“I think my trunk is on this train,” she said.—[Page 7.]

MOLLY BROWN’S
FRESHMAN DAYS

By
NELL SPEED

WITH FOUR HALF-TONE ILLUSTRATIONS
BY CHARLES L. WRENN

NEW YORK
HURST & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1912,
BY
HURST & COMPANY

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

Molly Brown’s Freshman Days

CHAPTER I.
WELLINGTON.

“Wellington! Wellington!” called the conductor.

The train drew up at a platform, and as if by magic a stream of girls came pouring out of the pretty stucco station with its sloping red roof and mingled with another stream of girls emptying itself from the coaches. Everywhere appeared girls,—leaping from omnibuses; hurrying down the gravel walk from the village; hastening along the University drive; girls on foot; girls on bicycles; girls running, and girls strolling arm in arm.

Few of them wore hats; many of them wore sweaters and short walking skirts of white duck or serge, and across the front of each sweater was embroidered a large “W” in cadet blue, the mystic color of Wellington University.

In the midst of a shouting, gesticulating mob stood Mr. Murphy, baggage master, smiling good naturedly.

“Now, young ladies, one at a time, please. We’ve brought down all the baggage left over by the 9.45. If your trunk ain’t on this train, it’ll come on the next. All in good time, please.”

A tall girl with auburn hair and deep blue eyes approached the group. There was a kind of awkward grace about her, the grace which was hers by rights and the awkwardness which comes of growing too fast. She wore a shabby brown homespun suit, a shade darker than her hair, and on her head was an old brown felt which had plainly seen service the year before.

But knotted at her neck was a tie of burnt-orange silk which seemed to draw attention away from the shiny seams and frayed hem and to cry aloud:

“Look at me. I am the color of a winter sunset. Never mind the other old togs.”

Surely there was something very brave and jaunty about this young girl who now pushed her way through the crowd of students and endeavored to engage the attention of the baggage-master.

[“I think my trunk was on this train,” she said] timidly. “I hope it is. It came from Louisville to Philadelphia safely, and when I re-checked it they told me it would be on this train.”

Now, Murphy, the baggage master, had his own peculiar method of conducting business, and it was strictly a partial and prejudiced one. If he liked the face of a student, he always waited on her first, regardless of how many other students were ahead of her; and, as he told his wife later, he “took a fancy to that overgrown gal from the fust.”

“I beg your pardon, but Mr. Murphy is engaged,” put in a haughty looking young woman with black eyes that snapped angrily.

“Now, Miss Judith,” said the baggage master, who knew many of the students by name, “don’t go fer to git excited. I ain’t made no promises to no one. It’s plain to see this here young lady is a newcomer, and, as sich, she gits my fust consideration.”

“Oh, please excuse me,” said the girl in shabby brown. “I’m not used to—I mean I haven’t traveled very much.”

Judith turned irritably away.

“I should think you hadn’t,” she said in a low voice, but loud enough to be overheard. “Freshies have a lot to learn and one is to respect their elders.”

The new girl put down her straw suit case and leaned against the wall of the station. She looked tired and there was a streak of soot across her cheek. The trip from Kentucky in this warm September weather was not the pleasantest journey in the world. While she waited for Mr. Murphy to return with news of her trunk, her attention was claimed by two girls standing at her elbow who were talking cheerfully together.

“Yes,” said one of them, a plump, brown-eyed girl with brown hair, a slightly turned-up nose and a humorous twitch to her lips, “I have a room at Queen’s cottage. It’s the best I could do unless I went into one of the expensive suites in the dormitories, and you know I might as well expect to take the royal suite on the Mauretania and sail for Europe as do that.”

The other girl laughed.

“You’d be quite up to doing anything with your enterprising ways, Nance Oldham,” she exclaimed.

“Oh, are you going to Queen’s cottage?” here broke in the girl in shabby brown. “I’m there, too. My name is Molly Brown. I come from Kentucky. I feel awfully forlorn and homesick arriving at the University station without knowing a soul.”

There was a kind of ringing note to Molly Brown’s voice which made the other girls listen more closely.

“I wonder if she doesn’t sing,” thought Nance Oldham, giving her a quick, scrutinizing glance. “Yes, I am at Queen’s cottage,” she continued aloud, “but that’s about all I can tell you. I feel like a greeny, too. We’ll soon learn, I suppose. This is Miss Brinton, Miss Brown.”

Caroline Brinton was rather a nondescript young person with dreamy eyes and an absent-minded manner. She came from Philadelphia, and she greeted the new acquaintance rather coldly.

“Your trunk ain’t here, yet, Miss,” called the baggage master. “Like enough it’ll come on the 6.50.”

Molly looked disturbed, while the black-eyed Judith standing nearby flashed a triumphant smile, as much as to say:

“It only serves you right for pushing in out of turn.”

“What are we to do now?” she asked of her new friends, rather helplessly.

“Take the ’bus up to Wellington,” said brisk Nance Oldham. “I know that much. There’s one filling up now. We’d better hurry and get seats.”

The three girls crowded into the long, narrow side-seated vehicle already half filled with students. Even at this early stage in their acquaintance, the bonds of loneliness and sympathy had drawn them together.

“I’m a stranger in a strange land,” Molly Brown had confided to the listening ear of Nance Oldham. “I had made up my mind not to be homesick. I really didn’t know what the feeling was like, because I have never had a chance to learn. But I know now it’s a kind of an all-gone sensation. I suppose little orphans have it when they first go into an orphan asylum.”

“Oh, you’ll soon get over it,” answered Nance. “It’s because you live so far away. Kentucky, didn’t you say?”

Molly nodded and looked the other way. The memory of an old brick house with broad piazzas and many windows blurred her vision for a moment. But she resolutely pressed her lips together and began to watch the passing scenery, as new and strange to her as the scenery in a foreign land.

The road leading to Wellington University skirted a pretty village and then plunged straight into the country between rolling meadow lands tinged a golden brown with the autumn sun. And there in the distance were the gray towers of Wellington, silhouetted against the sky like a mediæval castle.

Molly Brown clasped her hands and smiled a heavenly smile.

“Is that it?” she exclaimed rapturously.

“It must be,” answered Nance, who also felt some quiet and reserved flutterings.

“It is,” said Miss Brinton. “I came down to engage my room, so I know.”

In the meantime, there was a busy conversation going on around them.

“I’m going to cut gym this year. It interferes too much,” exclaimed a tiny girl with birdlike motions and intelligent, beady little eyes as bright and alert as the eyes of a little brown bird.

But evidently Molly was not the only person who had noticed this resemblance, for one of the students called out:

“Now, Jennie Wren, you must admit that gym never had any charms for you and it’s a great relief to give it up.”

“Of course she must,” put in another girl. “The only exercise Jennie Wren ever takes is to hop about on the lawn and prune her feathers.”

“Never!” cried Jennie Wren. “I never wear them, not even quills. I belong to the S. P. C. A.”

“Is there much out-of-door life here?” asked Molly Brown, of a tall, somewhat older girl sitting opposite her.

“This new girl may have timid manners,” thought Nance Oldham; “but she is not afraid to talk to strangers. I suppose that’s the friendly Southern way. She hasn’t been in Wellington a quarter of an hour and she has already made three friends,—Caroline and the station-master and me. And now she’s getting on famously with that older girl. What I like about her is that she isn’t a bit self-conscious and she takes it for granted everybody’s going to be kind.”

“Oh, yes, lots of it,” the older girl was saying to Molly kindly. “If you have a taste for that kind of thing, you may indulge it to your heart’s content. There is a splendid swimming pool attached to the gym, and there are golf links, of course. You know they are quite famous in this part of the world. Then, there are the tennis courts, and we’ll still have some canoeing on the lake before the weather gets too cold and later glorious skating. Besides all that, there are perfectly ripping walks for miles around. The college has several Saturday afternoon walking clubs.”

“But don’t these things interfere with—with lectures?” asked Molly, who was really quite ignorant regarding college life, although she had passed her entrance examinations without any conditions whatever.

The older girl laughed pleasantly. She was not good looking, but she had a fine face and Molly liked her immensely.

“Oh, no, you’ll find there’s plenty of time for everything you want to get in, because most things have their season, and most girls specialize, anyhow. A golf fiend is seldom a tennis fiend, and there are lots of walking fiends who don’t like either.”

Molly’s liking for this big girl and her grave, fine face increased as the conversation progressed. She had a most reassuring, kindly manner and Molly noticed that the other girls treated her with a kind of deferential respect and called her “Miss Stewart.” She learned afterward that Miss Stewart was a senior and a member of the “Octogons,” the most coveted society in the University. She led in all the athletic sports, was quite a wonderful musician and had composed an operetta for her class and most of the music for the class songs. It was whispered also that she was very rich, though no one would ever have guessed this secret from Mary Stewart herself, who was careful never to allude to money and dressed very simply and plainly.

The omnibus now turned into the avenue which led to the college campus and there was general excitement of a subdued sort among the new girls and greetings and calls from the older girls as they caught glimpses of friends strolling on the lawn.

“Queen’s Cottage,” called the driver and Molly stood up promptly, shrinking a little as twenty pairs of eyes turned curiously in her direction.

Then the big girl leaned over and took her hand kindly.

“Won’t you look me up to-morrow?” she said. “My name is Mary Stewart, and I stop at No. 16 on the Quadrangle. Perhaps I can help you get things straightened out a bit and show you the ropes.”

“Oh, thank you,” said Molly, with that musical ring to her voice which never failed to thrill her hearers. “It’s awfully nice of you. What time shall I come?”

“I’ll see you in Chapel in the morning, and we’ll fix the time then,” called Miss Stewart as Molly climbed out, dragging her straw telescope over the knees of the other passengers, followed by Nance Oldham, who had waited for her to take the initiative.

As the two girls stood watching the disappearing vehicle, they became the prey to the most extreme loneliness.

“I feel as if I had just left the tumbrel on the way to my execution,” observed Molly, trying to laugh, although the corners of her mouth turned persistently down.

“But, anyway, I’m glad we are together,” she continued, slipping her arm through Nance’s. “Queen’s Cottage does seem so remote and lonesome, doesn’t it? Just a thing apart.”

The two girls gazed uncertainly at the rather dismal-looking shingled house, stained brown and covered with a mantle of old vines which appeared to have been prematurely stripped of their foliage. It was somewhat isolated, at least it seemed so at first. The next house was quite half a block on and was a cheerful place, all stucco and red roof like the station.

“Well, here goes,” Molly went on. “If it’s Queen’s, why then, so be it,” and she marched up the walk and rang the front door bell, which resounded through the hall with a metallic clang.

“Shure, I’m after bein’ wit’ you in a moment,” called a voice from above. “You’re the new young ladies, I’m thinkin’, and glad I am to see you.”

There was the sound of heavy footsteps down the stairs and the door was opened by Mrs. Murphy, wife of the baggage master and housekeeper for Queen’s Cottage. She was a middle-aged Irish woman with a round, good-natured face and she beamed on the girls with motherly interest as she ushered them into the parlor.

“Since ye be the fust comers, ye may be the fust choosers,” she said; “and if ye be friends, ye may like to be roommates, surely, and that’s a good thing. It’s better to room with a friend than a stranger.”

The two girls looked at each other with a new interest. It had not occurred to them that they might be roommates, but had not they already, with the swiftness peculiar to girls, bridged the gulf which separates total strangers, and were now on the very verge of plunging into intimate friendship? Would it not be better to seize this opportunity than to wait for other chances which might not prove so agreeable?

“Shall we not?” asked Molly with that charming, cordial manner which appeared to win her friends wherever she went.

“It would be a great relief,” answered Nance, who was yet to learn the value of showing real pleasure when she felt it. Nevertheless, Nance, under her whimsical, rather sarcastic outer shell, had a warm and loyal heart.

Thus Molly Brown and Nance Oldham, quite opposites in looks and temperaments, became roommates during their freshman year at Wellington College and thus, from this small beginning, the seeds of a life-long friendship were sown.

The two girls chose a big sunny room on the third floor looking over a portion of the golf links. Molly liked it because it had blue wallpaper and Nance because it had a really commodious closet.

CHAPTER II.
THEIR NEIGHBOR.

Molly Brown was the youngest member of a numerous family of older brothers and sisters. Her father had been dead many years, and in order to rear and educate her children, Mrs. Brown had been obliged to mortgage, acre by acre, the fine old place where Molly and her brothers and sisters had been born and brought up. Every time anybody in the Brown family wanted to do anything that was particularly nice, something had to go, either a cow or a colt or a piece of land, according to the needs of the moment. A two-acre lot represented Molly’s college education—two perfectly good acres of orchard.

“If you don’t bring back at least one golden apple in return for all these nice juicy ones that are going for your education, Molly, you are no child of mine,” Mrs. Brown had laughingly exclaimed when she kissed her daughter good-bye.

“I’ll bring back the three golden apples of the Hesperides, mother, and make the family rich and happy,” cried Molly, and from that moment the three golden apples became a secret symbol to her, although she had not decided in her mind exactly what they represented.

“But,” as Molly observed to herself, “anybody who has had two acres of winter sweets, pippins and greenings spent on her, must necessarily engage to win a few.”

Those two fruitful acres, however, while they provided a fund for an education, did not extend far into the margin and there was little left for clothes. That was perhaps one of the reasons why Molly had felt so disturbed about the delay in receiving her trunk.

“I can stand traveling in this old brown rag for economy’s sake,” she thought; “but I would like to put on the one decent thing I own for my first day at college. I was a chump not to have brought something in my suit case besides a blouse. However, what’s done can’t be undone,” and she stoically went to work to remove the stains of travel and put on a fresh blue linen shirtwaist; while Nance Oldham, who had been more far-sighted, made herself spic and span in a duck skirt and a white linen blouse. She had little to say during the process of making her toilet, and Molly wondered if, after all, she would like a roommate so peculiarly reserved and whimsical as this new friend. She hoped there would be lots of nice girls in the house of the right sort, girls who meant business, for while Molly meant to enjoy herself immensely, she meant business decidedly, and she didn’t want to get into a play set and be torn away from her studies. As these thoughts flitted through her mind she heard voices coming up the stairs.

“Now, Mrs. Murphy, I do hope you’ve got something really decent. You know, I hadn’t expected to come back this year. I thought I would stay in France with grandmamma, but at the last moment I changed my mind, and I’ve come right here from the ship without engaging a thing at all. I’ll take anything that’s a single.”

The voice had a spoiled, imperious sound, like that of a person in the habit of having her own way.

“I have a single, Miss, but it’s a small one, and they do say you’ve got a deal of belongings.”

“Let’s see it. Let’s see it, quick, Granny Murphy,” and from the noise without our two young persons judged that this despotic stranger had placed her hands on Mrs. Murphy’s shoulders and was running her along the passage.

“Now, you’ll be giving me apoplexy, Miss, surely, with your goings-on,” cried the woman breathlessly, as she opened the door next theirs.

“Who’s in there? Two freshies?”

“Yes, Miss. They only just arrived an hour ago.”

“Greenies from Greenville, Green County,” chanted the young woman, who did not seem to mind being overheard by the entire household. “Very well, I’ll take this little hole-in-the-wall. I won’t move any of my things in, except some books and cushions. And now, off wit’ yer. Here’s something for your trouble.”

“Oh, thank you, thank you, Miss.”

The two girls seemed to hear the Irish woman being shoved out in the hall. Then the door was banged after her and was locked.

“Dear me, what an obstreperous person,” observed Nance. “I wonder if she’s going to give us a continuous performance.”

“I don’t know,” answered Molly. “She’ll be a noisy neighbor if she does. But she sounds interesting, living in France with her grandmamma and so on.”

Nance glanced at her watch.

“Wouldn’t you like to go for a stroll before supper? We have an hour yet. I’m dying to see the famous Quadrangle and the Cloisters and a few other celebrated spots I’ve heard about. Aren’t you?”

“And incidentally rub off a little of our greenness,” said Molly, recalling the words of the girl next door.

As the two girls closed the door to their room and paused on the landing, the door adjoining burst open and a human whirlwind blew out of the single room and almost knocked them over.

“I beg your pardon,” said Nance stiffly, giving the human whirlwind a long, cool, brown glance.

Molly, a little behind her friend, examined the stranger with much curiosity. She could not quite tell why she had imagined her to be a small black-eyed, black-haired person, when here stood a tall, very beautiful young woman. Her hair was light brown and perfectly straight. She had peculiarly passionate, fiery eyes of very dark gray, of the “smouldering kind,” as Nance described them later; her features were regular and her mouth so expressive of her humors that her friends could almost read her thoughts by the curve of her sensitive lips. Even in that flashing glimpse the girls could see that she was beautifully dressed in a white serge suit and a stunning hat of dull blue, trimmed with wings.

But instead of continuing her mad rush, which seemed to be her usual manner of doing things, the young woman became suddenly a zephyr of mildness and gentleness.

“Excuse my precipitate methods,” she said. “I never do things slowly, even when there’s no occasion to hurry. It’s my way, I suppose. Are you freshmen? Perhaps you’d like for me to show you around college. I’m a soph. I’m fairly familiar.”

Nance pressed her lips together. She was not in the habit of making friends off-hand. Molly, in fact, was almost her first experience in this kind of friendship. But Molly Brown, who had never consciously done a rude thing in her life, exclaimed:

“That would be awfully nice. Thanks, we’ll come.”

They followed her rather timidly down the steps. Across the campus the pile of gray buildings, in the September twilight, more than ever resembled a fine old castle. As they hastened along, the sophomore gave them each a quick, comprehensive glance.

“My name is Frances Andrews,” she began suddenly, and added with a peculiar intonation, “I was called ‘Frank’ last year. I’m so glad we are to be neighbors. I hope we shall have lots of good times together.”

Molly considered this a particular mark of good nature on the part of an older girl to two freshmen, and she promptly made known their names to Frances Andrews. All this time Nance had remained impassive and quiet.

Ten girls, arm in arm, were strolling toward them across the soft green turf of the campus, singing as in one voice to the tune of “Maryland, My Maryland”:

“Oh, Wellington, My Wellington,
Oh, how I love my Wellington!”

Suddenly Frances Andrews, who was walking between the two young girls, took them each firmly by the arm and led them straight across the campus, giving the ten girls a wide berth. There was so much fierce determination in her action that Molly and Nance looked at her with amazement.

“Are those seniors?” asked Nance, thinking perhaps it was not college etiquette to break through a line of established and dignified characters like seniors.

