Molly Brown's College Friends

“Once more for luck!” commanded Great Commander Judy.

“Practice makes perfect,” so this time the Musicians of Bremen outdid themselves. Otoyo made a most wonderful pussy; Maud Adams herself could not have been a more realistic chanticler than Katherine; and Judy’s donkey was so good that one could almost see the ears wagging as her great bray made night hideous.

“Now run before they have a chance to open their windows!” and Judy was up and off in the darkness with the two other girls close on her heels.

“I bet you investigating will go on at a great rate to-morrow,” gasped Katherine, as after leaving the college grounds they came to the outskirts of the village.

“It was so funnily,” giggled Otoyo. “We must amusement make for the smally Mildred and Cho-Cho when the to-morrow has come.”

“I can’t believe I am a full-fledged teacher in a model modern school in our great metropolis,” said Katherine. “I feel just exactly like a schoolgirl, – not even a college girl. I know I could run a mile and there is no mischief I would not welcome.”

“I tooly!” agreed Otoyo. “It seems but a dream that I have honorable husband and smally babee, Cho-Cho. I feel like badly naughtily Japanese girl in masque.”

“Well, it is surely great to be a boy again just for to-night,” declared Judy.

“What next?” asked Katherine.

“Next will be our great adventure! This has been only in the foothills of happenings. Soon we will have something really great come to us,” encouraged the captain.

The village was well-lighted on the principal street, but that the girls avoided and crept down the side streets where all was quiet and almost dark, except at the corners where small gas-posts sent out feeble rays of light. They passed comfortable homes surrounded by large yards where the élite of Wellington lived. The élite were evidently a well-behaved lot, as they were all safely bestowed in bed, sleeping the sleep of the just as our naughty girls crept in front of their spacious mansions.

Next to the great, came the near great: a row of pleasant cottages, each one with its little garden separated from its neighbor’s by neat whitewashed palings. After these, they approached a cottage set in a large yard and isolated as much as if it were in the country. It was well back from the street and instead of the white palings of its neighbors, it boasted a box hedge about five feet high and at least three feet broad. Generations of close clipping had made this hedge as solid as a brick wall. The yard enclosed was laid out as a formal garden with box labyrinth and winding paths. In the rear was a summer-house with stone pillars covered with ivy. Two stone benches were on each side in this quaint house where no doubt dead and gone lovers had sat and perhaps caught rheumatism. Box bushes were placed at the four sides of the garden and these had been cut to represent armchairs by some zealous gardener long since passed away. The modern shears had but followed the lines of the original ones and the armchairs were still there although somewhat lopsided and hazy in drawing. There was the sun-dial and a snub-nosed stone Hebe who held aloft her little pitcher with a cup in the other hand ready to serve the Gods with imperceptible nectar.

Our girls’ eyes had become accustomed to the darkness and they peeped over the hedge (at least Katherine and Judy did, poor little Otoyo was too short), plainly discerning the charming ensemble of the little formal garden.

“There, Adventure awaits us!” said Katherine melodramatically.

“I want muchly to see,” pleaded Otoyo. So Judy lifted her up for a peep.

“I believe that is where the Misels live,” said Judy. “It looks quite different at night, but I’m almost sure it is the place. Molly and I called at dusk and we came up on the other side, but I think it is this cottage. Isn’t it lovely? I am so sorry for them, they do seem so friendless, somehow. Madame is already working for the Red Cross. Molly says she can make surgical dressings faster than anybody she ever saw. She takes them home and does them and brings them back so neatly folded and tied up that they think it is perfect foolishness to inspect them. They are sure there will be no mistakes where such a careful worker is on the job. M. Misel is so lame he can hardly locomote.”

“Let’s go in their garden and sit down a little while,” suggested Katherine, who but a few moments before had declared she could run a mile. The sedentary life as a teacher had not improved her wind. Her spirits might have been those of a schoolgirl but her endurance was equal only to a full-fledged teacher in a model school.

They passed through the small green turnstile and silently crept around the labyrinth to the summer-house. The three girls sank on one of the cold stone benches and peered out into the picturesque garden. Their veils were raised but ready to be pulled down at a moment’s notice.

“Ghosts might walk in such a garden,” whispered Judy.

