How they had practiced and rehearsed and worked over that play not one of the senior cast will ever forget. But now it was ready and the time was ripe for the grand performance. In two days it was to take place.
The next morning, in response to the telegram, the three friends met Molly's brother and sister at the station. They were a good looking pair, as Nance pronounced them, but not the least like Molly. Minnie or Mildred Brown was as pretty as Molly in her way. She had an aquiline nose that spoke of family, brown hair curling bewitchingly about her face and a beautifully modeled mouth and chin. Kent was different, too—tall with gravely humorous gray eyes, his mouth rather large and shapely, his nose a little small—but he was very handsome and his manners were perfection. He took to Judy at once. She amused and mystified him and she volunteered after lunch to show him all the sights of Wellington. Another visitor at Wellington was Jimmy Lufton, who had come down to see the celebration regardless of work and expenses, and ordered Molly a beautiful bouquet of narcissus to be handed to her when she appeared as Rosalind.
Molly introduced him to Kent and Minnie and the three were soon good friends and looking for the best places along the campus to see the sights, while Molly rushed off to attire herself for the morning as a Maypole dancer. Old Wellington presented a strange and unusual aspect on that beautiful May morning. Far back under the trees gathered the people of the pageant waiting for the cue to start the march. Carts drawn by yokes of oxen rumbled along the avenue, filled with rustics from the country, mostly freshmen dressed in all manner of early English costumes. There were shepherds and shepherdesses, maids of low and high degree. Gentlemen of the court and plow boys in smock frocks elbowed each other on the green. Booths had been set up of a seventeenth century pattern, where anachronisms in the form of modern refreshments were sold.
Bands of singers and rustic dancers trooped by, jesters in cap and bells, page boys and trumpeters. A more animated and brilliantly colored scene would be difficult to imagine.
Providence had smiled on Wellington's Jubilee and sent a glorious day for the May Day Festival. It was an early spring and everything that could do honor to the day had burst into blossom: daffodils that bordered the lawns of the campus houses nodded their delicate yellow heads in the morning sunlight; clumps of lilac bushes formed bouquets of purple and white and from an occasional old apple tree showers of pink petals fell softly on the grass.
"It's almost as beautiful as Kentucky, Kent," observed Mildred Brown, and Jimmy Lufton laughed joyfully.
"Almost, but not quite," he said. "In Kentucky there would be twice as much of everything, and, besides the elms, there would be beech trees and maples with a good sprinkling of walnut and locust."
"Twice as many Mildreds, too," observed Kent. "But for my part I think the young ladies I have seen here are quite as pretty as the girls at home."
"I think you'd have a hard time finding two to match Miss Molly and Miss Mildred," put in Jimmy, looking with admiration at the charming Mildred, dressed in a cool white linen, a broad brimmed straw hat trimmed with pink roses shading her face.
"There's Miss Judy Kean," argued Kent.