Molly Brown's Sophomore Days

"What's this?" demanded Margaret Wakefield, unrolling her scroll and regarding it with the legal eye of an attorney perusing documentary evidence.

Across the top of the scroll swung a gay little row of Japanese lanterns done in delicate water colors, and in characters strangely Japanese was inscribed the following invitation:

"Greetings from

Otoyo Sen:

Your honorable

presence is requested on

Saturday evening at the insignificant fête in the unworthily apartment of

Otoyo Sen.

Otoyo muchly flattered by joyful acceptance."

Fortunately, the little Japanese girl, overcome by shyness after this rash venture, had not appeared at breakfast and was spared the mirthful expressions on the faces of the girls around the table.

"Well, of all the funny children," laughed Molly. "Nance, let's offer her our room. She can't get the crowd into her little place."

"Of course," said Nance, agreeable to anything her roommate might suggest.

Not a single girl declined the quaint invitation and formal acceptances were sent that very day.

Otoyo was so excited and happy over these missives that she seemed to be in a state of semi-exaltation for the better part of a week. She rushed to the village and sent off a telegram and before Saturday morning received at least a dozen mysterious boxes by express. They were piled one on top of the other in her room like an Oriental pyramid and no one was permitted to see their contents.

All offers of assistance were refused the day of the party. Otoyo wished to carry out her ideas in her own peculiar way and needed only a step-ladder. If it was not asking too much, would the beautiful and kind friends not enter their room until that evening? Removing all things needful in the way of books and clothes to Judy's room, the beautiful and kind friends good-naturedly absented themselves from their apartment from ten in the morning to seven-thirty that evening. Molly spent the afternoon in the library studying, and Nance called on Mrs. McLean and drank a cup of tea and ate a buttered scone, while she cast an occasional covert glance in the direction of Andy junior's photograph on the mantel.

It was well before eight o'clock when the inquisitive guests assembled, and there were at least twenty of them; for Otoyo's acquaintance was large and numbered girls from all four classes. They met downstairs in a body and then marched up to the third story together.

"Let's give her a serenade before we knock," suggested Judy, and they sang: "The sweetest girl in Wellington is O-to-yo." Any name could be fitted into this convenient and ingenious song.

Otoyo flung open the door and stood smiling before them. Her manner was the very quintessence of hospitality. She wore a beautiful embroidered kimono and her hair was fixed Japanese fashion. Even her shoes were Japanese, and she carried a little fan which she agitated charmingly to express her excited emotions.

All her English forsook her in the excitement of greeting her guests and she could only repeat over and over again:

"Otoyo delightly – Otoyo delightly."

"Well, I never," ejaculated Nance, entering her old familiar room, now transformed into a gay Japanese bazaar.

"Is this the parent of all the umbrella family?" demanded Judy, pointing to an enormous parasol swung in some mysterious manner from the centre of the ceiling and resembling a large fish swimming among a numerous small-fry of lanterns. The divans were spread with Japanese covers, and over the white dimity curtains were hung cotton crepe ones of pale blue with a pink cherry-blossom design. In one corner stood a vase, from which poured the incense of smoking joss-sticks. Funny little handleless cups were ranged on the table and lacquered trays of candied fruits, rice cakes and other indescribable Japanese "meat-sweets," as Otoyo had called them. The little hostess flew about the room exactly as the Three Little Maids did in "The Mikado," waving her fan and bowing profoundly to her guests. Presently, sitting cross-legged on the floor, she sang a song in her own language, accompanying herself on a curious stringed instrument, a kind of Japanese banjo. She was, in fact, the funniest, queerest, most captivating little creature ever seen. She loaded her guests with souvenirs, little lacquered boxes, fans and diminutive toys.

"I feel as if I were a belle at a grand cotillion with all these lovely favors," exclaimed Jessie Lynch.

"Of course, you would always be laden with favors," said Judy; "that is, if you could get all your beaux to come to the same cotillion. You are like the sailor who had a lass in every port. I strongly suspect you of having an admirer in every prominent city in the country."

Jessie laughed and dimpled.

"No," she said; "I stopped at the Rocky Mountains."

