“Oh, it is nice to be back home,” sighed Molly, settling herself luxuriously in the sleepy-hollow chair that was supposed to be set aside for the master of the house. With the girlish habit she had never outgrown, she slipped off her pumps and stretched out her slender feet to the wood fire, that felt very comfortable in the crisp autumn weather.
“That’s what you said when we arrived in Kentucky in the spring,” teased her husband.
“Well, so it was nice. The migratory birds have two homes and they are always glad to get to whichever one is seasonable. I reckon I am with my two homes as Mother is with her seven children. I love them just the same. Thank goodness, I haven’t seven of them, homes, I mean.”
“Yes, I think two are enough.”
“Which home do you love best, Wellington or the Orchard Home?” asked Molly, smiling fondly at her husband, who was dandling little Mildred on his knees with awkward eagerness.
“Why, neither one of them is home to me unless you are there, and whichever one you grace with your presence is for the time being the one I like the better.”
“And the baby, too, whichever one she is in makes it home!”
“Oh, certainly!” exclaimed Edwin Green with a whimsical expression on his face. “I see that when I make love now it is to be to two ladies and not to one.”
“Don’t you think Mildred has grown a lot? And see, her eyes have really turned brown, just as Mother said they would. Don’t you think she looks well?”
“Yes, honey, I think she looks very well, but I don’t think you do.”
“Me! Nonsense! I am as well as can be, just a little tired from the trip.”
“Yes, I know. Of course that was fatiguing, but I think you are thinner than you have any right to be. I am afraid you have been doing too much.”
“Oh, not at all. I have had simply nothing to do but take care of the baby, and that is just play, real play.”
“Humph, no doubt! But maybe you have played too hard and that is what has tired you. I thought you were going to bring Kizzie along to nurse.”
“Oh, that was your and Mother’s plan! I never had any idea of doing it. ’Deed and um’s muvver is going to take care of ’ittle bits a baby herself,” and Molly reached out and snuggled the willing Mildred down in the sleepy-hollow chair. Daddy’s knee was not the most comfortable spot in the world, and a back that has only been in the world about four months cannot stand for much dandling.
“But, Molly darling, Kizzie is a good girl and it would help you ever so much to have her.You know we can well afford it now, so don’t let the financial side of it worry you.”
“But, Edwin, I can’t give up taking care of the baby. I just love to do it.”
“All right, my dear, but please don’t wear yourself out.”
The fact was that the long strain of waiting for news from Kent had told on Molly, and she was looking quite wan and tired. It was not just the trip from Kentucky, which, of course, was no easy matter. Twenty-four hours on the train with an infant that needed much attention and got much more than it really needed was no joke, but the long hours and days of waiting and uncertainty had taken Molly’s strength. She did feel tired and had no appetite, but she felt sure a night’s rest would restore her. She rather attributed her lack of appetite to the poor food that the new Irish maid, whom Edwin had installed in her absence, was serving.
“I’ll take hold of her to-morrow and see what can be done,” she said rather wearily to herself. “I wish Mother could train her for me. I shouldmuch rather do the cooking myself than try to train some one who is as hopelessly green as this girl.”
That night little Mildred decided was a good time to assert herself. The trip had not tired her at all; on the contrary, it had spurred her on to a state of hilarity, which was very amusing at first but as the night wore on, ceased to be funny. She had come to the delightful knowledge of the fact that she had feet and that each foot had five toes. The cover did not stay on these little pigs one moment. Every time Molly would settle her tired bones and begin to doze, there would be a crow from Mildred, a gurgle, and straight in the air would go the bed clothes, tucked in for the millionth time by the patient young mother. Then the pink tootsies would leap into sight and soon find their way to a determined little mouth.
“Darling, you must go to sleepsumby!” Molly would remonstrate. “And you will catch your death if you don’t keep covered up!”
But the four months’ old baby had been too busy in her short life learning other things tobother her head about a mere language. The business of the night was feet and feet alone. There was too much to do about those wonderful little feet for her to think of sleep. Finally Molly gave up. She closed the windows, as too much fresh air on bare feet and legs might not be best and already the little limbs were icy cold. Then she kindled a fire in the grate, the furnace not yet having been started, and gave herself up to a night of sleeplessness. Early in the action, Edwin had been banished to the guest chamber, as he must get sleep no matter what happened, for he had a busy day ahead of him.
