The Motor Maids by Rose, Shamrock and Thistle Part 22

"And I thought you were to be an engineer, Timothy?" said Billie.

"It's this enterprising American Edward who's done it all," answered Timothy. "We couldn't bear to be separated from him, English Eddie and I couldn't, so that's why we entered this seat of wisdom and learning. But it is a great experience. I'm not sorry for the work I had to do to get in."

"And here we are at the most beautiful college in Oxford," continued the American Edward proudly. "I had a tough pull, too, and studied day and night, but I'm here and it's great."

He led the way up that famous High Street which Hawthorne said was the n.o.blest old street in England, turned to the left and finally conducted them through a gateway into the beautiful Quadrangle of St. Mary Magdalen College. They climbed the Magdalen Tower where at five in the morning on every first day of May the choir still sings a Latin hymn.

From the summit of this ancient tower they saw the lovely little river, the verdant banks of which were dotted with students.

"And now, let us lead you gently to the tea table," said Timothy.

"But what about Feargus, Cousin Helen?" asked Billie. "Were we not to meet him in time for tea?"

"And who is Feargus?" demanded the boys.

"He is a firebrand young Irishman who is conducting us on this trip."

Now, it so happened that the two Paxtons had an important engagement that would take them away for half an hour and Timothy was to do the honors of their lodgings until their return. Billy and Elinor had already strolled on ahead with the Paxtons; so that there was really no objection to be made, when Nancy offered to go back to the hotel and look for Feargus.

"The real reason I want to go," she confided to Miss Campbell, "is to change my hat. I can't bear this ugly old motor hat I am wearing, and if I had on the one with the pink lining, I'd feel much happier."

"Very well, dear," said Miss Campbell, smiling indulgently over Nancy's vanities, "go along and get your other hat if it will improve your state of mind."

"First show me exactly how to get to the lodgings," Nancy asked of Timothy.

"You can't miss it," he said. "You have only to come back on this same street. Do you see that gray house over there with the white steps and the white front door? Ring the bell and ask for our rooms and the maid will show you up. Have you got it straight?"

"Certainly," answered Nancy. "My mind is active enough to grasp a gray house with white front steps and a maid to show me up."

With an impudent toss of her head, she hastened away on her errand, already in her mind's eye putting on the hat with the pink lining, under the drooping brim of which she felt herself to become an irresistible person.

Feargus was not at the hotel. He had left a note stating that he had gone for a walk and would be back in time for dinner. Nancy felt irritated. He was a moody soul, that Irishman: one day in high spirits and the next in the depths. She pinned on the hat and looked at herself in the gla.s.s.

Now really, how pretty she was! What a beguiling face, to be sure! Her cheeks seemed pinker under the shadow of the drooping rose-lined brim, and her laughing blue eyes added l.u.s.ter to the soft oval of her face.

"I think I am looking rather well," she said to herself, patting a curl or two and giving her gray brilliantine frock a little jerk, as she hurried out again.

Her mind filled with her own charms and the joy of living in a world so happy and beautiful, she left the ancient hostelry and turned her face toward Magdalen College and her friends' lodgings. Crossing the bridge, she let her glance wander along the green stretches of meadow beyond, with lovely glimpses of river scenery and wooded landscape.

And now, once over the bridge, she must cross the street, go a little way up another, and there, to be sure, was the gray house with the white steps. She marched up triumphantly.

"Who says I'm a dunce?" she demanded of her innermost self.

She rang the bell and the sound echoed through the house, but no one came to the door. Again she pulled the handle and the brazen call might have been heard through all Oxford, resounding far and near with a hundred reverberations. Then there floated to her from above a chorus of men's voices. This was the song they sang:

"The story of Frederick Gowler, A mariner of the sea, Who quitted his ship, 'The Howler,'

A-sailing in Caribbee.

For many a day he wandered Till he met, in a state of rum, Calamity Pop Von Peppermint Drop, The King of Canoodle-Dum."

All this time Nancy was ringing the bell impatiently. Finally a voice called down the stair-way:

"Why don't you come up?"

Nancy flushed angrily. It was hardly polite of Timothy Peppercorn not to meet her at the door. She wondered at Miss Campbell for permitting such rudeness. She wondered at herself for enduring it. And she rang the bell again so hard that it came out by the roots and dangled at the side of the door, disqualified for useful service ever again; but her blood was up now, and flinging the door wide open with a gesture of haughty exasperation, she ran upstairs as fast as she could.

She paused at the first open door on the upper landing, where there continued to issue a loud volume of sound; a chorus of robust tenors, baritones and ba.s.ses, all mingling in one enormous, crushing wave of harmony:

"Bang-bang, how the tom-toms thundered!

Bang-bang, how they thumped the gongs!

Bang-bang, how the people won--"

Nancy walked timidly into the room. Through a haze of tobacco smoke as thick as a London fog she made out some hundreds of young men, more or less. At least it seemed to her an immense number. As a matter of fact, there were only eight of them sitting about on the table and benches.

And from the mouth of each young man there poured forth a pillar of smoke as from the chimney of a factory.

When Nancy stood framed in the doorway like an unexpected apparition of spring, the silence of the tomb fell on the company.

CHAPTER XV.-NANCY AND HER CAVALIERS.

Eight briarwood pipes were instantly removed from eight mouths opened wide with astonishment, and seven painfully embarra.s.sed young men withdrew into a corner of the room behind the table, as if Nancy had been an object to flee from. The one young man who remained in the foreground to face the danger reminded her of the poor craven bridegroom who said never a word, in "Lochinvar."

"Why, I thought--" began Nancy Brown and paused. Perhaps she had mistaken the room. "Didn't you call to me to come up?" she asked the cowardly creature who looked as if he preferred death to the torture he was now enduring.

"I beg your pardon," he replied, in an excessive state of embarra.s.sment, "I believe I did."

"But you were not expecting me?"

"Oh, yes, of course--" stammered the student, trying to be polite. "It was awfully good of you to come, don't you know--" he broke off and cleared his throat.

"Then, where is Timothy?"

"Timothy?"

"Yes, Timothy Peppercorn and the others? I was to come right here and have tea with them after I left the hotel. This was the house, I'm sure.

And where are the two Edward Paxtons and Miss Campbell?"

Nancy Brown was a.s.suredly a most bewildering mixture of child and woman.

She must have known that she had come to the wrong house and that the only thing for her to do was quickly to descend those uncarpeted stairs and return to the hotel, or search again for the lodgings of Timothy and the Paxtons. But the sight of the eight bashful students, desperately shy, and still unable to lift their gaze from her charming face, inspired her with the spirit of mischief.

"I'm a little frightened," she said suddenly looking about the room, as if she had only just noticed it was filled with people. "I-I'm lost,"

she added with a choke in her voice.

This was not the first time that Nancy had practiced the role of coquette, young as she was.

"Oh, don't be frightened," exclaimed the spokesman for the eight, forgetting to be shy in the presence of this alarmed beauty. "No one is ever really lost in Oxford. It isn't big enough."

"But I am," insisted Nancy. "It's dreadful to be lost in a strange country. It's so lonely."