Molly Brown's College Friends

“I am almost sure they have made up and are engaged again,” sighed Molly ecstatically. A romance was dear to her soul and being happily married herself, she felt like furthering the love affairs of all her friends.

“They are either engaged or dead,” laughed Edwin. “Such silence emanating from the library must bode extreme calamity or extreme bliss. If it continues much longer I think it is my duty as a householder to break in the door and offer congratulations or call the coroner, as the case demands.”

“It is getting late. Maybe I had better go in and ask Andy to stay to dinner.”

Molly, who had a deep-rooted objection to noise and usually talked in a low tone, now spoke in a loud voice as she bumped her way along the hall, pushing chairs and rattling the hat rack and calling out shrilly to the amused husband following her. Strange to say, she could not remember on which side of the door the knob was, although she had lived several years in that house. She fumblingly hunted it and finally opened the door with a great rattle.

Nance was seated sedately knitting and Andy was holding his coat close to the dying flames. The room was almost dark.

“Kizzie should have lighted the lamp and attended to the fire,” Molly said briskly. Oh, Molly, how could you be so untruthful, blaming things on poor Kizzie, too? (Molly’s conscience did hurt her for dragging Kizzie in and she gave the girl a long coveted blue hat that she had meant to keep for second best, feeling that it might act as a salve on her own tender, truth-loving soul. Kizzie, quite ignorant of the cause for this generosity, gratefully accepted the hat and asked no questions.)

“Yes, it gets dark before one realizes,” said Nance demurely.

“Ahem!” from the professor.

“Oh, Andy, your coat is still wet! Mildred told me you wrapped it around her. I’ll get you Edwin’s smoking jacket and have your coat dried. You must stay to dinner with us. I can ’phone your mother not to expect you at home.”

Andy did not need much persuading, but accepted the invitation with alacrity. Molly called up Mrs. McLean to ask for the loan of her son for dinner.

“Yes!” exclaimed that wise lady at the other end of the wire. “I have been expecting a telephone call for the last half hour. You may keep him but I shall wait up to see him when he gets home. I am sur-r-e he’ll have something to tell me. From my back window I saw Nance with the perambulator full of babies on her way to the lake and I sent Andy off for a walk, first putting a flea in his ear by suggesting that the lake was getting shallower and shallower. He has always been that inquisitive that I was sur-r-e he would make for that spot to find out why. I knew that all those poor-r young folks had to do was to meet. Keep him, Molly – and God bless you!”

There was a little choking sound at the other end that Molly understood very well. She hung up the receiver “with a smile on her lip but a tear in her eye.” It is all very well for a mother to be unselfish and want her son to marry and to be happy, but there is a tug of war going on in her heart all the time.

“I know how I will feel when Dodo gets engaged,” Molly said to Edwin when she told him of what Mrs. McLean had said; but that young father went off into such shouts of laughter, Molly had a feeling that mere man could never understand a mother’s heart.

CHAPTER IX

PLANS

“I have no idea of going through dinner without letting you and old Ed know all about us!” said Andy as he took his place at Molly’s hospitable board.

“What about you?” asked Molly, who was growing deceitful, her husband feared.

“About Nance and me! I can’t keep it any longer,” declared the happy young doctor. Nance kept her eyes on her plate but her mouth was twitching with amusement.

“What about you and Nance?” solemnly asked the professor.

“Why, we’re engaged!”

“No! Not really?” and Edwin grinned.

“Oh, Andy! I’m so glad!” and Molly reached a hand out to her two friends, who were perforce placed across the table from each other since there were only four for dinner.

Nance got up and kissed her hostess. “Oh, Molly, you are too lovely! Don’t you know that I know that Andy and I have not fooled you one moment? Don’t I see brandy peaches on the side table all ready for dessert, and don’t you know that I know that those precious articles are only brought out on highdays and holidays? Isn’t that fruit cake I smell, that you know perfectly well you made and put away for next Christmas so it would be ripe and get better and better?”

“Well, I had to express my feelings somehow, and how did I know that you and Andy were going to tell your secret this very evening? I knew I mustn’t say a thing until you two said something, and if I could not say anything, I could at least feed you.”

