spent on her, must necessarily
+engage to win a few."
+
+Those two fruitful acres, however, while they provided a fund for an
+education, did not extend far into the margin and there was little left
+for clothes. That was perhaps one of the reasons why Molly had felt so
+disturbed about the delay in receiving her trunk.
+
+"I can stand traveling in this old brown rag for economy's sake," she
+thought; "but I would like to put on the one decent thing I own for my
+first day at college. I was a chump not to have brought something in my
+suit case besides a blouse. However, what's done can't be undone," and
+she stoically went to work to remove the stains of travel and put on
+a fresh blue linen shirtwaist; while Nance Oldham, who had been more
+far-sighted, made herself spic and span in a duck skirt and a white
+linen blouse. She had little to say during the process of making her
+toilet, and Molly wondered if, after all, she would like a roommate so
+peculiarly reserved and whimsical as this new friend. She hoped there
+would be lots of nice girls in the house of the right sort, girls who
+meant business, for while Molly meant to enjoy herself immensely, she
+meant business decidedly, and she didn't want to get into a play set and
+be torn away from her studies. As these thoughts flitted through her
+mind she heard voices coming up the stairs.
+
+"Now, Mrs. Murphy, I do hope you've got something really decent. You
+know, I hadn't expected to come back this year. I thought I would stay
+in France with grandmamma, but at the last moment I changed my mind, and
+I've come right here from the ship without engaging a thing at all. I'll
+take anything that's a single."
+
+The voice had a spoiled, imperious sound, like that of a person in the
+habit of having her own way.
+
+"I have a single, Miss, but it's a small one, and they do say you've got
+a deal of belongings."
+
+"Let's see it. Let's see it, quick, Granny Murphy," and from the noise
+without our two young persons judged that this despotic stranger had
+placed her hands on Mrs. Murphy's shoulders and was running her along
+the passage.
+
+"Now, you'll be giving me apoplexy, Miss, surely, with your goings-on,"
+cried the woman breathlessly, as she opened the door next theirs.
+
+"Who's in there? Two freshies?"
+
+"Yes, Miss. They only just arrived an hour ago."
+
+"Greenies from Greenville, Green County," chanted the young woman, who
+did not seem to mind being overheard by the entire household. "Very
+well, I'll take this little hole-in-the-wall. I won't move any of my
+things in, except some books and cushions. And now, off wit' yer. Here's
+something for your trouble."
+
+"Oh, thank you, thank you, Miss."
+
+The two girls seemed to hear the Irish woman being shoved out in the
+hall. Then the door was banged after her and was locked.
+
+"Dear me, what an obstreperous person," observed Nance. "I wonder if
+she's going to give us a continuous performance."
+
+"I don't know," answered Molly. "She'll be a noisy neighbor if she does.
+But she sounds interesting, living in France with her grandmamma and so
+on."
+
+Nance glanced at her watch.
+
+"Wouldn't you like to go for a stroll before supper? We have an hour
+yet. I'm dying to see the famous Quadrangle and the Cloisters and a few
+other celebrated spots I've heard about. Aren't you?"
+
+"And incidentally rub off a little of our greenness," said Molly,
+recalling the words of the girl next door.
+
+As the two girls closed the door to their room and paused on the
+landing, the door adjoining burst open and a human whirlwind blew out
+of the single room and almost knocked them over.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Nance stiffly, giving the human whirlwind
+a long, cool, brown glance.
+
+Molly, a little behind her friend, examined the stranger with much
+curiosity. She could not quite tell why she had imagined her to be
+a small black-eyed, black-haired person, when here stood a tall, very
+beautiful young woman. Her hair was light brown and perfectly straight.
+She had peculiarly passionate, fiery eyes of very dark gray, of the
+"smouldering kind," as Nance described them later; her features were
+regular and her mouth so expressive of her humors that her friends could
+almost read her thoughts by the curve of her sensitive lips. Even in
+that flashing glimpse the girls could see that she was beautifully
+dressed in a white serge suit and a stunning hat of dull blue, trimmed
+with wings.
+
+But instead of continuing her mad rush, which seemed to be her usual
+manner of doing things, the young woman became suddenly a zephyr of
+mildness and gentleness.
+
+"Excuse my precipitate methods," she said. "I never do things slowly,
+even when there's no occasion to hurry. It's my way, I suppose. Are you
+freshmen? Perhaps you'd like for me to show you around college. I'm
+a soph. I'm fairly familiar."
+
+Nance pressed her lips together. She was not in the habit of making
+friends off-hand. Molly, in fact, was almost her first experience in
+this kind of friendship. But Molly Brown, who had never consciously done
+a rude thing in her life, exclaimed:
+
+"That would be awfully nice. Thanks, we'll come."
+
+They followed her rather timidly down the steps. Across the campus
+the pile of gray buildings, in the September twilight, more than ever
+resembled a fine old castle. As they hastened along, the sophomore gave
+them each a quick, comprehensive glance.
+
+"My name is Frances Andrews," she began suddenly, and added with a
+peculiar intonation, "I was called 'Frank' last year. I'm so glad we are
+to be neighbors. I hope we shall have lots of good times together."
+
+Molly considered this a particular mark of good nature on the part of an
+older girl to two freshmen, and she promptly made known their names to
+Frances Andrews. All this time Nance had remained impassive and quiet.
+
+Ten girls, arm in arm, were strolling toward them across the soft green
+turf of the campus, singing as in one voice to the tune of "Maryland, My
+Maryland":
+
+     "Oh, Wellington, My Wellington,
+      Oh, how I love my Wellington!"
+
+Suddenly Frances Andrews, who was walking between the two young girls,
+took them each firmly by the arm and led them straight across the
+campus, giving the ten girls a wide berth. There was so much fierce
+determination in her action that Molly and Nance looked at her with
+amazement.
+
+"Are those seniors?" asked Nance, thinking perhaps it was not college
+etiquette to break through a line of established and dignified
+characters like seniors.
+
+"No; they are sophomores singing their class song," answered Frances.
+
+"Aren't you a sophomore?" demanded Nance quickly.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Curious she doesn't want to meet her friends," thought Molly.
+
+But there were more interesting sights to occupy her attention just
+then.
+
+They had reached the great gray stone archway which formed the entrance
+to the Quadrangle, a grassy courtyard enclosed on all sides by the walls
+of the building. Heavy oak doors of an antique design opened straight
+onto the court from the various corridors and lecture rooms and at one
+end was the library, a beautiful room with a groined roof and stained
+glass windows, like a chapel. Low stone benches were ranged along the
+arcade of the court, whereon sat numerous girls laughing and talking
+together.
+
+Although she considered that undue honors were being paid them by having
+as guide this dashing sophomore, somehow Molly still felt the icy grip
+of homesickness on her heart. Nance seemed so unsympathetic and reserved
+and there was a kind of hardness about this Frances Andrews that made
+the warm-hearted, affectionate Molly a bit uncomfortable. Suddenly Nance
+spied her old friend, Caroline Brinton, in the distance, and rushed over
+to join her. As she left, three girls came toward them, talking
+animatedly.
+
+"Hello, Jennie Wren!" called Frances gayly. It was the same little
+bird-like person who had been in the bus. "Howdy, Rosamond. How are you,
+Lotta? It's awfully nice to be back at the old stand again. Let me
+introduce you to my new almost-roommate, Miss Brown," went on Frances
+hurriedly, as if to fill up the gaps of silence which greeted them.
+
+"How do you do, Miss Andrews," said Jennie Wren, stiffly.
+
+Rosamond Chase, who had a plump figure and a round, good-natured face,
+was slightly warmer in her greeting.
+
+"How are you, Frankie? I thought you were going to France this winter."
+
+The other girl who had a turned-up nose and blonde hair, and was called
+"Peggy Parsons," sniffed slightly and put her hands behind her back as
+if she wished to avoid shaking hands.
+
+Molly was so shocked that she felt the tears rising to her eyes. "I wish
+I had never come to college," she thought, "if this is the way old
+friends treat each other."
+
+She slipped her arm through Frances Andrews' and gave it a sympathetic
+squeeze.
+
+"Won't you show me the Cloisters?" she said. "I'm pining to see what
+they are like."
+
+"Come along," said Frances, quite cheerfully, in spite of the fact that
+she had just been snubbed by three of her own classmates.
+
+Lifting the latch of a small oak door fitted under a pointed arch, she
+led the way through a passage to another oak door which opened directly
+on the Cloisters. Molly gave an exclamation of pleasure.
+
+"Oh," she cried, "are we really allowed to walk in this wonderful
+place?"
+
+"As much as you like before six P. M.," answered Frances. "How do you
+do, Miss Pembroke?"
+
+A tall woman with a grave, handsome face was waiting under the arched
+arcade to go through the door.
+
+"So you decided to come back to us, Miss Andrews. I'm very glad of it.
+Come into my office a moment. I want a few words with you before
+supper."
+
+"You can find your way back to Queen's by yourself, can't you, Miss
+Brown?" asked Frances. "I'll see you later."
+
+And in another moment, Molly Brown was quite alone in the Cloisters. She
+was glad to be alone. She wanted to think. She paced slowly along the
+cloistered walk, each stone arch of which framed a picture of the grassy
+court with an Italian fountain in the center.
+
+"It's exactly like an old monastery," she said to herself. "I wonder
+anybody could ever be frivolous or flippant in such an old world spot as
+this. I could easily imagine myself a monk, telling my beads."
+
+She sat down on a stone bench and folded her hands meditatively.
+
+"So far, I've really only made one friend at college," she thought to
+herself, for Nance Oldham was too reserved to be called a friend yet,
+"and that friend is Frances Andrews. Who is she? What is she? Why do
+her classmates snub her and why did Miss Pembroke, who belonged to the
+faculty, wish to speak with her in her private office?" It was all
+queer, very queer. Somehow, it seemed to Molly now that what she had
+taken for whirlwind manners was really a tremendous excitement under
+which Frances Andrews was laboring. She was trying to brazen out
+something.
+
+"Just the same, I'm sorry for her," she said out loud.
+
+At that moment, a musical, deep-throated bell boomed out six times in
+the stillness of the cloisters. There was the sound of a door opening, a
+pause and the door closed with a clicking noise. Molly started from her
+reverie. It was six o'clock. She rushed to the door of antique design
+through which she had entered just fifteen minutes before. It was closed
+and locked securely. She knocked loudly and called:
+
+"Let me out! Let me out! I'm locked in!"
+
+Then she waited, but no one answered. In the stillness of the twilit
+courtyard she could hear the sounds of laughter and talking from the
+Quadrangle. They grew fainter and fainter. A gray chill settled down
+over the place and Molly looked about her with a feeling of utter
+desolation. She had been locked in the Cloisters for the night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE PROFESSOR.
+
+
+Molly beat and kicked on the door wildly. Then she called again and
+again but her voice came back to her in a ghostly echo through the dim
+aisles of the cloistered walk. She sat down on a bench and burst into
+tears.
+
+How tired and hungry and homesick she was! How she wished she had never
+heard of college, cold, unfriendly place where people insulted old
+friends and they locked doors at six o'clock. The chill of the evening
+had fallen and the stars were beginning to show themselves in the square
+of blue over the Cloisters. Molly shivered and folded her arms. She had
+not worn her coat and her blue linen blouse was damp with dew.
+
+"Can this be the only door into the Cloisters?" she thought after the
+first attack of homesick weeping had passed.
+
+She rose and began to search along the arcade which was now almost
+black. There were doors at intervals but all of them locked. She
+knocked on each one and waited patiently.
+
+"Oh, heavens, let me get out of this place to-night," she prayed,
+lifting her eyes to the stars with an agonized expression. Suddenly, the
+high mullioned window under which she was standing, glowed with a light
+just struck. Then, someone opened a casement and a man's voice called:
+
+"Is anyone there? I thought I heard a cry."
+
+"I am," said Molly, trying to stifle the sobs that would rise in her
+throat. "I've been locked in, or rather out."
+
+"Why, you poor child," exclaimed the voice again. "Wait a moment and
+I'll open the door."
+
+There were sounds of steps along the passage; a heavy bolt was thrust
+back and a door held open while Molly rushed into the passage like a
+frightened bird out of the dark.
+
+"It's lucky I happened to be in my study this evening," said the man,
+leading the way toward a square of light in the dark corridor. "Of
+course the night watchman would have made his rounds at eight, but an
+hour's suspense out there in the cold and dark would have been very
+disagreeable. How in the world did it happen?"
+
+By this time they had reached the study and Molly found herself in a
+cozy little room lined from ceiling to floor with books. On the desk was
+a tray of supper. The owner of the study was a studious looking young
+man with kindly, quizzical brown eyes under shaggy eyebrows, a firm
+mouth and a cleft in his chin, which Molly had always heard was a mark
+of beauty in a woman.
+
+"You must be a freshman?" he said looking at her with a shade of
+amusement in his eyes.
+
+"I am," replied Molly, bravely trying to keep her voice from shaking. "I
+only arrived an hour or so ago. I--I didn't know they would lock----"
+She broke down altogether and slipping into a big wicker chair sobbed
+bitterly. "Oh, I wish--I wish I'd stayed at home."
+
+"Why, you poor little girl," exclaimed the man. "You have had a beastly
+time for your first day at college, but you'll come to like it better
+and better all the time. Come, dry your eyes and I'll start you on your
+way to your lodgings. Where are you stopping?"
+
+"Queen's."
+
+"Suppose you drink some hot soup before you go. It will warm you up," he
+added kindly, taking a cup of hot bouillon from the tray and placing it
+on the arm of her chair.
+
+"But it's your supper," stammered Molly.
+
+"Nonsense, there's plenty more. Do as I tell you," he ordered. "I'm a
+professor, you know, so you'll have to obey me or I'll scold."
+
+Molly drank the soup without a word. It did comfort her considerably and
+presently she looked up at the professor and said:
+
+"I'm all right now. I hope you'll excuse me for being so silly and weak.
+You see I felt so far away and lonesome and it's an awful feeling to be
+locked out in the cold about a thousand miles from home. I never was
+before."
+
+"I'm sure I should have felt the same in your place," answered the
+professor. "I should probably have imagined I saw the ghosts of monks
+dead and gone, who might have walked there if the Cloisters had been
+several hundreds of years older, and I would certainly have made the
+echoes ring with my calls for help. The Cloisters are all right for
+'concentration' and 'meditation,' which I believe is what they are
+intended to be used for on a warm, sunny day; but they are cold comfort
+after sunset."
+
+"Is this your study?" asked Molly, rising and looking about her with
+interest, as she started toward the door.
+
+"I should say that this was my play room," he replied, smiling.
+
+"Play room?"
+
+"Yes, this is where I hide from work and begin to play." He glanced at
+a pile of manuscript on his desk.
+
+"I reckon work is play and play is work to you," observed Molly,
+regarding the papers with much interest. She had never before seen
+a manuscript.
+
+"If you knew what an heretical document that was, you would not make
+such rash statements," said the professor.
+
+"I'm sure it's a learned treatise on some scientific subject," laughed
+Molly, who had entirely regained her composure now, and felt not the
+least bit afraid of this learned man, with the kind, brown eyes. He
+seemed quite old to her.
+
+"If I tell you what it is, will you promise to keep it a secret?"
+
+"I promise," she cried eagerly.
+
+"It's the libretto of a light opera," he said solemnly, enjoying her
+amazement.
+
+"Did you write it?" she asked breathlessly.
+
+"Not the music, but the words and the lyrics. Now, I've told you my only
+secret," he said. "You must never give me away, or the bottom would fall
+out of the chair of English literature at Wellington College."
+
+"I shall never, never tell," exclaimed Molly; "and thank you ever so
+much for your kindness to-night."
+
+They clasped hands and the professor opened the door for her and stood
+back to let her pass.
+
+Then he followed her down the passage to another door, which he also
+opened, and in the dim light she still noticed that quizzical look in
+his eyes, which made her wonder whether he was laughing at her in
+particular, or at things in general.
+
+"Can you find your way to Queen's Cottage?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, yes," she assured him. "It's the last house on the left of the
+campus."
+
+The next moment she found herself running along the deserted Quadrangle
+walk. Under the archway she flew, and straight across the campus--home.
+
+It was not yet seven o'clock, and the Queen's Cottage girls were still
+at supper. A number of students had arrived during the afternoon and
+the table was full. There were several freshmen; Molly identified them
+by their silence and looks of unaccustomedness, and some older girls,
+who were chattering together like magpies.
+
+"Where have you been?" demanded Nance Oldham, who had saved a seat for
+her roommate next to her own.
+
+All conversation ceased, and every eye in the room was turned on
+blushing Molly.
+
+"I--I've been locked up," she answered faintly.
+
+"Locked up?" repeated several voices at once. "Where?"
+
+"In the Cloisters. I didn't realize it was six o'clock, and some one
+locked the door."
+
+Molly had been prepared for a good deal of amusement at her expense, and
+she felt very grateful when, instead of hoots of derision, a nice junior
+named Sallie Marks, with an interesting face and good dark eyes,
+exclaimed:
+
+"Why, you poor little freshie! What a mediaeval adventure for your first
+day. And how did you finally get out?"
+
+"One of the professors heard me call and let me out."
+
+"Which one?" demanded several voices at once.
+
+"I don't know his name," replied Molly guardedly, remembering that she
+had a secret to keep.
+
+"What did he look like?" demanded Frances Andrews, who had been
+unusually silent for her until now.
+
+"He had brown eyes and a smooth face and reddish hair, and he was middle
+aged and quite nice," said Molly glibly.
+
+"What, you don't mean to say it was Epimenides Antinous Green?"
+
+"Who?" demanded Molly.
+
+"Never mind, don't let them guy you," said Sallie Marks. "It was
+evidently Professor Edwin Green who let you in. He is professor of
+English literature, and I'll tell you for your enlightenment that he
+was nicknamed in a song 'Epimenides' after a Greek philosopher, who
+went to sleep when he was a boy and woke up middle-aged and very wise,
+and 'Antinous' after a very handsome Greek youth. Don't you think him
+good-looking?"
+
+"Rather, for an older person," said Molly thoughtfully.
+
+"He's not thirty yet, my child," said Frances Andrews. "At least, so
+they say, and he's so clever that two other colleges are after him."
+
+"And he's written two books," went on Sally. "Haven't you heard of
+them--'Philosophical Essays' and 'Lyric Poetry.'"
+
+Molly was obliged to confess her ignorance regarding Professor Edwin
+Green's outbursts into literature, but she indulged in an inward mental
+smile, remembering the lyrics in the comic opera libretto.
+
+"He's been to Harvard and Oxford, and studied in France. He's a perfect
+infant prodigy," went on another girl.
+
+"It's a ripping thing for the 'Squib,'" Molly heard another girl whisper
+to her neighbor.
+
+She knew she would be the subject of an everlasting joke, but she hoped
+to live it down by learning immediately everything there was to know
+about Wellington, and becoming so wise that nobody would ever accuse her
+again of being a green freshman.
+
+Mrs. Maynard, the matron, came in to see if she was all right. She was a
+motherly little woman, with a gentle manner, and Molly felt a leaning
+toward her at once.
+
+"I hope you'll feel comfortable in your new quarters," said Mrs.
+Maynard. "You'll have plenty of sunshine and a good deal more space
+when you get your trunks unpacked, although the things inside a trunk
+do sometimes look bigger than the trunk."
+
+Molly smiled. There was not much in her trunk to take up space, most
+certainly. She had nicknamed herself when she packed it "Molly Few
+Clothes," and she was beginning to wonder if even those few would pass
+muster in that crowd of well-dressed girls.
+
+"Oh, have the trunks really come, Miss Oldham?" she asked her roommate.
+
+"Yes, just before supper. I've started unpacking mine."
+
+"Thank goodness. I've got an old ham and a hickory nut cake and some
+beaten biscuits and pickles and blackberry jam in mine, and I can hardly
+wait to see if anything has broken loose on my clothes, such as they
+are."
+
+Nance Oldham opened her eyes wide.
+
+"I've always heard that Southern people were pretty strong on food," she
+said, "and this proves it."
+
+"Wait until you try the hickory nut cake, and you won't be so scornful,"
+answered Molly, somehow not liking this accusation regarding the
+appetites of her people.
+
+"Did I hear the words 'hickory nut cake' spoken?" demanded Frances
+Andrews, who apparently talked to no one at the table except freshmen.
+
+"Yes, I brought some. Come up and try it to-night," said Molly
+hospitably.
+
+"That would be very jolly, but I can't to-night, thanks," said Frances,
+flushing.
+
+And then Molly and Nance noticed that the other sophomores and juniors
+at the table were all perfectly silent and looking at her curiously.
+
+"I hope you'll all come," she added lamely, wondering if they were
+accusing her of inhospitality.
+
+"Not to-night, my child," said Sally Marks, rising from the table.
+"Thank you, very much."
+
+As the two freshmen climbed the stairs to their room a little later,
+they passed by an open door on the landing.
+
+"Come in," called the voice of Sally. "I was waiting for you to pass.
+This is my home. How do you like it?"
+
+"Very much," answered the two girls, really not seeing anything
+particularly remarkable about the apartment, except perhaps the sign on
+the door which read "Pax Vobiscum," and would seem to indicate that the
+owner of the room had a Christian spirit.
+
+"Your name is 'Molly Brown,' and you come from Kentucky, isn't that so?"
+asked Sally Marks, taking Molly's chin in her hand and looking into her
+eyes.
+
+"And yours?" went on the inquisitive Sally, turning to Molly's roommate.
+
+"Is Nance Oldham, and I come from Vermont," finished Nance promptly.
+
+"You're both dears. And I am ever so glad you are in Queens. You won't
+think I'm patronizing if I give you a little advice, will you?"
+
+"Oh, no," said the two girls.
+
+"You know Wellington's full of nice girls. I don't think there is a
+small college in this country that has such a fine showing for class and
+brains. But among three hundred there are bound to be some black sheep,
+and new girls should always be careful with whom they take up."
+
+"But how can we tell?" asked Nance.
+
+"Oh, there are ways. Suppose, for instance, you should meet a girl who
+was good-looking, clever, rich, with lots of pretty clothes, and all
+that, and she seemed to have no friends. What would you think?"
+
+"Why, I might think there was something the matter with her, unless she
+was too shy to make friends."
+
+"But suppose she wasn't?" persisted Sally.
+
+"Then, there would surely be something the matter," said Nance.
+
+"Well, then, children, if you should meet a girl like that in college,
+don't get too intimate with her."
+
+Sally Marks led them up to their own room, just to see how they were
+fixed, she said.
+
+Later, when the two girls had crawled wearily into bed, after finishing
+the unpacking, Molly called out sleepily:
+
+"Nance"--she had forgotten already to say Miss Oldham--"do you suppose
+that nice junior could have meant Miss Andrews?"
+
+"I haven't a doubt of it," said Nance.
+
+"Just the same, I'm sorry for the poor thing," continued Molly. "I'm
+sorry for anybody who's walking under a cloud, and I don't think it
+would do any harm to be nice to her."
+
+"It wouldn't do her any harm," said Nance.
+
+"Epimenides Antinous Green," whispered Molly to herself, as she snuggled
+under the covers. The name seemed to stick in her memory like a rhyme.
+"Funny I didn't notice how young and handsome he was. I only noticed
+that he had good manners, if he did treat me like a child."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+A BUSY DAY.
+
+
+The next day was always a chaotic one in Molly's memory--a jumble of new
+faces and strange events. At breakfast she made the acquaintance of the
+freshmen who were staying at Queen's Cottage--four in all. One of these
+was Julia Kean, "a nice girl in neutral tints," as Molly wrote home to
+her sister, "with gray eyes and brown hair and a sense of humor." She
+came to be known as "Judy," and formed an intimate friendship with Molly
+and Nance, which lasted throughout the four years of their college
+course.
+
+"How do you feel after your night's rest?" she called across the table
+to Molly in the most friendly manner, just as if they had known each
+other always. "You look like the 'Lady of the Sea' in that blue linen
+that just matches your eyes." She began looking Molly over with a kind
+of critical admiration, narrowing her eyes as an artist does when
+he's at work on a picture. "I'd like to make a poster of you in
+blue-and-white chalk. I'd put you on a yellow, sandy beach, against a
+bright blue sky, in a high wind, with your dress and hair blowing----"
+And with eyes still narrowed, she traced an imaginary picture with one
+hand and shaped her ideas with the other.
+
+Molly laughed.
+
+"You must be an artist," she said, "with such notions about posing."
+
+"A would-be one, that's all. 'Not yet, but soon,' is my motto."
+
+"That's a bad motto," here put in Nance Oldham. "It's like the Spanish
+saying of '_Hasta manana_.' You are very apt to put off doing things
+until next day."
+
+Julia Kean looked at her reproachfully.
+
+"You've read my character in two words," she said.
+
+"Why don't you introduce me to your friends, Judy?" asked a handsome
+girl next to her, who had quantities of light-brown hair piled on top
+of her head.
+
+"I haven't been introduced myself," replied Judy; "but I never could see
+why people should stop for introductions at teas and times like this.
+We all know we're all right, or else we wouldn't be here."
+
+"Of course," said Frances Andrews, who had just come in, "why all this
+formality, when we are to be a family party for the next eight months?
+Why not become friends at once, without any preliminaries?"
+
+Sally Marks, who had given them the vague yet meaningful warning the
+night before, appeared to be absorbed in her coffee cup, and the other
+two sophomores at the table were engaged in a whispered conversation.
+
+"Nevertheless, I will perform the introductions," announced Judy Kean.
+"This is Miss Margaret Wakefield, of Washington, D. C.; Miss Edith
+Coles, of Rhode Island; Miss Jessie Lynch, of Wisconsin, and Miss Mabel
+Hinton, of Illinois. As for me, my name is Julia Kean, and I come
+from--nowhere in particular."
+
+"You must have had a birthplace," insisted that accurate young person,
+Nance Oldham.
+
+"If you could call a ship a birthplace, I did," replied Judy. "I was
+born in mid-ocean on a stormy night. Hence my stormy, restless nature."
+
+"But how did it happen?" asked Molly.
+
+"Oh, it was all simple enough. Papa and mamma were on their way back
+from Japan, and I arrived a bit prematurely on board ship. I began life
+traveling, and I've been traveling ever since."
+
+"You'll have to stay put here; awhile, at least," said Sally Marks.
+
+"I hope so. I need to gather a little moss before I become an habitual
+tramp."
+
+"Hadn't we better be chasing along?" said Frances Andrews. "It's almost
+time for chapel."
+
+No one answered and Molly began to wonder how long this strange girl
+would endure the part of a monologist at college. For that was what her
+attempts at conversation seemed to amount to. She admired Frances's
+pluck, at any rate. Whatever she had done to offend, it was courageous
+of her to come back and face the music.
+
+Chapel was an impressive sight to the new girls. The entire body of
+students was there, and the faculty, including Professor Edwin Green,
+who gave each girl the impression he was looking at her when he was
+really only gazing into the imaginary bull's-eye of an imaginary camera,
+and saw not one of them. Molly decided his comeliness was more charm
+than looks. "The unknown charm," she wrote her sister. "His ears are a
+little pointed at the top, and he has brown eyes like a collie dog. But
+it was nice of him to have given me his soup," she added irrelevantly,
+"and I shall always appreciate it."
+
+After chapel, when Molly was following in the trail of her new friends,
+feeling a bit strange and unaccustomed, some one plucked her by the
+sleeve. It was Mary Stewart, the nice senior with the plain, but fine
+face.
+
+"I'll expect you this evening after supper," she said. "I'm having a
+little party. There will be music, too. I thought perhaps you might like
+to bring a friend along. It's rather lonesome, breaking into a new crowd
+by one's self."
+
+It never occurred to Molly that she was being paid undue honors. For a
+freshman, who had arrived only the afternoon before, without a friend in
+college, to be asked to a small intimate party by the most prominent
+girl in the senior class, was really quite remarkable, so Nance Oldham
+thought; and she was pleased to be the one Molly chose to take along.
+
+The two girls had had a busy, exciting day. They had not been placed
+in the same divisions, B and O being so widely separated in the
+alphabet, and were now meeting again for the first time since lunch.
+Molly had stretched her length on her couch and kicked off her pumps,
+described later by Judy Kean as being a yard long and an inch broad.
+
+[Illustration: "I wish you would tell me your receipt for making
+friends, Molly," exclaimed Nance.--_Page 51._]
+
+"I wish you would tell me your receipt for making friends, Molly,"
+exclaimed Nance. "You are really a perfect wonder. Don't you find it
+troublesome to be so nice to so many people?"
+
+"I'd find it lots harder not to be nice," answered Molly. "Besides, it's
+a rule that works both ways. The nicer you are to people, the nicer they
+are to you."
+
+"But don't you think lots of people aren't worth the effort and if you
+treat them like sisters, they are apt to take advantage of it and bore
+you afterwards?"
+
+Molly smiled.
+
+"I've never been troubled that way," she said.
+
+"Now, don't tell me," cried Nance, warming to the argument, "that that
+universally cordial manner of yours doesn't bring a lot of rag-tags
+around to monopolize you. If it hasn't before, it will now. You'll see."
+
+"You make me feel like the leader of Coxey's Army," laughed Molly;
+"because, you see, I'm a kind of a rag-tag myself."
+
+Her eyes filled with tears. She was thinking of her meagre wardrobe.
+Nance was silent. She was slow of speech, but when she once began, she
+always said more than she intended simply to prove her point; and now
+she was afraid she had hurt Molly's feelings. She was provoked with
+herself for her carelessness, and when she was on bad terms with herself
+she appeared to be on bad terms with everybody else. Of course, in her
+heart of hearts, she had been thinking of Frances Andrews, whom she felt
+certain Molly would never snub sufficiently to keep her at a distance.
+
+The two girls went about their dressing without saying another word.
+Nance was coiling her smooth brown braids around her head, while Molly
+was looking sorrowfully at her only two available dresses for that
+evening's party. One was a blue muslin of a heavenly color but
+considerably darned, and the other was a marquisette, also the worse
+for wear. Suddenly Nance gave a reckless toss of her hair brush in one
+direction and her comb in another, and rushed over to Molly, who was
+gazing absently into the closet.
+
+"Oh, Molly," she cried impetuously, seizing her friend's hand, "I'm a
+brute. Will you forgive me? I'm afraid I hurt your feelings. It's just
+my unfortunate way of getting excited and saying too much. I never met
+any one I admired as much as you in such a short time. I wish I did know
+how to be charming to everybody, like you. It's been ground into me
+since I was a child not to make friends with people unless it was to my
+advantage, and I found out they were entirely worthy. And it's a slow
+process, I can tell you. You are the very first chance acquaintance I
+ever made in my life, and I like you better than any girl I ever met.
+So there, will you say you have forgiven me?"
+
+"Of course, I will," exclaimed Molly, flushing with pleasure. "There is
+nothing to forgive. I know I'm too indiscriminate about making friends.
+Mother often complained because I would bring such queer children out to
+dinner when I was a child. Indeed, I wasn't hurt a bit. It was the word
+'rag-tag,' that seemed to be such an excellent description of the
+clothes I must wear this winter, unless some should drop down from
+heaven, like manna in the desert for the Children of Israel."
+
+Without a word, Nance pulled a box out from under her couch and lifted
+the lid. It disclosed a little hand sewing machine.
+
+"Can you sew?" she asked.
+
+"After a fashion."
+
+"Well, I can. It's pastime with me. I'd rather make clothes than do lots
+of other things. Now, suppose we set to work and make some dresses. How
+would you like a blue serge, with turn-over collar and cuffs, like that
+one Miss Marks is wearing, that fastens down the side with black satin
+buttons?"
+
+"Oh, Nance, I couldn't let you do all that for me," protested Molly.
+"Besides, I haven't the material or anything."
+
+"Why don't you earn some money, Molly?" suggested Nance. "There are lots
+of different ways. Mrs. Murphy, the housekeeper, was telling me about
+them. One of the girls here last year actually blacked boots--but, of
+course, you wouldn't do anything so menial as that."
+
+"Wouldn't I?" interrupted Molly. "Just watch me. That's a splendid idea,
+Nance. It's a fine, honorable labor, as Colonel Robert Wakefield said,
+when his wife had to take in boarders."
+
+Molly slipped on the blue muslin.
+
+"It really doesn't make any difference what she wears," thought Nance,
+looking at her friend with covert admiration. "She'd be a star in a
+crazy quilt."
+
+The two girls hurried down to supper. Molly was thoughtful all through
+that conversational meal. Her mind was busy with a scheme by which she
+intended to remove that unceasing pressure for funds which bade fair to
+be an ever-increasing bugbear to her.