“No; they are sophomores singing their class song,” answered Frances.

“Aren’t you a sophomore?” demanded Nance quickly.

“Yes.”

“Curious she doesn’t want to meet her friends,” thought Molly.

But there were more interesting sights to occupy her attention just then.

They had reached the great gray stone archway which formed the entrance to the Quadrangle, a grassy courtyard enclosed on all sides by the walls of the building. Heavy oak doors of an antique design opened straight onto the court from the various corridors and lecture rooms and at one end was the library, a beautiful room with a groined roof and stained glass windows, like a chapel. Low stone benches were ranged along the arcade of the court, whereon sat numerous girls laughing and talking together.

Although she considered that undue honors were being paid them by having as guide this dashing sophomore, somehow Molly still felt the icy grip of homesickness on her heart. Nance seemed so unsympathetic and reserved and there was a kind of hardness about this Frances Andrews that made the warm-hearted, affectionate Molly a bit uncomfortable. Suddenly Nance spied her old friend, Caroline Brinton, in the distance, and rushed over to join her. As she left, three girls came toward them, talking animatedly.

“Hello, Jennie Wren!” called Frances gayly. It was the same little bird-like person who had been in the bus. “Howdy, Rosamond. How are you, Lotta? It’s awfully nice to be back at the old stand again. Let me introduce you to my new almost-roommate, Miss Brown,” went on Frances hurriedly, as if to fill up the gaps of silence which greeted them.

“How do you do, Miss Andrews,” said Jennie Wren, stiffly.

Rosamond Chase, who had a plump figure and a round, good-natured face, was slightly warmer in her greeting.

“How are you, Frankie? I thought you were going to France this winter.”

The other girl who had a turned-up nose and blonde hair, and was called “Peggy Parsons,” sniffed slightly and put her hands behind her back as if she wished to avoid shaking hands.

Molly was so shocked that she felt the tears rising to her eyes. “I wish I had never come to college,” she thought, “if this is the way old friends treat each other.”

She slipped her arm through Frances Andrews’ and gave it a sympathetic squeeze.

“Won’t you show me the Cloisters?” she said. “I’m pining to see what they are like.”

“Come along,” said Frances, quite cheerfully, in spite of the fact that she had just been snubbed by three of her own classmates.

Lifting the latch of a small oak door fitted under a pointed arch, she led the way through a passage to another oak door which opened directly on the Cloisters. Molly gave an exclamation of pleasure.

“Oh,” she cried, “are we really allowed to walk in this wonderful place?”

“As much as you like before six P. M.,” answered Frances. “How do you do, Miss Pembroke?”

A tall woman with a grave, handsome face was waiting under the arched arcade to go through the door.

“So you decided to come back to us, Miss Andrews. I’m very glad of it. Come into my office a moment. I want a few words with you before supper.”

“You can find your way back to Queen’s by yourself, can’t you, Miss Brown?” asked Frances. “I’ll see you later.”

And in another moment, Molly Brown was quite alone in the Cloisters. She was glad to be alone. She wanted to think. She paced slowly along the cloistered walk, each stone arch of which framed a picture of the grassy court with an Italian fountain in the center.

“It’s exactly like an old monastery,” she said to herself. “I wonder anybody could ever be frivolous or flippant in such an old world spot as this. I could easily imagine myself a monk, telling my beads.”

She sat down on a stone bench and folded her hands meditatively.

“So far, I’ve really only made one friend at college,” she thought to herself, for Nance Oldham was too reserved to be called a friend yet, “and that friend is Frances Andrews. Who is she? What is she? Why do her classmates snub her and why did Miss Pembroke, who belonged to the faculty, wish to speak with her in her private office?” It was all queer, very queer. Somehow, it seemed to Molly now that what she had taken for whirlwind manners was really a tremendous excitement under which Frances Andrews was laboring. She was trying to brazen out something.

“Just the same, I’m sorry for her,” she said out loud.

At that moment, a musical, deep-throated bell boomed out six times in the stillness of the cloisters. There was the sound of a door opening, a pause and the door closed with a clicking noise. Molly started from her reverie. It was six o’clock. She rushed to the door of antique design through which she had entered just fifteen minutes before. It was closed and locked securely. She knocked loudly and called:

“Let me out! Let me out! I’m locked in!”

Then she waited, but no one answered. In the stillness of the twilit courtyard she could hear the sounds of laughter and talking from the Quadrangle. They grew fainter and fainter. A gray chill settled down over the place and Molly looked about her with a feeling of utter desolation. She had been locked in the Cloisters for the night.

CHAPTER III.
THE PROFESSOR.

Molly beat and kicked on the door wildly. Then she called again and again but her voice came back to her in a ghostly echo through the dim aisles of the cloistered walk. She sat down on a bench and burst into tears.

How tired and hungry and homesick she was! How she wished she had never heard of college, cold, unfriendly place where people insulted old friends and they locked doors at six o’clock. The chill of the evening had fallen and the stars were beginning to show themselves in the square of blue over the Cloisters. Molly shivered and folded her arms. She had not worn her coat and her blue linen blouse was damp with dew.

“Can this be the only door into the Cloisters?” she thought after the first attack of homesick weeping had passed.

She rose and began to search along the arcade which was now almost black. There were doors at intervals but all of them locked. She knocked on each one and waited patiently.

“Oh, heavens, let me get out of this place to-night,” she prayed, lifting her eyes to the stars with an agonized expression. Suddenly, the high mullioned window under which she was standing, glowed with a light just struck. Then, someone opened a casement and a man’s voice called:

“Is anyone there? I thought I heard a cry.”

“I am,” said Molly, trying to stifle the sobs that would rise in her throat. “I’ve been locked in, or rather out.”

“Why, you poor child,” exclaimed the voice again. “Wait a moment and I’ll open the door.”

There were sounds of steps along the passage; a heavy bolt was thrust back and a door held open while Molly rushed into the passage like a frightened bird out of the dark.

“It’s lucky I happened to be in my study this evening,” said the man, leading the way toward a square of light in the dark corridor. “Of course the night watchman would have made his rounds at eight, but an hour’s suspense out there in the cold and dark would have been very disagreeable. How in the world did it happen?”

By this time they had reached the study and Molly found herself in a cozy little room lined from ceiling to floor with books. On the desk was a tray of supper. The owner of the study was a studious looking young man with kindly, quizzical brown eyes under shaggy eyebrows, a firm mouth and a cleft in his chin, which Molly had always heard was a mark of beauty in a woman.

“You must be a freshman?” he said looking at her with a shade of amusement in his eyes.

“I am,” replied Molly, bravely trying to keep her voice from shaking. “I only arrived an hour or so ago. I—I didn’t know they would lock——” She broke down altogether and slipping into a big wicker chair sobbed bitterly. “Oh, I wish—I wish I’d stayed at home.”

“Why, you poor little girl,” exclaimed the man. “You have had a beastly time for your first day at college, but you’ll come to like it better and better all the time. Come, dry your eyes and I’ll start you on your way to your lodgings. Where are you stopping?”

“Queen’s.”

“Suppose you drink some hot soup before you go. It will warm you up,” he added kindly, taking a cup of hot bouillon from the tray and placing it on the arm of her chair.

“But it’s your supper,” stammered Molly.

“Nonsense, there’s plenty more. Do as I tell you,” he ordered. “I’m a professor, you know, so you’ll have to obey me or I’ll scold.”

Molly drank the soup without a word. It did comfort her considerably and presently she looked up at the professor and said:

“I’m all right now. I hope you’ll excuse me for being so silly and weak. You see I felt so far away and lonesome and it’s an awful feeling to be locked out in the cold about a thousand miles from home. I never was before.”

“I’m sure I should have felt the same in your place,” answered the professor. “I should probably have imagined I saw the ghosts of monks dead and gone, who might have walked there if the Cloisters had been several hundreds of years older, and I would certainly have made the echoes ring with my calls for help. The Cloisters are all right for ‘concentration’ and ‘meditation,’ which I believe is what they are intended to be used for on a warm, sunny day; but they are cold comfort after sunset.”

“Is this your study?” asked Molly, rising and looking about her with interest, as she started toward the door.

“I should say that this was my play room,” he replied, smiling.

“Play room?”

“Yes, this is where I hide from work and begin to play.” He glanced at a pile of manuscript on his desk.

“I reckon work is play and play is work to you,” observed Molly, regarding the papers with much interest. She had never before seen a manuscript.

“If you knew what an heretical document that was, you would not make such rash statements,” said the professor.

“I’m sure it’s a learned treatise on some scientific subject,” laughed Molly, who had entirely regained her composure now, and felt not the least bit afraid of this learned man, with the kind, brown eyes. He seemed quite old to her.

“If I tell you what it is, will you promise to keep it a secret?”

“I promise,” she cried eagerly.

“It’s the libretto of a light opera,” he said solemnly, enjoying her amazement.

“Did you write it?” she asked breathlessly.

“Not the music, but the words and the lyrics. Now, I’ve told you my only secret,” he said. “You must never give me away, or the bottom would fall out of the chair of English literature at Wellington College.”

“I shall never, never tell,” exclaimed Molly; “and thank you ever so much for your kindness to-night.”

They clasped hands and the professor opened the door for her and stood back to let her pass.

Then he followed her down the passage to another door, which he also opened, and in the dim light she still noticed that quizzical look in his eyes, which made her wonder whether he was laughing at her in particular, or at things in general.

“Can you find your way to Queen’s Cottage?” he asked.

“Oh, yes,” she assured him. “It’s the last house on the left of the campus.”

The next moment she found herself running along the deserted Quadrangle walk. Under the archway she flew, and straight across the campus—home.

It was not yet seven o’clock, and the Queen’s Cottage girls were still at supper. A number of students had arrived during the afternoon and the table was full. There were several freshmen; Molly identified them by their silence and looks of unaccustomedness, and some older girls, who were chattering together like magpies.

“Where have you been?” demanded Nance Oldham, who had saved a seat for her roommate next to her own.

All conversation ceased, and every eye in the room was turned on blushing Molly.

“I—I’ve been locked up,” she answered faintly.

“Locked up?” repeated several voices at once. “Where?”

“In the Cloisters. I didn’t realize it was six o’clock, and some one locked the door.”

Molly had been prepared for a good deal of amusement at her expense, and she felt very grateful when, instead of hoots of derision, a nice junior named Sallie Marks, with an interesting face and good dark eyes, exclaimed:

“Why, you poor little freshie! What a mediæval adventure for your first day. And how did you finally get out?”

“One of the professors heard me call and let me out.”

“Which one?” demanded several voices at once.

“I don’t know his name,” replied Molly guardedly, remembering that she had a secret to keep.

“What did he look like?” demanded Frances Andrews, who had been unusually silent for her until now.

“He had brown eyes and a smooth face and reddish hair, and he was middle aged and quite nice,” said Molly glibly.

“What, you don’t mean to say it was Epiménides Antinous Green?”

“Who?” demanded Molly.

“Never mind, don’t let them guy you,” said Sallie Marks. “It was evidently Professor Edwin Green who let you in. He is professor of English literature, and I’ll tell you for your enlightenment that he was nicknamed in a song ‘Epiménides’ after a Greek philosopher, who went to sleep when he was a boy and woke up middle-aged and very wise, and ‘Antinous’ after a very handsome Greek youth. Don’t you think him good-looking?”

“Rather, for an older person,” said Molly thoughtfully.

“He’s not thirty yet, my child,” said Frances Andrews. “At least, so they say, and he’s so clever that two other colleges are after him.”

“And he’s written two books,” went on Sally. “Haven’t you heard of them—‘Philosophical Essays’ and ‘Lyric Poetry.’”

Molly was obliged to confess her ignorance regarding Professor Edwin Green’s outbursts into literature, but she indulged in an inward mental smile, remembering the lyrics in the comic opera libretto.

“He’s been to Harvard and Oxford, and studied in France. He’s a perfect infant prodigy,” went on another girl.

“It’s a ripping thing for the ‘Squib,’” Molly heard another girl whisper to her neighbor.

She knew she would be the subject of an everlasting joke, but she hoped to live it down by learning immediately everything there was to know about Wellington, and becoming so wise that nobody would ever accuse her again of being a green freshman.

Mrs. Maynard, the matron, came in to see if she was all right. She was a motherly little woman, with a gentle manner, and Molly felt a leaning toward her at once.

“I hope you’ll feel comfortable in your new quarters,” said Mrs. Maynard. “You’ll have plenty of sunshine and a good deal more space when you get your trunks unpacked, although the things inside a trunk do sometimes look bigger than the trunk.”

Molly smiled. There was not much in her trunk to take up space, most certainly. She had nicknamed herself when she packed it “Molly Few Clothes,” and she was beginning to wonder if even those few would pass muster in that crowd of well-dressed girls.

“Oh, have the trunks really come, Miss Oldham?” she asked her roommate.

“Yes, just before supper. I’ve started unpacking mine.”

“Thank goodness. I’ve got an old ham and a hickory nut cake and some beaten biscuits and pickles and blackberry jam in mine, and I can hardly wait to see if anything has broken loose on my clothes, such as they are.”

Nance Oldham opened her eyes wide.

“I’ve always heard that Southern people were pretty strong on food,” she said, “and this proves it.”

“Wait until you try the hickory nut cake, and you won’t be so scornful,” answered Molly, somehow not liking this accusation regarding the appetites of her people.

“Did I hear the words ‘hickory nut cake’ spoken?” demanded Frances Andrews, who apparently talked to no one at the table except freshmen.

“Yes, I brought some. Come up and try it to-night,” said Molly hospitably.

“That would be very jolly, but I can’t to-night, thanks,” said Frances, flushing.

And then Molly and Nance noticed that the other sophomores and juniors at the table were all perfectly silent and looking at her curiously.

“I hope you’ll all come,” she added lamely, wondering if they were accusing her of inhospitality.

“Not to-night, my child,” said Sally Marks, rising from the table. “Thank you, very much.”

As the two freshmen climbed the stairs to their room a little later, they passed by an open door on the landing.

“Come in,” called the voice of Sally. “I was waiting for you to pass. This is my home. How do you like it?”

“Very much,” answered the two girls, really not seeing anything particularly remarkable about the apartment, except perhaps the sign on the door which read “Pax Vobiscum,” and would seem to indicate that the owner of the room had a Christian spirit.

“Your name is ‘Molly Brown,’ and you come from Kentucky, isn’t that so?” asked Sally Marks, taking Molly’s chin in her hand and looking into her eyes.

“And yours?” went on the inquisitive Sally, turning to Molly’s roommate.

“Is Nance Oldham, and I come from Vermont,” finished Nance promptly.

“You’re both dears. And I am ever so glad you are in Queens. You won’t think I’m patronizing if I give you a little advice, will you?”

“Oh, no,” said the two girls.

“You know Wellington’s full of nice girls. I don’t think there is a small college in this country that has such a fine showing for class and brains. But among three hundred there are bound to be some black sheep, and new girls should always be careful with whom they take up.”

“But how can we tell?” asked Nance.

“Oh, there are ways. Suppose, for instance, you should meet a girl who was good-looking, clever, rich, with lots of pretty clothes, and all that, and she seemed to have no friends. What would you think?”

“Why, I might think there was something the matter with her, unless she was too shy to make friends.”

“But suppose she wasn’t?” persisted Sally.

“Then, there would surely be something the matter,” said Nance.

“Well, then, children, if you should meet a girl like that in college, don’t get too intimate with her.”

Sally Marks led them up to their own room, just to see how they were fixed, she said.

Later, when the two girls had crawled wearily into bed, after finishing the unpacking, Molly called out sleepily:

“Nance”—she had forgotten already to say Miss Oldham—“do you suppose that nice junior could have meant Miss Andrews?”

“I haven’t a doubt of it,” said Nance.

“Just the same, I’m sorry for the poor thing,” continued Molly. “I’m sorry for anybody who’s walking under a cloud, and I don’t think it would do any harm to be nice to her.”

“It wouldn’t do her any harm,” said Nance.

“Epiménides Antinous Green,” whispered Molly to herself, as she snuggled under the covers. The name seemed to stick in her memory like a rhyme. “Funny I didn’t notice how young and handsome he was. I only noticed that he had good manners, if he did treat me like a child.”

CHAPTER IV.
A BUSY DAY.

The next day was always a chaotic one in Molly’s memory—a jumble of new faces and strange events. At breakfast she made the acquaintance of the freshmen who were staying at Queen’s Cottage—four in all. One of these was Julia Kean, “a nice girl in neutral tints,” as Molly wrote home to her sister, “with gray eyes and brown hair and a sense of humor.” She came to be known as “Judy,” and formed an intimate friendship with Molly and Nance, which lasted throughout the four years of their college course.

“How do you feel after your night’s rest?” she called across the table to Molly in the most friendly manner, just as if they had known each other always. “You look like the ‘Lady of the Sea’ in that blue linen that just matches your eyes.” She began looking Molly over with a kind of critical admiration, narrowing her eyes as an artist does when he’s at work on a picture. “I’d like to make a poster of you in blue-and-white chalk. I’d put you on a yellow, sandy beach, against a bright blue sky, in a high wind, with your dress and hair blowing——” And with eyes still narrowed, she traced an imaginary picture with one hand and shaped her ideas with the other.

Molly laughed.

“You must be an artist,” she said, “with such notions about posing.”

“A would-be one, that’s all. ‘Not yet, but soon,’ is my motto.”

“That’s a bad motto,” here put in Nance Oldham. “It’s like the Spanish saying of ‘Hasta mañana.’ You are very apt to put off doing things until next day.”

Julia Kean looked at her reproachfully.

“You’ve read my character in two words,” she said.

“Why don’t you introduce me to your friends, Judy?” asked a handsome girl next to her, who had quantities of light-brown hair piled on top of her head.

“I haven’t been introduced myself,” replied Judy; “but I never could see why people should stop for introductions at teas and times like this. We all know we’re all right, or else we wouldn’t be here.”

“Of course,” said Frances Andrews, who had just come in, “why all this formality, when we are to be a family party for the next eight months? Why not become friends at once, without any preliminaries?”

Sally Marks, who had given them the vague yet meaningful warning the night before, appeared to be absorbed in her coffee cup, and the other two sophomores at the table were engaged in a whispered conversation.

“Nevertheless, I will perform the introductions,” announced Judy Kean. “This is Miss Margaret Wakefield, of Washington, D. C.; Miss Edith Coles, of Rhode Island; Miss Jessie Lynch, of Wisconsin, and Miss Mabel Hinton, of Illinois. As for me, my name is Julia Kean, and I come from—nowhere in particular.”