Otoyo, who had been listening closely to this dialogue, suddenly bethought herself of a new sensation she had provided for her friends, which she was about to forget.

"Oh," she cried, "I nearlee forgetting. American girl love fortune telling? So do Japanese. You like to have your fortune told?" she asked, cocking her head on one side like a little bird and blinking at Jessie.

"Would she?" cried a dozen ironical voices.

"I hope it's nothing disagreeable and there's no bad luck in it," said Jessie, drawing a slip of paper from a flat, shiny box. "But it's all in Japanese," she added, with much disappointment.

"Otoyo will translate it. Won't you, you cunning little sugar-lump?" asked Molly.

"Everybodee choose and then I will make into English," said the small, busy hostess, flying from one to another on her marshmallow soles.

"Me first of all," cried the eager Jessie. "I had first draw."

Otoyo took the slip and, holding it under a lantern, translated in a high, funny voice:

"He happy who feesh for one and catch heem, than feesh for many and catch none."

The wild whoop of joy that went up at this unexpectedly appropriate statement made the lanterns quiver and the teacups rattle.

Some of the others were not so appropriate, but they were all very amusing. Mabel Hinton, who had been nicknamed "old maid" the year before, drew one which announced:

"Your daughters will make good matches."

The girls laughed till the tears ran down their cheeks at this prediction, and Mabel was quite teased.

"I'd like to know why I shouldn't have a family of marriageable daughters some day," she exclaimed, blinking at them with near-sighted eyes while she wiped the moisture from her large round glasses.

Nance's fortune was a very sentimental one and caused her to blush as red as a rose.

"Love will not change, neither in the cold weenter time nor in the warm spreengtime under the cherry-blossoms when the moon ees bright."

"Oh, thou blushing maiden," cried Judy, "canst look us in the eye after this?"

Molly's was rather comforting to her troubled and unquiet heart.

"Look for cleer weather when the sky ees blackest."

Of all the mottoes, Judy's was the funniest.

"Eef thy hus-band beat thee, geeve heem a smile."

"Smile indeed," exclaimed that young woman when the laughter had died down; "I'll just turn the tables on him and beat him back, Otoyo. American young lady quite capable of giving honorable husband a good trouncing with a black-snake whip."

Otoyo opened her eyes at this. It was doubtful whether she could appreciate the humor of her mottoes, but she enjoyed hearing the girls laugh; she realized they must be having a good time if they laughed like that – really genuine, side-shaking laughter and no lip-smiles for politeness' sake.

"Who's heard the news about Judith Blount?" asked one of the Williamses, after the party had broken up and only the Queen's girls remained.

Molly and Judy and Nance exchanged telegraphic glances. They had been careful to keep secret what Mrs. Kean had written her daughter, and they were curious to know just how much the others knew on the subject, which was now always uppermost, at least in Molly's mind.

"She's sub-let her apartment, furnished, to that rich freshman from New York, whose father's worth a fortune a minute from gold mines and oil wells, and she, I mean Judith, is taking the empty singleton here."

"You don't mean it!" cried a chorus of voices.

"It seems to me I heard that a Mr. Blount lost a lot of money," observed Margaret. "It must have been her father."

"How are the mighty fallen!" exclaimed Edith Williams. "I should think she'd have gone anywhere rather than here."

"She couldn't get in any of the less expensive places unless she had taken a room over the post office in the village."

"Poor Judith!" ejaculated Jessie. "I've known it for a week."

To save her life Molly could not keep a tiny little barbed thought from piercing her mind: "Is it fair for Judith to stay at college when I have to leave? Has she any right to the money that's paying her tuition?"

Molly turned quickly and began gathering up the débris from the tea-tables. Anything to get that bitter notion out of her head.

"Let's be awfully nice to her, girls," she said presently. "I'm sure she's terribly unhappy. Remember what success we had with Frances Andrews last year just through a little kind treatment."

"Judith is a different subject altogether," said Margaret, argumentatively. "She has such a dreadful temper. You never can tell when it's going to break loose."

With the Goddess of War sitting among them at this moment, nobody dared betray by the flick of an eyelash that there were others whose tempers were rather uncertain. Only Jessie observed:

"Well, Margaret, dear, you got the better of her that time at the Ledges, temper or no temper."

