CHAPTER IV
A BUSY DAY

The next day was always a chaotic one in Molly’s memory – a jumble of new faces and strange events. At breakfast she made the acquaintance of the freshmen who were staying at Queen’s Cottage – four in all. One of these was Julia Kean, “a nice girl in neutral tints,” as Molly wrote home to her sister, “with gray eyes and brown hair and a sense of humor.” She came to be known as “Judy,” and formed an intimate friendship with Molly and Nance, which lasted throughout the four years of their college course.

“How do you feel after your night’s rest?” she called across the table to Molly in the most friendly manner, just as if they had known each other always. “You look like the ‘Lady of the Sea’ in that blue linen that just matches your eyes.” She began looking Molly over with a kind of critical admiration, narrowing her eyes as an artist does when he’s at work on a picture. “I’d like to make a poster of you in blue-and-white chalk. I’d put you on a yellow, sandy beach, against a bright blue sky, in a high wind, with your dress and hair blowing – ” And with eyes still narrowed, she traced an imaginary picture with one hand and shaped her ideas with the other.

Molly laughed.

“You must be an artist,” she said, “with such notions about posing.”

“A would-be one, that’s all. ‘Not yet, but soon,’ is my motto.”

“That’s a bad motto,” here put in Nance Oldham. “It’s like the Spanish saying of ‘Hasta mañana.’ You are very apt to put off doing things until next day.”

Julia Kean looked at her reproachfully.

“You’ve read my character in two words,” she said.

“Why don’t you introduce me to your friends, Judy?” asked a handsome girl next to her, who had quantities of light-brown hair piled on top of her head.

“I haven’t been introduced myself,” replied Judy; “but I never could see why people should stop for introductions at teas and times like this. We all know we’re all right, or else we wouldn’t be here.”

“Of course,” said Frances Andrews, who had just come in, “why all this formality, when we are to be a family party for the next eight months? Why not become friends at once, without any preliminaries?”

Sally Marks, who had given them the vague yet meaningful warning the night before, appeared to be absorbed in her coffee cup, and the other two sophomores at the table were engaged in a whispered conversation.

“Nevertheless, I will perform the introductions,” announced Judy Kean. “This is Miss Margaret Wakefield, of Washington, D. C.; Miss Edith Coles, of Rhode Island; Miss Jessie Lynch, of Wisconsin, and Miss Mabel Hinton, of Illinois. As for me, my name is Julia Kean, and I come from – nowhere in particular.”

“You must have had a birthplace,” insisted that accurate young person, Nance Oldham.

“If you could call a ship a birthplace, I did,” replied Judy. “I was born in mid-ocean on a stormy night. Hence my stormy, restless nature.”

“But how did it happen?” asked Molly.

“Oh, it was all simple enough. Papa and mamma were on their way back from Japan, and I arrived a bit prematurely on board ship. I began life traveling, and I’ve been traveling ever since.”

“You’ll have to stay put here; awhile, at least,” said Sally Marks.

“I hope so. I need to gather a little moss before I become an habitual tramp.”

“Hadn’t we better be chasing along?” said Frances Andrews. “It’s almost time for chapel.”

No one answered and Molly began to wonder how long this strange girl would endure the part of a monologist at college. For that was what her attempts at conversation seemed to amount to. She admired Frances’s pluck, at any rate. Whatever she had done to offend, it was courageous of her to come back and face the music.

Chapel was an impressive sight to the new girls. The entire body of students was there, and the faculty, including Professor Edwin Green, who gave each girl the impression he was looking at her when he was really only gazing into the imaginary bull’s-eye of an imaginary camera, and saw not one of them. Molly decided his comeliness was more charm than looks. “The unknown charm,” she wrote her sister. “His ears are a little pointed at the top, and he has brown eyes like a collie dog. But it was nice of him to have given me his soup,” she added irrelevantly, “and I shall always appreciate it.”

After chapel, when Molly was following in the trail of her new friends, feeling a bit strange and unaccustomed, some one plucked her by the sleeve. It was Mary Stewart, the nice senior with the plain, but fine face.

“I’ll expect you this evening after supper,” she said. “I’m having a little party. There will be music, too. I thought perhaps you might like to bring a friend along. It’s rather lonesome, breaking into a new crowd by one’s self.”

It never occurred to Molly that she was being paid undue honors. For a freshman, who had arrived only the afternoon before, without a friend in college, to be asked to a small intimate party by the most prominent girl in the senior class, was really quite remarkable, so Nance Oldham thought; and she was pleased to be the one Molly chose to take along.

The two girls had had a busy, exciting day. They had not been placed in the same divisions, B and O being so widely separated in the alphabet, and were now meeting again for the first time since lunch. Molly had stretched her length on her couch and kicked off her pumps, described later by Judy Kean as being a yard long and an inch broad.