Toward morning little Mildred mastered her pedagogy, as her father had called it, and then she dropped off into a deep and peaceful sleep. The weary Molly slept, too.
Before he went to his lectures, Edwin crept into the room to look at his sleeping treasures. The chubby baby still had a toe clasped in her hand but from very weariness had fallen over on her side and was covered up all but the pink foot, which was asserting itself in the remarkable positionthat only the young can take. Molly looked very pale and tired but was sleeping peacefully. Edwin smiled at them. He had given the green maid from the Emerald Isle strict orders not to awaken them. He devoutly hoped that Molly would not know what a very mean breakfast he had endeavored to choke down; burnt bacon and underdone biscuit washed down with very weak coffee and flanked by eggs that had been cooked too long and not long enough, thereby undergoing that process that the chemist tells us is of all things the most indigestible: half hard and half soft. The burnt bacon had been cold and the underdone biscuit still cooking, seemingly, when the poor young husband and father had tried to nourish himself on them.
He had rather hoped when Molly once got back to Wellington that his food would be better; no doubt it would as soon as she, poor girl, could get rested up. He was thankful, indeed, now that she was asleep and tiptoed out of the room and house without making a sound.
She slept until late in the morning and then thebusiness of the day began, getting little Mildred fed and washed and dressed and fed again and then to sleep. The good-natured, if wholly incapable, Katy hung around and waited on the pretty young mistress. Katy had never been out in service in the “schtates,” but had come from New York in answer to an advertisement in a newspaper inserted by the despairing professor when he had come back to Wellington alone while his wife waited in Kentucky for news of her brother. He had had kindly visions of getting a good Irish cook and having the housekeeping all running beautifully before Molly’s return.
Immigrant Katy proved rosy and willing but with no more conception of how to cook than she had how to clean. She was great on “scroobing,” but walls and furniture and carpets were not supposed to be scrubbed. The kitchen floor and pantry shelves were alike beautiful after her administrations, but gold dust and a stiff brush had not improved the appearance of the piano legs. Edwin had come home in the nick of time to stop her before she vented her energies on Molly’sown Persian rug, the pride of her heart because of the wonderful blue in it.
“What time is it, Katy?” asked Molly after the baby was absolutely finished and tucked in her carriage to stay on the porch.
“’Tis twilve of the clock, Miss, and I haven’t so much as turned a hand below schtairs.”
“Oh, it can’t be that late! Lunch at one! What are we to have?”
“And that I am not knowing, Miss. Sure and there is nothing in the house.”
“Oh, Katy, and I have been dawdling up here for hours! I forgot about keeping house, I was so taken up with the baby.”
“Yes, and no doubt your man will be sour about it, too.”
Molly, still in her kimono, flew to the regions below and began frantically to search for something to concoct into luncheon. A forlorn piece of roast veal was excavated and half a loaf of stale baker’s bread. A can of asparagus, a leftover from the housekeeping of the spring, was unearthed. Olive oil was in the refrigerator,also, butter, milk and eggs. The veal looked very hopeless, evidently having reposed for hours in a half cold oven before it had furnished forth a miserable dinner for the poor professor.
“Now I’ll ’form a miracle on the vituals,’ as dear Aunt Mary would say,” declared Molly to herself. “Katy, get the dining room straight. Don’t scrub anything but just clear off the table and then set it again as well as you can. Put on a fresh lunch cloth and clean napkins; then see that the fire in the library is all right.”
The veal, run through the meat chopper, came out better than was to be expected, and croquettes were formed and frying in deep fat before the dazed Katy had cleared off the breakfast table.
“Katy, you must hurry or we won’t have the master’s luncheon ready when he gets in.”
“Faith, and, Mrs. Green, you do be flying round so schwift like, that I can’t get me breath. I feel like the wind from your schkirts was sinding me back. All I can do is schtand schtill and breast the wind.”
“Well, I tell you what you do then,” laughed Molly: “You come fly with the wind,” and she caught the Irish girl by the hand and ran her around the dining room table just to show her how fast she could go if necessary. Katy, having got wound up, kept on going at a rate of speed that was astonishing. To be sure, she broke a cup and a plate, but what was a little chaney to the master’s luncheon being served on time?
The faithful can of asparagus was opened and heated; toast was made from the half loaf of stale bread, and a cream sauce prepared to pour over the asparagus on toast. Popovers were stirred up and in the oven before Katy got the table set, although she was going with the wind instead of trying to breast it. A few rosy apples from the orchard at Chatsworth, unearthed from the depths of the unpacked trunk, formed a salad with a mayonnaise made in such a hurry that Molly trembled for its quality; but luck being with her that day, it turned out beautifully.
