“Oh, Molly, what was that awful
black wagon that went up the avenue a few minutes
ago?” demanded half a dozen voices as she opened
the door into her own room.
“The freshman at the Infirmary
who was threatened with typhoid fever is getting well,”
remarked Margaret Wakefield.
“Surely, nothing has happened
to any of the Wellington girls?” put in Jessie
uneasily.
“No, no,” answered Molly,
“nothing so terrible as that, thank goodness.
It wasn’t an undertaker’s wagon, but an
ambulance.” She paused. It would be
rather hard on Nance to tell the news about Andy before
all the girls.
“It looked something like the
Exmoor ambulance,” here observed Katherine Williams.
Molly was silent. Suppose she
should tell the sad news and Nance should break down
and make a scene. It would be cruel. “I’ll
wait until they go,” she decided. But this
was not easy.
“Who was in the ambulance, Molly?”
asked Judy impatiently. “I should think
you would have had curiosity enough to have noticed
where it stopped.”
It was no use wrinkling her eyebrows
at Judy or trying to evade her direct questions.
The inquisitive girl went on:
“Wasn’t that Dr. McLean on the seat with
the driver?”
“Naturally he would be there,
being the only physician in Wellington,” replied
Molly.
Then Lawyer Wakefield began a series
of cross-questions that fairly made the poor girl
quail.
“In which direction were you
going when you met the ambulance?” asked this
persistent judge.
“I was coming this way, of course.”
“And you mean to say your curiosity
didn’t prompt you to turn around and see where
the ambulance stopped?”
“I didn’t say that,”
faltered Molly, feeling very much like a prisoner
at the bar.
“You did turn and look then?
Was it toward the faculty houses or the Quadrangle
that the ambulance was driving?”
“Well, really, Judge Wakefield,
I think I had better seek legal advice before replying
to your questions.”
Margaret laughed.
“I only wanted to prove to myself
that the only way to get at the truth of a matter
is by a system of questions which require direct answers.
It’s like the game of ‘Twenty Questions,’
which is the most interesting game in the world when
it’s properly played. Once I guessed the
ring on the Pope’s finger in six questions just
by careful deduction. It’s easier to get
at the truth by subtracting than adding ”
“Truth, indeed. You haven’t
got a bit nearer than any of us,” burst in the
incorrigible Judy. “With all your legal
mind you haven’t made Molly tell us who was
in the ambulance, and of course she knows. She
has never said she didn’t, yet.”
Molly felt desperately uncomfortable.
She wished now that she had told them in the beginning.
It had only made matters worse not to tell.
“Molly, you are the strangest
person. What possible reason could you have for
keeping secret who was in the ambulance? Was it
one of the students or one of the faculty?”
demanded Nance.
“People who live in the country
say that calves are the most inquisitive creatures
in the world, but I think girls are,” remarked
Molly.
“This is as good as a play,”
cried one of the Williams girls, “a real play
behind footlights, to sit here and look on at this
little comedy of curiosity. You’ve asked
every conceivable question under the sun, and Molly
there has never told a thing. Now I happen to
know that the ambulance is connected with the sanitarium
over near Exmoor. I saw it once when we were
walking, and it is therefore probably bringing someone
from Exmoor here. Then if you wish to inquire
further by the ’deductive method,’ as
Judge Wakefield calls it: who at Exmoor has connections
at Wellington?”
“Dodo Green and Andy McLean,” said Judy
quickly.
“Exactly,” answered Edith.
Nance’s eyes met Molly’s
and in a flash she understood why her friend had been
parrying the questions of the other girls. It
was to save her from a shock.
Perhaps some of the other girls recognized
this, too, for Margaret and the Williamses rose at
the same moment and made excuses to go, and the others
soon followed. Only blundering and thoughtless
Judy remained to blunder more.
“Molly Brown,” she exclaimed,
“you have been getting so full of mysteries
and secrets lately that you might as well live in a
tower all alone. Now, why ”
“Is he very badly hurt, Molly?”
interrupted Nance in a cold, even voice, not taking
the slightest notice of Judy’s complaints.
“Pretty badly, Nance. The
journey over from Exmoor was harder on him than they
thought it would be. I stood beside the stretcher
for a minute.”
Nance walked over to the side window
and looked across the campus in the direction of the
McLean house. On the small section of the avenue
which could be seen from that point she caught a glimpse
of the ambulance making its return trip to Exmoor.