+
+No. 16 on the Quadrangle turned out to be a very luxurious and
+comfortable suite of rooms, consisting of quite a large parlor, a little
+den or study and a bedroom. Mary Stewart met them at the door in such a
+plain dress that at first Molly was deceived into thinking it was just
+an ordinary frock until she noticed the lines. And in a few moments
+Nance took occasion to inform her that simplicity was one of the most
+expensive things in the world, which few people could afford, and
+furthermore that Mary Stewart's gray, cottony-looking dress was a dream
+of beauty and must have come from Paris.
+
+There were six or seven other girls in the crowd, including that little
+bird-like, bright-eyed creature they called "Jennie Wren," whose real
+name was Jane Wickham. The only other girl they knew was Judith Blount,
+who had been so snubby to Molly the day before about the luggage.
+
+All these girls were musical, as the freshmen were soon to learn, and
+belonged to the College Glee Club.
+
+"What a pretty room!" exclaimed Molly to her hostess, after she had been
+properly introduced and enthroned in a big tapestry chair, in which she
+unconsciously made a most delightful and colorful picture.
+
+"I'm glad you like it. I have some trouble keeping it from getting
+cluttered up with 'truck,' as we call it. It's about like Hercules
+trying to clean the Augean Stables, I think, but I try and use the den
+for an overflow, and only put the things I'm really fond of in here.
+That helps some."
+
+"They are certainly lovely," said the young freshman, looking wistfully
+at the head of "The Unknown Woman," between two brass candlesticks on
+the mantel shelf. On the bookshelves stood "The Winged Victory," and
+hanging over the shelves on the opposite side of the room was an immense
+photograph of Botticelli's "Primavera." The only other pictures were two
+Japanese prints and the only other furniture was a baby grand piano and
+some chairs. It was really a delightfully empty and beautiful place, and
+Molly felt suddenly strangely crude and ignorant when she recalled the
+things she had intended to do to her part of the room at Queen's Cottage
+toward beautifying it. She was engaged in mentally clearing them all
+out, when a voice at her elbow said:
+
+"Are you thinking of taking the vows, Miss Brown?"
+
+It was Judith Blount, who had drawn up a chair beside her's. There was
+something very patronizing and superior in Miss Blount's manner, but
+Molly was determined to ignore it, and smiled sweetly into the black
+eyes of the haughty sophomore.
+
+"Taking what vows?" she asked.
+
+"Why, I understood you had become a cloistered nun."
+
+Molly flushed. So the story was out. It didn't take long for news to
+travel through a girl's college.
+
+"I wasn't cloistered very long," she answered. "And the only vow I took
+was never to be caught there again after six o'clock."
+
+"How did you like Epimenides? I hear he's made a great joke of it," she
+continued, without waiting for Molly to answer. "He's rather humorous,
+you know. Even in his most serious work, it will come out."
+
+"I don't think there was much to joke about," put in Molly, feeling a
+little indignant. "I was awfully forlorn and miserable."
+
+"The real joke was that he called you 'little Miss Smith,'" said Judith.
+
+Molly's moods reflected themselves in her eyes just as the passing
+clouds are mirrored in two blue pools of water. A shadow passed over her
+face now and her eyes grew darker, but she kept very quiet, which was
+her way when her feelings were hurt. Then Mary Stewart began to play on
+the piano, and Molly forgot all about the sharp-tongued sophomore, who,
+she strongly suspected, was trying to be disagreeable, but for what
+reason for the life of her Molly could not see.
+
+Never before had she heard any really good playing on the piano, and it
+seemed to her now that the music actually flowed from Mary's long,
+strong fingers, in a melodious and liquid stream. Other music followed.
+Judith sang a gypsy song, in a rich contralto voice, that Molly thought
+was a little coarse. Jennie Wren, who could sing exactly like a child,
+gave a solo in the highest little piping soprano. Two girls played on
+mandolins, and Mary Stewart, who appeared to do most things, accompanied
+them on a guitar. Then came supper, which was rather plain, Molly
+thought, and consisted simply of tea and cookies. "I suppose it's
+artistic not to have much to eat," her thoughts continued, but she made
+up her mind to invite Mary Stewart to supper before the old ham and the
+hickory nut cake were consumed by hungry freshmen.
+
+"It seems to me that with such a voice as yours you must sing, Miss
+Brown," here broke in Mary Stewart. "Will you please oblige the
+company?"
+
+"I wouldn't like to sing after all this fine music," protested Molly.
+"Besides, I don't know anything but darky songs."
+
+"The very girl we want for our Hallowe'en Vaudeville," cried Jennie
+Wren. "What do you use, a guitar or a piano?"
+
+"Either, a little," answered Molly, blushing crimson; "but I haven't any
+more voice than a rabbit."
+
+"Fire away," cried Jennie Wren, thrusting a guitar into her hands.
+
+Molly was actually trembling with fright when she found herself the
+center of interest in this musical company.
+
+[Illustration: "I'm scared to death," she announced. Then she struck a
+chord and began.--_Page 60._]
+
+"I'm scared to death," she announced, as she faintly tuned the guitar.
+Then she struck a chord and began:
+
+     "Ma baby loves shortnin',
+      Ma baby loves shortnin' bread;
+      Ma baby loves shortnin',
+      Mammy's gwine make him some shortnin' bread."
+
+Before she had finished, everybody in the room had joined in. Then she
+sang:
+
+     "Ole Uncle Rat has come to town,
+      To buy his niece a weddin' gown,
+          OO-hoo!"
+
+"A quarter to ten," announced some one, and the next moment they had all
+said good-night and were running as fast as their feet could carry them
+across the campus, "scuttling in every direction like a lot of rats," as
+Judith remarked.
+
+"Lights out at ten o'clock," whispered Nance breathlessly, as they crept
+into their room and undressed in the dark. It was very exciting. They
+felt like a pair of happy criminals who had just escaped the iron grasp
+of the law.
+
+When Molly Brown dropped into a deep and restful sleep that night, she
+never dreamed that she had already become a noted person in college,
+though how it happened, it would be impossible to say. It might have
+been the Cloister story, but, nevertheless, Molly--overgrown child that
+she may have seemed to Professor Green--had a personality that attracted
+attention wherever she was.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE KENTUCKY SPREAD.
+
+
+"Molly, you look a little worried," observed Nance Oldham, two days
+before the famous spread was to take place, it having been set for
+Friday evening.
+
+Molly was seated on her bed, in the midst of a conglomerate mass of
+books and clothes, chewing the end of a pencil while she knitted her
+brows over a list of names.
+
+"Not exactly worried," she replied. "But, you know, Nance, giving a
+party is exactly like some kind of strong stimulant with me. It goes
+to my head, and I seem to get intoxicated on invitations. Once I get
+started to inviting, I can't seem to stop."
+
+"Molly Brown," put in Nance severely, "I believe you've just about
+invited the whole of Wellington College to come here Friday night. And
+because you are already such a famous person, everybody has accepted."
+
+"I think I can about remember how many I asked," she replied penitently.
+"There are all the girls in the house, of course."
+
+"Frances Andrews?"
+
+Molly nodded.
+
+"And all the girls who were at Miss Stewart's the other night."
+
+"What, even that girl who makes catty speeches. That black-eyed Blount
+person?"
+
+"Yes, even so," continued Molly sadly. "I really hadn't intended to ask
+her, Nance, but I do love to heap coals of fire on people's heads, and
+besides, I just told you, when I get started, I can't seem to stop. When
+I was younger, I've been known to bring home as many as six strange
+little girls to dinner at once."
+
+"The next time you give a party," put in Nance, "we'd better make out
+the list beforehand, and then you must give me your word of honor not to
+add one name to it."
+
+"I'll try to," replied Molly with contrition, "but it's awfully hard to
+take the pledge when it comes to asking people to meals, even spreads."
+
+The two girls examined the list together, and Molly racked her brains to
+try and remember any left-outs, as she called them.
+
+"I'm certain that's all," she said at last. "That makes twenty, doesn't
+it? Oh, Nance, I tremble for the old ham and the hickory nut cake. Do
+you think they'll go round? Aunty, she's my godmother, is sending me
+another box of beaten biscuits. She has promised to keep me supplied.
+You know, I have never eaten cold light bread in my life at breakfast,
+and I'd just as soon choke down cold potatoes as the soggy bread they
+give us here. But beaten biscuit and ham and home-made pickles won't be
+enough, even with hickory nut cake," she continued doubtfully.
+
+"I have a chafing dish. We can make fudge; then there's tea, you know.
+We can borrow cups and saucers from the others. But we'll have to do
+something else for their amusement besides feed them. Have you thought
+of anything?"
+
+"Lillie and Millie," these were two sophomores at Queen's, "have a stunt
+they have promised to give. It's to be a surprise. And Jennie Wren has
+promised to bring her guitar and oblige us with a few selections, but,
+oh, Nance, except for the eatin', I'm afraid it won't be near such a
+fine party as Mary Stewart's was."
+
+"Eatin's the main thing, child. Don't let that worry you," replied Nance
+consolingly. "I think I have an idea of something which would interest
+the company, but I'm not going to tell even you what it is."
+
+Nance had a provoking way of keeping choice secrets and then springing
+them when she was entirely ready, and wild horses could not drag them
+out of her before that propitious moment.
+
+On Friday evening the girls began to arrive early, for, as has been
+said, Molly was already an object of interest at Wellington College, and
+the fame of her beaten biscuits and old ham had spread abroad. Some of
+the guests, like Mary Stewart, came because they were greatly attracted
+toward the young freshman; and others, like Judith Blount, felt only an
+amused curiosity in accepting the invitation. As a general thing, Judith
+was a very exclusive person, but she felt she could safely show her face
+where Mary Stewart was.
+
+"This looks pretty fine to me," observed that nice, unaffected young
+woman herself, shaking hands with Molly and Nance.
+
+"It's good of you to say so," replied Molly. "Your premises would make
+two of our's, I'm thinking."
+
+"But, look at your grand buffet. How clever of you! One of you two
+children must have a genius for arrangement."
+
+The study tables had been placed at one end of the room close together,
+their crudities covered with a white cloth borrowed from Mrs. Murphy,
+and on these were piled the viands in a manner to give the illusion of
+great profusion and plenty.
+
+"It's Molly," laughed Nance; "she's a natural entertainer."
+
+"Not at all," put in Molly. "I come of a family of cooks."
+
+"And did your cook relatives marry butlers?" asked Judith.
+
+Molly stifled a laugh. Somehow Judith couldn't say things like other
+girls. There was always a tinge of spite in her speeches.
+
+"Where I come from," she said gravely, "the cooks and butlers are
+colored people, and the old ones are almost like relatives, they are so
+loyal and devoted. But there are not many of those left now."
+
+The room was gradually filling, and presently every guest had arrived,
+except Frances Andrews.
+
+"We won't wait for her," said Molly to Lillie and Millie, the two
+inseparable sophomores, who now quietly slipped out. Presently, Nance,
+major domo for the evening, shoved all the guests back onto the divans
+and into the corners until a circle was formed in the centre of the
+room. She then hung a placard on the knob of the door which read:
+
+
+                MAHOMET, THE COCK OF THE EAST,
+
+                            _vs._
+
+              CHANTECLER, THE COCK OF THE WEST.
+
+
+There was a sound of giggling and scuffling, the door opened and two
+enormous, man-sized cocks entered the room. Both fowls had white bodies
+made by putting the feet through the sleeves of a nightgown, which was
+drawn up around the neck and over the arms, the fullness gathered into
+the back and tied into a rakish tail. A Persian kimono was draped over
+Mahomet to represent wings and a tightly fitting white cap with a point
+over the forehead covered his head. His face was powdered to a ghastly
+pallor with talcum and his mouth had been painted with red finger-nail
+salve into a cruel red slash across his countenance. Chantecler was of
+a more engaging countenance. A small red felt bedroom slipper formed his
+comb and a red silk handkerchief covered his back hair. The two cocks
+crowed and flapped their wings and the fight began, amid much laughter
+and cheering. Twice Chantecler was almost spurred to death, but it was
+Mahomet's lot to die that evening, and presently he expired with a
+terrible groan, while the Cock of the West placed his foot on Mahomet's
+chest and crowed a mighty crow, for the West had conquered the East.
+
+That was really the great stunt of the evening, and it occupied a good
+deal of time. Molly began carving the ham, which she had refused to do
+earlier, because a ham, properly served, should appear first in all its
+splendid shapely wholeness before being sliced into nothingness.
+Therefore she now proceeded to cut off thin portions, which crumbled
+into bits under the edge of the carving knife borrowed from Mrs. Murphy.
+But the young hostess composedly heaped it upon the plates with pickle
+and biscuit, and it was eaten so quickly that she had scarcely finished
+the last serving before the plates were back again for a second
+allowance.
+
+During the hot fudge and hickory nut cake course, the door opened and a
+Scotch laddie, kilted and belted in the most approved manner entered the
+room. His knees were bare, he wore a little Scotch cap, a black velvet
+jacket and a plaidie thrown over one shoulder. But the most perfect part
+of his get-up was his miniature bagpipe, which he blew on vigorously,
+and presently he paused and sang a Scotch song.
+
+"Nance!" cried several of the Queen's Cottage girls, for it was
+difficult to recognize the quiet young girl from Vermont in this rakish
+disguise.
+
+In the midst of the uproar there was a loud knock on the door.
+
+"Come in," called Molly, a little frightened, thinking, perhaps, the
+kindly matron had for once rebelled at the noise they were making.
+
+Slowly the door opened and an old hag stepped into the room. She was
+really a terrible object, and some of the girls shrieked and fell back
+as she advanced toward the jolly circle. Her nose was of enormous
+length, and almost rested on her chin, like a staff, like the nose of
+"The Last Leaf on the Tree." Also, she had a crooked back and leaned
+heavily on a stick. On her head was a high pointed witch's cap. She wore
+black goggles, and had only two front teeth. The witch produced a pack
+of cards which she dexterously shuffled with her black gloved hands.
+Then she sat down on the floor, beckoning to the girls to come nearer.
+
+"Half-a-minute fortune for each one," she observed in a muffled,
+disguised voice, but it was a very fulsome minute, as Judy remarked
+afterward, for what little she said was strictly to the point.
+
+To Judith Blount she said:
+
+"English literature is your weak point. Look out for danger ahead."
+
+This seemed simple enough advice, but Judith flushed darkly, and several
+of the girls exchanged glances. Molly, for some reason, recalled what
+Judith had said about Professor Edwin Green.
+
+Many of the other girls came in for knocks, but they were very skillful
+ones, deftly hidden under the guise of advice. To Jennie Wren the witch
+said:
+
+"Be careful of your friends. Don't ever cultivate unprofitable people."
+
+To Nance Oldham she said:
+
+"You will always be very popular--if you stick to popular people."
+
+It was all soon over. Molly's fortune had been left to the last. The
+strange witch had gone so quickly from one girl to another that they had
+scarcely time to take a breath between each fortune.
+
+"As for you," she said at last, turning to Molly, "I can only say that
+'kind hearts are more than coronets, and simple faith than Norman
+blood,' and by the end of your freshman year you will be the most
+popular girl in college."
+
+"Who are you?" cried Molly, suddenly coming out of her dream.
+
+"Yes, who are you?" cried Judith, breaking through the circle and
+seizing the witch by the arm.
+
+With a swift movement the witch pushed her back and she fell in a heap
+on some girls who were still sitting on the floor.
+
+"I will know who you are," cried Jennie Wren, with a determined note in
+her high voice, as she grasped the witch by the arm, and it did look for
+a moment as if the Kentucky spread were going to end in a free-for-all
+fight, when suddenly, in the midst of the scramble and cries, came
+three raps on the door, and the voice of the matron called:
+
+"Young ladies, ten o'clock. Lights out!"
+
+The girls always declared that it was the witch who had got near the
+door and pushed the button which put out every light in the room. At any
+rate, the place was in total darkness for half a minute, and when Molly
+switched the lights on again for the girls to find their wraps the witch
+had disappeared.
+
+In another instant the guests had vanished into thin air and across the
+moonlit campus ghostly figures could be seen flitting like shadows over
+the turf toward the dormitories, for there was no time to lose. At a
+quarter past ten the gates into the Quadrangle would be securely locked.
+
+Nance lit a flat, thick candle, known in the village as "burglar's
+terror," and in this flickering dim light the two girls undressed
+hastily.
+
+Suddenly Molly exclaimed in a whisper:
+
+"Nance, I believe it was Frances Andrews who dressed up as that witch,
+and I'm going to find out, rules or no rules."
+
+She slipped on her kimono and crept into the hall. The house was very
+still, but she tapped softly on Frances' door. There was no answer, and
+opening the door she tiptoed into the room. A long ray of moonlight,
+filtering in through the muslin curtains, made the room quite light.
+There was a smell of lavender salts in the air, and Mollie could plainly
+see Frances in her bed. A white handkerchief was tied around her head,
+as if she had a headache, but she seemed to be asleep.
+
+"Frances," called Molly softly.
+
+Frances gave a stifled sob that was half a groan and turned over on her
+side.
+
+"Frances," called Molly again.
+
+Frances opened her eyes and sat up.
+
+"Is anything the matter?" she asked.
+
+Molly went up to the bedside. Even in the moonlight she could see that
+Frances' eyes were swollen with crying.
+
+"I was afraid you were ill," whispered Molly. "Why didn't you come to
+the spread?"
+
+"I had a bad headache. It's better now. Good night." Molly crept off to
+her room.
+
+Was it Frances, after all, who had broken up her party?
+
+Molly was inclined to think it was not, and yet----
+
+"At any rate, we'll give her the benefit of the doubt, Nance," she
+whispered.
+
+But there were no doubts in Nance's mind.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+KNOTTY PROBLEMS.
+
+
+"I tell you things do hum in this college!" exclaimed Judy Kean, closing
+a book she had been reading and tossing it onto the couch with a sigh of
+deep content.
+
+"I don't see how you can tell anything about it, Judy," said Nance
+severely. "You've been so absorbed in 'The Broad Highway' every spare
+moment you've had for the last two days that you might as well have been
+in Kalamazoo as in college."
+
+"Nance, you do surely tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but
+the truth," said Judy good naturedly. "I know I have the novel habit
+badly. It's because I had no restraint put upon me in my youth, and if I
+get a really good book like this one, I just let duty slide."
+
+"Why don't you put your talents to some use and write, then?" demanded
+Nance, who enjoyed preaching to her friends.
+
+"Art is more to my taste," answered Judy.
+
+"Well, art is long and time is fleeting. Why don't you get busy and do
+something?" exclaimed the other vehemently. "What do you intend to be?"
+
+Judy had a trick of raising her eyebrows and frowning at the same time,
+which gave her a serio-comic expression and invested her most earnest
+speeches with a touch of humor. But she did not reply to Nance's
+question, having spent most of her life indulging her very excellent
+taste without much thought for the future.
+
+"What do you intend to be?" she asked presently of Nance, who had her
+whole future mapped out in blocks: four years at college, two years
+studying languages in Europe, four years as teacher in a good school,
+then as principal, perhaps, and next as owner of a school of her own.
+
+"Why, I expect to teach languages," said Nance without a moment's
+hesitation.
+
+"Of course, a teacher. I might have known!" cried Judy. "You've
+commenced already on me--your earliest pupil!
+
+    "'Teacher, teacher, why am I so happy, happy, happy,
+      In my Sunday school?'"
+
+She broke off with her song suddenly and seized Nance's hand.
+
+"Please don't scold me, Nance, dear. I know life isn't all play, and
+that college is a serious business if one expects to take the whole four
+years' course. I've already had a warning. It came this morning. It's
+because I've been cutting classes. And I have been entirely miserable.
+That's the reason I've been so immersed in 'The Broad Highway.' I've
+been trying to drown my sorrows in romance. I know I'm not clever----"
+
+"Nonsense," interrupted the other impatiently. "You are too clever, you
+silly child. That's what is the matter with you, but you don't know how
+to work. You have no system. What you really need is a good tutor. You
+must learn to concentrate----"
+
+"Concentrate," laughed Judy. "That's something I never could do. As soon
+as I try my thoughts go skylarking."
+
+"How do you do it?"
+
+"Well, I sit very still and dig my toes into the soles of my shoes and
+my finger nails into the palms of my hands and say over and over the
+thing I'm trying to concentrate on."
+
+The girls were still laughing joyously when Molly came in. Her face
+wore an expression of unwonted seriousness, and she was frowning
+slightly. Three things had happened that morning which worried her
+considerably.
+
+The first shock came before breakfast when she had looked in her
+handkerchief box where she kept her funds promiscuously mixed up with
+handkerchiefs and orris root sachet bags and found one crumpled dollar
+bill and not a cent more. There was a kind of blind spot in Molly's
+brain where money was concerned, little of it as she had possessed in
+her life. She never could remember exactly how much she had on hand, and
+change was a meaningless thing to her. And now it was something of a
+blow to her to find that one dollar must bridge over the month's
+expenses, or she must write home for more, a thing she did not wish to
+do, remembering the two acres of apple orchard which had been sunk in
+her education.
+
+"And it's all gone in silk attire and riotous living," she said to
+herself, for she had bought herself ten yards of a heavenly sky blue
+crepey material which she and Nance proposed to make into a grand
+costume, also she had entertained numbers of friends at various times
+to sundaes in the village. One of the other of her triple worries was a
+note she had received that morning from Judith Blount, and the third was
+another note, about both of which she intended to ask the advice of her
+two most intimate friends.
+
+"What's bothering you, child?" demanded Judy, quick to notice any change
+in her adored Molly's face.
+
+"Oh, several things. These two notes for one." She drew two envelopes
+from her pocket and opening the first one, began to read aloud:
+
+  "'DEAR MISS BROWN:
+
+  "'Since you come of a family of cooks and are expert on the subject,
+  I am going to ask you to take charge of a little dinner I am giving
+  to-morrow night in my rooms to my brother and some friends. I shall
+  expect you to be chief cook, but not bottle-washer. You'll have an
+  assistant for that; but I'd like you to wait on the table, seeing
+  you are so good at those things. Don't bother about cap and apron.
+  I have them.
+                          "'Yours with thanks in advance,
+                                            "'JUDITH BLOUNT.'"
+
+The note was written on heavy cream-colored paper with two Greek letters
+embossed at the top in dark blue. Judith lived in the Beta Phi House,
+which was divided into apartments, and occupied by eight decidedly
+well-to-do girls, the richest girls in college, as a matter of fact. It
+was called "The Millionaire's Club," and was known to be the abode of
+snobbishness, although Molly, who had been there once to a tea, had been
+entirely unconscious of this spirit.
+
+Judy and Nance were speechless with indignation after Molly had finished
+reading the note.
+
+"What do you think of that?" she exclaimed, breaking the silence.
+
+"It's a rank insult," cried Nance.
+
+"If you were a man, you could challenge her to a duel," cried Judy; "but
+being a girl, you'll have to take it out in ignoring her."
+
+"It's written in such a matter-of-fact way," continued Molly, "that I
+can't believe it's entirely unusual. After sober, second thought, I
+believe I'll ask Sallie before I answer it."
+
+"Speaking of angels--there is Sallie!" cried Judy, as that young woman
+herself hurried past the door on her way to a class.
+
+"What is it? Make it quick. I'm late now!" ejaculated Sallie, popping
+her head in at the door with a smile on her face to counteract her
+abrupt manner. "Who's in trouble now?"
+
+The three freshmen stood silently about her while she perused Judith's
+note.
+
+"Did you ever hear of such a thing?" burst out Judy with hot
+indignation.
+
+"Oh, yes, lots of times, little one. It's quite customary for freshmen
+to act as waitresses when girls in the older classes entertain in their
+rooms. The freshies like to do it because they get such good food. I do
+think this note is expressed, well--rather unfortunately. It has a sort
+of between-the-lines superiority. But Judith is always like that. You
+just have to take her as you find her and ignore her faults. You'd
+better accept, Molly, with good grace. You'll enjoy the food, too.
+To-morrow--let me see, that's New England boiled dinner night, isn't it?
+You'll probably have beefsteak and mushrooms and grape fruit and ice
+cream and all the delicacies of the season."
+
+"Very well, if you advise it, I'll accept, like a lady," said Molly
+resignedly.
+
+"It's customary," answered Sallie, smiling cheerfully and waving her
+hand as she hurried down the hall.
+
+"Well, that's settled," continued Molly sighing. Somehow, Judith Blount
+did get on her nerves. "Now, the other note is even more serious in a
+way. Listen to this."
+
+Before reading it, she carefully closed the door, drew the other girls
+into the far end of the room and began in a low voice:
+
+  "'DEAR MISS BROWN:
+
+  "'May I have the pleasure of being your escort to the
+  sophomore-freshman ball? Let me know whether you intend to wear
+  one of your cerulean shades. The carriage will stop for us at
+  eight o'clock. You might leave the answer at my door to-night.
+
+                                     "'Yours faithfully,
+                                          "'FRANCES ANDREWS.'"
+
+The girls looked at each other in consternation.
+
+"What's to be done?"
+
+"Say you have another engagement," advised Judy, who was not averse at
+times to telling polite fibs in order to extricate herself from a
+difficulty. But Molly was the very soul of truth, and even small fibs
+were not in her line.
+
+"Hasn't any one else asked you yet?" asked Nance.
+
+"No; you see, it's a week off, and I suppose they are just beginning to
+think of partners now."
+
+"All I can say is that if you do go with her you are done for,"
+announced Nance solemnly.
+
+Molly sat down in the Morris chair and wrinkled her brows.
+
+"I do wish she hadn't," she said.
+
+"She just regards you as a sort of life preserver," exclaimed Judy.
+"She's trying to keep above the surface by holding on to you. If I were
+you, I wouldn't be bothered with her."
+
+"Of course, I know," said Molly, "that Frances Andrews did something
+last year that put her in the black books with her class. She's trying
+to live it down, and they are trying to freeze her out. Nobody has
+anything to do with her, and she's not invited to anything except the
+big entertainments like this. I can't help feeling sorry for her, and I
+don't see how it would do me any harm to go with her. But I just don't
+want to go, that's all. I'd rather take a beating than go."
+
+"Well, then you are a chump for considering it!" exclaimed Judy, whose
+self-indulgent nature had little sympathy for people who would do
+uncomfortable things.
+
+"Then, on the other hand," continued Molly, "suppose my going would help
+her a little, don't you think it would be mean to turn her down? Oh, say
+you think I ought to do it, because I'm going to, hard as it seems."
+
+Nance went over and put her arms around her friend, quite an unusual
+demonstration with her, while Judy seized her hand and patted it
+tenderly.
+
+"Really, Molly, you are quite the nicest person in the world," she
+exclaimed. Then she added: "By the way, Molly, can you spare the time to
+tutor me for a month or so? I don't know what the rates are, but we can
+settle about that later. Nance tells me I must get busy or else take my
+walking papers. I'd be afraid of a strange tutor. I'm a timid creature.
+But I think I might manage to learn a few things from you, Molly, dear."
+
+Did Judy understand the look of immense relief which instantly appeared
+on Molly's sensitive face? If she did she made no sign.
+
+"Now, don't say no," she went on. "I know you are awfully busy, and all
+that, but it would be just an act of common charity."
+
+"Say no?" cried Molly, laughing lightly. "I can hardly wait to say yes,"
+and she cheerfully got out six pairs of muddy boots from the closet,
+enveloped herself in a large apron, slipped on a pair of old gloves and
+went to work to clean and black them. Molly had become official
+bootblack at Queen's Cottage at ten cents a pair when they were not
+muddy, and fifteen cents when they were.
+
+When she had completed her lowly job she sat down at her desk and wrote
+two notes.
+
+One was to Judith Blount, in which she accepted her invitation to wait
+at table in the most polite and correct terms, and signed her name "Mary
+Carmichael Washington Brown."
+
+The second letter, which was to Frances Andrews, was also a note of
+acceptance.
+
+Then Molly removed her collar, rolled up her sleeves, kicked off her
+pumps--a signal that she was going to begin work--and sat down to cram
+mathematics,--the very hardest thing in life to her and the subject
+which was to be a stumbling block in her progress always.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+AN INCIDENT OF THE COFFEE CUPS.
+
+
+Molly turned up at the Beta Phi House about five o'clock the next
+evening. She wore a blue linen so that if any grease sputtered it would
+fall harmlessly on wash goods, and in other ways attired herself as much
+like a maid as possible with white collar and cuffs and a very plain
+tight arrangement of the hair.
+
+"If I'm to be a servant, I might as well look like one," she thought, as
+she marched upstairs and rapped on Judith's door.
+
+"Come in," called the voice of Jennie Wren. "Judith's gone walking with
+her guests," she explained; "but she left her orders with me, and I'll
+transmit them to you," she added rather grandly. "You are to do the
+cooking. Here are all the things in the ice box, and there's the gas
+stove on the trunk. Miss Brinton and I will set the table."
+
+Molly gathered that Caroline Brinton, the unbending young woman from
+Philadelphia, had been chosen as her assistant.
+
+The tiny ice box was stuffed full of provisions. There was the
+inevitable beefsteak, as Sallie had predicted; also canned soup; a head
+of celery, olives, grape fruits, olive oil, mushrooms, cheese--really,
+a bewildering display of food stuffs.
+
+"Did Miss Blount decide on the courses?" Molly asked Jennie Wren.
+
+"No; she got the raw material and left the rest entirely with you. 'Tell
+her to get up a good dinner for six people,' she said. 'I don't care how
+she does it, only she must have it promptly at six-fifteen.'"
+
+There were only two holes to the gas stove and likewise only two
+saucepans to fit over them, so that it behooved Molly to look alive if
+she were to prepare dinner for six in an hour and a quarter.
+
+"Where's the can opener?" she called.
+
+A calm, experienced cook with the patience of a saint might have felt
+some slight irritability if she had been placed in Molly's shoes that
+evening. Nothing could be found. There was no can opener, no ice pick,
+the coffeepot had a limited capacity of four cups, and there was
+no broiler for the steak. It had to be cooked in a pan. It must be
+confessed also that it was the first time in her life Molly had ever
+cooked an entire meal. She had only made what her grandmother would have
+called "covered dishes," or surprise dishes, and she now found preparing
+a dinner of four courses for six people rather a bewildering task.
+
+At last there came the sound of voices in the next room. She put on the
+beefsteak. Her cheeks were flaming from the heat of the little stove.
+Her back ached from leaning over, and her head ached with responsibility
+and excitement.
+
+"Is everything all right?" demanded Judith, blowing into the room with
+an air of "if it isn't it will be the worse for you."
+
+"I believe so," answered Molly.
+
+"Why did you put the anchovies on crackers?" demanded the older girl
+irritably. "They should have been on toast."
+
+"Because there wasn't enough bread for one thing, and because there was
+no way to toast it if there had been," answered Molly shortly.
+
+No cook likes to be interfered with at that crucial moment just before
+dinner.
+
+"Here are your cap and apron," went on Judith. "You know how to wait,
+don't you? Always hand things at the left side."
+
+"Water happens to be poured from the right," answered Molly, pinning on
+the little muslin cap. She was in no mood to be dictated to by Judith
+Blount or any other black-eyed vixen.
+
+Judith made no answer. She seemed excited and absent-minded.
+
+Caroline placed the anchovies while Molly poured the soup into cups,
+there being no plates. The voices of the company floated in to her.
+Jennie Wren had joined them, making the sixth.
+
+She heard a man's voice exclaim:
+
+"I say, Ju-ju, I call this very luxurious. We never had anything so fine
+as this at Harvard. You always could hold up the parent and get what you
+wanted. Now, I never had the nerve. And, by the way, have you got a
+cook, too?"
+
+"Only for to-night," answered Judith. "We usually eat downstairs with
+the others."
+
+"You're working some poor little freshman, ten to one," answered
+Judith's brother, for that was evidently who it was. Then Molly heard
+some one run up a brilliant scale and strike a chord and a good baritone
+voice began singing:
+
+    "'Oh, I'm a cook and a captain bold,
+        And a mate of the Nancy brig,
+      And a bo'sun tight and a midshipmatemite,
+        And the crew of the captain's gig.'"
+
+"Why don't you join in, Eddie? But I forgot. It would never do for a
+Professor of English Literature at a girls' college to lift his voice in
+ribald song."
+
+Some one laughed. Molly recognized the voice instantly. She knew that
+Professor Edwin Green was dining at Judith's that night, and her
+inquiring mind reached out even further into the realms of conjecture,
+and she guessed who was the author of his light opera.
+
+"Cousin Edwin, will you sit there, next to me?" said Judith's voice.
+
+"Cousin?" repeated Molly. "So that's it, is it?"
+
+Then other voices joined in--Mary Stewart, Jennie Wren and Martha
+Schaeffer, a rich girl from Chicago, who roomed in that house.
+
+They gobbled down the first course as people usually dispatch relishes,
+and as Caroline removed the dishes, Molly appeared with the soup. None
+of the girls recognized her, of course, which was perfectly good college
+etiquette, although Mary Stewart smiled when Molly placed her cup of
+soup and whispered:
+
+"Good work."