“You must have had a birthplace,” insisted that accurate young person, Nance Oldham.

“If you could call a ship a birthplace, I did,” replied Judy. “I was born in mid-ocean on a stormy night. Hence my stormy, restless nature.”

“But how did it happen?” asked Molly.

“Oh, it was all simple enough. Papa and mamma were on their way back from Japan, and I arrived a bit prematurely on board ship. I began life traveling, and I’ve been traveling ever since.”

“You’ll have to stay put here; awhile, at least,” said Sally Marks.

“I hope so. I need to gather a little moss before I become an habitual tramp.”

“Hadn’t we better be chasing along?” said Frances Andrews. “It’s almost time for chapel.”

No one answered and Molly began to wonder how long this strange girl would endure the part of a monologist at college. For that was what her attempts at conversation seemed to amount to. She admired Frances’s pluck, at any rate. Whatever she had done to offend, it was courageous of her to come back and face the music.

Chapel was an impressive sight to the new girls. The entire body of students was there, and the faculty, including Professor Edwin Green, who gave each girl the impression he was looking at her when he was really only gazing into the imaginary bull’s-eye of an imaginary camera, and saw not one of them. Molly decided his comeliness was more charm than looks. “The unknown charm,” she wrote her sister. “His ears are a little pointed at the top, and he has brown eyes like a collie dog. But it was nice of him to have given me his soup,” she added irrelevantly, “and I shall always appreciate it.”

After chapel, when Molly was following in the trail of her new friends, feeling a bit strange and unaccustomed, some one plucked her by the sleeve. It was Mary Stewart, the nice senior with the plain, but fine face.

“I’ll expect you this evening after supper,” she said. “I’m having a little party. There will be music, too. I thought perhaps you might like to bring a friend along. It’s rather lonesome, breaking into a new crowd by one’s self.”

It never occurred to Molly that she was being paid undue honors. For a freshman, who had arrived only the afternoon before, without a friend in college, to be asked to a small intimate party by the most prominent girl in the senior class, was really quite remarkable, so Nance Oldham thought; and she was pleased to be the one Molly chose to take along.

The two girls had had a busy, exciting day. They had not been placed in the same divisions, B and O being so widely separated in the alphabet, and were now meeting again for the first time since lunch. Molly had stretched her length on her couch and kicked off her pumps, described later by Judy Kean as being a yard long and an inch broad.

“I wish you would tell me your receipt for making friends, Molly,” exclaimed Nance.—Page 51.

“I wish you would tell me your receipt for making friends, Molly,” exclaimed Nance. “You are really a perfect wonder. Don’t you find it troublesome to be so nice to so many people?”

“I’d find it lots harder not to be nice,” answered Molly. “Besides, it’s a rule that works both ways. The nicer you are to people, the nicer they are to you.”

“But don’t you think lots of people aren’t worth the effort and if you treat them like sisters, they are apt to take advantage of it and bore you afterwards?”

Molly smiled.

“I’ve never been troubled that way,” she said.

“Now, don’t tell me,” cried Nance, warming to the argument, “that that universally cordial manner of yours doesn’t bring a lot of rag-tags around to monopolize you. If it hasn’t before, it will now. You’ll see.”

“You make me feel like the leader of Coxey’s Army,” laughed Molly; “because, you see, I’m a kind of a rag-tag myself.”

Her eyes filled with tears. She was thinking of her meagre wardrobe. Nance was silent. She was slow of speech, but when she once began, she always said more than she intended simply to prove her point; and now she was afraid she had hurt Molly’s feelings. She was provoked with herself for her carelessness, and when she was on bad terms with herself she appeared to be on bad terms with everybody else. Of course, in her heart of hearts, she had been thinking of Frances Andrews, whom she felt certain Molly would never snub sufficiently to keep her at a distance.

The two girls went about their dressing without saying another word. Nance was coiling her smooth brown braids around her head, while Molly was looking sorrowfully at her only two available dresses for that evening’s party. One was a blue muslin of a heavenly color but considerably darned, and the other was a marquisette, also the worse for wear. Suddenly Nance gave a reckless toss of her hair brush in one direction and her comb in another, and rushed over to Molly, who was gazing absently into the closet.

“Oh, Molly,” she cried impetuously, seizing her friend’s hand, “I’m a brute. Will you forgive me? I’m afraid I hurt your feelings. It’s just my unfortunate way of getting excited and saying too much. I never met any one I admired as much as you in such a short time. I wish I did know how to be charming to everybody, like you. It’s been ground into me since I was a child not to make friends with people unless it was to my advantage, and I found out they were entirely worthy. And it’s a slow process, I can tell you. You are the very first chance acquaintance I ever made in my life, and I like you better than any girl I ever met. So there, will you say you have forgiven me?”

“Of course, I will,” exclaimed Molly, flushing with pleasure. “There is nothing to forgive. I know I’m too indiscriminate about making friends. Mother often complained because I would bring such queer children out to dinner when I was a child. Indeed, I wasn’t hurt a bit. It was the word ‘rag-tag,’ that seemed to be such an excellent description of the clothes I must wear this winter, unless some should drop down from heaven, like manna in the desert for the Children of Israel.”

Without a word, Nance pulled a box out from under her couch and lifted the lid. It disclosed a little hand sewing machine.

“Can you sew?” she asked.

“After a fashion.”

“Well, I can. It’s pastime with me. I’d rather make clothes than do lots of other things. Now, suppose we set to work and make some dresses. How would you like a blue serge, with turn-over collar and cuffs, like that one Miss Marks is wearing, that fastens down the side with black satin buttons?”

“Oh, Nance, I couldn’t let you do all that for me,” protested Molly. “Besides, I haven’t the material or anything.”

“Why don’t you earn some money, Molly?” suggested Nance. “There are lots of different ways. Mrs. Murphy, the housekeeper, was telling me about them. One of the girls here last year actually blacked boots—but, of course, you wouldn’t do anything so menial as that.”

“Wouldn’t I?” interrupted Molly. “Just watch me. That’s a splendid idea, Nance. It’s a fine, honorable labor, as Colonel Robert Wakefield said, when his wife had to take in boarders.”

Molly slipped on the blue muslin.

“It really doesn’t make any difference what she wears,” thought Nance, looking at her friend with covert admiration. “She’d be a star in a crazy quilt.”

The two girls hurried down to supper. Molly was thoughtful all through that conversational meal. Her mind was busy with a scheme by which she intended to remove that unceasing pressure for funds which bade fair to be an ever-increasing bugbear to her.

No. 16 on the Quadrangle turned out to be a very luxurious and comfortable suite of rooms, consisting of quite a large parlor, a little den or study and a bedroom. Mary Stewart met them at the door in such a plain dress that at first Molly was deceived into thinking it was just an ordinary frock until she noticed the lines. And in a few moments Nance took occasion to inform her that simplicity was one of the most expensive things in the world, which few people could afford, and furthermore that Mary Stewart’s gray, cottony-looking dress was a dream of beauty and must have come from Paris.

There were six or seven other girls in the crowd, including that little bird-like, bright-eyed creature they called “Jennie Wren,” whose real name was Jane Wickham. The only other girl they knew was Judith Blount, who had been so snubby to Molly the day before about the luggage.

All these girls were musical, as the freshmen were soon to learn, and belonged to the College Glee Club.

“What a pretty room!” exclaimed Molly to her hostess, after she had been properly introduced and enthroned in a big tapestry chair, in which she unconsciously made a most delightful and colorful picture.

“I’m glad you like it. I have some trouble keeping it from getting cluttered up with ‘truck,’ as we call it. It’s about like Hercules trying to clean the Augean Stables, I think, but I try and use the den for an overflow, and only put the things I’m really fond of in here. That helps some.”

“They are certainly lovely,” said the young freshman, looking wistfully at the head of “The Unknown Woman,” between two brass candlesticks on the mantel shelf. On the bookshelves stood “The Winged Victory,” and hanging over the shelves on the opposite side of the room was an immense photograph of Botticelli’s “Primavera.” The only other pictures were two Japanese prints and the only other furniture was a baby grand piano and some chairs. It was really a delightfully empty and beautiful place, and Molly felt suddenly strangely crude and ignorant when she recalled the things she had intended to do to her part of the room at Queen’s Cottage toward beautifying it. She was engaged in mentally clearing them all out, when a voice at her elbow said:

“Are you thinking of taking the vows, Miss Brown?”

It was Judith Blount, who had drawn up a chair beside her’s. There was something very patronizing and superior in Miss Blount’s manner, but Molly was determined to ignore it, and smiled sweetly into the black eyes of the haughty sophomore.

“Taking what vows?” she asked.

“Why, I understood you had become a cloistered nun.”

Molly flushed. So the story was out. It didn’t take long for news to travel through a girl’s college.

“I wasn’t cloistered very long,” she answered. “And the only vow I took was never to be caught there again after six o’clock.”

“How did you like Epiménides? I hear he’s made a great joke of it,” she continued, without waiting for Molly to answer. “He’s rather humorous, you know. Even in his most serious work, it will come out.”

“I don’t think there was much to joke about,” put in Molly, feeling a little indignant. “I was awfully forlorn and miserable.”

“The real joke was that he called you ‘little Miss Smith,’” said Judith.

Molly’s moods reflected themselves in her eyes just as the passing clouds are mirrored in two blue pools of water. A shadow passed over her face now and her eyes grew darker, but she kept very quiet, which was her way when her feelings were hurt. Then Mary Stewart began to play on the piano, and Molly forgot all about the sharp-tongued sophomore, who, she strongly suspected, was trying to be disagreeable, but for what reason for the life of her Molly could not see.

Never before had she heard any really good playing on the piano, and it seemed to her now that the music actually flowed from Mary’s long, strong fingers, in a melodious and liquid stream. Other music followed. Judith sang a gypsy song, in a rich contralto voice, that Molly thought was a little coarse. Jennie Wren, who could sing exactly like a child, gave a solo in the highest little piping soprano. Two girls played on mandolins, and Mary Stewart, who appeared to do most things, accompanied them on a guitar. Then came supper, which was rather plain, Molly thought, and consisted simply of tea and cookies. “I suppose it’s artistic not to have much to eat,” her thoughts continued, but she made up her mind to invite Mary Stewart to supper before the old ham and the hickory nut cake were consumed by hungry freshmen.

“It seems to me that with such a voice as yours you must sing, Miss Brown,” here broke in Mary Stewart. “Will you please oblige the company?”

“I wouldn’t like to sing after all this fine music,” protested Molly. “Besides, I don’t know anything but darky songs.”

“The very girl we want for our Hallowe’en Vaudeville,” cried Jennie Wren. “What do you use, a guitar or a piano?”

“Either, a little,” answered Molly, blushing crimson; “but I haven’t any more voice than a rabbit.”

“Fire away,” cried Jennie Wren, thrusting a guitar into her hands.

Molly was actually trembling with fright when she found herself the center of interest in this musical company.

“I’m scared to death,” she announced. Then she struck a chord and began.—Page 60.

“I’m scared to death,” she announced, as she faintly tuned the guitar. Then she struck a chord and began:

“Ma baby loves shortnin’,
Ma baby loves shortnin’ bread;
Ma baby loves shortnin’,
Mammy’s gwine make him some shortnin’ bread.”

Before she had finished, everybody in the room had joined in. Then she sang:

“Ole Uncle Rat has come to town,
To buy his niece a weddin’ gown,
OO-hoo!”

“A quarter to ten,” announced some one, and the next moment they had all said good-night and were running as fast as their feet could carry them across the campus, “scuttling in every direction like a lot of rats,” as Judith remarked.

“Lights out at ten o’clock,” whispered Nance breathlessly, as they crept into their room and undressed in the dark. It was very exciting. They felt like a pair of happy criminals who had just escaped the iron grasp of the law.

When Molly Brown dropped into a deep and restful sleep that night, she never dreamed that she had already become a noted person in college, though how it happened, it would be impossible to say. It might have been the Cloister story, but, nevertheless, Molly—overgrown child that she may have seemed to Professor Green—had a personality that attracted attention wherever she was.

CHAPTER V.
THE KENTUCKY SPREAD.

“Molly, you look a little worried,” observed Nance Oldham, two days before the famous spread was to take place, it having been set for Friday evening.

Molly was seated on her bed, in the midst of a conglomerate mass of books and clothes, chewing the end of a pencil while she knitted her brows over a list of names.

“Not exactly worried,” she replied. “But, you know, Nance, giving a party is exactly like some kind of strong stimulant with me. It goes to my head, and I seem to get intoxicated on invitations. Once I get started to inviting, I can’t seem to stop.”

“Molly Brown,” put in Nance severely, “I believe you’ve just about invited the whole of Wellington College to come here Friday night. And because you are already such a famous person, everybody has accepted.”

“I think I can about remember how many I asked,” she replied penitently. “There are all the girls in the house, of course.”

“Frances Andrews?”

Molly nodded.

“And all the girls who were at Miss Stewart’s the other night.”

“What, even that girl who makes catty speeches. That black-eyed Blount person?”

“Yes, even so,” continued Molly sadly. “I really hadn’t intended to ask her, Nance, but I do love to heap coals of fire on people’s heads, and besides, I just told you, when I get started, I can’t seem to stop. When I was younger, I’ve been known to bring home as many as six strange little girls to dinner at once.”

“The next time you give a party,” put in Nance, “we’d better make out the list beforehand, and then you must give me your word of honor not to add one name to it.”

“I’ll try to,” replied Molly with contrition, “but it’s awfully hard to take the pledge when it comes to asking people to meals, even spreads.”

The two girls examined the list together, and Molly racked her brains to try and remember any left-outs, as she called them.

“I’m certain that’s all,” she said at last. “That makes twenty, doesn’t it? Oh, Nance, I tremble for the old ham and the hickory nut cake. Do you think they’ll go round? Aunty, she’s my godmother, is sending me another box of beaten biscuits. She has promised to keep me supplied. You know, I have never eaten cold light bread in my life at breakfast, and I’d just as soon choke down cold potatoes as the soggy bread they give us here. But beaten biscuit and ham and home-made pickles won’t be enough, even with hickory nut cake,” she continued doubtfully.

“I have a chafing dish. We can make fudge; then there’s tea, you know. We can borrow cups and saucers from the others. But we’ll have to do something else for their amusement besides feed them. Have you thought of anything?”

“Lillie and Millie,” these were two sophomores at Queen’s, “have a stunt they have promised to give. It’s to be a surprise. And Jennie Wren has promised to bring her guitar and oblige us with a few selections, but, oh, Nance, except for the eatin’, I’m afraid it won’t be near such a fine party as Mary Stewart’s was.”

“Eatin’s the main thing, child. Don’t let that worry you,” replied Nance consolingly. “I think I have an idea of something which would interest the company, but I’m not going to tell even you what it is.”

Nance had a provoking way of keeping choice secrets and then springing them when she was entirely ready, and wild horses could not drag them out of her before that propitious moment.

On Friday evening the girls began to arrive early, for, as has been said, Molly was already an object of interest at Wellington College, and the fame of her beaten biscuits and old ham had spread abroad. Some of the guests, like Mary Stewart, came because they were greatly attracted toward the young freshman; and others, like Judith Blount, felt only an amused curiosity in accepting the invitation. As a general thing, Judith was a very exclusive person, but she felt she could safely show her face where Mary Stewart was.

“This looks pretty fine to me,” observed that nice, unaffected young woman herself, shaking hands with Molly and Nance.

“It’s good of you to say so,” replied Molly. “Your premises would make two of our’s, I’m thinking.”

“But, look at your grand buffet. How clever of you! One of you two children must have a genius for arrangement.”

The study tables had been placed at one end of the room close together, their crudities covered with a white cloth borrowed from Mrs. Murphy, and on these were piled the viands in a manner to give the illusion of great profusion and plenty.

“It’s Molly,” laughed Nance; “she’s a natural entertainer.”

“Not at all,” put in Molly. “I come of a family of cooks.”

“And did your cook relatives marry butlers?” asked Judith.

Molly stifled a laugh. Somehow Judith couldn’t say things like other girls. There was always a tinge of spite in her speeches.

“Where I come from,” she said gravely, “the cooks and butlers are colored people, and the old ones are almost like relatives, they are so loyal and devoted. But there are not many of those left now.”

The room was gradually filling, and presently every guest had arrived, except Frances Andrews.

“We won’t wait for her,” said Molly to Lillie and Millie, the two inseparable sophomores, who now quietly slipped out. Presently, Nance, major domo for the evening, shoved all the guests back onto the divans and into the corners until a circle was formed in the centre of the room. She then hung a placard on the knob of the door which read:

MAHOMET, THE COCK OF THE EAST,
vs.
CHANTECLER, THE COCK OF THE WEST.

There was a sound of giggling and scuffling, the door opened and two enormous, man-sized cocks entered the room. Both fowls had white bodies made by putting the feet through the sleeves of a nightgown, which was drawn up around the neck and over the arms, the fullness gathered into the back and tied into a rakish tail. A Persian kimono was draped over Mahomet to represent wings and a tightly fitting white cap with a point over the forehead covered his head. His face was powdered to a ghastly pallor with talcum and his mouth had been painted with red finger-nail salve into a cruel red slash across his countenance. Chantecler was of a more engaging countenance. A small red felt bedroom slipper formed his comb and a red silk handkerchief covered his back hair. The two cocks crowed and flapped their wings and the fight began, amid much laughter and cheering. Twice Chantecler was almost spurred to death, but it was Mahomet’s lot to die that evening, and presently he expired with a terrible groan, while the Cock of the West placed his foot on Mahomet’s chest and crowed a mighty crow, for the West had conquered the East.

That was really the great stunt of the evening, and it occupied a good deal of time. Molly began carving the ham, which she had refused to do earlier, because a ham, properly served, should appear first in all its splendid shapely wholeness before being sliced into nothingness. Therefore she now proceeded to cut off thin portions, which crumbled into bits under the edge of the carving knife borrowed from Mrs. Murphy. But the young hostess composedly heaped it upon the plates with pickle and biscuit, and it was eaten so quickly that she had scarcely finished the last serving before the plates were back again for a second allowance.

During the hot fudge and hickory nut cake course, the door opened and a Scotch laddie, kilted and belted in the most approved manner entered the room. His knees were bare, he wore a little Scotch cap, a black velvet jacket and a plaidie thrown over one shoulder. But the most perfect part of his get-up was his miniature bagpipe, which he blew on vigorously, and presently he paused and sang a Scotch song.