“No lettuce, so we’ll put the salad on those green majolica plates and maybe he won’t notice,”she called to Katy, just as the professor opened the front door.
“Mol—ly!” he called.
“Here I am.”
The mistress of the house emerged from the kitchen in a state of mussiness but looking very pretty withal, her red-gold hair curling up in little ringlets from the steam and her cheeks as rosy as though she had joost come over wid Katy. Her blue kimono was very becoming but hardly what she would have chosen to appear in at luncheon.
“I am so sorry not to be dressed, but I had to hustle so as to get lunch ready in time. The clock struck twelve when I thought it was about ten.”
“Did you have to get luncheon? Where was Katy?”
“She helped, but I wanted to have a finger in it. If you will wait a minute, I will get into a dress.”
“Why, you look beautiful in that loose bluething; besides, I have to eat and run. A faculty meeting is calling me.”
The luncheon was delicious, and Edwin gave it all praise by devouring large quantities of it. Molly could not eat much as she was too hot, and hurrying is not conducive to appetite. Mildred, who was sleeping on the porch, awoke when the meal was half over and Molly could not trust Katy to take her up.
“She might hold her upside down. I will bring her to the table and she can talk to you while you are finishing!”
So Molly flew to the porch and picked up her darling. She had intended to take her to the dining room but she remembered it was time for Mildred to have her food and so the patient Edwin had to finish his meal alone.
He found his wife and baby on the upper back porch. The color had left Molly’s cheeks and she was quite pale, and there was a little wan, wistful look in her countenance that Edwin did not like.
“Molly, honey, you are all tired out. You didnot eat your luncheon and you got no sleep last night. What are we going to do about it?”
“Oh, I’m all right! Please don’t bother about me! Did you like the apple salad? They were apples from Kentucky.”
“Fine! Everything was delicious. But I don’t want you to wear yourself out cooking. If Katy can’t cook, we must get some one who can. If she can’t cook and you won’t let her nurse, why what is the use of her?”
Molly, worn out with the sleepless night and the record breaking getting of a meal out of nothing, felt as though she would disgrace herself in a minute and burst into tears. She could not discuss the matter with Edwin for fear of breaking down. Edwin kissed her good-by and tactfully withdrew.
“You goose, Molly Brown!” she scolded herself. “And what on earth are you so full of tears over? I know Edwin thinks I ought to have a nurse and I just can’t trust Mildred to any one. I am going to try so hard to have everything so nice that he won’t think about it any more.”
A grand telephoning for provisions ensued, and a dinner was planned for six-thirty that would have taxed the culinary powers of a real chef and before which Katy bowed her head in defeat. It meant that by four Molly must be back in the kitchen to start things.
Callers came in through the afternoon to welcome back to Wellington the popular wife of the popular professor and to glimpse the new baby. Kind Mrs. McLean, the wife of the doctor, a little older than when last we saw her but showing it only in her whitening hair and not at all in her upright carriage and British complexion, stopped in “just for a moment” to be picked up later by the doctor on his way to a country patient. Miss Walker herself, the busy president of Wellington, ran in from the meeting of the faculty to greet her one time pupil and to give one kiss to the college baby. Several of the seniors, who were freshmen when Molly was still at college as post graduate and who had the delight of calling her Molly while most of the others had to say Mrs. Green, came in fresh from a game of basketball, glowing with health and enthusiasm.
While these friends were all gathered about Molly and the baby, Alice Fern, Edwin Green’s cousin, driving in to Wellington in a very stylish new electric car, stopped to make a fashionable call on her law kin. She had never forgiven Molly for stealing (as she expressed it) Edwin’s affections. She was still Miss Fern, and although she was possessed of beauty and intelligence, it was likely that she would remain Miss Fern. Molly was never very much at her ease with Alice. She was particularly sensitive to any feeling of dislike entertained toward her, and Edwin’s cousin always made her feel that she disapproved of her in some way.
