CHAPTER I
NANCE OLDHAM

“I am so afraid Nance will be changed,” sighed Molly as she put the finishing touches to the room her old friend was to occupy.

“I’ll wager anything she is the same old Nance Oldham,” insisted Professor Green, obediently mounting the ladder to hang the last snowy curtain at the broad, deep window in the guest chamber overlooking the campus. “I think she is the kind of girl who will always be the same. Is that straight?”

“A little bit lower at this end – there! What a comfort you are, Edwin!” and Molly viewed the effect approvingly.

“Pretty good general houseworker, eh?” and the dignified professor of English at Wellington College ran nimbly down the ladder and hugged his wife. She submitted with very good grace to his embraces in spite of the fact that the fresh bureau scarves and table covers with which she was preparing to decorate her old friend’s room were included in the demonstration of affection.

Professor Edwin Green always declared that he never expected to catch up on all the years he had loved Molly Brown and had been forced to let “concealment like a worm in the bud feed on his damask cheek.” He and Molly had been married almost four years on that day in March when he was assisting in the imposing rite of hanging curtains in the guest chamber, and she was still as wonderful to him as she had been on that day they had walked through the Forest of Fontainebleau and he had confessed his love. She was the same charming girl who had lingered too long in the cloisters and been locked in to be rescued by him on her first day at college, now so many years ago.

Indeed, Molly Brown has changed very little since last we saw her. Little Mildred is walking and talking and singing little tunes and saying Mother Goose rhymes. She even knows her letters upside down and no other way, having learned them from blocks, presumably standing on her curly head as she acquired the knowledge.

There is another baby in the nursery now: little Dodo, whose real name is George, a remarkably satisfactory infant who sleeps when he should and wakes in a good humor, taking the proper nourishment at the proper hours and going back to sleep. Molly had learned the great secret of young motherhood from her first born: not to take parenthood too solemnly and seriously, and to realize that Mother Nature is the very best mother of all and babies thrive most when left as much as possible to her all-wise and tender care.

Nance Oldham, Molly’s old friend and roommate at college, was coming at last to make her long promised visit to the Greens. Little wonder that Molly feared she would be changed! Nance’s path in life had not been strewn with roses. No doubt my readers will remember that Mrs. Oldham, her mother, was a clever woman, lecturer, suffrage agitator, anything but a homemaker. When Nance finished college she had gone back to Vermont and dutifully kept house for her neglected father, although her secret ambition was to teach. Mr. Oldham had been so happy in having a home of his own that Nance had felt fully repaid for her sacrifice. Her mother, too, had at last realized the delights of home, when someone else had the trouble of keeping it, and had spent much more time with her family than she had for many years.

A lingering illness had attacked Mr. Oldham and after two years of tender nursing on the part of his daughter and futile ineffectual attempts at tenderness on the part of his wife, the poor man had passed away. Then it was that Nance’s friends had felt that her career might begin, but Mrs. Oldham had suddenly decided that she could not live without the husband who had been ever patient with her vagaries and she had gone into a slow decline. More nursing and self-denial for the patient Nance!

She was an orphan now and although she was in reality little more than a girl she felt old and settled, that the little youth she had ever had, had left her years ago. Molly had written her immediately on hearing of Mrs. Oldham’s death, declaring that she and her Edwin were ready and eager for the long-deferred visit. “I say ‘visit,’” wrote Molly, “but I want you to make your home with us. Little Mildred calls you Aunt Nance and Dodo will call you the same as soon as he can talk.”

The guest chamber was now in perfect order. The fresh curtains hung as straight as a learned professor of English could hang them, the bureau scarf and table cover were smooth and spotless, and on the window sill blossomed a pot of sweet violets sent by Mrs. McLean from her own greenhouse.

“I wonder about Nance and Andy McLean,” said Molly, as she and her husband were walking to the station to meet their guest.

“Wonder what about them?”

“Wonder if they will ever marry!”

“Pooh! I fancy it was just a schoolgirl affair. They don’t often amount to much.”

“Schoolgirl affairs can be right serious, as you of all others should know!”

“Thank goodness, some of them!” said Edwin devoutly.

“I reckon Nance will be in deep mourning,” sighed Molly. “I hate mourning, – I mean long veils and crêpe trimmings.”

“So do I, – a relic of barbarism!”

“I’ll give up my literary club for a while. I know Nance will not feel like seeing a lot of young people.”

Professor Green said nothing but he felt it was rather hard on Wellington that any of its pleasures should be curtailed because of the death of a lady in Vermont. But Molly must do what she thought best. He hoped their guest would not put too long a face on life and would not prove inconsolable.

The long train stopped at the little station at Wellington and Molly and her husband eagerly scanned the few passengers who alighted from the Pullman. One lady in a long crêpe veil got an embrace from the impulsive Molly but she turned out to be an utter stranger and not the beloved Nance.

“She didn’t come!” cried Molly.

“Oh yes, she did, but she came on a day coach,” and there was Nance hugging Molly and shaking hands with Professor Green at the same time.

That gentleman was viewing his wife’s old friend with great satisfaction. Instead of the long crêpe veil and the lugubrious black-clothed figure, here was a slight young woman in a neat brown suit and furs, with a close brown velvet toque and a chic little dotted brown veil.