“The bench is coldly like a ghost,” shivered Otoyo.

CHAPTER XIV

AS SEEN FROM THE SUMMER-HOUSE

“And now, Adventure, come forth!” commanded Katherine in sepulchral tones.

The side door of the cottage, leading to the garden, now opened as though at Katherine’s orders, and a broad ribbon of light fell across the labyrinth, picking out the snub-nosed Hebe and the sun-dial and one of the box chairs to illuminate. A man’s figure was silhouetted in the doorway, a figure so beautiful that the artist in Judy gasped. He had on running togs which exposed his clean-cut limbs and shapely shoulders. A woman stood beside him and Judy recognized the outline of Madame Misel. The Greek god of a man was strange to her, although there was something familiar about the poise of his head on its column-like neck.

The woman spoke in German in a low clear voice. Judy and Katherine both knew German fairly well and Otoyo had some knowledge of it. They heard Madame Misel say distinctly:

“It is wiser if you wait until midnight for the exercises. Some of these blockheads might be out.”

“Oh, absurd!” answered the man. “There is no one in this whole stupid place with the spirit to be from under cover after ten. I am cramped enough and must run and leap. Stand aside!”

“Misel, himself!” gasped Judy. Where were his crutch and cane and his lame back?

The girls sat as still as the stone Hebe. It was inky black in their corner of the summer-house where they cowered, not afraid at all but ready to knock the chip from the shoulder of Adventure. Judy’s first instinct on recognizing Madame Misel was to make herself known and explain their presence in her garden at such a late hour, but the realization that Misel was the man in running togs, which usually means running, glued her to her bench. What did it all mean?

The door was shut and then Misel began a series of exercises of which any circus actor might have been proud. He began by leaping over the clipped hedge of the labyrinth, – back and forth with most surprising gyrations. It was so dark that it was difficult to follow his every movement, and so rapid were his leaps and bounds that he was now here, now there before eyes could be focussed to take in the impression. Then almost without the girls realizing what had happened, he had cleared the five-foot hedge and was out on the deserted street running like a deer.

“Quick, before he is back!” gasped Judy, and the seekers for sensations were out of the garden and through the little turnstile in not much more time than it had taken the master of the house to leap the hedge.

Without a word they hastened back to the college grounds. As they turned a corner, they ran plump into Misel, who seemed to have let off steam enough to be trotting contentedly home. They need not have feared him. He was much more anxious to escape from them than they were from him. He turned and ran like the wind in the opposite direction.

“Gee, I wish we could have tripped him up!” exclaimed Judy.

“And I might have jiu jitsued him most neatlily,” put in little Otoyo. “I think he is what you might call a traitor-r-r.”

“I was never more excited in my life. What will the girls think when we tell them of what has happened to us?” panted Katherine.

“Do you realize we have run against a tremendous thing?” said Judy soberly. “Almost international importance! I fancy we must keep kind of quiet about it. Of course we will tell Molly and Edwin and the girls, but I have an idea this thing will have to be worked up slowly and cautiously. I bet you it will be a case of secret service men and enemy aliens and what not. Why should Misel have pretended to be lame? Why should they come to live at Wellington? Why – a million whys about the whole matter!”

“One thing: – Misel thought we were college girls on a lark and he will have no fear of our saying we met him or anyone outside the campus at such an hour,” said Katherine wisely.

CHAPTER XV

THE PROFESSOR AT A KIMONO PARTY

The Welsh rarebit was just assuming its required thickness and smoothness and the toast was done to a turn ready to receive its libation of cheese, when the wanderers came pattering in.

“Where is Edwin?” demanded Judy.

“In his den! You see this is a kimono party and gentlemen are not admitted,” said Molly, helping Judy off with her coat and veil. “Now tell us all about it! Something has happened, I can see by your eyes and hair.”

“Happened! I should say it has! Something has bounced! Call Edwin! I don’t give a hang if we are in kimonos! I’ll be bound he does not know a kimono from a ball gown – I can’t tell it twice.”

“Otoyo and I are not dumb. We might help out when you fall by the wayside,” laughed Katherine, “but I, for one, don’t mind the professor.”

“Nor I! Nor I!” chorused the others.

“I think mine is vastly becoming,” Jessie whispered to Margaret, who called her a vain puss.