The living room in the broad old red brick house on the campus, occupied by the professor of English, was a pleasant room, breathing of the tastes and pursuits of the owners. Low bookshelves were in every nook and cranny, filled with books, the shelves actually sagging with them. Botticelli’s Primavera, a present from Mary Stewart, adorned one wall; Mathew Jouette’s portrait of Molly’s great grandmother, a weddingpresent from Aunt Clay, another. This was the portrait that looked so much like Molly and also like the Marquise d’Ochtè, between whom and Aunt Sarah Clay there was no love lost; indeed, it was this likeness that had induced Aunt Clay to part with such a valuable work of art. The other pictures were some dashing, clever sketches by Judy Kean, and Pierce Kinsella’s very lovely portrait of Mrs. Brown, that had won honorable mention at the Salon and then had been sent by the young artist to adorn Molly’s home. On the whole, it was a very satisfactory and tastefully furnished room and Molly and Edwin always declared they could talk better and think better in that room than in any they had ever seen.
On that first day home, Molly was a little conscious of the fact that the room needed a thorough cleaning, not the scrubbing that Katy was so desirous of administering, but just a good thorough cleaning. However, she was so glad to see her friends again and so proud of showing herwonderful baby to them that the cleaning seemed of small importance.
“I’ll dust all the books to-morrow,” she said to herself, “and have Katy wipe down the walls, polish the glass on the pictures, and above all, wash the windows.”
She well knew that Miss Walker and dear Mrs. McLean were not noticing such things, or, if they did, they would make all excuses. As for the college girls—dirt was not what they came to see. They came to see the lovely Molly and her adorable baby. If the walls were festooned with cobwebs, why that was the way walls should be in the home of a learned professor of English, who had written several books, besides the libretto to a successful opera, and who was married to a beautiful Titian-haired girl who was also a genius in her way, having been accepted in magazines when she was not even out of college. What did they care for dust on the books and smeary window panes? Molly was so popular with the college girls that in their eyes she was perfection itself.
Alice Fern’s entrance broke up the cheerful group gathered around Molly and the rosy Mildred. Miss Walker suddenly remembered that she had an important engagement and hurried off, and Mrs. McLean, who made no endeavor to hide her impatience at Miss Fern’s exceeding smugness, went outside to wait for the doctor. The girls stayed, however, hoping to sit out the unwelcome interrupter.
These girls were favorites of Molly’s. The harum scarum Billie McKym from New York reminded her in a way of her own Judy, although no one else could see it. Josephine Crittenden, Tom boy of college and leader in all sports, hailed from Kentucky, and being a distant relative of Crittenden Rutledge, Mildred Brown’s husband, was of course taken immediately under the wing of the loyal Molly. She had what she called a crush on Molly, and not a little did she amuse that young matron, as well as annoy her, by her gifts of flowers and candy.
The third girl was from the West. Thelma Olsen was her name, and although her familyhad been in America for three generations, Thelma had inherited the characteristics of a Viking maiden along with the name. She was very tall, with an excellent figure and the strength of a man. Her hair was as yellow as gold and her eyes as blue as corn flowers. She moved with dignity, holding her head up like a queen. Her expression was calm and kindly. She had, in very truth, worked her way through college, which of course appealed to Molly, remembering well her own boot blacking days and her many schemes for making a few pennies. But what most touched our Molly was the fact that Thelma had a writing bee in her bonnet. The girl had an instinct for literature and a longing for expression that must come out. Professor Green thought very highly of her gift for prose and did much to encourage her.
These three girls formed a strange trio, but they were inseparable, having roomed together since their freshman year. Billie was very rich in her own name, since she was an orphan with nothing closer than a guardian and an aunt-in-law.Money meant no more to her than black-eyed peas. She was intensely affectionate and where she loved, she loved so fiercely that it positively hurt, she used to say. She was witty and clever but not much of a student, as is often the case where learning comes too easily. She was so generous it was embarrassing to her friends. Her talent lay in clothes. She knew more about clothes than Paquin and Doucet and all the others. It positively hurt her when her friends did not wear becoming clothes, just as it hurt her when she loved them so hard. The object of her life was to clothe her dear friend Thelma in dark blue velvet. Thelma was too proud to be clothed in anything that she had not paid for herself, and the consequence was that coarse blue serge was as near as she came to poor Billie’s dream.
Alice Fern seated herself on the front of a chair with very much of a lady-come-to-see expression and then formally entered into a conversation, going through the usual questions about when Molly had arrived and how old thebaby was, polite inquiries regarding the relatives in Kentucky, etc.
