"Who"s heard the news about Judith Blount?" asked one of the Williamses, after the party had broken up and only the Queen"s girls remained.
Molly and Judy and Nance exchanged telegraphic glances. They had been careful to keep secret what Mrs. Kean had written her daughter, and they were curious to know just how much the others knew on the subject, which was now always uppermost, at least in Molly"s mind.
"She"s sub-let her apartment, furnished, to that rich freshman from New York, whose father"s worth a fortune a minute from gold mines and oil wells, and she, I mean Judith, is taking the empty singleton here."
"You don"t mean it!" cried a chorus of voices.
"It seems to me I heard that a Mr. Blount lost a lot of money," observed Margaret. "It must have been her father."
"How are the mighty fallen!" exclaimed Edith Williams. "I should think she"d have gone anywhere rather than here."
"She couldn"t get in any of the less expensive places unless she had taken a room over the post office in the village."
"Poor Judith!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Jessie. "I"ve known it for a week."
To save her life Molly could not keep a tiny little barbed thought from piercing her mind: "Is it fair for Judith to stay at college when I have to leave? Has she any right to the money that"s paying her tuition?"
Molly turned quickly and began gathering up the debris from the tea-tables. Anything to get that bitter notion out of her head.
"Let"s be awfully nice to her, girls," she said presently. "I"m sure she"s terribly unhappy. Remember what success we had with Frances Andrews last year just through a little kind treatment."
"Judith is a different subject altogether," said Margaret, argumentatively. "She has such a dreadful temper. You never can tell when it"s going to break loose."
With the G.o.ddess of War sitting among them at this moment, n.o.body dared betray by the flick of an eyelash that there were others whose tempers were rather uncertain. Only Jessie observed:
"Well, Margaret, dear, you got the better of her that time at the Ledges, temper or no temper."
"I doubt if she takes to poverty as a duck to water," here put in Judy.
"She"ll make a very impatient tutor, and I"d hate to have her black my boots. She might throw them at my head."
"She is certainly not subdued by her reverses," remarked Jessie. "She"s just like a caged animal. I never saw anything to equal her. I went over there this afternoon and she was packing. She almost pitched me out of the room. Of course, it"s very luxurious at Beta Phi House, but her little room here isn"t to be scorned. It"s really quite pretty, with lovely paper and matting and chintz curtains and wicker chairs."
Suddenly a wave of indignation swept over Molly. n.o.body had ever seen her look as she looked now, burning spots of color on her cheeks and her eyes black.
"What right has she--how dare she--she should be thankful--" she burst out incoherently. Then she stamped both feet up and down like an angry child and flung herself face down on the couch in an agony of tears. It was a kind of mental tempest, resembling one of those sudden storms which come with a flash of lightning, a roaring crash of thunder and then a downpour of rain.
"Why, Mary Carmichael Washington Brown," exclaimed Judy, kneeling beside poor Molly, "whatever has come over you?"
Little Otoyo was so frightened that she hid behind a j.a.panese screen, while the other girls sat dumb with amazement.
The Williams girls were intensely interested, and Margaret, always consistent and logical in her decisions, knew very well that there was something serious back of it.
"Please forgive me," said Molly presently, wiping her eyes and sitting up as limp as a rag. "I"m awfully sorry to have spoiled the evening like this. I didn"t mean it. It just slipped out of me before I knew it was coming."
"Why, you old sweetness," exclaimed the affectionate Judy, "of course, you are forgiven. I guess you ought to be allowed a few outbursts. But what caused it?"
"I think it was nervousness," answered Molly evasively.
But the girls began to realize that it was not entirely nervousness. It occurred to them now that Molly had been preoccupied and strangely silent for some time. Occasionally she gave way to forced gaiety. Twice she had started on walks, changed her mind and come back, without giving any excuse except that she was a little tired. It was, in fact, a condition that had come about so gradually that they were hardly aware they had noticed it until this sudden breakdown.
"She"s dead tired and ought to get to bed this minute," remarked Nance, caressing her friend"s hand.
"Dearest Molly," said Jessie, who was moved by a gentle sympathy always for those in trouble, "go to bed and get a good rest. It was just nice and human of you to get mad once in a thousand years and we love you all the better for it."
They were good friends, all of them, Molly felt, as they kissed her or pressed her hand good-night, while Nance and Judy hastened to clear off the divan and put up the windows to blow out the heavy, incense-scented air.
It was Otoyo, however, who brought the tears back to poor Molly"s eyes.
"Dear, beautiful Mees Brown," she said. "You must not think it will come wrong. It will come right, I feel, surelee."
"What is it, Nance?" whispered Judy, after they had got their friend to bed.
Nance shook her head.
"Heaven knows," she answered. "But it"s something, and it must be serious, Judy, or she never would have let go like that."
CHAPTER IX.
VESPERS.
There was a pretty little Episcopal chapel in the village of Wellington, where at Vespers on Sunday afternoons the students were wont to congregate. Six Wellington girls always served as ushers and the college Glee Club formed the Chapel choir.
"It"s a good thing to go to Vespers," remarked Judy one Sabbath afternoon, pinning on her large velvet hat before the mirror over the mantel, notably the most becoming mirror in the house, "not only for the welfare of our souls, but also to attire ourselves in decent clothes."
"I suspect you of thinking it"s good for your soul to wear good clothes, Judy," observed Nance.
"You suspect rightly, then," answered Judy. "If I had to dress in rags, I"m afraid my soul would become a thing of shreds and patches, too, all shiny at the seams and down at the heels."
Nance laughed.
"That"s a funny way to talk, considering you are about to attend Vespers at the Chapel of the good St. Francis, who took the vows of poverty and lived a roving life on the hills around a.s.sisi."
"That"s all very true," said Judy, "and I"ve seen the picture of him being married to Lady Poverty, but our dispositions are different, St.
Francis"s and mine. I like the roving over the hills part, because I"m a wanderer by nature, but I like to wander in nice clothes. My manners are getting to be regular old gray sweater manners, and if I didn"t put on my velvet suit and best hat once a week there"s no telling what kind of a rude creature I would become."
"Why, Julia Kean, I"m ashamed of you," cried Nance, "you"ve as good as confessed that you go to Vespers to show your fine clothes."
"I don"t go to show "em, goosie; I go to wear "em. But you have no sense of humor. What"s the good of telling you anything? Molly, there, understands my feelings, I am sure."
Molly was not listening. She was making calculations at her desk with a blunt pencil on a sc.r.a.p of paper.
"I"ve got as good a sense as you have," cried Nance hotly, "only I don"t approve of being humorous about sacred things."
"Nonsense," broke in Judy, "don"t you know, child, that you can"t limit humor? It spreads over every subject and it"s not necessarily profane because it touches on clothes at church. I suppose you think there is nothing funny about the Reverend Gustavus Adolphus La.r.s.en, and you have forgotten how you giggled that Sunday when he announced from the pulpit that his text was taken from St. Paul"s "Efistle to the Epeesians.""