Edwin came in, rather pleased at being admitted and being allowed to have some of the party.

“I never expected to get in on a fudge party,” he said, contentedly settling himself by Judy, who was bursting with news.

“Now begin!” commanded Margaret, rapping for order in much the old manner of class president and presiding officer.

“Begin at the beginning!” begged Edith.

“Well, first we went by Prexy’s, just to get the feeling of youth back in our veins. She saw us, but we chased by.”

“So it was you! I wish I had run you down,” cried the brother-in-law.

“It is a blessing you did not or a good story would have been ruined,” said Katherine.

Margaret rapped for order and Judy took up the tale.

“Then we went to call on Mattie Math. She was burning the midnight oil, at least the 10 p. m. oil, and when we acted the Musicians of Bremen, she threw up the sash.”

“The hash? What hash?” asked Jessie, who often arrived a bit late. Shrieks and more rappings from Margaret.

“My, how much I have missed in never being asked to a kimono party before,” whispered the male guest in Judy’s ear.

“After we had brayed and crowed and meouwed and a dog had barked for us – ”

“All together!” cried Katherine, and the musicians gave a sample of their performance, Mrs. Matsuki outdoing all cats by her lifelike caterwauling.

“After that, we went silently down to the village.”

“I don’t believe it, not silently!” asserted Edwin.

“No interruptions from the minority! We went silently down to the village, veils down, steps stealthy, eyes open and mouths shut. The garden at the Misels’ was most inviting in its sweetness and beauty. Of course we wanted to go in and rest on the nice warm stone benches, so we walked through the turnstile and seated ourselves in the little dark summer-house, there to await Adventure.”

“Bang! Adventure comes stalkingly in!” cried Otoyo.

“Leaping was more like it!” from Katherine.

“Yes! Who should come springing from the side door, totally oblivious of us, but Misel, stripped for running and looking like a detail from a Greek frieze!”

“Monsieur Misel! Why, Judy, you are mad! Misel is so lame he can’t stand alone without crutch and cane!” cried Molly.

“Lame your grandmother! He is a perfect circus actor. I have never seen a private citizen with such control of his muscles. He actually turned somersaults over the hedge in the labyrinth, walked on his hands better than I can on my feet, and cleared the five-foot hedge that borders the street with as much ease as – as – I eat this fudge,” reaching for another piece.

“But, Judy, are you sure it was he?” asked Edwin excitedly.

“Of course I am sure!” And then Judy repeated the conversation they had overheard between Misel and his wife. “My German is shady when I have to use it, but I can understand very well.”

“So can I,” declared Katherine.

“And while I am constructionally verily faultily, I comprehend can,” said Otoyo, so excited that she ran off to adverb forms as was her wont in times of stress.

“This is serious,” said Edwin solemnly. “So serious that I feel I must do something about it and do it immediately. What time is it, honey?” he asked Molly.

“Eleven-fifty! Why, what can you do? Not go fight Misel – not that!”

“No, not that, at least not that yet, although I should like to break his lying crutch over his traitorous head. I must get in touch with the Secret Service. War will be declared any day now and Germany is getting busy even in quiet Wellington.”

“You forget Exmoor College is so near,” put in Margaret. “Our college boys will officer the new army in part. I’ll wager anything that this man has already begun his pacifist propaganda here in Wellington and at Exmoor, too. Has he been to Exmoor?”

“Why, certainly! He got me to take him over and introduce him, the beast!” stormed Edwin. “Please pack my little grip for me, honey,” he asked, drawing Molly to him. “I can catch the twelve-forty to New York. Don’t give out that I am away. We had better do a little camouflage act of our own. I am ill, very ill! That will do! Let it be – what shall it be?”

“Mumps!” cried Edith.

“Not mumps, please!” cried Jessie. “Nothing contagious or we might catch it!”

“Or worse than that, even, be quarantined!” laughed Nance.

“Pretty hard on you, honey, as it would stop the ceremony,” suggested Molly.

“What do you usually have when you have anything?” asked Margaret with her judicial manner.

“Neuralgia!”

“Then neuralgia would be the natural thing to have when you have not anything.”

“Of course! Then, Molly, all day to-morrow your poor husband is ill with neuralgia. Not even the servants and children must come in my darkened room. I’ll be home in the night and wake up the next morning feeling much better,” and Molly hurried off to pack the grip.

