Among all the little happenings that infest our daily lives it is often the least and most accidental that wields the strongest influence. This chance discovery by Molly that she could read poetry aloud gave her infinite secret pleasure. She began to memorize and repeat to herself all her favorite poems. Sometimes her pulses beat time to the rhythm in her head; even her speech at such times became unconsciously metrical, and as she walked she felt her body swing to the music of the verse. With a strange shyness she hid this secret from her friends, who never guessed when she sat quietly with them that she was chanting poetry to herself.
Molly had planned to do several errands that afternoon, after the class in Lit. II. The first one took her to the village to see Madeleine Petit, the little Southern girl, who was willing to do almost any kind of work to earn money. Molly had never returned the magazine clippings of prize offers, and she had also another reason for wanting to see Madeleine. She wished to find out just how different life in a room over the post-office was from life at Queen's. She was thankful when the lesson was over, that Judy was engaged for basket-ball practice in the gym., for she wished to be alone when she made this call.
Only a few days before, Miss Walker had called to her after chapel and suggested that she look over the rooms the postmistress rented to students, and make her choice so that lodgings could be spoken for before Christmas.
Molly paused at Madeleine's door and read the sign carefully.
"I suppose I shall have to be fixing up something like that," she thought, "only I never could do up jabots and I'd rather scrub floors than shampoo people's heads."
"Come in," called the liquid, melting voice of the Southern girl in answer to Molly's tap. "Oh, how do you do? What a delightful, welcome surprise," cried the hospitable little person. "Put your feet over the register. That's where I spend most of my time now. I'm not used to this awful climate. Now, give me your hat and coat. You're to have tea with me, you know. You won't mind if I go on working, will you? I'm doing up some jabots and things for that sweet Miss Stewart. She has given me a lot of work. Such a lady, if she is a Yankee! I can safely say that to you because you aren't one, you know. But, really, I'm beginning to like these Northern girls so much. They are quite as nice as the girls from home, only quieter," rattled on Miss Petit.
Molly groaned inwardly.
"If she only didn't talk so much," she thought. "I'm always putting up milestones during her ramblings to remind me of something I wanted to say, but there's never any chance to go back, even if I could remember where I put them."
"I wanted to return these clippings," she managed to edge in at last, producing the slips of papers.
"Oh, you needn't have bothered. I shall never use any of them. I told you there was nothing but mathematics in my soul. I can't write at all. The themes are the horror of my life. But you tried, I am sure. Was it the short story or one of the advertising ones? They are all of them terribly unsatisfactory because you never know where you stand until months and months afterwards when you read that somebody has won the prize. But, of course, I never expect to win prizes. I could never make a coup de tête like that."