“Really, Molly, you are quite the nicest person in the world,” she exclaimed. Then she added: “By the way, Molly, can you spare the time to tutor me for a month or so? I don’t know what the rates are, but we can settle about that later. Nance tells me I must get busy or else take my walking papers. I’d be afraid of a strange tutor. I’m a timid creature. But I think I might manage to learn a few things from you, Molly, dear.”
Did Judy understand the look of immense relief which instantly appeared on Molly’s sensitive face? If she did she made no sign.
“Now, don’t say no,” she went on. “I know you are awfully busy, and all that, but it would be just an act of common charity.”
“Say no?” cried Molly, laughing lightly. “I can hardly wait to say yes,” and she cheerfully got out six pairs of muddy boots from the closet, enveloped herself in a large apron, slipped on a pair of old gloves and went to work to clean and black them. Molly had become official bootblack at Queen’s Cottage at ten cents a pair when they were not muddy, and fifteen cents when they were.
When she had completed her lowly job she sat down at her desk and wrote two notes.
One was to Judith Blount, in which she accepted her invitation to wait at table in the most polite and correct terms, and signed her name “Mary Carmichael Washington Brown.”
The second letter, which was to Frances Andrews, was also a note of acceptance.
Then Molly removed her collar, rolled up her sleeves, kicked off her pumps—a signal that she was going to begin work—and sat down to cram mathematics,—the very hardest thing in life to her and the subject which was to be a stumbling block in her progress always.