Molly Brown's College Friends

“Oh, the poor little letters!” she cried. “Is that all they mean to you?”

“Oh, honey, they meant a lot to me and still do, but they are just letters and you are – you.”

“But how about the letters you wrote Miss Polly Nelson? Are they just letters to her and nothing more? Don’t you think it is possible that she may have treasured your letters, especially the pretty warm ones, and be looking forward to the end of the war with the same eagerness that you have felt up to – say – ”

“The minute I laid eyes on you. At first I used to dream maybe you were she, but I began to feel that she must be much – younger – somehow, than you. You are so capable, so mature in a way. She is little more than a child and you are a grown woman.”

“I am twenty-one – but the war ages one.”

“I don’t mean you look old – I just mean you seem so sensible.”

“And Miss Nelson didn’t?”

“I don’t mean that, I just mean she seemed immature. But suppose you read the last letter. And couldn’t you do it with one hand and let me hold the other?”

“Certainly not!” and the night nurse stooped and gathered the scattered letters. Leaning over may have accounted for the rosy hue that overspread her countenance.

“You certainly read her writing mighty easily. I had a hard time at first. I think she writes a rotten fist, although there is plenty of character in it, dear little Godmother!”

“Humph! Do you think so? I wouldn’t tell her that if I were you – I mean that you think her fist is rotten.”

“Of course not, but begin, please, and say – couldn’t you manage with one hand?”

But the night nurse was adamant and drew herself up very primly and began to read:

My dear Godson:

I am afraid gratitude has got the better of you. You must not feel that because a girl in America has written you a pile of foolish letters and sent you a few little paltry presents, you must send her such very loverlike letters in return. I am disappointed in you, Godson. I had an idea that you were steadier. Just suppose I were a designing female who was going to hold you up and drag you through the wounded-affections court? There is quite enough in your last two letters to justify such a proceeding. It may be only your poverty that will restrain me. In the first place, you don’t know me from Adam or rather Eve. I may be a Fairy Godmother with a crooked back and a black cat, who prefers a broom-stick to a limousine; I may have a hare-lip and a mean disposition; I may write vers libre and believe in dress reform. In fact I am a pig in a poke and you are a very foolish person to think you want to carry me off without ever looking at me. I won’t say that I don’t want to see you and know you, because I do. I have been very honest with you in my letters because, as I told you once, it has seemed almost like keeping a diary to write to you, and I think a person who is not honest in a diary is as bad as the person who cheats at solitaire. When the war is over if you want to look me up you will find me in Louisville, Kentucky. When you do find me, I want you to be nothing but my Godson. You may not like me a bit and I may find you unbearable, – somehow, I don’t believe I shall, though. I do hope you will like me, too. One thing I promise – that is, not to fall in love with anyone else until I have looked you over. And you – I fancy you see no females to fall in love with.

I never let myself think about your getting killed. As Fairy Godmother I cast a spell about you to protect you. There are times when I almost wish you could be safely wounded. Those are the times when I doubt the efficacy of my prayers and the powers of my fairy gifts.

And now for the news: I am going to the front! I have worked it by strategy. A girl I know has had all her papers made out ready to join the Red Cross nurses, and now at the last minute her young man has stepped in and persuaded her to marry him instead. I have cajoled the papers from her and am leaving in a few hours. Aunt Sally and Cousin Kate, Uncle Bruce and Cousin Maria are half demented. They don’t know how I worked it or I am sure they would have the law on me for perjury. I am free, white, and twenty-one now, and they could control me in no other way. Good-by, Godson! I wonder if we will meet somewhere in France. I will write you when I can, but I am afraid I shall not be able to send any more presents for a while.

Your affectionate Godmother.

“Now don’t you hate and despise me for telling you what I did just now? You see she says she will at least not fall in love with anyone else until she looks me over, and think what I have done! What must I do? I am going to try not to tell you I love you any more until that other girl knows what a blackguard I am, but you must understand all the time that I do.”

“I understand nothing, Mr. Stephen Scott. I am simply the night nurse in the convalescent ward and you have asked me to read some letters to you, and I have read them; and now it is my duty to forget what is in them, and I am going to do it, – I have done it. All I can say is that you might give Miss Polly Nelson the chance to find someone else she likes better than she does you before you are so quick to take for granted she will stick to her bargain, too. If there is any jilting going on, we Southern girls rather prefer to be the jilters than the jiltees.”

“Don’t say jilting! It isn’t fair. Please be good to me! I am so miserable.”

The night nurse smiled in spite of herself and felt his pulse.

“There now! Just as I thought! You have worked yourself up into an abnormal pulse and I shall have to start a chart on you.”

“Abnormal nothing! How is a fellow’s pulse to remain normal when you put your dear little fingers on his wrist? But I forgot! I am not going to make love to you until I can let my Godmother know. Maybe she has met some grand English Tommy by this time – ” And then he groaned aloud and cried: “But I don’t want her to do that, either!”

