Molly Brown's Freshman Days Part 5

Later, when the two girls had crawled wearily into bed, after finis.h.i.+ng the unpacking, Molly called out sleepily:

"Nance"--she had forgotten already to say Miss Oldham--"do you suppose that nice junior could have meant Miss Andrews?"

"I haven't a doubt of it," said Nance.

"Just the same, I'm sorry for the poor thing," continued Molly. "I'm sorry for anybody who's walking under a cloud, and I don't think it would do any harm to be nice to her."

"It wouldn't do her any harm," said Nance.

"Epimenides Antinous Green," whispered Molly to herself, as she snuggled under the covers. The name seemed to stick in her memory like a rhyme.

"Funny I didn't notice how young and handsome he was. I only noticed that he had good manners, if he did treat me like a child."

CHAPTER IV.

A BUSY DAY.

The next day was always a chaotic one in Molly's memory--a jumble of new faces and strange events. At breakfast she made the acquaintance of the freshmen who were staying at Queen's Cottage--four in all. One of these was Julia Kean, "a nice girl in neutral tints," as Molly wrote home to her sister, "with gray eyes and brown hair and a sense of humor." She came to be known as "Judy," and formed an intimate friends.h.i.+p with Molly and Nance, which lasted throughout the four years of their college course.

"How do you feel after your night's rest?" she called across the table to Molly in the most friendly manner, just as if they had known each other always. "You look like the 'Lady of the Sea' in that blue linen that just matches your eyes." She began looking Molly over with a kind of critical admiration, narrowing her eyes as an artist does when he's at work on a picture. "I'd like to make a poster of you in blue-and-white chalk. I'd put you on a yellow, sandy beach, against a bright blue sky, in a high wind, with your dress and hair blowing----"

And with eyes still narrowed, she traced an imaginary picture with one hand and shaped her ideas with the other.

Molly laughed.

"You must be an artist," she said, "with such notions about posing."

"A would-be one, that's all. 'Not yet, but soon,' is my motto."

"That's a bad motto," here put in Nance Oldham. "It's like the Spanish saying of '_Hasta manana_.' You are very apt to put off doing things until next day."

Julia Kean looked at her reproachfully.

"You've read my character in two words," she said.

"Why don't you introduce me to your friends, Judy?" asked a handsome girl next to her, who had quant.i.ties of light-brown hair piled on top of her head.

"I haven't been introduced myself," replied Judy; "but I never could see why people should stop for introductions at teas and times like this.

We all know we're all right, or else we wouldn't be here."

"Of course," said Frances Andrews, who had just come in, "why all this formality, when we are to be a family party for the next eight months?

Why not become friends at once, without any preliminaries?"

Sally Marks, who had given them the vague yet meaningful warning the night before, appeared to be absorbed in her coffee cup, and the other two soph.o.m.ores at the table were engaged in a whispered conversation.

"Nevertheless, I will perform the introductions," announced Judy Kean.

"This is Miss Margaret Wakefield, of Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C.; Miss Edith Coles, of Rhode Island; Miss Jessie Lynch, of Wisconsin, and Miss Mabel Hinton, of Illinois. As for me, my name is Julia Kean, and I come from--nowhere in particular."

"You must have had a birthplace," insisted that accurate young person, Nance Oldham.

"If you could call a s.h.i.+p a birthplace, I did," replied Judy. "I was born in mid-ocean on a stormy night. Hence my stormy, restless nature."

"But how did it happen?" asked Molly.

"Oh, it was all simple enough. Papa and mamma were on their way back from j.a.pan, and I arrived a bit prematurely on board s.h.i.+p. I began life traveling, and I've been traveling ever since."

"You'll have to stay put here; awhile, at least," said Sally Marks.

"I hope so. I need to gather a little moss before I become an habitual tramp."

"Hadn't we better be chasing along?" said Frances Andrews. "It's almost time for chapel."

No one answered and Molly began to wonder how long this strange girl would endure the part of a monologist at college. For that was what her attempts at conversation seemed to amount to. She admired Frances's pluck, at any rate. Whatever she had done to offend, it was courageous of her to come back and face the music.

Chapel was an impressive sight to the new girls. The entire body of students was there, and the faculty, including Professor Edwin Green, who gave each girl the impression he was looking at her when he was really only gazing into the imaginary bull's-eye of an imaginary camera, and saw not one of them. Molly decided his comeliness was more charm than looks. "The unknown charm," she wrote her sister. "His ears are a little pointed at the top, and he has brown eyes like a collie dog. But it was nice of him to have given me his soup," she added irrelevantly, "and I shall always appreciate it."

After chapel, when Molly was following in the trail of her new friends, feeling a bit strange and unaccustomed, some one plucked her by the sleeve. It was Mary Stewart, the nice senior with the plain, but fine face.

"I'll expect you this evening after supper," she said. "I'm having a little party. There will be music, too. I thought perhaps you might like to bring a friend along. It's rather lonesome, breaking into a new crowd by one's self."

It never occurred to Molly that she was being paid undue honors. For a freshman, who had arrived only the afternoon before, without a friend in college, to be asked to a small intimate party by the most prominent girl in the senior cla.s.s, was really quite remarkable, so Nance Oldham thought; and she was pleased to be the one Molly chose to take along.

The two girls had had a busy, exciting day. They had not been placed in the same divisions, B and O being so widely separated in the alphabet, and were now meeting again for the first time since lunch.

Molly had stretched her length on her couch and kicked off her pumps, described later by Judy Kean as being a yard long and an inch broad.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I wish you would tell me your receipt for making friends, Molly," exclaimed Nance.--_Page 51._]

"I wish you would tell me your receipt for making friends, Molly,"

exclaimed Nance. "You are really a perfect wonder. Don't you find it troublesome to be so nice to so many people?"

"I'd find it lots harder not to be nice," answered Molly. "Besides, it's a rule that works both ways. The nicer you are to people, the nicer they are to you."

"But don't you think lots of people aren't worth the effort and if you treat them like sisters, they are apt to take advantage of it and bore you afterwards?"

Molly smiled.

"I've never been troubled that way," she said.

"Now, don't tell me," cried Nance, warming to the argument, "that that universally cordial manner of yours doesn't bring a lot of rag-tags around to monopolize you. If it hasn't before, it will now. You'll see."

"You make me feel like the leader of c.o.xey's Army," laughed Molly; "because, you see, I'm a kind of a rag-tag myself."

Her eyes filled with tears. She was thinking of her meagre wardrobe.

Nance was silent. She was slow of speech, but when she once began, she always said more than she intended simply to prove her point; and now she was afraid she had hurt Molly's feelings. She was provoked with herself for her carelessness, and when she was on bad terms with herself she appeared to be on bad terms with everybody else. Of course, in her heart of hearts, she had been thinking of Frances Andrews, whom she felt certain Molly would never snub sufficiently to keep her at a distance.

The two girls went about their dressing without saying another word.