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Molly Brown's College Friends

“I am sure some scheme can be worked to keep down the expenses,” insisted Molly.

“We can’t live on less food!” bluntly declared Lilian Swift.

“Nor plainer!” from a discontented one.

“It might be plainer without being less nourishing,” suggested Molly. “How about your doing some light housekeeping on your own hook and not trying to board with the college?”

“But I am sure the college authorities do not make money on the girls as it is,” said Billie McKym, who had come to the meeting from truly altruistic motives, as expenses made no difference to her personally. “If a great body of girls cannot be fed on the amount charged now, I am certain a girl could not live on less if she went in for herself.”

Billie, with all her wealth, had a good keen eye for business and understood the management of money rather better than any poor girl at Wellington.

“I reckon you are right,” said Molly sadly. “Would you girls mind if I ask my husband to come in and talk it over with you?”

“No!” in chorus. “Bring him in!”

“Not that knowing how to read Chaucer in old English will make him wise as how to live on nothing a year,” whispered one.

Professor Green was in the den with his cousin, old Major Fern, who had motored in from the country to have a chat with his favorite kinsman. Molly entered, smiling at the clouds of tobacco smoke which almost obscured the two gentlemen.

“Edwin, I know the Major will excuse you for a moment. I need you badly.”

“Of course, my dear! But I hope it is nothing serious that is beclouding your fair brow,” said the old gentleman with the courteous manner of his generation.

“Yes, it is serious in a way,” and Molly told her husband and his cousin what was the problem the girls had brought to her to solve.

“Of course, I can’t blame the college authorities,” she sighed. “It is hard to feed people as it is, and with expenses going up, up, I know they will have to raise the board. But on the other hand, there are many girls who simply cannot pay more than they are already paying. I feel for them, as I was one of them when I was at college. If the board had been raised one nickel I should have had to stop. I almost had to as it was. If it had not been for Edwin’s fondness for apples, I should have been degreeless to this day.”

“Adam and I!” laughed the professor. “But what do you want me to do, Molly? I am yours to command.”

“I don’t know exactly! I thought you might talk to the girls and we might keep on thinking and praying until some solution is reached.”

“I have a proposition to make that might interest your college friends,” said Major Fern. “They may scorn it, but on the other hand they may like the idea. Let me talk to them.”

“Oh, how lovely! I knew there would be a way,” cried the optimistic Molly.

“Wait until you hear it first,” smiled the old gentleman.

Molly led the way to the library, where the twenty girls were having a hot discussion on ways and means. She introduced Major Fern, who took his seat among them and beamed on them with kindly eyes.

“Ahem!” he began. “I am not much of a public speaker but I am going to put a plan before you and see how it strikes you. I understand that you are making a kick because of the raising of board for the ensuing year – ”

“We are!”

“Well, you know that everything is going up?”

“Everything but prayer!” from the discontented one.

“Even that may be going up, too,” he answered solemnly. “Now listen: Perhaps you know that I am rich, – not so rich as some, but richer than I have any right to be or any reason for being – ”

Here Mary Culbertson tossed her proud little head as much as to let him know that charity was not what she wanted. Major Fern saw her and smiled his approval.

“I have no idea of offering any of my ill-gotten gold to you. – I know how you would hate that. In fact, I haven’t any gold to offer. I am rich only in land and about as poor as they make ’em in other things. I am really land poor, having much more land than I have any use for or can till. I can’t get labor to keep up my farms. I have been thinking of selling an especially fertile farm about four miles from Wellington, but I don’t want to lose money on it, and if I sell at this time I am sure to. This farm comprises about two hundred acres of as good land as one can find in these parts, and that is saying a great deal. And now I am coming to my scheme – ”

The old gentleman paused while the girls waited in breathless eagerness.

“I will let you have this farm if you will work it for me, – have it for as long as you need it. You don’t know what can be done in the way of intensive farming if one can get the labor. You could raise enough potatoes to run your mess for the winter; enough tomatoes and beans to can, and what’s more you can can them right on the spot.”

“Hurrah! Hurrah!” shouted Billie McKym. “The problem is solved or I’m a Boche.”

“Are you willing to undertake it?” asked the Major.

“Of course we are willing!” cried Lilian.

