Molly Brown of Kentucky Part 11

Already the great range, that stretched the entire length of the tiny tiled kitchen, was filled with copper vessels, and appetizing odors were permeating the living room and the little shop beyond.

"Let me help," said Judy bravely. "Must I mind the shop or do you need me here? I can't cook, but I can wash spinach and peel potatoes."

"Marie can look after the shop this morning, my dear child, so you go rest yourself," said the good wife.

"I don't want to rest! I want to work!"

"Let her work, Mother! Let her work! It is best so," and Judy's old partner got the blue bowl, sacred to mayonnaise, and Judy sat on the bench in the court and stirred and stirred as she dropped the oil into the beaten egg. Her arm ached as the great smooth yellow ma.s.s grew thicker and thicker, but the more her arm ached, the less her heart ached. When the bowl was quite full, she started in on a great basket of potatoes that must be peeled, some for Saratoga chips and some for potato salad. Onions must be peeled, too, and then the spinach cleaned and chopped in a colander until it was a puree.

The Tricots worked with a precision and ease that delighted Judy. She never tired of watching the grenadier turn out the wonderful little tarts. On that morning a double quant.i.ty was to be made as Marie was to carry a basket of them to "the regiment"; that, of course, meant Jean Tricot's regiment. They had not yet been ordered to the front, but were ready to go at any moment.

The old woman put batch after batch in the great oven. They came out all done to a turn and all exactly alike, as though made by machinery. Then they were put in the show cases in the shop; and more were rolled out, filled and baked.

"Sometime may I try to do some?"

The old woman smiled indulgently at Judy's pale face.

"You may try right now."

Judy made a rather deformed batch but Mere Tricot declared the children would not know the difference, and they could be sold to them. "The soldats must have the prettiest and another time you can make them well enough for them."

So far, Judy had not shed a tear. Her eyes felt dry and feverish and her heart was still beating in her throat in some mysterious way. Suddenly without a bit of warning the tears came. Splash! Splash! they dropped right on the tarts.

"Never mind the tarts!" exclaimed the kindly grenadier. "Those must go to Jean's regiment. They will understand."

"I could not help it," sobbed poor Judy. "I was thinking how proud Kent would be of me when he knew I could make tarts and wondering how many he could eat, when all of a sudden it came to me that he never would know--and--and--Oh, Mother Tricot!" and she buried her face on the bosom of the good old woman, who patted her with one hand and held her close while she adroitly whisked a pan of tarts from the oven with the other.

"Tarts must not burn, no matter if hearts are broken!"

CHAPTER X.

THE ZEPPELIN RAID.

Judy's cry did her good, although it left her in such a swollen state she was not fit to keep shop, which was what she had planned to do for the afternoon.

"I think I'll go round to the studio in Rue Brea for a little while. I want to get some things."

What she really wanted was to get a bath and to be alone for a few hours. Her kind hosts thought it would be wise to let her do whatever she wanted, so they gave her G.o.d-speed but begged her not to be out late.

Judy now longed for solitude with the same eagerness she had before longed for companionship. She knew it would be unwise for her to give up to this desire to any extent and determined to get back to her kind friends before dark, but be alone she must for a while. She got the key from the concierge and entered the studio. All was as she had left it.

Windows and doors opened wide soon dispelled the close odor. A cold bath in the very attractive white porcelain tub, the pride of the Bents, made poor Judy feel better in spite of herself.

"I don't want to feel better. I've been brave and n.o.ble all morning and now I want to be weak and miserable. I don't care whether school keeps or not. I am a poor, forlorn, broken-hearted girl, without any friends in all the world except some Normandy peasants. The Browns will all hate me, and my mother and father I may never see again. Oh, Kent! Kent! Why didn't you just pick me up and make me go with you? If you had been very, very firm, I'd have gone."

