Molly Brown's Junior Days

She found Judy stretched on the sofa, feverish and coughing, while Nance was dosing her with a large dose of quinine and an additional dose of sweet spirits of niter.

“You’re going to kill me, Nance,” Judy was grumbling.

“For heaven’s sake, be quiet,” scolded Nance. “You haven’t any voice to waste. Molly, will you make her a hot lemonade? I think we had better get her to bed and cover her up with all the comforts so as to bring on a perspiration.”

“Only one?” inquired Judy.

“Get up from there and go to bed,” ordered Nance. “The inspection is over and there won’t be any chance of another one to-day. You’ll have to miss supper to-night. We’ll say you have one of your sick headaches.”

Judy obediently got out of her things while Molly flew around making hot lemonade, and Nance hung a blanket over the heater and pulled down their three winter comforts off a shelf in the closet.

Judy meekly allowed herself to be smothered under a mountain of covers, while she drank the lemonade with childish enjoyment.

“You always make good ones, Molly, darling, because you put in enough sugar. I’ll probably be melted into a fountain of perspiration like Undine, only she went away in tears,” she complained presently.

“That’s the object of the treatment,” answered Nance sternly. “Whatever is left of you after the melting process is over is quite well of the cold.”

Molly could have laughed if she had not been thinking of something else very hard.

The two girls sat down on the divan and began a subdued and earnest conversation.

“What are we to do with these things, Molly? We can’t leave them in the piano because the moment some one sits down to play we’ll be discovered.”

“Murderers take up the planks in the floor and hide their bloodstained clothing underneath,” observed Molly. “But we can’t do that, of course.”

They took the bundle from its hiding place and looked over the garments.

“I have an idea,” announced Nance, who had many practical notions on the subject of clothes. “Suppose we take the dress to the cleaner’s in the village and have it steamed.”

“Why can’t we steam it ourselves over the tea kettle?” demanded Molly. “We can and we’ll do it right now and press it on the wrong side. If it hadn’t been so much admired, it wouldn’t matter so very much, but some one’s sure to ask to see it or borrow it or something. How about the underclothes? Can’t we smooth them out with a hot iron before they go to the laundry?”

They set to work at once to heat water and irons, and presently were engaged in restoring the old rose velvet to a semblance of its former beauty.

“What are we going to do about that slipper?” demanded Molly, pausing in her labors.

“I’ve made up my mind to that,” replied Nance. “We must bury it.”

CHAPTER IX.

THE GRAVE DIGGERS

Three times during the night Molly and Nance crept into Judy’s room and looked at her anxiously. She seemed to be sleeping heavily, but she tossed about the bed with feverish restlessness, and her forehead was burning hot.

Early in the morning the faithful friends were up again, tipping about like two wraiths of the dawn in their trailing dressing gowns.

“I’ll bathe her face and hands before she takes any tea,” said Molly. “She’s awake. I saw her open her eyes when I peeped in just now.”

Judy was awake and sitting bolt upright when they presently entered with the basin and towels. There was a strange look in her eyes. Molly remembered to have seen it before when Judy was in the grip of the wander thirst.

“Here you are, Sweet Spirits of Niter,” she cried, in a hoarse, excited voice. “Knowst thou the land of Sweet Spirits of Niter?” she began singing. “Knowst thou the Sweet Spirits? They are tall, slender, gray ladies done in long curving lines, like that.” She illustrated her ideas of these strange beings by sketching a picture on an imaginary canvas. “They lean against slim trees. They have soft musical voices and speak gently because they are sweet. You see? And the Land of Niter, what of it? It is a land of gray mists, always in twilight, and the Sweet Spirits who live in it are shadows. It is a sad land, but it is still and quiet and there are cool fountains everywhere. Sweet spirit, wouldst give me to drink of thy cup?”

Molly and Nance laughed. They knew that Judy was delirious, but it was impossible not to laugh over her strange, poetic illusion regarding sweet spirits of niter. Setting down the basin and towel, they retreated to the next room.

“We’d better make her a cup of beef tea as quickly as we can,” said Nance. “That will quench her thirst and nourish her at the same time. Good heavens, Molly, what shall we do if she begins to talk about the slipper and the lake?”