"I doubt if she takes to poverty as a duck to water," here put in Judy. "She'll make a very impatient tutor, and I'd hate to have her black my boots. She might throw them at my head."

"She is certainly not subdued by her reverses," remarked Jessie. "She's just like a caged animal. I never saw anything to equal her. I went over there this afternoon and she was packing. She almost pitched me out of the room. Of course, it's very luxurious at Beta Phi House, but her little room here isn't to be scorned. It's really quite pretty, with lovely paper and matting and chintz curtains and wicker chairs."

Suddenly a wave of indignation swept over Molly. Nobody had ever seen her look as she looked now, burning spots of color on her cheeks and her eyes black.

"What right has she – how dare she – she should be thankful – " she burst out incoherently. Then she stamped both feet up and down like an angry child and flung herself face down on the couch in an agony of tears. It was a kind of mental tempest, resembling one of those sudden storms which come with a flash of lightning, a roaring crash of thunder and then a downpour of rain.

"Why, Mary Carmichael Washington Brown," exclaimed Judy, kneeling beside poor Molly, "whatever has come over you?"

Little Otoyo was so frightened that she hid behind a Japanese screen, while the other girls sat dumb with amazement.

The Williams girls were intensely interested, and Margaret, always consistent and logical in her decisions, knew very well that there was something serious back of it.

"Please forgive me," said Molly presently, wiping her eyes and sitting up as limp as a rag. "I'm awfully sorry to have spoiled the evening like this. I didn't mean it. It just slipped out of me before I knew it was coming."

"Why, you old sweetness," exclaimed the affectionate Judy, "of course, you are forgiven. I guess you ought to be allowed a few outbursts. But what caused it?"

"I think it was nervousness," answered Molly evasively.

But the girls began to realize that it was not entirely nervousness. It occurred to them now that Molly had been preoccupied and strangely silent for some time. Occasionally she gave way to forced gaiety. Twice she had started on walks, changed her mind and come back, without giving any excuse except that she was a little tired. It was, in fact, a condition that had come about so gradually that they were hardly aware they had noticed it until this sudden breakdown.

"She's dead tired and ought to get to bed this minute," remarked Nance, caressing her friend's hand.

"Dearest Molly," said Jessie, who was moved by a gentle sympathy always for those in trouble, "go to bed and get a good rest. It was just nice and human of you to get mad once in a thousand years and we love you all the better for it."

They were good friends, all of them, Molly felt, as they kissed her or pressed her hand good-night, while Nance and Judy hastened to clear off the divan and put up the windows to blow out the heavy, incense-scented air.

It was Otoyo, however, who brought the tears back to poor Molly's eyes.

"Dear, beautiful Mees Brown," she said. "You must not think it will come wrong. It will come right, I feel, surelee."

"What is it, Nance?" whispered Judy, after they had got their friend to bed.

Nance shook her head.

"Heaven knows," she answered. "But it's something, and it must be serious, Judy, or she never would have let go like that."

CHAPTER IX.

VESPERS

There was a pretty little Episcopal chapel in the village of Wellington, where at Vespers on Sunday afternoons the students were wont to congregate. Six Wellington girls always served as ushers and the college Glee Club formed the Chapel choir.

"It's a good thing to go to Vespers," remarked Judy one Sabbath afternoon, pinning on her large velvet hat before the mirror over the mantel, notably the most becoming mirror in the house, "not only for the welfare of our souls, but also to attire ourselves in decent clothes."

"I suspect you of thinking it's good for your soul to wear good clothes, Judy," observed Nance.

"You suspect rightly, then," answered Judy. "If I had to dress in rags, I'm afraid my soul would become a thing of shreds and patches, too, all shiny at the seams and down at the heels."

Nance laughed.

"That's a funny way to talk, considering you are about to attend Vespers at the Chapel of the good St. Francis, who took the vows of poverty and lived a roving life on the hills around Assisi."