+
+Molly gave her a grateful look, and Professor Edwin Green, looking up,
+caught a glimpse of Molly's flushed face, and smiled, too.
+
+"I say, Ju-ju, who's your head waitress?" Molly could not help
+overhearing Richard Blount ask when she had left the room.
+
+"Oh, just a little Southern girl named Smith, or something," answered
+Judith carelessly.
+
+"That young lady," said Professor Edwin Green, "is Miss Molly Brown, of
+Kentucky."
+
+The young freshman's face was crimson when she brought in the steak and
+placed it in front of Mr. Blount.
+
+Then she took her stand correctly behind his chair, with a plate in her
+hand, waiting for him to carve.
+
+Sometimes two members of the same family are so unlike that it is almost
+impossible to believe that blood from the same stock runs in their
+veins. So it was with Richard Blount and his sister, Judith. She was
+tall and dark and arrogant, and he was short and blond and full of
+good-humored gayety. He rallied all the girls at the table. He teased
+his Cousin Edwin. He teased his sister, and then he ended by highly
+praising the food, looking all the time from one corner of his mild blue
+eyes at Molly's flushed face.
+
+"Really," he exclaimed, "a French chef must have broiled this steak. Not
+even Delmonico, nor Oscar himself at the Waldorf, could have done it
+better. Isn't it the top-notch, Eddie? What's this? Mushroom sauce? By
+Jupiter, it's wonderful to come out here in the wilds and get such
+food."
+
+Mary Stewart began to laugh. After all, it was just good-natured
+raillery.
+
+"Why, Mr. Blount," she said, "there is something to be found here that
+is lots better than porter-house steak."
+
+"What is it? Name it, please!" cried Richard. "If I must miss the train,
+I must have some, whatever it is--cream puffs or chocolate fudge?"
+
+"It's Kentucky ham of the finest, what do you call it--breed? Three
+years old. You've never eaten ham until you've tasted it."
+
+She smiled charmingly at Molly, who pretended to look unconscious while
+she passed the vegetables. Judith endeavored to change the subject.
+
+She was angry with Mary for thus bringing her freshman waitress into
+prominence. But Molly was destined to be the heroine of the evening in
+spite of all efforts against it.
+
+"Old Kentucky ham!" cried Richard Blount, starting from his chair with
+mock seriousness, "Where is it? I implore you to tell me. My soul cries
+out for old ham from the dark and bloody battleground of Kentucky!"
+
+Everybody began to laugh, and Judith exclaimed:
+
+"Do hush, Richard. You are so absurd! Did he behave this way at Harvard
+all the time, Cousin Edwin?"
+
+"Oh, yes; only more so. But tell me more of this wonderful ham, Miss
+Stewart."
+
+Molly wondered if Professor Green really understood that it was all a
+joke on her when he asked that question.
+
+Suddenly she formed a resolution. Following her assistant into the next
+room, she whispered:
+
+"Which would you rather do, Miss Brinton? Go over to Queen's and ask
+Nance to give you the rest of my ham or wait on the table while I go?"
+
+"I'd rather get the ham," replied Miss Brinton, whose proud spirit was
+crushed by the menial service she had been obliged to undertake that
+evening.
+
+The dinner progressed. In a little while Molly had cleared the table and
+was preparing to bring on the grape-fruit salad when Caroline appeared
+with the remnants of the ham. Molly removed it from its wrappings and,
+placing it on a dish, bore it triumphantly into the next room.
+
+"What's this?" cried Richard Blount. "Do my eyes deceive me? Am I
+dreaming? Is it possible----"
+
+"The old ham, or, rather, the attenuated ghost of the old ham!"
+ejaculated Mary Stewart.
+
+Even Judith joined in the burst of merriment, and Professor Green's
+laugh was the gayest of all.
+
+Molly returned with the carving knife and fork, and Richard Blount began
+to snip off small pieces.
+
+"'Ham bone am very sweet,'" he sang, one eye on Molly.
+
+"It is certainly wonderful," exclaimed Professor Green, as he tasted the
+delicate meat; "but it seems like robbery to deprive the owner of it."
+
+"Now, Edwin, you keep quiet, please," interrupted Richard. "I've heard
+that some owners of old hams are just as fond of things sweeter than ham
+bones. A five-pound box ought to be the equivalent of this, eh?"
+
+"Really, Richard, you go too far," put in Judith, frowning at her
+brother.
+
+But Richard took not the slightest notice of her, nor did he pause until
+he had cleaned the ham bone of every scrap of meat left on it.
+
+"Aren't you going to catch your train?" asked Judith.
+
+"I think not to-night, Ju-ju," he answered, smiling amiably. "Edwin, can
+you put me up? If not, I'll stop at the inn in the village."
+
+"No, indeed, you won't, Dick. You must stop with me. I have an extra
+bed, solely in hopes you might stay in it some night. And later this
+evening we might run over--er--a few notes."
+
+He looked consciously at Richard, then he gave Molly a swift, quizzical
+glance, remembering probably that he had confided to her and her alone
+that he was the author of the words of a comic opera.
+
+Having cleared the table, Molly now returned with the coffee. The cups
+jaggled as she handed them. She was very weary, and her arms ached.
+When she had reached Professor Edwin Green, Richard Blount, with his
+nervous, quick manner, suddenly started from his chair and exclaimed:
+
+"Now, I know whom you remind me of--Ellen Terry at sixteen."
+
+Nobody but Molly realized for a moment that he was talking to her, and
+she was so startled that her wrist gave a twist and over went the tray
+and three full coffee cups straight on to the knees of the august
+Professor of English Literature.
+
+There was a great deal of noise, Molly remembered. She herself was so
+horrified and stunned that she stood immovable, clutching the tray
+wildly, as a drowning person clings to a life preserver. She heard
+Judith cry:
+
+"How stupid! How could you have been so unpardonably awkward!"
+
+At the same moment Mary Stewart said: "It was entirely your fault, Mr.
+Blount. You frightened the poor child with your wild behavior."
+
+And Professor Green said:
+
+"Don't scold, Judith. I'm to blame. I joggled the tray with my elbow.
+There's no harm done, at any rate. These gray trousers will be much
+improved by being dyed _cafe au lait_."
+
+Then Richard Blount rose from the table and marched straight over to
+where Molly was standing transfixed, still miserably holding to the
+tray.
+
+"Miss Brown," he said humbly, "I want to apologize. All this must have
+been very trying for you, and you have behaved beautifully. I hope you
+will forgive me. My only excuse is that I am always forgetting my little
+sister and her friends are not still children. Will you forgive me?"
+
+He looked so manly and good-natured standing there before her with his
+hand held out, that Molly felt what slight indignation there was in her
+heart melting away at once. She put her hand in his.
+
+"There is nothing to forgive, Mr. Blount," she said, and the young man
+who was a musician pricked up his ears when he heard that soft, musical
+voice.
+
+"And I've robbed you of your ham," he continued.
+
+"It was a pleasure to know you enjoyed it," she said.
+
+Presently Molly began clearing the table. Richard sat down at the piano.
+It was evident that he never wandered far from his beloved instrument,
+and the girls gathered around him while he ran over the first act of his
+new opera.
+
+Professor Edwin Green said good night and took himself and his
+coffee-soaked trousers home to his rooms.
+
+"You can follow later, Dickie," he called.
+
+As he passed Molly, standing by the door, he smiled at her again, and
+Molly smiled back, though she was quite ready to cry.
+
+"The ham was delicious," he said. "Thank you very much."
+
+That night, when Molly had wearily climbed the stairs to her room and
+flung herself on her couch, Nance, writing at her desk, called over:
+
+"Well, how was the beefsteak?"
+
+"I didn't get any," said Molly. "Even if there had been any left, I was
+too tired to eat anything. I'm afraid I wasn't born to be anybody's
+cook, Nance, or waitress, either."
+
+And Molly turned her face to the wall and wept silently.
+
+Lest we forget, we will say now that two days after this episode of the
+coffee cups, there came, by express for Miss Molly Brown, a five-pound
+box of candy without a card, and the girls at Queen's Cottage feasted
+right royally for almost two evenings.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+CONCERNING CLUBS,--AND A TEA PARTY.
+
+
+At the first meeting of the freshman class of 19--, Margaret Wakefield
+of Washington, D. C., had been elected President.
+
+Just how this came about no one could exactly say. She could not have
+been accused of electioneering for herself, and yet she made an
+impression somehow and had won the election by a large majority.
+
+"Anybody who can talk like that ought to be President of something,"
+Molly had observed good naturedly. "She could make a real inauguration
+speech, I believe, and she knows all about Parliamentary Law, whatever
+that is."
+
+"She dashed off the class constitution just as easily as if she were
+writing a letter home," said Judy.
+
+"That's not so easy, either," added Nance mournfully.
+
+The girls were silent. It had gradually leaked out as their friendship
+progressed that Nance's home was not an abode of happiness by any means.
+And yet Nance had written a theme on "Home," which was so well done that
+she had been highly complimented by Miss Pomeroy, who had read it aloud
+to the class. Molly often wondered just what manner of woman Nance's
+mother was, and she soon had an opportunity of finding out for herself.
+
+But the conversation about the new class president continued.
+
+"President Wakefield wants us to have bi-monthly meetings," continued
+Judy. "She wishes to divide the class into committees and have a
+chairman for each committee--"
+
+"Committees for what?" demanded Molly.
+
+"Dear knows," laughed Judy, "but her father's a Congressman, and she
+has inherited his passion for law and order, I suppose. She wants to
+conduct a debate on Woman's Suffrage to meet Saturdays. It's to be
+called 'The Woman's Franchise Club,' and she wishes to establish
+by-laws and resolutions and a number of other things that are Greek to
+me, for 'the political body corporate.' She says it's a crying shame
+that women know so little about the constitution of their own country,
+and in establishing a debating society, she hopes to do some missionary
+work in that line."
+
+Judy had risen and was waving her arms dramatically while her voice rose
+and fell like an old-time orator's.
+
+"I suppose we ought," said Molly; "but I'd rather put it off a year
+or so. There are so many other things to enjoy first. Besides, it will
+be four years before I reach the voting age, and by that time I hope
+my 'intellects' will have developed sufficiently to take in the
+constitution of the country."
+
+"Anyhow," exclaimed Judy, "I'm proud to have a class president who's
+such a first-class public speaker, because it takes it all off our
+shoulders. Whenever there's a speech to be made or anything public and
+embarrassing to be done, we'll just vote for her to do it, because she
+will enjoy it so much."
+
+"But are you going to join the debating club?" asked Nance.
+
+"I suppose it's our duty to," replied Molly; "but I do hate to pin
+myself down. Suppose we say we'll go to one and listen?"
+
+"Well, you'd better settle it now, because here comes the President
+sailing up the walk. She's going the rounds now, I suppose, and in
+another two minutes she'll be springing the question on us."
+
+Judy, who was sitting at the front window of her own room, nodded down
+into the yard and smiled politely, and the girls had just time to settle
+among themselves what they were going to say when there was a smart rap
+on the door and President Wakefield entered.
+
+She wore rather masculine-looking clothes, and carried a business-like
+small-sized suit case in one hand and a notebook in the other.
+
+"Hello, girls!" she began; "I'm so glad I caught you together. It saves
+telling over the same thing three times. I want to know first exactly
+how you stand on the woman's suffrage question. Now, don't be afraid to
+be frank about it, and speak your minds. Of course, I'm sure that, being
+women who are seeking the higher education, you are all of you on the
+right side--the side of the thinking woman of to-day----"
+
+Here Judy sneezed so violently that she almost upset the little
+three-legged clover-leaf tea table at her elbow.
+
+"How do you feel on the subject, Molly?"
+
+Molly smiled broadly, while Nance cleared her throat and Judy blew her
+nose and exclaimed:
+
+"I think I must be taking cold. Excuse me while I get a sweater," and
+disappeared in the closet.
+
+"I--I'm afraid I don't know very much about the subject, Margaret. You
+see, I was brought up in the country, and I haven't had a chance to go
+into woman's suffrage very deeply."
+
+"There is no time like the present for beginning, then," said Margaret
+promptly, opening the business-like little suit case. "Read these two
+pamphlets and you'll get the gist of the entire subject clearly and
+concisely expressed. I will call on you for an opinion next week after
+you've had time to study the question a bit."
+
+Molly took the pamphlets and began hastily turning the leaves. She
+wanted to laugh, but she felt certain it would offend Margaret deeply
+not to be taken seriously, and she controlled her facial muscles with
+an effort while she waited for attack No. Two.
+
+"Nance, have you taken any interest in this question?" continued
+Margaret, who seemed to have the patience of a fanatic spreading his
+belief.
+
+"I know something about it," replied Nance quietly. "You see, my mother
+is President of a Woman's Suffrage Association, and she spends most of
+her time going about the country making speeches for the National
+Association."
+
+"What, is your mother Mrs. Anna Oldham, the famous clubwoman?" cried
+Margaret.
+
+Nance nodded her head silently.
+
+"Why, she is one of the greatest authorities on women's suffrage in the
+country!" exclaimed Margaret with great enthusiasm. "It says so here.
+Look, it gives a little sketch of her life and titles. She is president
+of two big societies and an officer in five others. It's all in this
+little book called 'Famous Club Women in America and England.' Dear me,"
+continued Margaret modestly, "I think I'd better resign and give the
+chair to you, Nance. I'm nobody to be preaching to you when you must
+know the subject from beginning to end."
+
+Nance smiled in her curious, whimsical way.
+
+"Have you ever eaten too much of something, Margaret," she said, "and
+then hated it ever afterward?"
+
+"Why, yes," replied the President, "that has happened to every one, I
+suppose. Mince pie and I have been strangers to each other for many
+years on that account."
+
+"Well," continued Nance, "I've been fed on clubs until I feel like a
+Strausberg goose. I've had them crammed down my throat since I was five
+years old. When I was twelve, I was my mother's secretary, and I've sent
+off thousands of just such pamphlets as you are distributing now. I
+learned to write on the typewriter so I could copy my mother's speeches.
+I've been usher at club conventions and page at committee meetings. I've
+distributed hundreds of badges with 'Votes for Women' printed on them. I
+had to make a hundred copies of mother's speech on 'The Constitution and
+By-Laws of the United States,' and send them to a hundred different
+women's clubs. So, you see," she added, simply, frowning to keep back
+her tears, "I think I'll take a rest from clubs while I'm at college and
+begin to enjoy life a little with Molly and Judy."
+
+Margaret Wakefield, who was really a very nice girl and exceedingly
+well-bred, leaned over and placed a firm, rather large hand on Nance's.
+
+"I should think you had had enough," she exclaimed, giving the hand
+a warm squeeze. Seeing teardrops glistening in Nance's eyes, she rose
+and started to the door. "If ever you do want to come to any of the
+meetings, you will be very welcome, girls," she said; "but you don't
+want to overdo anything in life, you know, and if there are things
+that interest you more than Woman's Suffrage you oughtn't to sacrifice
+yourselves. People should follow their own bent, I think. Good-bye," she
+went on, smiling brightly, "and don't bother to read the pamphlets,
+Molly, dear, if you don't want to. It's a poor way to carry a point to
+make a bugbear of the subject."
+
+She went out quietly and closed the door.
+
+"I call her a perfect lady," exclaimed Molly, trying not to look at
+Nance, but wishing at the same time that her friend would give way just
+once and have a good cry.
+
+"Let's cut study this afternoon and take a walk," exclaimed Judy. "Trot
+along and get on your sweaters. It's much too glorious to stay indoors.
+Nance, can't you do your theme after supper? Molly, you look a little
+peaked. It will do you good to breathe the fresh, untainted air of the
+pine woods."
+
+Judy, it must be confessed, was always glad of a good excuse to get away
+from her books.
+
+"Splendid!" cried Molly with enthusiasm.
+
+"And I'll bring my English tea basket," went on Judy. "Who's got any
+cookies?"
+
+"I have," said Nance, now fully recovered.
+
+In five minutes the three girls had started across the campus to the
+road and presently were making for the pine woods that bordered the
+pretty lake. Everybody seemed to be out roaming the country that
+beautiful autumn afternoon. Parties of girls came swinging past, who
+had been on long tramps through the woods and over to the distant hills
+which formed a blue and misty background to the lovely rolling country.
+The lake was dotted with canoes and rowboats, and from far down the road
+that wound its way through the valley there came the sound of singing.
+Presently a wagon-load of girls emerged into view, followed by another
+wagon filled with autumn leaves and evergreens.
+
+"It's the sophomore committee on decoration," Judy explained. Apparently
+she knew everything that happened at college. "They are getting the
+decorations for the gym. for the ball to-morrow night."
+
+Molly quickly changed the subject. She had had two invitations to go
+to the Sophomore-Freshman Ball since she had accepted Frances Andrews'
+offer, and several of the sophomores had been to see her to ask her to
+change her mind, but, having given her word, Molly intended to keep it,
+no matter what was to pay.
+
+"Let's go to the upper end of the lake," she suggested. "It's wilder and
+much prettier," and she led the way briskly along the path through the
+pine woods.
+
+In a little while they came out at the other end of the small body of
+water where the woods abruptly ended at the foot of a hill called "Round
+Head," which the girls proceeded to climb. From this eminence could be
+seen a widespreading panorama of hills and valleys, little streams and
+bits of forests, and beyond the pine woods the college itself, its
+campus spread at its feet like a mat of emerald green.
+
+The girls paused breathlessly and Judy put down her tea basket.
+
+"Here's where a little refreshment might be very welcome," she said,
+opening her basket of which she was justly proud, for not many girls at
+Wellington could boast of such a possession. She filled the little
+kettle from the bottle of water she had taken the precaution to bring
+along, and they sat down in a circle on the turf. The autumn had been
+a dry one, and the ground was not damp. Nibbling cookies and sweet
+chocolate, they waited for the water to boil.
+
+"Look, here comes some one," whispered Judy, indicating the figure of
+a man appearing around the side of the hill.
+
+"I do hope it's not a tramp," exclaimed Nance uneasily.
+
+Molly Brown hoped so, too, although she said nothing. But she felt
+nervous, as who wouldn't in that lonely place? As the man came nearer,
+it became plain that he was making straight for them, and he did most
+assuredly look like a wanderer of some kind. He was dressed in an old
+suit of rough gray, wore an old felt hat and carried a staff like a
+pilgrim. The girls sat quite still and said nothing. There had been a
+silent understanding among them that it was better not to run. As the
+man drew nearer, Molly became suddenly conscious of the fact that across
+the gray trousers just above the knees was a deep coffee-colored stain.
+
+The next moment the man stood before them, leaning on his staff, his
+hat under his arm. It was "Epimenides Antinous Green."
+
+"Confess now," he said, smiling at all of them and looking at Molly,
+whom he knew best of the three, "you took me for a tramp?"
+
+"Not exactly for a tramp," answered Molly; "but for one who tramps."
+
+"What's the difference, Miss Brown?" he asked laughing.
+
+"Oh, everything. Clothes----" she paused, blushing deeply. Her eyes had
+fallen on the coffee stain. "Why doesn't he have it cleaned off?" she
+thought, frowning slightly. "And--and looks," she continued out loud.
+
+"Even in the walk," Judy finished. "Perhaps we can give you a cup of
+tea, Professor," she added politely.
+
+The Professor was only too glad for a cup of tea. He had been roaming
+the hills all day, he said, and he was tired and thirsty. While he
+sipped the fragrant beverage, he glanced at his watch.
+
+"The truth is, I had an appointment at this spot at four-thirty," he
+announced. "I was to meet my young brother George, familiarly known as
+'Dodo.' He's at Exmoor College, ten miles over, and was to walk across
+the valley to the rendezvous, and I was to conduct him safely to my
+rooms for supper. He was afraid to enter the college by the front gate
+for fear of meeting several hundreds of young women. He runs like a
+scared rabbit if he sees a girl a block off."
+
+"Won't it give him an awful shock when he catches a glimpse of us
+waiting here on the hilltop?" asked Molly.
+
+"It's a shock that won't hurt him," replied the professor. "We'll see
+what happens, at any rate."
+
+He put his cup and saucer on the ground, while his quizzical eyes, which
+seemed to laugh even when his face was serious, turned toward Molly. And
+Molly was well worth looking at that afternoon, although she herself
+was much dissatisfied with her appearance. Her auburn hair had almost
+slipped down her back. Her blue linen shirtwaist was decidedly blousey
+at the waist line. "It's because I haven't enough shape to keep it
+down," she was wont to complain. Her cheeks were glowing and her eyes as
+calmly blue as the summer skies.
+
+"Perhaps we'd better start on," said Nance uneasily. She always felt an
+inexplicable shyness in the presence of men, and her friends had been
+known to nickname her "old maid."
+
+But before Professor Green could protest that he was only too glad to
+have his bashful brother make the acquaintance of three charming college
+girls, Judy, ever on the alert, exclaimed, "Look, there he comes around
+the side of the hill."
+
+The Professor rose and signaled with his hat, chuckling to himself, as
+he watched his youthful brother pause irresolutely on the hillside.
+
+"Come on, Dodo," he shouted, making a trumpet of his hands.
+
+"I believe not this afternoon, thank you," Dodo trumpeted back. "I have
+an important engagement at six."
+
+The girls could not keep from laughing.
+
+"It's a shame to frighten the poor soul like that," exclaimed Molly.
+"We'll start back, Professor, and leave him in peace."
+
+But the Professor was a man of determination, and had made up his mind
+to bring his shy brother into the presence of ladies that afternoon,
+very attractive ladies at that, of George's own age, with simple,
+unaffected manners, calculated to make a shy young man forget for the
+moment that he had an affliction of agonizing diffidence.
+
+"George," called the professor, running a little way down the hillside,
+"come back and don't be a fool."
+
+The wretched lad turned his scarlet face in their direction and began to
+climb the hill. He was a tall, overgrown youth, with large hands and
+feet, and when he stood in their midst, holding his cap nervously in
+both hands, while the Professor performed the introductions, he looked
+like a soldier facing the battle.
+
+It remained for Molly and Judy to put him at his ease, however, with tea
+and cookies and questions about Exmoor College, while the Professor
+conversed with Nance about life at Wellington, and which study she liked
+best. At last the spirit of George emerged from its shy retreat, and he
+forgot to feel self-conscious or afraid. They rose, packed the tea
+things and started back. And it was the Professor who carried Judy's tea
+basket, while George, glancing from Molly's blue eyes to Judy's soft
+gray ones, strolled between them and related a thrilling tale of college
+hazing.
+
+"That was a swift remedy, was it not, Miss Oldham?" observed the
+Professor, laughing under his breath.
+
+But undoubtedly the cure was complete, for that very evening Molly
+received a note, written in a crabbed boyish hand, and signed "George
+Green," inviting the three girls to ride over to Exmoor on the trolley
+the following Saturday and spend the day. Miss Green, an older sister,
+would act as chaperone.
+
+And not a few thrills did these young ladies experience at the
+prospect.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+RUMORS AND MYSTERIES.
+
+
+How many warm-hearted, impetuous people get themselves into holes
+because of those two qualities which are very closely allied indeed;
+and Molly Brown was one of those people. Carried away by emotions of
+generosity, she found herself constantly going farther than she realized
+at the moment. Why, for instance, could she not have put Frances Andrews
+off with an excuse for a day or so? Some one would surely have asked her
+to the Sophomore-Freshman ball.
+
+And if she had only liked Frances, matters would have been different.
+If it had been an act of friendship, of deep devotion. But in spite
+of herself, she could not bring herself to trust that strange girl,
+beautiful and clever as she undoubtedly was, and sorry as Molly was
+for her. After all, it was rather selfish of Frances to have obtained
+the promise from Molly. Did she think it would reinstate her in the
+affections of her class to be seen in the company of the popular young
+freshman?
+
+All this time, Molly said nothing to her friends, but on the morning of
+the ball she could not conceal from Judy and Nance her apprehension and
+general depression. And seeing their friend's lack-lustre eye and
+drooping countenance, they held a counsel of war in Judy's small
+bedroom.
+
+At the end of this whispered conference, Judy was heard to remark:
+
+"I'm afraid of the girl, to tell you the truth. Her fiery eyes and her
+two-pronged tongue seem to take all the spirit out of me."
+
+"I'm not afraid of her," said Nance, who had a two-pronged tongue of her
+own, once she was stirred into action. "You wait here for me, and when I
+come back, you can go and notify the sophomores of what's happened. Of
+course, Molly will get to the ball all right. The thing is to extricate
+her from the situation by the most tactful and surest means."
+
+Judy laughed.
+
+"No," she answered, "the thing is not to let Molly know we have saved
+her life."
+
+"If Frances hadn't done that witch's stunt and said all those malicious
+things at Molly's Kentucky spread, I don't think I should have minded so
+much. And do you know, Judy, that the report has spread abroad that she
+and Molly had prepared the whole thing beforehand, speeches and all and
+were in league together? You see, Molly was the only one who wasn't
+hit."
+
+"You don't mean it," cried Judy. "Then, more than ever, I want to spare
+the child the humiliation she might have to suffer if she went with
+Frances to-night. Go forth to battle, Nance, and may the saints preserve
+you."
+
+Nance girded her sweater about her like a coat of mail, stiffened her
+backbone, pressed her lips together and marched out to the fray. She
+never told even Judy exactly what took place between Frances and her in
+that small room, with its bewildering array of fine trappings, silver
+combs and brushes, yellow silk curtains at the window, Turkish rugs,
+books and pictures. No one had ever seen the room except Molly the night
+of the spread, when it was too dark to make out what was in it.
+
+There was no loud talking. Whatever was said was of the tense quiet
+kind, and presently Nance emerged unscathed from the encounter.
+
+"She made me give my word of honor not to tell what was said," she
+announced to the palpitating Judy, "but she's writing the note to Molly
+now; so go quickly and inform someone that Molly has no escort for the
+ball."
+
+Judy departed much mystified and Nance remained discreetly away from her
+own room until she perceived Frances steal down the hall, push a note
+under their door and then hurry back, bang her own door and lock it.
+
+Then, after a moment's grace, Nance marched boldly to their chamber.
+Molly was reading the note.
+
+"What do you think, Nance?" she exclaimed with a tone of evident relief
+in her voice, "Frances Andrews can't go to-night."
+
+"Indeed, and what reason does she give?" asked Nance, feeling very much
+like a conspirator now that she was obliged to face Molly.
+
+"None. She simply says 'I'm sorry I can't go to-night. Hope you'll enjoy
+it. F. A.' How does she expect me to get there, I wonder, at the
+eleventh hour?"
+
+Nance examined her finger nails attentively.
+
+"Perhaps she's seen to that," she replied after a pause.
+
+"Nance," said Molly, presently, "I'm so relieved that I think I'll have
+to 'fess up. It's mean of me, I know, and I feel awfully ungenerous to
+be so glad. You see, nobody can ever tell what strange, freakish thing
+she's going to do. Of course she was the witch. I knew it from the
+conscious look that came into her face when I told her about it
+afterwards."
+
+"The mistake she has made is being defiant instead of repentant," said
+Nance. "Instead of trying to brazen it out, she ought to 'walk softly,'
+as the Bible says, and keep quiet. She is the most embittered soul I
+ever met in all my life. If hatred counted for much, her hatred for her
+own class would burn it to a cinder."
+
+There was a sound of hurrying footsteps on the stairs and Judy burst
+into the room. Her face was aflame and she flung herself into a chair
+panting for breath.
+
+"What's your hurry?" asked Molly, slipping on her jacket. "Excuse me, I
+must be chasing along to French. Tell her the news, Nance."
+
+No need to tell Judy news, who had news of her own.
+
+"I tell you, Nance," she exclaimed, "there are times when I think the
+position of a freshman is one of the lowliest things in life. The first
+sophomore I met was Judith Blount. I did feel a little timid, but I told
+her what had happened. 'You can tell your friend,' she said, 'that we
+sophomores are not so gullible as all that, and if her nerve has failed
+her at the last moment, it's her fault, not ours.'"
+
+"Why, Judy," exclaimed Nance, "you didn't know you were jumping from the
+frying pan right into the fire when you told that to Judith Blount, who
+has never liked Molly from the beginning. It's jealousy, pure and
+simple, I think; although there almost seems to be something more behind
+it sometimes. She takes such pains to be disagreeable. Was anyone else
+there to hear you?"
+
+"Oh, yes. She was surrounded by her satellites, Jennie Wren and a few
+others."
+
+The two girls sat in gloomy silence for a few minutes. After that
+rebuff, they hardly cared to circulate the bit of news any further in
+the sophomore class, which, it must be confessed, had the reputation of
+being run by a clique of the most arrogant and snobbish set of girls
+Wellington College had ever known.
+
+"Let's go and tell our woes to nice old Sally Marks," suggested Judy,
+and off they marched in search of the good-natured funny Sally, whose
+room was on the floor below.
+
+"Come in," she called at their tap on the door, and noticing at once
+their serious faces, she exclaimed:
+
+"I declare, I am beginning to feel like the Oracle at Delphi. What's the
+trouble, now, my children?"
+
+"You ought never to have gone to Judith Blount," she continued after
+they had unburdened their secrets. But having gone to her, "it would be
+well," so spake the Oracle, "to sit back and hold tight. The news is
+certain to spread, and of course only Judith and her ring would believe
+that Molly sent you out to find her an escort. There is one thing sure:
+Molly is obliged to go to the dance, not only because she has so many
+friends, but because she figures, I am told, so largely in 'Jokes &
+Croaks,' and it would be sport spoiled if she wasn't there when the
+things are read out. Now, trot along, children, I'm cramming for an
+exam., and I'm busier than the busiest person in Wellington to-day."
+
+The afternoon dragged itself slowly along. Nance took her best dress out
+of its wrappings, heated a little iron and smoothed out its wrinkles.
+She lifted Molly's blue crepe from its hanger and laid it on the couch.
+
+"It was made in the simplest possible way out of the least possible
+goods in the least possible time," she informed Judy, who had wickedly
+cut a class and sat moping in her friend's room. "Isn't it pretty? We
+made it together, and I'm really quite puffed up about the result. It's
+Empire, you know," she added proudly.
+
+The dress did indeed show the short Empire waist. The round neck was cut
+out and finished with a frill of creamy lace which Molly happened to
+have, and there had not been much of a struggle with the sleeves, which
+came only to the elbow and were to all intents and purposes shapeless.
+But the color was the thing, as Molly had said.
+
+"I'd be willing to drown in a color like that," Judy observed. Judy was
+quite a _poseuse_ about colors and assured her friends that she could
+never wear red because it inflamed her temper and made her cross; that
+violet quieted her nerves; green stirred her ambitions, and blue aroused
+her sympathies. While they were looking at the dress, Margaret Wakefield
+and Jessie Lynch, her roommate and boon companion, after rapping on the
+door, sailed into the room.
+
+"We came to consult about clothes," they announced. "Is this to be an
+evening dress affair, or what's proper to wear?"
+
+"The best you have," replied Judy, "at least that's what I was told by
+the oracular Sally below stairs."
+
+"For the love of heaven, don't tell that to Jessie," cried Margaret. "If
+you give her so much rope, she'll be wearing purple velvet and cloth of
+gold."
+
+Jessie laughed good-naturedly. She was already considered the best
+dressed and prettiest girl in the freshman class, and it was a joke at
+Queen's Cottage that she had been obliged to apply to the matron for
+more closet room, because the large one she shared with Margaret
+Wakefield was not nearly adequate for her numerous frocks. It had been a
+constant wonder to the other girls in the house that these two opposite
+types could have become such intimate friends; but friends they were,
+and continued to be throughout their college course, although Jessie
+never could rake up an interest in the U. S. Constitution or woman's
+suffrage, either.
+
+The two girls really formed a sort of combination of brains and beauty,
+and it became generally known that Jessie would hardly have pulled
+through the four years, except for the indefatigable efforts of her
+faithful friend, Margaret.
+
+Mabel Hinton, a Queen's Cottage freshman, now popped her head in at the
+door, which was half open. She was a very odd character, but she was
+popular with her friends, who called her "The Martian," probably because
+she had a phenomenal intellect and wore enormous glasses in tortoise
+shell frames which made her eyes look like a pair of full moons.
+
+"I thought I heard a racket," she said in her crisp, catchy voice. "I
+suppose you are all discussing the news."
+
+"News? What news?" they demanded.
+
+She closed the door carefully and came farther into the room.
+
+"Gather around me, girls," she said mysteriously, enjoying their
+curiosity.
+
+"But what is it, Mabel? Don't keep us in suspense," cried Judy, always
+impatient.
+
+"Well, there is evidence that someone was going to set fire to the
+gym. to-night," she began, in a whisper. "This morning a bundle of
+oil-soaked rags was discovered in a closet, and then they began to
+search and found several other bundles like the first. There was a lot
+of excitement, and the Prex came over. They tried to keep it quiet, but
+the story leaked out, of course, and is still leaking----" she smiled.