“In time to give the bride away!” suggested Judy.

“May I tell Andy all about it?” asked Nance shyly.

“Of course! We would not be so cruel as to make you start out with a secret from your lord and master,” said Edwin.

“It makes me so mad to think how kind Andy was to that man, offering his medical services to him and what not. I know the brutes had a good laugh over his gullibility. Andy told me afterwards that he could not understand the case, and if the man wasn’t shamming, it was the most peculiar thing he had ever seen: the way he jumped up out of his chair when he was so lame.”

“Now I remember that very night that I heard Madame Misel call her husband a fool on the way into the dining-room. I had forgotten all about it until this minute. I kept wondering what she meant,” said Molly.

“I tell you they are deep ones,” put in Katherine.

“Not a bit of it!” stormed Judy. “They are the worst of all fools because they think no one else has any sense. Bobby, my beloved parent, always says that is the worst kind of fool. That the wise man, who wants to put over anything, must go to work with the idea that all the persons he wants the scheme to get by with have as much and more sense than he has. Now these Huns think they are the only pebbles on the beach and take for granted that they are dealing with children and fools, and as a rule they get caught up with.”

“Not before they do lots of damage, however,” said Nance.

“I hope in this instance their machinations have not done any,” said Edwin devoutly. “Be sure and give the Misels no inkling they are suspected. All of you remember to be as polite as usual to them if you happen to run across them.”

“I’ll try, but it will surely go against the grain,” said Judy, her eyes flashing.

“Prove your father’s statements, dear little sister, and we shall let these foreigners know that we are not the blockheads they call us.”

“Also we are not the sleepily heads that must go bedwardly at such earlyly hour,” and little Otoyo opened her almond eyes very wide to show that she at least would neither slumber nor sleep until the enemies to her country and her adopted country were safely caught up with.

Molly came in with the grip packed. Some fudge was tucked in to help out his journey and Edwin, with the warm wishes of the kimono party, started on his patriotic travels.

“Remember to let Prexy know I am almost dead with neuralgia and do not let a soul but Andy on to the fact that I am off on a journey. I’ll creep in to-morrow night. Keep your eyes open for deviltries that the Misels may be up to, but don’t let them know you are not the dummies they think you. They will not be classed as alien enemies until war is formally declared, and that will be day after to-morrow, according to the latest news.”

Nance was quietly stitching while most of the above conversation was going on, but her thoughts were very busy. The idea that was uppermost in her mind was that the day United States was to form an alliance with the nations, she was to form one equally strong with her Andy.

CHAPTER XVI

WAR RELIEF

Edwin Green occasionally had an attack of neuralgia that incapacitated him for work for at least a day, so when Molly solemnly gave out the news that her poor husband was suffering with one of his spells of that painful malady, sympathy was expressed by servants, teachers, and students. Blinds in the invalid’s room were carefully closed and the door locked, with the key in Molly’s pocket. Instructions were sternly given that nobody must disturb him. When he felt better he would ask for what he wanted. Little Mildred was very sad that she was not allowed to take him his “tup of toffee.”

“I weckon he’s a-gonter die, sho,” she confided to Cho-Cho-San. “Only my mother don’t know it or she wouldn’t be a-smilin’ an’ laughin’ so hard.”

“I am going to work this morning at my war relief, even if we are to get married to-morrow,” declared Molly at breakfast. “If I let anything short of death interfere I get into bad habits, and the work simply must be done. They are crying out for more and more dressings.”

“Let’s all of us go help! We can turn out oodlums of work if we try,” cried Judy.

“Not Nance!” insisted Molly. “I know she has a lot of little stitches to put in before to-morrow.”

“If you will excuse me, I will beg off,” blushed Nance. “Andy is coming in this morning for a few moments, besides.”

“I tell you, you must stay at home to take care of poor dear Edwin,” laughed Judy. “It would look terribly heartless for all of us to go leave him.”

“Oh, I forgot Edwin!” declared Molly, just as Kizzie came in with a stack of waffles. The girl looked at her mistress in astonishment. What was coming over her Miss Molly, “fergittin’ of the boss and then a-larfin’ about it?”

