Molly Brown's Freshman Days

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.