CHAPTER V.
AN UNWILLING EAVESDROPPER

Busy days followed for Molly. She had been made chairman of the committee on decoration for the sophomore-freshman reception along with all her many other duties, and had entered into it as conscientiously as she went into everything. Some days before the semi-official party for the gathering of autumn foliage and evergreens, Chairman Molly and Judy had a consultation.

"What we want is something different," Judy remarked, and Molly smiled, remembering that her friend's greatest fear in life was to appear commonplace.

"Caroline Brinton will want cheese cloth, of course," said Molly, "but I think she'll be out-voted if we can only talk to the committee beforehand. My plan is to mass all the greens around the pillars and hang strings of Japanese lanterns between the galleries."

"And," went on fanciful Judy, who adored decoration, "let's make a big primrose and violet banner exactly the same size as the Wellington banner and hang them from the center of the gymnasium, one on each side of the chandelier."

A meeting of the class was called to consider the question of the banner and it was decided not only to have the largest class banner ever seen at Wellington, but to give the entire class a hand in the making of it. The money was to be raised partly by subscription and partly by an entertainment to be given later.

The girls were very proud of the gorgeous pennant when it was completed. Every sophomore had lent a helping hand in its construction, which had taken several hours a day for the better part of a week. It was of silk, one side lavender and the other side primrose color. On the lavender side "Wellington" in yellow silk letters had been briar-stitched on by two skillful sophomores and on the primrose side was "19 – " in lavender.

The Wellington banner, a gift from the alumnae, was also of silk in the soft blue which every Wellington girl loved. It was necessary to obtain a special permission from President Walker to use this flag, which was brought out only on state occasions, and it devolved on Molly, as chairman, to make the formal request for her class. That this intrepid class of sophomores was the first ever to ask to use the banner had not occurred to her when she knocked at the door of the President's office.

Miss Walker would see her in ten minutes, she was told by Miss Maxwell, the President's secretary, and she sat down in the long drawing room to await her summons. It was a pleasant place in which to linger, Molly thought, as she leaned back in a beautiful old arm chair of the sixteenth century, which had come from a Florentine palace. Most of the furniture and ornaments in the room had been brought over from Italy by Miss Walker at various times. There were mirrors and high-backed carved chairs from Venice. Over the mantel was a beautiful frieze of singing children, and at one side was a photograph, larger even than Mary Stewart's, of the "Primavera"; on the other side of the mantel was a lovely round Madonna which Molly thought also might be a Botticelli.

As her eyes wandered from one object to another in the charming room, her tense nerves began to relax. At last her gaze rested on the photograph of a pretty, dark-haired girl in an old-fashioned black dress. There was something very appealing about the sweet face looking out from the carved gilt frame, a certain peaceful calmness in her expression. And peace had not been infused into Molly's daily life lately. What a rush things had been in; every moment of the day occupied. There were times when it was so overwhelming, this college life, that she felt she could not breast the great wave of duties and pleasures that surged about her. And now, at last, in the subdued soft light of President Walker's drawing room she found herself alone and in delightful, perfect stillness. How polished the floors were! They were like dim mirrors in which the soft colors of old hangings were reflected. Two Venetian glass vases on the mantel gave out an opalescent gleam in the twilight.

"Some day I shall have a room like this," Molly thought, closing her eyes. "I shall wear peacock blue and old rose dresses like the Florentine ladies and do my hair in a gold net – "

Her heavy eyelids fluttered and drooped, her hands slipped from the arms of her chair into her lap and her breathing came regularly and even like a child's. She was sound asleep, and while she slept Miss Maxwell peeped into the room. Seeing no one, apparently, in the dim light, she went out again. Evidently the sophomore had not waited, she decided, so she said nothing to Miss Walker about it.

Half an hour slipped noiselessly by; the sun set. For a few minutes the western window reflected a deep crimson light; then the shadows deepened and the room was almost dark.

"Never mind the lights, Mary. I'll see Miss Walker in her office at five thirty," said a voice at the door. "She expects me and I'll wait here until it's time."

"Very well, sir," answered the maid.

Someone came softly into the room and sat down near the window, well removed from the sleeping Molly. Again the stillness was unbroken and the young girl, sitting in the antique chair in which noble lords and ladies and perhaps cardinals and archbishops had sat, began to dream. She thought the dark-haired girl in the photograph was standing beside her. She wore a long, straight, black dress that seemed to fade off into the shadows. Molly remembered the face perfectly. There was a sorrowful look on it now. Then suddenly the sadness changed inexplicably and the face was the face in the photograph, the peaceful calmness returned and the eyes looked straight into Molly's, as they did from the picture.

Molly started slightly and opened her eyes.

"I must have been asleep," she thought.

"My dear Edwin," Miss Walker's voice was saying, "this is terrible. I am so shocked and sorry. What's to be done?"

"I don't know. I haven't been able to think yet, it was all so sudden. I had just heard when I telephoned you half an hour ago. It's a great blow to the family. Grace is with them now, and she's a tower of strength, you know."

"What's to be done about Judith? She was getting on so well this year. I think her punishment last winter did her good."

"She did appear to be in a better frame of mind," said Professor Green drily.

"Is she to be told at once?"

"She has to be told about the money, of course, but the disgraceful part is to be kept from her as much as possible."

Molly's heart began to beat. What should she do? Make her presence known to Professor Green and Miss Walker? But how very embarrassing that would be, to break suddenly into this intimate conversation and confess that she had overheard a family secret.

