“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.”