At dinner Molly sat between Will Stewart and an elegant, rich young man named Raymond Bellaire, who talked in rather a drawling voice about yachting parties and cross-country riding and motoring. "At college, you know, the fellahs are awfully set on those little two-seated electric affairs." What car did Molly prefer? Molly was obliged to admit that she preferred the Stewart car in New York, whatever that was, it being the only one she had ever ridden in.
The young man screwed a monocle into one eye and looked at her. He was half English and had half a right to a monocle, but Molly wished he wouldn"t screw up his eye like that. It made her want to laugh. However, he didn"t appear to notice at all that she was endeavoring to keep the irresistible laugh-curve from her lips. He only looked at her harder, and then remarked:
"I say, by Jove, you"d make a jolly fine Portia. Did you ever think of going on the stage?"
"Oh, no; I"m going to be a school teacher," answered Molly.
"School teacher?" he repeated aghast. "You? With that hair and--by Jove--those violets!" His eyes had lighted on the mammoth bunch. "Tell that to the marines."
Molly flushed.
"The violets haven"t anything to do with my teaching school," she said a little indignantly. "And neither has my hair. Didn"t you ever see a red-headed school teacher?"
"Not when her hair curled like that and had glints of gold in it."
"You"re teasing me because I"m only a soph.o.m.ore," she said, and turned her head away.
"No, by Jove, I"m not though," protested Raymond Bellaire, looking much pained. But Molly was talking to Willie Stewart at her right.
That young man was the most correct individual in the matter of clothes, deportment and small talk she had ever seen. She thought of his splendid father, who had started life as a bootblack.
"I wonder if he"s pleased with his fashion-plate son?" she pondered.
She didn"t care for him or his friends. They were not like the jolly boys over at Exmoor, who talked about basket-ball and football, and swopped confidences regarding Latin and Greek and that _awful_ French Literature examination, and what this professor was like, and what the Prexy said or was supposed to have said, and so on. It was all college gossip, but Molly enjoyed it and contributed her share eagerly. She tried a little of it on Brother Willie.
"Are you taking up Higher Math. this year, Mr. Stewart?" she asked.
"Oh, after a fashion," he answered. "I don"t expect to stay at college after this year. I"m going to Paris to finish off."
Molly wondered what "Higher Math. after a fashion" really meant.
At the concert later it was a relief to find herself next to Professor Green, who had scarcely looked in her direction all through dinner. At first she felt a little embarra.s.sed, sitting next to the Professor, who was a great man at Wellington. She began silently to admire the packed audience of young girls in light dresses with a generous sprinkling of young men in evening clothes.
"You"ll probably be a member of the club next year, Miss Brown," the Professor was saying. "I"m sure you must sing. I am surprised they have not found it out by this time. Next winter you must----"
"I doubt if I am here next winter," interrupted Molly, and then blushed furiously and bit her lip. She wished she had not made that speech.
"Is anything going to happen that will keep you from coming to college next winter?" he asked, glancing at the violets.
"How can I tell what will happen?" she answered childishly.
"Then, why not come back next year?"
"Because--because----" she began. "Oh, here they come!" she interrupted herself to say, as the members of the Glee Club filed slowly out and took their seats. "Aren"t they sweet in their white dresses?"
"Very!" answered the Professor, "but what"s this about next year? It was just idle talk, wasn"t it?"
"No, no," whispered Molly, for the first number was about to begin; "hasn"t Mr. Blount told you anything?"
"Why, no. That is, nothing about you. What on earth?"
"Didn"t you have a list of the stockholders?"
"You mean of the Square Deal Mine?" he asked in entire amazement.
"Yes."
"I have a list, but what of it?"
"My mother"s name is there--Mrs. Mildred Carmichael Brown."
"Great heavens!" groaned the Professor. Then he sunk far down in his seat and buried his face in his program.
Jenny Wren opened the concert with this song, which suited her high, bird-like voice to perfection:
""Oh, I wish I were a tiny, Browny bird from out the South, Settled among the alderholts And twittering by the stream; I would put my tiny tail down And put up my little mouth, And sing my tiny life away In one melodious dream.
""I would sing about the blossoms, And the sunshine and the sky, And the tiny wife I mean to have, In such a cosy nest; And if someone came and shot me dead, Why, then, I could but die, With my tiny life and tiny song Just ended at their best.""
There was something so moving about the little song that Molly felt she could have melted into a fountain of tears like Undine; and she was obliged to smile and smile and pretend that her heart wasn"t breaking because her tiny life and tiny song at Wellington--her beloved Wellington--were soon to come to an end. The Professor, too, was stirred. He glanced once at Molly"s smiling lips and tearful eyes and blew his nose violently. Then again he contemplated the program with great interest.
During the intermission, Molly and Will Stewart went visiting down the aisle. Half the audience was moving about, talking to the other half, and the hall was filled with the buzz of laughter and conversation.
"I love it! I love it!" Molly kept repeating to herself. "There couldn"t be anything more perfect than college. Oh, do I have to give it up?"
"Hey, Miss Molly!" called Andy McLean in a nearby seat, while Judy and Nance and George Theodore Green were waving violently to her, and Lawrence Upton was shaking hands with her and a.s.suring her that the dinner had been a failure because she hadn"t been there. Fortunately, Judith was well out of ear-shot behind the scenes. The Williams sisters, from across the aisle, were calling in one voice:
"Molly, come and meet our brother John."
Margaret Wakefield, causing a sensation with her distinguished father, and enduring the gaze of the entire audience with the calmness of one reared in the public eye, detained her for a moment to introduce her to the famous politician.
"A real belle," said Miss Grace Green to her brother, leaning across two seats to speak to him, "is one who is just as popular with women as with men, and Miss Molly Brown of Kentucky appears to be a general favorite."
The Professor looked at his sister absently. Apparently, he hadn"t heard a word she said.
He was saying to himself:
"I think I"ll let the tenor sing that little lyric that begins: "Eyes like the skies in summer.""
After a while the delightful affair was over, and Molly, feeling immensely happy in spite of her anxious heart, had been escorted to Queen"s. Professor Edwin Green, hastening into his room, flung his hat in one direction and his coat in another, and sat down at his desk.
Without an instant"s hesitation, he seized a pencil and the first sc.r.a.p of paper he found and began to write:
"Dear Richard:
"I know that your cares are many, but get to work on the score of the opera. I find that by working at night for a week I shall be able to finish the last act and make all the changes you suggested. We must launch the thing now. I have overcome all scruples, as you called them, and I want nothing more than to get the opera into some manager"s hands. If you think that Blum & Starks will take it up, you had better see them at once. My name may be used and everything that goes with it in the way of previous unimportant literary efforts. It"s unusual, of course, for a Professor of English Literature to write a comic opera, but the very unusualness may give it some publicity and help the thing along. I have made one change without conferring; given the tenor-lover the baritone-villain"s song: "Eyes like the skies in summer." Write something very pretty for that, will you, old man? The money we may make on this will help some in the present critical family situation. I understand that there have been a good many failures in light opera this winter, and the managers are looking for good things. It may be that we shall strike at the psychological moment.
"Yours, E. G."