“All I can say, Andy, is that if your experience in choosing a girl from that class of 19 – is as fortunate as mine, you will be a pretty happy man, and by Jove, I believe you are running me a mighty close second,” and to the astonishment of his wife, as Edwin Green was certainly a far from demonstrative man, he actually jumped from his seat and embraced Nance. Then Andy felt that he must kiss Molly, and Kizzie coming in at this juncture almost dropped the dish she was carrying.

“Sich a-carryin’s on I never seed. I’m a-thinking you folks had better sort yo’selves,” and the girl went off chortling.

“Now tell me your plans!” demanded Molly when they settled down to dinner. Strange to say, they had got rather mixed up in the promiscuous embracing that had been going on, and Edwin and Andy had changed places. Edwin found himself seated at Molly’s side while Andy had greatly disarranged the table by plumping himself down by his Nance.

“We are to be married immediately,” announced Andy stoutly.

Nance gasped. The fact was they had been so busy explaining the past and living in the present while the fire had died so low in the library, that the future had not been touched upon.

“Of course I may start for France at any time now, but before I go I mean to get me a war bride. It will be pretty bad leaving her, but then the war can’t last forever, and I have decided it is my duty to go help, and I fancy it still is. When Uncle Sam steps in, maybe he can finish up things in a hurry. Then I can get back to Nance.”

“Get back to me, indeed! If you think you are going without me, Andy McLean, you are vastly mistaken. If it is your duty to go help, it is my duty, too. Oh, I know I am no trained nurse, but I can do lots of other things. Dr. Flint says I am better than most trained nurses – ”

Nance stopped short. She should not have mentioned Dr. Flint. Only suppose it had hurt Andy’s feelings! Not a bit of it!

“Bully for Flint!” cried the accepted lover. “Oh, Nance, would you go with me?”

“I can scrub and cook and take care of babies.”

“I don’t know about that,” teased Andy.

“But you will always be near and pull them out of the water when I let them fall in,” suggested Nance. “Won’t you?”

“That I will! Just as near as I can get!” and Andy hitched his chair a little closer, thereby disarranging the table even more than he had done before. But although Molly was a very careful housekeeper and most particular about the looks of her table, she cared not one whit, but beamed on Andy as though he were the pink of propriety instead of a naughty boy.

What a change a little lovering had made in the appearance of both Nance and Andy! The girl’s clear skin was flushed and her eyes sparkling. The corners of her mouth had no trace of downward tendency now. The years of sadness and confinement spent in nursing her father and mother were forgotten. Nance had come into her own – her woman’s heritage: to be beloved, to be guarded and cherished; at the same time to know that she was to be the companion, the helpmeet. As for Andy, – he beamed with joy. His face had lost the stern lines that had so distressed his mother. He looked again like the boy he was, not like the tired, disappointed man she had known of late.

Nance had no romantic notions of what life in France meant in that early spring of 1917. She knew that there was no room for drones and unproductive consumers in that war-worn country. She knew that in marrying Andy and going with his unit she was to face work, privations, danger, even death; but with her eyes open she was determined to see it through.

“I would enlist in the United States army,” Andy said to his host after dinner, as they lounged in the den and puffed away at their comforting pipes, “but I feel that I can be of more good right now in France where they are crying out for surgeons.”

“It can’t be many days now before war is declared,” sighed Edwin. “By jiminy! I hate myself for not being able to get in the game.”

“Too bad, old man! A fellow with a wife and two children has to think of them.”

“Of course! I wouldn’t let Molly know how I feel about it for any thing. I am not so young as I was, but I am stronger now than I was as a youth. As for my eyes – they are good enough eyes in glasses and my bald head would be no drawback.” Edwin always would call his sparsely covered top “bald,” but Molly, by diligent care, had made two blades of grass grow where only one had grown before, and with a microscope one could see the beginnings of a fuzzy crop of hair, at least so the fond wife insisted.

“I bet she would say go, if it were put to her,” said Andy.

“I’ll not do it, though! It wouldn’t be fair.”

“Well, if it is put up to her, I bet on Molly Brown!”

CHAPTER X

ALL THE OLD GIRLS

“I’ve got a wonderful scheme, Edwin,” said Molly when she had finally engineered her husband out of the den and Nance in.