“I don’t know,” replied Molly, lighting the alcohol lamp, while Nance found the jar of beef extract. “I wish you hadn’t given her so much physic, Nance.” Molly had a deep-rooted objection to medicine, while Nance, on the other hand, was a firm believer in old-fashioned remedies. “Her stomach was in no condition for all that stuff. It was utterly upset. Her gastric juices had been lashed into a storm and hadn’t had time to subside.”

Nance smiled at Molly’s ignorance.

“You are getting the emotions and the stomach mixed, Molly, dear.”

Now, Molly had her own ideas on this subject, but it was vain to argue with her friend, the actual proprietor of a real medicine chest marked “Household Remedies,” which contained more than a dozen phials of physics.

Judy was, in fact, paying the penalty for her mental storm when on the night of the play she had run through the whole scale of emotions, beginning with stage fright and an awful fear and passing into mortification, disappointment, rage, remorse and finally sorrow, or it might be called self-pity, which inspired her to launch a canoe and paddle into the middle of the lake at midnight. It will never be known how near she came to jumping into the lake. It is difficult to reckon with an unrestrained, hypersensitive nature like hers, always up in the heights or down in the depths; sometimes capable of splendid acts of generosity and unselfishness, but capable also of inflicting cruel punishments for imagined offences.

Nance was for more medicine.

“Suppose I give her a big dose of castor oil, Molly,” she suggested, while she stirred the tea. “She had better take it before she drinks this.”

“Goodness, Nance, you’ll kill her,” exclaimed Molly, horrified. “Don’t you see that it is entirely a mental thing with Judy? What she needs is absolute quiet, and the quinine has probably excited her and made her delirious. She doesn’t need things to stimulate her. She’s almost effervescent in her normal condition, anyhow.”

“Castor oil isn’t a stimulant, child.”

“Perhaps not, but she’d better not be upset any more,” and in the end Molly had her way.

Returning in a few moments to bathe Judy’s face, she found the sick girl half out of bed.

“Get back into bed, Judy,” she said firmly. “You’re to have a nice quiet day in here and no one to bother you.”

“But the slipper. I’m looking for the other slipper,” began Judy, weeping. “Oh, dear, I must find the slipper. Nance, Molly, the slipper, have you seen the slipper, the old oaken slipper, the iron-bound slipper that hangs in the well. If it’s in the well now, drop it to the bottom. I hope it’s a deep well, the deepest well in Well County.”

It was unkind to laugh, but Molly could not keep her countenance.

“I might have known,” she thought, “that Judy could be more delirious than anybody in the world.”

Judy submitted to having her face bathed and drank the beef tea without a murmur. She appeared greatly refreshed and quieted and said a few rational words about having had bad dreams.

It was Sunday morning, frosty and bright. The bell of the Catholic Church in the village called devotees to early mass. It rang out joyfully and persuasively, reiterating its message to unbelievers. It was a cheerful sound and, in spite of Judy’s troubles, they felt comforted. The steam heat began its pleasant matins in the pipes. The kettle on the alcohol stove hummed busily. Molly began to make preparations for breakfast. Although she was not self-indulgent, discomfort was never an acceptable state to her.

“Get your bath, Nance,” she ordered, “and then you can come back and make the toast while I take mine.”

Nance departed for the bathrooms with soap and towels, while Molly busied herself spreading a lunch cloth on one of the study tables and placing a blue china bowl full of oranges in the center. Then she carefully extracted four eggs from a paper bag in a box on the outer window ledge; cut four thin, even slices of bread to be inserted in Judy’s patent electric toaster, and at intervals poured boiling water through the dripper into the coffee pot.

“If I were at home this morning,” she said, “I would be eating hot waffles and kidney hash.”

Suddenly she looked up. Judy was standing in the doorway.

“Molly,” she said, “I want my slipper.”

Molly took her hand and gently led her back to bed.

“Judy, would you like a cup of delicious, strong, hot coffee?” she asked, endeavoring to divert Judy’s quinine-charged senses.

“Very much, but the slipper – ” Judy began to whimper like a child.

Molly hurried into the next room, found one of Nance’s slippers and gravely handed it to Judy, who grasped it carefully with both hands as if it were something very precious and brittle.

“When I gave her your slipper, Nance, I felt something like the old witch who had kidnapped the Queen’s infant and put a changeling in its place,” Molly observed later, in telling about this incident to Nance. “But there is nothing to do but humor her, I suppose, until the influence of the quinine wears off.”

