Molly Brown's College Friends Part 18

"I can't believe I am a full-fledged teacher in a model modern school in our great metropolis," said Katherine. "I feel just exactly like a schoolgirl,--not even a college girl. I know I could run a mile and there is no mischief I would not welcome."

"I tooly!" agreed Otoyo. "It seems but a dream that I have honorable husband and smally babee, Cho-Cho. I feel like badly naughtily j.a.panese girl in masque."

"Well, it is surely great to be a boy again just for to-night," declared Judy.

"What next?" asked Katherine.

"Next will be our great adventure! This has been only in the foothills of happenings. Soon we will have something really great come to us,"

encouraged the captain.

The village was well-lighted on the princ.i.p.al street, but that the girls avoided and crept down the side streets where all was quiet and almost dark, except at the corners where small gas-posts sent out feeble rays of light. They pa.s.sed comfortable homes surrounded by large yards where the elite of Wellington lived. The elite were evidently a well-behaved lot, as they were all safely bestowed in bed, sleeping the sleep of the just as our naughty girls crept in front of their s.p.a.cious mansions.

Next to the great, came the near great: a row of pleasant cottages, each one with its little garden separated from its neighbor's by neat whitewashed palings. After these, they approached a cottage set in a large yard and isolated as much as if it were in the country. It was well back from the street and instead of the white palings of its neighbors, it boasted a box hedge about five feet high and at least three feet broad. Generations of close clipping had made this hedge as solid as a brick wall. The yard enclosed was laid out as a formal garden with box labyrinth and winding paths. In the rear was a summer-house with stone pillars covered with ivy. Two stone benches were on each side in this quaint house where no doubt dead and gone lovers had sat and perhaps caught rheumatism. Box bushes were placed at the four sides of the garden and these had been cut to represent armchairs by some zealous gardener long since pa.s.sed away. The modern shears had but followed the lines of the original ones and the armchairs were still there although somewhat lopsided and hazy in drawing. There was the sun-dial and a snub-nosed stone Hebe who held aloft her little pitcher with a cup in the other hand ready to serve the G.o.ds with imperceptible nectar.

Our girls' eyes had become accustomed to the darkness and they peeped over the hedge (at least Katherine and Judy did, poor little Otoyo was too short), plainly discerning the charming ensemble of the little formal garden.

"There, Adventure awaits us!" said Katherine melodramatically.

"I want muchly to see," pleaded Otoyo. So Judy lifted her up for a peep.

"I believe that is where the Misels live," said Judy. "It looks quite different at night, but I'm almost sure it is the place. Molly and I called at dusk and we came up on the other side, but I think it is this cottage. Isn't it lovely? I am so sorry for them, they do seem so friendless, somehow. Madame is already working for the Red Cross. Molly says she can make surgical dressings faster than anybody she ever saw.

She takes them home and does them and brings them back so neatly folded and tied up that they think it is perfect foolishness to inspect them.

They are sure there will be no mistakes where such a careful worker is on the job. M. Misel is so lame he can hardly locomote."

"Let's go in their garden and sit down a little while," suggested Katherine, who but a few moments before had declared she could run a mile. The sedentary life as a teacher had not improved her wind. Her spirits might have been those of a schoolgirl but her endurance was equal only to a full-fledged teacher in a model school.

They pa.s.sed through the small green turnstile and silently crept around the labyrinth to the summer-house. The three girls sank on one of the cold stone benches and peered out into the picturesque garden. Their veils were raised but ready to be pulled down at a moment's notice.

"Ghosts might walk in such a garden," whispered Judy.

"The bench is coldly like a ghost," shivered Otoyo.

CHAPTER XIV

AS SEEN FROM THE SUMMER-HOUSE

"And now, Adventure, come forth!" commanded Katherine in sepulchral tones.