“Nance!” cried several of the Queen’s Cottage girls, for it was difficult to recognize the quiet young girl from Vermont in this rakish disguise.

In the midst of the uproar there was a loud knock on the door.

“Come in,” called Molly, a little frightened, thinking, perhaps, the kindly matron had for once rebelled at the noise they were making.

Slowly the door opened and an old hag stepped into the room. She was really a terrible object, and some of the girls shrieked and fell back as she advanced toward the jolly circle. Her nose was of enormous length, and almost rested on her chin, like a staff, like the nose of “The Last Leaf on the Tree.” Also, she had a crooked back and leaned heavily on a stick. On her head was a high pointed witch’s cap. She wore black goggles, and had only two front teeth. The witch produced a pack of cards which she dexterously shuffled with her black gloved hands. Then she sat down on the floor, beckoning to the girls to come nearer.

“Half-a-minute fortune for each one,” she observed in a muffled, disguised voice, but it was a very fulsome minute, as Judy remarked afterward, for what little she said was strictly to the point.

To Judith Blount she said:

“English literature is your weak point. Look out for danger ahead.”

This seemed simple enough advice, but Judith flushed darkly, and several of the girls exchanged glances. Molly, for some reason, recalled what Judith had said about Professor Edwin Green.

Many of the other girls came in for knocks, but they were very skillful ones, deftly hidden under the guise of advice. To Jennie Wren the witch said:

“Be careful of your friends. Don’t ever cultivate unprofitable people.”

To Nance Oldham she said:

“You will always be very popular—if you stick to popular people.”

It was all soon over. Molly’s fortune had been left to the last. The strange witch had gone so quickly from one girl to another that they had scarcely time to take a breath between each fortune.

“As for you,” she said at last, turning to Molly, “I can only say that ‘kind hearts are more than coronets, and simple faith than Norman blood,’ and by the end of your freshman year you will be the most popular girl in college.”

“Who are you?” cried Molly, suddenly coming out of her dream.

“Yes, who are you?” cried Judith, breaking through the circle and seizing the witch by the arm.

With a swift movement the witch pushed her back and she fell in a heap on some girls who were still sitting on the floor.

“I will know who you are,” cried Jennie Wren, with a determined note in her high voice, as she grasped the witch by the arm, and it did look for a moment as if the Kentucky spread were going to end in a free-for-all fight, when suddenly, in the midst of the scramble and cries, came three raps on the door, and the voice of the matron called:

“Young ladies, ten o’clock. Lights out!”

The girls always declared that it was the witch who had got near the door and pushed the button which put out every light in the room. At any rate, the place was in total darkness for half a minute, and when Molly switched the lights on again for the girls to find their wraps the witch had disappeared.

In another instant the guests had vanished into thin air and across the moonlit campus ghostly figures could be seen flitting like shadows over the turf toward the dormitories, for there was no time to lose. At a quarter past ten the gates into the Quadrangle would be securely locked.

Nance lit a flat, thick candle, known in the village as “burglar’s terror,” and in this flickering dim light the two girls undressed hastily.

Suddenly Molly exclaimed in a whisper:

“Nance, I believe it was Frances Andrews who dressed up as that witch, and I’m going to find out, rules or no rules.”

She slipped on her kimono and crept into the hall. The house was very still, but she tapped softly on Frances’ door. There was no answer, and opening the door she tiptoed into the room. A long ray of moonlight, filtering in through the muslin curtains, made the room quite light. There was a smell of lavender salts in the air, and Mollie could plainly see Frances in her bed. A white handkerchief was tied around her head, as if she had a headache, but she seemed to be asleep.

“Frances,” called Molly softly.

Frances gave a stifled sob that was half a groan and turned over on her side.

“Frances,” called Molly again.

Frances opened her eyes and sat up.

“Is anything the matter?” she asked.

Molly went up to the bedside. Even in the moonlight she could see that Frances’ eyes were swollen with crying.

“I was afraid you were ill,” whispered Molly. “Why didn’t you come to the spread?”

“I had a bad headache. It’s better now. Good night.” Molly crept off to her room.

Was it Frances, after all, who had broken up her party?

Molly was inclined to think it was not, and yet——

“At any rate, we’ll give her the benefit of the doubt, Nance,” she whispered.

But there were no doubts in Nance’s mind.

CHAPTER VI.
KNOTTY PROBLEMS.

“I tell you things do hum in this college!” exclaimed Judy Kean, closing a book she had been reading and tossing it onto the couch with a sigh of deep content.

“I don’t see how you can tell anything about it, Judy,” said Nance severely. “You’ve been so absorbed in ‘The Broad Highway’ every spare moment you’ve had for the last two days that you might as well have been in Kalamazoo as in college.”

“Nance, you do surely tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth,” said Judy good naturedly. “I know I have the novel habit badly. It’s because I had no restraint put upon me in my youth, and if I get a really good book like this one, I just let duty slide.”

“Why don’t you put your talents to some use and write, then?” demanded Nance, who enjoyed preaching to her friends.

“Art is more to my taste,” answered Judy.

“Well, art is long and time is fleeting. Why don’t you get busy and do something?” exclaimed the other vehemently. “What do you intend to be?”

Judy had a trick of raising her eyebrows and frowning at the same time, which gave her a serio-comic expression and invested her most earnest speeches with a touch of humor. But she did not reply to Nance’s question, having spent most of her life indulging her very excellent taste without much thought for the future.

“What do you intend to be?” she asked presently of Nance, who had her whole future mapped out in blocks: four years at college, two years studying languages in Europe, four years as teacher in a good school, then as principal, perhaps, and next as owner of a school of her own.

“Why, I expect to teach languages,” said Nance without a moment’s hesitation.

“Of course, a teacher. I might have known!” cried Judy. “You’ve commenced already on me—your earliest pupil!

“‘Teacher, teacher, why am I so happy, happy, happy,
In my Sunday school?’”

She broke off with her song suddenly and seized Nance’s hand.

“Please don’t scold me, Nance, dear. I know life isn’t all play, and that college is a serious business if one expects to take the whole four years’ course. I’ve already had a warning. It came this morning. It’s because I’ve been cutting classes. And I have been entirely miserable. That’s the reason I’ve been so immersed in ‘The Broad Highway.’ I’ve been trying to drown my sorrows in romance. I know I’m not clever——”

“Nonsense,” interrupted the other impatiently. “You are too clever, you silly child. That’s what is the matter with you, but you don’t know how to work. You have no system. What you really need is a good tutor. You must learn to concentrate——”

“Concentrate,” laughed Judy. “That’s something I never could do. As soon as I try my thoughts go skylarking.”

“How do you do it?”

“Well, I sit very still and dig my toes into the soles of my shoes and my finger nails into the palms of my hands and say over and over the thing I’m trying to concentrate on.”

The girls were still laughing joyously when Molly came in. Her face wore an expression of unwonted seriousness, and she was frowning slightly. Three things had happened that morning which worried her considerably.

The first shock came before breakfast when she had looked in her handkerchief box where she kept her funds promiscuously mixed up with handkerchiefs and orris root sachet bags and found one crumpled dollar bill and not a cent more. There was a kind of blind spot in Molly’s brain where money was concerned, little of it as she had possessed in her life. She never could remember exactly how much she had on hand, and change was a meaningless thing to her. And now it was something of a blow to her to find that one dollar must bridge over the month’s expenses, or she must write home for more, a thing she did not wish to do, remembering the two acres of apple orchard which had been sunk in her education.

“And it’s all gone in silk attire and riotous living,” she said to herself, for she had bought herself ten yards of a heavenly sky blue crêpey material which she and Nance proposed to make into a grand costume, also she had entertained numbers of friends at various times to sundaes in the village. One of the other of her triple worries was a note she had received that morning from Judith Blount, and the third was another note, about both of which she intended to ask the advice of her two most intimate friends.

“What’s bothering you, child?” demanded Judy, quick to notice any change in her adored Molly’s face.

“Oh, several things. These two notes for one.” She drew two envelopes from her pocket and opening the first one, began to read aloud:

“‘Dear Miss Brown:

“‘Since you come of a family of cooks and are expert on the subject, I am going to ask you to take charge of a little dinner I am giving to-morrow night in my rooms to my brother and some friends. I shall expect you to be chief cook, but not bottle-washer. You’ll have an assistant for that; but I’d like you to wait on the table, seeing you are so good at those things. Don’t bother about cap and apron. I have them.

“‘Yours with thanks in advance,
“‘Judith Blount.’”

The note was written on heavy cream-colored paper with two Greek letters embossed at the top in dark blue. Judith lived in the Beta Phi House, which was divided into apartments, and occupied by eight decidedly well-to-do girls, the richest girls in college, as a matter of fact. It was called “The Millionaire’s Club,” and was known to be the abode of snobbishness, although Molly, who had been there once to a tea, had been entirely unconscious of this spirit.

Judy and Nance were speechless with indignation after Molly had finished reading the note.

“What do you think of that?” she exclaimed, breaking the silence.

“It’s a rank insult,” cried Nance.

“If you were a man, you could challenge her to a duel,” cried Judy; “but being a girl, you’ll have to take it out in ignoring her.”

“It’s written in such a matter-of-fact way,” continued Molly, “that I can’t believe it’s entirely unusual. After sober, second thought, I believe I’ll ask Sallie before I answer it.”

“Speaking of angels—there is Sallie!” cried Judy, as that young woman herself hurried past the door on her way to a class.

“What is it? Make it quick. I’m late now!” ejaculated Sallie, popping her head in at the door with a smile on her face to counteract her abrupt manner. “Who’s in trouble now?”

The three freshmen stood silently about her while she perused Judith’s note.

“Did you ever hear of such a thing?” burst out Judy with hot indignation.

“Oh, yes, lots of times, little one. It’s quite customary for freshmen to act as waitresses when girls in the older classes entertain in their rooms. The freshies like to do it because they get such good food. I do think this note is expressed, well—rather unfortunately. It has a sort of between-the-lines superiority. But Judith is always like that. You just have to take her as you find her and ignore her faults. You’d better accept, Molly, with good grace. You’ll enjoy the food, too. To-morrow—let me see, that’s New England boiled dinner night, isn’t it? You’ll probably have beefsteak and mushrooms and grape fruit and ice cream and all the delicacies of the season.”

“Very well, if you advise it, I’ll accept, like a lady,” said Molly resignedly.

“It’s customary,” answered Sallie, smiling cheerfully and waving her hand as she hurried down the hall.

“Well, that’s settled,” continued Molly sighing. Somehow, Judith Blount did get on her nerves. “Now, the other note is even more serious in a way. Listen to this.”

Before reading it, she carefully closed the door, drew the other girls into the far end of the room and began in a low voice:

“‘Dear Miss Brown:

“‘May I have the pleasure of being your escort to the sophomore-freshman ball? Let me know whether you intend to wear one of your cerulean shades. The carriage will stop for us at eight o’clock. You might leave the answer at my door to-night.

“‘Yours faithfully,
“‘Frances Andrews.’”

The girls looked at each other in consternation.

“What’s to be done?”

“Say you have another engagement,” advised Judy, who was not averse at times to telling polite fibs in order to extricate herself from a difficulty. But Molly was the very soul of truth, and even small fibs were not in her line.

“Hasn’t any one else asked you yet?” asked Nance.

“No; you see, it’s a week off, and I suppose they are just beginning to think of partners now.”

“All I can say is that if you do go with her you are done for,” announced Nance solemnly.

Molly sat down in the Morris chair and wrinkled her brows.

“I do wish she hadn’t,” she said.

“She just regards you as a sort of life preserver,” exclaimed Judy. “She’s trying to keep above the surface by holding on to you. If I were you, I wouldn’t be bothered with her.”

“Of course, I know,” said Molly, “that Frances Andrews did something last year that put her in the black books with her class. She’s trying to live it down, and they are trying to freeze her out. Nobody has anything to do with her, and she’s not invited to anything except the big entertainments like this. I can’t help feeling sorry for her, and I don’t see how it would do me any harm to go with her. But I just don’t want to go, that’s all. I’d rather take a beating than go.”

“Well, then you are a chump for considering it!” exclaimed Judy, whose self-indulgent nature had little sympathy for people who would do uncomfortable things.

“Then, on the other hand,” continued Molly, “suppose my going would help her a little, don’t you think it would be mean to turn her down? Oh, say you think I ought to do it, because I’m going to, hard as it seems.”

Nance went over and put her arms around her friend, quite an unusual demonstration with her, while Judy seized her hand and patted it tenderly.

“Really, Molly, you are quite the nicest person in the world,” she exclaimed. Then she added: “By the way, Molly, can you spare the time to tutor me for a month or so? I don’t know what the rates are, but we can settle about that later. Nance tells me I must get busy or else take my walking papers. I’d be afraid of a strange tutor. I’m a timid creature. But I think I might manage to learn a few things from you, Molly, dear.”

Did Judy understand the look of immense relief which instantly appeared on Molly’s sensitive face? If she did she made no sign.

“Now, don’t say no,” she went on. “I know you are awfully busy, and all that, but it would be just an act of common charity.”

“Say no?” cried Molly, laughing lightly. “I can hardly wait to say yes,” and she cheerfully got out six pairs of muddy boots from the closet, enveloped herself in a large apron, slipped on a pair of old gloves and went to work to clean and black them. Molly had become official bootblack at Queen’s Cottage at ten cents a pair when they were not muddy, and fifteen cents when they were.

When she had completed her lowly job she sat down at her desk and wrote two notes.

One was to Judith Blount, in which she accepted her invitation to wait at table in the most polite and correct terms, and signed her name “Mary Carmichael Washington Brown.”

The second letter, which was to Frances Andrews, was also a note of acceptance.

Then Molly removed her collar, rolled up her sleeves, kicked off her pumps—a signal that she was going to begin work—and sat down to cram mathematics,—the very hardest thing in life to her and the subject which was to be a stumbling block in her progress always.

CHAPTER VII.
AN INCIDENT OF THE COFFEE CUPS.

Molly turned up at the Beta Phi House about five o’clock the next evening. She wore a blue linen so that if any grease sputtered it would fall harmlessly on wash goods, and in other ways attired herself as much like a maid as possible with white collar and cuffs and a very plain tight arrangement of the hair.

“If I’m to be a servant, I might as well look like one,” she thought, as she marched upstairs and rapped on Judith’s door.

“Come in,” called the voice of Jennie Wren. “Judith’s gone walking with her guests,” she explained; “but she left her orders with me, and I’ll transmit them to you,” she added rather grandly. “You are to do the cooking. Here are all the things in the ice box, and there’s the gas stove on the trunk. Miss Brinton and I will set the table.”

Molly gathered that Caroline Brinton, the unbending young woman from Philadelphia, had been chosen as her assistant.

The tiny ice box was stuffed full of provisions. There was the inevitable beefsteak, as Sallie had predicted; also canned soup; a head of celery, olives, grape fruits, olive oil, mushrooms, cheese—really, a bewildering display of food stuffs.

“Did Miss Blount decide on the courses?” Molly asked Jennie Wren.

“No; she got the raw material and left the rest entirely with you. ‘Tell her to get up a good dinner for six people,’ she said. ‘I don’t care how she does it, only she must have it promptly at six-fifteen.’”

There were only two holes to the gas stove and likewise only two saucepans to fit over them, so that it behooved Molly to look alive if she were to prepare dinner for six in an hour and a quarter.

“Where’s the can opener?” she called.

A calm, experienced cook with the patience of a saint might have felt some slight irritability if she had been placed in Molly’s shoes that evening. Nothing could be found. There was no can opener, no ice pick, the coffeepot had a limited capacity of four cups, and there was no broiler for the steak. It had to be cooked in a pan. It must be confessed also that it was the first time in her life Molly had ever cooked an entire meal. She had only made what her grandmother would have called “covered dishes,” or surprise dishes, and she now found preparing a dinner of four courses for six people rather a bewildering task.

At last there came the sound of voices in the next room. She put on the beefsteak. Her cheeks were flaming from the heat of the little stove. Her back ached from leaning over, and her head ached with responsibility and excitement.

“Is everything all right?” demanded Judith, blowing into the room with an air of “if it isn’t it will be the worse for you.”

“I believe so,” answered Molly.

“Why did you put the anchovies on crackers?” demanded the older girl irritably. “They should have been on toast.”

“Because there wasn’t enough bread for one thing, and because there was no way to toast it if there had been,” answered Molly shortly.

No cook likes to be interfered with at that crucial moment just before dinner.

“Here are your cap and apron,” went on Judith. “You know how to wait, don’t you? Always hand things at the left side.”

“Water happens to be poured from the right,” answered Molly, pinning on the little muslin cap. She was in no mood to be dictated to by Judith Blount or any other black-eyed vixen.

Judith made no answer. She seemed excited and absent-minded.

Caroline placed the anchovies while Molly poured the soup into cups, there being no plates. The voices of the company floated in to her. Jennie Wren had joined them, making the sixth.

She heard a man’s voice exclaim:

“I say, Ju-ju, I call this very luxurious. We never had anything so fine as this at Harvard. You always could hold up the parent and get what you wanted. Now, I never had the nerve. And, by the way, have you got a cook, too?”

“Only for to-night,” answered Judith. “We usually eat downstairs with the others.”

“You’re working some poor little freshman, ten to one,” answered Judith’s brother, for that was evidently who it was. Then Molly heard some one run up a brilliant scale and strike a chord and a good baritone voice began singing:

“‘Oh, I’m a cook and a captain bold,
And a mate of the Nancy brig,
And a bo’sun tight and a midshipmatemite,
And the crew of the captain’s gig.’”

“Why don’t you join in, Eddie? But I forgot. It would never do for a Professor of English Literature at a girls’ college to lift his voice in ribald song.”

Some one laughed. Molly recognized the voice instantly. She knew that Professor Edwin Green was dining at Judith’s that night, and her inquiring mind reached out even further into the realms of conjecture, and she guessed who was the author of his light opera.

“Cousin Edwin, will you sit there, next to me?” said Judith’s voice.

“Cousin?” repeated Molly. “So that’s it, is it?”

Then other voices joined in—Mary Stewart, Jennie Wren and Martha Schaeffer, a rich girl from Chicago, who roomed in that house.