She turned quickly and went back to her chair.
“It looks like a hearse,” she said miserably.
“Is it Andy?” asked Judy of Molly in a
whisper.
Molly nodded her head.
“What a chump I’ve been!” ejaculated
Judy.
“It happened the night of the carnival, of course,”
pursued Nance.
“Yes.”
“It was all my fault,”
she went on quietly. “I would coast down
one of those long hills and Andy didn’t want
me to. I knew I could, and I wanted to show him
how well I could skate. Then, just as we got to
the bottom, my heel came off and we both tumbled.
It didn’t hurt us, but Andy was provoked, and
then we quarreled. Of course, walking back made
us late and he missed the others.”
“But, dear Nance, it might have
happened just the same, even if he had been with the
others,” argued Molly.
“No, it couldn’t have
been so bad. He must have been lying in the snow
a long time before they found him, and was probably
half frozen,” she went on, ruthlessly inflicting
pain on herself.
“They did go back and find him,
fortunately,” admitted Molly.
“He was the first and only boy
friend I have ever had,” continued Nance in
a tone of extreme bitterness. “I always
thought I was a wallflower until I met him. Other
girls like you two and Jessie have lots of friends
and can spare one. But I haven’t any to
spare. I only have Andy.” Her voice
broke and she began to sob, “Oh, why was I so
stubborn and cruel that night?”
Judy crept over and locked the door.
She was sore in mind and body at sight of Nance’s
misery.
“I feel like a whipped cur,”
she thought. “Just as if someone had beaten
me with a stick. Poor old Nance!”
“You mustn’t feel so hopeless
about it, Nance dear,” Molly was saying.
“I’m sure he’ll pull through.
They wouldn’t have brought him all this distance
if he had been so badly off.”
“They have brought him home
to die!” cried Nance fiercely. “And
I did it. I did it!” she rocked herself
back and forth. “I want to be alone,”
she said suddenly.
“Of course, dear Nance, no one
shall disturb you,” said Molly, taking a pile
of books off the table and a “Busy” sign,
which she hung on the door. “We’ll
bring up your supper. Don’t come down this
evening.”
But when the girls returned some hours
later with a tray of food, Nance had gone to bed and
turned her face to the wall, and she refused to eat
a morsel. All next day it was the same. Nance
remained in bed, ruthlessly cutting lessons and refusing
to take anything but a cup of soup at lunch time.
The girls called at Dr. McLean’s to inquire for
Andy and found that his condition was much the same.
Nance’s condition was the same, too. She
turned a deaf ear to all their arguments and declined
to be reasoned with.
“She can’t lie there forever,” Judy
exclaimed at last.
“But what are we to do, Judy?”
Molly asked. “She’s just nursing her
troubles until she’ll go into melancholia!
I would go to Mrs. McLean, but she won’t see
anyone and the doctor is too unhappy to listen.
I tried to tell him about Nance and he didn’t
hear a word I was saying. I didn’t realize
how much they adored Andy.”
Judy could offer no suggestion and
Molly went off to the Library to think.
It occurred to her that Professor
Green might give her some advice. He knew all
about the friendship between Nance and Andy, and, besides,
he had interested himself once before in Nance’s
troubles when he arranged for her to go to the McLeans’
supper party the year before. Molly glanced at
the clock. It was nearly half-past four.
“He’ll probably be in
his little cloister study right now,” she said
to herself, and in three minutes she was rapping on
the oak door in the corridor marked “E.
Green.”
“Come in,” called the Professor.
He was sitting at his study table,
his back turned to her, writing busily.
“You’re late, Dodo,”
he continued, without looking up. “I expected
you in time for lunch. Sit down and wait.
I can’t stop now. Don’t speak to
me for fifteen minutes. I’m finishing something
that must go by the six o’clock mail.”
Molly sank into the depths of the
nearest chair while the Professor’s pen scratched
up and down monotonously. Not since the famous
night of her Freshman year when she was locked in
the cloisters had she been in the Professor’s
sanctum, and she looked about her with much curiosity.
“I wish I had one just like
it,” she thought. “It’s so peaceful
and quiet, just the place to work in and write books
on ’The Elizabethan Drama,’ and lyric
poetry, and comic operas ”
There was a nice leathery smell in
the atmosphere of book bindings mingled with tobacco
smoke, and the only ornament she could discover, except
a small bronze bust of Voltaire and a life mask of
Keats, was a glazed paper weight in the very cerulean
blue she herself was so fond of. It caught the
fading light from the window and shone forth from the
desk like a bit of blue sky.
