Molly Brown's Freshman Days Part 16

"Not as yet," came the answer with a laugh. "But be careful, she is near----"

Molly moved away hastily, her face crimson.

Jessie had heard the question also and recognized the voice of Judith Blount.

"Why, Molly," she exclaimed, glancing at her face, "you don't think they meant----"

"Yes," said Molly, trying to smile naturally, "I do."

She glanced down at her home-made dress. Perhaps it did look amateurish.

She and Nance had worked very hard over it, but, after all, they were not experienced dressmakers.

"Why, you look perfectly charming," went on Jessie generously. "The color is exactly right for you----"

"Yes, color," answered Molly, "but there ought to be something besides color to a dress, you know. Never mind, I shouldn't be such a sensitive plant, Jessie. One ought not to mind being called fantastic. It's not nearly so bad as being called--well, malicious--cruel. I'd rather be fantastic than any of those things. But I did think the dress was pretty when we made it."

"Come along, and let's get some lemonade, Molly. Your dress is sweet and suits you exactly, so there."

Then someone came up and claimed Jessie for the next dance, but Molly was grateful to the pretty b.u.t.terfly creature for her a.s.surances and she resolved to forget all about her dress. As she lingered in the corner, uncertain whether to stay where she was or join her friends in the gallery, Mary Stewart made her way through the crowd and called:

"Oh, here you are. Some of the seniors are just outside and want to meet you. Will you come?"

"I should think I would," replied Molly, joyfully. Fantastic, or not, she had one good friend among the older girls.

"This is Miss Molly Brown of Kentucky," announced Mary Stewart presently to a dozen august seniors who shook her hand and began asking her questions.

"We had two reasons for wanting to meet you, Miss Brown," here put in a very handsome big girl, who spoke in an authoritative tone, which made everybody stop and listen. (She was, in fact, the President of the senior cla.s.s.) "One of course was just to make your acquaintance, and the other was to ask if you would do us a favor. We are going to have a living picture show Friday week for the benefit of the Students' Fund, and we wondered if you would pose in one of the pictures, maybe several, we haven't decided on them yet. But that dress must be in one of them, don't you think so, Mary? One of Romney's Lady Hamilton pictures for instance, with a white gauze fichu; or a Sir Thomas Lawrence portrait----"

"You don't think it's too fantastic?" asked Molly.

"What, that lovely blue thing? Heavens, no! it's charming----"

Molly had barely time to thank her and accept the invitation, when she and Mary were dragged off to make up the big circle of "right and left all around," which wound up the dance. After this whirling romp, three loud raps were heard and gradually the noise of talking and laughter subsided into absolute silence. A girl had mounted the platform. She carried a megaphone in one hand and a book in the other. She was the official reader of her cla.s.s, and now proceeded to recite through the megaphone all the best and most amusing material from "Jokes & Croaks."

According to time honored custom, the jokes were greeted with applause and laughter, and the croaks with groans and laughter, and anybody who groaned at a joke or applauded a croak, if she happened to be caught, was publicly humiliated by being made to stand up and face the jeers of the mult.i.tude. The girls finally decided, after many ludicrous mistakes, that the jokes were on the soph.o.m.ores and the croaks were on the freshmen. For instance, here was a croak:

"A lady of notable luck, Who cared not for turkey or duck, Cried, 'Give me old ham And I don't give a slam, If it comes from Vermont or Kaintuck.'"

This was greeted with laughing groans, and Molly for the first time realized the significance of her roommate's name.

Margaret Wakefield figured in several croaks, as "the Suffragette of Queen's." In fact Queen's girls came in for a good many croaks and began to wait fearfully for what was to come next. But the witticisms were all quite good-natured, even the last, which called forth so many merry groans that they soon ceased to be groans at all and became uproarious laughter, and Molly, very red and laughing, too, was the centre of all eyes. This was the croak:

"They have locked me in the Cloisters, They have fastened up the gate!

Oh, let me out; Oh, let me out.

It's getting very late.

'Tis said the ghosts of cla.s.ses gone Do wander here at night.

Oh, let me out; Oh, let me out, Before I die of fright!

And then there rang a clarion voice.

It's tone was loud and clear.

'Oh, dry your eyes and cease your cries, For help, I ween, is near.

But promise me one little thing Before I ope the gate: Oh, never pa.s.s the coffee tray, If I am sitting nigh; Or, if you pa.s.s the coffee tray, Oh, then, just pa.s.s me by!'"

It was all very jolly and delightful, and for the first time the girls felt that they were really a part of the college life.

Mary Stewart was very sweet to Molly when she took her home that night, and the young freshman never realized until long afterwards, when she was a senior herself, what a nice thing her friend had done; for soph.o.m.ore-freshman receptions were an old story to Mary Stewart.

CHAPTER XI.

EXMOOR COLLEGE.

Busy days followed the soph.o.m.ore-freshman ball. The girls were "getting into line," as Judy variously expressed it; "showing their mettle; and putting on steam for the winter's work." The story of the incendiary had been reported exaggerated and had gradually died out altogether. Frances Andrews had returned to college, more brazenly facetious than ever, breaking into conversations, loudly interrupting, making jokes which no one laughed at except Molly and Judy out of charity. She was a strange girl and led a lonely life, but she was too much like the crater of a sleeping volcano, which might shoot off unexpectedly at any moment, and most of the girls gave her a wide berth.

The weather grew cold and crisp. There was a smell of smoke in the air from burning leaves and from the chimneys of the faculty homes wherein wood fires glowed cheerfully.

At last Sat.u.r.day arrived. It was the day of the excursion to Exmoor, and it was with more or less anxiety regarding the weather that the three girls scanned the skies that morning for signs of rain. But the heavens were a deep and cloudless blue and the air mildly caressing, neither too cold nor too warm.

"It is like the Indian summers we have at home," exclaimed Molly, when, an hour later, they turned their faces toward the village through which the trolley pa.s.sed.

Mabel Hinton, pa.s.sing them as they started, had called out:

"Art off on a picnic?"

And they had answered:

"We art."

Some other girls had cried:

"Whither away so early, Oh?"

And they had cried:

"To Exmoor! To Exmoor, for now the day has come at last!" paraphrasing a song Judy was in the habit of singing.

Indeed the day seemed so perfect and joyous that they could hardly keep from singing aloud instead of just humming when they boarded the trolley car.

Through the country they sped swiftly. The valley unfolded itself before them in all its beauty and the misty blue hills in the distance seemed to draw nearer. Over everything there was a sense of autumn peace which comes when the world is drowsing off into his deep sleep.

"Exmoor!" called the conductor at last, and the three girls stepped off at a charming rustic station. With a clang of the bell which rang out harshly in the still air, the car flew on.

The three girls looked at the empty station. Then they looked at each other with a kind of mock consternation, for nothing really mattered.