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.