Judy remembered with a grim smile how in old days at college she had longed to wear mourning and how absurd she had made herself by dyeing her hair and draping herself in black. "I'm going into mourning now. It is about all I can do for Kent. It won't cost much and somehow I'd feel better." Judy, ever visualizing, pictured herself in black with organdy collar and cuffs and a mournful, patient look. "I'll just go on selling tarts. It will help the Tricots and give me my board." She counted out her money, dwindled somewhat, but now that she was working she felt she might indulge her grief to the extent of a black waist and some white collars and cuffs. "I've got a black skirt and I'll get my blue suit dyed to-morrow. I'll line my black sport hat with white crepe. That will make it do." In pity for herself, she wept again.

She slipped out of the studio and made her few purchases at a little shop around the corner. Madame, the proprietaire, was all sympathy. She had laid in an especial stock of cheap mourning, she told Judy, as there was much demand for it now.

It took nimble fingers to turn the jaunty sport hat into a sad little mourning bonnet, but Judy was ever clever at hat making, and when she finished just before the sun set, she viewed her handiwork with pardonable pride. She slipped into her cheap black silk waist and pinned on the collar and cuffs. The hat was very becoming, so much so that Judy had another burst of tears.

"I can't bear for it to be becoming. I want to look as ugly and forlorn as possible."

She determined to leave her serge suit in the studio and come on the following day to take it to a dye shop. As she was to do this, she decided not to leave the key with the concierge but take it with her.

Her kind friends looked sadly at the mourning. They realized when they saw it that Judy had given up all hope of her friend.

"Ah, the pity of it! The pity of it!" exclaimed the old grenadier.

Marie, whose apple-like countenance was not very expressive of anything but health, looked as sympathetic as the shape of her face would allow.

Round rosy cheeks, round black eyes, and a round red mouth are not easy to mold into tragic lines, but Judy knew that Marie was feeling deeply for her. She was thinking of her Jean and the possibility of turning her bridal finery into mourning. There was so much mourning now and according to the _Temps_, the war was hardly begun.

"I'll have my serge suit dyed to-morrow," Judy confided to her.

"Ah, no! Do not have it dyed! Mere Tricot and I can do it here and do it beautifully. The butcher's wife over the way is dyeing to-morrow and she will give us some of her mixture. It is her little brother who fell only yesterday."

That night there was great excitement in the Montparna.s.se quarter. A fleet of air ships circled over the city, dropping bombs as they flew.

The explosions were terrific. The people cowered in their homes at first and then came rushing out on the streets as the noise subsided.

Pere Tricot came back with the news that no great harm had been done, but it was his opinion that the Prussians had been after the Luxembourg.

"They know full well that our art treasures are much to us, and they would take great pleasure in destroying them. The beasts!"

"Where did the bombs strike?" asked Judy from her couch in the living room. She had wept until her pillow had to be turned over and then had at last sunk into a sleep of exhaustion only to be awakened by the ear-splitting explosions.

"I don't know exactly, but it was somewhere over towards the Gardens of the Luxembourg. I thank the good G.o.d you were here with us, my child."

CHAPTER XI.

"L'HIRONDELLE DE MER."

Kent Brown, when he reached New York on his return trip to Paris in quest of the rather wilful, very irritating, and wholly fascinating Judy, got his money changed into gold, which he placed in a belt worn under his shirt.

"There is no telling what may happen," he said to the young Kentuckian, Jim Castleman, with whom he had struck up an acquaintance on the train.

"Gold won't melt in the water if we do get torpedoed, and if I have it next me, whoever wants it will have to do some tearing off of clothes to get it. And what will I be doing while they are tearing off my clothes?"

"Good idea! I reckon I'll do the same--not that I have enough to weigh myself down with." Castleman was on his way to France to fight.

"I don't give a hang whether I fight with the English, French, Serbs or Russians, just so I get in a few licks on the Prussians." He was a strapping youth of six feet three with no more idea of what he was going up against than a baby. War was to him a huge football game and he simply meant to get into the game.

The _Hirondelle_ was a slow boat but sailing immediately, so Kent and his new friend determined to take it, since its destination, Havre, suited them.