“The ones who live far can take the first part of the summer, and the last, just before college opens, and the ones who are close can fill in during the midsummer,” said Molly, immediately grasping the possibility of the plan.

“Well, I’ll leave it to you young ladies to work up, and when you care to, I’ll take you over the place. There is a good house and well and plenty of fruit, – apples to feed to the hogs – ”

“That suits me!” declared Edwin, who had been quiet while his cousin was unfolding the plan. “I see no reason, seriously, why this idea should not be wonderfully successful, – not only should it bring you back to college and keep you for the same, or even less, money than you have hitherto had to pay, but it will at the same time help materially in the food situation that the country is going to have to face.”

“Will you be one of that committee that must take hold of this thing?” asked Billie.

“If the student body so wishes!”

“Well, we so wish!” came from twenty throats.

“You and Mrs. Green, – she is already one of us. As for you, Major Fern, we hardly know how to thank you for what you have done,” said the president of the juniors.

“Don’t thank me! I have done nothing! Instead of selling a farm at a loss when I can’t get labor to work it, I am going to ask some beautiful young ladies to work it for me.”

“We might drink him down,” whispered a timid girl.

“Of course! Drink him down!”

And without more ado the twenty girls, with Molly chiming in and Edwin holding down a second, sang:

“Here’s to Major Fern! Drink him down!Here’s to Major Fern! Drink him down!Here’s to Major Fern! Here’s to Major Fern!Drink him down! Drink him down! Drink him down!”

“Fine! That beats a wreath of bay,” beamed the dear old gentleman. “And now I’ll take myself off. I forgot to say I’ll have the land turned under for you and give the use of a team whenever you need it.”

He was gone. The girls, who only a few moments before had felt so depressed, were now filled with hope and animation. Degrees were to be had, after all. Of course it meant work, but that would be fun.

“Oh, gee! I’m happy!” cried Mary Culbertson. “But we must get busy in a hurry.”

“First we must see Prexy and get her to coöperate,” suggested Molly.

“Sure! Let’s do it in order, and find out if we do our part if the college authorities will do theirs. I dote on digging potatoes, myself,” said Lilian.

Committees were formed immediately; one to see Prexy; one to go view their estate; another to look into housing conditions; another to canvas the student body and find out who would and who wouldn’t, who preferred to plant and who to reap.

Billie McKym was wild with enthusiasm. “Do you realize, Molly, that I won’t have to spend a summer in Newport, after all? I can put it up to my relations that I am needed in these parts. I mean to ask for a larger allowance, though, as I can help out some on the sly. I am thinking about buying some Close-to-Nature houses and presenting them to the agricultural club. We shall have to have overalls, too, – and farming implements. – I think I’ll make Grandmother and Uncle come across in good shape.”

Prexy, Miss Walker, was not only willing to coöperate but delighted that the students were finding a way out of the difficulty. It was a deep grief to her, this raising of prices, and she knew only too well how many girls would be cut out of their degrees by this necessary step.

Many interviews with Major Fern had to be arranged and many meetings of committees had to be held, but finally everything was under way for the agricultural club’s work on the farm so kindly donated by its delighted owner.

“By Jove, I begin to feel that I’m helping to win the war!” he declared. “I have been hating myself for a useless hulk of a veteran who was too old to fight and too old-fashioned to suggest to others how to fight, but if I can be the means of keeping a lot of girls at college I think I am doing pretty well; especially if by so doing, those girls will grow food enough for themselves. Every potato is equal to a hand grenade and every bean to a bullet.”

CHAPTER XXIV

THE TRENCHES

Molly and Edwin found themselves deeper in this agricultural scheme than they had at first bargained for. If it was to be done at all, it must be well done and quickly. There must be order and system. Suddenly they awoke to the realization that if it was to be well done and quickly done, it was up to them, the Greens, to do it.

“I am afraid, my dear, that you must be the chaperone and I must turn farmer. This is a stupendous undertaking and for the good name of Wellington we must see it through.”

“It will mean work all summer for you, when you so need a holiday, you poor old fellow.”

“I need no more holiday than you do. You haven’t been idle one minute this whole college year. I have a feeling that this summer we have no business with holidays anyhow. The world is too busy, too upset for any of us, who are able, to lay off. I mean to dig and delve here at home and do all the good I can.”