+
+The girls exchanged horrified glances. What terrible disaster might not
+have befallen them if the rags had not been discovered?
+
+"Of course it was the work of an insane person," said Margaret
+Wakefield.
+
+"Of course, but who? Is she one of the students or some outside person?"
+
+With a common instinct, Judy and Nance looked up at the same moment.
+Their glances met. Without making a sound, Judy's lips formed the word
+"Frances."
+
+"Is the dance to take place, then?" asked Jessie.
+
+"Oh, yes. It's all been hushed up and things will go on just as usual.
+I'm going to look on from the balcony. I shan't mingle with the
+dancers, because they knock off my spectacles and generally upset my
+equilibrium."
+
+The door opened and Molly appeared in their midst like a gracefully
+angular wraith, for her face looked white, her shoulders drooped and
+her long slim arms hung down at her sides dejectedly.
+
+"Why, Molly, dear, has anything happened to you?" cried Nance.
+
+"No, I won't say that nothing has happened," answered Molly, sinking
+into a chair and resting her chin on her hand. "I have been put through
+an ordeal this day, why, I can never tell you, but I am glad you are all
+here so that I can tell you about it."
+
+They pressed about her, full of sympathy and friendliness, while Judy,
+who loved comfort and recognized the needs of the flesh under the most
+trying circumstances, lit Nance's alcohol lamp and put on the kettle to
+make tea.
+
+"But what is it?" they all demanded, seeing that Molly had fallen into a
+silence.
+
+"I've been with the President for the last hour," she said, "though for
+what reason I can't explain. I can't imagine why I was sent for and
+brought to her private office. She was very nice and kind. She asked me
+a lot of questions about myself and all of Queen's girls. I was glad
+enough to answer them, because we have nothing to be ashamed of, have
+we, girls?" Molly rose and stood before them, spreading out her hands
+with a kind of deprecating gesture. The circle of faces before her
+almost seemed abashed under the steady gaze of her clear blue eyes. "It
+was a pleasure to tell her what nice girls were stopping at Queen's
+Cottage."
+
+"Did she mention?" began Judy and pointed to the dividing wall of the
+next room.
+
+"Oh, yes, I was coming to that. But what do I know about----" Mollie
+stopped short and caught her breath. Her eyes turned towards the door,
+which was opened softly. There stood Frances Andrews.
+
+She had evidently just come in, for she still wore her sweater and tam
+o' shanter, and brought with her the smell of the fresh piney air.
+
+"It's all right about your escort for to-night, Miss Brown. You are to
+go with Miss Stewart, who has got special privilege from the sophomore
+president to take you. Good-bye. I hope you'll have a ripping time. I
+shan't see you at supper. I'm going off on the 6.15 train and won't be
+back until Sunday night."
+
+There was such a tense feeling in the circle of freshmen as Frances
+stood there, that, as Judy remarked afterwards, they almost crackled
+with electricity.
+
+It was quite late, and as most of the girls intended to dress for the
+party before supper, they took their departure immediately without any
+comment.
+
+"Is anything special the matter?" asked Molly, after they had gone and
+she was left alone with her friends.
+
+They told her the strange story which Mabel Hinton had reported to them
+a little while before.
+
+"But that is the work of a lunatic," exclaimed Molly, horrified.
+
+"And I suppose," went on Nance, "that the reason Prexy sent for you was
+that she suspected a certain person, who shall be nameless, and she was
+told that you were the only person who had ever been nice to her, and
+furthermore that you were going to the dance with her."
+
+"Of course that must be the reason," said Molly, "and of course it's
+absurd, I mean suspecting Frances Andrews. She might be accused of many
+things, but she is certainly in her right mind. She's much cleverer than
+lots of the girls in her class."
+
+"Clever, yes. But should you call her balanced?"
+
+Molly did not answer. She felt anxious and frightened, and a rap on the
+door at that moment made her jump with nervousness. It proved to be one
+of the maids of the house with two boxes of flowers, both for Molly. One
+was pink roses and contained the card of Mary Stewart, and the other was
+violets, and contained no card whatever.
+
+She divided the violets in half and made her two friends wear them that
+night to the dance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+JOKES AND CROAKS.
+
+
+"I'm beginning to feel that we shall issue happily out of all our
+troubles," cried Judy Kean, bursting into her friends' room without
+knocking, "and the reason why I feel that way is because when I am
+clothed in silk attire my soul is clothed in joy. Especially when
+there's dancing to follow. Button me up, someone, please, so that I may
+take a good look at my resplendent form in your mirror. I can't see more
+than a square inch of neck in my own two by four."
+
+The girls stood back to admire their friend, who indulged her artistic
+fancy in rather theatrical clothes much too old for her, but who usually
+succeeded in gaining the effect she sought.
+
+"Dear me, 'she walks in beauty like the night,'" said Molly laughing.
+"You look like a charming and very youthful widow-lady, Judy, but how
+comes it you are wearing black?"
+
+"Black is for certain types," replied Judy sagely, "and I am one of
+them. Next to black my bilious skin takes on a dazzling, creamy tint and
+my mouse-colored hair assumes a yellow glint that is not its own."
+
+The girls laughed at their erratic friend, who was, indeed, dressed in
+black chiffon, from the fluffy folds of which her vivacious young face
+glowed like a flower.
+
+"If you object to me, wait until you see Jessie," cried Judy. "She might
+be going to the opera, she is so fine. She is wearing pink satin that
+glistens all over like a Christmas tree with little shiny things."
+
+As a matter of fact, Nance, whose well balanced and correct tastes in
+most things rarely failed her, was the most suitably dressed of our
+girls, in her pretty white lingerie frock.
+
+At eight o'clock that evening Molly rolled away luxuriously in a village
+hack with Mary Stewart, holding her roses tenderly and carefully under
+her gray eiderdown cape, so as not to crush them.
+
+"I'm awfully glad I was so lucky as to draw you this evening, Molly,"
+the older girl was saying.
+
+"I'm the lucky one," answered Molly, her thoughts reverting to the
+strange discovery of the morning. "Oh, Miss Stewart, what did Frances
+Andrews do last year to get herself into such a mess and be frozen out
+by all her class this year?"
+
+"I'll tell you perhaps some day, but not to-night. We want to enjoy
+ourselves to-night. Can you guide, Molly?"
+
+"Like a streak. I always guided at home at the school dances, because I
+was the tallest girl in my class."
+
+"I'm a guider, too," laughed Mary, "and when two guiders come together,
+I imagine it's a good deal like a tug of war."
+
+During the ride over to the gymnasium, neither of the girls mentioned
+the thing uppermost in their minds: the attempt to set the gymnasium on
+fire that night. Nor was the rumor referred to by anyone at the dance
+later. It was a strictly forbidden topic, the President herself having
+issued orders.
+
+The great room was a mass of foliage and bunting, Japanese lanterns and
+incandescent lights in many colors, and it was really quite a brilliant
+affair according to Molly's notions, who had never seen anything but
+small country dances usually given at the schoolhouse several miles
+from her home. Lovely music floated from behind a screen of palms and
+lovely girls floated on the floor in couples, to the strains of the
+latest waltz.
+
+"I'm afraid I'm going to be an awful wallflower," thought Molly, feeling
+suddenly overgrown and awkward in the midst of this swirling mass of
+grace and beauty. "I can't help feeling queer and I don't seem to
+recognize anybody."
+
+But Molly had plenty of partners that evening, and after that first
+delightful waltz, it was nearly an hour before she caught a glimpse of
+Mary Stewart again in the crowd of dancers.
+
+"Isn't it jolly?" called Judy, as they dashed past each other in a
+romping barn dance.
+
+"I never thought I could have such a good time at a manless party,"
+Jessie Lynch confided to Molly while they rested against the wall later.
+"But, really, it's quite as good fun."
+
+"Isn't it?" replied Molly. "I think I never had a better time in my
+life. But I'm afraid our roommates and friends are not enjoying it very
+much," she added ruefully, pointing to the gallery, where seated in a
+silent bored row were Margaret Wakefield, Nance Oldham and Mabel
+Hinton.
+
+"Of course," said Jessie, "you would never expect Mabel to join this mad
+throng, but I'm surprised at Nance and Margaret."
+
+"Margaret prefers conversation parties, I suppose, and Nance is not fond
+of dancing, either. She would always rather look on, she says."
+
+The two girls were standing near the musicians and from the other side
+of the screen of palms they now heard a voice say:
+
+"Have you danced with the fantastic Empress Josephine as yet?"
+
+"Not as yet," came the answer with a laugh. "But be careful, she is
+near----"
+
+Molly moved away hastily, her face crimson.
+
+Jessie had heard the question also and recognized the voice of Judith
+Blount.
+
+"Why, Molly," she exclaimed, glancing at her face, "you don't think they
+meant----"
+
+"Yes," said Molly, trying to smile naturally, "I do."
+
+She glanced down at her home-made dress. Perhaps it did look amateurish.
+She and Nance had worked very hard over it, but, after all, they were
+not experienced dressmakers.
+
+"Why, you look perfectly charming," went on Jessie generously. "The
+color is exactly right for you----"
+
+"Yes, color," answered Molly, "but there ought to be something besides
+color to a dress, you know. Never mind, I shouldn't be such a sensitive
+plant, Jessie. One ought not to mind being called fantastic. It's not
+nearly so bad as being called--well, malicious--cruel. I'd rather be
+fantastic than any of those things. But I did think the dress was pretty
+when we made it."
+
+"Come along, and let's get some lemonade, Molly. Your dress is sweet and
+suits you exactly, so there."
+
+Then someone came up and claimed Jessie for the next dance, but Molly
+was grateful to the pretty butterfly creature for her assurances and she
+resolved to forget all about her dress. As she lingered in the corner,
+uncertain whether to stay where she was or join her friends in the
+gallery, Mary Stewart made her way through the crowd and called:
+
+"Oh, here you are. Some of the seniors are just outside and want to meet
+you. Will you come?"
+
+"I should think I would," replied Molly, joyfully. Fantastic, or not,
+she had one good friend among the older girls.
+
+"This is Miss Molly Brown of Kentucky," announced Mary Stewart presently
+to a dozen august seniors who shook her hand and began asking her
+questions.
+
+"We had two reasons for wanting to meet you, Miss Brown," here put in a
+very handsome big girl, who spoke in an authoritative tone, which made
+everybody stop and listen. (She was, in fact, the President of the
+senior class.) "One of course was just to make your acquaintance, and
+the other was to ask if you would do us a favor. We are going to have a
+living picture show Friday week for the benefit of the Students' Fund,
+and we wondered if you would pose in one of the pictures, maybe several,
+we haven't decided on them yet. But that dress must be in one of them,
+don't you think so, Mary? One of Romney's Lady Hamilton pictures
+for instance, with a white gauze fichu; or a Sir Thomas Lawrence
+portrait----"
+
+"You don't think it's too fantastic?" asked Molly.
+
+"What, that lovely blue thing? Heavens, no! it's charming----"
+
+Molly had barely time to thank her and accept the invitation, when she
+and Mary were dragged off to make up the big circle of "right and left
+all around," which wound up the dance. After this whirling romp, three
+loud raps were heard and gradually the noise of talking and laughter
+subsided into absolute silence. A girl had mounted the platform. She
+carried a megaphone in one hand and a book in the other. She was the
+official reader of her class, and now proceeded to recite through the
+megaphone all the best and most amusing material from "Jokes & Croaks."
+According to time honored custom, the jokes were greeted with applause
+and laughter, and the croaks with groans and laughter, and anybody who
+groaned at a joke or applauded a croak, if she happened to be caught,
+was publicly humiliated by being made to stand up and face the jeers of
+the multitude. The girls finally decided, after many ludicrous mistakes,
+that the jokes were on the sophomores and the croaks were on the
+freshmen. For instance, here was a croak:
+
+     "A lady of notable luck,
+      Who cared not for turkey or duck,
+        Cried, 'Give me old ham
+        And I don't give a slam,
+      If it comes from Vermont or Kaintuck.'"
+
+This was greeted with laughing groans, and Molly for the first time
+realized the significance of her roommate's name.
+
+Margaret Wakefield figured in several croaks, as "the Suffragette of
+Queen's." In fact Queen's girls came in for a good many croaks and began
+to wait fearfully for what was to come next. But the witticisms were all
+quite good-natured, even the last, which called forth so many merry
+groans that they soon ceased to be groans at all and became uproarious
+laughter, and Molly, very red and laughing, too, was the centre of all
+eyes. This was the croak:
+
+     "They have locked me in the Cloisters,
+        They have fastened up the gate!
+      Oh, let me out; Oh, let me out.
+        It's getting very late.
+
+      'Tis said the ghosts of classes gone
+        Do wander here at night.
+      Oh, let me out; Oh, let me out,
+        Before I die of fright!
+
+      And then there rang a clarion voice.
+        It's tone was loud and clear.
+      'Oh, dry your eyes and cease your cries,
+        For help, I ween, is near.
+
+      But promise me one little thing
+        Before I ope the gate:
+      Oh, never pass the coffee tray,
+        If I am sitting nigh;
+      Or, if you pass the coffee tray,
+        Oh, then, just pass me by!'"
+
+It was all very jolly and delightful, and for the first time the girls
+felt that they were really a part of the college life.
+
+Mary Stewart was very sweet to Molly when she took her home that night,
+and the young freshman never realized until long afterwards, when she
+was a senior herself, what a nice thing her friend had done; for
+sophomore-freshman receptions were an old story to Mary Stewart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+EXMOOR COLLEGE.
+
+
+Busy days followed the sophomore-freshman ball. The girls were "getting
+into line," as Judy variously expressed it; "showing their mettle; and
+putting on steam for the winter's work." The story of the incendiary had
+been reported exaggerated and had gradually died out altogether. Frances
+Andrews had returned to college, more brazenly facetious than ever,
+breaking into conversations, loudly interrupting, making jokes which no
+one laughed at except Molly and Judy out of charity. She was a strange
+girl and led a lonely life, but she was too much like the crater of a
+sleeping volcano, which might shoot off unexpectedly at any moment, and
+most of the girls gave her a wide berth.
+
+The weather grew cold and crisp. There was a smell of smoke in the air
+from burning leaves and from the chimneys of the faculty homes wherein
+wood fires glowed cheerfully.
+
+At last Saturday arrived. It was the day of the excursion to Exmoor, and
+it was with more or less anxiety regarding the weather that the three
+girls scanned the skies that morning for signs of rain. But the heavens
+were a deep and cloudless blue and the air mildly caressing, neither too
+cold nor too warm.
+
+"It is like the Indian summers we have at home," exclaimed Molly, when,
+an hour later, they turned their faces toward the village through which
+the trolley passed.
+
+Mabel Hinton, passing them as they started, had called out:
+
+"Art off on a picnic?"
+
+And they had answered:
+
+"We art."
+
+Some other girls had cried:
+
+"Whither away so early, Oh?"
+
+And they had cried:
+
+"To Exmoor! To Exmoor, for now the day has come at last!" paraphrasing a
+song Judy was in the habit of singing.
+
+Indeed the day seemed so perfect and joyous that they could hardly keep
+from singing aloud instead of just humming when they boarded the trolley
+car.
+
+Through the country they sped swiftly. The valley unfolded itself before
+them in all its beauty and the misty blue hills in the distance seemed
+to draw nearer. Over everything there was a sense of autumn peace which
+comes when the world is drowsing off into his deep sleep.
+
+"Exmoor!" called the conductor at last, and the three girls stepped off
+at a charming rustic station. With a clang of the bell which rang out
+harshly in the still air, the car flew on.
+
+The three girls looked at the empty station. Then they looked at each
+other with a kind of mock consternation, for nothing really mattered.
+
+"Where is Dodo?" asked Judy, with the smile of the victor, since she had
+predicted only a few moments before that Dodo might by this time have
+become so frightened at his boldness that he would suddenly become
+extinct like his namesake, the dodo-bird.
+
+"Well, if Dodo is really extinct," said Molly, "we'll just take a little
+walk back through the fields. Epimenides thought nothing of it. He
+expects to walk to-day and meet us at lunch."
+
+But Dodo was not extinct that morning, and they beheld him now running
+down the steep road as fast as his heavy boots could carry him.
+
+"Behold, his spirit has risen from its fossil remains and he now walks
+among us in the guise of a man," chanted Judy.
+
+"Don't make us laugh, Judy, just as the poor soul arrives without enough
+breath to apologize," said Nance, and the next instant the embarrassed
+young man stood before them blushing and stammering as if he had been
+caught in the act of picking a pocket or committing some other slight
+crime which required explanation.
+
+"I'm terribly sorry--have you waited long?--the schedule was changed--I
+didn't know--you should have come half an hour later--I don't mean
+that--I mean I wasn't ready--" he broke off in an agony of embarrassment
+and the girls burst out laughing.
+
+"Don't you be caring," said Judy. "We're here and nothing else really
+matters."
+
+"I shouldn't have thought the station of a man's college could be so
+deserted," observed Molly, looking about the empty place.
+
+Dodo assured her that plenty of people would be there in half an hour,
+when the train arrived; just then everybody was either in the village
+on the other side of the buildings, or down on the football grounds
+watching the morning practice game. There was to be a real game that
+afternoon.
+
+"You see, it's only a small college," he went on. "There are only two
+hundred and fifty in all. The standards are so high it's rather hard to
+get in, but we are heavily endowed and can afford to keep up the
+standards," he added proudly.
+
+They climbed the road to the college almost in silence and in ten
+minutes emerged on a level elevation or table land which commanded a
+view of the entire countryside. Here stood the college buildings, built
+of red brick, seasoned and mellowed with time. They were a beautiful
+and dignified group of buildings, and there was a decidedly old world
+atmosphere about the place and the campus with splendid elm trees.
+Molly had once heard Judith Blount refer to Exmoor as that "one-horse,
+old-fashioned little college," and she was not prepared for anything so
+fine and impressive as this.
+
+Nor was she prepared for the surprise of Miss Green, sister of Professor
+Edwin and Dodo. The girls had pictured her a middle-aged spinster,
+having heard she was older than the Professor himself, who seemed a
+thousand to them. And here, waiting for them, in the living room of the
+Chapter House, was a very charming and girlish young woman with Edwin's
+brown eyes and cleft chin and George's blonde hair; the ease and
+graciousness of one brother and the youthful fairness of the other. She
+had come down from New York the night before especially to meet them,
+she said.
+
+Rather an expensive trip, they thought, for one day's pleasure, since it
+took about seven hours and meant usually one meal and of course at night
+a berth on the sleeper.
+
+"At first I thought I couldn't manage it for this week," she continued,
+"but Edwin was so insistent and no one has ever been known to refuse him
+anything he really wanted."
+
+Edwin! But why Edwin? Why not the youthful and blushing Dodo? So Molly
+wondered, while they were conducted over the entire college; the
+beautiful little Gothic chapel with its stained glass windows; through
+the splendid old library which was much smaller than the one at
+Wellington, but much more "atmospheric" as Judy had remarked; then
+through the dormitories where they remained discreetly in the corridors,
+and finally back to the Chapter House, in which George lodged with some
+thirty schoolmates.
+
+There on the piazza was Professor Edwin Green waiting for them. He had
+made an early start, he said, and walked the whole distance in less than
+three hours. Some other young men came up and were introduced, and the
+entire gay party, Nance shyly sticking closely beside Miss Green, went
+off to view the village, which was a quaint old place well worth
+visiting, they were told.
+
+The train had evidently come in, and crowds of people were hurrying up
+the road. There was a sound of a horn and a coach dashed in sight filled
+with students wearing crimson streamers in their buttonholes.
+
+"It's a crowd of Repton fellows come over to see their team licked,"
+George explained, "but look, Edwin, here comes Dickie Blount. I thought
+he was in Chicago."
+
+"Evidently he isn't," said the Professor, his eyes smiling, his mouth
+serious. It was Richard Blount, the hero of the ham bone, and he
+straightway attached himself to Molly and declined to leave her side
+for the rest of the day.
+
+"Don't tell me that that delightful, joking, jolly person is brother to
+Judith," whispered Judy in Molly's ear.
+
+Molly nodded.
+
+"There's no family resemblance, but it's true, nevertheless."
+
+Motor cars and carriages of all varieties now began to arrive. The whole
+countryside had turned out to see the great game between the two local
+college teams, and the Wellington girls pinned green rosettes in their
+buttonholes to signify that their sympathies were all for Exmoor.
+
+"It's the most exciting, jolliest time I ever had in all my life," cried
+Molly to Professor Green, who walked on her other side. "And to think I
+have never seen a football game before in all my life."
+
+"I must draw a diagram for you and show you what some of the plays are,
+or you will be in a muddle," said the Professor, looking at her gravely,
+almost, as Molly thought, as if she were one of his English Literature
+pupils.
+
+At lunch, according to the etiquette of the place, George and his guests
+were placed at the senior table. There was no smoking nor loud talking
+and the students behaved themselves most decorously, although George
+confided to Judy that ordinarily pandemonium prevailed.
+
+After lunch they started for the grounds in a triumphal procession; for
+our Wellington freshmen and their chaperone had an escort of at least
+four or five young men apiece. Nance looked bewildered and shy and
+happy; Judy was never more sparkling nor prettier, and Molly was in her
+gayest, brightest humor.
+
+They had hardly left the Chapter House behind them and proceeded in
+a snake-like procession across the campus, when a black and prancing,
+though rather bony, steed dashed up bearing a young lady in a
+faultlessly fitting riding habit. It was Judith Blount.
+
+Nobody looked particularly thrilled at Judith's appearance, not even
+Judith's brother, and Judy almost exclaimed out loud:
+
+"Bother! Why couldn't she stay at home just once?"
+
+"How do you do, Cousin Grace?" called Judith from her perch. "I heard
+you were going to be down and I couldn't resist riding over to see you."
+
+"How are you, Judith? I'm so glad to see you," answered Cousin Grace in
+a tone without much heart to it. "Why didn't you come sooner? We've just
+finished lunch."
+
+"Thanks, I had a sandwich early. I suppose you are off for the grounds.
+Go ahead. I'll get Cousin Edwin to help me tie up this old animal
+somewhere. We'll follow right behind."
+
+Molly was almost certain that Cousin Edwin was about to place this
+office on the shoulders of his younger brother, but glancing again at
+the flushed and happy face of Dodo at the side of Judy, the Professor
+relented and dropped behind to look after his relation.
+
+Never had Molly been so wildly excited as she was over the football
+game that afternoon. It was a wonderful picture, the two teams lined
+up against each other; crowds of people yelling themselves hoarse; the
+battle cry of the Repton team mingling with the warlike cry of the
+Exmoor students. The cheer leaders at the heads of the cheer sections
+made the welkin ring continuously. At last a young man, who seemed to
+be a giant in size and strength, dashed like a wild horse across the
+Russian steppes straight up the field with the ball under his arm, and
+from the insane behavior of the green men, including Professor Edwin
+Green and his fair sister, Molly became suddenly aware that the game
+was over and Exmoor had won.
+
+The cheering section could yell no more, because to a man it had lost
+its voice; but, oh, the glad burst of song from the Exmoor students as
+they leaped into the field and bore the conquering giant around on their
+shoulders. And, oh! the dejection of the men of crimson as they stalked
+sadly from the scene of their humiliation.
+
+At last the whole glorious day was over and the girls found themselves
+on the way to the trolley station. Richard Blount and his cousin, Miss
+Green, had hastened on ahead. They were to take the six o'clock train
+back to New York.
+
+"Cousin Edwin, why can't you hire a horse in the village and ride back
+to Wellington with me?" asked Judith, when they paused at the Chapter
+House for her to mount her black steed.
+
+"Because I'm engaged to take these young ladies home by trolley,
+Judith," answered the Professor firmly.
+
+Judith leaped on her horse without assistance, gave the poor animal a
+savage lash with her whip and dashed across the campus without another
+word.
+
+The ride back at sunset was even more perfect than the morning trip.
+The Professor of English Literature appeared to have been temporarily
+changed into a boy. He told them funny stories and bits of his own
+college experiences, and made them talk, too. Almost before they knew
+it, the conductor was calling: "Wellington!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+SUNDAY MORNING BREAKFAST.
+
+
+It was quite the custom at Wellington for girls to prepare breakfasts
+on Sunday morning in their rooms. There was always the useful boneless
+chicken to be creamed in one's chafing dish; and in another, eggs to be
+scrambled with a lick and a promise, at these impromptu affairs; and it
+was a change from the usual codfish balls of the Sunday house breakfast.
+
+[Illustration: It was quite the custom for girls to prepare breakfast in
+their rooms.--_Page 152._]
+
+On this particular Sunday morning, Judy was very busy; for the breakfast
+party was of her giving, in Molly's and Nance's room; her own
+"singleton" being too small. She was also very angry in her tempestuous
+and unrestrained way, and having emptied the vials of her wrath on
+Molly's head, she was angrier with herself for giving away to temper.
+
+Although it was Judy's party, Molly, as usual kind-hearted and grandly
+hospitable, had invited Frances Andrews. Then she had gone and
+confessed her sins to Judy, who flared up and said things she hadn't
+intended, and Molly had wept a little and owned that she was entirely
+at fault. But what could be done? Frances was invited and had accepted.
+To atone for her sins, poor Molly had made popovers as a surprise and
+arranged to bake them in Mrs. Murphy's oven. But the hostess being
+gloomy, the company was gloomy, since the one is apt to reflect the
+humor of the other. However, as the coffee began to send forth its
+cheerful aroma from Judy's Russian samovar, discord took wings and
+harmony reigned. It was a very comfortable and sociable party. Most of
+the girls wore their kimonos, it being a time for rest and relaxation;
+but when Frances Andrews swept into the room in a long lavender silk
+_peignoir_ trimmed with frills of lace, all cotton crepe Japanese
+dressing gowns faded into insignificance.
+
+"There is no doubt that college girls are a hungry lot," remarked
+Margaret Wakefield, settling herself comfortably to dispose of food and
+conversation and arouse argument, a thing she deeply enjoyed.
+
+"So much brain work requires nourishment," observed Mabel Hinton.
+
+"There is not much brain nourishment at Queen's," put in Frances
+Andrews. "I've been living on raw eggs and sweet chocolate for the last
+week. The table has run down frightfully."
+
+Sallie Marks was a loyal Queen's girl, and resented this slur on the
+table of the establishment which was sheltering her now for the third
+year.
+
+"The food here is quite as good as it is at any of the other houses,"
+she said coldly to the unfortunate Frances, who really had not intended
+to give offence.
+
+"Pardon me, but I don't agree with you," replied Frances, "and I have
+a right to my own opinion, I suppose."
+
+Judy gave Molly a triumphant glance, as much as to say, "You see what
+you have done."
+
+Everybody looked a little uncomfortable, and Margaret Wakefield, equal
+to every occasion, launched into a learned discussion on how many ounces
+of food the normal person requires a day.
+
+Once more the talk flowed on smoothly. But where Frances was, it would
+seem there were always hidden reefs which wrecked every subject, no
+matter how innocent, the moment it was launched.
+
+"Molly, I can trade compliments with you," put in Jessie Lynch, taking
+not the slightest notice of her roommate's discourse. "It's one of those
+very indirect, three-times-removed compliments, but you'll be amused by
+it."
+
+"Really," said Molly, "do tell me what it is before I burst with
+curiosity."
+
+"I said 'trade,'" laughed Jessie, who liked a compliment herself
+extremely.
+
+"Oh, of course," replied Molly. "I have any number I can give you in
+exchange. How do you care for this one? Mary Stewart thinks you are very
+attractive."
+
+"Does she, really? That's nice of her," exclaimed Jessie, blushing with
+pleasure as if she hadn't been told the same thing dozens of times
+before. "I think she's fine; not exactly pretty, you know, but fine."
+
+"I suppose you don't know how her father made his money?" broke in
+Frances.
+
+There was a silence, and Molly, feeling that she was about to be
+mortified again by something disagreeable, cried hastily:
+
+"Oh, dear, I forgot the surprise. Do wait a moment," and dashed from the
+room.
+
+While she was gone, Nance and Judy began filling up the intervals with
+odd bits of conversation, helped out by the other girls, and Frances
+Andrews did not have another opportunity to put in her oar. Suddenly she
+rose and swept to the door.
+
+"You would none of you feel interested to know, I suppose, that Mary
+Stewart's father started life as a bootblack----"
+
+"That's what I'm starting life as," cried Molly, who now appeared
+carrying a large tray covered with a napkin. "I am the official
+bootblack of Queen's, and I make sometimes one-fifty a week at it. I
+hope I'll do as well as Mr. Stewart in the business. Have a popover?"
+
+She unfolded the napkin and behold a pile of golden muffins steaming
+hot. There were wild cries of joy from the kimonoed company.
+
+"And now, Jessie, I'll take my second-hand, roundabout compliment----"
+she began, when Judy interrupted her.
+
+"Won't you have a popover, Miss Andrews?" she asked in a cold,
+exasperated tone.
+
+"Thanks; I eat the European breakfast usually--coffee and roll----"
+
+"Yes, I've been there," answered Judy.
+
+"I'll say good morning. I've enjoyed your little party immensely," and
+Frances marched out of the room and banged the door.
+
+"I should think you would have learned a lesson by this time, Molly
+Brown," cried Judy hotly. "There is always a row whenever that girl is
+around. She can't be nice, and there is no use trying to make her over."
+
+"I'm sorry," said Molly penitently. "I wish I could understand why she
+behaves that way when she knows it's going to take away what few friends
+she has."
+
+"I think I can tell you," put in Mabel Hinton. "Nobody likes her, and
+nobody expects any good of her. If you are constantly on the lookout
+for bad traits, they are sure to appear. It's almost a natural law.
+Everybody was expecting this to-day, and so it happened, of course. If
+we had been cordial and sweet to her, she never would have said that
+about Mary Stewart or the food at Queen's, either."
+
+"Dear me, are we listening to a sermon," broke in Judy flippantly.
+
+But, in spite of Judy's interruption, Mabel's speech made an impression
+on the girls, some of whom felt a little ashamed of their attitude
+toward Frances Andrews.
+
+"Did you ever see a dog that had been kicked all its life?" went on
+Mabel; "how it snarls and bites and snaps at anybody who tries to pet
+it? Well, Frances is just a poor kicked dog. She's done something she
+ought not to have done, and she's been kicked out for it, and she's so
+sore and unhappy, she snarls at everybody who comes near her."
+
+"Mabel, you're a brick!" exclaimed Sallie Marks. "I started the fight
+this morning and I'm ashamed of it. I'm going to make a resolution to be
+nice to that poor girl hereafter, no matter how horrid she is. It will
+be an interesting experiment, if for no other reason."
+
+"Let's form a society," put in Molly, "to reinstate Frances Andrews, and
+the way to do it will be to be as nice as we can to her and to say nice
+things about her to the other girls."
+
+"Good work!" cried Margaret Wakefield, scenting another opportunity to
+draw up a constitution, by-laws and resolutions. "We will call a first
+meeting right now, and elect officers. I move that Molly be made
+chairman of the meeting."
+
+"I second the motion," said Sallie heartily. "All in favor say 'aye.'"
+
+There was a chorus of laughing "ayes" and a society was actually
+established that morning, Molly, as founder, being elected President. It
+consisted of eight members, all freshmen, except the good-natured Sallie
+Marks, who condescended, although a junior, to join.
+
+"Suppose we vote on a name now," continued Margaret who wished to leave
+nothing undone in creating the club. "Each member has a right to suggest
+two names, votes to be taken afterward."
+
+It was all very business-like, owing to Margaret's experienced methods,
+but the girls enjoyed it and felt quite important. As a matter of fact,
+it was the first society to be established that year in the freshman
+class, and it developed afterward into a very important organization.
+
+Among the various names suggested were "The Optimists," "The Bluebirds,"
+"The Glad Hands," mentioned by Sallie Marks, and "The Happy Hearts."
+
+"They are all too sentimental," said the astute Margaret, looking
+them over. "There'll be so many croaks about us if we choose one of
+these names that we'll be crushed with ridicule. How about these
+initials--'G.F.' What do they stand for?"
+
+"Gold Fishes," replied Mabel Hinton promptly. The others laughed, but
+the name pleased them, nevertheless. "You see," went on Mabel, "a gold
+fish always radiates a cheerful glow no matter where he is. He is the
+most amiable, contented little optimist in the animal kingdom, and he
+swims just as happily in a finger bowl as he does in a fish pond. He was
+evidently created to cheer up the fish tribe and I'm sure he must
+succeed in doing it."
+
+The explanation was received with applause, and when the votes were
+taken, "G.F." was chosen without a dissenting voice.
