“Better not say that,” said Judy calmly. “It simply wouldn’t go, you know, and you must know as well as I do that it would be absolutely false.”
“How do you know what I was going to say?”
“I could guess,” said Judy, shrugging her shoulders. “I can often guess things you would like to say, but don’t, Miss Blount. What I came for was to ask you to help us find the ring. Molly is very ill, and, of course, it’s the loss of the ring as much as anything else that’s made her so. We’re all doing the best we can, and if you’ll just kindly add your efforts to ours, it might help some.”
“Supposing the ring isn’t found, what redress have I? It’s been in our family for generations. It was brought over from France by a Huguenot ancestor——”
“Nice place to be wearing it, then, at a football game!” exclaimed Judy indignantly. “And then forcing other people to take charge of it for you! Redress, indeed! Do you want Molly to pay you for your ring? I tell you, Miss Blount, that a person who really had Huguenot ancestors would never have suggested such a thing. It wouldn’t have been Huguenot etiquette.”
And Judy flung herself out of the room and down the steps before the astonished Judith had time to realize that she had been insulted by an upstart of a freshman.
It looked very much for a day or two as if Molly were going to have a congestion in one lung. For several days she was a very sick girl. She had a strange delirium that she was looking for something while she was walking on stilts. Many times she asked the nurse if sapphires were as valuable as emeralds, and once she demanded to know if an emerald as large as her little finger nail was worth much money, say, two acres of good orchard land. But the lung was not congested, as Dr. McLean had at first thought. In a day or two the fever subsided and by Thursday she was able to sit up in bed, propped by many pillows and see Judy and Nance.
Her room was a bower of flowers. They had even come from Exmoor, Lawrence Upton having sent her a box of lovely pink roses. Mrs. McLean had brought her a bunch of red berries from the woods, and one day two cards were brought up, one of which looked familiar: Miss Grace Green and Mr. Edwin Green, inquiring as to the improvement in Miss Molly Brown’s condition, were pleased to hear that she was better.
And now Nance and Judy sat on either side the young invalid, each trying to assume a cheerful expression and each feeling that whatever disagreeable things had happened—and several had happened—they must be hidden from Molly at all costs.
Judith Blount had scattered reports around college of an extremely hateful character which Molly’s friends had done their best to suppress. The ring had never been found, although everything had been done that could be thought of in the way of advertising and searching.