"I'm afraid I've been acting just like the little child who threw himself on the floor and kicked and screamed for more cake," she was thinking. "I suppose another year at college is just like a nice big hunk of chocolate cake and it wouldn't be good for mental digestion. I might as well stop struggling and begin to cram mathematics. That's the hardest thing I have, and I ought to get in as much of it as I can before I go."
"Perhaps you won't have to go at all," spoke another voice in her mind.
But Molly couldn't see it that way. Other letters from her mother had made it clear to her that no more money could be raised. There was a good place waiting for her to step into, however, in a small private school made up of children who lived in the neighborhood. She could come home after the mid-year examinations when the present teacher in the school was planning to be married.
"Oh, Miss Brown," someone said. Molly looked up quickly. It was President Walker. "Will you walk along with me? I had a letter from your mother last night and I want to speak to you about it."
The President was a very democratic and motherly woman who not only guided the affairs of the college with a wise hand, but kept in personal touch with her girls, and it was not unusual to see her walking home from Vespers with several students. This time, however, she took Molly's arm and led her down the village street without asking any of the others to join her.
The young girl was very sensible of the honor paid her, thus singled out by the President to walk back to college. She felt a shy pleasure in the sensation they created as the crowd of students parted to let them pass.
"I am very, very sorry to receive this news from your mother, Miss Brown," began the President. "I suppose you know what it is?"
"You mean about leaving college, Miss Walker?"
"Yes. It's really a great distress to me to think that one of my Queen's girls especially must give up in the middle of her course. Instead of listening to that young man at Vespers, I was thinking and thinking about this unwelcome news."
Molly smiled. She had managed to listen to the preaching and to think about her affairs at the same time, because they somehow seemed to fit together. Once she almost felt that perhaps he knew all about her case and was preaching to her. But, of course, everybody had problems and lots of the girls thought the same thing, no doubt,—Madeleine Petit, for instance.