“Nance! I was expecting – ”

“Of course you were expecting to find me swathed in black. I am doing what Mother asked me to do. She hated mourning and so did Father and I am a fright in black and it would have meant a new outfit, which I can ill afford, and so – ”

“And so you are a sensible girl,” said Professor Green approvingly, as he took possession of her traveling bag and trunk check.

“Oh, Nance, you are not changed one bit!” cried Molly.

“You are changed a lot,” said the truthful Nance, “but you are more beautiful. In fact, you never were really beautiful before, but now, now – ”

“Oh, spare my blushes!” cried Molly, who did not spare herself but blushed and blushed and blushed again.

Nance was the same little brown-eyed person with the same honest look out of those eyes. In repose her mouth did have a slight droop at the corners but otherwise she might have been a college girl still, so youthful were her lines and so clear and rosy her healthy skin. Her hair was as Molly had always remembered it, smooth and glossy with much brushing and every lock in place.

“Are you tired, honey? If you are, we can go home in the bus,” suggested Molly. “Look what a fine motor bus we have now! Do you remember the old yellow one with the lame horses?”

“Do I? And also that I met you right at this station when we were both freshmen and we rode up in that bus together. Oh, Molly, it is wonderful to be here with you! No, I’m not tired, so let’s walk.”

The professor was due for lectures and the girls left him without reluctance. Even husbands were superfluous when such old friends met after being separated for so many years. There was so much to talk about, so many loose threads to catch up, so much belated news that had not seemed important enough to write.

“I’m dying to see the children.”

“They are lovely! There is Mildred now waving to us from your window. I wonder what she is doing in there. I do hope she has not got into mischief,” said Molly uneasily.

The guest chamber was still spotless and Molly breathed a sigh of relief. She had had visions of the irrepressible Mildred’s making dolly sheets of the bureau scarf or of putting her black kitten to sleep in the snowy bed. The chubby imp was standing with her back to the window, her hands behind her. Her golden curls made a halo around her charming face, her brown eyes were soft and dreamy and her rosebud mouth looked as though butter would not melt in it.

“Come, darling, and speak to Aunt Nance,” said Molly.

“Ain’t no Aunt Nance!”

“Mildred!”

“Never mind, Molly! Don’t force her. She and I will end by being sweethearts, I am sure,” said Nance laughing.

“Never mind, Dodo will be your sweetheart now,” declared Molly, going through all the agony of motherhood when the offspring refuses to be polite. “You may go to Katy, Mildred,” in a tone as severe as she could make it.

Mildred sidled around, carefully keeping her back to her mother.

“What have you in your hand, darling?”

“Fings!”

“What things?”

“I been a-tuttin’.”

“Scissors! Oh, Mildred, you know how afraid your mother is for you to play with scissors! What am I to do with you?”

Mildred made a sudden resolution. Why not throw herself on the mercy of this new aunt for protection. She darted by her mother and sprang into the ready arms of Nance.

“I been a-tuttin’ a bunch of vi’lets for my Aunt Nance – an’ I been a-fwingin’ her curtains all pretty for her.”

In one hand she had tightly clasped a huge pair of shears and in the other the violets which she had ruthlessly culled from the pot sent by Mrs. McLean.

“Oh, Mildred, see what you have done,” agonized Molly. “Mrs. McLean sent them to you, Nance. I am so sorry they are spoiled.”

“But they are not,” declared Nance, trying to keep down the blush that would come at the knowledge that Andy McLean’s mother had shown her this attention. “We can put this dear little bunch in water, and I am sure there are many more buds to bloom. Let’s see, Mildred.”

“’Deed they is! I wouldn’t cut no li’l baby buds off for nothin’ or nothin’. ’Tain’t no bad Milly in this house.”

“But the curtains!” wailed poor Molly when she viewed the neat fringes that her daughter had so carefully slashed with the great shears.

“Now don’t worry about that,” insisted Nance. “Mildred and I are going to cut them off and hem them up. Aren’t we, Mildred? Very short curtains are all the style now, anyhow.”

“Yes!” exclaimed the wily Mildred eagerly, “the windows likes to show they silk stockings, jes’ like the ladies.”

“Oh, you darling!” cried Nance, sinking down and holding the child in her arms, while Molly rescued the long and dangerous shears.

“Now, Muvver, you needn’t to worry no mo’, Aunt Nance an’ I is done made up an’ I done forgive her an’ all.”

“But how about you! Who has forgiven you?”

“Me! I done forgive myself ’long with Aunt Nance. I say right easy way down inside me: ‘Milly, ’scuse me!’ An’ then way down inside me say mos’ politeful: ‘You’s ’scusable, darlin’ chil’.’”

“Molly, how can you resist her?” asked Nance.

“Well, I don’t reckon I can,” said Molly, whimsically. “But you won’t do it any more, will you, Mildred?”

“No’m, never in my world – cross my heart an’ wish I may die – bake a puddin’ bake a pie did you ever tell a lie yes you did you know you did you broke yo’ mammy’s teapot lid.”

“Some of Kizzie’s nonsense!” laughed Molly, remembering in her childhood saying exactly the same thing.

And so Nance Oldham was received into the home of the Edwin Greens. Already she had won the approval of the master by appearing in colors and not swathed in black (men always do hate mourning). Mildred had decided to love and honor and make her obey. Little Dodo soon accepted her lap as an especially nice place to spend his few waking moments, and Molly’s love and welcome were assured from the beginning of time.