+
+It was decided that the club was to meet once a week, it's object, to
+be, in a way, the promotion of kindliness, especially toward such people
+as Frances Andrews, who were friendless.
+
+"We'll be something like the Misericordia Society in Italy," observed
+Judy, "only, instead of looking after wounded and hurt people, we'll
+look after wounded and hurt feelings."
+
+It was further moved, seconded and the motion carried that the society
+should be a secret one; that reports should be read each week by
+members who had anything to report; and, by way of infusing a little
+sociability into the society, it was to give an entertainment, something
+unique in the annals of Wellington; subject to be thought of later.
+
+It was noon by the time the first meeting of the G. F. Society was ready
+to disband. But the girls had really enjoyed it. In the first place,
+there was an important feeling about being an initial member of a club
+which had such a beneficial object, and was to be so delightfully
+secretive. There was, in fact, a good deal of knight errantry in the
+purpose of the G. F.'s, who felt not a little like Amazonian cavaliers
+looking for adventure on the highway.
+
+"Really, you know," observed Jessie, "we should be called 'The Friends
+of the Wallflowers,' like some men at home, who made up their minds one
+New Year's night at a ball to give a poor cross-eyed, ugly girl who
+never had partners the time of her life, just once."
+
+"Did they do it?" asked Nance, who imagined that she was a wallflower,
+and was always conscious when the name was mentioned.
+
+"They certainly did," answered Jessie, "and when I saw the girl
+afterward in the dressing room, she said to me, 'Oh, Jessie, wasn't it
+heaven?' She cried a little. I was ashamed."
+
+"By the way, Jessie, I never got my compliment," said Molly. "Pay it to
+me this instant, or I shall be thinking I haven't had a 'square deal.'"
+
+"Well, here it is," answered Jessie. "It has been passed along
+considerably, but it's all the more valuable for taking such a
+roundabout route to get to you. I'll warn you beforehand that you will
+probably have an electric shock when you hear it. You know I have some
+cousins who live up in New York. One of them writes to me----"
+
+"Girl or man?" demanded Judy.
+
+"Man," answered Jessie, blushing.
+
+There was a laugh at this, because Jessie's beaux were numerous.
+
+"His best friend," she continued, "has a sister, and that sister--do you
+follow--is an intimate friend----"
+
+"'An intimate friend of an intimate friend,'" one of the girls
+interrupted.
+
+"Yes," said Jessie, "it's obscure, but perfectly logical. My cousin's
+intimate friend's sister has an intimate friend--Miss Green----"
+
+"Oh, ho!" cried Judy. "Now we are getting down to rock bottom."
+
+"And Miss Green told her intimate friend who told my cousin's intimate
+friend's sister--it's a little involved, but I think I have it
+straight--who told her brother who told my cousin who wrote it to me."
+
+"But what did he write," they demanded in a chorus.
+
+"That one of Miss Green's brothers was crushed on a charming red-headed
+girl from Kentucky."
+
+Molly's face turned crimson.
+
+"But Dodo is crushed on Judy," she laughed.
+
+"It may be," said Jessie. "Rumors are most generally twisted."
+
+The first meeting of the G. F.'s now disbanded and the members scattered
+to dress for the early Sunday dinner. They all attended Vespers that
+afternoon, and in the quiet hour of the impressive service more than one
+pondered seriously upon the conversation of the morning and the purpose
+of the new club.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+TRICKERY.
+
+
+It was several days before the G. F.'s had an opportunity to practise
+any of their new resolutions on Frances Andrews. The eccentric girl was
+in the habit of skipping meals and eating at off hours at a little
+restaurant in the village, or taking ice cream sundaes in the drug
+store.
+
+At last, however, she did appear at supper in a beautiful dinner dress
+of lavender crepe de chine with an immense bunch of violets pinned at
+her belt. She looked very handsome and the girls could not refrain from
+giving her covert glances of admiration as she took her seat stonily at
+the table.
+
+It was the impetuous, precipitate Judy who took the lead in the
+promotion of kindliness and her premature act came near to cutting down
+the new club in its budding infancy.
+
+"You must be going to a party," she began, flashing one of her
+ingratiating smiles at Frances.
+
+Frances looked at her with an icy stare.
+
+"I--I mean," stammered Judy, "you are wearing such an exquisite dress.
+It's too fine for ordinary occasions like this."
+
+Frances rose.
+
+"Mrs. Markham," she said to the matron of Queen's, "if I can't eat here
+without having my clothes sneered at, I shall be obliged to have my
+meals carried to my room hereafter."
+
+Then she marched out of the dining room.
+
+Mrs. Markham looked greatly embarrassed and nobody spoke for some time.
+
+"Good heavens!" said Judy at last in a low voice to Molly, "what's to be
+done now?"
+
+"Why don't you write her a little note," replied Molly, "and tell her
+that you hadn't meant to hurt her feelings and had honestly admired her
+dress."
+
+"Apologize!" exclaimed Judy, her proud spirit recoiling at the ignoble
+thought. "I simply couldn't."
+
+But since her attack on Molly, Judy had been very much ashamed of
+herself, and she was now taking what she called "self-control in broken
+doses," like the calomel treatment; that night she actually wrote a note
+to Frances and shoved it under the door. In answer to this abject
+missive she received one line, written with purple ink on highly scented
+heavy note paper:
+
+  "Dear Miss Kean," it ran, "I accept your apology.
+
+                                       "Yours sincerely,
+                                   "FRANCES LE GRAND ANDREWS."
+
+"Le Grand, that's a good name for her," laughed Judy, sniffing at the
+perfumed paper with some disgust.
+
+But she wrote an elaborate report regarding the incident and read it
+aloud to the assembled G. F.'s at their second meeting.
+
+In the meantime, Sallie Marks had her innings with the redoubtable
+Frances, and retreated, wearing the sad and martyred smile of one who
+is determined not to resent an insult. One by one the G.F.'s took
+occasion to be polite and kind to the scornful, suspicious Frances.
+Her malicious speeches were ignored and her vulgarities--and she had
+many of them--passed lightly over. Little by little she arrived at
+the conclusion that refinement did not mean priggishness and that
+vulgarity was not humor. Of course the change came very gradually. Not
+infrequently after a sophomore snub, the whipped dog snarled savagely;
+or she would brazenly try to shock the supper table with a coarse,
+slangy speech. But with the persistent friendliness of the Queen's
+girls, the fires in her nature began to die down and the intervals
+between flare-ups grew longer each day.
+
+Frances Andrews was the first "subject" of the G.F.'s, and they were
+as interested in her regeneration as a group of learned doctors in the
+recovery of a dangerously ill patient.
+
+In the meantime, the busy college life hummed on and Molly felt her head
+swimming sometimes with its variety and fullness. What with coaching
+Judy, blacking boots, making certain delicious sweetmeats called
+"cloudbursts,"--the recipe of which was her own secret,--which sold
+like hot cakes; keeping up the social end and the study end, Molly was
+beginning to feel tired. A wanness began to show in the dark shadows
+under her eyes and the pinched look about her lips even as early as the
+eventful evening when she posed for the senior living picture show.
+
+"This child needs some make-up," the august senior president had
+exclaimed. "Where's the rouge and who's got my rabbit's foot? No,
+burned cork makes too broad a line. Give me one of the lighter colored
+eyebrow pencils. You mustn't lose your color, little girl," she said,
+dabbing a spot of red on each of Molly's pale cheeks. "Your roses are
+one of your chief attractions."
+
+A great many students and some of the faculty had bought tickets for
+this notable occasion, and the gymnasium was well filled before the
+curtain was drawn back from a gigantic gold frame disclosing Mary
+Stewart as Joan of Arc in the picture by Bastien Le Page, which hangs
+in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. There was no attempt to
+reproduce the atmospheric visions of the angel and the knight in armor,
+only the poor peasant girl standing in the cabbage patch, her face
+transfigured with inspiration. When Molly saw Mary Stewart pose in this
+picture at the dress rehearsal, she could not help recalling the story
+of the bootblack father.
+
+"She has a wonderful face, and I call it beautiful, if other people
+don't," she said to herself.
+
+As for our little freshman, so dazed and heavy was she with fatigue,
+the night of the entertainment, that she never knew she had created a
+sensation, first as Botticelli's "Flora," barefooted and wearing a Greek
+dress constructed of cheesecloth, and then as "Mrs. Hamilton," in the
+blue crepe with a gauzy fichu around her neck.
+
+After the exhibition, when all the actors were endeavoring to collect
+their belongings in the confusion of the green room, Sallie Marks came
+running behind the scenes.
+
+"Prexy has specially requested you to repeat the Flora picture," she
+announced, breathlessly.
+
+"Is Prexy here?" they demanded, with much excitement.
+
+"She is so," answered Sallie. "She's up in the balcony with Professor
+Green and Miss Pomeroy."
+
+"Well, what do you think, we've been performing before 'Queen Victoria
+and other members of the royal family,' like P. T. Barnum, and never
+knew a thing about it," said a funny snub-nosed senior. "'Daily
+demonstrations by the delighted multitude almost taking the form of
+ovations,'" she proceeded.
+
+"Don't talk so much, Lulu, and help us, for Heaven's sake! Where's Molly
+Brown of Kentucky?" called the distracted President.
+
+Molly came forth at the summons. Overcome by an extreme fatigue, she had
+been sitting on a bench in a remote corner of the room behind some stage
+property.
+
+"Here, little one, take off your shoes and stockings, and get into your
+Flora costume, quick, by order of Prexy."
+
+In a few minutes, Molly stood poised on the tips of her toes in the gold
+frame. The lights went down, the bell rang, and the curtains were parted
+by two freshmen appointed for this duty. For one brief fleeting glance
+the audience saw the immortal Flora floating on thin air apparently, and
+then the entire gymnasium was in total darkness.
+
+A wave of conversation and giggling filled the void of blackness, while
+on the stage the seniors were rushing around, falling over each other
+and calling for matches.
+
+"Who's light manager?"
+
+"Where's Lulu?"
+
+"Lulu! Lulu!"
+
+"Where's the switch?"
+
+"Lulu's asleep at the switch," sang a chorus of juniors from the
+audience.
+
+"I'm not," called Lulu. "I'm here on the job, but the switch doesn't
+work."
+
+"Telephone to the engineer."
+
+"Light the gas somebody."
+
+But there were no matches, and the only man in the house was in the
+balcony. However, he managed to grope his way to the steps leading to
+the platform, where he suddenly struck a match, to the wild joy of the
+audience. Choruses from various quarters had been calling:
+
+"Don't blow out the gas!"
+
+"Keep it dark!"
+
+And one girl created a laugh by announcing:
+
+"The present picture represents a 'Nocturne' by Whistler."
+
+Then the janitor began lighting gas jets along the wall and finally a
+lonesome gas jet on the stage faintly illumined the scene of confusion.
+
+The gigantic gilt frame outlined a dark picture of hurrying forms, and
+huddled in the foreground lay a limp white object, for Botticelli's
+"Flora" had fainted away.
+
+The confusion increased. The President joined the excited seniors and
+presently the doctor appeared, fetched by the Professor of English
+Literature. "Flora" was lifted onto a couch; her own gray cape thrown
+over her, and opening her eyes in a few minutes, she became Molly Brown
+of Kentucky. She gazed confusedly at the faces hovering over her in the
+half light; the doctor at one side, the President at the other; Mary
+Stewart and Professor Green standing at the foot and a crowd of seniors
+like a mob in the background.
+
+Suddenly Molly sat up. She brushed her auburn hair from her face and
+pointed vaguely toward the hall:
+
+"I saw her when she----" she began. Her eye caught Professor Green's,
+and she fell back on the couch.
+
+"You saw what, my child?" asked the President kindly.
+
+"I reckon I was just dreaming," answered Molly, her Southern accent more
+marked than ever before.
+
+The President of the senior class now hurried up to the President of
+Wellington University.
+
+"Miss Walker," she exclaimed, her voice trembling with indignation, "we
+have just found out, or, rather, the engineer has discovered, that some
+one has cut the electric wires. It was a clean cut, right through. I do
+think it was an outrage." She was almost sobbing in her righteous
+anger.
+
+The President's face looked very grave.
+
+"Are you sure of this?" she asked.
+
+"It's true, ma'am," put in the engineer, who had followed close on the
+heels of the senior.
+
+Without a word, President Walker rose and walked to the centre of the
+platform. With much subdued merriment the students were leaving the
+gymnasium in a body. Lifting a small chair standing near, she rapped
+with it on the floor for order. Instantly, every student faced the
+platform, and those who had not reached the aisles sat down.
+
+"Young ladies," began the President in her calm, cultivated tones that
+could strike terror to the heart of any erring student, "I wish to speak
+a word with you before you leave the gymnasium to-night. Probably most
+of you are aware by this time that the accident to the electric lighting
+was really not an accident at all, but the result of a deliberate act by
+some one in this room. Of course, I realize, that in so large a body of
+students as we have at Wellington University there must, of necessity,
+be some black sheep. These we endeavor, by every effort, to regenerate
+and by mid-years it is usually not a difficult matter to discover those
+who are in earnest and those who consider Wellington College merely a
+place of amusement. Those who do consider it as such, naturally, do
+not--er--remain with us after mid-years."
+
+To Molly, sitting on the platform, and to other trembling freshmen in
+the audience, the President seemed for the moment like a great and stern
+judge, who had appointed mid-years as the time for a general execution
+of criminals.
+
+"I consider," went on the speaker in slow and even tones, "idleness a
+most unfortunate quality, and I am prepared to combat it and to convince
+any of my girls who show that tendency that good hard work and only good
+hard work will bring success. A great many girls come here preferring
+idleness and learn to repent it--before mid-years."
+
+A wave of subdued laughter swept over the audience.
+
+"But," said the President, her voice growing louder and sterner, "young
+ladies, I am not prepared to combat chicanery and trickery by anything
+except the most severe measures, and if there is one among you who
+thinks and believes she can commit such despicable follies as that
+which has been done to-night, and escape--I would say to her that she is
+mistaken. I shall not endure such treachery. It shall be rooted out. For
+the honor and the illustrious name of this institution, I now ask each
+one of you to help me, and if there is one among you who knows the
+culprit and does not report it to me at once, I shall hold that girl as
+responsible as the real culprit. You may go now, and think well over
+what I have said."
+
+The President retired and the students filed soberly and quietly from
+the gymnasium.
+
+"How do you feel now, dear?" asked President Walker, leaning over Molly
+and taking her hand.
+
+"Much better, thank you," answered Molly, timidly.
+
+"Could you hear what I was saying to the girls?" continued the
+President, looking at her closely.
+
+"Yes," faltered Molly.
+
+"Think over it, then. And you had better stay in bed a few days until
+you feel better. Have you prescribed for her, doctor?"
+
+The doctor nodded. He was a bluff, kindly Scotchman.
+
+"A little anaemic and tired out. A good tonic and more sleep will put her
+to rights."
+
+Mary Stewart had telephoned for a carriage to take Molly home, and Judy,
+filled with passionate devotion when anything was the matter, hurried
+ahead to turn down the bed, lay out gown and wrapper and make a cup of
+bouillon out of hot water and a beef juice capsule; and finally assist
+her beloved friend--whom she occasionally chastened--to remove her
+clothes and get into bed.
+
+"I may not have many chances to wait on you, Molly, darling," she
+exclaimed, when Molly protested at so much devotion. "I may not have a
+chance after mid-years."
+
+If she had mentioned death itself, she could not have used a more tragic
+tone.
+
+"Judy," cried Molly, slipping her arms around her friend's neck, "I'm
+not going to let you go at mid-years if I have to study for two."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+AN INSPIRATION.
+
+
+"This is like having a bedroom _salon_," exclaimed Molly with a
+hospitable smile to some dozen guests who adorned the divans and easy
+chairs, the floor and window sills of her room.
+
+Surely there was nothing Molly liked better than to entertain, and when
+she had callers, she always entertained them with refreshments of some
+kind. Often it had to be crackers and sweet chocolate, and she had even
+been reduced to tea. But usually her family kept her supplied with good
+things and her larder was generally well stocked.
+
+She lay in bed, propped up with pillows, and scattered about the bed
+were text-books and papers.
+
+"You've been studying again, you naughty child," exclaimed Mary Stewart,
+shaking her finger. "Didn't Dr. McLean tell you to go easy for the next
+week?"
+
+"Go easy, indeed," laughed Molly. "You might as well tell a trapeze
+actor to do the giant-swing and hold on tight at the same time. But it's
+worth losing a few days to find out what loving friends I have. Your
+pink roses are the loveliest of all," she added, squeezing her friend's
+hand.
+
+"Tell us exactly who sent you each bunch?" demanded Jessie, passing
+a box of ginger-snaps, while Judy performed miracles with a tea ball,
+a small kettle and a varied assortment of cups and saucers. "I have
+a right to ask you," continued Jessica, "because you asked the same
+question of me last Tuesday when two boxes came."
+
+"No suitor sent me any of these, Mistress Jessica," answered Molly,
+"because I haven't any. Miss Stewart sent the pink ones, and the
+President of the senior class sent the red ones. Judy brought me the
+double violets and Nance the lilies of the valley, bless them both, and
+another senior the pot of pansies. The seniors have certainly been
+sweet and lovely."
+
+"There's one you haven't accounted for," interrupted Jessie.
+
+"The violets?" asked Molly, blushing slightly.
+
+"Oh, ho!" cried Jessie in her high, musical voice, "trying to crawl,
+were you? You can't deceive old Grandmamma Sharp-eyes. Honor bright,
+who sent the violets?"
+
+"To tell you the truth, I don't know. I suspected Frances Andrews, but
+when I thanked her for them, she looked horribly embarrassed and said
+she hadn't sent them. I was afraid she would go down and get some after
+my break, but thank goodness, she had the good taste not to."
+
+"You mean to say they were anonymous?" demanded Jessie.
+
+"I mean to say that thing, but I suppose some of the seniors who
+preferred to remain unknown sent them."
+
+"It's just possible," put in Mary, and the subject was dropped.
+
+"Let's talk about the only thing worth talking about just now," broke
+in Judy. "The Flopping of Flora; or, Who Cut the Wires?"
+
+"Why talk about it?" said Molly. "You could never reach any conclusion,
+and guessing doesn't help."
+
+"Oh, just as a matter of interest," replied Judy. "For instance, if we
+were detectives and put on the case, how would we go about finding the
+criminal?"
+
+"I should look for a silly mischief-maker," said Mary Stewart. "Some
+foolish girl who wanted to do a clever thing. Freshmen at boys' colleges
+are often like that."
+
+"You don't think it was a freshman, do you, Miss Stewart?" cried Mabel
+Hinton, turning her round spectacles on Mary like a large, serious owl.
+
+"Oh, no, indeed. I was only joking. I haven't the remotest notion who it
+is."
+
+"If I were a detective on the case," said Mabel Hinton, "I should look
+for a junior who was jealous of the seniors. Some one who had a grudge,
+perhaps."
+
+"If I were a detective," announced Margaret Wakefield, in her most
+judicial manner, "I should look for some one who had a grudge against
+Molly."
+
+"Of course; I never thought of that. It did happen just as Molly was
+about to give the encore, didn't it?"
+
+"It did," answered Margaret.
+
+The girls had all stopped chattering in duets and trios to listen.
+
+"Has any one in the world the heart to have a grudge against you, you
+sweet child?" exclaimed Mary Stewart, placing her rather large, strong
+hand over Molly's.
+
+The young freshman looked uncomfortable.
+
+"I hope not," she said, smiling faintly. "I never meant to give offence
+to any one."
+
+Pretty soon the company dispersed and Molly was left alone with her two
+best friends.
+
+"Judy," she said, "will you please settle down to work this instant? You
+know you have to write your theme and get it in by to-morrow noon, and
+you haven't touched it so far."
+
+Nance was already deep in her English. Molly turned her face to the wall
+and sighed.
+
+"I can't do it," she whispered to herself; "I simply cannot do it." But
+what she referred to only she herself knew.
+
+In the meantime Judy chewed the end of her pencil and looked absently at
+her friend's back. Presently she gave the pad on her lap an impatient
+toss in one direction and the pencil in another, and flung herself on
+the foot of Molly's couch.
+
+"Don't scold me, Molly. I never compose, except under inspiration, and
+inspiration doesn't seem to be on very good terms with me just now. She
+hasn't visited me in an age."
+
+"Nonsense! You know perfectly well you can write that theme if you set
+your mind to it, Judy Kean. You are just too lazy. You haven't even
+chosen a subject, I'll wager anything."
+
+"No," said Judy sadly.
+
+"Why don't you write a short story? You have plenty of material with all
+your travel----"
+
+"I know what I'll write," Judy interrupted her excitedly, "The Motives
+of Crime."
+
+"How absurd," objected Molly. "Besides, don't you think that's a little
+personal just now, when the whole school is talking about the
+wire-cutter?"
+
+"Not at all. We are all trying to run down the criminal, anyhow. I shall
+take the five great motives which lead to crime: anger, jealousy,
+hatred, envy and greed. It will make an interesting discourse. You'll
+see if it doesn't."
+
+"The idea of your writing on such a subject," laughed Molly. "You're not
+a criminal lawyer or a prosecuting attorney."
+
+"I admit it," answered Judy, "and I suppose Lawyer Margaret Wakefield
+ought to be the one to handle the subject. But, nevertheless, I am
+fired with inspiration, and I intend to write it myself. I shall not see
+you again until the deed is done, if it takes all night. By the way,
+lend me some coffee, will you? I'm all out, and I always make some on
+the samovar for keeping-awake purposes when I'm going to work at night."
+
+"I don't know what I'm going to do with you, Judy," sighed Molly, as the
+incorrigible girl sailed out of the room, a jar of coffee under one arm
+and her writing pad under the other.
+
+At first she wrote intermittently, rumpling up her hair with both hands
+and chewing her pencil savagely; but gradually her thoughts took form
+and the pencil moved steadily along, almost like "spirit-writing" it
+seemed to her, until the essay was done. It was half-past three o'clock
+and rain and hail beat a dismal tattoo on her window pane. She had not
+even noticed the storm, having hung a bed quilt over her window and
+tacked a dressing gown across the transom to conceal the light of the
+student's lamp from the watchful matron. Putting out her light and
+removing all signs of disobedience, she now cheerfully went to bed.
+
+"Motives for crime," she chuckled to herself. "I suppose I'm committing
+a small crime for disobeying the ten-o'clock rule, and my motive is to
+hand in a theme on time to-morrow."
+
+The next morning when Judy read over her night's work, she enjoyed it
+very much. "It's really quite interesting," she said to herself. "I
+really don't see how I ever did it."
+
+She delivered the essay at Miss Pomeroy's office and felt vastly proud
+when she laid it on the table near the desk. Her own cleverness told her
+that she had done a good thing.
+
+"I don't believe Wordsworth ever enjoyed his own works more than I do
+mine," she observed, as she strolled across the campus. "And because
+I've been _bon enfant_, I shall now take a rest and go forth in search
+of amusement." She turned her face toward the village, where a kind of
+Oriental bazaar was being held by some Syrians. It would be fun, she
+thought, to look over their bangles and slippers and bead necklaces.
+
+In the meantime, Miss Pomeroy was engaged in reading over Judy's theme,
+which, having been handed in last, had come to her notice first. Such is
+the luck of the procrastinator.
+
+She smiled when she saw the title, but the theme interested her greatly,
+and presently she tucked it into her long reticule, familiar to every
+Wellington girl, and hastened over to the President's house.
+
+"Emma," she said (the two women were old college mates, and were Emma
+and Louise in private), "I think this might interest you. It's a theme
+by one of my freshman girls. A strange subject for a girl of seventeen,
+but she's quite a remarkable person, if she would only apply herself.
+Somehow, it seems, whether consciously or unconsciously, to bear on what
+has been occupying us all so much since last Friday."
+
+The President put on her glasses and began to read Judy's theme. Every
+now and then she gave a low, amused chuckle.
+
+"The child writes like Marie Corelli," she exclaimed, laughing. "And yet
+it is clever and it does suggest----" she paused and frowned. "I wonder
+if she could and doesn't dare tell?" she added slowly.
+
+"I wonder," echoed Miss Pomeroy.
+
+"Is she one of the Queen's Cottage girls? They appear to be rather a
+remarkable lot this year."
+
+"Some of them are very bright," said Miss Pomeroy.
+
+"Louise," said the President suddenly, "Frances Andrews is one of the
+girls at that house, is she not?"
+
+"Yes," nodded the other, with a queer look on her face.
+
+"She's clever," said the President. "She's deep, Emma. It is impossible
+to make any definite statement about her. One must go very slowly in
+these things. But after what happened last year, you know----"
+
+She paused. Even with her most intimate friend she disliked to discuss
+certain secrets of the institution openly.
+
+"Yes," said Miss Pomeroy, "she is either very deep or entirely
+innocent."
+
+"Some one is guilty," sighed the President. "I do wish I knew who it
+was."
+
+Judy's theme not only received especial mention by Miss Pomeroy, but it
+was read aloud to the entire class and was later published in the
+college paper, _The Commune_, to Judy's everlasting joy and glory. She
+was congratulated about it on all sides and her heart was swollen with
+pride.
+
+"I think I'll take to writing in dead earnest," she said to Molly,
+"because I have the happy faculty of writing on subjects I don't know
+anything about, and no one knows the difference."
+
+"I wish you'd take to doing anything in dead earnest," Molly replied,
+giving her friend a little impatient shake.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+PLANNING AND WISHING.
+
+
+"Mrs. Anna Oldham, the famous suffragette, will speak in the gymnasium
+on Saturday afternoon, at four o'clock, on 'Woman's Suffrage.' All those
+interested in this subject are invited to be present."
+
+Molly and Judy, with a crowd of friends, on the way from one classroom
+to another one busy Friday had paused in front of the bulletin board in
+the main corridor.
+
+"Mrs. Anna Oldham?" they repeated, trying to remember where they had
+heard the name before.
+
+"Why, Judy," whispered Molly, "that must be Nance's mother. Do you--do
+you suppose Nance knows?"
+
+"If she does, she has never mentioned it. You know she never tells
+anything. She's a perfect clam. But this, somehow, is different."
+
+Both girls thought of their own mothers immediately. Surely they would
+have shouted aloud such news as Nance had.
+
+"Shall we mention it to her, or do you think we'd better wait and let
+her introduce the subject?" asked Molly.
+
+"Surely she corresponds with her own mother," exclaimed Judy without
+answering Molly's question.
+
+"Her father writes to her about once a week, I know; but I don't think
+she hears very often from Mrs. Oldham. You see, her mother's away most
+of the time lecturing."
+
+"Lecturing--fiddlesticks!" cried Judy indignantly. "What kind of a
+mother is she, I'd like to know? I'll bet you anything Nance doesn't
+know at all she's going to be here. I think we ought to tell her,
+Molly."
+
+"Poor Nance," answered Molly. "I don't know which would mortify her
+most: to know or not to know. Suppose we find out in some tactful
+roundabout way whether she knows, and then I'll offer to go in with you
+Saturday night and give her mother my bed."
+
+Judy cordially consented to this arrangement, having a three-quarter bed
+in her small room, although secretly she was not fond of sharing it and
+preferred both her bed and her room to herself.
+
+It was not until much later in the day that they saw Nance, who appeared
+to be radiantly and buoyantly happy. Her usually quiet face was aglow
+with a soft light, and as she passed her two friends she waved a letter
+at them gayly.
+
+"You see, she knows and she is delighted," exclaimed Judy. "Just as we
+would be. Oh, Molly, wait until you see my mother, if you want to meet a
+thing of beauty and a joy forever. You'd think I was her mother instead
+of her being mine, she is so little and sweet and dainty."
+
+Molly laughed.
+
+"Isn't she coming up soon? I'd dearly love to meet her."
+
+"I'm afraid not. You know papa is always flying off on trips and mamma
+goes with him everywhere. I used to, too, before I decided to be
+educated. It was awfully exciting. We often got ready on a day's
+notice to go thousands of miles, to San Francisco or Alaska or Mexico,
+anywhere. Papa is exactly like me, or, rather, I am exactly like him,
+only he is a hundred times better looking and more fascinating and
+charming than I can ever hope to be."
+
+"You funny child," exclaimed Molly; "how do you know you are not all
+those things right now?"
+
+"I know I'm not," sighed Judy. "Papa is brilliant, and not a bit lazy.
+He works all the time."
+
+"So would you if you only wanted to. You only choose to be lazy. If I
+had your mind and opportunities there is no end to what I would do."
+
+Judy looked at her in surprise.
+
+"Why, Molly, do you think I have any mind?" she asked.
+
+"One of the best in the freshman class," answered her friend. "But look,
+here are some letters!"
+
+She paused in the hall of Queen's Cottage to look over a pile of mail
+which had been brought that afternoon.
+
+There were several letters for the girls; Judy's bi-weeklies from both
+her parents, who wrote to her assiduously, and Molly's numerous home
+epistles from her sisters and mother. But there were two, one for each
+of the girls, with the Exmoor postmark on them.
+
+Molly opened hers first.
+
+"Oh, Judy," she exclaimed, "do you remember that nice Exmoor Sophomore
+named 'Upton?' He wants to come over Saturday afternoon to call and go
+walking. Dodo has probably written the same thing to you. I see you have
+an Exmoor letter."
+
+"He has," answered Judy, perusing her note. "He wishes the honor of my
+company for a short walk. Evidently they don't think we have many
+engagements since they don't give us time to answer their notes."
+
+"Judy!"
+
+"Molly!"
+
+The two girls looked at each other for a brief moment and then broke
+into a laugh.
+
+"Nance's letter must have been from one of the others, Andy McLean,
+perhaps, that was why she was so----"
+
+Judy paused. Somehow, it didn't seem very kind to imply that poor Nance
+was elated over her first beau.
+
+"Dear, sweet old Nance!" cried Molly, her heart warming to her friend.
+"She will probably have them by the dozens some of these days."
+
+"I'm sure I should camp on her trail if I were a man," said Judy
+loyally. "But, Molly," she added, laughing again, "what are we to do
+about old Mrs. Oldham?"
+
+"Oh, dear! I hadn't thought of that. And poor Nance would have enjoyed
+the walk so much more than a learned discourse on woman's rights."
+
+Just before supper time Nance burst into the room. She was humming a
+waltz tune; her cheeks looked flushed, and she went briskly over to the
+mirror and glanced at her image quickly, while she took off her tam and
+sweater.
+
+The girls had never seen her looking so pretty. They waited for her to
+mention the note, but she talked of other things until Judy, always
+impatient to force events, exclaimed:
+
+"What was that note you were waving at us this afternoon, Nance?"
+
+"Oh, that was from----"
+
+A tap on the door interrupted her and Margaret Wakefield entered.
+
+"Oh, Nance," she cried, "I am so excited over your mother's coming to
+speak at college to-morrow afternoon. Isn't it fine of her? It's Miss
+Bowles, Professor in Advanced Math., who is bringing her, you know, of
+course?"
+
+Except that her face turned perfectly white, Nance showed no sign
+whatever that she had received a staggering blow, but her two friends
+felt for her deeply and Molly came to her rescue.
+
+"By the way, Nance, dearest," she said, "I thought you might want to
+have your mother with you to-morrow night, and I was going to offer you
+my bed and turn in with Judy."
+
+"Thanks, Molly," answered Nance, huskily; "that would be nice."
+
+Very little ever escaped the alert eyes of Margaret Wakefield; but if
+she noticed anything strange in Nance's manner, she made no comment
+whatever. She was a fine girl, full of sympathy and understanding, with
+a certain well-bred dignity of manner that is seldom seen in a young
+girl.
+
+"It will be quite a gala event at Queen's if Mrs. Oldham eats supper
+here," she said gently; "but no doubt she will be claimed by some of the
+faculty." Then she slipped quietly out of the room, just in time, for
+quiet, self-contained Nance burst suddenly into a storm of weeping and
+flung herself on the bed.
+
+"And she never even took the trouble to tell me," she sobbed brokenly.
+"She has probably forgotten that I am even going to Wellington."
+
+It was a difficult moment for Molly and Judy. Would it be more tactful
+to slip out of the room or to try and comfort Nance? After all, she had
+had very little sympathy in her life, and sympathy was what she craved
+and love, too, Molly felt sure of this, and with an instinct stronger
+than reason, she slipped down beside her friend on the couch and put her
+arms around her.
+
+"Darling, sweetest Nance," she cried, "I am sure the message will come.
+Perhaps she'll telegraph, and they will telephone from the village. Judy
+and I love you so dearly, it breaks our hearts to see you cry like this.
+Doesn't it, Judy?"
+
+"Indeed, it does," answered Judy, who was kneeling at the side of the
+couch with her cheek against Nance's hand.
+
+It was a comfort to Nance to realize that she had gained the friendship
+and affection of these two loving, warm-hearted girls. Never in her life
+had she met any girls like them, and presently the bitterness in her
+heart began to melt away.
