Molly Brown's Junior Days Part 10

Molly leaped out of bed and began pulling on her clothes.

"Why am I dressing?" she thought. "It is because I must--_hurry!_"

"Hurry," that was the word. It came back to her now, quietly and significantly.

Nance wakened and sat up in bed.

"What is it?" she asked.

"I don't know. I must hurry. Don't stop me," answered Molly.

Nance looked at her curiously.

"You've had a nightmare, Molly," she said.

Molly glanced up vaguely as Nance switched on the light.

"Have I? I don't know, but I must make haste, or I'll be too late."

"Too late for what?"

"I don't know yet."

"Wake up, Molly. You're asleep. Nothing is going to happen. You are here, in your own room."

"Yes, yes. I understand, but I must hurry. Don't stop me, Nance. You may come if you like, but don't stop me."

Nance had often heard that it was dangerous to awaken sleepwalkers too suddenly, and she believed now as she saw Molly slipping on her skirt and sweater that she was certainly asleep.

"Dearest Molly," she insisted. "This is college. You are in your own room. It's a quarter to twelve. Don't go out of the room."

Molly took no notice. Nance turned on another light and slipped across to Judy's room. She must have help, and Judy was the nearest person.

"Judy's not in her room," she exclaimed suddenly, in a scared voice.

Molly gave a slight shudder.

"It's Judy who needs me," she said. "I was trying to remember. I couldn't make it out at first. Put on your things, Nance. Don't delay.

Put out the light. We must hurry."

Nance got into a few clothes as fast as she could. She slipped on tennis shoes and an ulster and presently the two girls were standing in the corridor.

"Where are we going, Molly?" asked Nance, now under the spell of the other's conviction.

"This way," answered Molly, looking indeed like a sleepwalker as she glided down the hall to the main steps.

If the girls had glanced back they would have noticed a figure creep softly after them.

"But the gate is locked," objected Nance.

"I know, but we'll find another way. Come on."

Down the steps they hastened noiselessly. At the bottom, instead of going straight ahead, Molly turned to the left and led the way to a sitting room for visitors on the ground floor of the tower. The windows of the Tower Room, as it was known, looked out on the campus. They were small, deep-silled, and closed with iron-bound wooden shutters like the doors into the cloisters. Mounting a bench, Molly opened the inside gla.s.s cas.e.m.e.nt of one of the windows and drew back the bolt which secured the shutter. Then she hoisted herself onto the sill, crawled through the window, and holding by both hands dropped to the ground.

Nance, of a more practical temperament, wondered how they would ever get back into the Tower Room; but blind, unquestioning faith is an infinitely stronger staff to lean upon than uneasy speculation, as Nance was one day to find out.

"When the night watchman makes his rounds, will he see the window open in the tower?" she thought. "And if he does, what will he do? Give the alarm at once or try to find out our names and report us? If he reports us, what then? We may be expelled, or suspended or punished in some awful way."

So Nance's thoughts busily shaped out these tragic events as she followed Molly out of the window and dropped to the gravel walk below.

The tower clock struck twelve while the two girls flitted across the campus. It was a strange adventure, Nance pondered, and one she would never have undertaken, or even considered, alone. But then her instincts were not like Molly's. The inner voice which spoke to her sometimes was usually the sharp, reproving voice of a Puritan conscience. It spoke to her now, but she turned a deaf ear to it for once.

It told her how absurd she would appear to other people in this dangerous midnight escapade; what risks she was running. Judy, of course, had spent the night with one of the other girls, it said. It troubled her mind with whispers of doubts and fears; it ridiculed and abused her, but not once did it weaken her determination to follow Molly wherever she intended to go. And presently, when Molly quickened her footsteps into a run, Nance kept right at her elbow like a noonday shadow, foreshortened and broadened.

Molly turned in the direction of the lake. Nance's heart gave a violent thump. She had believed all along that they were taking a short cut across to the gymnasium, instead of following the gravel walk.

"Molly, you don't think----" she began breathlessly.

"Don't talk now. Hurry," was Molly's brief reply.

Across a corner of the golf course they flew, and before Nance could take breath for another dash through a fringe of pine trees she caught sight of the waters, as black as ink. She clutched Molly's arm.

"Did you hear anything?" she asked, in a frightened whisper.

They waited a moment, straining their ears in the darkness.

From the middle of the lake came the sound of a canoe paddle dipping into the water.

Molly breathed a sigh of relief.

"It's all right," she said, and they hastened down to the platform of the boathouse.

In another moment they had launched a small rowboat and were out on the lake.

"Will Judy Kean never learn sense?" Nance thought impatiently. "She's just like a prairie fire. It only takes a spark to set her going and then she burns up everything in sight."

Nance had never been able to understand why Judy could not hold her pa.s.sionate, excitable temperament more in control. She, herself, had learned self-denial at an early age. But that was because she had a selfish mother.

"How did you ever guess she would be here, Molly?" she asked, as the prow of the boat cut softly through the waters of the lake with a musical ripple.

Nance was rowing, and Molly, who had never learned to handle oars, was sitting facing her.

"I don't know. I can't explain it. I dreamed that some one said 'hurry,' and the lake seemed to be the place to come to."

Some two hundred feet beyond they now made out the silhouette of a canoe. Judy--of course it was Judy; already they recognized the outline of her slender figure--kneeling in the bottom of the boat, had stopped paddling. She held up her head like a startled animal when it scents danger. It occurred to Nance, watching her over her shoulder as they drew nearer, that there was really something wild and untamed in Judy's nature. She remembered that, the first morning they had met her at Queen's, Judy had laughingly announced that she had been born at sea on a stormy night. But it was no joking matter, Nance was thinking, and she fervently wished that Judy would learn to quell her troubled moods.

The next instant the two boats touched prows. The little canoe, the most delicate and sensitive craft that there is, quivered violently with the shock of the collision and sprang back. As it bounded forward again, Molly held out her hand. Instinctively Judy grasped it, and the two boats drew alongside each other.

"Crawl into our boat, Judy, dearest," said Molly. "It will be easier to pull the canoe to sh.o.r.e if it's empty."