“Blessed if I’m not in love with two girls,” he thought.

The night nurse sat quietly down to her charts after having gone the rounds of her ward. All was quiet. The convalescent soldiers were sleeping peacefully, dreaming of home, she hoped. Scott stirred restlessly now and then. He could not sleep but watched the busy little stained hand of the night nurse as it glided rapidly over the charts. She had no light but that of a guttering candle, carefully shaded from her patients’ eyes, but Scott could see her well-poised head and fine profile as she bent over her writing. How lovely she was! Would she ever listen to him? How she stood up for her sex, – and still she did not exactly repulse him. What a strange name for a girl like that to have! Grubb! It was preposterous. Indeed, he felt it his duty to make her change that name as soon as possible. Polly Nelson is a pretty name – dear little Godmother! Would she despise him, too, like this other girl? But did this other one despise him?

The night nurse made her rounds again and then left the ward for a moment. When she returned, she came to the American’s bedside.

“A letter has just come for you, Mr. Scott.”

“For me? Splendid! Will you read it to me?”

“Yes, if you cannot possibly see to do it yourself.”

“I might, but I’d rather not.”

“It is in the same rotten fist of those I read you to-night.”

“My Fairy Godmother! I – I – believe I can see to read that myself.”

She handed him the letter. Her hand was trembling a little and so was his. She brought the guttering candle and he opened his letter.

Somewhere in France.

My dear Godson:

I have always been so frank with you that I feel I must make a confession. I promised you in my last letter, the one I wrote just before I left home, that I would not fall in love with anyone until after the war, when you were to present yourself in Louisville and we were to view each other for the first time. Dear Godson – I have not kept my word. They say a man falls in love with his nurse often because of the feeling he has for his mother. She makes it seem as though he were a little child again. I reckon a nurse falls in love with her patient because he seems so like a little boy. She loves him first because of the maternal instinct. Be that as it may, I am in love with one of my patients. I tell you this fearing you may be wounded and you may fall in the hands of a cap and apron, and from a feeling of noblesse oblige you may not grasp the happiness within your reach.

God bless you, my dear Godson!

Always,Your Fairy Godmother.

P. S. – He is an American.

A great tear rolled down the scarred cheek of the young soldier and splashed on the signature. Then something happened that made him sit up very straight in his cot and stretch out a shaking hand for the night nurse. She was by his side in a moment.

“Look! Look! The ink is not dry yet. See where that tear dropped! Dry ink would not float off like that!” He turned the sheet over. It was a chart.

“But you – you – little Fairy Godmother! Who is he?”

“There is only one American in my ward.”

“But you said your name was Grubb!”

“That’s my official name. Mary Grubb was the girl whose place I got with the Red Cross. Do you know, you hurt my feelings terribly when you said my fist was rotten?”

And Stephen Scott, holding the little stained and roughened hand in his, wondered that he ever could have made such a break.

“Thank God, you are just one girl, after all!” he cried.

But the night nurse wished that there were two of her for a while at least: one to stay by the bedside of the convalescent American and one to make out the charts that must be got ready for the morning rounds of the surgeon in charge.

CHAPTER V

THE CRITICS

“Ahem!” said Billie, rapping for order as the girls began all at once to say what they thought of “Fairy Godmothers Wanted.” The one with the burning plot began rattling her paper in preparation of the turn she hoped for.

“First general impressions are in order! One at a time, please! You, Miss Oldham, you tell us how it strikes you.”

“Pleasing on the whole, but – ”

“We’ll come to the ‘buts’ later,” was the stern mandate of the chairman of the day.

“You, Lilian Swift, you next!”

“Too long!” from the blunt Lilian.

“The idea! I think it was just sweet,” from the gentle Alabamian.

“I got kind of mixed in the middle and couldn’t tell which was the nurse and which Polly Nelson,” declared one who had evidently gone off into a cataleptic fit, no doubt dreaming of a story she meant to write some day.

“I never, never could love a man who had deceived me,” sighed the sentimental one with big eyes and a little mouth.

“Personal predilections not valuable as criticism,” said Billie sternly.

Many and various were the opinions expressed. Molly diligently and meekly took notes, agreeing heartily with the ones who thought it was too long.

“Where must I cut it?” she asked eagerly.

“Cut out all the letters!” suggested Lilian.

“How could she? It is all letters,” asked Billie, whose chair was becoming a burden as she felt she must get into the discussion.

“Cut ’em, anyhow. Letters in fiction are no good.”

“Humph! How about the early English novelists?” asked Molly.

“Dead! Dead! All of them dead!” stormed Lilian.

“Then how about Mary Roberts Rinehart and Booth Tarkington and lots of others? Daddy Longlegs is all letters.”

“All the samey, it is a poor stunt,” insisted the intrepid Lilian. “I call it a lazy way to get your idea over.”