+
+"Perhaps she will telegraph," she said, drying her eyes. "It was silly
+of me to take on so, but, you see, I had a little shock--I'm all right
+now. You're dears, both of you."
+
+Judy went into her own room and returned in a moment with a large bottle
+of German cologne. Filling the stationary wash basin with cold water she
+poured in a liberal quantity of the cologne.
+
+"Now, dearest Nance," she said, "bathe your face in that, and then
+powder with Molly's pink rice powder, and all will be as if it never had
+been," she added, smiling.
+
+The others smiled, too. Somehow, Nance's outburst had done her more good
+than harm. For the first time in her life she had been coddled and
+sympathized with and petted. It was almost worth while to have suffered
+to have gained such rewards. After all, there were some pleasant things
+in life. For instance, the note which had come to her that afternoon
+from young Andy McLean, son of Dr. McLean, the college physician. To
+think that she, "the little gray mouse," as her father had often called
+her, had inspired any one with a desire to see her again. It was almost
+impossible to believe, but there was the young Scotchman's note to
+refute all contrary arguments.
+
+  "DEAR MISS OLDHAM," it said, in a good, round handwriting, "I
+  have been wanting so much to see you again since our jolly day at
+  Exmoor. I am bringing some fellows over on Saturday to supper at
+  my father's. If you should happen to be in about four o'clock,
+  may I call? How about a walk before supper? I can't tell you how
+  disappointed I'll be if you have another engagement.
+
+                                  "Yours sincerely,
+                                          "ANDREW MCLEAN, 2D."
+
+Of course, she would have to give up the walk now, but it was pleasant
+to have been remembered and perhaps he would come again.
+
+That night at supper Nance was unusually bright and talkative. She
+answered all the many questions concerning her famous mother so easily
+and pleasantly that even Margaret Wakefield must have been deceived.
+
+The two sophomores at Queen's were giving a dance that evening, and
+while the girls sat in the long sitting room waiting for the guests to
+arrive, Judy took occasion to whisper to Molly:
+
+"Why should she have to appear at the lecture, anyhow?"
+
+"Because it would be disrespectful not to," answered Molly. "She must be
+there, of course. Would you go gallivanting off with a young man if your
+mother was going to give a lecture here?"
+
+"I should say not; but that's different."
+
+"No, no," persisted Molly; "it's never different when it's your mother,
+even when she doesn't behave like one. Can't you see that Nance would
+rather die than have people know that her mother isn't exactly like
+other mothers?"
+
+The next day was one of the busiest in the week for Molly. Two of her
+morning hours she spent coaching Judy in Latin. Then there were her lace
+collars to be done up, her stockings to be darned; a trip to be made
+to the library, where she stood in line for more than twenty minutes
+waiting for a certain volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and spent
+more than an hour extracting notes on "Norse Mythology." It was well on
+toward lunch time when she finally hastened across the campus to Queen's
+to fill some orders for "cloud-bursts," which were intended to be part
+of the refreshments for certain Saturday evening suppers.
+
+So weary was she and so intent on getting through in what she called
+"schedule time," that she almost ran into Professor Edwin Green before
+she even recognized him.
+
+"Oh, I beg your pardon," she exclaimed, a wave of color sweeping over
+her pale face.
+
+"Why are you hurrying so fast on Saturday?" he asked pleasantly. "Don't
+you ever give yourself a holiday?"
+
+"Oh, yes; lots of them," she answered; "but I'm a little rushed to-day
+with some extra duties."
+
+She thought of the "cloud-bursts," which must be made and packed in
+boxes by the afternoon.
+
+"You are overdoing it, Miss Brown. You are not obeying the doctor's
+orders. When I see you there to-night I shall confront you in his
+presence with the charge of disobedience."
+
+"There to-night?" repeated Molly.
+
+"Certainly. Have you forgotten about the supper to-night?"
+
+"But I'm not invited."
+
+"Oh, yes, you are," answered the Professor, with a knowing smile.
+"You'll probably find the note waiting for you. And you must be sure and
+come, because the McLean's are real characters. They will interest you,
+I am sure."
+
+"Poor Nance," was Molly's first thought. And her second thought was: "If
+her mother is invited out to dine, she can accept." Her face brightened
+at this, and without knowing it, she smiled.
+
+Molly led such a busy, concentrated life, that when she did relax for a
+few moments, she sometimes seemed absent-minded and inattentive. The
+Professor was looking at her closely.
+
+"You are pleased at being asked to the McLean's?" he said.
+
+"I was thinking of something else," she said. "I was wondering if, after
+all, Nance couldn't arrange to go. Of course, she'll be invited, too;
+but, you see, her mother is to be here."
+
+"Is Mrs. Oldham, the Suffragette, her mother?" he asked in surprise.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Mrs. Oldham is to dine at the President's to-night. I know, because I
+was asked to meet her, but"--he looked at her very hard indeed--"I had
+another engagement."
+
+"Then Nance can go. Isn't it beautiful? I am so glad!" Molly clasped her
+hands joyously.
+
+Professor Green gave her such a beautiful, beaming smile that it fairly
+transfigured his face.
+
+"You are a very good friend, Miss Brown," he said gently; "but would
+not Miss Oldham rather be with her mother, that is, in case the
+President should invite her, too, which is highly probable?"
+
+"Oh, I hope she won't. You see, Nance has never had much pleasure with
+young people, and"--it was difficult to explain--"and her mother----"
+she hesitated.
+
+"Her mother, being the most famous clubwoman in America, hasn't spent
+much time at home? Is that it?"
+
+"Well, yes," admitted Molly. "In fact, she hardly remembers she has a
+daughter," she added indignantly, and then bit her lip, feeling that she
+was bordering on disloyalty.
+
+The Professor cleared his throat and thrust his hands into his pockets.
+He was really very boyish-looking to be so old.
+
+"So you have set your heart on Miss Oldham's going to the supper
+to-night?" he said gravely.
+
+"If there is any fun going, Judy and I would be sorry to have her miss
+it," she answered. "And I don't suppose it would be thrilling to dine at
+the President's with a lot of learned older people."
+
+"I'm just on my way to President Walker's now," pursued the Professor
+thoughtfully. "In fact, I was just about to deliver my regrets in
+person regarding dinner to-night, and having some business to attend
+to with Miss Walker, I thought I would call. While I am there, it is
+possible--well, in fact, Miss Brown, there should be a good fairy
+provided by Providence to grant all unselfish wishes. She would not be
+a busy fairy by any means, I am afraid, except when she hovered around
+you. Good morning," and lifting his hat, the Professor hastened away,
+leaving Molly in a state of half-pleased perplexity.
+
+On the table in her room she found a note from Mrs. McLean, inviting her
+to supper that evening. Two other invitations from the same lady were
+handed to Nance and Judy, but Nance was at that moment seated at her
+desk accepting an invitation from Miss Walker to dine there with her
+mother at seven. She was writing the answer very carefully and slowly,
+in her best handwriting, and on her best monogram note paper.
+
+"Do you think that's good enough?" she demanded, handing the note to
+Molly to read.
+
+"Why, yes," answered Molly, looking it over hastily while she prepared
+to write her own answer to Mrs. McLean, and then she threw herself into
+the business of "cloud-bursts."
+
+Just as the lunch gong sounded, Bridget, the Irish waitress at President
+Walker's house, appeared at their half-open door.
+
+"A note for Miss Oldham," she said; "and the President says no answer is
+necessary. Good afternoon, ma'am; they'll be waitin' lunch if I don't
+make haste."
+
+  "'MY DEAR MISS OLDHAM,'" Nance read aloud. "'I have just learned
+  that you are invited to a young people's supper party to-night at
+  Mrs. McLean's, and I therefore hasten to release you from your
+  engagement to dine with me. Your mother will spare you, I am sure,
+  on this one evening, and I hope you will enjoy yourself with your
+  friends. With kindest regards, believe me,
+
+                                    "'Cordially yours,
+                                           "'EMMA K. WALKER.'"
+
+"Isn't she a brick?" cried Judy, dancing around the room and clapping
+her hands.
+
+"It was awfully nice of her," said Nance thoughtfully. "I wonder how
+she knew I was invited to the McLean's?"
+
+"Some good fairy must have told her," answered Molly, half to herself,
+as she stirred brown sugar into a saucepan.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+THE MCLEAN SUPPER.
+
+
+Nance did get a telegram from her mother that afternoon. It was very
+vague about trains and merely said: "Arrive in Wellington about two this
+afternoon. Meet me. Mother."
+
+Fortunately, the girls were as familiar with the train schedule as with
+their own class schedules, and knew exactly what train she meant.
+
+"It's the two-fifteen, of course," announced Judy. "Shall we go down
+with you to meet her, Nance?"
+
+"Why, yes; I think mother would like that very much," answered Nance,
+pleased with the idea. "She loves attention."
+
+Therefore, when the two-fifteen pulled into Wellington station, our
+three freshmen, together with Margaret Wakefield heading a deputation
+from the Freshman Suffrage Club, and Miss Bowles, teacher in Higher
+Mathematics, were waiting on the platform.
+
+"There she is!" cried Nance, with a note of eagerness in her voice that
+made Molly's heart ache.
+
+They all moved forward to meet a gaunt, tired-looking woman, with a
+sallow, faded complexion and a nervous manner; but her brilliant,
+clear brown eyes offset her unprepossessing appearance. Glowing with
+intelligence and with feverish energy they flashed their message to
+the world, like two mariner's lights at sea, and those who caught that
+burning glance forgot the tired face and distraught manner of the woman
+of clubs.
+
+"How are you, my dear?" she said, kissing Nance quite casually, without
+noticing where the kiss was going to land, and scarcely glancing at her
+daughter.
+
+She had evidently been making notes on the trip down and still carried
+a pencil and some scrap paper in one hand, while the other grasped
+her suit case, of which Nance promptly relieved her. She shook hands
+cordially with Miss Bowles, and the girls whom Nance introduced,
+searching the face of each, as a recruiting officer might examine
+applicants for the army. Then they all climbed into the bus and
+presently she plunged into a discussion with Miss Bowles on the advance
+of the suffrage movement in England and America.
+
+"And this is the woman," whispered Judy to Molly dramatically, "who has
+spoken before legislatures and represented the suffrage party abroad and
+been regent of Colonial Dames and President of National Societies for
+the Purification of Politics and--and lecturer on 'The History of
+Legislation----'"
+
+"How under the sun can you remember it all?" interrupted Molly.
+
+"I don't think I have got them straight," answered Judy, "but they all
+sound alike, anyhow, so what's the odds?"
+
+Molly discreetly took herself off to Judy's room that afternoon, leaving
+Nance and her mother together for the short time that elapsed before the
+lecture was to begin. But Nance soon followed them.
+
+"Mother wants to be alone," she said. "She has some notes to look over,
+and she has never read her day-before-yesterday's mail yet. By the way,
+you are not going to the lecture, are you?"
+
+"Of course we are," answered the girls in the same breath.
+
+"But the walk?"
+
+"That can be postponed until to-morrow," answered Molly promptly. "The
+boys are going to spend the night at the McLean's, you know."
+
+Thus Nance's happiness was all arranged for by her two devoted friends.
+
+The gymnasium was only half full when the girls escorted "the most
+distinguished clubwoman in America" across the campus and into the great
+hall. The freshmen had turned out in full force, partly to do honor to
+Nance and partly because President Margaret Wakefield had been talking
+up the lecture beforehand. Miss Walker and others of the faculty were
+there, and in a far gallery seat Molly caught a glimpse of Professor
+Green, whose glance seemed to be turned unseeingly in her direction.
+
+If Judy and Molly had had any fears as to how the absent-minded member
+of clubs was going to conduct herself on the platform, all doubts were
+soon dispelled. After the introduction made by the President, the
+lecturer's nervous manner entirely disappeared. She approached the front
+of the platform with a composure marvelous to see, and in a cultivated,
+trained voice--not her everyday voice, by any means--she delivered an
+address of fervid and passionate eloquence; a plea for woman's rights
+and universal suffrage so convincing that the most obstinate "anti"
+would have been won over. After the lecture there was an impromptu
+reception on the platform; then tea at Miss Bowles' room and at last
+home to dress for the supper parties.
+
+Judy and Molly had hastened ahead, leaving Nance to tear her mother from
+her circle of admirers with the plea that she would be too late. At
+twenty minutes before seven they hurried in, Mrs. Oldham looking so
+frail and exhausted that it hardly seemed possible she could keep up.
+While her poor daughter dashed into her own clothes, her mother sat limp
+and inert during the process of having her hair beautifully arranged
+with lightning speed by the deft and handy Judy, while Molly gave
+the weary woman aromatic spirits of ammonia in a glass of water and
+presently hooked her into a dinner dress which was really very handsome,
+of black lace over gray satin.
+
+"Thank you, my dears," she said amiably, giving an absent-minded glance
+at herself in the glass. "You are very kind, I am sure. I am such a
+busy woman I have little time to spare for beautifying; but I must say
+Miss Kean has improved my appearance by that high arrangement of hair."
+
+They were surprised that she remembered Judy's name until they learned
+from Nance later that such was her training in meeting strangers, she
+never forgot a name or face.
+
+"Now, where am I going?" continued the famous clubwoman. "You will drop
+me there, you say? You are going somewhere, Nance?"
+
+"Yes, mother," answered Nance patiently. It was the third time she had
+told her mother that fact.
+
+At last they got her be-nubiaed and be-caped, and at exactly two minutes
+past seven o'clock deposited her at the President's front door.
+
+Then, with feelings of indescribable relief, they ran gayly across the
+campus, chattering and laughing like magpies.
+
+Ten minutes later they were seated at Mrs. McLean's large round supper
+table.
+
+Professor Green, seated just opposite Nance, gave her happy, glowing
+face a long questioning look, then turning to Molly next to him, he
+said:
+
+"She is enjoying it, isn't she?"
+
+"Yes," whispered Molly; "thanks to you, good fairy."
+
+"But the wish must come before the fairy acts, so that, after all, one
+is far more important than the other," he replied.
+
+"Wasn't the lecture wonderful?" asked Molly.
+
+"Very remarkable," he answered. "Women like that should take to the
+platform and leave families to other women to rear."
+
+"They certainly can't do both," said Molly, remembering poor Nance's
+outburst the afternoon before.
+
+"And if you have the vote," went on the Professor in a louder voice, and
+with a kind of mock solemnity, "what will you do with it?"
+
+"They'll pitch all the men out of office, Professor," called Dr. McLean,
+who had overheard this question; "and they'll do all the work, too, and
+we men will begin to enjoy life a little. We've been slaves long enough.
+I'm for the emancipation of men," he cried, "and Woman's Suffrage is the
+only way to bring it about."
+
+They all laughed at this original view of the question, and Mrs. McLean,
+a charming woman with a beautiful Scotch accent, impossible to imitate,
+observed:
+
+"My dear, the women are just as great slaves as the men, and they work
+much harder, if only you knew it. But you don't because we are careful
+to conceal it. There are _vera_ few women who do not wear their company
+manners in the presence of a man, take my word for it."
+
+"Is that the reason you are always so charming, Mrs. McLean?" put in
+Professor Green. "But I suspect you have only company manners."
+
+"Not at all, Professor; young Andy will tell you that I can be rude
+enough at times."
+
+Andy McLean, a tall, raw-boned youth with sandy hair and a thin,
+intelligent face, was too deeply engaged in conversation at that moment
+with Nance, to hear his mother's speech.
+
+"Let him alone, he's busy," remarked his father with a humorous smile.
+
+"There's an old song we sing at home," went on Mrs. McLean, "'there's
+nae luck in tha' hoose when the gude man's awa',' but it should be the
+gude wife, for if ever a house goes to sixes and sevens it is my own
+house when I leave the two Andys and take ship for Scotland for a bit of
+a visit. There's nae luck in the hoose for certain, and glad they are
+to get me back again, if 'tis only for their own personal comfort."
+
+"Hoity, toity, mother," exclaimed the doctor; "we're joost as glad to
+have you for your ainsel', my dear."
+
+"Now, is it so, then?" laughed the gude wife. "Well, that's satisfying
+assurance, truly."
+
+They found the doctor and his wife very amusing, and Molly liked
+Lawrence Upton, too, who was seated on her other side. He was a typical
+college youth, tall and stalwart, his brown hair brushed back in a
+pompadour, his clear, ruddy complexion glowing with vigor. In fact, he
+was one of the leading athletes at Exmoor, and had won a championship at
+high jumping and running.
+
+"I hope we'll have some dancing after dinner, Miss Brown," he said. "I
+hear Southern girls fairly float, and I'd like to have a chance to find
+it out."
+
+"I'm afraid you'll be disappointed with me, then," answered Molly. "I've
+been leading at most of the college dances this fall, and it's ruination
+to good dancing, you know. A leader is always pulling against the bit
+like a badly trained horse."
+
+"You look to me like a thoroughbred, Miss Brown," said the gallant
+youth. "I'm not afraid of your pulling against the bit."
+
+There _was_ some dancing after dinner in the McLean's long,
+old-fashioned drawing-room, while Mrs. McLean herself played long
+old-fashioned waltzes on the piano, funny hop polkas and schottisches of
+antique origin. They enjoyed it immensely, however, fitting barn dances
+to the schottisches and mazurkas and two steps to the polkas. Twice
+Professor Green engaged Molly in a waltz. She had anticipated that his
+dancing would be as old-fashioned as the music, but to her surprise, she
+found him thoroughly up to date. In fact, she was obliged to admit that
+the Professor in English Literature danced better than any of the
+younger men at Mrs. McLean's that night.
+
+It was really the most delightful evening Molly had spent since she had
+been at Wellington. To Nance, it was the most delightful evening of her
+entire life and Judy, who always enjoyed the last time best of all, told
+Mrs. McLean when they left that she had never had a better time in her
+life.
+
+After the dance, they sat around the big open fire, roasting chestnuts,
+while Dr. McLean sang a funny song called "Wee Wullie," and Judy
+followed with an absurd "piece" on the piano called "Birdie's Dead," in
+schottische time, which sent them into shrieks of laughter and amused
+Dr. McLean so that he laid his head on his wife's shoulder and wept with
+joy.
+
+Sitting in the inglenook by the fireplace, Professor Green said to
+Molly:
+
+"I have been waiting to say something to you, Miss Brown, and I will ask
+you to regard it as confidential."
+
+She looked up thinking perhaps it was the comic opera he was going to
+talk about, but she was vastly mistaken.
+
+"When, as Botticelli's Flora, you came to that night with the words, 'I
+saw her----' you did not guess, did you, that I, too, had seen her?"
+
+They looked at each other and a flash of understanding passed between
+them. They now shared two secrets.
+
+"I always wanted to tell you," he continued in a low voice, "how much I
+admired your generous silence. You are a very remarkable young woman."
+
+With that the party broke up. Later, stretching her long slenderness in
+the three-quarter bed beside Judy, Molly smiled to herself, and decided
+that some older men were almost as nice as some young ones.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+A MIDNIGHT ADVENTURE.
+
+
+Just about this time a new figure appeared at Wellington College. She
+was known as "inspector of dormitories," and her office was mainly
+sanitary, and did not infringe on the duties of the matrons. The new
+inspector lodged at Queen's, since there was an empty room in that
+establishment, and her name was Miss Steel.
+
+"If she had had her choice of all the names in the English language, she
+could not have chosen a more suitable one," remarked Judy who had taken
+a violent dislike to Miss Steel from the first.
+
+She was indeed a steel-like person, steely eyes, steel-gray hair, pale,
+thin lips, and at her belt metallic chains from which jangled notebook
+and pencil. When she spoke, which was rarely, her voice was sharp and
+incisive, and cut the air like a knife. But her most objectionable
+quality, the girls thought, was that she never made any sound when she
+walked, the reason being that she had rubber heels on her shoes.
+
+The first real encounter the girls had with Miss Steel was at a
+Thanksgiving Eve spread given by the combined G. F. Society, most of
+the members having received bountiful Thanksgiving boxes from home.
+Nance's neglected and lonely father had sent her a five-pound box of
+candy in lieu of the usual box, which takes a woman to plan and pack,
+and Judy's devoted parents, always on the fly, had shipped her
+a box of fruit. All the others had received regular boxes full of
+Thanksgiving cheer, and the feast was to be a grand one. Each member
+invited guests, and by general vote extra ones were asked: Frances
+Andrews, who declined because she was going away, and two freshmen who
+lived in the village, and were working their way through college.
+Judith Blount was to be there by invitation of pretty Jessie Lynch,
+and Molly had invited Mary Stewart.
+
+Most of the girls wore fancy costumes, and Molly's and Nance's large
+room was the scene of an extravaganza. The feast was piled on four study
+tables placed in an unbroken row and covered with a white cloth.
+
+Jessie had worn her famous ballet costume, and was as pretty as a little
+captive sprite. Judith was in a gorgeous Turkish dress consisting of
+full yellow silk trousers, a tunic of transparent net and embroidered
+Turkish slippers. Nance wore her Scotch costume, and at the last minute
+Molly, who had been too busy even to think of a costume all day, dressed
+herself up charmingly like a Tyrolean peasant in what she could collect
+from the other girls.
+
+A great many of the guests had arrived and the room was filled when
+a chambermaid appeared in the doorway with a tray of cards.
+
+"Some gentlemen to call, Miss," she said, endeavoring not to smile at
+a Little Boy Blue and a Little Lord Fauntleroy, who were waltzing
+together.
+
+There were four cards on the tray: "Mr. Edwin Green," "Mr. George
+Theodore Green," "Andrew McLean, 2d," and "Mr. Lawrence Upton."
+
+"Well, of all the strange times to pay a call," exclaimed Molly. "Will
+you say that we are very sorry, but we must be excused this evening,"
+she said to the maid.
+
+The servant bowed and slipped away, while all the girls in the room
+pounced on the cards.
+
+"Well, I never! Four beaux, and one of them a professor!" cried Jessie,
+showing the cards to Judith.
+
+"Miss Brown could hardly claim Cousin Edwin as a beau," said Judith, her
+black eyes snapping. "His younger brother, George, often drags him into
+things, and poor Cousin Edwin consents to go because George is so
+timid, but as for paying a social call on a freshman, even the most
+self-confident freshman could hardly regard a visit from him as that."
+
+"I don't regard it as that," ejaculated Molly.
+
+She was not accustomed to sharp-tongued people, and it was really
+difficult for her to deal with them properly, as Judy could, and Nance,
+too. But she forced herself to remember that Judith was a guest in her
+room, and was about to partake of some of her good Kentucky fare. She
+turned away without saying another word, and fortunately the maid came
+back just then and relieved the strained situation.
+
+"The gentlemen say they must see you, ma'am," she said; "and if you
+won't come down to them, they'll just come upstairs."
+
+"What?" cried a chorus of girls.
+
+Suddenly there was a wild scramble on the stairs; shouts of laughter,
+a sound of heavy boots thumping along the hall, and four tall young men
+burst into the room. There were shrieks from disappearing Boy Blues
+and Fauntleroys, who endeavored to cover their extremities with sofa
+cushions, the captive sprite rushed into a closet and a wild scene of
+disorder and pandemonium followed.
+
+"Don't be frightened, ladies," said the tallest young man, who wore
+correct evening clothes, from his opera hat and pearl studs to his
+pointed patent leather pumps. His hair was light and curly, and he had
+a long yellow mustache, like Lord Dundreary's.
+
+"Ladies! ladies! why all this excitement?" called another of the
+quartette, dressed in full black and white checked trousers, a short
+tan overcoat, a red tie and a brown derby.
+
+The third young man wore a smoking jacket and white duck trousers, and
+the fourth was dressed in an English golf suit and visored cap.
+
+"Oh, you villains!" cried Jessica, popping her head out of the closet.
+"You have frightened us almost to death. Do you think I wouldn't know
+you, Margaret Wakefield, even in that sporting suit. Come over here and
+show yourself!"
+
+The bogus gentlemen were indeed three of the evening's hostesses and one
+of the guests. Mary Stewart wore the evening clothes, borrowed from her
+brother for a senior play to take place shortly. Judy had on the golf
+suit, Sallie Marks the dinner coat and Margaret the rakish sporting
+costume.
+
+"But where did you get the cards?" asked Judith, ashamed of herself, now
+that the visitors' real identity was disclosed.
+
+"I wrote to Dodo and asked him for them," answered Judy, giving her
+a look, as much as to say, "What affair is it of yours?"
+
+After the banquet was commenced and the fun waxed fast and furious,
+there was a cakewalk at the last, with a box of "cloud-bursts" as the
+prize, the eight hostesses taking turns as judges.
+
+"After this wild orgy, I think we'd better be leaving," said Mary
+Stewart. "It's getting cold and late, but we've had a glorious time.
+Will you permit a gentleman to kiss you on the cheek, Molly?"
+
+"That I will," answered Molly, "and proud of the honor."
+
+Slipping on a skirt and a long ulster, Mary took her departure with
+Judith and the other girls, who did not have rooms at Queen's, and
+pretty soon the party had disbanded.
+
+"I'll stay and help you gather up the loaves and fishes," Judy
+announced. "It'll soon be ten, but we can hang a dressing gown over the
+transom and draw the blinds and no one will know the difference just
+this once," she added, proceeding to carry out her ideas of deception.
+
+"I'm still hungry," observed Nance. "I had to wait on so many people I
+didn't have a chance to eat any supper myself."
+
+"So am I famished," said Molly; "but I was ashamed to confess it."
+
+"I'd like a cup of hot tea," observed Judy, who had waited on nobody but
+herself.
+
+"When Mrs. Markham comes around," cautioned Nance, "in case she knocks
+on the door, one of us be ready to put out the light. Judy, you slip
+into the closet. She's been known to come in, you know, after one of
+these jamborees."
+
+"Mrs. Markham's away," answered Judy. "'Steel beads' is taking her place
+until after Thanksgiving."
+
+The girls munched their sandwiches and talked in low voices. Suddenly
+there was a sharp rap on the door. Instantly the light went out and
+there was dead silence. Judy, crawling on all fours toward the closet,
+was about to conceal herself behind protecting skirts, when the rap was
+repeated.
+
+"Well, what is it?" called Nance, the boldest among them, "the light is
+out."
+
+There was no answer and the rap was not repeated.
+
+The girls waited a few moments, and then cautiously lighting a student's
+lamp with a green shade, proceeded with their supper. Judy looked at her
+watch. It was a quarter of eleven.
+
+Again they were interrupted. This time by some pebbles thrown against
+the window.
+
+Molly raised the sash softly and gazed down into the darkness below.
+
+"What is it?" she called.
+
+"It's Margaret," answered a voice from the yard. "For the love of
+heaven, can't you let me in? I'll explain afterward. I wouldn't mind
+ringing up Mrs. Markham, but I'm afraid of that Steel woman."
+
+"Wait a minute," answered Molly, and closing the window, she turned to
+consult with the others.
+
+"There's nothing to be done but to go down," they decided, and Molly
+insisted on being the sacrificial lamb. Judy made her slip on her
+nightgown over her dress, and her dressing gown over that, in order to
+appear in the proper guise in case anything happened.
+
+But they were doomed to another shock that night.
+
+Just as Molly opened the door she came face to face with Miss Steel
+standing outside in the hall.
+
+"Oh, I beg your pardon," said Molly politely, feeling thankful she had
+put on her nightgown, "I thought I heard a noise outside."
+
+"You seem to be sitting up very late to-night, Miss Brown," said Miss
+Steel, looking at her coldly. "I was told to enforce the ten o'clock
+rule in Mrs. Markham's absence, and I must ask you to get to bed at
+once, unless you wish to be reported."
+
+"I'm sorry," said Molly.
+
+The woman seemed unnecessarily stern, she thought, because, after all,
+this was not a boarding school, but a college. However, she went back,
+and closed and bolted the door. In her heart she felt a contempt for any
+one who would creep about and listen at people's doors. Mrs. Markham
+would have been incapable of it.
+
+Just then there came another pebble against the window.
+
+Judy crept to the window this time.
+
+"Wait, Margaret," she called. "Miss Steel is about."
+
+There was perfect stillness for several long black minutes. The three
+girls sat in a row on the floor listening with strained ears and to
+Judy at least the adventure was not without its enjoyment. At last they
+felt that it might be safe to act. Taking off their shoes they moved
+noiselessly to the window and looked down. There stood the courageous
+Margaret in full view on the roof of the piazza. She had actually
+shinned up one of the pillars, which was not such a difficult feat as
+it might seem, as the railing around the piazza had placed her within
+reach of the wooden grillwork and swinging onto that she had drawn
+herself up to the roof. She had skinned her wrist and stumped one of
+her stockinged toes, having removed her shoes and hidden them under
+the house, but she appeared now the very figure of courage and action,
+waiting for the next move. The three girls stood looking down at her in
+a state of fearful uncertainty as to what should be done next, and as
+if this were not exciting enough, three light telegraphic taps were
+heard on the door.
+
+"That's not Miss Steel," whispered Judy.
+
+"Who is it," she called softly through the keyhole.
+
+"Jessie," came the answer.
+
+Instantly the door was opened and Jessie crept in.
+
+"Miss Steel is up," she whispered. "I saw her on the landing below just
+now. Be careful. I am scared to death because Margaret hasn't come
+back."
+
+For an answer, they led her to the window and pointed to the shadowy
+figure of her roommate on the piazza roof.
+
+Because Molly had conceived a dislike and distrust for Miss Steel, she
+made up her mind to outwit her and save her friend. She reflected that
+if Margaret tried any of the girls on the second floor whose windows
+opened on the roof, she might get in but she would still have the third
+flight to make and as the stairs creaked at every step, it would be a
+difficult matter. Fortunately Miss Steel's room was on the other side of
+the hall.
+
+"I have a scheme," she whispered at last. "Now, don't any one move. I
+can manage it without making a sound."
+
+There was a ball of twine on the mantelpiece. Thank heavens for that.
+She tied one end to the back of a cane chair, which she let slowly out
+of the window. Then, snipping off the end of the cord, she gave it to
+Nance to hold. Another chair, which was fortunately smaller, she let
+down in the same way and finally a stool. Margaret placed one on top of
+the other, mounted the precarious and toppling pyramid, and with the
+strength of arm and wrist which showed her gymnasium training, pulled
+herself to the window sill and was in the room.
+
+"Be quiet," they whispered. "Miss Steel is about."
+
+The four girls lay down on the couches and waited a long time. Judy
+really fell asleep in the interval before they dared risk pulling back
+the chairs. It was, in fact, a risky business, and had to be done
+cautiously and carefully to keep them from bumping against the walls of
+the house. At last, however, the whole thing was accomplished.
+
+Margaret explained that she had gone over to one of the other houses to
+return the clothes she had borrowed and had joined another Thanksgiving
+party and stayed longer than she had intended. They also had been held
+up by the matron, and had been obliged to put out the lights and hide
+everything under the bed. She had escaped from the house by a miracle
+without being found out, and had trusted to luck and her friends for
+getting into Queen's unobserved.
+
+And now, at last, the adventure was almost over. After another
+interminable wait, Judy and Margaret and Jessie crept off to their
+rooms.
+
+Judy's door was still ajar when she saw a flash of light on the stairs,
+which heralded the approach of Miss Steel, still fully clothed, and
+walking noiselessly as usual. Judy closed her door and locked it softly.
+
+"Only a spy would wear felt slippers," she said to herself scornfully.
+Then she laughed. "It was rather good fun to be sure, but would it have
+mattered so much, after all, if Margaret had boldly come in at the front
+door and explained?"
+
+They would never have gone to all that trouble to deceive nice Mrs.
+Markham, her thoughts continued as she removed her manly attire, but
+Miss Steel was different.
+
+As for Molly, her thoughts were about the same as Judy's.
+
+"A lady doesn't creep," she was thinking, as she thankfully crawled into
+bed; "a lady doesn't listen at doors or wear soundless slippers in order
+to walk like a cat. No, Miss Steel is decidedly not a lady."
+
+And when Molly came to this decision about a person, she avoided them
+carefully ever afterward. Her definition of a "lady" was about the same
+as a man's definition of a "gentleman." It had nothing whatever to do
+with birth or education.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+THE FOOTBALL GAME
+
+
+During those fast flying weeks which tread on one another's heels so
+rapidly between Thanksgiving and Christmas, came one of the most
+important events of the season.
+
+It was announced on the bulletin board as the "Harboard-Snail Football
+Game," and was, in fact, a grand burlesque on a game played not long
+before between two university teams.
+
+Quite half of the Wellington students took part in the affair and those
+who were not actively engaged were placed in the cheer sections to yell
+themselves hoarse. There were a dozen doctors, an ambulance, stretcher
+bearers, trained nurses and the two teams in proper football attire.
