"Was it very bad, Judy, dear?" Nance asked, when Judy walked into the room, white and silent.
"It was worse than that," replied Judy in a steady even voice. "If she had given me twenty lashes on my bare shoulders I should have liked it better. What business is it of hers what color I turn my hair? This is not a boarding school. I detest her!" Whereupon, she slammed her door and the girls did not see her again for several hours.
When she did finally emerge, she was calm and smiling, but the girls felt instinctively that her dangerous mood had not passed, only deepened, and Molly felt she would give a great deal to win her friend away from the malign influence of Adele Windsor.
It seemed to her sometimes that Judy was cherishing a secret grievance against her as well as against Miss Walker. But Molly had little time for brooding over such things in the daytime and at night sleep overtook her as soon as her tired head dropped on the pillow.
A great many things were in the air at Wellington just now. A prize had been offered for the best suggestion for a jubilee entertainment. It was only ten dollars, but every girl in college competed except Judy. One morning Adele Windsor's name was posted on the bulletin board as winner of the prize, and not long afterward they learned that it was Judy's scheme, unfolded on the opening night of college, that Adele had appropriated, no doubt with Judy's full consent.
Molly's exchange of brief notes with Jimmy Lufton had ripened into a correspondence, and she was prepared therefore for the enormous package containing at least a dozen Sunday newspapers that came to her one morning—also a check for fifteen dollars. With eager fingers she tore wrappers from the papers, and began to search through multitudinous columns for her article about Wellington.
At last, with Nance's and Judy's help, she found it, not tucked away in a corner as she had half expected, but spread out over the page. It is true the pictures were rather blurred, but there were the columns of writing, all hers, so she fondly believed, so skillfully had Mr. Lufton wrought the changes he had been obliged to make.
The article was signed "M. W. C. B." and a framed copy of it hangs to this day on the crowded walls of the Commune office. There was not much doubt who "M. W. C. B." was and Molly was deluged with calls and congratulations all day. It was glorious to have been the means of refuting Miss Beatrice Slammer's criticisms, and she could not help feeling very proud as she hurried down the avenue to the infirmary, one of the papers tucked under her arm, devoutly hoping that Alice Fern had gone home by now. It was reported that the Professor was walking about and in a few days was to go to Bermuda to stay until after the Christmas holidays. The Professor himself, and not Miss Fern, opened the door for Molly before Miss Grace Green, reading aloud by the window, could remonstrate with him. He was a mere ghost of his former self, pale, emaciated. His clothes seemed three sizes too big for his wasted frame and he had grown quite bald around the temples. Molly thought him very old that afternoon.
"I've brought something to show you," she said, after she had shaken hands with the brother and sister and the three had drawn up their chairs by the window. Then Miss Grace Green read the article aloud and Molly explained that it was Mr. Lufton, to whom they were already so deeply indebted, who had arranged to get it published.
"I took him over to the Commune office," said Molly, "and that started it."