“Perhaps you are right, but the point is: did I get my idea over?”

“We-ll, yes, – but they tell me editors don’t like letter form of fiction.”

“Certainly none of them have liked this,” sighed Molly, who had devoutly hoped her little story would sell. The money she made herself was very delightful to receive and more delightful to spend. A professor’s salary can as a rule stand a good deal of supplementing.

“How about the plot, now?” asked Billie, having finished with the general impression.

“Slight!”

“Strong!”

“Weak!”

“Impossible!”

“Plausible!”

“Original!”

“Bromidic!”

“Involved!” were the verdicts. The matter was thoroughly threshed out, Billie with difficulty keeping order. Nance was called on for the “but” that she had been left holding.

“The plot is slight but certainly original in its way. The letters are too long, longer than a Godmother would be apt to write, I think. The story could be cut to three thousand words, I believe, to its advantage.”

“I have already cut out about fifteen hundred words,” wailed Molly. “The first writing was lots longer.”

“Gee!” breathed the one eager for a hearing.

“Now for the characterization! Don’t all speak at once, but one at a time tell what you think of it.”

“Did you mean to make Polly so silly?” asked Lilian.

“I – I – perhaps!” faltered Molly.

“Of course if you meant to, why then your characterization is perfect.”

“Silly! Why, she is dear,” declared the girl from Alabama. “I don’t like her having to nurse that black man, though.”

“Too many points of view!” suddenly blurted out a member who had hitherto kept perfectly silent, but she had been eagerly scanning a paper whereon was written the requisites for a short story.

“But you see – ” meekly began Molly.

“The point of view must either be that of the author solely or one of the characters,” asserted the knowing one. “Why, you even let us know how the Bedouin feels.”

“Oh!” gasped the poor author. “I think you would limit the story teller too much if you eliminated such things as that.”

“Here’s what the correspondence course says – ”

“Spare us!” cried the club in a chorus.

“I hate all these cut and dried rules!” cried Billie. “It would take all the spice out of literature if we stuck to them.”

“That’s just it,” answered Lilian. “We are not making literature but trying to sell our stuff. Persons who have arrived can write any old way. They can start off with the climax and end up with an introduction and their things go, but I’ll bet you my hat that you will not find a single story by a new writer that does not have to toe the mark drawn by the teachers of short story writing.”

“Which hat?” teased Billie. “The one you put on for Great-aunt Gertrude? If it is that one, I won’t bet. I wouldn’t read a short story by a new writer for it.”

“To return to my story,” pleaded Molly, “do you think if I rewrite it, leave out the letters, strengthen the plot a bit and make Polly a little wiser that I might sell it?”

“Sure!” encouraged Lilian.

“Yes, indeed!” echoed Nance.

“And the black man – please cut him out! I can’t bear to think of him,” from the girl from Alabama.

“Dialogue, – how about it?” asked the chairman.

“Pretty good, but a little stilted,” was the verdict of several critics.

“I think you are all of you simply horrid!” exclaimed Mary Neil, who had been silent and sullen through the whole evening. “I think it is the best story that has been read all year and I believe you are just jealous to tear it to pieces this way.”

“Stuff and nonsense!” said Lilian.

“We do hope we haven’t hurt your feelings, Mrs. Green,” cried the girl who was taking the correspondence course.

“Hurt my feelings! The very idea! I read my story to get help from you and not praise. I am going to think over what you have said and do my best to correct the faults, if I come to the conclusion you are right.”

“You would have a hard time doing what everybody says,” laughed Nance, “as no two have agreed.”

“Well, I can pick and choose among so many opinions,” said Molly, putting her manuscript back in its big envelope. “I might do as my mother did when she got the opinion of two physicians on the diet she was to have: she simply took from each man the advice that best suited her taste and between the two managed to be very well fed, and, strange to say, got well of her malady under the composite treatment.”

“Ahem!” said the girl with the burning plot, rattling her manuscript audibly so that the hardhearted Billie must perforce recognize her and give her the floor.

CHAPTER VI

“I HAD A LITTLE HUSBAND NO BIGGER THAN MY THUMB”

“Aunt Nance, what’s the use you ain’t got no husband an’ baby children?” Mildred always said use instead of reason.

“Lots of reasons!” answered Nance, smiling at her little companion. Mildred had moved herself and all her belongings into the guest-chamber. Her mother had at first objected, but when she found it made Nance happy to have the child with her, she gave her consent.

“Ain’t no husbands come along wantin’ you?”

“That is one of the reasons.”

“I’m going to make Dodo marry you when he gets some teeth.”

“Thank you, darling! Dodo would make a dear little husband.”

“Dodo wouldn’t never say nothin’ mean to you. He’s got more disposition than any baby in the family.”

“I am sure he wouldn’t,” said Nance, trying to count the stitches as she neatly turned the heel of the grey sock she was knitting. Nance was always knitting in those days.

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