“I wish you would tell me your receipt for making friends, Molly,” exclaimed Nance. “You are really a perfect wonder. Don’t you find it troublesome to be so nice to so many people?”

“I’d find it lots harder not to be nice,” answered Molly. “Besides, it’s a rule that works both ways. The nicer you are to people, the nicer they are to you.”

“But don’t you think lots of people aren’t worth the effort and if you treat them like sisters, they are apt to take advantage of it and bore you afterwards?”

Molly smiled.

“I’ve never been troubled that way,” she said.

“Now, don’t tell me,” cried Nance, warming to the argument, “that that universally cordial manner of yours doesn’t bring a lot of rag-tags around to monopolize you. If it hasn’t before, it will now. You’ll see.”

“You make me feel like the leader of Coxey’s Army,” laughed Molly; “because, you see, I’m a kind of a rag-tag myself.”

Her eyes filled with tears. She was thinking of her meagre wardrobe. Nance was silent. She was slow of speech, but when she once began, she always said more than she intended simply to prove her point; and now she was afraid she had hurt Molly’s feelings. She was provoked with herself for her carelessness, and when she was on bad terms with herself she appeared to be on bad terms with everybody else. Of course, in her heart of hearts, she had been thinking of Frances Andrews, whom she felt certain Molly would never snub sufficiently to keep her at a distance.

The two girls went about their dressing without saying another word. Nance was coiling her smooth brown braids around her head, while Molly was looking sorrowfully at her only two available dresses for that evening’s party. One was a blue muslin of a heavenly color but considerably darned, and the other was a marquisette, also the worse for wear. Suddenly Nance gave a reckless toss of her hair brush in one direction and her comb in another, and rushed over to Molly, who was gazing absently into the closet.

“Oh, Molly,” she cried impetuously, seizing her friend’s hand, “I’m a brute. Will you forgive me? I’m afraid I hurt your feelings. It’s just my unfortunate way of getting excited and saying too much. I never met any one I admired as much as you in such a short time. I wish I did know how to be charming to everybody, like you. It’s been ground into me since I was a child not to make friends with people unless it was to my advantage, and I found out they were entirely worthy. And it’s a slow process, I can tell you. You are the very first chance acquaintance I ever made in my life, and I like you better than any girl I ever met. So there, will you say you have forgiven me?”

“Of course, I will,” exclaimed Molly, flushing with pleasure. “There is nothing to forgive. I know I’m too indiscriminate about making friends. Mother often complained because I would bring such queer children out to dinner when I was a child. Indeed, I wasn’t hurt a bit. It was the word ‘rag-tag,’ that seemed to be such an excellent description of the clothes I must wear this winter, unless some should drop down from heaven, like manna in the desert for the Children of Israel.”

Without a word, Nance pulled a box out from under her couch and lifted the lid. It disclosed a little hand sewing machine.

“Can you sew?” she asked.

“After a fashion.”

“Well, I can. It’s pastime with me. I’d rather make clothes than do lots of other things. Now, suppose we set to work and make some dresses. How would you like a blue serge, with turn-over collar and cuffs, like that one Miss Marks is wearing, that fastens down the side with black satin buttons?”

“Oh, Nance, I couldn’t let you do all that for me,” protested Molly. “Besides, I haven’t the material or anything.”

“Why don’t you earn some money, Molly?” suggested Nance. “There are lots of different ways. Mrs. Murphy, the housekeeper, was telling me about them. One of the girls here last year actually blacked boots – but, of course, you wouldn’t do anything so menial as that.”

“Wouldn’t I?” interrupted Molly. “Just watch me. That’s a splendid idea, Nance. It’s a fine, honorable labor, as Colonel Robert Wakefield said, when his wife had to take in boarders.”

Molly slipped on the blue muslin.

“It really doesn’t make any difference what she wears,” thought Nance, looking at her friend with covert admiration. “She’d be a star in a crazy quilt.”

The two girls hurried down to supper. Molly was thoughtful all through that conversational meal. Her mind was busy with a scheme by which she intended to remove that unceasing pressure for funds which bade fair to be an ever-increasing bugbear to her.

No. 16 on the Quadrangle turned out to be a very luxurious and comfortable suite of rooms, consisting of quite a large parlor, a little den or study and a bedroom. Mary Stewart met them at the door in such a plain dress that at first Molly was deceived into thinking it was just an ordinary frock until she noticed the lines. And in a few moments Nance took occasion to inform her that simplicity was one of the most expensive things in the world, which few people could afford, and furthermore that Mary Stewart’s gray, cottony-looking dress was a dream of beauty and must have come from Paris.

There were six or seven other girls in the crowd, including that little bird-like, bright-eyed creature they called “Jennie Wren,” whose real name was Jane Wickham. The only other girl they knew was Judith Blount, who had been so snubby to Molly the day before about the luggage.

All these girls were musical, as the freshmen were soon to learn, and belonged to the College Glee Club.