They gobbled down the first course as people usually dispatch relishes, and as Caroline removed the dishes, Molly appeared with the soup. None of the girls recognized her, of course, which was perfectly good college etiquette, although Mary Stewart smiled when Molly placed her cup of soup and whispered:

“Good work.”

Molly gave her a grateful look, and Professor Edwin Green, looking up, caught a glimpse of Molly’s flushed face, and smiled, too.

“I say, Ju-ju, who’s your head waitress?” Molly could not help overhearing Richard Blount ask when she had left the room.

“Oh, just a little Southern girl named Smith, or something,” answered Judith carelessly.

“That young lady,” said Professor Edwin Green, “is Miss Molly Brown, of Kentucky.”

The young freshman’s face was crimson when she brought in the steak and placed it in front of Mr. Blount.

Then she took her stand correctly behind his chair, with a plate in her hand, waiting for him to carve.

Sometimes two members of the same family are so unlike that it is almost impossible to believe that blood from the same stock runs in their veins. So it was with Richard Blount and his sister, Judith. She was tall and dark and arrogant, and he was short and blond and full of good-humored gayety. He rallied all the girls at the table. He teased his Cousin Edwin. He teased his sister, and then he ended by highly praising the food, looking all the time from one corner of his mild blue eyes at Molly’s flushed face.

“Really,” he exclaimed, “a French chef must have broiled this steak. Not even Delmonico, nor Oscar himself at the Waldorf, could have done it better. Isn’t it the top-notch, Eddie? What’s this? Mushroom sauce? By Jupiter, it’s wonderful to come out here in the wilds and get such food.”

Mary Stewart began to laugh. After all, it was just good-natured raillery.

“Why, Mr. Blount,” she said, “there is something to be found here that is lots better than porter-house steak.”

“What is it? Name it, please!” cried Richard. “If I must miss the train, I must have some, whatever it is—cream puffs or chocolate fudge?”

“It’s Kentucky ham of the finest, what do you call it—breed? Three years old. You’ve never eaten ham until you’ve tasted it.”

She smiled charmingly at Molly, who pretended to look unconscious while she passed the vegetables. Judith endeavored to change the subject.

She was angry with Mary for thus bringing her freshman waitress into prominence. But Molly was destined to be the heroine of the evening in spite of all efforts against it.

“Old Kentucky ham!” cried Richard Blount, starting from his chair with mock seriousness, “Where is it? I implore you to tell me. My soul cries out for old ham from the dark and bloody battleground of Kentucky!”

Everybody began to laugh, and Judith exclaimed:

“Do hush, Richard. You are so absurd! Did he behave this way at Harvard all the time, Cousin Edwin?”

“Oh, yes; only more so. But tell me more of this wonderful ham, Miss Stewart.”

Molly wondered if Professor Green really understood that it was all a joke on her when he asked that question.

Suddenly she formed a resolution. Following her assistant into the next room, she whispered:

“Which would you rather do, Miss Brinton? Go over to Queen’s and ask Nance to give you the rest of my ham or wait on the table while I go?”

“I’d rather get the ham,” replied Miss Brinton, whose proud spirit was crushed by the menial service she had been obliged to undertake that evening.

The dinner progressed. In a little while Molly had cleared the table and was preparing to bring on the grape-fruit salad when Caroline appeared with the remnants of the ham. Molly removed it from its wrappings and, placing it on a dish, bore it triumphantly into the next room.

“What’s this?” cried Richard Blount. “Do my eyes deceive me? Am I dreaming? Is it possible——”

“The old ham, or, rather, the attenuated ghost of the old ham!” ejaculated Mary Stewart.

Even Judith joined in the burst of merriment, and Professor Green’s laugh was the gayest of all.

Molly returned with the carving knife and fork, and Richard Blount began to snip off small pieces.

“‘Ham bone am very sweet,’” he sang, one eye on Molly.

“It is certainly wonderful,” exclaimed Professor Green, as he tasted the delicate meat; “but it seems like robbery to deprive the owner of it.”

“Now, Edwin, you keep quiet, please,” interrupted Richard. “I’ve heard that some owners of old hams are just as fond of things sweeter than ham bones. A five-pound box ought to be the equivalent of this, eh?”

“Really, Richard, you go too far,” put in Judith, frowning at her brother.

But Richard took not the slightest notice of her, nor did he pause until he had cleaned the ham bone of every scrap of meat left on it.

“Aren’t you going to catch your train?” asked Judith.

“I think not to-night, Ju-ju,” he answered, smiling amiably. “Edwin, can you put me up? If not, I’ll stop at the inn in the village.”

“No, indeed, you won’t, Dick. You must stop with me. I have an extra bed, solely in hopes you might stay in it some night. And later this evening we might run over—er—a few notes.”

He looked consciously at Richard, then he gave Molly a swift, quizzical glance, remembering probably that he had confided to her and her alone that he was the author of the words of a comic opera.

Having cleared the table, Molly now returned with the coffee. The cups jaggled as she handed them. She was very weary, and her arms ached. When she had reached Professor Edwin Green, Richard Blount, with his nervous, quick manner, suddenly started from his chair and exclaimed:

“Now, I know whom you remind me of—Ellen Terry at sixteen.”

Nobody but Molly realized for a moment that he was talking to her, and she was so startled that her wrist gave a twist and over went the tray and three full coffee cups straight on to the knees of the august Professor of English Literature.

There was a great deal of noise, Molly remembered. She herself was so horrified and stunned that she stood immovable, clutching the tray wildly, as a drowning person clings to a life preserver. She heard Judith cry:

“How stupid! How could you have been so unpardonably awkward!”

At the same moment Mary Stewart said: “It was entirely your fault, Mr. Blount. You frightened the poor child with your wild behavior.”

And Professor Green said:

“Don’t scold, Judith. I’m to blame. I joggled the tray with my elbow. There’s no harm done, at any rate. These gray trousers will be much improved by being dyed cafe au lait.”

Then Richard Blount rose from the table and marched straight over to where Molly was standing transfixed, still miserably holding to the tray.

“Miss Brown,” he said humbly, “I want to apologize. All this must have been very trying for you, and you have behaved beautifully. I hope you will forgive me. My only excuse is that I am always forgetting my little sister and her friends are not still children. Will you forgive me?”

He looked so manly and good-natured standing there before her with his hand held out, that Molly felt what slight indignation there was in her heart melting away at once. She put her hand in his.

“There is nothing to forgive, Mr. Blount,” she said, and the young man who was a musician pricked up his ears when he heard that soft, musical voice.

“And I’ve robbed you of your ham,” he continued.

“It was a pleasure to know you enjoyed it,” she said.

Presently Molly began clearing the table. Richard sat down at the piano. It was evident that he never wandered far from his beloved instrument, and the girls gathered around him while he ran over the first act of his new opera.

Professor Edwin Green said good night and took himself and his coffee-soaked trousers home to his rooms.

“You can follow later, Dickie,” he called.

As he passed Molly, standing by the door, he smiled at her again, and Molly smiled back, though she was quite ready to cry.

“The ham was delicious,” he said. “Thank you very much.”

That night, when Molly had wearily climbed the stairs to her room and flung herself on her couch, Nance, writing at her desk, called over:

“Well, how was the beefsteak?”

“I didn’t get any,” said Molly. “Even if there had been any left, I was too tired to eat anything. I’m afraid I wasn’t born to be anybody’s cook, Nance, or waitress, either.”

And Molly turned her face to the wall and wept silently.

Lest we forget, we will say now that two days after this episode of the coffee cups, there came, by express for Miss Molly Brown, a five-pound box of candy without a card, and the girls at Queen’s Cottage feasted right royally for almost two evenings.

CHAPTER VIII.
CONCERNING CLUBS,—AND A TEA PARTY.

At the first meeting of the freshman class of 19—, Margaret Wakefield of Washington, D. C., had been elected President.

Just how this came about no one could exactly say. She could not have been accused of electioneering for herself, and yet she made an impression somehow and had won the election by a large majority.

“Anybody who can talk like that ought to be President of something,” Molly had observed good naturedly. “She could make a real inauguration speech, I believe, and she knows all about Parliamentary Law, whatever that is.”

“She dashed off the class constitution just as easily as if she were writing a letter home,” said Judy.

“That’s not so easy, either,” added Nance mournfully.

The girls were silent. It had gradually leaked out as their friendship progressed that Nance’s home was not an abode of happiness by any means. And yet Nance had written a theme on “Home,” which was so well done that she had been highly complimented by Miss Pomeroy, who had read it aloud to the class. Molly often wondered just what manner of woman Nance’s mother was, and she soon had an opportunity of finding out for herself.

But the conversation about the new class president continued.

“President Wakefield wants us to have bi-monthly meetings,” continued Judy. “She wishes to divide the class into committees and have a chairman for each committee—”

“Committees for what?” demanded Molly.

“Dear knows,” laughed Judy, “but her father’s a Congressman, and she has inherited his passion for law and order, I suppose. She wants to conduct a debate on Woman’s Suffrage to meet Saturdays. It’s to be called ‘The Woman’s Franchise Club,’ and she wishes to establish by-laws and resolutions and a number of other things that are Greek to me, for ‘the political body corporate.’ She says it’s a crying shame that women know so little about the constitution of their own country, and in establishing a debating society, she hopes to do some missionary work in that line.”

Judy had risen and was waving her arms dramatically while her voice rose and fell like an old-time orator’s.

“I suppose we ought,” said Molly; “but I’d rather put it off a year or so. There are so many other things to enjoy first. Besides, it will be four years before I reach the voting age, and by that time I hope my ‘intellects’ will have developed sufficiently to take in the constitution of the country.”

“Anyhow,” exclaimed Judy, “I’m proud to have a class president who’s such a first-class public speaker, because it takes it all off our shoulders. Whenever there’s a speech to be made or anything public and embarrassing to be done, we’ll just vote for her to do it, because she will enjoy it so much.”

“But are you going to join the debating club?” asked Nance.

“I suppose it’s our duty to,” replied Molly; “but I do hate to pin myself down. Suppose we say we’ll go to one and listen?”

“Well, you’d better settle it now, because here comes the President sailing up the walk. She’s going the rounds now, I suppose, and in another two minutes she’ll be springing the question on us.”

Judy, who was sitting at the front window of her own room, nodded down into the yard and smiled politely, and the girls had just time to settle among themselves what they were going to say when there was a smart rap on the door and President Wakefield entered.

She wore rather masculine-looking clothes, and carried a business-like small-sized suit case in one hand and a notebook in the other.

“Hello, girls!” she began; “I’m so glad I caught you together. It saves telling over the same thing three times. I want to know first exactly how you stand on the woman’s suffrage question. Now, don’t be afraid to be frank about it, and speak your minds. Of course, I’m sure that, being women who are seeking the higher education, you are all of you on the right side—the side of the thinking woman of to-day——”

Here Judy sneezed so violently that she almost upset the little three-legged clover-leaf tea table at her elbow.

“How do you feel on the subject, Molly?”

Molly smiled broadly, while Nance cleared her throat and Judy blew her nose and exclaimed:

“I think I must be taking cold. Excuse me while I get a sweater,” and disappeared in the closet.

“I—I’m afraid I don’t know very much about the subject, Margaret. You see, I was brought up in the country, and I haven’t had a chance to go into woman’s suffrage very deeply.”

“There is no time like the present for beginning, then,” said Margaret promptly, opening the business-like little suit case. “Read these two pamphlets and you’ll get the gist of the entire subject clearly and concisely expressed. I will call on you for an opinion next week after you’ve had time to study the question a bit.”

Molly took the pamphlets and began hastily turning the leaves. She wanted to laugh, but she felt certain it would offend Margaret deeply not to be taken seriously, and she controlled her facial muscles with an effort while she waited for attack No. Two.

“Nance, have you taken any interest in this question?” continued Margaret, who seemed to have the patience of a fanatic spreading his belief.

“I know something about it,” replied Nance quietly. “You see, my mother is President of a Woman’s Suffrage Association, and she spends most of her time going about the country making speeches for the National Association.”

“What, is your mother Mrs. Anna Oldham, the famous clubwoman?” cried Margaret.

Nance nodded her head silently.

“Why, she is one of the greatest authorities on women’s suffrage in the country!” exclaimed Margaret with great enthusiasm. “It says so here. Look, it gives a little sketch of her life and titles. She is president of two big societies and an officer in five others. It’s all in this little book called ‘Famous Club Women in America and England.’ Dear me,” continued Margaret modestly, “I think I’d better resign and give the chair to you, Nance. I’m nobody to be preaching to you when you must know the subject from beginning to end.”

Nance smiled in her curious, whimsical way.

“Have you ever eaten too much of something, Margaret,” she said, “and then hated it ever afterward?”

“Why, yes,” replied the President, “that has happened to every one, I suppose. Mince pie and I have been strangers to each other for many years on that account.”

“Well,” continued Nance, “I’ve been fed on clubs until I feel like a Strausberg goose. I’ve had them crammed down my throat since I was five years old. When I was twelve, I was my mother’s secretary, and I’ve sent off thousands of just such pamphlets as you are distributing now. I learned to write on the typewriter so I could copy my mother’s speeches. I’ve been usher at club conventions and page at committee meetings. I’ve distributed hundreds of badges with ‘Votes for Women’ printed on them. I had to make a hundred copies of mother’s speech on ‘The Constitution and By-Laws of the United States,’ and send them to a hundred different women’s clubs. So, you see,” she added, simply, frowning to keep back her tears, “I think I’ll take a rest from clubs while I’m at college and begin to enjoy life a little with Molly and Judy.”

Margaret Wakefield, who was really a very nice girl and exceedingly well-bred, leaned over and placed a firm, rather large hand on Nance’s.

“I should think you had had enough,” she exclaimed, giving the hand a warm squeeze. Seeing teardrops glistening in Nance’s eyes, she rose and started to the door. “If ever you do want to come to any of the meetings, you will be very welcome, girls,” she said; “but you don’t want to overdo anything in life, you know, and if there are things that interest you more than Woman’s Suffrage you oughtn’t to sacrifice yourselves. People should follow their own bent, I think. Good-bye,” she went on, smiling brightly, “and don’t bother to read the pamphlets, Molly, dear, if you don’t want to. It’s a poor way to carry a point to make a bugbear of the subject.”

She went out quietly and closed the door.

“I call her a perfect lady,” exclaimed Molly, trying not to look at Nance, but wishing at the same time that her friend would give way just once and have a good cry.

“Let’s cut study this afternoon and take a walk,” exclaimed Judy. “Trot along and get on your sweaters. It’s much too glorious to stay indoors. Nance, can’t you do your theme after supper? Molly, you look a little peaked. It will do you good to breathe the fresh, untainted air of the pine woods.”

Judy, it must be confessed, was always glad of a good excuse to get away from her books.

“Splendid!” cried Molly with enthusiasm.

“And I’ll bring my English tea basket,” went on Judy. “Who’s got any cookies?”

“I have,” said Nance, now fully recovered.

In five minutes the three girls had started across the campus to the road and presently were making for the pine woods that bordered the pretty lake. Everybody seemed to be out roaming the country that beautiful autumn afternoon. Parties of girls came swinging past, who had been on long tramps through the woods and over to the distant hills which formed a blue and misty background to the lovely rolling country. The lake was dotted with canoes and rowboats, and from far down the road that wound its way through the valley there came the sound of singing. Presently a wagon-load of girls emerged into view, followed by another wagon filled with autumn leaves and evergreens.

“It’s the sophomore committee on decoration,” Judy explained. Apparently she knew everything that happened at college. “They are getting the decorations for the gym. for the ball to-morrow night.”

Molly quickly changed the subject. She had had two invitations to go to the Sophomore-Freshman Ball since she had accepted Frances Andrews’ offer, and several of the sophomores had been to see her to ask her to change her mind, but, having given her word, Molly intended to keep it, no matter what was to pay.

“Let’s go to the upper end of the lake,” she suggested. “It’s wilder and much prettier,” and she led the way briskly along the path through the pine woods.

In a little while they came out at the other end of the small body of water where the woods abruptly ended at the foot of a hill called “Round Head,” which the girls proceeded to climb. From this eminence could be seen a widespreading panorama of hills and valleys, little streams and bits of forests, and beyond the pine woods the college itself, its campus spread at its feet like a mat of emerald green.

The girls paused breathlessly and Judy put down her tea basket.

“Here’s where a little refreshment might be very welcome,” she said, opening her basket of which she was justly proud, for not many girls at Wellington could boast of such a possession. She filled the little kettle from the bottle of water she had taken the precaution to bring along, and they sat down in a circle on the turf. The autumn had been a dry one, and the ground was not damp. Nibbling cookies and sweet chocolate, they waited for the water to boil.

“Look, here comes some one,” whispered Judy, indicating the figure of a man appearing around the side of the hill.

“I do hope it’s not a tramp,” exclaimed Nance uneasily.

Molly Brown hoped so, too, although she said nothing. But she felt nervous, as who wouldn’t in that lonely place? As the man came nearer, it became plain that he was making straight for them, and he did most assuredly look like a wanderer of some kind. He was dressed in an old suit of rough gray, wore an old felt hat and carried a staff like a pilgrim. The girls sat quite still and said nothing. There had been a silent understanding among them that it was better not to run. As the man drew nearer, Molly became suddenly conscious of the fact that across the gray trousers just above the knees was a deep coffee-colored stain.

The next moment the man stood before them, leaning on his staff, his hat under his arm. It was “Epiménides Antinous Green.”

“Confess now,” he said, smiling at all of them and looking at Molly, whom he knew best of the three, “you took me for a tramp?”

“Not exactly for a tramp,” answered Molly; “but for one who tramps.”

“What’s the difference, Miss Brown?” he asked laughing.

“Oh, everything. Clothes——” she paused, blushing deeply. Her eyes had fallen on the coffee stain. “Why doesn’t he have it cleaned off?” she thought, frowning slightly. “And—and looks,” she continued out loud.

“Even in the walk,” Judy finished. “Perhaps we can give you a cup of tea, Professor,” she added politely.

The Professor was only too glad for a cup of tea. He had been roaming the hills all day, he said, and he was tired and thirsty. While he sipped the fragrant beverage, he glanced at his watch.

“The truth is, I had an appointment at this spot at four-thirty,” he announced. “I was to meet my young brother George, familiarly known as ‘Dodo.’ He’s at Exmoor College, ten miles over, and was to walk across the valley to the rendezvous, and I was to conduct him safely to my rooms for supper. He was afraid to enter the college by the front gate for fear of meeting several hundreds of young women. He runs like a scared rabbit if he sees a girl a block off.”