“I think we ought to rent the Orchard Home for the summer, don’t you?” asked Molly, turning her head away so her husband could not see what it cost her to make that suggestion.

“Why, Molly honey, I can’t bear to think of it. It is hard enough on you not to be able to go to Kentucky for vacation, but I don’t think you should have to think of strangers as being among your apple trees.”

“It won’t be bad, not nearly so bad as you think. At least, the little brown bungalow won’t be quite so lonesome as it would be empty all the year, and we might buy tons of seed with the rent money or even take care of some war orphans.”

“I guess you are right, – you usually are. I’ll write to a real estate agent in Louisville immediately and put it on the market for the summer. I hate to do it, though. Not that it will make so much difference to me. Wherever you are is my Orchard Home, honey!”

The Major’s farm was dubbed “The Trenches” by the members of the agricultural club. It was a suitable name, for these girls felt that they were in the war almost as much as the soldier boys themselves.

Early in May Molly moved to the old farmhouse to superintend arrangements for the many girls later to be housed there. It was decided to run the place more or less as a military camp is run, with squads detailed for various duties.

“Only our trench digging will be in the potato fields and our drilling in the bean patch,” Billie declared.

Billie was in a state of ecstasy from the first. She was General Molly’s aide-de-camp, giving time, money, and thought to the undertaking.

“It is so splendid really to be helping! I wanted to do something to help the Government and now I believe I am going to. I should like best to shoulder a gun and take a crack at the Huns, but since that cannot be, I’ll shoulder a pick and take a crack at the soil.”

Billie, whose post-graduate studies at Wellington were not very important, had cut and gone to The Trenches with Molly. They had installed themselves in a corner of the rambling old farmhouse and were as busy as bees getting ready for the thirty girls who were to land on them the last week in May. Katy and the two children were with them, but Kizzie had been left in Wellington to look after the master, who was up to his neck in work for the finals at college.

The students at Wellington had been canvassed from A to Z, and with a deal of clerical work, all of the ones who were to join the agricultural club had been enrolled and their time of service settled on and arranged for. Billie had donated six Close-to-Nature houses which were to be set up on the grassy lawn of the old farm. The cots she had wheedled out or her uncle. Farming implements, such as hoes, rakes, spades, gasoline ploughs and cultivators she had, as she expressed it, “blasted out of Grandmother McKym.”

“They don’t understand me in the least, my uncle and my grandmother, but they love me, I really believe, and I fancy they always hope I’ll come to my senses and marry in ‘the set’ some of these days. They are really dears,” Billie explained to Molly as they helped to unload the wagons that had just arrived laden with the tents and implements.

“I think they are certainly very generous,” declared Molly, pulling out a bundle of rakes.

From the beginning these girls had determined not to be dependent upon the merely masculine to fetch and carry for them, and Molly and Billie had pitched in with a will to do without men if need be.

“Oh, yes, generous enough! They are glad when I let them off with nothing more troublesome than writing checks. I believe Uncle Donald was scared stiff that I might insist on his coming down here to help dig. And as for Grandmother, – she would rather ante up thousands of dollars than have to drag her silk skirts around in the wet grass here at The Trenches. They don’t see for an instant that I am kind of patriotic in helping this way. They think I am just a faddist. Maybe I am, but somehow I feel that I have ideals! Do you think I am just a silly goose to think so?”

“No, indeed! I know you have ideals, – I should hate to think you didn’t, – very high ideals,” said Molly, as together they wheeled the barrow laden with hoes and rakes out to the tool house. “I reckon your uncle and grandmother have them, too, only perhaps they are not so open about them.”

“Oh yes, they have them. Uncle Donald loves to talk about them, but Grandmother isn’t so keen on expressing herself. Sometimes I think his ideals are mostly literary and hers sartorial. He is a great reader of belles lettres and Grandmother has an instinct for clothes that is truly remarkable.”

“You have it, too.”

“Well, I do like ’em, but I like to dress other persons better than I do myself. If I had been poor, I’d have gone into the business. I may do it yet, but now until this war is over it seems to me it doesn’t make a bit of difference how anyone is dressed – anybody but Mother Earth. The soil dressed with a good fertilizer is more important than silk raiment.”