“Where has she got it now?” asked Nance, ignoring Molly’s allusions to quinine.

“What? The changeling slipper? Under her pillow.”

Nance laughed.

“I’m thinking, Molly,” she remarked, “that to-day would be an excellent time to get rid of that other slipper. I don’t feel as if I could sleep comfortably another night in these rooms with the guilty thing around. Until we dig a hole and bury it deep, we shall never have any peace of mind.”

Molly was carefully peeling the shell from the end of an egg.

“Do you think we could leave her alone this afternoon?” she asked. “How long does quinine continue its ravages?”

“Oh, not long,” answered Nance, in a most matter of fact voice. “She’s such a sensitive subject, that is the trouble. Quinine doesn’t usually make people take on so. I never met any one so excitable and high strung as Judy. She gets her nerves tuned up to such a high pitch sometimes that I wonder they don’t snap in two.”

“Nance, don’t you think we ought to confess the whole thing to Miss Walker?”

“Do you think Judy would ever forgive us if we did?”

Molly sighed.

“I’m afraid not,” she said. “Confessing would involve so much. We would have to go back so far to the original cause, those wretched Shakespeareans. It would be pretty hard on poor old Judy. But the slipper, Nance – it’s such a ridiculous thing, our hiding that slipper. Where shall we hide it?”

“We must dig a grave and bury it,” said Nance, “and we must do it this afternoon and get the thing off our minds. Then all evidence will be destroyed and there will be no possible way of finding out about Judy.”

“You have forgotten about the visitor to our room in the night.”

“Yes,” admitted Nance, “there is that visitor. Who was she? What did she want? You haven’t missed anything, have you?”

“No,” replied Molly. “I have nothing valuable enough to steal except old Martin Luther, and he’s quite safe.”

She reached for the china pig on the bookshelves and shook him carefully. His interior gave out a musical jingle.

Clothed and fed and comforted, the two girls leaned back in their Morris chairs, with extra cups of coffee resting on the chair arms, to consider the question of Judy’s slipper. At last they came to a mutual agreement.

Otoyo, the safest, discreetest and least inquisitive of their friends, was to be taken partly into their confidence and left to look after Judy while they went on their mysterious errand. Otoyo, who had the racial peculiarity of the Japanese of never being surprised at anything, accepted this position of trust without a comment. Few students took Sunday morning walks at Wellington, and therefore morning was the safest time for the expedition. Judy, reënforced with a soft-boiled egg and a cup of coffee, appeared perfectly rational and quiet. She surrendered the slipper without a murmur, and turning over on her side dropped off to sleep. A Not-at-Home sign was hung on the door and Otoyo was cautioned not to let any one into Judy’s room. She was to say to all callers that Judy had a headache and was asleep.

Dressed for a tramp, with Judy’s slipper in one of the deep pockets of Nance’s ulster, and a knife, fork and table spoon for digging purposes in the other, the two girls presently left Otoyo on the floor immersed in study. They had scarcely closed the door when Judy called from the next room:

“Bring me that slipper, Otoyo.”

And the little Japanese, with a puzzled look on her face, obeyed.

As they hastened down the corridor, hoping devoutly not to meet intimate friends, Molly and Nance were stopped by the irrepressible Minerva Higgins.

“Isn’t this a stroke of luck?” she exclaimed. “You are going for a walk and so am I. I was just on the lookout for somebody. Girls here are so industrious Sunday mornings, I can never get any one to go walking until afternoon.”

Molly was silent. At that moment she yearned for the courage of Nance, who with a word could scatter Minerva’s cheeky assurance like chaff before the wind.

“It’s lack of character, I suppose,” she thought disconsolately. “But I couldn’t crush a fly, much less that presumptuous little freshman.”

She stood back, therefore, and let Nance have a clear field for the struggle.

“You are very kind to offer us your company, Miss Higgins, but we must beg to be excused to-day,” said Nance calmly.

“I call that a nice, Sunday-morning, Christian spirit,” cried Minerva, with an angry flash in her small, pig-like eyes.

“No, no, Minerva,” put in Molly gently. “You must not think that way about it. Nance and I have some important business to discuss, that’s all. You mustn’t imagine it’s unkind when older girls turn you down sometimes. You know it isn’t customary here for a freshman to invite herself to join an older girl. I believe it isn’t customary in any college. Don’t be angry, please.”

