“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.