On that afternoon, as she rode up in her closed electric car, dressed in a fawn-colored suit with spotless white gloves and spats, she really looked like a beautiful wax figure in a showcase. Beside her, poor Molly looked like a rumpled Madonna. She had on a very becoming blue linen house dress that she had donned as not only suitable for possible callers but also not too pure or good in which to cook her husband’s food. The baby had delighted the admiring audience, before the arrival of Miss Fern, by clutching a handful of her mother’s pretty hair and having to have her little pink fingers opened one by one to disengage them. No doubt it was a highly intelligent and charming performance, but it had played sad havoc with Molly’s hair.
“We are so glad you are back, Molly, for more reasons than one,” exclaimed Jo Crittenden, hoping to loosen the tension a little, when Alice had completed her perfunctory catechism. “When are you going to begin the Would-be Authors’ Club?”
“Oh, do begin soon!” begged Billie. “Thelma has turned out some scrumptious bits during vacation, and even I have busted loose on paper.”
“Yes, I have written a lot this summer,” said Thelma, as Molly smiled on her. “Have you done anything, or has the baby kept you too busy?”
“Oh, I had plenty of time while I was in Kentucky. You see, out there I have a very good servant and then my mother helps me with Mildred. I have finished a short story and sent it off. Of course, I am expecting it back by every mail.”
“I should think your household cares would prevent your giving much time to scribbling,” sniffed Alice, if one could call the utterances of such an elegant dame sniffing.
“Scribbling! Why, Mrs. Green has written real things and been in real magazines,” stormed Billie.
“Ah, indeed!”
“Yes, and if we had not limited the Would-be Authors to twenty, we would have the whole of Wellington clamoring to join,” declared Jo, who considered it was high time for a perfect gentleman to step in and let Miss Alice Fern know how Wellington felt toward Mrs. Edwin Green.
Miss Fern said nothing but stared at the corner of the room that Edwin and Molly called: “The Poet’s Corner.” It was where all the poetry, ancient, medieval and modern, found shelf room. Over it hung Shakespeare’s epitaph, a framed rubbing from the tomb, the same that Edwin had always kept over his desk in his bachelor days to scare his housekeeper, Mrs. Brady, into sparing his precious papers.