“Shall I take Andy up to see him?” asked Nance soberly.

“Perhaps!”

“Hadn’t we better take the kids along so their noise won’t disturb poor dear Brother Edwin?” suggested Judy, “Mildred and Cho-Cho and Poilu, the puppy.” Poilu was a diminutive mongrel, the love of Mildred’s heart.

“Oh, Mother, please, please!” begged Mildred.

“I’m so ’appee! I’m so ’appee!” sang Cho-Cho as Molly smiled her consent.

“They can play in the churchyard and will be good, I am sure,” she declared.

And so Nance was left to put in her finishing stitches, to receive her lover and to take care of the fictitious case of neuralgia.

“Hot cloths on his head if he is in very great agony,” Molly called back as the gay throng started for the war relief rooms. “There is more aspirin in the top drawer if he is in much pain.”

Nance had a busy morning answering the ’phone, which rang many times with inquiries for the popular professor. Mary Neil sent a box of candy to Molly as a kind of consolation prize and Billie McKym sent Edwin a pot of flowers. Lilian Swift sent a basket of fruit.

“If their friends rally around them so for an imaginary disease, what would they do if something were really the matter?” thought Nance.

M. Misel and Andy met at the front door, Misel to inquire for the poor ill man and Andy to catch a glimpse of his Nance. Misel had walked slowly and painfully across the campus from his class room. Nance, from the window, had watched him approaching and she could but admire his patience as he made his crippled way.

“It must be worse to have to pretend to be lame than to be lame,” she said to herself. “I wonder if Andy is still fooled.”

The two men came into the library together, Andy showing great solicitude for the disabled foreigner. Misel was so extremely polite and seemed so distressed at Edwin’s illness that Nance could hardly believe that Judy and the girls could be right in the discovery they had made the night before. His manner was perfect, so respectful, so kindly and courteous.

“I believe I am to wish you joy, Dr. McLean, – and I do so with all my heart.” Andy grinned his appreciation. “My wife and I were quite charmed by Miss Oldham. I hear you are to go to the front to assist poor stricken France. I admire the courage of your fiancée to contemplate going with you.”

“It would take more for me to stay away,” whispered Nance softly.

“Ah, it is the spirit of the women which is what the Germans have to fight!”

“Is not the spirit of the German women quite as courageous as ours?” asked Nance, looking at Misel keenly.

“Ah! Wonderschön!” his eyes glowed. Suddenly the fact that he had dropped into German seemed to embarrass him. “That is – that is the word for the German women, just as ‘wonderful’ is the one for the Americans.”

“Tell me about Edwin,” interrupted Andy, as though he meant to put Misel at his ease again. “Is he very ill?”

“Oh, very!”

“Can’t I go up to see him?”

“Molly said he was not to be disturbed. These headaches just wear themselves out. He will be all right to-night.”

“But there is something to be done before it wears Edwin out as well as itself,” insisted the young doctor.

“Molly says not!” Nance shook her head at Andy as much as to tell him he was talking too much, and that young man subsided until Misel had gone. Then Nance revealed to her lover the whole nefarious plot.

“I had my doubts about that man from the first. I could not see how anyone as lame as he was could have jumped up so briskly. The beast! How could you be so polite to him?”

“Camouflage! Fighting the devil with fire!”

“I am glad old Ed took matters in hand so promptly. I tell you these college professors show up pretty well in these times! Wilson and Green forever!”

In the meantime the industrious war relief workers were hard at it. The be-aproned and be-kerchiefed ladies of Wellington held their séances in the basement of the little church. It was astonishing how large was their output, but busy fingers had been steadily at work ever since word had come from France that wounded men were dying for lack of surgical dressings, and that word had come very soon after the breaking out of the World War.

Women with earnest faces were bending over the long tables, some rolling bandages; some tearing cotton cloth; some pulling threads for careful cutting of gauze, later to be deftly folded in the prescribed shape. In one corner, cotton batting was being fluffed up for the making of fracture pillows. Huge baskets were being emptied by one group as they stuffed the pillows, while others were being filled by the fluffers, as Judy called the women whose duty it was to pick the cotton. Much sneezing went on in this corner and he who wonders why, might try once fluffing unrefined cotton.

“Let me make the tampons!” begged Jessie.