“I’ll be bound you have. I never saw such a Mrs. Machiavelli! – First I mustn’t go in the library but stick to the den, and now that I had just made myself at home in the den I must flee to the library.”

Molly laughed at her husband’s pretended discomfiture as he settled himself to find out what was going on at the front.

“Now read the news to me while I knit. There is no knowing how soon our own boys will be needing sweaters. I feel that every stitch I put in is important. Mercy, what a mess my knitting is in! I do believe that little monkey of a Mildred has been working on it. But she can’t purl at all! Someone else has done it. No one has been here but Andy.”

“Well, I can’t think Andy McLean would attempt a sweater,” laughed Edwin. “Maybe Nance is responsible.”

“But Nance is a past master!”

“She might have been trying a one-handed stunt and failed. I don’t believe even Prussian efficiency could knit and get proposed to and accept all at the same time. Under the circumstances I think she should be forgiven for purling where she should have knitted and knitting where she should have purled.”

“You sound like the prayer book,” said Molly, patiently pulling out stitches and deftly picking up where Andy asked to hold Nance’s hand. “I almost feel as though I were committing a sacrilege. This sweater is like a piece of tapestry where the lady has recorded her emotions, using the medium she knew best. I just know dear old Nance tried to go on with her work all the time Andy was making love,” and Molly wiped a wee tear off on the ball of yarn.

“I tell you that sweater could tell tales if it could speak,” teased Edwin. “Why don’t you sew in one of your golden hairs so that the happy soldier who finally gets it will have some inkling of how the beautiful girl looks who made it?”

“Silly! But don’t you want to hear what my scheme is?”

“Dying to!”

“I am going to try to get the old Queen’s girls, that is our ’special crowd, to come to Nance’s wedding. Katherine and Edith Williams are both in New York; Judy is there; Otoyo Sen is in Boston; Margaret Wakefield is in Washington; Jessie Lynch is in Philadelphia – ”

“Are there no husbands?”

“Oh, yes, plenty of them, but I’m not going to invite husbands! The babies can come if the mothers can’t leave them, but the husbands are not invited. Katherine Williams and Jessie Lynch are the only ones who are still in single blessedness.”

“Are you going to have them all stay here?” asked Edwin in amazement, never having quite accustomed himself to Molly’s wholesale hospitality.

“Of course! I can manage it finely. That will be only six extra ones. Why, at Chatsworth we had that much company any time. This house is really almost as big as Chatsworth and there we had our huge family to put away besides.”

“All I can say is that you are a wonder, but please don’t break yourself down over this wedding. What does Nance say to it?”

“I haven’t asked her, but I know she is dying to see all the girls together. We have often talked about it, and wedding or no wedding I was going to try to get them here this next month. Otoyo has already promised to come, you remember, and now she can just hurry up and get here for the wedding. She will have to bring Cho-Cho-San, who is just a bit older than Mildred. They can have great times together. You don’t mind, do you, honey?”

“Mind! Of course not! You know I like company. I was just afraid you were giving yourself too large an order.”

Nance, on being consulted, thought it would be wonderful to see all the old girls again before embarking on her great adventure, so letters were forthwith written and sent to the six friends, who one and all joyfully accepted. Business, husbands, babies, society were to be left behind for this grand reunion of the old Queen’s crowd.

Otoyo Sen, now Mrs. Matsuki, whose exceedingly regretfully but honorable husband was gone on short journey and baby Cho-Cho-San must stay with humble mother for the wedding. As Molly had expected to have the child, this was as it should be.

Katherine had demanded leave from the lectures she was delivering, and Edith had an excellent nurse for her baby and could leave her family easily. Margaret Wakefield had no children and was able to cancel the many engagements that such an important person was sure to have, and her house was in such good running order that her husband, the rising young congressman, would want for nothing in her absence. Jessie Lynch had declined two luncheons, a dinner dance, and a theatre party, besides breaking as many more engagements in order to come to this wedding of the old college friend. Jessie was still unmarried although she had been the one that the prophecy had married off first. Pretty little Jessie had so many lovers it was hard to choose among them.

The very first reply was from Judy and she, Judy-like, answered in person. She blew in at nightfall with a huge suitcase, many parcels and her gay chintz knitting bag stuffed full of various things besides knitting.