“What a pretty room!” exclaimed Molly to her hostess, after she had been properly introduced and enthroned in a big tapestry chair, in which she unconsciously made a most delightful and colorful picture.

“I’m glad you like it. I have some trouble keeping it from getting cluttered up with ‘truck,’ as we call it. It’s about like Hercules trying to clean the Augean Stables, I think, but I try and use the den for an overflow, and only put the things I’m really fond of in here. That helps some.”

“They are certainly lovely,” said the young freshman, looking wistfully at the head of “The Unknown Woman,” between two brass candlesticks on the mantel shelf. On the bookshelves stood “The Winged Victory,” and hanging over the shelves on the opposite side of the room was an immense photograph of Botticelli’s “Primavera.” The only other pictures were two Japanese prints and the only other furniture was a baby grand piano and some chairs. It was really a delightfully empty and beautiful place, and Molly felt suddenly strangely crude and ignorant when she recalled the things she had intended to do to her part of the room at Queen’s Cottage toward beautifying it. She was engaged in mentally clearing them all out, when a voice at her elbow said:

“Are you thinking of taking the vows, Miss Brown?”

It was Judith Blount, who had drawn up a chair beside her’s. There was something very patronizing and superior in Miss Blount’s manner, but Molly was determined to ignore it, and smiled sweetly into the black eyes of the haughty sophomore.

“Taking what vows?” she asked.

“Why, I understood you had become a cloistered nun.”

Molly flushed. So the story was out. It didn’t take long for news to travel through a girl’s college.

“I wasn’t cloistered very long,” she answered. “And the only vow I took was never to be caught there again after six o’clock.”

“How did you like Epiménides? I hear he’s made a great joke of it,” she continued, without waiting for Molly to answer. “He’s rather humorous, you know. Even in his most serious work, it will come out.”

“I don’t think there was much to joke about,” put in Molly, feeling a little indignant. “I was awfully forlorn and miserable.”

“The real joke was that he called you ‘little Miss Smith,’” said Judith.

Molly’s moods reflected themselves in her eyes just as the passing clouds are mirrored in two blue pools of water. A shadow passed over her face now and her eyes grew darker, but she kept very quiet, which was her way when her feelings were hurt. Then Mary Stewart began to play on the piano, and Molly forgot all about the sharp-tongued sophomore, who, she strongly suspected, was trying to be disagreeable, but for what reason for the life of her Molly could not see.

Never before had she heard any really good playing on the piano, and it seemed to her now that the music actually flowed from Mary’s long, strong fingers, in a melodious and liquid stream. Other music followed. Judith sang a gypsy song, in a rich contralto voice, that Molly thought was a little coarse. Jennie Wren, who could sing exactly like a child, gave a solo in the highest little piping soprano. Two girls played on mandolins, and Mary Stewart, who appeared to do most things, accompanied them on a guitar. Then came supper, which was rather plain, Molly thought, and consisted simply of tea and cookies. “I suppose it’s artistic not to have much to eat,” her thoughts continued, but she made up her mind to invite Mary Stewart to supper before the old ham and the hickory nut cake were consumed by hungry freshmen.

“It seems to me that with such a voice as yours you must sing, Miss Brown,” here broke in Mary Stewart. “Will you please oblige the company?”

“I wouldn’t like to sing after all this fine music,” protested Molly. “Besides, I don’t know anything but darky songs.”

“The very girl we want for our Hallowe’en Vaudeville,” cried Jennie Wren. “What do you use, a guitar or a piano?”

“Either, a little,” answered Molly, blushing crimson; “but I haven’t any more voice than a rabbit.”

“Fire away,” cried Jennie Wren, thrusting a guitar into her hands.

Molly was actually trembling with fright when she found herself the center of interest in this musical company.

“I’m scared to death,” she announced, as she faintly tuned the guitar. Then she struck a chord and began:

 
“Ma baby loves shortnin’,
Ma baby loves shortnin’ bread;
Ma baby loves shortnin’,
Mammy’s gwine make him some shortnin’ bread.”
 

Before she had finished, everybody in the room had joined in. Then she sang:

 
“Ole Uncle Rat has come to town,
To buy his niece a weddin’ gown,
OO-hoo!”
 

“A quarter to ten,” announced some one, and the next moment they had all said good-night and were running as fast as their feet could carry them across the campus, “scuttling in every direction like a lot of rats,” as Judith remarked.

“Lights out at ten o’clock,” whispered Nance breathlessly, as they crept into their room and undressed in the dark. It was very exciting. They felt like a pair of happy criminals who had just escaped the iron grasp of the law.

When Molly Brown dropped into a deep and restful sleep that night, she never dreamed that she had already become a noted person in college, though how it happened, it would be impossible to say. It might have been the Cloister story, but, nevertheless, Molly – overgrown child that she may have seemed to Professor Green – had a personality that attracted attention wherever she was.