"The thing has been kept quiet so far," went on the Professor. "The newspapers, strange to say, have not got hold of it, but it's going to take every cent the family can get together to pull out of the hole. Hardly half a dozen persons outside the family know the real state of the case. I have taken you into my confidence because you are an old and intimate friend of the family and because we must reach some decision about Judith. Her mother wants her to stay right where she is now, just as if nothing had happened. Judith has always been very proud and her mother thinks it would be too much of a come-down for her to live in cheaper quarters."

"Nonsense!" exclaimed Miss Walker. "On the contrary, I think it would do Judith good to associate with girls who are not so well off. Put her with a group of clever, hard-working girls like the ones at Queen's, for instance."

Molly's heart gave a leap. How much she would like to tell the girls this compliment the President had paid them! Then again the embarrassment of her position overwhelmed her. She was about to force herself to rise and confess that she had been an unwitting eavesdropper when she heard the Professor's voice from the door saying:

"Well, you advise me to do nothing this evening? Richard is going to call me up again in an hour on the long distance in the village for the sake of privacy. If he agrees with you, I'll wait until to-morrow."

"Where's Mr. Blount now?"

"They think he's on his way to South America. You see, Richard, in some way, found out about the fake mining deal and the family is trying to get together enough money to pay back the stockholders. There are not many local people involved. Most of it was sold in the West and South and we hope to refund all the money in the course of time. It's nearly half a million, you know, and while the Blounts have a good deal of real estate, it takes time to raise money on it."

"What did you say the name of the mine was? I have heard, but it has slipped my memory."

"'The Square Deal Mine'; a bad name, considering it was about the crookedest deal ever perpetrated."

Molly started so violently that the Venetian vases on the mantel quivered and the little table on which stood the picture in the gilt frame trembled like an aspen.

"The Square Deal Mine!" Had she heard anything else but that name all summer? Had not her mother, on the advice of an old friend, invested every cent she could rake and scrape together, except the fund for her own college expenses, in that very mine? And everybody in the neighborhood had done the same thing.

"It's a sure thing, Mrs. Brown," Colonel Gray had told her mother. "I'm going to put in all I have because an old friend at the head of one of the oldest and most reliable firms in the country is backing it."

The voices grew muffled as the President and Professor Green moved slowly down the hall. Molly felt ill and tired. Would the Blounts be able to pay back the money? Suppose they were not and she had to leave college while Judith was to be allowed to finish her education and live in the most expensive rooms in Wellington.

She pressed her lips together. Such thoughts were unworthy of her and she tried to brush them out of her mind.

"Poor Judith!" she said to herself.

The President's footsteps sounded on the stairs. She paused on the landing, cleared her throat and mounted the second flight.

How dark it had grown. A feeling of sickening fear came over Molly, and suddenly she rushed blindly into the hall and out of the house without once looking behind her. Down the steps she flew, and, in her headlong flight, collided with Professor Green, who had evidently started to go in one direction and, changing his mind, turned to go toward the village.

"Why, Miss Brown, has anything frightened you? You are trembling like a leaf."

"I – I was only hurrying," she replied lamely.

"Have you been to see the President?"

"I didn't see her. It was too late," answered Molly evasively.

They walked on in silence for a moment.

"I am going down to the village for a long-distance message. May I see you to your door on my way?" he asked.

"Oh, yes," said Molly, half inclined to confide to the Professor that she had just overheard his conversation. But a kind of shyness closed her lips. They began talking of other things, chiefly of the little Japanese, Molly's pupil.

At the door of Queen's, the Professor took her hand and looked down at her kindly.

"You were frightened at something," he said, smiling gravely. "Confess, now, were you not?"

"There was nothing to frighten me," she answered. "Did you ever see a picture," she continued irrelevantly, "a photograph in a gilt frame on a little table in the President's drawing room? It's a picture of a slender girl in an old-fashioned black dress. Her hair is dark and her face is rather pale-looking."

"Oh, yes. That's a photograph of Miss Elaine Walker, President Walker's sister."

"Where is she now?" asked Molly.

"She died in that house some twenty-five years ago. You know, Miss Walker succeeded her father as President and they have always lived there. Miss Elaine was in her senior year when she had typhoid fever and died. It was a good deal of a blow, I believe, to the family and to the entire University. She was very popular and very talented. She wrote charming poetry. I have read some of it. No doubt she would have done great things if she had lived."

"After all," Molly argued with herself, "I went to sleep looking at her photograph. It was the most natural thing in the world to dream about it. But why did she look so sorrowful and then so hopeful? I can't forget her face."

Once again she was on the point of speaking to Professor Green about the mine, and once again she checked her confidence. The cautious Nance had often said to her: "If there's any doubt about mentioning a thing, I never mention it."

"By the way, Miss Brown, I wonder if there are any vacant rooms here at Queen's?"

"Yes," said Molly, "there happens to be a singleton. It was to have been taken by a junior who broke her arm or something and couldn't come back to college this year. Why? Have you any more little Japs for me to tutor?"

"No, but I was thinking there might have to be some changes a little later, and Miss Blount, my cousin, would perhaps be looking for – er – less commodious quarters. But don't mention it, please. It may not be necessary."

"I may have to make some changes myself for the same reason," thought poor Molly, but she said nothing except a trembly, shaky "good-night," which made the Professor look into her face closely and then stand watching her as she hastened up the steps and was absorbed by the shadowy interior of Queen's still unlighted hallway.