“The funny thing about me and Math. is that I never did really and truly understand it,” laughed Molly. “I learned how to work one example as another was worked, but it was never with any real comprehension. Nothing but memory got me through. I remember so well when I was a little girl, going to the district school. I came home in tears because division of decimals had stumped me. My father found me weeping my soul out with a sticky slate and pencil grasped to my panting breast. ‘What’s the matter, little daughter?’ he said. ‘Oh, father, I can’t see how a great big number can go into a little bits of number and make a bigger number still.’ ‘Well, you poor lamb, don’t bother your little red head about it any more, but run and get yourself dressed and come drive to town with me. I am going to take you to see Jo Jefferson play “Cricket on the Hearth.”’ I shall never forget that play, but I never have really understood decimals; and you may know what higher mathematics meant to me.”
“Speaking of a quiet year, Molly, I have an idea one reason it has been so uneventful is that our dear old Judy has not been here to get herself into hot water, sometimes pulling in her devoted friends after her when they tried to fish her out. Won’t it be splendid to see all the old Queen’s crowd again: Judy and Katherine and Edith, Margaret and Jessie? I wonder if they have changed much! I am so glad they are coming to the meeting of the alumnæ this year, and that we are here without having to come!”
“I do hope my box from home will get here in time for the first night of the gathering of the clan. I know it will seem more natural to them if we can get up a little feast. I want all of the girls to know Melissa. Isn’t she happy at the prospect of her dear teacher’s coming? Do you know the lady’s name? I never can remember to ask Melissa, who always speaks of her with clasped hands and a rapt expression as ‘teacher’.”
“Yes,” answered Nance. “She has a wonderful name for one who is giving up her life working for mankind: Dorothea Allfriend, all-friendly gift of God. I believe her name must have influenced her from the beginning.”
“We must ask her to our spread on Melissa’s account,” cried the impetuously hospitable Molly. “That makes ten, counting the eight Queen’s girls, and while we are about it, let’s have——”
“Molly Brown, stop right there. If you ask a lot of outsiders, how can we have the intimate old talk that we are all of us hungering for? Of course we can’t leave Melissa out, as she has been too close to us all winter to do anything without her, and her friend must come, too; but in the name of old Queen’s, let that suffice.”
“Right, as usual, Nance, but inviting is such a habit with all of my family that it almost amounts to a vice. Of course we don’t want outsiders, and I shall hold a tight rein on my inclination to entertain until after the fourth of June. If there are any scraps left, I might give another party.”
“There won’t be any, unless all of us have fallen in love and lost our appetites.”
The fourth came at last, and with it our five old friends: the Williams sisters, Katherine and Edith, as amusing as ever, still squabbling over small matters but agreeing on fundamentals, which they had long ago decided was the only thing that mattered; Margaret Wakefield, with the added poise and gracious manner that a winter in Washington society would be apt to give one; Jessie Lynch, as pretty as ever but still Jessie Lynch, not having married the owner of the ring, as we had rather expected her to do when she left college; and our dear Judy, in the seventh heaven of bliss because The American Artists’ exhibition had accepted and actually hung, not very far above the line, a small picture done in Central Park at dusk.
The meeting at No. 5, Quadrangle, was a joyous one. Everybody talked at once, except of course little Otoyo, whose manners were still so good that she never talked when any one else had the floor; but her smile was so beaming that Edith declared it was positively deafening.