+
+Everybody in college turned out one Saturday afternoon to witness this
+elaborate parody. A coach drove over from Exmoor fairly alive with
+students, and the fields outside the Wellington athletic grounds were
+black with people.
+
+Judy was a member of the corps of physicians who were all dressed alike
+in frock coats reaching well below the knees, gray trousers and silk
+hats. They had imposing mustaches, carried bags of instruments and were
+the most ludicrous of all the actors that day.
+
+But it was the stretcher bearers who seemed to excite the greatest
+merriment in the grand parade which took place before the game began.
+They were dressed something like "Slivers," the famous clown, in full
+white pantaloons and long white coats cut in at the waist with wide
+skirts. The members of the cheering sections which headed the grand
+column were dressed in every sort of absurd burlesque of a college boy's
+clothes that could be devised.
+
+"How they ever collected all those ridiculous costumes is a marvel to
+me," exclaimed President Walker to Dr. McLean, whose face had turned an
+apoplectic purple from laughter and who occasionally let out a roar of
+joy that could be heard all the way across the field.
+
+Following the cheering sections in the parade were the two teams, hardly
+recognizable at all as human beings. Their wigs of tousled hair stood
+out all over their heads like the petals of enormous chrysanthemums.
+Most of them wore nose guards or their faces were made up in a savage
+and barbaric fashion. In their wadded football suits, stuffed out of all
+human recognition, they resembled trussed fowls. In the vanguard of this
+strange and ludicrous procession stalked a gigantic figure of Liberty.
+She was about fifteen feet high, and her draperies reached to the
+ground. Her long red hair blew in the breezes and she carried a
+Wellington banner, which she majestically waved over the heads of the
+multitude. By her side ran a dwarf. They were the mascots of the two
+sides.
+
+"Why, if that isn't our little friend, Miss Molly Brown," exclaimed
+Dr. McLean, pointing to Liberty. "She's a bonnie lass and a sweet one.
+Think now, of her being able to walk on those sticks without losing
+her balance. It's a verra great achievement, I'm thinking, for a
+giddy-headed young woman. For they're all giddy-headed at seventeen or
+thereabouts."
+
+It was indeed Molly, the only girl in all Wellington who could walk on
+stilts. The seniors had advertised in _The Commune_ for a first-class
+"stiltswoman," and Molly had promptly offered her services. Jessie had
+been selected as the dwarf.
+
+"I hope the child won't fall and break her neck," said Mrs. McLean on
+the other side of the doctor. "It's verra dangerous. Suppose she should
+become suddenly faint----"
+
+"Don't suppose anything of the sort, mither. You've no grounds for
+thinkin' the lass will tumble. She seems to be at home in the air."
+
+Professor Green, just beyond Mrs. McLean, frowned, and put his hands
+in his pockets. He wondered if Dr. McLean had forgotten that he had
+been sent for just three weeks before when Molly had fainted in the
+gymnasium, and the Professor breathed a sigh of relief when Liberty
+presently descended to the earth and the game began.
+
+It was one of the bloodiest and roughest games in the history of
+football. The ambulance bell rang constantly. Every time a victim fell,
+the cheering section on the other side set up a wild yell. Doctors and
+nurses were scattered all about the edges of the field attending to the
+wounded and the stretchers were busy every minute. As fast as one man
+tumbled another jumped into his place, and at last when there came a
+touchdown the players seemed to have fallen on top of each other in a
+mad squirming mass.
+
+People laughed that day who were rarely seen to smile. Even Miss Steel's
+severe expression relaxed into a cold, steely smile.
+
+Molly had gathered up her long cheesecloth robe and was sitting with
+Jessie on a bench at the side of the field.
+
+"Isn't it perfect, Jessie?" she was saying. "I don't think I ever
+enjoyed anything so much in all my life. It will make a wonderful letter
+home."
+
+Jessie smiled absently. With a pair of field glasses, she was searching
+the faces of the spectators for two friends (men, of course), who had
+motored over to see the sport. At her belt was pinned the most enormous
+bunch of violets ever seen. In fact, they were two bunches worn as one,
+from her two admirers. Presently Judith joined them on the bench. Ever
+since the Thanksgiving spread she had endeavored to be very nice to
+Molly.
+
+"Hello, Ju-ju!" called Jessie; "you are a sight."
+
+"I know it," she said. "I feel that I am a disgrace to the sex. I only
+hope I'm not recognizable."
+
+"Your shiny black eye is the only familiar thing about you. The rest is
+entirely disguised."
+
+"I think I'd recognize that ring, Miss Blount," put in Molly. "Almost
+everybody knows that emerald by sight now, who knows you at all."
+
+Judith glanced quickly at her finger.
+
+"Do you know," she exclaimed, "I forgot I was wearing it? How stupid of
+me! I am booked to take Rosamond's place in a minute. Will one of you
+girls take care of it for me? I shall be much obliged."
+
+"You'd better take it, Jessie," said Molly, looking rather doubtfully at
+the ring. She had only one piece of jewelry to her name, a string of
+sapphires, which had belonged to her mother when she was a girl.
+
+But the ring was too big for Jessie's slender, pretty little fingers.
+
+"I can't," she said, "unless I wear it on my thumb, and it might slip
+off, you know. You'll have to take it, Molly."
+
+Molly slipped it on her finger and held it up for admiration.
+
+"It's the most beautiful ring I ever saw," she exclaimed. "It's the
+color of deep green sea water. Not that I ever saw any, but I've heard
+tell of it," she added, laughing.
+
+"You don't mean to say you have never seen the ocean!" cried Judith in
+a pleasant tone of voice.
+
+Molly had never seen her so amiable before.
+
+"No," replied the freshman, "this is the nearest I have ever been to
+it."
+
+"Well, thanks for taking care of my ring," went on Judith. "I'll see you
+after the game," and she departed to take up her duties on the field,
+just as Rosamond, at the appointed time, with a gash across her face,
+made with finger-nail salve, was borne from the field on a stretcher.
+
+After the game came another grand procession in which all the wounded
+took part, Molly on stilts, with Jessie running beside her, as before.
+
+All that morning Molly had felt buoyed up by the fun and excitement of
+the great burlesque. But, now that the game was over, as she strode
+along on the giant stilts, she began to feel the same overpowering
+fatigue she had experienced that night at the living picture show. For
+a week she had been living on her nerves. Often at night she had not
+slept, but had tossed about on her bed trying to recall her lessons or
+make mental notes of things she intended to do. On cold mornings, her
+feet and hands were numb and dead and Judy often made her run across the
+campus and back to start her circulation. And now that numbness began to
+climb from her toes straight up her body. Molly turned unsteadily and
+with shaky strides at least six feet long, hastened across the field.
+Her feeling that she must get out of the noise and turmoil, away from
+everybody in the world, carried her back of a row of sheds under which
+the players sat during the intermissions. Once in this quiet place she
+let herself down from the stilts. She was conscious of being very cold.
+There was a deep red light in the western sky from the setting sun, then
+the numbness reached her brain and she remembered nothing more until she
+opened her eyes and saw Dr. McLean at one side of her and Professor
+Green at the other.
+
+"Here she comes back at last," exclaimed the doctor. "Aye, lass, it's a
+good thing this young man has an observant eye. Otherwise ye might have
+been lying out here in the cold all night. You feel better now, don't
+you?"
+
+"Yes, doctor," answered Molly weakly.
+
+"I don't like these fainting spells, my lass. You're not made of iron,
+child. You'll have to give up one thing or t'other--study or play."
+
+But there were other things Molly did beside studying and playing. Of
+course the doctor did not know about the "cloud-bursts" and the
+shoe-blacking and the tutoring.
+
+"Aye, here comes one of my associates with a carriage," he went on,
+chuckling to himself. "Shall we have a consultation now, Dr. Kean?"
+
+Judy, still in her absurd burlesque costume, had driven up in one of the
+village surreys.
+
+As the two men lifted Molly into the back seat, she noticed for the
+first time that she was wearing a man's overcoat. It was dark blue and
+felt warm and comfortable. She slipped her hands into the deep pockets
+and snuggled down into its folds. Certainly she felt shivery about the
+spine, and her hands and feet, which were never known to be warm, were
+now like lumps of ice. As the doctor was still wearing his great coat of
+Scotch tweed, it was evidently the coat of the Professor of English
+Literature she had appropriated.
+
+"It's awfully good of you to lend me your coat," she said to Professor
+Green, who was standing at the side of the carriage while the doctor
+climbed in beside her. "I'm afraid you'll take cold without it."
+
+"Nonsense," he said, almost gruffly, "I'm not dressed in cheesecloth."
+
+"But I have on a white sweater under all this," said Molly timidly.
+
+The carriage drove away, however, without his saying another word, and
+later that afternoon, after Molly had taken a nap and felt rested and
+refreshed, she engaged one of the maids at Queen's cottage to return
+Professor Green's overcoat with a message of thanks. Then, with a sigh
+of relief, because when she had borrowed anything it always weighed
+heavily on her mind, and because she felt somehow that the Professor
+was provoked with her, she turned over and went to sleep again.
+
+Just as the clock in the chapel tower sounded midnight she sat up in
+bed.
+
+"What is it, Molly, dear?" asked Nance, who was wakeful and uneasy about
+her friend.
+
+Molly was looking at her right hand wildly.
+
+"The ring!" she cried. "Judith's emerald ring--it's gone!"
+
+The ring was indeed gone. Neither of her friends had seen it on her
+finger since she had been in her room.
+
+It was gone--lost!
+
+"It must have slipped off my finger when I fainted," sobbed the poor
+girl.
+
+Nance had summoned Judy at this trying crisis, and the two girls
+endeavored to comfort their friend, who seemed to be working herself
+into a state of feverish excitement.
+
+"Never mind, we'll find it in the morning, Molly," cried Nance. "You
+know exactly where it was you fell, don't you? Somewhere behind the
+sheds. It's sure to be there. Judy and I promise to go there first
+thing, don't we, Judy?"
+
+"Yes, indeed," acquiesced Judy, who loved her morning sleep better than
+anything in life. But Judy was learning unselfishness since she had been
+associating with Molly and Nance.
+
+There was no more sleep for poor Molly that night, however, and she lay
+through the dragging hours with strained nerves and throbbing temples
+wondering what would happen if she did not find the ring.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+THREE FRIENDS.
+
+
+Nance was still sound asleep when Molly crept from her bed and dressed
+herself. It was a dismal cold morning. A fine snow was falling and she
+shivered as she tied a scarf around her head, threw her long gray
+eiderdown cape over her shoulders and slipped from the room, without
+waking her friend, who was weary after the excitements of the day
+before.
+
+Across the wind-swept campus she hastened, anxiety lending swiftness to
+her steps, and at last reached the Athletic Field. At the far end
+snuggled several low wooden sheds like a group of animals trying to keep
+warm by staying close together.
+
+"I must hurry," Molly thought, "or the snow will be so thick I shall
+never be able to find the ring," and summoning all her energy she ran
+as fast as she could straight to the spot where she remembered to have
+dropped the day before behind the sheds. Breathless and tingling all
+over with little prickly chills, she knelt down and began to search in
+the dead grass, brushing the snow away as she hunted. She had not
+stopped to find gloves, neither had she wasted any time lacing her
+boots, but had slipped on some pumps at the side of the bed.
+
+For a long time Molly searched every inch of the ground back of the
+sheds where she might have been. Then, with an ever-growing feeling
+of desperation, she hunted in the field itself, across which she had
+followed the parade. And it was here that Judy and Nance found her so
+absorbed in her search that she had not even noticed their approach.
+
+"Oh, Molly, Molly! what are we going to do with you?" cried Nance,
+seizing her by the arm impulsively. "You'll kill yourself by your
+imprudence. Why didn't you wait and let us look?"
+
+Molly opened her mouth to answer, and the words came out in a husky
+whisper. She had entirely lost her voice from hoarseness, without even
+knowing that she had caught cold.
+
+"I've looked everywhere," she whispered, "and I haven't found it. I
+couldn't have lost it while I was on the stilts, because I never let go
+of them for a moment. It must have been when I fainted."
+
+"Judy, you take her home while I look again," volunteered Nance.
+
+"Take her to the infirmary, you mean," answered Judy, and she promptly
+led Molly by a short cut toward the last house on the far side of the
+campus, where stood the small college hospital.
+
+Molly obediently allowed herself to be piloted along. Her cheeks were
+burning; there was a feverish light in her eyes, and she no longer felt
+cold at all, but hot all over with little chills along her spine.
+
+"I'm afraid I'm a great nuisance, Judy, dear. I hope you'll forgive me,
+but I'm really in great trouble," she said huskily, as Judy confided her
+to one of the two nurses at the hospital.
+
+"Don't worry," was Judy's parting command. "We'll find the ring. It
+can't possibly be lost utterly. It's too big and green. I'll see Judith
+Blount, too. Some one may have found it and returned it to her by this
+time. I'll leave a notice on the bulletin board and stand my little St.
+Joseph on his head," she added laughing. "You may be sure I'll leave
+nothing undone to find that old ring."
+
+The first thing Judy did after breakfast that Sunday morning was to pay
+a visit to Judith Blount. There was a placard on her door announcing to
+whom it might concern that Judith was busy and did not wish to be
+disturbed, but Judy knocked boldly and at an impatient "Who is it?"
+replied: "I wish to see you on important business. Please unlock the
+door."
+
+Judy couldn't make out why Judith Blount looked so white and uneasy when
+she entered the room; nor why her expression changed to one of intense
+relief a moment later.
+
+"I came to ask you," began Judy abruptly, "if any one had found your
+emerald ring."
+
+"Miss Brown has my ring," answered Judith promptly.
+
+"Didn't you know that Molly had fainted and is now ill in the hospital
+and the ring is lost?"
+
+"My emerald ring lost?" Judith almost shouted.
+
+"Don't carry on so about it," put in Judy. "It'll be found. Molly
+herself was up at dawn this morning. She stole away before anybody could
+stop her, and went to the field to look for it, but she hasn't been
+able to find it, and neither has Nance, who looked for it later. Nance
+has gone down to the village to find the surrey that took Molly home. We
+are all doing everything we can and in the meantime I thought I would
+tell you so that you could help us."
+
+Judy could be very impudent when she wanted to, and she was impudent
+now, as she stood looking straight into Judith's angry black eyes.
+
+"She should have been more careful," burst out Judith in a rage. "How do
+I know that----" she stopped, frightened at what she was about to say.
+
+"Better not say that," said Judy calmly. "It simply wouldn't go, you
+know, and you must know as well as I do that it would be absolutely
+false."
+
+"How do you know what I was going to say?"
+
+"I could guess," said Judy, shrugging her shoulders. "I can often guess
+things you would like to say, but don't, Miss Blount. What I came for
+was to ask you to help us find the ring. Molly is very ill, and, of
+course, it's the loss of the ring as much as anything else that's made
+her so. We're all doing the best we can, and if you'll just kindly add
+your efforts to ours, it might help some."
+
+"Supposing the ring isn't found, what redress have I? It's been in our
+family for generations. It was brought over from France by a Huguenot
+ancestor----"
+
+"Nice place to be wearing it, then, at a football game!" exclaimed Judy
+indignantly. "And then forcing other people to take charge of it for
+you! Redress, indeed! Do you want Molly to pay you for your ring? I tell
+you, Miss Blount, that a person who really had Huguenot ancestors would
+never have suggested such a thing. It wouldn't have been Huguenot
+etiquette."
+
+And Judy flung herself out of the room and down the steps before the
+astonished Judith had time to realize that she had been insulted by an
+upstart of a freshman.
+
+It looked very much for a day or two as if Molly were going to have a
+congestion in one lung. For several days she was a very sick girl. She
+had a strange delirium that she was looking for something while she was
+walking on stilts. Many times she asked the nurse if sapphires were as
+valuable as emeralds, and once she demanded to know if an emerald as
+large as her little finger nail was worth much money, say, two acres of
+good orchard land. But the lung was not congested, as Dr. McLean had at
+first thought. In a day or two the fever subsided and by Thursday she
+was able to sit up in bed, propped by many pillows and see Judy and
+Nance.
+
+Her room was a bower of flowers. They had even come from Exmoor,
+Lawrence Upton having sent her a box of lovely pink roses. Mrs. McLean
+had brought her a bunch of red berries from the woods, and one day two
+cards were brought up, one of which looked familiar: Miss Grace Green
+and Mr. Edwin Green, inquiring as to the improvement in Miss Molly
+Brown's condition, were pleased to hear that she was better.
+
+And now Nance and Judy sat on either side the young invalid, each trying
+to assume a cheerful expression and each feeling that whatever
+disagreeable things had happened--and several had happened--they must be
+hidden from Molly at all costs.
+
+Judith Blount had scattered reports around college of an extremely
+hateful character which Molly's friends had done their best to suppress.
+The ring had never been found, although everything had been done that
+could be thought of in the way of advertising and searching.
+
+Moreover, Miss Steel had asked twice of Molly's condition in a very
+meaning tone of voice, and had wished to know exactly when the nurse
+thought Molly would be able to see visitors. These things the girls
+knew, and since Molly was still weak and very hoarse, her friends were
+careful to keep off dangerous subjects.
+
+Strange to say, Molly had never mentioned the ring to any one since she
+had been in the hospital.
+
+"Everybody has been so beautifully kind," she was saying, "and really,
+I think the rest is going to do me so much good, that when I get well
+I'll be better than I was before I got sick," she added, laughing.
+
+"We've missed you terribly," said Nance dolefully.
+
+"Queen's just a dead old hole without you, Molly, dear," went on Judy
+affectionately.
+
+Molly smiled lovingly at her two friends.
+
+"You are the dearest----" she began, taking a hand of each when the
+nurse entered.
+
+"Miss Stewart would like to see you, Miss Brown."
+
+"Oh, yes," cried Molly; "do ask her to come up."
+
+Nance and Judy did not linger after Mary Stewart's arrival. Her face
+also wore a serious look, and she took Molly's hand and gazed down into
+her face almost with a compassionate expression.
+
+"How are you, Molly, dear?"
+
+"Oh, I'm much better," replied Molly, cheerfully. "I shall be up by
+to-morrow, the doctor says, and I expect to go back to Queen's Sunday."
+
+Mary sat down and drew her chair up close to the little white bed.
+
+"It's almost providential my being in the hospital like this," went on
+Molly, "it's rested me so. You see, I was terribly worried about
+something when I came here."
+
+"And you aren't worried any longer?"
+
+"No; I've conquered it. I know it's got to be faced; but I believe there
+will be a way out of it, and I'm not frightened any more. I have always
+had a kind of blind faith like that when things look very black."
+
+"You are talking of the emerald ring, aren't you, Molly?"
+
+"Yes, Mary. I know it hasn't been found, of course. I can tell that by
+the girls' faces, and I know that Judith Blount is--well, she is your
+friend, Mary----"
+
+"Oh, no; not now," put in Mary. "We've had a--er--difference of opinion
+that has--well, not to put too fine a point on it, broken up our
+friendship. I always admired her, without ever really liking her."
+
+Molly looked at Mary and a very tender expression came into her heavenly
+blue eyes.
+
+"Was the difference about me?" she asked presently.
+
+Mary hesitated.
+
+"Yes, Molly; since you force me to tell you, it was."
+
+"She has been saying some horrid things? Of course, I knew she would. I
+was prepared for that. And I could tell----" Molly paused. "No, no, I
+mustn't!" she exclaimed hastily.
+
+"What could you tell, Molly?"
+
+"Don't ask me. I would never speak to myself again, if I did tell. She
+has been saying that I never lost the ring, that I was poor and needed
+the money, and things like that. Tell me honestly, isn't that the
+truth?"
+
+Mary nodded her head and frowned. There was a silence, and presently
+Mary's strong, brown fingers closed over Molly's slender ones.
+
+"Molly," she began in a business-like tone of voice, "I'm almost glad
+that this subject has come up because I came here really to----" she
+broke off. "It's very hard," she began again. "I hardly know how to put
+it. You knew, Molly, dear, that I was rich, didn't you?"
+
+"Why, yes; I guessed you must be, although you have been careful not to
+mention it yourself. You're the most high-bred, finest girl I ever knew,
+Mary," she added impetuously.
+
+Mary laughed.
+
+"That's nice of you to say such things, dear, because I haven't but one
+ancestor on my paternal side and that's father, but he's generations in
+himself, he's so splendid. But to go on, Molly, dear, I am rich, not
+ordinarily rich, but enormously, vastly rich. It's absurd, really,
+because we'll never spend it, and we don't care a rap about saving it;
+but whatever father touches just turns to gold."
+
+"I wish he'd touch something for me," laughed Molly, wistfully.
+
+"Now, listen to me, dear, and don't interrupt. Father adores me to that
+extent that I could spend any amount of money and he would just smile
+and say: 'Go ahead, little Mary, go as far as you like.' But, you see,
+I only want a few very nice things, consequently, I can't be extravagant
+to save my life."
+
+Molly laughed aloud at this naive confession.
+
+"The point I'm coming to is this, Molly: Judith Blount is being
+exceedingly horrid over that ring. I believe myself it will be found
+eventually. But until it is found, I want you--now don't interrupt me
+and don't carry on, please--I want you to ask her the value of her old
+ring and give her the money for it. If she chooses to be ill-bred, she
+must be treated with ill-bred methods."
+
+"But, dearest Mary, I can't----" began Molly.
+
+"Yes, you can. I haven't known you but a few months, Molly, but I've
+learned to love you in that time. And when I really care for any one,
+which is seldom, she becomes a sister to me. You are my little sister,
+and shall always be. I shall never change. And between sisters there
+must be no foolish pride. Now, Molly, I want to settle this thing with
+Judith Blount once and for all, through you, of course. She is not to
+know I had anything to do with it. You must tell her that you have
+raised the money and would like to pay her the full value of the ring.
+When the ring is found, she can give you back the money. That will stop
+her wicked, wagging tongue, at least."
+
+Molly tried hard not to cry, but the tears welled up in her eyes and
+trickled down her cheeks. She took Mary's hand and kissed it.
+
+"I wish I could kiss you, dearest Mary," she sobbed; "but you see, I've
+got such a bad cold."
+
+How could she thank Mary for her generous offer or explain that her
+family would never allow her to accept the money, even if she felt she
+could herself?
+
+"You are the finest, noblest, most generous girl," she went on brokenly.
+
+"No, I'm not," said Mary. "It's easy to do things for people we love and
+easier still when we have the money to do it with. If I hadn't been so
+fond of you, Molly, and had been obliged to deny myself besides, that
+would have been generosity. This is only a pleasure. A sort of
+self-gratification, because I've adopted you, you see, as my little
+sister."
+
+Molly lay quietly for a while with her cheek pressed against Mary's
+hand.
+
+"Are you thinking it over?" asked Mary at last, patting her cheek.
+
+"I'm thinking how happy I am," answered Molly.
+
+"As soon as you are well, then," went on Mary, rising to go, "you must
+have an interview with Judith and settle the whole thing."
+
+Molly smiled up at her friend and squeezed her hand.
+
+There are times when two friends need not speak to express what they
+think.
+
+"Even if I never win the three golden apples," she reflected after Mary
+had gone, "I have won three friends that are as true as gold."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+MISS STEEL.
+
+
+With the wonderful powers of recuperation which natures like Molly's
+have, on Sunday morning she was up and dressed, almost dancing about her
+room in the infirmary, long before it was time for Dr. McLean to call
+and grant her permission to leave.
+
+It was good to be up and well again; it was good to be at college, for
+she had been homesick for Wellington since she had been shut up in the
+hospital, and better still, it was good to have friends, such friends as
+she had.
+
+As for the emerald ring--a shadow darkened her face. The thought of the
+emerald ring would push its way into her mind.
+
+"I believe it will come out all right," she said to herself. "I believe
+it--I believe it! I couldn't help losing it, and if it isn't found, I
+can't help that, either. I just won't be miserable, that's all. I feel
+too happy and too well."
+
+"Are you at home to visitors this morning, Miss Brown?" asked a sharp
+unmusical voice at the door.
+
+"Oh, yes; do come in," answered Molly, rising to meet Miss Steel, who
+had walked up the uncarpeted steps and along the echoing corridor
+without making a sound, as usual.
+
+Molly's manners were unfailingly cordial to visitors, and when she shook
+hands with Miss Steel and insisted on making her take the armchair, that
+flint-like person visibly softened a little and faintly smiled. Molly
+wondered why the sanitary inspector had called on her, but she
+appreciated attentions from anybody and was as grateful for being
+popular as if it were something entirely new and strange to her.
+
+She showed Miss Steel her flowers and pinned a lovely pink rose on the
+inspector's granite-colored cloth coat. She made light of her illness,
+and rejoiced that she was returning in a few hours to dear old Queen's.
+She was, in fact, so wonderfully sweet and charming that Sunday morning
+that it must have been very difficult even for the stony inspector to
+touch on the real business of her visit.
+
+At last, however, Miss Steel buckled on her armor of decision, averted
+her eyes for a moment from Molly's glowing face and plunged in.
+
+"I don't suppose, Miss Brown, you suspected my title of 'Dormitory
+Inspector' here was merely a nominal one, and that I had another motive
+in being at Wellington College?"
+
+Molly hardly liked to tell her that they had long considered her a spy
+and detested her for that reason. She said nothing, therefore, and sat
+in her favorite position when listening intently with her hands clasping
+one knee and her shoulders drooping; a very wrong position indeed,
+considering that it would eventually make her round-shouldered and
+hollow chested; but Molly was never more graceful or comfortable than
+when she adopted this unhealthful attitude.
+
+"I am an inspector," went on the other, "but I am an inspector of
+police, that is, a detective. Doubtless you have heard of certain
+mysterious things that have happened at Wellington this autumn; the
+attempt to burn the gymnasium, which we now believe was only a practical
+joke to frighten the sophomore class; the cutting of the electric
+wires one night, and there are a few other things you have not heard;
+for instance, Miss Walker has received lately several anonymous
+letters--two of them about you----"
+
+Molly started.
+
+"About me?" she exclaimed.
+
+"Yes," said Miss Steel, watching her closely. "But they were not
+disagreeable letters, strange to say, since anonymous letters usually
+are. They expressed the most ardent admiration for you. They mentioned
+that you had enemies who were trying to ruin your reputation."
+
+"How absurd!" exclaimed Molly indignantly. She detested anything
+deceitful and underhand with all her soul. "When did these letters
+come?"
+
+"Just since you have been at the Infirmary."
+
+"They must be about the emerald ring," broke in Molly.
+
+"Exactly," answered the inspector. "You have lost a valuable emerald
+ring belonging to another girl who is making it disagreeable for you."
+
+"But I didn't want to take care of her ring," protested Molly. "She
+insisted on it. It was too big for my finger, and when I fainted it
+must have slipped off. I've done everything I could to find it, but she
+needn't worry. She'll be paid for it, if two acres of good apple orchard
+that were to have paid my college expenses have to go."
+
+"Nonsense, child!" exclaimed Miss Steel, suddenly melting into a human
+being. "I'm going to find that ring for you if it takes the rest of this
+winter."
+
+Molly seized her hand joyfully. By one of those swift flashes of insight
+which come to us when we least expect them, it was revealed to Molly
+that she had made a friend of the inspector.
+
+"I have been here almost a month," continued Miss Steel, giving the
+girl's hand a little vicelike squeeze, which was her way of expressing
+cordiality, "and I have found out a great many things. A girls' college
+is a strange place. There is a good deal of wire-pulling and petty
+jealousy among a certain class of girls, and yet I have reason to know
+that the code of honor here is exceedingly high, and I find myself
+growing more and more interested in the girls and their lives. Nowhere
+but in college could such devoted friendships be formed. They are
+elevating and fine, especially for selfish girls, who learn how to be
+unselfish by example. The girls develop each other. Your G. F. Society,
+for instance, has had a remarkably refining and, shall I say, quieting
+effect on Miss Andrews----"
+
+Molly started. She was amazed at the inspector's insight into the
+college life.
+
+"Which brings me to the point I have been aiming to reach. Since I have
+been here I have taken pains to learn the history of Miss Andrews as
+well as to study her character. She is a strange girl. Doubtless you
+know the incident of last year?"
+
+Molly shook her head.
+
+"To begin at the beginning: Miss Andrews' parents were rather strange
+people. Her father is a city politician who never made any secret of his
+grafting methods. Her mother was an actress and is dead. Frances hadn't
+been brought up to any code of honor. She had been allowed to do as she
+chose, and had all the money she wanted to spend. If she is vulgar and
+pretentious, it isn't really her fault. Last year she offended her class
+by telling a falsehood. She was under honor, according to the custom
+here when a student leaves the premises, to be back from some visit by
+ten o'clock Sunday night. She missed the ten o'clock train and took the
+train which arrived at midnight. However, as luck would have it, the
+ten o'clock train was delayed by a washout and drew into Wellington
+station just in front of the train Frances was on. She, of course, found
+this out immediately, and taking advantage of it, she gave out that she
+had been on the earlier train, which saved all unnecessary explanations.
+It must have been a great temptation for a girl brought up as she had
+been. But truth always comes to the top, sooner or later, and as the
+President of her own class happened to have been on the earlier train,
+she was found out. She was summoned by the Student Council, tried and
+found guilty. Then she was treated, I imagine, something in the same way
+that a French soldier is expelled from the army. Figuratively speaking,
+her sword was broken and her epaulettes torn from her uniform!"
+
+"How terrible!" exclaimed Molly.
+
+"Yes; it was pretty severe. But she was very defiant, and said dreadful
+things, denounced her class and college. Few girls would have had the
+courage to return to college next year, but she came back, hoping to
+live her dishonor down, and when she found her class to a member ignored
+her very existence, she became almost insane with bitterness and rage,
+and having studied her character closely, I judge that for a while,
+until your secret society took her in hand, she was hardly responsible
+for her actions.
+
+"Now, Miss Walker is very sorry for Frances Andrews; but she considers
+her a dangerous element in college, and at mid-years she would like some
+definite reason for asking her not to come back. I am speaking plainly,
+because Miss Walker is convinced that you know a definite reason and
+through some mistaken idea of kindness, you keep it to yourself. In
+fact, Miss Brown, Miss Walker is convinced that you and you alone saw
+Frances Andrews cut the wires in the gymnasium that night."
+
+"But I didn't," cried Molly, much excited; "or, rather, it wasn't Miss
+Andrews."
+
+Miss Steel looked at her in surprise, so sure was she that Molly would
+confirm her suspicions.
+
+Molly sat down again and clasped her knees with her long arms. Her
+cheeks were crimson and her eyes blazing.
+
+"Who was it, then?" asked the inspector.
+
+"I can't tell you that, Miss Steel. If I should give you the girl's name
+I should be dishonored all my life. I have been brought up to believe
+that the one who tells is as low as the one who did the deed. When we
+were children, my mother would never listen to a telltale. I do think it
+was a wicked, mischievous thing to have done--a contemptible thing; but
+I'd rather you found out the name of the girl in some other way than
+through me, especially right now----"
+
+"Why right now?"
+
+But Molly would not reply.
+
+Miss Steel could see nothing but truth in the depths of Molly's troubled
+blue eyes. She took the girl's hand in her's and looked at her gravely.
+
+"You are a fine girl, Miss Brown," she said, "and if you tell me
+that the girl who cut the wires was not Miss Andrews, I believe you
+implicitly. Of course, Miss Walker would never tell Miss Andrews not to
+return to Wellington without something very definite and tangible on
+which to base her dismissal. Luke Andrews, the girl's father, is as
+hot-headed and high tempered as his daughter, and he would probably make
+a great deal of trouble and cause a great deal of publicity if Frances
+were asked to leave college quietly."
+
+"I'm sorry for her," said Molly. "I think she might have been helped if
+she had had just a little more time. After all, the worse thing about
+her is her bringing up."
+
+"And this other girl whom you are shielding, Miss Brown, does she
+deserve so much generosity from you?"
+
+Molly closed her lips firmly.
+
+"That isn't the question with me, Miss Steel," she said at last. "The
+question is: could I ever show my face again if I told."
+
+"But no one need ever know, that is, no one but the President and me."
+
+"You don't understand," said Molly wearily. "It's with me, you see. I
+could never be on comfortable terms with myself again. I should always
+be thinking that I hadn't behaved--well, like a gentleman."
+
+Then the inspector did a most surprising thing. She went over and kissed
+Molly.
+
+"I wouldn't for worlds keep you from being true to yourself, my child,"
+she exclaimed. "It's a rare quality, and one which will make you devoted
+friends all your life, because people will always know they can trust
+you."
+
+Molly looked at the inspector, and lo and behold, a strange
+transformation had taken place in that inscrutable, expressionless face.
+The cold gray eyes were softened by a mist of tears and the thin lips
+were actually quivering. She looked almost beautiful at that moment, and
+Molly suddenly put her arms around her neck and laid her head on the
+flat, hard chest.