The side door of the cottage, leading to the garden, now opened as though at Katherine's orders, and a broad ribbon of light fell across the labyrinth, picking out the snub-nosed Hebe and the sun-dial and one of the box chairs to illuminate. A man's figure was silhouetted in the doorway, a figure so beautiful that the artist in Judy gasped. He had on running togs which exposed his clean-cut limbs and shapely shoulders. A woman stood beside him and Judy recognized the outline of Madame Misel.

The Greek G.o.d of a man was strange to her, although there was something familiar about the poise of his head on its column-like neck.

The woman spoke in German in a low clear voice. Judy and Katherine both knew German fairly well and Otoyo had some knowledge of it. They heard Madame Misel say distinctly:

"It is wiser if you wait until midnight for the exercises. Some of these blockheads might be out."

"Oh, absurd!" answered the man. "There is no one in this whole stupid place with the spirit to be from under cover after ten. I am cramped enough and must run and leap. Stand aside!"

"Misel, himself!" gasped Judy. Where were his crutch and cane and his lame back?

The girls sat as still as the stone Hebe. It was inky black in their corner of the summer-house where they cowered, not afraid at all but ready to knock the chip from the shoulder of Adventure. Judy's first instinct on recognizing Madame Misel was to make herself known and explain their presence in her garden at such a late hour, but the realization that Misel was the man in running togs, which usually means running, glued her to her bench. What did it all mean?

The door was shut and then Misel began a series of exercises of which any circus actor might have been proud. He began by leaping over the clipped hedge of the labyrinth,--back and forth with most surprising gyrations. It was so dark that it was difficult to follow his every movement, and so rapid were his leaps and bounds that he was now here, now there before eyes could be focussed to take in the impression. Then almost without the girls realizing what had happened, he had cleared the five-foot hedge and was out on the deserted street running like a deer.

"Quick, before he is back!" gasped Judy, and the seekers for sensations were out of the garden and through the little turnstile in not much more time than it had taken the master of the house to leap the hedge.

Without a word they hastened back to the college grounds. As they turned a corner, they ran plump into Misel, who seemed to have let off steam enough to be trotting contentedly home. They need not have feared him.

He was much more anxious to escape from them than they were from him.

He turned and ran like the wind in the opposite direction.

"Gee, I wish we could have tripped him up!" exclaimed Judy.

"And I might have jiu jitsued him most neatlily," put in little Otoyo.

"I think he is what you might call a traitor-r-r."

"I was never more excited in my life. What will the girls think when we tell them of what has happened to us?" panted Katherine.

"Do you realize we have run against a tremendous thing?" said Judy soberly. "Almost international importance! I fancy we must keep kind of quiet about it. Of course we will tell Molly and Edwin and the girls, but I have an idea this thing will have to be worked up slowly and cautiously. I bet you it will be a case of secret service men and enemy aliens and what not. Why should Misel have pretended to be lame? Why should they come to live at Wellington? Why--a million whys about the whole matter!"

"One thing:--Misel thought we were college girls on a lark and he will have no fear of our saying we met him or anyone outside the campus at such an hour," said Katherine wisely.

CHAPTER XV

THE PROFESSOR AT A KIMONO PARTY

The Welsh rarebit was just a.s.suming its required thickness and smoothness and the toast was done to a turn ready to receive its libation of cheese, when the wanderers came pattering in.

"Where is Edwin?" demanded Judy.

"In his den! You see this is a kimono party and gentlemen are not admitted," said Molly, helping Judy off with her coat and veil. "Now tell us all about it! Something has happened, I can see by your eyes and hair."

"Happened! I should say it has! Something has bounced! Call Edwin! I don't give a hang if we are in kimonos! I'll be bound he does not know a kimono from a ball gown--I can't tell it twice."

"Otoyo and I are not dumb. We might help out when you fall by the wayside," laughed Katherine, "but I, for one, don't mind the professor."

"Nor I! Nor I!" chorused the others.

"I think mine is vastly becoming," Jessie whispered to Margaret, who called her a vain puss.

Edwin came in, rather pleased at being admitted and being allowed to have some of the party.