“How about literature?” laughed Molly, her friend’s enthusiasm amusing her and at the same time pleasing her. “Do you think writing should stop as well as dressing?”

“Oh, of course scribblers will scribble and anyone who has a message to deliver will have to spout it out, war time or not, but they may not think they are so all-fired important. A letter from the most ignorant soldier at the front will have more real stuff in it than all of the vaporings of the poet who only imagines gunfire.”

“And here far from the strife – ”

“Here we will make sonnets with hoe and rake!”

“Our lines made by the gasoline plough shall be beautiful and harmonious!” suggested Molly.

“Our onion patch shall be worthy to be put into verse along with Eugene Field’s Onion Tart,” said Billie, going Molly one better.

“Our potato field shall be as full of solid refreshment as Charles Dudley Warner’s five feet of classics. Only smell the newly-ploughed earth! Isn’t it delicious?”

The wagons were unloaded, the farming implements piled neatly in the tool house and the Close-to-Nature houses dotted about the lawn ready for the stupendous task of being put up. The girls were waiting for Katy, whom they had dubbed “the powerful Katrinka,” to come help them with that job. Katy was in her element. She had been born and raised in the country, and now that she was once more where things were growing, where she could help them grow, she was as happy an Irish girl as there was in all the land. Nothing was too difficult for her to do and her great strength helped Molly and Billie out of many a quagmire of work that seemed too heavy for them to accomplish without masculine aid.

“And now Oi’m ready for to help put oop the little play houses,” she said as she joined Molly and Billie.

“That’s fine,” said her mistress, “but before we begin, just let’s smell the ploughed ground a little. Don’t you love it, Katy?”

“Sure! And it beats the perfumery that comes in a bottle, to my moind,” said the girl, sniffing delightedly.

“I don’t see why they don’t bottle the smell of new ploughed earth just as they have new mown hay,” laughed Billie. “I know two who would want to buy it.”

“Deed and Oi’d buy a gallon of sooch smells!”

“Do you know Masefield’s ‘Everlasting Mercy,’ Billie? You and Katy listen while I tell you the part about ploughing and then we’ll put up the tent houses.”

Very charming was the picture made by this group of girls. So Edwin Green thought as he walked silently across the lawn of the old farm. Katy, the sturdy Irish girl, was not without picturesque lines. Her look was somewhat that of Bastien Lepage’s peasant Jeanne d’Arc as she stood in rapt reverie while her beloved mistress gave voice to those wonderful lines of England’s greatest modern poet. Billie looked very down-to-date in her khaki overalls and stubby shoes, while Molly was very Mollyesque in the blue linen blouse that was the only true Molly Brown blue.

She did not hear her husband as he stepped lightly across the green spring grass and he motioned to Billie not to let her know he was there. He stood silently, with bared head while she recited. Molly’s voice had always appealed to Edwin, in fact it had been the first thing that had attracted him – and when Molly recited poetry!

“‘The past was faded like a dream;There came the jingling of a team,A ploughman’s voice, a clink of chain,Slow hoofs, and harness under strain.Up the slow slope a team came bowing,Old Callow at his autumn ploughing,Old Callow stooped above the hales,Ploughing the stubble into wales.His grave eyes looking straight ahead,Shearing a long straight furrow red;His plough-foot high to give it earthTo bring new food for men to birth.“‘O wet red swathe of earth laid bare,O truth, O strength, O gleaming share,O patient eyes that watch the goal,O ploughman of the sinner’s soul.O Jesus, drive the coulter deepTo plough my living man from sleep.“‘Slow up the hill the plough team plod,Old Callow at the task of God,Helped by man’s wit, helped by the brute,Turning a stubborn clay to fruit,His eye forever on some signTo help him plough a perfect line.*******“‘I kneeled there in the muddy fallow,I knew that Christ was there with Callow,That Christ was standing there with me,That Christ had taught me what to be,That I should plough, and as I ploughedMy Savior Christ would sing aloud,And as I drove the clods apartChrist would be ploughing in my heart,Through rest-harrow and bitter roots,Through all my bad life’s rotten fruits.“‘O Christ, who holds the open gate,O Christ, who drives the furrow straight,O Christ, the plough, O Christ, the laughterOf holy white birds flying after,Lo, all my heart’s field red and torn,And thou wilt bring the young green corn,The young green corn divinely springing,The young green corn forever singing;And when the field is fresh and fairThy blessèd feet shall glitter there,And we will walk the weeded field,And tell the golden harvest’s yield,The corn that makes the holy breadBy which the soul of man is fed,The holy bread, the food unpriced,Thy everlasting mercy, Christ.’”