+
+"You'll forgive me, won't you, Miss Steel?"
+
+"I will, indeed, dear," answered the other, patting Molly's cheek. "And
+now, don't bother about all this business. Get well and strong. Don't
+overwork, and I promise to find that ring for you if I have to turn the
+college upside down to do it."
+
+Then she gave Molly a warm, motherly squeeze, kissed her on the forehead
+and took her departure as quietly as she had come.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+A BACHELOR'S POCKET.
+
+
+Miss Steel was a very busy woman that afternoon. She was shut up with
+Judy Kean for half an hour; she visited the livery stable in the
+village, she paid a call on Dr. McLean and finally she went to see
+Professor Green.
+
+It is in Professor Green's study on the Cloisters that we now find her,
+sitting bolt upright in her chair, alert and bright-eyed. At such times
+as this, Miss Steel is not unlike a hunting dog on the scent of his
+quarry.
+
+Professor Green sits at his desk. He looks tired, and his heavy reddish
+eyebrows are drawn together in a frown. When the inspector came into the
+room he had pushed a pile of manuscript under some loose papers, but a
+sheet had slipped off and now lay in plain view. Across it was written
+in a bold hand:
+
+"Exeunt FAIRIES in disorder, leaving WOOD SPRITE at Left Centre.
+
+"THE SONG OF THE WOOD SPRITE."
+
+"I hope you will pardon this intrusion, Professor. I see you are very
+busy," the inspector began, glancing at the manuscript with a look of
+some slight amusement.
+
+The Professor hastily covered up the sheet.
+
+"Not at all," he said politely; "I'm just idling away a little time.
+What can I do for you?"
+
+He had seen Miss Steel about the building and most of the Faculty knew
+her by this time as "Inspector of Dormitories."
+
+"Do you remember helping a young lady who fainted on the day of the
+football game?"
+
+"Oh, yes, certainly," replied the Professor, absent-mindedly fingering
+a paper cutter.
+
+"You lent her your overcoat that afternoon, didn't you?"
+
+"Why, yes; I believe I did."
+
+"Have you worn the coat since?"
+
+"Certainly," he answered, laughing; "every day, and several times a day.
+It's the only one I have. Are you a detective?"
+
+"Yes. Do you ever put things in the pockets of your coat?"
+
+The Professor smiled shamefacedly like a schoolboy culprit.
+
+"In one of them. There's been a hole in the other one for a long
+time--two years at least."
+
+"Would you mind letting me see that coat?"
+
+He lifted the blue overcoat from a hook on the door and placed it on a
+chair beside Miss Steel.
+
+"Am I a suspect?" he asked politely. "Has anything been lost?"
+
+The detective seized the overcoat and began rummaging through the
+pockets with a practised hand.
+
+"Yes," she answered; "something has been lost, and extremely
+disagreeable things have been said by the owner about it."
+
+"About me?" asked the Professor, still groping in the dark.
+
+"No, no; about the girl who lost it."
+
+"Miss Brown?"
+
+The detective did not reply. She had run her hand through the hole in
+the pocket and was now searching the corners between the lining and the
+cloth.
+
+"Ha!" she cried at last, exactly like the detective in a play. "Here it
+is!"
+
+With a swift movement she extricated her hand from the bottomless pocket
+and displayed between her thumb and forefinger a large emerald ring.
+
+"Why, that's the ring of my cousin, Judith Blount!" exclaimed the
+Professor in amazement. "And I have had it in my pocket all this time.
+Great heavens! what an extraordinary thing, and how did it get there?"
+
+"Miss Blount forced Miss Brown to take charge of it while she was
+playing football. After Miss Brown came to from her faint, she must have
+been very cold and slipped her hands in the pockets of this coat for
+warmth----"
+
+"She did," confirmed the Professor.
+
+"And the ring slipped off. When she found it was lost she got up at dawn
+next day and went out in her slippers in the snow to find it, and nearly
+caught her death. But she's had no thanks for her trouble from your
+relation, I can assure you. Nothing but abuse----"
+
+"What!" shouted the Professor. "You mean to say that Judith has dared to
+insinuate----"
+
+"She has," said Miss Steel.
+
+"And she whom Miss Brown has shielded--great heavens! this is too much."
+
+He began walking up and down the room in a rage.
+
+"Shielded from what?"
+
+"I am not at liberty to tell you," he replied. "The girl repented of
+what she did. I know that, but she's an ungrateful little wretch."
+
+A scholarly professor of English literature, however, is no match for
+a well-trained detective, and with a knowing smile on her lips the
+inspector rose to leave.
+
+"You may return the ring," she said. "It will be a great relief to Miss
+Molly Brown of Kentucky to know it has been found. She was about to give
+up two acres of good apple orchard to pay for it; the land, in fact,
+which was to provide the money for her college expenses."
+
+And with that she sailed out of the room and went straight to the home
+of President Walker, with whom she spent the better part of an hour.
+
+Professor Green followed close on her heels. He did not pause at Miss
+Walker's pretty stucco residence, however, but hastened down the campus
+and rang the bell at Queen's Cottage.
+
+Miss Brown was in, he learned from the maid. She had only arrived from
+the Infirmary that afternoon.
+
+The Professor waited in the sitting room deserted by the students at
+that hour, those who were not studying in their rooms being at Vespers.
+Presently Molly appeared, looking very slender and tall, like a pale
+flower swaying on its stalk.
+
+The Professor rushed up and seized her hand unceremoniously.
+
+"My dear child!" he cried, "how am I ever going to make my apologies to
+you for all this trouble of which I have been the unconscious cause?"
+
+"For what----" began Molly, too much astonished to finish her question.
+
+"The ring! The ring! It's been concealed in the ragged lining of my
+shabby old overcoat all this time, and that clever detective of
+dormitories, or whatever she is, ferreted it out just now. Perhaps I
+should have thought of it myself; but, you see, I hadn't even heard the
+ring had been lost. I am afraid you suffered a great deal."
+
+"I did at first; but after I grew better I never let myself slip back
+into that state again. I kept believing it would be found. I was so sure
+of it that I haven't really been unhappy at all. You see, everybody is
+so beautifully kind and no one believed----"
+
+"Great heavens!" interrupted the Professor, storming excitedly
+around the room, "that ungrateful, wicked girl to have made such an
+accusation--she shall hear from me what she owes to you! I'll take the
+ring to her myself later. She is my cousin, and her brother is as near
+to me as my own brother, but----"
+
+"You aren't going to tell Prexy?" cried Molly.
+
+"I must. Besides, I nearly gave it away to Miss Steel."
+
+"Oh, well, if that's the case, she knows already. She's a detective, and
+if you let two words slip, she can easily guess the rest. There's no
+keeping anything from her. You may be sure Prexy knows it by this time."
+
+"I'm rather relieved," said the Professor. "Judith will probably be well
+punished; but she should be."
+
+"I've always wondered," said Molly, after a short pause, "why Judith did
+it."
+
+The Professor looked at her closely with his humorous brown eyes.
+
+"Have you no idea why?" he asked.
+
+"Except for mischief and to annoy the seniors," she answered.
+
+"Possibly," he said. "A girl who has been spoiled and petted as she has
+will give in to almost any whim that seizes her. However, such actions
+are not tolerated at Wellington, and she will have to learn a few pretty
+stiff lessons if she expects to remain here."
+
+Then Professor Green shook hands with Molly, gave her a little paternal
+advice about taking care of her health, and took his departure. His
+next destination was the President's house, where he waited in the
+drawing-room until Miss Steel had terminated her interview. He was
+prepared for a round scolding from his old friend, who had known him
+since his early youth, but the President was inclined to be lenient with
+the young man.
+
+"It all goes to show," she said at the end of the interview, "that
+murder will out. But why did the foolish girl do that mischievous thing?
+What did she have to gain by it?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Jealous of some one prettier and more popular than herself, probably,"
+he answered.
+
+The President sighed.
+
+"Who can understand the intricacies of a young girl's heart," she said.
+"I have been studying them for twenty years, and they are still a
+closed book to me."
+
+When Professor Green a little later returned the emerald ring to his
+cousin, he cut the visit as short as possible. He told her that she had
+deliberately and wrongfully accused one who had shielded her even at the
+risk of offending the President of Wellington College, and that it was
+he who had given the detective, already suspicious, the clue she wanted.
+
+Judith wept bitterly, but her cousin showed no signs of relenting.
+
+"If you want to be loved," he said, "learn unselfishness and gentleness
+and truthfulness. These are the qualities that make men and women
+beloved. You will never gain anything by cheating and lying."
+
+The end of the episode was a pretty severe punishment for Judith Blount.
+She was suspended from college for three weeks and was compelled to
+resign from all societies for the rest of the winter. She left college
+next morning early, and no one saw her again until after Christmas, when
+she returned a much chastened and quieted young woman.
+
+A few days after she had gone Molly received a note from her from New
+York. It read:
+
+  "DEAR MISS BROWN:
+
+  "Will you forgive me? I am very unhappy.
+
+                                      "JUDITH BLOUNT."
+
+You may be sure that Molly's reply was prompt and forgiving.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+CHRISTMAS--MID-YEARS--AND THE WANDERTHIRST.
+
+
+There are few lonelier and more dismal experiences in life than
+Christmas away from home for the first time. Molly felt her heart sink
+as the great day approached. One morning a trainload of chattering,
+laughing girls pulled out of the Wellington station. Judy hanging
+recklessly to the last step, waved her handkerchief until Molly's figure
+grew indistinct in the distance, and Nance on the crowded platform
+called out again and again, "Good-bye, Molly, dear. Good-bye!"
+
+Molly almost regretted that she had ever left Kentucky, as the Christmas
+train became a point of black on the horizon.
+
+"I might have ended my days as a teacher in a country school-house and
+been happier than this," she thought desperately, starting back to
+college.
+
+Some one came running up behind her. It was Mary Stewart who had been
+down to see some classmates off. She was to take the night train to New
+York.
+
+"When do you get off?" she asked, slipping her arm through Molly's like
+the good comrade she was. "I'm surprised you didn't leave yesterday,
+with such a long journey before you."
+
+"I'm not going home this Christmas," replied Molly.
+
+"Not going?" began Mary. "You're to be left at Queen's by yourself?"
+
+Molly nodded, vainly endeavoring to smile cheerfully.
+
+"Then you're to go with me. I'll come right along now and help you
+pack," announced Mary decisively.
+
+"But, Mary, I can't. I haven't anything--money or clothes----"
+
+"Don't say 'but' to me! I've got everything. I've even got the
+drawing-room to myself on the night train to New York. You shall go
+with me. I don't know why I never thought of it before. We'll have a
+beautiful Christmas together. Since mother's death, five years ago,
+Christmas has been a dismal time at our house. You'll be just the
+person to cheer us up. It will be like having a child in the house.
+You shall have a Christmas tree and hang up your stocking. Father will
+be delighted and so will Brother Willie."
+
+Thus overruled, Molly was borne triumphantly to New York that same
+evening, and spent one of the most wonderful Christmases of her life in
+Mary's beautiful home on Riverside Drive. As her mother and godmother
+both wisely sent her checks for Christmas gifts, she was not embarrassed
+by any lack of ready money. She was even rich enough to purchase a new
+evening dress and a pretty blouse which Mary had ordered to be sent up
+on approval, and not for many a year afterward did she guess why those
+charming things happened to be such bargains. But Molly was a very
+inexperienced young person, and knew little concerning prices at that
+time.
+
+Mary's father was a fine man, quiet and self-contained, with a splendid
+rugged face. He treated his only daughter with indescribable tenderness,
+and called her "Little Mary." They did not see much of "Brother Willie,"
+a sophomore at Yale, and very busy enjoying his holiday. He regarded
+Molly as a child and his sister as an old maid, but condescended to take
+them to the theatre twice.
+
+But all good things must come to an end, and it seemed just a little
+while before Molly found herself back at her old desk in her room at
+Queen's, writing a "bread-and-butter" letter to Mr. Stewart, which
+pleased him mightily, since Mary's guests had never before taken that
+trouble.
+
+Judy came back radiantly happy. She had had a glorious time in
+Washington with her "vagabond" parents, as she called them. Nance, too,
+had enjoyed her Christmas with her father and busy mother, who had come
+home to rest during the holidays. Only one of Queen's girls did not join
+the jolly circle that now congregated in the most hospitable room in the
+house to "swap" holiday experiences. But a letter had arrived from the
+missing member addressed to "Miss M. C. W. Brown," and beginning: "My
+Dear Molly Brown."
+
+  "Good-bye," the letter ran. "I'm off for Europe and Grandmamma, by
+  the _Kismet_, sailing the eighteenth. I am afraid I was too much
+  like a bull in a china shop at college. I was always breaking
+  something, mostly rules. I've done lots of foolish things, and I am
+  sorry. They were jokes, of course, most of them, and intended to
+  frighten silly self-important people. I've learned a great deal from
+  you and your friends, but I'd rather practice my new wisdom on other
+  people. If you ever see me again you'll find me changed. I may enter
+  a convent for a few years in France and learn to keep quiet. You did
+  what you could for me, and so did the others. You are a first rate
+  lot and you make a jolly good freshman class. I shall miss you, and
+  I shall miss old Wellington. I wouldn't have come back this year if
+  I hadn't felt the call of its two gray towers. Somehow, it's been
+  more of a home to me than most places, and when I'm quite old and
+  forgotten I shall go back and see it again some day. Good-bye again,
+  and good luck. I've told Mrs. Murphy to give you my Persian prayer
+  rug. It's just your color of blue.
+
+                                                 "F. ANDREWS."
+
+Molly read the letter aloud and the girls were half sorry and half
+relieved over its contents. After all, Frances was a very disturbing
+element, but as Margaret Wakefield announced later at a meeting of the
+G. F. Society, she had responded to kind treatment, and she, Margaret,
+moved that they send her a combination steamer letter of farewell and
+a bunch of violets to cheer her on her lonely voyage. The movement was
+promptly seconded by Molly, carried by universal acclaim, and the
+resolution put into effect immediately.
+
+After Christmas comes the terror of every freshman's heart--the mid-year
+examinations. As the dreaded week approached, lights burned late in
+every house on the campus and nobody offered any interference. Behind
+closed doors sat scores of weary maidens with pale concentrated faces
+bent over text-books.
+
+Judy Kean made a record at Queen's. She crammed history for thirty-six
+hours at a stretch, only stopping for food occasionally or to snatch a
+half hour's nap.
+
+It was Saturday and bitter cold. Examinations were to begin on Monday,
+and there yet remained two more blessed days of respite. Molly, in a
+long, gray dressing gown, with a towel wrapped around her head, had
+been cramming mathematics since six in the morning, and now at eleven
+o'clock, she lifted her eyes from the hated volume and looked about her
+with a dazed expression as if she had suddenly awakened from a black
+dream. Nance had hurried into the room.
+
+"Molly, for heaven's sake, go to Judy. I think she's losing her mind.
+She has overstudied and it has affected her brain. I can't do anything
+with her at all."
+
+"What?" cried Molly, rushing down the hall, her long, gray wrapper
+trailing after her in voluminous folds.
+
+She opened Judy's door unceremoniously and marched in.
+
+The room looked as if a cyclone had struck it. The contents of the
+bureau drawers were dumped onto the floor; the closet was emptied,
+clothes and books piled about on the bed and chairs, and Judy's two
+trunks filled up what floor space remained.
+
+Judy herself was working feverishly. She had packed a layer of books in
+one of the trunks and was now folding up her best dresses.
+
+"Julia Kean, what are you doing?" cried Molly in a stern voice.
+
+Judy gave her a constrained nod.
+
+"Don't bother me now. There's a dear. I'm in a dreadful hurry."
+
+Molly shook her violently by the shoulder. She had a feeling that Judy
+was asleep and must be waked up.
+
+"Get up from there this minute and answer my question," she commanded.
+
+"What was your question?" asked Judy with an embarrassed little laugh.
+"Oh, yes, you asked what I was doing. I should think you could see I
+wasn't gathering cowslips on the campus."
+
+"Are you running away, Judy?" asked Molly, trying another tack.
+
+"Yes, my Mariucci," cried Judy, quoting a popular song, "'_I'm gona
+packa my trunk and taka my monk and sail for sunny It._'"
+
+Molly refused even to smile at this witticism.
+
+"I know what you're doing," she exclaimed. "You are running away from
+examinations. You're a coward. You are no better than a deserter from
+the army in time of war. It's bad enough in time of peace, but just
+before the battle--I'm so ashamed and disappointed in you that I can
+hardly understand how I ever could have loved you so much."
+
+Judy went on stolidly packing, rolling her clothes into little bundles
+and stuffing them in anywhere she could find a place between her
+numerous books.
+
+"Have you lost your nerve, Judy, dear?" said Molly, after a minute,
+kneeling down beside her friend and seizing her hands.
+
+"I suppose so," said Judy, extricating her hands, and speaking in a
+hard, strained voice in an effort to keep from breaking down. "I'd
+rather not stay here and be disgraced by flunking, but there's another
+reason beside that, Molly. I know I look like a deserter and deserve to
+be shot, but there's another reason," she wailed; "there's another good
+reason."
+
+"Why, Judy, dearest, what can it be?" asked Molly gently.
+
+"They're going to Italy," she burst out. "They're sailing on Monday. I
+got the letter to-day, and, oh, I can't stand it--I can't endure it.
+They'll be in Sicily in a few weeks--and without me! Mamma hates the
+cold. So do I. I'm numb now with it. Oh, Molly, they'll be sailing
+without me, and I want to go. You can't understand what the feeling
+is. There is something in me that is calling all the time, and I can't
+help hearing it and answering. In my mind I can live through every bit
+of the voyage. At first it's cold, bitter cold, and then after a few
+days we get into the Gulf Stream and gradually it grows warmer. Even
+in the winter time the air is soft and smells of the south. At last
+the Azores come--cunning little islands snuggling down out there in
+the Atlantic--and finally you see a long line of coast--it's Africa;
+then Gibraltar and the Mediterranean--oh, Molly--and Algiers, lovely
+Algiers, nestling down between the hills and looking across such a
+harbor! You can see the domes of the mosques as you sail in and Arab
+boys come out in funny little boats and offer to row you to shore.
+It's delightfully warm and you smell flowers everywhere. The sky is a
+deep blue. It's like June. And then, after Algiers, comes Italy----"
+
+Judy had risen to her feet now, and her eyes had an uncanny expression
+in them. She appeared to have lost sight entirely of the little room at
+Queen's, and through the chaos of books and clothing, she was seeing a
+vision of the South.
+
+"Come back to earth, Judy," said Molly, gently pulling her sleeve.
+"Wouldn't your mother and father be angry with you for giving up college
+and joining them uninvited?"
+
+"Angry?" cried Judy. "Of course not. Even if I just caught the steamer,
+it would be all right, they would fix it up somehow, and they would be
+glad--oh, so glad! What a glorious time we will have together. Perhaps
+we shall spend a few weeks in Capri. I shall try and make them stay a
+while in Capri. Such a view there is at Capri across the Bay. Papa loves
+Naples. He even loves its dirtiness and calls it 'local color.' We'll
+have to stay there a week to satisfy him, and then mamma will make us
+go to Ravello. She's mad about it; and then I'll have my choice--it's
+Venice, of course; but we'll wait until it's warmer for Venice. April is
+perfect there, and then Rome after Easter. Oh, Molly, Molly, help me
+pack! I'm off--I'm off--isn't it glorious, Italy, when the spring
+begins, the roses and the violets and the fresias----"
+
+Judy began running about the room, snatching her things from the bed and
+chairs and tossing them into the trunks helter-skelter. Molly watched
+her in silence for a while. She must collect her ideas, and think of
+something to say. But not now. It was like arguing with a lunatic to say
+anything now.
+
+At last Judy's feverish energy burned itself out and she sat down on the
+bed exhausted.
+
+"So you're going to give up four splendid years at college and all the
+friends you've made--Nance and me and Margaret and Jessie, and nice old
+Sallie Marks and Mabel, all the fun and the jolly times, the delightful,
+glorious life we have here--and for what? For a three months' trip you
+have taken before, and will take again often, no doubt. Just for three
+short, paltry little months' pleasure, you're going to give up things
+that will be precious to you for the rest of your life. It's not only
+the book learning, it's the associations and the friends----"
+
+"I don't see why I should lose my friends," broke in Judy sullenly.
+
+"They'll never be the same again. They couldn't after such a
+disappointment as this. You see, you'll always be remembered as a coward
+who turned and ran when examinations came--you lost your nerve and
+dropped out and even pretty little Jessie has the courage to face it.
+Oh, Judy, but I'm disappointed in you. It's a hard blow to come now
+when we're all fighting to save ourselves and pull through safely. And
+you--one of the cleverest and brightest girls in the class. Don't tell
+me your father will be pleased. He'll be mortified, I'm certain of it.
+He's much too fine a man to admire a cowardly act, no matter whose act
+it is. You'll see. He'll be shocked and hurt. If he had thought it was
+right for you to give up college on the eve of examinations, he would
+have written for you to come. It will be a crushing blow to him, Judy."
+
+Judy lay on her bed, her hands clasped back of her head. There was a
+defiant look on her face, and she kicked the quilt up and down with one
+foot, like an impatient horse pawing the ground. Then, suddenly, she
+collapsed like a pricked balloon. Burying her face in the pillows, she
+began sobbing bitterly, her body shaking convulsively with every sob.
+It was a terrible sight to see Judy cry, and Molly hoped she would be
+spared such another experience.
+
+Without saying another word, Molly began quietly unpacking the trunks
+and putting the things back in their places. Then she pulled the
+empty trunks into the hall. This done, she filled a basin with water,
+recklessly poured in an ample quantity of Judy's German cologne, and
+sitting on the side of the bed, began bathing her friend's convulsed
+and swollen face. Gradually Judy's sobs subsided, her weary eyelids
+drooped and presently she dropped off into a deep, exhausted sleep.
+
+Nance crept into the room.
+
+"She's all right now," whispered Molly. "She's had an attack of the
+'wanderthirst,' but it's passed."
+
+All day and all night Judy slept, and on Sunday morning she was her old
+self once more, gay and laughing and full of fun. That afternoon she was
+an usher at Vespers in Wellington Chapel, with Molly and Nance, and wore
+her best suit and a big black velvet hat.
+
+She never alluded again to her attack of wanderthirst, but her devotion
+to Molly deepened and strengthened as the days flew by until it became
+as real to her as her love for her mother and father.
+
+Once in the midst of the dreaded examinations they did not seem so
+dreadful after all. The girls at Queen's came out of the fight with
+"some wounds, but still breathing," as Margaret Wakefield had put it.
+Molly had a condition in mathematics.
+
+"I got it because I expected it," she said.
+
+But Judy came through with flying colors--not a single black mark
+against her. Jessie barely pulled through, and her friends rejoiced that
+the prettiest, most frivolous member of the freshman class had made such
+a valiant fight and won.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+SOPHOMORES AT LAST.
+
+
+     "Freshman, arise!
+      Gird on thy sword!
+      Captivity is o'er.
+      To arms! To arms!
+      For, lo! thou art
+      A daring sophomore!"
+
+The words of this stirring song floated in through the open windows at
+Queen's one warm night in early June. Moonlight flooded the campus, and
+the air was sweet with the perfume of lilac and syringa.
+
+A group of sophomores had gathered in front of the house to serenade the
+freshmen at Queen's, who had immediately repaired to the piazza to
+acknowledge this unusual honor paid them by their august predecessors.
+
+"I think it would be far more appropriate if they sang:
+
+    "'When all the saints who from their labors rest,'"
+
+remarked Mabel Hinton, who, in order to make a record, had studied
+herself into a human skeleton.
+
+"Well," said Molly Brown, "when I left home last September, one of my
+brothers cheerfully informed me that I looked like 'a rag and a bone and
+a hank of hair.' I am afraid I don't feel very saint-like now, because I
+have gained ten pounds, and I'm not tired of anything, except packing my
+clothes. I'm so sorry to leave blessed old Queen's that I could kiss her
+brown cheek, if it didn't look foolish."
+
+"Well, go and kiss the side of the house then," put in Judy. "You have a
+poetic nature, Molly; but I wouldn't have it changed. I like it just as
+it is."
+
+"Do you know," interrupted Margaret Wakefield, "that Queen's, from
+having once been scorned as a residence, has now become a very popular
+abode, and there were so many applications for rooms here for next year
+that the registrar has had to make a waiting list for the first time in
+connection with Queen's. Think of that at old Queen's!"
+
+"It's because it's the residence of a distinguished person," announced
+Molly. "I think we should put a brass plate on the front door, stating
+that in this house lived a class president who possessed every attribute
+for the office. She was versed in parliamentary law, she had an
+executive mind, and she was beloved by all who knew her."
+
+Margaret was pleased at this compliment.
+
+"_Voyons, voyons, que vous me flattez!_" she exclaimed. "It's your warm
+Southern nature that makes you so enthusiastic. Now, the real reason why
+old brown Queen's, with her moldering vines, is so popular all of a
+sudden is because you are here."
+
+It was Molly's turn now to be pleased.
+
+"We won't argue such a personal matter," she said, squeezing Margaret's
+hand. "But I'm glad I'm booked here for next year. I was afraid Nance
+would want a 'singleton,' she has such a retiring nun-like nature."
+
+"Me?" exclaimed Nance, disregarding English in her amazement. "Why, I've
+had the happiest winter of my whole life with you, Molly. If there's a
+chance for another one like it, I'm only too thankful."
+
+"Certainly Mary Carmichael Washington Brown is a modest soul," thought
+Judy, who happened to know that her friend had had some five or six
+tempting offers to move into better quarters the next year at no greater
+expense to herself. One was from Mary Stewart, who was to return next
+winter for a post-graduate course. Another was from Judith Blount, who
+had proposed Molly for membership in the Beta Phi Society next year, and
+had furthermore invited the surprised young freshman to take the study
+of her apartment for a bedroom and offered her the constant use of her
+sumptuous sitting room.
+
+Certainly, if ever there was an expression of true remorse and
+repentance, that was one, Molly thought, and the allusion to roommates
+reminded her that she must say good-bye to Judith, for there would be no
+time in the morning for last farewells.
+
+"I am going over to the Beta Phi house for a minute," she announced.
+"Any one want to come along?"
+
+Margaret and Jessie, who had friends in that "abode of fashion," as it
+was called, joined her, and presently the three white figures were lost
+in the shadows on the campus.
+
+"She is going to say farewell to black-eyed Judith," observed Judy in
+a low voice to Nance, "and all I would say is what the colored preacher
+said: 'Can the le-o-pard change his spots?'"
+
+Nance smiled gravely. She did not possess Judy's prejudiced nature, but
+her convictions were strong.
+
+"Do you think she's a 'le-o-pard,' Judy?" she asked.
+
+"She may be a domesticated one," said Judy, "of the genus known as
+'cat.'"
+
+"Aren't you ashamed, Judy?" exclaimed Nance, reprovingly.
+
+But it must be confessed that a few doubts still lurked in her own heart
+concerning the sincerity of proud Judith's repentance.
+
+In the meantime, the three freshmen had separated in the upper hall of
+the Beta Phi House, and Molly had given a timid rap with Judith's fine
+brass knocker.
+
+Instantly the door flew open and she found herself precipitated into a
+roomful of people, at least it seemed so at first, who had just subsided
+into quiet because some one was going to play.
+
+Molly was about to retreat in great confusion when Miss Grace Green
+seized one hand and Mary Stewart the other. Judith came forward with
+a show of extreme cordiality and Richard Blount left the piano and
+actually ran the full length of the room, exclaiming:
+
+"It's Miss Molly Brown of Kentucky!"
+
+Molly knew she was breaking into a party, but there was nothing to do
+but make a call of a few minutes and then take her leave as gracefully
+as possible under the circumstances.
+
+Professor Edwin Green had also shaken her by the hand warmly, and
+pushing up a chair had insisted on her sitting down. They had all drawn
+their chairs around her in a semicircle, and Richard Blount had brought
+over the piano stool and placed it directly in front of her so that he
+could look straight at her.
+
+In fact, here sat the little freshman, blushing crimson and painfully
+embarrassed, enthroned in a large armchair, and gathered around her was
+a circle of very delightful, not to say, admiring persons.
+
+As one of these persons was Judith's brother and two were her near
+cousins, Molly thought she could explain their excessive cordiality.
+They knew the story of the ring and they were anxious to make amends.
+
+She recalled, with a furtive inner smile, the last time she was in those
+rooms, when, as a waitress, she had upset the coffee on the Professor's
+knees. How glad she was that the painful experience was well over and
+forgotten by now. But she was glad about many things that evening. She
+was happy to see that Mary and Judith had made up their differences, and
+were once more friends. She knew that Mary, who had the kindest heart in
+the world, could never stay angry long.
+
+"I didn't know that Judith was giving a party," Molly began, still very
+much embarrassed. "I just dropped in to say good-bye because I am
+leaving to-morrow morning."
+
+"To-morrow morning?" repeated Richard Blount. "Wasn't it lucky for me
+you happened in to-night. I had expected to call on you to-morrow
+afternoon, and think how disappointed I should have been to have found
+the nest empty and the bird flown."
+
+"So you are really off to-morrow?" broke in Professor Green. "I am so
+sorry. I was going to ask you to have tea in the Cloisters with my
+sister and me in the afternoon."
+
+Again Molly smiled to herself. Tea in the Cloisters, with a
+distinguished professor and his charming sister! Only nine months
+before she had been a lonely, shivering little waif of a freshman
+locked in the Cloisters. The words of the sophomore "croak" came back
+to her:
+
+     "They have locked me in the Cloisters;
+      They have fastened up the gate.
+      Oh, let me out! Oh, let me out!
+      It's growing very late."
+
+"I am sorry that my ticket is bought and my berth engaged, and the
+expressman coming for my trunk to-morrow at nine," she said. "If all
+those things were not so, I should love to drink soup----" she stopped
+and flushed a deep red.
+
+What absurd trick of the mind had made her say "soup"? "I mean tea," she
+went on hastily, hoping no one had heard the break.
+
+Miss Green was talking with Mary Stewart. Richard Blount was twirling on
+the piano stool, his hands deep in his pockets, and Judith was engaged
+at a side table in pouring lemonade into glasses.
+
+There was a twinkle of amusement in the Professor's brown eyes, and he
+gave Molly a delightful smile.
+
+"I must be going," she said anxiously, rising.
+
+"Not till you've had a glass of lemonade, for I made it myself," said
+Richard, gallantly handing her one on a plate.
+
+Molly looked doubtfully toward Judith.
+
+"I don't want to be like that young man in the rhyme," she said.
+
+    "'There was a young man so benighted,
+      He never knew when he was slighted.
+      He'd go to a party and eat just as hearty,
+      As if he'd been really invited.'"
+
+Everybody laughed, and Judith suddenly becoming a model hostess,
+exclaimed:
+
+"Indeed, you must stay, Molly, and have some lemonade. Richard didn't
+make it at all. He only squeezed the lemons."
+
+Molly, therefore, remained and had a beautiful time, and when she really
+did take her departure the entire party, including Judith, escorted her
+across the moonlit campus to the door of Queen's. But Molly was still
+certain that it was the ring episode and nothing else that made them
+all so polite and attentive.
+
+And so she informed Nance and Judy that night as she unlocked her trunk
+for the third time in ten minutes to stuff in some overlooked belonging.
+
+But Judy sniffed the air and exclaimed:
+
+"Ring, nothing! It's popularity!"
+
+Molly smiled and went to bed, feeling that her last day at Wellington
+had been a decided improvement on the first one.
+
+The next morning Queen's Cottage was a pandemonium of trunks and bags
+and excited young women, rushing up and down the halls. Cries could be
+heard from every room in the house of:
+
+"The laundress hasn't brought my shirtwaists! Perfidious woman!"
+
+"The expressman's here!"
+
+"Is your trunk strapped?"
+
+"I've got to sleep in an upper berth."
+
+"Don't forget to write me."
+
+"Where are you to be this summer?"
+
+"I can't get this top down and the trunk man's waiting!"
+
+"Oh, dear, do hurry! We'll miss the bus!"
+
+"Young ladies, the bus is coming," called the voice of Mrs. Markham from
+the front door.
+
+And then, with a fluttering of handkerchiefs and many a last call of
+"good-bye," the bus-load of girls moved sedately down the avenue.
+
+Molly, looking back at the twin gray towers of Wellington, understood
+why Frances Andrews wanted so much to return.
+
+"How glad I am to be only a sophomore," she cried. "I shall have three
+more years at Wellington!"
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note: Besides some minor printer's errors the following
+correction has been made: on page 172 "Professor" has been changed to
+"President" (the doctor at one side, the President at the other).
+Otherwise the original has been preserved, including inconsistent
+spelling and hyphenation.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Molly Brown's Freshman Days, by Nell Speed
+
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