Molly was sitting in a high back leather
chair, which quite hid her from Judith Blount, who
presently, knocking on the door and opening it at the
same moment, entered the room like a hurricane.
“Cousin Edwin, may I come in?
I want to ask you something ”
“I can’t possibly see
you now, Judith. You must wait until to-morrow.
I’m very busy.”
“Oh, pshaw!” exclaimed
the girl and banged the door as she departed into
the corridor.
What a jarring element she was in
all that peaceful stillness! The muffled noises
in the Quadrangle seemed a hundred miles away.
Molly rose and tiptoed to the door.
“He’ll be angrier than
ever if he should find me here,” she thought.
“I’ll just get out quietly and explain
some other time.”
Her hand was already on the doorknob
when the Professor wheeled around and faced her.
“Why, Miss Brown,” he
exclaimed, “was it you all the time? I might
have known my clumsy brother couldn’t have been
so quiet.”
“Please excuse me,” faltered
Molly. “I am sure you are very busy.
I am awfully sorry to have disturbed you.”
“Nonsense! It’s only
unimportant things I won’t be bothered with,
like the absurd questions Judith thinks up to ask
me and Dodo’s gossip about the fellows at Exmoor.
But I am well aware that you never waste time.
I suspect you of being one of the busiest little ladies
in Wellington.”
Molly smiled. Somehow, she liked
to be called a “little lady” by this distinguished
professor.
“But your letter that must go by the six mail?”
“That can wait until morning,” he said.
He had just said it was to go at six,
but, of course, he had a right to change his mind.
“Sit down and tell me what’s
the trouble. Have you had bad news from home?”
“No, it’s about Nance,”
she began, and told him the whole story. “You
see,” she finished, “Nance has had so few
friends, and she is very fond of Andy. Because
she thinks the accident was her fault, she is just
grieving herself into an awful state.”
The Professor sat with his chin resting on his hand.
“Poor little girl!” he
said. “And the Doctor and Mrs. McLean are
in almost as bad a state themselves. You know
it’s just a chance that Andy will pull through.
He has developed pneumonia.”
“Oh, dear, with all those broken
bones and that terrible gash! Isn’t it
dreadful?”
“Pretty bad. Have you tried talking to
Miss Oldham?”
“I’ve tried everything
and nothing will move her. It’s just a kind
of stubborn misery that seems to have paralyzed her,
mind and body.”
The two sat in silence for a moment,
then the Professor said:
“Suppose I go down to Queen’s
to-night and see Miss Oldham? Do you think she
could be induced to come down into Mrs. Markham’s
sitting room and have a talk with me?”
“I should think so. She
wouldn’t have the courage to decline to see one
of the faculty.”
“Very well. If she is roused
to get up and come down stairs, she may come to her
senses. But don’t go yet. I have something
to tell you, something that doesn’t concern
Miss Oldham but er myself.
Do you remember the opera I told you about?”
Molly nodded.
“It’s going into rehearsal
Christmas week and will open in six weeks. Are
you pleased?”
Molly was pleased, of course.
She was always glad of other people’s good luck.
“How would you like to go to the opening?”
he asked.
“It would be wonderful, but but
I don’t see how I can. I told you there
were complications.”
“Yes, I know,” he answered,
“but you’re to forget complications that
night and enjoy my first attempt to be amusing.”
“I’ll try,” answered
Molly, not realizing how her reply might sound to
the author of the comic opera, who only smiled good-naturedly
and said:
“The music will be pretty at any rate.”
They sat talking about the opera for
some time, in fact, until the tower clock clanged
six.
“I never dreamed it was so late,”
apologized Molly, “and I have kept you all this
time. I know you must be awfully busy. I
hope you will forgive me.”
“Didn’t I just say that
your time was quite as important as mine?” he
said. “And when two very important people
get together the moments are not wasted.”
That night the Professor did call
on Nance at Queen’s, and the unhappy girl was
obliged to get into her things as quickly as possible
and go down. What he said to her Molly and Judy
never knew, but in an hour Nance returned to them
in a normal, sensible state of mind, and not again
did she turn her face to the wall and refuse to be
comforted.
“There is no doubt in my mind
that Professor Green is the nicest person in Wellington,
that is, of the faculty,” thought Molly as she
settled under the reading lamp, and prepared to study
her Lit. lesson.