Hidden under layers of vanity, selfishness and stupid assurance, was Minerva’s better self which Molly hoped to reach, and some day she would break through the crust, but not this morning.

“Don’t tell me anything about upper-class girls – conceited snobs! I know all about them,” exclaimed Minerva angrily, as she marched down the corridor in a high state of rage.

“Don’t bother about her. She’s a hopeless case, just as Margaret said,” remarked Nance.

Once off the campus, they followed the path along the lake and turned their faces toward Round Head as being the spot most apt to be deserted at that hour in the morning. It was not long before they were climbing the steep hill.

“Where shall we lay it to rest, poor weary little sole?” asked Nance, laughing.

“Let’s dig the grave on the Exmoor side,” answered Molly. “Behind one of those big rocks is a good spot. We’ll be hidden from sight and the ground is softer there.”

Talking and giggling, because after all they were entirely innocent of any wrongdoing, they set to work to dig a small grave for Judy’s slipper.

“When the earth casts up its dead on the Day of Judgment, Nance, do you suppose this slipper will seek its mate?”

“I hope it won’t seek it any sooner,” answered Nance dryly.

At last the grave was ready. They laid the slipper in the hole, carefully covered it with earth, and concealed all evidences of recent disturbance with bits of grass and splinters of rock.

Then Molly, leaning against the side of the boulder and clasping her hands, remarked:

“Let this be its epitaph:

“‘Under the wide and starry skyDig the grave and let me lie;Glad did I live and gladly die,And I laid me down with a will.“‘This be the verse you ’grave for me:Here he lies where he longed to be;Home is the sailor, home from the sea,And the hunter home from the hill.’”

Scarcely had the last words died on her lips when Nance gave a low, horrified exclamation. Molly glanced up quickly. Just above them in the shadow of another big rock stood Professor Green in his old gray suit. So still was he that he might have been a part of the geological formation of the hill, planted there centuries ago. Molly felt the hot blood mount to her face. How long had he been there? How much had he seen? What did he think? Forcing its way through all these wild speculations came another thought: there was a brown coffee stain on one of his trouser legs. She tried to speak, but the words refused to come, and before she could get herself in hand, the professor coldly lifted his hat and walked away.

In his glance she read DISAPPOINTMENT as plainly as if it had been written across his brow in letters of fire.

“Oh, Nance,” she cried, and burst into tears.

“He won’t tell, even if he has seen,” Nance reassured her. “Don’t mind, Molly, dear. Come along. I’m not afraid.”

“It’s not that! It’s not that!” sobbed Molly. But then, of course, Nance wouldn’t understand what it really was, because she hardly understood it herself. He believed, of course, that she had gone rowing with some Exmoor boys after ten o’clock. He had heard the story of the slipper. Everybody had heard it. It was the talk of college. For a moment Molly felt a wave of resentment against Judy. Then her anger shifted to Professor Green.

“At least he might have given us a chance to explain,” she exclaimed, as she followed Nance along the lake path back to the campus.

As soon as they entered the room, a little while later, they saw by Otoyo’s face that something had happened.

“What is it?” they demanded uneasily.

“Oh,” ejaculated Otoyo, raising both hands with an eloquent gesture, “it was that terrible Mees Heegins. You had but scarcely departing gone when there came to the door a rap-rap-rap – so. I thought it was you returning, and when I open, she push her way in, so.”

Otoyo gave an imitation of Minerva forcing her way into the sitting room.

“She say: ‘I wish to see Mees Kean on a particular business.’ I say: ‘Mees Kean has a sickness to her head.’ She say: ‘Move away, little yellow peril. Don’t interfere with me. I wish to inquire after her health.’ Then she make great endeavors to remove me from the door.”

“And what did you do, Otoyo?” they asked anxiously.

Otoyo’s face took on an expression half humorous and half deprecating.

“It will not make you angry with little Japanese girl?”

“No, of course not, child.”

“I employ jiu jitsu.”

The girls both laughed, and Otoyo, relieved, joined in the merriment.

“She receive no bruises, but she receive a shock, because it arrive so suddenlee, you see? So she quietlee walk away and say no more.”

“You adorable little Japanese girl,” cried Molly, embracing her.

Nance opened the door and peeped into Judy’s room.

She was sleeping quietly, the slipper clasped in both hands.

