While Katherine read the verse, another girl held up a large picture ent.i.tled "The Flight of the Royal Family." In the foreground was a little purple cow grazing on purple turf, and in the background, running at full speed, with every indication of extreme terror on their faces, were a dozen queens, wearing gold crowns and lavender and primrose robes.
Hardly a girl at Wellington but had heard of the absurd adventure of the Queen"s girls, and a tremendous laugh shook the walls of the gymnasium.
In the midst of this uproar, someone touched Molly on the shoulder. It was a junior known to her only by sight, who whispered:
"You"re wanted on the telephone."
Now, all telegrams to Wellington College were received at the telegraph office in the village and telephoned over, and when Molly was notified that there was a message for her, she felt instinctively that it was a telegram from home; and they would only telegraph bad news, she was certain.
Her face was pale and her heart thumping as she hurried out of the gymnasium. Nance and Judy rose and followed her. If anything was the matter with their beloved friend, they were determined to share her trouble.
Molly hastened to the telephone booths in the main corridor.
"Is it a telegram?" she asked the young woman in charge of the switchboard; for, in the last few years telephones had been installed in all the houses of the faculty and their respective offices as well, thereby saving many steps and much time.
"h.e.l.lo! Long distance?" called the girl, without answering Molly"s question. "Here"s your party. Booth No. 2," she ordered.
The operator had very little patience with college girls, and this Adamless Eden palled on her city-bred soul.
"h.e.l.lo!" said Molly.
Then came a small, thin voice, an immense distance away, but strangely familiar.
"Is this Miss Molly Brown of Kentucky?"
"Yes. Who is this?"
"This is Richard Blount. Have you forgotten me?"
"Of course not."
"Is your mother Mrs. Mildred Carmichael Brown, of Carmichael Station, Kentucky?"
"Yes."
"Um! I suppose you think it"s very strange, Miss Brown, my asking you this question," called the thin, far-away voice. "I had a very good reason for asking it. Have you heard from home lately?"
"Not for a week. Is anything the matter with my family besides the----"
"No, no, nothing that I know of."
"Is it about the mine?"
"Yes, but you are not to worry. You understand, you are not to worry one instant. Everything will come out all right."
"It was nearly ten thousand dollars," said Molly, almost sobbing; "our house and garden and the rest of the apple orchard that was sending me to college--" Here she broke down completely. "I may have to give up all this--I may----"
"Now, Miss Molly, you mustn"t cry. You make me feel like the very--very unhappy, way off here."
"Five minutes up," called the voice of the exchange.
"Good-by, good-by," called Molly. "I"m sorry I cried, Mr. Blount."
Poor man! It was all terribly hard on him, and it was cruel of her to have given way, but it had come so unawares!
From a corner of her eye, she could see her friends waiting anxiously outside the booth. She pretended to be writing something on the telephone pad with a stubby pencil tied to a string, until she recovered her composure.
"What"s the matter?" demanded the two girls as she emerged from the booth.
"It was just a long distance from Richard Blount," said Molly, not knowing what else to say.
"I didn"t know you had asked him to go to the Glee Club concert," said Nance.
"He can"t go," Molly replied quickly, relieved that they had been willing to accept this explanation.
"I should think he couldn"t," put in Judy, in a low voice. "Mamma has just written me such news about the Blounts. The letter came by the late mail and I didn"t have a chance to read it until a little while ago. Mr.
Blount has failed and gone away, no one knows where. They thought they could pay off his creditors and his family found that he had mortgaged all his property and there wasn"t any money left."
In the dimly-lighted corridor the girls had not noticed that Molly had turned perfectly white and was clasping and unclasping her hands convulsively in an effort to retain her self-control.
"No money left?" she repeated in a low voice.
"Not a cent," said Judy. "Papa knows because he had some friends who lost money in a mine or something Mr. Blount owned."
"Poor Judith," observed Nance. "Do you suppose she hasn"t been told?"
"Of course not. She wouldn"t be flaunting around here to-night if she knew her family were in trouble."
"How strange for us to know and for her not to!" pursued Nance.
"It isn"t generally known. Mamma says the papers haven"t got hold of it yet, and I"m not to tell. You see mamma and I met Judith Blount one afternoon at a matinee just before college opened. That"s why she was interested, because she remembered that Judith was Mr. Blount"s daughter."
All this time Molly"s mind was busy working out the problem of how to remain at college without any money. Of course, the Blounts couldn"t pay their father"s debts on nothing, although Richard Blount had told her not to worry. The family would have to move out of their old home, she supposed, and take a small house in town, and everybody would have to just turn in and go to work. Oh, why had her mother heeded the advice of old Colonel Gray? He had a.s.sured her that she would make at least fifteen thousand from the money invested, while he, poor man, had squandered his entire inheritance in the enterprise, just because an old and intimate friend was backing it. That old and intimate friend was Mr.
Blount, and Molly had never guessed it.
Pretty soon it was time to go home. Molly found herself in the carriage, trying to listen politely to the ceaseless flow of Miss Pet.i.t"s conversation, while she wrapped her old, gray eider-down cape about her and thought and thought. Suddenly the words of Madeleine Pet.i.t pierced her troubled mind.
"Do you write, Miss Brown? I wish I could. I"d like to try for some of the prizes for short stories. Think of winning a thousand dollars for one story! Wouldn"t it be glorious? Then, there are some advertis.e.m.e.nt prizes, too. One for five hundred dollars; think of that! I always cut out every one I see, meaning to compete, but I never do. It isn"t in my line, you see. I"m going to major in mathematics."
Molly smiled that the dainty little creature should have chosen that hated subject for her life"s work.
"You say you saved the clippings about prizes?" she asked when they had reached Madeleine"s lodging.
"Oh, yes; I have them all in my room. Would you like to see some of them? Tell the man to wait, and I"ll bring them down."
Molly reached Queen"s that night before the other girls, and hastening to the student"s lamp, she proceeded to look over the clippings.
One was from a leading woman"s magazine; one from a magazine of short stories; several from advertising firms--the best jingle about a stove polish; the best catchy phrase about a laundry soap; the best advertis.e.m.e.nt in verse or prose for a real estate company which had purchased an entire mountain and was engaged in erecting numbers of Swiss chalets for summer residents. The pictures of these pretty little houses were very attractive. Many of them had poetical names. One of them, called "The Chalet of the West Wind," occupied the centre of the page. From its broad gallery could be seen a long vista of valley, flanked by mountain ranges.