“Won’t it give him an awful shock when he catches a glimpse of us waiting here on the hilltop?” asked Molly.

“It’s a shock that won’t hurt him,” replied the professor. “We’ll see what happens, at any rate.”

He put his cup and saucer on the ground, while his quizzical eyes, which seemed to laugh even when his face was serious, turned toward Molly. And Molly was well worth looking at that afternoon, although she herself was much dissatisfied with her appearance. Her auburn hair had almost slipped down her back. Her blue linen shirtwaist was decidedly blousey at the waist line. “It’s because I haven’t enough shape to keep it down,” she was wont to complain. Her cheeks were glowing and her eyes as calmly blue as the summer skies.

“Perhaps we’d better start on,” said Nance uneasily. She always felt an inexplicable shyness in the presence of men, and her friends had been known to nickname her “old maid.”

But before Professor Green could protest that he was only too glad to have his bashful brother make the acquaintance of three charming college girls, Judy, ever on the alert, exclaimed, “Look, there he comes around the side of the hill.”

The Professor rose and signaled with his hat, chuckling to himself, as he watched his youthful brother pause irresolutely on the hillside.

“Come on, Dodo,” he shouted, making a trumpet of his hands.

“I believe not this afternoon, thank you,” Dodo trumpeted back. “I have an important engagement at six.”

The girls could not keep from laughing.

“It’s a shame to frighten the poor soul like that,” exclaimed Molly. “We’ll start back, Professor, and leave him in peace.”

But the Professor was a man of determination, and had made up his mind to bring his shy brother into the presence of ladies that afternoon, very attractive ladies at that, of George’s own age, with simple, unaffected manners, calculated to make a shy young man forget for the moment that he had an affliction of agonizing diffidence.

“George,” called the professor, running a little way down the hillside, “come back and don’t be a fool.”

The wretched lad turned his scarlet face in their direction and began to climb the hill. He was a tall, overgrown youth, with large hands and feet, and when he stood in their midst, holding his cap nervously in both hands, while the Professor performed the introductions, he looked like a soldier facing the battle.

It remained for Molly and Judy to put him at his ease, however, with tea and cookies and questions about Exmoor College, while the Professor conversed with Nance about life at Wellington, and which study she liked best. At last the spirit of George emerged from its shy retreat, and he forgot to feel self-conscious or afraid. They rose, packed the tea things and started back. And it was the Professor who carried Judy’s tea basket, while George, glancing from Molly’s blue eyes to Judy’s soft gray ones, strolled between them and related a thrilling tale of college hazing.

“That was a swift remedy, was it not, Miss Oldham?” observed the Professor, laughing under his breath.

But undoubtedly the cure was complete, for that very evening Molly received a note, written in a crabbed boyish hand, and signed “George Green,” inviting the three girls to ride over to Exmoor on the trolley the following Saturday and spend the day. Miss Green, an older sister, would act as chaperone.

And not a few thrills did these young ladies experience at the prospect.

CHAPTER IX.
RUMORS AND MYSTERIES.

How many warm-hearted, impetuous people get themselves into holes because of those two qualities which are very closely allied indeed; and Molly Brown was one of those people. Carried away by emotions of generosity, she found herself constantly going farther than she realized at the moment. Why, for instance, could she not have put Frances Andrews off with an excuse for a day or so? Some one would surely have asked her to the Sophomore-Freshman ball.

And if she had only liked Frances, matters would have been different. If it had been an act of friendship, of deep devotion. But in spite of herself, she could not bring herself to trust that strange girl, beautiful and clever as she undoubtedly was, and sorry as Molly was for her. After all, it was rather selfish of Frances to have obtained the promise from Molly. Did she think it would reinstate her in the affections of her class to be seen in the company of the popular young freshman?

All this time, Molly said nothing to her friends, but on the morning of the ball she could not conceal from Judy and Nance her apprehension and general depression. And seeing their friend’s lack-lustre eye and drooping countenance, they held a counsel of war in Judy’s small bedroom.

At the end of this whispered conference, Judy was heard to remark:

“I’m afraid of the girl, to tell you the truth. Her fiery eyes and her two-pronged tongue seem to take all the spirit out of me.”

“I’m not afraid of her,” said Nance, who had a two-pronged tongue of her own, once she was stirred into action. “You wait here for me, and when I come back, you can go and notify the sophomores of what’s happened. Of course, Molly will get to the ball all right. The thing is to extricate her from the situation by the most tactful and surest means.”

Judy laughed.

“No,” she answered, “the thing is not to let Molly know we have saved her life.”

“If Frances hadn’t done that witch’s stunt and said all those malicious things at Molly’s Kentucky spread, I don’t think I should have minded so much. And do you know, Judy, that the report has spread abroad that she and Molly had prepared the whole thing beforehand, speeches and all and were in league together? You see, Molly was the only one who wasn’t hit.”

“You don’t mean it,” cried Judy. “Then, more than ever, I want to spare the child the humiliation she might have to suffer if she went with Frances to-night. Go forth to battle, Nance, and may the saints preserve you.”

Nance girded her sweater about her like a coat of mail, stiffened her backbone, pressed her lips together and marched out to the fray. She never told even Judy exactly what took place between Frances and her in that small room, with its bewildering array of fine trappings, silver combs and brushes, yellow silk curtains at the window, Turkish rugs, books and pictures. No one had ever seen the room except Molly the night of the spread, when it was too dark to make out what was in it.

There was no loud talking. Whatever was said was of the tense quiet kind, and presently Nance emerged unscathed from the encounter.

“She made me give my word of honor not to tell what was said,” she announced to the palpitating Judy, “but she’s writing the note to Molly now; so go quickly and inform someone that Molly has no escort for the ball.”

Judy departed much mystified and Nance remained discreetly away from her own room until she perceived Frances steal down the hall, push a note under their door and then hurry back, bang her own door and lock it.

Then, after a moment’s grace, Nance marched boldly to their chamber. Molly was reading the note.

“What do you think, Nance?” she exclaimed with a tone of evident relief in her voice, “Frances Andrews can’t go to-night.”

“Indeed, and what reason does she give?” asked Nance, feeling very much like a conspirator now that she was obliged to face Molly.

“None. She simply says ‘I’m sorry I can’t go to-night. Hope you’ll enjoy it. F. A.’ How does she expect me to get there, I wonder, at the eleventh hour?”

Nance examined her finger nails attentively.

“Perhaps she’s seen to that,” she replied after a pause.

“Nance,” said Molly, presently, “I’m so relieved that I think I’ll have to ’fess up. It’s mean of me, I know, and I feel awfully ungenerous to be so glad. You see, nobody can ever tell what strange, freakish thing she’s going to do. Of course she was the witch. I knew it from the conscious look that came into her face when I told her about it afterwards.”

“The mistake she has made is being defiant instead of repentant,” said Nance. “Instead of trying to brazen it out, she ought to ‘walk softly,’ as the Bible says, and keep quiet. She is the most embittered soul I ever met in all my life. If hatred counted for much, her hatred for her own class would burn it to a cinder.”

There was a sound of hurrying footsteps on the stairs and Judy burst into the room. Her face was aflame and she flung herself into a chair panting for breath.

“What’s your hurry?” asked Molly, slipping on her jacket. “Excuse me, I must be chasing along to French. Tell her the news, Nance.”

No need to tell Judy news, who had news of her own.

“I tell you, Nance,” she exclaimed, “there are times when I think the position of a freshman is one of the lowliest things in life. The first sophomore I met was Judith Blount. I did feel a little timid, but I told her what had happened. ‘You can tell your friend,’ she said, ‘that we sophomores are not so gullible as all that, and if her nerve has failed her at the last moment, it’s her fault, not ours.’”

“Why, Judy,” exclaimed Nance, “you didn’t know you were jumping from the frying pan right into the fire when you told that to Judith Blount, who has never liked Molly from the beginning. It’s jealousy, pure and simple, I think; although there almost seems to be something more behind it sometimes. She takes such pains to be disagreeable. Was anyone else there to hear you?”

“Oh, yes. She was surrounded by her satellites, Jennie Wren and a few others.”

The two girls sat in gloomy silence for a few minutes. After that rebuff, they hardly cared to circulate the bit of news any further in the sophomore class, which, it must be confessed, had the reputation of being run by a clique of the most arrogant and snobbish set of girls Wellington College had ever known.

“Let’s go and tell our woes to nice old Sally Marks,” suggested Judy, and off they marched in search of the good-natured funny Sally, whose room was on the floor below.

“Come in,” she called at their tap on the door, and noticing at once their serious faces, she exclaimed:

“I declare, I am beginning to feel like the Oracle at Delphi. What’s the trouble, now, my children?”

“You ought never to have gone to Judith Blount,” she continued after they had unburdened their secrets. But having gone to her, “it would be well,” so spake the Oracle, “to sit back and hold tight. The news is certain to spread, and of course only Judith and her ring would believe that Molly sent you out to find her an escort. There is one thing sure: Molly is obliged to go to the dance, not only because she has so many friends, but because she figures, I am told, so largely in ‘Jokes & Croaks,’ and it would be sport spoiled if she wasn’t there when the things are read out. Now, trot along, children, I’m cramming for an exam., and I’m busier than the busiest person in Wellington to-day.”

The afternoon dragged itself slowly along. Nance took her best dress out of its wrappings, heated a little iron and smoothed out its wrinkles. She lifted Molly’s blue crepe from its hanger and laid it on the couch.

“It was made in the simplest possible way out of the least possible goods in the least possible time,” she informed Judy, who had wickedly cut a class and sat moping in her friend’s room. “Isn’t it pretty? We made it together, and I’m really quite puffed up about the result. It’s Empire, you know,” she added proudly.

The dress did indeed show the short Empire waist. The round neck was cut out and finished with a frill of creamy lace which Molly happened to have, and there had not been much of a struggle with the sleeves, which came only to the elbow and were to all intents and purposes shapeless. But the color was the thing, as Molly had said.

“I’d be willing to drown in a color like that,” Judy observed. Judy was quite a poseuse about colors and assured her friends that she could never wear red because it inflamed her temper and made her cross; that violet quieted her nerves; green stirred her ambitions, and blue aroused her sympathies. While they were looking at the dress, Margaret Wakefield and Jessie Lynch, her roommate and boon companion, after rapping on the door, sailed into the room.

“We came to consult about clothes,” they announced. “Is this to be an evening dress affair, or what’s proper to wear?”

“The best you have,” replied Judy, “at least that’s what I was told by the oracular Sally below stairs.”

“For the love of heaven, don’t tell that to Jessie,” cried Margaret. “If you give her so much rope, she’ll be wearing purple velvet and cloth of gold.”

Jessie laughed good-naturedly. She was already considered the best dressed and prettiest girl in the freshman class, and it was a joke at Queen’s Cottage that she had been obliged to apply to the matron for more closet room, because the large one she shared with Margaret Wakefield was not nearly adequate for her numerous frocks. It had been a constant wonder to the other girls in the house that these two opposite types could have become such intimate friends; but friends they were, and continued to be throughout their college course, although Jessie never could rake up an interest in the U. S. Constitution or woman’s suffrage, either.

The two girls really formed a sort of combination of brains and beauty, and it became generally known that Jessie would hardly have pulled through the four years, except for the indefatigable efforts of her faithful friend, Margaret.

Mabel Hinton, a Queen’s Cottage freshman, now popped her head in at the door, which was half open. She was a very odd character, but she was popular with her friends, who called her “The Martian,” probably because she had a phenomenal intellect and wore enormous glasses in tortoise shell frames which made her eyes look like a pair of full moons.

“I thought I heard a racket,” she said in her crisp, catchy voice. “I suppose you are all discussing the news.”

“News? What news?” they demanded.

She closed the door carefully and came farther into the room.

“Gather around me, girls,” she said mysteriously, enjoying their curiosity.

“But what is it, Mabel? Don’t keep us in suspense,” cried Judy, always impatient.

“Well, there is evidence that someone was going to set fire to the gym. to-night,” she began, in a whisper. “This morning a bundle of oil-soaked rags was discovered in a closet, and then they began to search and found several other bundles like the first. There was a lot of excitement, and the Prex came over. They tried to keep it quiet, but the story leaked out, of course, and is still leaking——” she smiled.

The girls exchanged horrified glances. What terrible disaster might not have befallen them if the rags had not been discovered?

“Of course it was the work of an insane person,” said Margaret Wakefield.

“Of course, but who? Is she one of the students or some outside person?”

With a common instinct, Judy and Nance looked up at the same moment. Their glances met. Without making a sound, Judy’s lips formed the word “Frances.”

“Is the dance to take place, then?” asked Jessie.

“Oh, yes. It’s all been hushed up and things will go on just as usual. I’m going to look on from the balcony. I shan’t mingle with the dancers, because they knock off my spectacles and generally upset my equilibrium.”

The door opened and Molly appeared in their midst like a gracefully angular wraith, for her face looked white, her shoulders drooped and her long slim arms hung down at her sides dejectedly.

“Why, Molly, dear, has anything happened to you?” cried Nance.

“No, I won’t say that nothing has happened,” answered Molly, sinking into a chair and resting her chin on her hand. “I have been put through an ordeal this day, why, I can never tell you, but I am glad you are all here so that I can tell you about it.”

They pressed about her, full of sympathy and friendliness, while Judy, who loved comfort and recognized the needs of the flesh under the most trying circumstances, lit Nance’s alcohol lamp and put on the kettle to make tea.

“But what is it?” they all demanded, seeing that Molly had fallen into a silence.

“I’ve been with the President for the last hour,” she said, “though for what reason I can’t explain. I can’t imagine why I was sent for and brought to her private office. She was very nice and kind. She asked me a lot of questions about myself and all of Queen’s girls. I was glad enough to answer them, because we have nothing to be ashamed of, have we, girls?” Molly rose and stood before them, spreading out her hands with a kind of deprecating gesture. The circle of faces before her almost seemed abashed under the steady gaze of her clear blue eyes. “It was a pleasure to tell her what nice girls were stopping at Queen’s Cottage.”

“Did she mention?” began Judy and pointed to the dividing wall of the next room.

“Oh, yes, I was coming to that. But what do I know about——” Mollie stopped short and caught her breath. Her eyes turned towards the door, which was opened softly. There stood Frances Andrews.

She had evidently just come in, for she still wore her sweater and tam o’ shanter, and brought with her the smell of the fresh piney air.

“It’s all right about your escort for to-night, Miss Brown. You are to go with Miss Stewart, who has got special privilege from the sophomore president to take you. Good-bye. I hope you’ll have a ripping time. I shan’t see you at supper. I’m going off on the 6.15 train and won’t be back until Sunday night.”

There was such a tense feeling in the circle of freshmen as Frances stood there, that, as Judy remarked afterwards, they almost crackled with electricity.

It was quite late, and as most of the girls intended to dress for the party before supper, they took their departure immediately without any comment.

“Is anything special the matter?” asked Molly, after they had gone and she was left alone with her friends.

They told her the strange story which Mabel Hinton had reported to them a little while before.

“But that is the work of a lunatic,” exclaimed Molly, horrified.

“And I suppose,” went on Nance, “that the reason Prexy sent for you was that she suspected a certain person, who shall be nameless, and she was told that you were the only person who had ever been nice to her, and furthermore that you were going to the dance with her.”

“Of course that must be the reason,” said Molly, “and of course it’s absurd, I mean suspecting Frances Andrews. She might be accused of many things, but she is certainly in her right mind. She’s much cleverer than lots of the girls in her class.”

“Clever, yes. But should you call her balanced?”

Molly did not answer. She felt anxious and frightened, and a rap on the door at that moment made her jump with nervousness. It proved to be one of the maids of the house with two boxes of flowers, both for Molly. One was pink roses and contained the card of Mary Stewart, and the other was violets, and contained no card whatever.

She divided the violets in half and made her two friends wear them that night to the dance.

CHAPTER X.
JOKES AND CROAKS.

“I’m beginning to feel that we shall issue happily out of all our troubles,” cried Judy Kean, bursting into her friends’ room without knocking, “and the reason why I feel that way is because when I am clothed in silk attire my soul is clothed in joy. Especially when there’s dancing to follow. Button me up, someone, please, so that I may take a good look at my resplendent form in your mirror. I can’t see more than a square inch of neck in my own two by four.”

The girls stood back to admire their friend, who indulged her artistic fancy in rather theatrical clothes much too old for her, but who usually succeeded in gaining the effect she sought.

“Dear me, ‘she walks in beauty like the night,’” said Molly laughing. “You look like a charming and very youthful widow-lady, Judy, but how comes it you are wearing black?”

“Black is for certain types,” replied Judy sagely, “and I am one of them. Next to black my bilious skin takes on a dazzling, creamy tint and my mouse-colored hair assumes a yellow glint that is not its own.”

The girls laughed at their erratic friend, who was, indeed, dressed in black chiffon, from the fluffy folds of which her vivacious young face glowed like a flower.

“If you object to me, wait until you see Jessie,” cried Judy. “She might be going to the opera, she is so fine. She is wearing pink satin that glistens all over like a Christmas tree with little shiny things.”

As a matter of fact, Nance, whose well balanced and correct tastes in most things rarely failed her, was the most suitably dressed of our girls, in her pretty white lingerie frock.

At eight o’clock that evening Molly rolled away luxuriously in a village hack with Mary Stewart, holding her roses tenderly and carefully under her gray eiderdown cape, so as not to crush them.

“I’m awfully glad I was so lucky as to draw you this evening, Molly,” the older girl was saying.

“I’m the lucky one,” answered Molly, her thoughts reverting to the strange discovery of the morning. “Oh, Miss Stewart, what did Frances Andrews do last year to get herself into such a mess and be frozen out by all her class this year?”

“I’ll tell you perhaps some day, but not to-night. We want to enjoy ourselves to-night. Can you guide, Molly?”

“Like a streak. I always guided at home at the school dances, because I was the tallest girl in my class.”

“I’m a guider, too,” laughed Mary, “and when two guiders come together, I imagine it’s a good deal like a tug of war.”

During the ride over to the gymnasium, neither of the girls mentioned the thing uppermost in their minds: the attempt to set the gymnasium on fire that night. Nor was the rumor referred to by anyone at the dance later. It was a strictly forbidden topic, the President herself having issued orders.