“Kent was dying to come but I told him no children and dogs were allowed,” announced that glowing young matron as she dropped her belongings, scattering them all over the library floor, and rushed around kissing and hugging everybody in the room. “I have come to help. I know you, Molly! You always act like triplets when there is any work on hand, and I know you, too, Nance! Your New England conscience will make you neglect Andy rather than seem to shirk work. I am here to sweep and dust and cook, take care of babies, or even to flirt with Andy if Nance does not look after him. I am going to dress the bride; find Edwin’s collar buttons and studs for his dress shirt; see that the best man has the ring safe in his pocket; pay the preacher; put in the supply of rice and old shoes – in fact,” she sang:

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

The Greens had been sitting quite sedately around the lamp engaged in their various occupations when Judy burst in on them. The professor was getting up a lecture for the morrow, Mildred was cutting out paper dolls, and Molly and Nance had for the moment put down their eternal knitting and were giving their attention to whipping on lace for the modest trousseau. But the whirlwind that came in swept aside all sane business. Needles were hastily thrust in cloth; thimbles were mislaid; paper dolls dropped for something livelier; and lecture preparation abandoned. When Judy, after the breathless announcement of having come and her reasons for coming, began on the Nancy Bell, Edwin sprang to his feet and, joining in the dance that Judy was improvising, sang in a rollicking mixture of tenor and baritone:

“‘And he shook his fist and tore his hair,Till I really felt afraid,For I couldn’t help thinking the man had been drinking,And so I simply said:“‘Oh, elderly man, it’s little I knowOf the duties of men of the sea,And I’ll eat my hand if I understandHowever you can be“‘At once a cook and a captain bold,And the mate of the Nancy brig,And a bo’sun tight, and a midshipmite,And the crew of the captain’s gig.’”

Little Mildred clapped her hands to see her dignified father cutting pigeon wings. She had yet to learn that dignity and Mrs. Kent Brown could not stay in the same room.

“Oh, Judy! It is good to see you,” gasped Molly when the chorus, in which all of them joined, had been sung over twice. “What a Judy you are, anyhow!”

“Let me take your suitcase up-stairs,” suggested Edwin.

“And I will carry your parcels,” insisted Nance, who was happy indeed over seeing her old college friend again.

“There is not a bit of use in taking a thing up-stairs. All of my clothes are in the knitting bag. Those parcels are wedding presents and the suitcase is full of all kinds of plunder. This big bundle is a tea basket from Kent and me. You and Andy can go to housekeeping in it. We thought you would rather have it than silver or cut glass, since you are going where there are no side boards to speak of.”

“Oh, Judy, how splendid! It is exactly what I have been longing for,” cried Nance, opening the charming Japanese basket. “Only look, plates, cups and saucers, tea pot, coffee pot, sugar bowl, cream pitcher, spoons, knives, forks, cannisters for coffee, tea, sugar, crackers, hard alcohol stove, chafing dish and tea kettle! All packed in two square feet of basket!”

“A regular kitchen cabinet!” declared Molly. “Nobody but Nance could ever get them packed again in the right place, I am sure, Nance and Otoyo, perhaps.”

“I just know Otoyo is going to bring her one like mine! I never thought of that when I got it. I saw it at Vantine’s and simply fell in love with it. I wanted it so bad myself I got it for Nance. If Otoyo does bring one, I will exchange mine,” said Judy generously.

“Indeed no! I wouldn’t mind having two one bit and I am certainly not going to give up my very first wedding present,” blushed Nance.

“Here is a steamer rug from dear old Mary Stuart. See how warm and soft it is! This is a pocket set of Shakespeare from Jimmy Lufton! He brought it to the train!”

“But how lovely! I didn’t dream of getting any presents,” said Nance.

“How did they know about Nance?” asked Molly.

“I ’phoned them! I got your letter while Kent was at the armory so I just called up everybody I knew and told them the news. There is no telling what the excess calls will amount to, but I had either to do that or burst! ’Phoning is cheaper than bursting.

“Now I bet you can’t guess what is in this great round box,” said the effervescent Judy.

“Your wedding hat!” solemnly suggested Edwin.

“Hat your grandmother! Guess again!”

“A German bomb!”

