Molly Brown's Junior Days Part 16

"And then what happened next?"

They looked at her blankly.

"What happened next?" repeated Molly.

"Yes. I want you to begin and tell me the whole thing from beginning to end."

Molly rested her chin on her hand and looked out of the window. This is what had been familiarly spoken of in college as being "on the grill."

"What do you want us to tell, Miss Walker?" asked Nance with a surprising amount of courage in her tones.

"I want to know," said the President sternly, "where you were between twelve and one o'clock on Friday night."

"We were on the lake," announced Nance, with keen appreciation of the fact that when President Walker made a direct question she expected a direct answer and there was no getting around it.

"Alone?"

"Yes."

"You mean to tell me that you three girls went rowing on the lake alone at that hour? What escapade is this?"

Her voice was so stern that it made Molly quake in her boots, but Nance was as heroic as an early Christian martyr.

"It was not a mad escapade. We did it because we had to," she answered.

"Why?"

Nance paused. This was the crucial point. It looked as if Miss Walker must be told about Judy's folly, or themselves be disgraced.

"They came for me," announced a hoa.r.s.e voice from the door.

It was such an unexpected interruption that all three women started nervously, but if Molly and Nance had been more observant they would have noticed the President stifle a smile which twitched the corners of her mouth.

Judy, in a long red dressing-gown, her hair in great disorder and her eyes glittering feverishly, came trailing into the room. In one hand she grasped Nance's slipper and with the other she made a dramatic gesture, pointing to herself.

"They came for me," she repeated. "I had been angry and said cruel, unjust things to Molly. Everybody went off and left me after the play. I was locked out and I was so unhappy, I wanted to be alone. Water always comforts me. You see, I was born at sea, and I took a canoe from the boat house and paddled into the middle of the lake. Then those two Sweet Spirits of Niter came for me, and the canoe upset and I--I dropped my slipper somewhere, 5-B is the number--I don't know who found it--here's its mate----" Judy waved the slipper over her head and laughed wildly.

"The child's delirious," exclaimed Miss Walker, smiling in spite of herself.

They persuaded Judy to get back into bed and the President sent Nance flying for the doctor. Presently, when Judy had dropped off to sleep again, Molly finished the story of that exciting evening.

"But, my dear," said the President, slipping her arm around Molly's waist and drawing her down on the arm of the chair, "what prompted you to go to the lake and nowhere else?"

"I can never explain really what it was," replied Molly. "I dreamed that someone said 'hurry.' I wasn't even thinking of Judy when I started to dress. You see, we thought she had gone to bed. I hadn't thought of the lake, either. It was just as if I was walking in my sleep, Nance said.

Then we found Judy wasn't in her room, and I knew she needed me. I remember we ran all the way to the lake."

"Strange, strange!" said Miss Walker.

She drew Molly's face down to her own and kissed her. There were tears on the President's cheek and Molly looked the other way.

"Sometimes, Molly," she said after a moment, "you remind me of my dear sister who died twenty years ago."

It was a good while before Nance returned with Dr. McLean and in the interval of waiting Molly and Miss Walker talked of many things. Molly told her how they had buried the slipper on Round Head, and of how they had seen the Professor and been frightened. They talked of Judy's temperament and of what kind of mental training Judy should have to learn to control her wild spirits. From that the talk drifted to Molly's affairs, and then she asked the President to do her the honor of drinking a cup of tea in her humble apartment. The two women spent an intimate and delightful hour together, with Judy sound asleep in the next room, and no one to disturb them because of that blessed Busy sign.

At last Dr. McLean came bl.u.s.tering in, and, seeing the President and Molly in close converse over their cups of tea, chuckled delightedly and observed:

"They are all alike, the women folk--the talk lasts as long as the tea lasts, and there's always another cup in the pot."

"Have a look at your patient, doctor," said Miss Walker, "and we'll save that extra cup in the pot for you."

The doctor was not disturbed over Judy's delirium.

"It's joost quinine and excitement that's made her go a bit daffy," he said. "Keep her quiet for a day or so. She'll be all right."

Imagine their surprise, ten minutes later, when Margaret Wakefield and the Williamses, peeping into the room, found Molly and Nance entertaining the President of Wellington and Dr. McLean at tea. The news spread quickly along the corridor and when the distinguished guests presently departed almost every girl in the Quadrangle had made it her business to be lingering near the stairway or wandering in the hall.

Only one person heard nothing of it, and that was Minerva Higgins, who, after Vespers, had taken a long walk. n.o.body told her about it afterward, because she was not popular with the Quadrangle girls and had formed her a.s.sociations with some freshmen in the village. When it was given out that evening that Miss Walker had come to see about Judy, who had been quite ill, the talk died down.

Having dropped the heavy load of responsibility they had been carrying for two days, Molly and Nance felt foolishly gay. Molly made Miss Walker a box of cloudbursts before she went to bed, while Nance read aloud a thrilling and highly exciting detective story borrowed from Edith Williams, whose shelves held books for every mood.

"By the way, Nance," observed Molly, when the story was finished, "how do you suppose Miss Walker found it all out?"

"Why, Professor Green, of course," answered Nance in a matter of fact voice. "There was never any doubt in my mind from the first moment she came into the room."

"What?" cried Molly, thunderstruck.

"There was no other way. He saw us burying the slipper and I suppose he thought it his duty to inform on us."

"He didn't feel it his duty to inform on Judith Blount when she cut the electric wires that night," broke in Molly.

"Perhaps he didn't think that was as wrong as rowing on the lake with boys from Exmoor. Besides, she was his relative."

Molly took off her slipper and held it up as if she were going to pitch it with all her force across the room. Then she dropped it gently on the floor.

"I'm disappointed," she said.

CHAPTER XI.

A SWOPPING PARTY AND A MOCK TRIAL.

There was never any tedious convalescing for Judy; no tiresome transition from illness to health. As soon as she determined in her mind that she was well, she arose from her bed and walked, and neither friendly remonstrances nor doctor's orders could induce her to return.

On Monday morning she appeared in the sitting room wearing a black dress with widow's bands of white muslin around the collar and cuffs. Molly and Nance were a little uneasy at first, thinking that the delirium still lingered, but Judy seemed entirely rational.