CHAPTER X.

A VISIT OF STATE

Judy still slept the sleep of the exhausted. Her tired forces craved a long rest after the storm that had lashed and beaten them. The girls crept about the room softly and spoke in low voices, and when they went down to the early dinner locked the door and took the key with them. Later, fearing callers, again they hung out a Busy sign and settled themselves comfortably for a peaceful afternoon. Nance, armed with a dictionary and notebook, was translating “Les Misérables,” a penitential task she had set for herself for two hours every Sunday.

Molly was also engaged in a penitential task. She was endeavoring to compose a story on simple and natural lines. It was very difficult. Her mind at this moment seemed to be an avenue for bands of roving and irrelevant thoughts and refused to concentrate on the work at hand. She made several beginnings, as: “One blustering, windy day in March a lonely little figure – ” With a contemptuous stroke of her pencil, she drew a line through the words and wrote underneath: “It was a calm, beautiful morning in May – ”

Twirling her pencil, she paused to consider this statement.

“No, no, that won’t do,” she thought. “It’s entirely too commonplace.” She glanced absently over at the book Nance was reading. “Victor Hugo would probably have put it this way: ‘It was the fifteenth of May, 17 – . A young girl was hurrying along the Rue – . She paused at the house, No. 11.’ Oh, dear,” pondered Molly, “one has to tell something very important to write in that way. It’s like sending a telegram. Just as much as possible expressed in the fewest possible words. Can the professor mean that? Would he mind if I asked him and then at the same time, perhaps – ” Again the wandering thoughts broke off. “It’s rather hard he should have misunderstood about this morning. Is there no way I can explain without involving Judy? Oh, dear! Oh, dear! How complicated life is, and what a complicated nature is Judy’s.”

There were two quick raps on the door. Molly and Nance exchanged frightened glances. It was not the masonic tap of their friends, and no one else would have knocked on a door which advertised a Busy sign. There was, in fact, a note of authority in the double rap. Some instinct prevented Nance from calling out “Come in,” a matter later for self-congratulation. She rose and opened the door and President Walker entered. If Miss Walker had ever paid a visit to a student before, the girls had not heard of it. It was, so far as they knew, an entirely unprecedented happening and quite sufficient to make innocent people look guilty and set hearts to pumping blood at double-quick time.

“I saw your Busy sign,” said Miss Walker, glancing from one startled face to the other, “but I shall not keep you long. What a pretty room,” she added, looking about her approvingly.

“Thank heavens, it’s straight,” thought Nance, groaning mentally.

“Won’t you sit down, Miss Walker?” asked Molly, pushing forward one of the easy chairs.

The President sat down. There was a plate of “cloudbursts” on the table. Would it be disrespectful to offer the President some of this delectable candy? Nance considered it would be, decidedly so. But Molly, a slave to the laws of hospitality, took what might be called a leap in the dark and silently held the plate in front of the President. If this turned out to be a visit of state it was rather a risky thing to do. But Miss Walker helped herself to one piece and then demanded another.

“Delicious,” she said. “Did you make it, Miss Brown?”

“Yes, Miss Walker.”

It had been purely a stroke of luck with Molly, who had no way to know that Miss Walker had a sweet tooth.

“I must have that recipe. What makes it so light?”

“The whites of eggs beaten very stiff, and the rest of it is just melted brown sugar. It’s very easy,” added Molly, forming a resolution to make the President a plate of “cloudbursts” without loss of time.

“Who is the third girl who shares this apartment with you?” asked Miss Walker, unexpectedly coming back to business.

“Julia Kean.”

“And where is she to-day?”

Nance hesitated.

“She is sick in bed to-day, Miss Walker.”

“Ahem! Cold, I suppose?”

“It’s more excitement than anything else,” put in Molly. “The junior play – ”

“Oh, yes. She was ‘Viola,’ of course,” said the President.

“You see she had a bad attack of stage fright,” continued Molly, “and Judy is so excitable and sensitive. She exaggerated what happened and it made her ill.”

“And what did happen? She forgot her lines, as I recall. But that often occurs. Even professionals have been known to forget their parts. Ellen Terry is quite notorious for her bad memory, but she is a great actress, nevertheless.”

The girls were silent. They wondered what in the world Miss Walker was driving at.

“And then what happened next?”

They looked at her blankly.