“No! Cold, cold! You’ll never get it! It is a wedding cake sent by Madeline Petit and Judith Blount. Now what do you think of that?”

“Wonderful!” cried Molly, as she lifted the cake from its careful packing. “Fruit cake with white icing! How on earth did they happen to do it?”

“You see I ’phoned them, too, because I always did like little Madeline in spite of the fact that she talks a fellow’s ear off. I am not so fond of Judith, but I do admire her. She has spunked up so splendidly and taken her medicine like a man. She and Madeline are doing a thriving business in a swell part of town with tea rooms and all kinds of fancy cakes. Judith was the one who suggested sending the cake, Madeline told me. She said Judith said she knew Molly Brown would work herself to death over the wedding and she, for one, was going to send something to help out Molly. She said you were just goose enough to make the cake at home.”

“I had planned to do it,” laughed Molly. “I was going to start to-morrow.”

“This huge box is candy to eat right now – that is Kent! I am almost afraid to eat it. He wanted to come so bad that he might have poisoned it for spite.”

“Why didn’t you let him come? Dear old Kent!” exclaimed Molly.

“Well, I knew perfectly well that it is some job to sleep seven persons outside of one’s own household, and it is doubly difficult when there are two sexes. Kent is as busy as can be anyhow: drilling day and night.”

Kent Brown had taken the training at Plattsburg and was then engaged in passing on this training to a company of militia in New York. He and Judy were eagerly awaiting the declaration of war by the United States. There was no such thing as neutrality for them. Having been in France in that August of 1914, Judy considered herself already at war and Kent enthusiastically shared the sentiments of his wife. He was prepared to leave his profession of architecture, in which he was proving himself very successful, and join any regiment that was likely to see service.

Judy had done exactly what the Marquis d’Ochtè had asked her to do: she had come back to New York and plunged into war relief work. Because of her enthusiasm and untiring energy she had been of great assistance in recruiting workers. Her admiring husband said that she was what one might call a real booster. Any campaign Judy plunged in was sure to be a whirlwind campaign. She had her father’s capacity for infinite work. Up to a certain period it had evinced itself in the form of infinite play, but now that the serious side of life had presented itself to her, the girl was working quite as hard as she had ever played. There was never anything half-way about our Judy. In New York she was canvassing for suffrage, keeping up her painting, and with her own hands cutting and folding enough surgical dressings to fill the peace ship, besides rounding up many workers for the cause. With it all she managed to be a very satisfactory wife and housekeeper. She and Kent were blissfully happy. There were red letter days in their calendar when both of them stopped working and went on some mad frolic. They had made many friends in New York, friends with whom they both worked and played. They had a hospitable apartment where the redoubtable Ca’line reigned in the tiny kitchen, Ca’line, trained by Mrs. Brown at Chatsworth and chastened by dear old Aunt Mary until she “knowed her place an’ kep’ it.”

Isn’t it fun to see Judy again? I hope my readers feel as glad for her to come bounding into these pages as the Greens and Nance Oldham did when she opened the door of the library at the Square Deal and, upsetting everything, scattered papers and parcels hither and yon, her vivid personality permeating every corner of the room.

Just before Judy said good-night, she paused and exclaimed, “I must tell you, Molly, how much I enjoy the dear little Virginia girls you have passed on to me. The Tucker twins and Page Allison are just about the nicest girls I know, and Mary Flannagan is a duck. I used to be an awful snob about college girls, – somehow, I thought girls who did not go to college were not worth knowing, but I have changed my mind since I have met these girls. They are an interesting lot and as far as I can see know as much as we do.”

“I knew you would like them. I simply fell in love with them last spring in Charleston. Have you met their father?”

“No, but he must be some father! The girls call him Zebedee, which appeals to me, having always called mine Bobby.”

“Zebedee? What a strange name!” said Nance.

“They say it is because nobody ever believes he is their father and so they want to know: ‘Who is the father of Zebedee’s children?’ It seems he is only about twenty years older than they are and is one of those persons who never gets on in years. They declare they are really more mature than he is and not nearly so agile,” laughed Judy.

“I have been meaning to ask them to Wellington and must certainly do it before they go back to Richmond,” declared Molly, on hospitality bent as usual.