The great room was a mass of foliage and bunting, Japanese lanterns and incandescent lights in many colors, and it was really quite a brilliant affair according to Molly’s notions, who had never seen anything but small country dances usually given at the schoolhouse several miles from her home. Lovely music floated from behind a screen of palms and lovely girls floated on the floor in couples, to the strains of the latest waltz.

“I’m afraid I’m going to be an awful wallflower,” thought Molly, feeling suddenly overgrown and awkward in the midst of this swirling mass of grace and beauty. “I can’t help feeling queer and I don’t seem to recognize anybody.”

But Molly had plenty of partners that evening, and after that first delightful waltz, it was nearly an hour before she caught a glimpse of Mary Stewart again in the crowd of dancers.

“Isn’t it jolly?” called Judy, as they dashed past each other in a romping barn dance.

“I never thought I could have such a good time at a manless party,” Jessie Lynch confided to Molly while they rested against the wall later. “But, really, it’s quite as good fun.”

“Isn’t it?” replied Molly. “I think I never had a better time in my life. But I’m afraid our roommates and friends are not enjoying it very much,” she added ruefully, pointing to the gallery, where seated in a silent bored row were Margaret Wakefield, Nance Oldham and Mabel Hinton.

“Of course,” said Jessie, “you would never expect Mabel to join this mad throng, but I’m surprised at Nance and Margaret.”

“Margaret prefers conversation parties, I suppose, and Nance is not fond of dancing, either. She would always rather look on, she says.”

The two girls were standing near the musicians and from the other side of the screen of palms they now heard a voice say:

“Have you danced with the fantastic Empress Josephine as yet?”

“Not as yet,” came the answer with a laugh. “But be careful, she is near——”

Molly moved away hastily, her face crimson.

Jessie had heard the question also and recognized the voice of Judith Blount.

“Why, Molly,” she exclaimed, glancing at her face, “you don’t think they meant——”

“Yes,” said Molly, trying to smile naturally, “I do.”

She glanced down at her home-made dress. Perhaps it did look amateurish. She and Nance had worked very hard over it, but, after all, they were not experienced dressmakers.

“Why, you look perfectly charming,” went on Jessie generously. “The color is exactly right for you——”

“Yes, color,” answered Molly, “but there ought to be something besides color to a dress, you know. Never mind, I shouldn’t be such a sensitive plant, Jessie. One ought not to mind being called fantastic. It’s not nearly so bad as being called—well, malicious—cruel. I’d rather be fantastic than any of those things. But I did think the dress was pretty when we made it.”

“Come along, and let’s get some lemonade, Molly. Your dress is sweet and suits you exactly, so there.”

Then someone came up and claimed Jessie for the next dance, but Molly was grateful to the pretty butterfly creature for her assurances and she resolved to forget all about her dress. As she lingered in the corner, uncertain whether to stay where she was or join her friends in the gallery, Mary Stewart made her way through the crowd and called:

“Oh, here you are. Some of the seniors are just outside and want to meet you. Will you come?”

“I should think I would,” replied Molly, joyfully. Fantastic, or not, she had one good friend among the older girls.

“This is Miss Molly Brown of Kentucky,” announced Mary Stewart presently to a dozen august seniors who shook her hand and began asking her questions.

“We had two reasons for wanting to meet you, Miss Brown,” here put in a very handsome big girl, who spoke in an authoritative tone, which made everybody stop and listen. (She was, in fact, the President of the senior class.) “One of course was just to make your acquaintance, and the other was to ask if you would do us a favor. We are going to have a living picture show Friday week for the benefit of the Students’ Fund, and we wondered if you would pose in one of the pictures, maybe several, we haven’t decided on them yet. But that dress must be in one of them, don’t you think so, Mary? One of Romney’s Lady Hamilton pictures for instance, with a white gauze fichu; or a Sir Thomas Lawrence portrait——”

“You don’t think it’s too fantastic?” asked Molly.

“What, that lovely blue thing? Heavens, no! it’s charming——”

Molly had barely time to thank her and accept the invitation, when she and Mary were dragged off to make up the big circle of “right and left all around,” which wound up the dance. After this whirling romp, three loud raps were heard and gradually the noise of talking and laughter subsided into absolute silence. A girl had mounted the platform. She carried a megaphone in one hand and a book in the other. She was the official reader of her class, and now proceeded to recite through the megaphone all the best and most amusing material from “Jokes & Croaks.” According to time honored custom, the jokes were greeted with applause and laughter, and the croaks with groans and laughter, and anybody who groaned at a joke or applauded a croak, if she happened to be caught, was publicly humiliated by being made to stand up and face the jeers of the multitude. The girls finally decided, after many ludicrous mistakes, that the jokes were on the sophomores and the croaks were on the freshmen. For instance, here was a croak:

“A lady of notable luck,
Who cared not for turkey or duck,
Cried, ‘Give me old ham
And I don’t give a slam,
If it comes from Vermont or Kaintuck.’”

This was greeted with laughing groans, and Molly for the first time realized the significance of her roommate’s name.

Margaret Wakefield figured in several croaks, as “the Suffragette of Queen’s.” In fact Queen’s girls came in for a good many croaks and began to wait fearfully for what was to come next. But the witticisms were all quite good-natured, even the last, which called forth so many merry groans that they soon ceased to be groans at all and became uproarious laughter, and Molly, very red and laughing, too, was the centre of all eyes. This was the croak:

“They have locked me in the Cloisters,
They have fastened up the gate!
Oh, let me out; Oh, let me out.
It’s getting very late.

’Tis said the ghosts of classes gone
Do wander here at night.
Oh, let me out; Oh, let me out,
Before I die of fright!

And then there rang a clarion voice.
It’s tone was loud and clear.
‘Oh, dry your eyes and cease your cries,
For help, I ween, is near.

But promise me one little thing
Before I ope the gate:
Oh, never pass the coffee tray,
If I am sitting nigh;
Or, if you pass the coffee tray,
Oh, then, just pass me by!’”

It was all very jolly and delightful, and for the first time the girls felt that they were really a part of the college life.

Mary Stewart was very sweet to Molly when she took her home that night, and the young freshman never realized until long afterwards, when she was a senior herself, what a nice thing her friend had done; for sophomore-freshman receptions were an old story to Mary Stewart.

CHAPTER XI.
EXMOOR COLLEGE.

Busy days followed the sophomore-freshman ball. The girls were “getting into line,” as Judy variously expressed it; “showing their mettle; and putting on steam for the winter’s work.” The story of the incendiary had been reported exaggerated and had gradually died out altogether. Frances Andrews had returned to college, more brazenly facetious than ever, breaking into conversations, loudly interrupting, making jokes which no one laughed at except Molly and Judy out of charity. She was a strange girl and led a lonely life, but she was too much like the crater of a sleeping volcano, which might shoot off unexpectedly at any moment, and most of the girls gave her a wide berth.

The weather grew cold and crisp. There was a smell of smoke in the air from burning leaves and from the chimneys of the faculty homes wherein wood fires glowed cheerfully.

At last Saturday arrived. It was the day of the excursion to Exmoor, and it was with more or less anxiety regarding the weather that the three girls scanned the skies that morning for signs of rain. But the heavens were a deep and cloudless blue and the air mildly caressing, neither too cold nor too warm.

“It is like the Indian summers we have at home,” exclaimed Molly, when, an hour later, they turned their faces toward the village through which the trolley passed.

Mabel Hinton, passing them as they started, had called out:

“Art off on a picnic?”

And they had answered:

“We art.”

Some other girls had cried:

“Whither away so early, Oh?”

And they had cried:

“To Exmoor! To Exmoor, for now the day has come at last!” paraphrasing a song Judy was in the habit of singing.

Indeed the day seemed so perfect and joyous that they could hardly keep from singing aloud instead of just humming when they boarded the trolley car.

Through the country they sped swiftly. The valley unfolded itself before them in all its beauty and the misty blue hills in the distance seemed to draw nearer. Over everything there was a sense of autumn peace which comes when the world is drowsing off into his deep sleep.

“Exmoor!” called the conductor at last, and the three girls stepped off at a charming rustic station. With a clang of the bell which rang out harshly in the still air, the car flew on.

The three girls looked at the empty station. Then they looked at each other with a kind of mock consternation, for nothing really mattered.

“Where is Dodo?” asked Judy, with the smile of the victor, since she had predicted only a few moments before that Dodo might by this time have become so frightened at his boldness that he would suddenly become extinct like his namesake, the dodo-bird.

“Well, if Dodo is really extinct,” said Molly, “we’ll just take a little walk back through the fields. Epiménides thought nothing of it. He expects to walk to-day and meet us at lunch.”

But Dodo was not extinct that morning, and they beheld him now running down the steep road as fast as his heavy boots could carry him.

“Behold, his spirit has risen from its fossil remains and he now walks among us in the guise of a man,” chanted Judy.

“Don’t make us laugh, Judy, just as the poor soul arrives without enough breath to apologize,” said Nance, and the next instant the embarrassed young man stood before them blushing and stammering as if he had been caught in the act of picking a pocket or committing some other slight crime which required explanation.

“I’m terribly sorry—have you waited long?—the schedule was changed—I didn’t know—you should have come half an hour later—I don’t mean that—I mean I wasn’t ready—” he broke off in an agony of embarrassment and the girls burst out laughing.

“Don’t you be caring,” said Judy. “We’re here and nothing else really matters.”

“I shouldn’t have thought the station of a man’s college could be so deserted,” observed Molly, looking about the empty place.

Dodo assured her that plenty of people would be there in half an hour, when the train arrived; just then everybody was either in the village on the other side of the buildings, or down on the football grounds watching the morning practice game. There was to be a real game that afternoon.

“You see, it’s only a small college,” he went on. “There are only two hundred and fifty in all. The standards are so high it’s rather hard to get in, but we are heavily endowed and can afford to keep up the standards,” he added proudly.

They climbed the road to the college almost in silence and in ten minutes emerged on a level elevation or table land which commanded a view of the entire countryside. Here stood the college buildings, built of red brick, seasoned and mellowed with time. They were a beautiful and dignified group of buildings, and there was a decidedly old world atmosphere about the place and the campus with splendid elm trees. Molly had once heard Judith Blount refer to Exmoor as that “one-horse, old-fashioned little college,” and she was not prepared for anything so fine and impressive as this.

Nor was she prepared for the surprise of Miss Green, sister of Professor Edwin and Dodo. The girls had pictured her a middle-aged spinster, having heard she was older than the Professor himself, who seemed a thousand to them. And here, waiting for them, in the living room of the Chapter House, was a very charming and girlish young woman with Edwin’s brown eyes and cleft chin and George’s blonde hair; the ease and graciousness of one brother and the youthful fairness of the other. She had come down from New York the night before especially to meet them, she said.

Rather an expensive trip, they thought, for one day’s pleasure, since it took about seven hours and meant usually one meal and of course at night a berth on the sleeper.

“At first I thought I couldn’t manage it for this week,” she continued, “but Edwin was so insistent and no one has ever been known to refuse him anything he really wanted.”

Edwin! But why Edwin? Why not the youthful and blushing Dodo? So Molly wondered, while they were conducted over the entire college; the beautiful little Gothic chapel with its stained glass windows; through the splendid old library which was much smaller than the one at Wellington, but much more “atmospheric” as Judy had remarked; then through the dormitories where they remained discreetly in the corridors, and finally back to the Chapter House, in which George lodged with some thirty schoolmates.

There on the piazza was Professor Edwin Green waiting for them. He had made an early start, he said, and walked the whole distance in less than three hours. Some other young men came up and were introduced, and the entire gay party, Nance shyly sticking closely beside Miss Green, went off to view the village, which was a quaint old place well worth visiting, they were told.

The train had evidently come in, and crowds of people were hurrying up the road. There was a sound of a horn and a coach dashed in sight filled with students wearing crimson streamers in their buttonholes.

“It’s a crowd of Repton fellows come over to see their team licked,” George explained, “but look, Edwin, here comes Dickie Blount. I thought he was in Chicago.”

“Evidently he isn’t,” said the Professor, his eyes smiling, his mouth serious. It was Richard Blount, the hero of the ham bone, and he straightway attached himself to Molly and declined to leave her side for the rest of the day.

“Don’t tell me that that delightful, joking, jolly person is brother to Judith,” whispered Judy in Molly’s ear.

Molly nodded.

“There’s no family resemblance, but it’s true, nevertheless.”

Motor cars and carriages of all varieties now began to arrive. The whole countryside had turned out to see the great game between the two local college teams, and the Wellington girls pinned green rosettes in their buttonholes to signify that their sympathies were all for Exmoor.

“It’s the most exciting, jolliest time I ever had in all my life,” cried Molly to Professor Green, who walked on her other side. “And to think I have never seen a football game before in all my life.”

“I must draw a diagram for you and show you what some of the plays are, or you will be in a muddle,” said the Professor, looking at her gravely, almost, as Molly thought, as if she were one of his English Literature pupils.

At lunch, according to the etiquette of the place, George and his guests were placed at the senior table. There was no smoking nor loud talking and the students behaved themselves most decorously, although George confided to Judy that ordinarily pandemonium prevailed.

After lunch they started for the grounds in a triumphal procession; for our Wellington freshmen and their chaperone had an escort of at least four or five young men apiece. Nance looked bewildered and shy and happy; Judy was never more sparkling nor prettier, and Molly was in her gayest, brightest humor.

They had hardly left the Chapter House behind them and proceeded in a snake-like procession across the campus, when a black and prancing, though rather bony, steed dashed up bearing a young lady in a faultlessly fitting riding habit. It was Judith Blount.

Nobody looked particularly thrilled at Judith’s appearance, not even Judith’s brother, and Judy almost exclaimed out loud:

“Bother! Why couldn’t she stay at home just once?”

“How do you do, Cousin Grace?” called Judith from her perch. “I heard you were going to be down and I couldn’t resist riding over to see you.”

“How are you, Judith? I’m so glad to see you,” answered Cousin Grace in a tone without much heart to it. “Why didn’t you come sooner? We’ve just finished lunch.”

“Thanks, I had a sandwich early. I suppose you are off for the grounds. Go ahead. I’ll get Cousin Edwin to help me tie up this old animal somewhere. We’ll follow right behind.”

Molly was almost certain that Cousin Edwin was about to place this office on the shoulders of his younger brother, but glancing again at the flushed and happy face of Dodo at the side of Judy, the Professor relented and dropped behind to look after his relation.

Never had Molly been so wildly excited as she was over the football game that afternoon. It was a wonderful picture, the two teams lined up against each other; crowds of people yelling themselves hoarse; the battle cry of the Repton team mingling with the warlike cry of the Exmoor students. The cheer leaders at the heads of the cheer sections made the welkin ring continuously. At last a young man, who seemed to be a giant in size and strength, dashed like a wild horse across the Russian steppes straight up the field with the ball under his arm, and from the insane behavior of the green men, including Professor Edwin Green and his fair sister, Molly became suddenly aware that the game was over and Exmoor had won.

The cheering section could yell no more, because to a man it had lost its voice; but, oh, the glad burst of song from the Exmoor students as they leaped into the field and bore the conquering giant around on their shoulders. And, oh! the dejection of the men of crimson as they stalked sadly from the scene of their humiliation.

At last the whole glorious day was over and the girls found themselves on the way to the trolley station. Richard Blount and his cousin, Miss Green, had hastened on ahead. They were to take the six o’clock train back to New York.

“Cousin Edwin, why can’t you hire a horse in the village and ride back to Wellington with me?” asked Judith, when they paused at the Chapter House for her to mount her black steed.

“Because I’m engaged to take these young ladies home by trolley, Judith,” answered the Professor firmly.

Judith leaped on her horse without assistance, gave the poor animal a savage lash with her whip and dashed across the campus without another word.

The ride back at sunset was even more perfect than the morning trip. The Professor of English Literature appeared to have been temporarily changed into a boy. He told them funny stories and bits of his own college experiences, and made them talk, too. Almost before they knew it, the conductor was calling: “Wellington!”

CHAPTER XII.
SUNDAY MORNING BREAKFAST.

It was quite the custom at Wellington for girls to prepare breakfasts on Sunday morning in their rooms. There was always the useful boneless chicken to be creamed in one’s chafing dish; and in another, eggs to be scrambled with a lick and a promise, at these impromptu affairs; and it was a change from the usual codfish balls of the Sunday house breakfast.

It was quite the custom for girls to prepare breakfast in their rooms.—Page 152.

On this particular Sunday morning, Judy was very busy; for the breakfast party was of her giving, in Molly’s and Nance’s room; her own “singleton” being too small. She was also very angry in her tempestuous and unrestrained way, and having emptied the vials of her wrath on Molly’s head, she was angrier with herself for giving away to temper.

Although it was Judy’s party, Molly, as usual kind-hearted and grandly hospitable, had invited Frances Andrews. Then she had gone and confessed her sins to Judy, who flared up and said things she hadn’t intended, and Molly had wept a little and owned that she was entirely at fault. But what could be done? Frances was invited and had accepted. To atone for her sins, poor Molly had made popovers as a surprise and arranged to bake them in Mrs. Murphy’s oven. But the hostess being gloomy, the company was gloomy, since the one is apt to reflect the humor of the other. However, as the coffee began to send forth its cheerful aroma from Judy’s Russian samovar, discord took wings and harmony reigned. It was a very comfortable and sociable party. Most of the girls wore their kimonos, it being a time for rest and relaxation; but when Frances Andrews swept into the room in a long lavender silk peignoir trimmed with frills of lace, all cotton crepe Japanese dressing gowns faded into insignificance.

“There is no doubt that college girls are a hungry lot,” remarked Margaret Wakefield, settling herself comfortably to dispose of food and conversation and arouse argument, a thing she deeply enjoyed.

“So much brain work requires nourishment,” observed Mabel Hinton.

“There is not much brain nourishment at Queen’s,” put in Frances Andrews. “I’ve been living on raw eggs and sweet chocolate for the last week. The table has run down frightfully.”

Sallie Marks was a loyal Queen’s girl, and resented this slur on the table of the establishment which was sheltering her now for the third year.

“The food here is quite as good as it is at any of the other houses,” she said coldly to the unfortunate Frances, who really had not intended to give offence.

“Pardon me, but I don’t agree with you,” replied Frances, “and I have a right to my own opinion, I suppose.”

Judy gave Molly a triumphant glance, as much as to say, “You see what you have done.”

Everybody looked a little uncomfortable, and Margaret Wakefield, equal to every occasion, launched into a learned discussion on how many ounces of food the normal person requires a day.