Katy wiped her eyes and Billie winked away the tears that would gather. Molly turned and saw Edwin standing only a few feet from her.

“Oh, Edwin, I didn’t know you were there. I declare I haven’t been spouting poetry ever since we got here! We have done a lot and were going now to put up the tent houses, but you aren’t to help. I’ll give you some tea and let you rest up after your tramp. We weren’t expecting you until Saturday – ”

“And don’t want me now?”

“Want you! Why, Edwin Green, B. A., M. A., P. H. D.! You know I always want you,” and then Billie and Katy thought it was time to leave the married lovers alone for a while.

“I want to help put up the houses, though,” insisted Edwin as he and Molly wended their way to a pretty little arbor covered by a crimson rambler that gave promise, if one might judge from the many buds, of being a glorious sight later in the season.

“But we can do it later by our lonesomes. You don’t know how many things we can do without the help of men, especially when one of us is as powerful as Katy and one as spunky as Billie.”

“And how about you?” and he pinched her rosy cheek.

“Oh, I’m not much force, I am afraid, but I have the bump of stickativeness which is sometimes as good as strength and takes the place of cleverness.”

“Do you really think you girls could run this farm without the help of a man?”

“Of course we could, once the heavy ploughing is done, and Katy says she could have done that, too, if we had wanted her to. Do you want to go off on a trip somewhere and let us try to run it without you?”

Edwin looked searchingly into Molly’s blue eyes. His gaze was long and earnest and in his brown eyes Molly read a kind of sadness she had never seen there before.

“Edwin, dearest, what is it?”

“Molly, it isn’t anything unless you want it to be.”

“Tell me!”

“Would you think it right or wrong if I should try to get into the service, military service, I mean? – I have taken an examination and am physically fit. – I won’t apply to go into training at Fort Myer unless you approve. – It rests entirely with you, honey.”

“You must go if you think it right.” Molly spoke without a tremor, although it did seem to her for a moment as though her heart would burst. How could a heart get so big all of a sudden? And then it seemed to her she was sounding cold and unemotional when Edwin wanted something else. “I – I – want you to go! I think it is right for men just like you to go – men with brains and the power of taking hold and leading – I wouldn’t have you stay behind for me for anything on earth. I – I – am proud of you and want you to do exactly what you think is right, and – and – I think you are right – just as right as can be – and – and – I love you more than ever.”

It seemed to both Edwin and Molly that at no time since their walk in the forest of Fontainebleau when the eternal question had been settled between them had any moment been so filled with love and understanding as now when he folded her in his arms. His Molly! His own, brave, true Molly! Her Edwin! Her honorable, courageous Edwin!

“I thought that I could content myself by digging and delving, but somehow I have been feeling lately that if you would consent, it was up to me to do something else. I don’t feel critical in the least towards the men of my age who are not going to the war, – not the younger ones, either, if they do not feel called upon, – but somehow when one has been called as I have, I think he should answer. I don’t know why a staid college professor should think it is his vocation, but I do think it, and, oh, dearest, it is good of you to take it this way!”

“I could take it no other way. Is not my mother giving God-speed to her sons? Is not Judy encouraging Kent? Is not Nance not only sending Andy but going with him? Who am I that I should say you shall and you shan’t do things for your country?”

“But you see, dear girl, there are the children to take care of in case – in case – in case I should – should – well – stump my toe.”

“I can take care of them as my mother did of all of us. My father died when I was a tiny child and still my mother raised me. But don’t stump your toe. Pick up your feet when you walk – and – and – ”

Here Molly came very near shedding the tears that she felt must be shed sooner or later, but she was determined that it should be later and that her soldier boy should not see them. She jumped up and offered to race him to the house where Katy was laying the tea table on the porch.

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