"That's all very true," said Judy, "and I've seen the picture of him being married to Lady Poverty, but our dispositions are different, St. Francis's and mine. I like the roving over the hills part, because I'm a wanderer by nature, but I like to wander in nice clothes. My manners are getting to be regular old gray sweater manners, and if I didn't put on my velvet suit and best hat once a week there's no telling what kind of a rude creature I would become."

"Why, Julia Kean, I'm ashamed of you," cried Nance, "you've as good as confessed that you go to Vespers to show your fine clothes."

"I don't go to show 'em, goosie; I go to wear 'em. But you have no sense of humor. What's the good of telling you anything? Molly, there, understands my feelings, I am sure."

Molly was not listening. She was making calculations at her desk with a blunt pencil on a scrap of paper.

"I've got as good a sense as you have," cried Nance hotly, "only I don't approve of being humorous about sacred things."

"Nonsense," broke in Judy, "don't you know, child, that you can't limit humor? It spreads over every subject and it's not necessarily profane because it touches on clothes at church. I suppose you think there is nothing funny about the Reverend Gustavus Adolphus Larsen, and you have forgotten how you giggled that Sunday when he announced from the pulpit that his text was taken from St. Paul's 'Efistle to the Epeesians.'"

"He's always getting mixed," here put in Molly, who at certain stages in the warm discussions between Nance and Judy always sounded a pacifying note. "They do say that he was talking to Miss Walker about one of the faculty pews, and he said: 'Do you occupew this pi?'"

This was too much for Nance's severity, and she broke down and laughed gaily with the others.

"He's a funny little man," she admitted, "but he's well meaning."

"Hurry up," admonished Judy; "it's twenty minutes of four and I want to get a good seat this afternoon."

"You want to show off your new fashionable headgear, you mean, Miss Vanity," said Nance, pinning on her neat brown velvet toque and squinting at herself in the mirror.

"Oh, me," thought Molly, "I wish I had a decent garment to show off."

She had intended to buy some clothes that autumn from a purchasing agent who came several times a year to Wellington with catalogues and samples, but she had been afraid to spend any of the money she had earned because of the precarious state of the family finances.

She ran her hatpin through her old soft gray felt, which had a bright blue wing at one side, and slipped on the coat of her last winter's gray suit. Then she drew white yarn gloves over her kid ones, because she had no muff and her hands were always frozen, and stoically marched across the campus with her friends.

The Chapel was already crowded when the girls arrived. They had not heard that the Rev. Gustavus's pulpit was to be filled that afternoon by a preacher from New York. At any rate, they had to sit in the little balcony, which commanded a better view of the minister than it did of the congregation. He was a nice-looking young man, with an unaffected manner, and he preached to the packed congregation as if he were talking quietly and simply to one person; at least, it seemed so to Molly. The sermon was a short address on "Faith." It contained no impassioned eloquence nor fiery exhortations, but it impressed the students profoundly.

"Don't try to instruct God about the management of your lives," he said, "any more than you would direct a wise and kind master who employed you to work on his estate. All the Great Master asks of you is to work well and honestly. The reward is sure to come. You cannot hurry it and you cannot make it greater than you deserve. It is useless to struggle and rage inwardly. Is not that being rather like a spoiled child, who lies on the floor and kicks and screams because his mother won't give him any more cake? Just put your affairs in the hands of God and go quietly along, doing the best you can. All of a sudden the conditions you once struggled against will cease to exist, and before you have realized it, the thing you asked for is yours."

Lots of people, the minister said, prayed a great deal without believing that their prayers would be heard. It reminded him of a little anecdote.

"One Sunday morning during a terrible drought a country preacher knelt in the midst of his family at home and prayed earnestly for rain. When it was time to start for church, the minister noticed that his little daughter was carrying an umbrella.

"'Why do you take an umbrella, my child?' he asked, glancing at the cloudless sky.

"'Didn't you just pray for rain, father?' she answered.

"All the learning of the ages is not greater than the simple faith of a little child," finished the young preacher.

And now the sermon was over and the girls were chatting in groups outside the Chapel, or strolling along the sidewalk arm in arm. Molly had withdrawn from her companions for a moment and was standing alone in a corner of the vestibule.