Once more the talk flowed on smoothly. But where Frances was, it would seem there were always hidden reefs which wrecked every subject, no matter how innocent, the moment it was launched.

“Molly, I can trade compliments with you,” put in Jessie Lynch, taking not the slightest notice of her roommate’s discourse. “It’s one of those very indirect, three-times-removed compliments, but you’ll be amused by it.”

“Really,” said Molly, “do tell me what it is before I burst with curiosity.”

“I said ‘trade,’” laughed Jessie, who liked a compliment herself extremely.

“Oh, of course,” replied Molly. “I have any number I can give you in exchange. How do you care for this one? Mary Stewart thinks you are very attractive.”

“Does she, really? That’s nice of her,” exclaimed Jessie, blushing with pleasure as if she hadn’t been told the same thing dozens of times before. “I think she’s fine; not exactly pretty, you know, but fine.”

“I suppose you don’t know how her father made his money?” broke in Frances.

There was a silence, and Molly, feeling that she was about to be mortified again by something disagreeable, cried hastily:

“Oh, dear, I forgot the surprise. Do wait a moment,” and dashed from the room.

While she was gone, Nance and Judy began filling up the intervals with odd bits of conversation, helped out by the other girls, and Frances Andrews did not have another opportunity to put in her oar. Suddenly she rose and swept to the door.

“You would none of you feel interested to know, I suppose, that Mary Stewart’s father started life as a bootblack——”

“That’s what I’m starting life as,” cried Molly, who now appeared carrying a large tray covered with a napkin. “I am the official bootblack of Queen’s, and I make sometimes one-fifty a week at it. I hope I’ll do as well as Mr. Stewart in the business. Have a popover?”

She unfolded the napkin and behold a pile of golden muffins steaming hot. There were wild cries of joy from the kimonoed company.

“And now, Jessie, I’ll take my second-hand, roundabout compliment——” she began, when Judy interrupted her.

“Won’t you have a popover, Miss Andrews?” she asked in a cold, exasperated tone.

“Thanks; I eat the European breakfast usually—coffee and roll——”

“Yes, I’ve been there,” answered Judy.

“I’ll say good morning. I’ve enjoyed your little party immensely,” and Frances marched out of the room and banged the door.

“I should think you would have learned a lesson by this time, Molly Brown,” cried Judy hotly. “There is always a row whenever that girl is around. She can’t be nice, and there is no use trying to make her over.”

“I’m sorry,” said Molly penitently. “I wish I could understand why she behaves that way when she knows it’s going to take away what few friends she has.”

“I think I can tell you,” put in Mabel Hinton. “Nobody likes her, and nobody expects any good of her. If you are constantly on the lookout for bad traits, they are sure to appear. It’s almost a natural law. Everybody was expecting this to-day, and so it happened, of course. If we had been cordial and sweet to her, she never would have said that about Mary Stewart or the food at Queen’s, either.”

“Dear me, are we listening to a sermon,” broke in Judy flippantly.

But, in spite of Judy’s interruption, Mabel’s speech made an impression on the girls, some of whom felt a little ashamed of their attitude toward Frances Andrews.

“Did you ever see a dog that had been kicked all its life?” went on Mabel; “how it snarls and bites and snaps at anybody who tries to pet it? Well, Frances is just a poor kicked dog. She’s done something she ought not to have done, and she’s been kicked out for it, and she’s so sore and unhappy, she snarls at everybody who comes near her.”

“Mabel, you’re a brick!” exclaimed Sallie Marks. “I started the fight this morning and I’m ashamed of it. I’m going to make a resolution to be nice to that poor girl hereafter, no matter how horrid she is. It will be an interesting experiment, if for no other reason.”

“Let’s form a society,” put in Molly, “to reinstate Frances Andrews, and the way to do it will be to be as nice as we can to her and to say nice things about her to the other girls.”

“Good work!” cried Margaret Wakefield, scenting another opportunity to draw up a constitution, by-laws and resolutions. “We will call a first meeting right now, and elect officers. I move that Molly be made chairman of the meeting.”

“I second the motion,” said Sallie heartily. “All in favor say ‘aye.’”

There was a chorus of laughing “ayes” and a society was actually established that morning, Molly, as founder, being elected President. It consisted of eight members, all freshmen, except the good-natured Sallie Marks, who condescended, although a junior, to join.

“Suppose we vote on a name now,” continued Margaret who wished to leave nothing undone in creating the club. “Each member has a right to suggest two names, votes to be taken afterward.”

It was all very business-like, owing to Margaret’s experienced methods, but the girls enjoyed it and felt quite important. As a matter of fact, it was the first society to be established that year in the freshman class, and it developed afterward into a very important organization.

Among the various names suggested were “The Optimists,” “The Bluebirds,” “The Glad Hands,” mentioned by Sallie Marks, and “The Happy Hearts.”

“They are all too sentimental,” said the astute Margaret, looking them over. “There’ll be so many croaks about us if we choose one of these names that we’ll be crushed with ridicule. How about these initials—‘G.F.’ What do they stand for?”

“Gold Fishes,” replied Mabel Hinton promptly. The others laughed, but the name pleased them, nevertheless. “You see,” went on Mabel, “a gold fish always radiates a cheerful glow no matter where he is. He is the most amiable, contented little optimist in the animal kingdom, and he swims just as happily in a finger bowl as he does in a fish pond. He was evidently created to cheer up the fish tribe and I’m sure he must succeed in doing it.”

The explanation was received with applause, and when the votes were taken, “G.F.” was chosen without a dissenting voice.

It was decided that the club was to meet once a week, it’s object, to be, in a way, the promotion of kindliness, especially toward such people as Frances Andrews, who were friendless.

“We’ll be something like the Misericordia Society in Italy,” observed Judy, “only, instead of looking after wounded and hurt people, we’ll look after wounded and hurt feelings.”

It was further moved, seconded and the motion carried that the society should be a secret one; that reports should be read each week by members who had anything to report; and, by way of infusing a little sociability into the society, it was to give an entertainment, something unique in the annals of Wellington; subject to be thought of later.

It was noon by the time the first meeting of the G. F. Society was ready to disband. But the girls had really enjoyed it. In the first place, there was an important feeling about being an initial member of a club which had such a beneficial object, and was to be so delightfully secretive. There was, in fact, a good deal of knight errantry in the purpose of the G. F.’s, who felt not a little like Amazonian cavaliers looking for adventure on the highway.

“Really, you know,” observed Jessie, “we should be called ‘The Friends of the Wallflowers,’ like some men at home, who made up their minds one New Year’s night at a ball to give a poor cross-eyed, ugly girl who never had partners the time of her life, just once.”

“Did they do it?” asked Nance, who imagined that she was a wallflower, and was always conscious when the name was mentioned.

“They certainly did,” answered Jessie, “and when I saw the girl afterward in the dressing room, she said to me, ‘Oh, Jessie, wasn’t it heaven?’ She cried a little. I was ashamed.”

“By the way, Jessie, I never got my compliment,” said Molly. “Pay it to me this instant, or I shall be thinking I haven’t had a ‘square deal.’”

“Well, here it is,” answered Jessie. “It has been passed along considerably, but it’s all the more valuable for taking such a roundabout route to get to you. I’ll warn you beforehand that you will probably have an electric shock when you hear it. You know I have some cousins who live up in New York. One of them writes to me——”

“Girl or man?” demanded Judy.

“Man,” answered Jessie, blushing.

There was a laugh at this, because Jessie’s beaux were numerous.

“His best friend,” she continued, “has a sister, and that sister—do you follow—is an intimate friend——”

“‘An intimate friend of an intimate friend,’” one of the girls interrupted.

“Yes,” said Jessie, “it’s obscure, but perfectly logical. My cousin’s intimate friend’s sister has an intimate friend—Miss Green——”

“Oh, ho!” cried Judy. “Now we are getting down to rock bottom.”

“And Miss Green told her intimate friend who told my cousin’s intimate friend’s sister—it’s a little involved, but I think I have it straight—who told her brother who told my cousin who wrote it to me.”

“But what did he write,” they demanded in a chorus.

“That one of Miss Green’s brothers was crushed on a charming red-headed girl from Kentucky.”

Molly’s face turned crimson.

“But Dodo is crushed on Judy,” she laughed.

“It may be,” said Jessie. “Rumors are most generally twisted.”

The first meeting of the G. F.’s now disbanded and the members scattered to dress for the early Sunday dinner. They all attended Vespers that afternoon, and in the quiet hour of the impressive service more than one pondered seriously upon the conversation of the morning and the purpose of the new club.

CHAPTER XIII.
TRICKERY.

It was several days before the G. F.’s had an opportunity to practise any of their new resolutions on Frances Andrews. The eccentric girl was in the habit of skipping meals and eating at off hours at a little restaurant in the village, or taking ice cream sundaes in the drug store.

At last, however, she did appear at supper in a beautiful dinner dress of lavender crêpe de chine with an immense bunch of violets pinned at her belt. She looked very handsome and the girls could not refrain from giving her covert glances of admiration as she took her seat stonily at the table.

It was the impetuous, precipitate Judy who took the lead in the promotion of kindliness and her premature act came near to cutting down the new club in its budding infancy.

“You must be going to a party,” she began, flashing one of her ingratiating smiles at Frances.

Frances looked at her with an icy stare.

“I—I mean,” stammered Judy, “you are wearing such an exquisite dress. It’s too fine for ordinary occasions like this.”

Frances rose.

“Mrs. Markham,” she said to the matron of Queen’s, “if I can’t eat here without having my clothes sneered at, I shall be obliged to have my meals carried to my room hereafter.”

Then she marched out of the dining room.

Mrs. Markham looked greatly embarrassed and nobody spoke for some time.

“Good heavens!” said Judy at last in a low voice to Molly, “what’s to be done now?”

“Why don’t you write her a little note,” replied Molly, “and tell her that you hadn’t meant to hurt her feelings and had honestly admired her dress.”

“Apologize!” exclaimed Judy, her proud spirit recoiling at the ignoble thought. “I simply couldn’t.”

But since her attack on Molly, Judy had been very much ashamed of herself, and she was now taking what she called “self-control in broken doses,” like the calomel treatment; that night she actually wrote a note to Frances and shoved it under the door. In answer to this abject missive she received one line, written with purple ink on highly scented heavy note paper:

“Dear Miss Kean,” it ran, “I accept your apology.

“Yours sincerely,
“Frances Le Grand Andrews.”

“Le Grand, that’s a good name for her,” laughed Judy, sniffing at the perfumed paper with some disgust.

But she wrote an elaborate report regarding the incident and read it aloud to the assembled G. F.’s at their second meeting.

In the meantime, Sallie Marks had her innings with the redoubtable Frances, and retreated, wearing the sad and martyred smile of one who is determined not to resent an insult. One by one the G.F.’s took occasion to be polite and kind to the scornful, suspicious Frances. Her malicious speeches were ignored and her vulgarities—and she had many of them—passed lightly over. Little by little she arrived at the conclusion that refinement did not mean priggishness and that vulgarity was not humor. Of course the change came very gradually. Not infrequently after a sophomore snub, the whipped dog snarled savagely; or she would brazenly try to shock the supper table with a coarse, slangy speech. But with the persistent friendliness of the Queen’s girls, the fires in her nature began to die down and the intervals between flare-ups grew longer each day.

Frances Andrews was the first “subject” of the G.F.’s, and they were as interested in her regeneration as a group of learned doctors in the recovery of a dangerously ill patient.

In the meantime, the busy college life hummed on and Molly felt her head swimming sometimes with its variety and fullness. What with coaching Judy, blacking boots, making certain delicious sweetmeats called “cloudbursts,”—the recipe of which was her own secret,—which sold like hot cakes; keeping up the social end and the study end, Molly was beginning to feel tired. A wanness began to show in the dark shadows under her eyes and the pinched look about her lips even as early as the eventful evening when she posed for the senior living picture show.

“This child needs some make-up,” the august senior president had exclaimed. “Where’s the rouge and who’s got my rabbit’s foot? No, burned cork makes too broad a line. Give me one of the lighter colored eyebrow pencils. You mustn’t lose your color, little girl,” she said, dabbing a spot of red on each of Molly’s pale cheeks. “Your roses are one of your chief attractions.”

A great many students and some of the faculty had bought tickets for this notable occasion, and the gymnasium was well filled before the curtain was drawn back from a gigantic gold frame disclosing Mary Stewart as Joan of Arc in the picture by Bastien Le Page, which hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. There was no attempt to reproduce the atmospheric visions of the angel and the knight in armor, only the poor peasant girl standing in the cabbage patch, her face transfigured with inspiration. When Molly saw Mary Stewart pose in this picture at the dress rehearsal, she could not help recalling the story of the bootblack father.

“She has a wonderful face, and I call it beautiful, if other people don’t,” she said to herself.

As for our little freshman, so dazed and heavy was she with fatigue, the night of the entertainment, that she never knew she had created a sensation, first as Botticelli’s “Flora,” barefooted and wearing a Greek dress constructed of cheesecloth, and then as “Mrs. Hamilton,” in the blue crepe with a gauzy fichu around her neck.

After the exhibition, when all the actors were endeavoring to collect their belongings in the confusion of the green room, Sallie Marks came running behind the scenes.

“Prexy has specially requested you to repeat the Flora picture,” she announced, breathlessly.

“Is Prexy here?” they demanded, with much excitement.

“She is so,” answered Sallie. “She’s up in the balcony with Professor Green and Miss Pomeroy.”

“Well, what do you think, we’ve been performing before ‘Queen Victoria and other members of the royal family,’ like P. T. Barnum, and never knew a thing about it,” said a funny snub-nosed senior. “‘Daily demonstrations by the delighted multitude almost taking the form of ovations,’” she proceeded.

“Don’t talk so much, Lulu, and help us, for Heaven’s sake! Where’s Molly Brown of Kentucky?” called the distracted President.

Molly came forth at the summons. Overcome by an extreme fatigue, she had been sitting on a bench in a remote corner of the room behind some stage property.

“Here, little one, take off your shoes and stockings, and get into your Flora costume, quick, by order of Prexy.”

In a few minutes, Molly stood poised on the tips of her toes in the gold frame. The lights went down, the bell rang, and the curtains were parted by two freshmen appointed for this duty. For one brief fleeting glance the audience saw the immortal Flora floating on thin air apparently, and then the entire gymnasium was in total darkness.

A wave of conversation and giggling filled the void of blackness, while on the stage the seniors were rushing around, falling over each other and calling for matches.

“Who’s light manager?”

“Where’s Lulu?”

“Lulu! Lulu!”

“Where’s the switch?”

“Lulu’s asleep at the switch,” sang a chorus of juniors from the audience.

“I’m not,” called Lulu. “I’m here on the job, but the switch doesn’t work.”

“Telephone to the engineer.”

“Light the gas somebody.”

But there were no matches, and the only man in the house was in the balcony. However, he managed to grope his way to the steps leading to the platform, where he suddenly struck a match, to the wild joy of the audience. Choruses from various quarters had been calling:

“Don’t blow out the gas!”

“Keep it dark!”

And one girl created a laugh by announcing:

“The present picture represents a ‘Nocturne’ by Whistler.”

Then the janitor began lighting gas jets along the wall and finally a lonesome gas jet on the stage faintly illumined the scene of confusion.

The gigantic gilt frame outlined a dark picture of hurrying forms, and huddled in the foreground lay a limp white object, for Botticelli’s “Flora” had fainted away.

The confusion increased. The President joined the excited seniors and presently the doctor appeared, fetched by the Professor of English Literature. “Flora” was lifted onto a couch; her own gray cape thrown over her, and opening her eyes in a few minutes, she became Molly Brown of Kentucky. She gazed confusedly at the faces hovering over her in the half light; the doctor at one side, the President at the other; Mary Stewart and Professor Green standing at the foot and a crowd of seniors like a mob in the background.

Suddenly Molly sat up. She brushed her auburn hair from her face and pointed vaguely toward the hall:

“I saw her when she——” she began. Her eye caught Professor Green’s, and she fell back on the couch.

“You saw what, my child?” asked the President kindly.

“I reckon I was just dreaming,” answered Molly, her Southern accent more marked than ever before.

The President of the senior class now hurried up to the President of Wellington University.

“Miss Walker,” she exclaimed, her voice trembling with indignation, “we have just found out, or, rather, the engineer has discovered, that some one has cut the electric wires. It was a clean cut, right through. I do think it was an outrage.” She was almost sobbing in her righteous anger.

The President’s face looked very grave.

“Are you sure of this?” she asked.

“It’s true, ma’am,” put in the engineer, who had followed close on the heels of the senior.

Without a word, President Walker rose and walked to the centre of the platform. With much subdued merriment the students were leaving the gymnasium in a body. Lifting a small chair standing near, she rapped with it on the floor for order. Instantly, every student faced the platform, and those who had not reached the aisles sat down.

“Young ladies,” began the President in her calm, cultivated tones that could strike terror to the heart of any erring student, “I wish to speak a word with you before you leave the gymnasium to-night. Probably most of you are aware by this time that the accident to the electric lighting was really not an accident at all, but the result of a deliberate act by some one in this room. Of course, I realize, that in so large a body of students as we have at Wellington University there must, of necessity, be some black sheep. These we endeavor, by every effort, to regenerate and by mid-years it is usually not a difficult matter to discover those who are in earnest and those who consider Wellington College merely a place of amusement. Those who do consider it as such, naturally, do not—er—remain with us after mid-years.”

To Molly, sitting on the platform, and to other trembling freshmen in the audience, the President seemed for the moment like a great and stern judge, who had appointed mid-years as the time for a general execution of criminals.

“I consider,” went on the speaker in slow and even tones, “idleness a most unfortunate quality, and I am prepared to combat it and to convince any of my girls who show that tendency that good hard work and only good hard work will bring success. A great many girls come here preferring idleness and learn to repent it—before mid-years.”

A wave of subdued laughter swept over the audience.

“But,” said the President, her voice growing louder and sterner, “young ladies, I am not prepared to combat chicanery and trickery by anything except the most severe measures, and if there is one among you who thinks and believes she can commit such despicable follies as that which has been done to-night, and escape—I would say to her that she is mistaken. I shall not endure such treachery. It shall be rooted out. For the honor and the illustrious name of this institution, I now ask each one of you to help me, and if there is one among you who knows the culprit and does not report it to me at once, I shall hold that girl as responsible as the real culprit. You may go now, and think well over what I have said.”