"I'm afraid I've been acting just like the little child who threw himself on the floor and kicked and screamed for more cake," she was thinking. "I suppose another year at college is just like a nice big hunk of chocolate cake and it wouldn't be good for mental digestion. I might as well stop struggling and begin to cram mathematics. That's the hardest thing I have, and I ought to get in as much of it as I can before I go."

"Perhaps you won't have to go at all," spoke another voice in her mind.

But Molly couldn't see it that way. Other letters from her mother had made it clear to her that no more money could be raised. There was a good place waiting for her to step into, however, in a small private school made up of children who lived in the neighborhood. She could come home after the mid-year examinations when the present teacher in the school was planning to be married.

"Oh, Miss Brown," someone said. Molly looked up quickly. It was President Walker. "Will you walk along with me? I had a letter from your mother last night and I want to speak to you about it."

The President was a very democratic and motherly woman who not only guided the affairs of the college with a wise hand, but kept in personal touch with her girls, and it was not unusual to see her walking home from Vespers with several students. This time, however, she took Molly's arm and led her down the village street without asking any of the others to join her.

The young girl was very sensible of the honor paid her, thus singled out by the President to walk back to college. She felt a shy pleasure in the sensation they created as the crowd of students parted to let them pass.

"I am very, very sorry to receive this news from your mother, Miss Brown," began the President. "I suppose you know what it is?"

"You mean about leaving college, Miss Walker?"

"Yes. It's really a great distress to me to think that one of my Queen's girls especially must give up in the middle of her course. Instead of listening to that young man at Vespers, I was thinking and thinking about this unwelcome news."

Molly smiled. She had managed to listen to the preaching and to think about her affairs at the same time, because they somehow seemed to fit together. Once she almost felt that perhaps he knew all about her case and was preaching to her. But, of course, everybody had problems and lots of the girls thought the same thing, no doubt, – Madeleine Petit, for instance.

"Is there no possible way it could be arranged?" went on the President. "Is this decision of your mother's final?"

Evidently Mrs. Brown had not explained why Molly was obliged to come home.

"Oh, she didn't decide it," answered the young girl, quickly. "It's because – because the money's gone – lost."

"I suspected it was something of that sort," went on the President. "Now, there is a way, Miss Brown, by which you could remain if you would be willing to leave Queen's Cottage. I am in charge of a Student Fund for just such cases as yours. This provides for tuition and board, – not on the campus, but in the village. You're making something now tutoring the little Japanese girl, I understand. That's good. That will help along. You will have to manufacture some excuse to your friends about leaving Queen's. Otherwise, the fund arrangement may remain a secret between you and me."

Miss Walker pressed the girl's hand and smiled kindly as she searched her face for some sign of gladness and relief at this offer.

Molly tried to smile back.

"We'll leave everything as it is until the end of this semester," continued the President.

"Thank you very, very much," Molly said, making a great effort to keep her voice from sounding shaky.

Leave Queen's! Was it possible the President didn't know that life at Queen's was the best part of college to her? Would there be any pleasure left if she had to tear herself away from her beloved chums and take up quarters in the village, living on a charity fund?

When she separated from Miss Walker at the McLeans' front door, she was so filled with inward lamentations and weeping that she could scarcely say good-night to the President, who looked somewhat puzzled at the girl's still pale face.

Rushing back to Queen's, Molly flung herself through the front door and tore upstairs. On the landing she bumped into Judith Blount, who gave her a sullen, angry look.

"Please be careful next time and don't take up the whole stairs," exclaimed that young woman rudely.

Molly glanced at her wildly. What right had she to talk, this wretch of a girl who could remain at Queen's and live on other people's money? Oh, oh, oh! Misery of miseries! She rushed up the second flight. She was having what Judy called "the dry weeps." At the door of Otoyo's room she paused. It was half open and the little Japanese was sitting cross-legged on the floor with a lamp beside her, studying.

"May I come in?"

"With much gladness," answered Otoyo, rising and bowing ceremoniously.

"I want to stay in here a little while, Otoyo, away from other people. May I sit here by the window in this big chair? Go on with your lessons. I don't want to talk. I wanted to be with someone who was quite quiet. I should have been obliged to hide in a closet if you hadn't let me in."