Molly was eager to get into the kitchen just for a moment to start Katy on the right track, well knowing that nothing would be doing until she did, but Alice Fern’s arrival made that impossible. She would not in the least have minded excusing herself for a moment to the girls, but if Edwin Green had to wait until midnight for his dinner, she could not be guilty of such a breach of etiquette with the cousin-in-law, whose disapproval she felt was ever on the alert for araison d’être. A leg of lamb, and well grown lamb at that, must have plenty of time and the oven must be hot (something Katy knew nothing about), but the wife of Professor Green must not let his relatives know that she was such a poor manager as to have to leave the parlor to attend to cooking at a time in the afternoon when callers were supposed to be doing their calling.
Alice Fern was really a very pretty young woman, and since she had nothing to do but attend to her person, she was always excellentlywell groomed. No blemish was allowed on her faultless complexion from sun or wind. An hour a day was religiously given up to massage and manicure. Her hair was always coiffed in the latest mode, and not one lock was ever known to be out of place. Her costume was ever of the richest and most stylish.
On that afternoon, as she rode up in her closed electric car, dressed in a fawn-colored suit with spotless white gloves and spats, she really looked like a beautiful wax figure in a showcase. Beside her, poor Molly looked like a rumpled Madonna. She had on a very becoming blue linen house dress that she had donned as not only suitable for possible callers but also not too pure or good in which to cook her husband’s food. The baby had delighted the admiring audience, before the arrival of Miss Fern, by clutching a handful of her mother’s pretty hair and having to have her little pink fingers opened one by one to disengage them. No doubt it was a highly intelligent and charming performance, but it had played sad havoc with Molly’s hair.
“We are so glad you are back, Molly, for more reasons than one,” exclaimed Jo Crittenden, hoping to loosen the tension a little, when Alice had completed her perfunctory catechism. “When are you going to begin the Would-be Authors’ Club?”
“Oh, do begin soon!” begged Billie. “Thelma has turned out some scrumptious bits during vacation, and even I have busted loose on paper.”
“Yes, I have written a lot this summer,” said Thelma, as Molly smiled on her. “Have you done anything, or has the baby kept you too busy?”
“Oh, I had plenty of time while I was in Kentucky. You see, out there I have a very good servant and then my mother helps me with Mildred. I have finished a short story and sent it off. Of course, I am expecting it back by every mail.”
“I should think your household cares would prevent your giving much time to scribbling,” sniffed Alice, if one could call the utterances of such an elegant dame sniffing.
“Scribbling! Why, Mrs. Green has written real things and been in real magazines,” stormed Billie.
“Ah, indeed!”
“Yes, and if we had not limited the Would-be Authors to twenty, we would have the whole of Wellington clamoring to join,” declared Jo, who considered it was high time for a perfect gentleman to step in and let Miss Alice Fern know how Wellington felt toward Mrs. Edwin Green.
Miss Fern said nothing but stared at the corner of the room that Edwin and Molly called: “The Poet’s Corner.” It was where all the poetry, ancient, medieval and modern, found shelf room. Over it hung Shakespeare’s epitaph, a framed rubbing from the tomb, the same that Edwin had always kept over his desk in his bachelor days to scare his housekeeper, Mrs. Brady, into sparing his precious papers.
“Good frend for Isus sake forbeareTo digg ye dust encloased heareBleste be ye man yt spares thes stonesAnd curst be he yt moves my bones.”
“Good frend for Isus sake forbeareTo digg ye dust encloased heareBleste be ye man yt spares thes stonesAnd curst be he yt moves my bones.”
“Good frend for Isus sake forbeareTo digg ye dust encloased heareBleste be ye man yt spares thes stonesAnd curst be he yt moves my bones.”
She kept her eyes so glued to the spot over the book shelves that finally all turned involuntarily to see what she was gazing on so intently. There it hung! There was no denying it or overlooking it: a great black cobweb that must have been there for several generations of spiders. No doubt it had taken all summer to weave such a mighty web and catch and hold so much grime.
Molly blushed furiously. For a moment, she almost hated Katy and she wholly hated Alice Fern. That elegant damsel had a supercilious expression on her aristocratic countenance that said as plainly as though she had given utterance to her thoughts:
“Author’s Club, indeed! She had much better clean her house.”
Molly was suddenly conscious that every corner was festooned with similar webs. The late afternoon sun was slanting in the windows and its searching rays had found and were showing up every grain of dust. The panes of glass were, to say the least, grimy.
“Oh!” she faltered, “I didn’t know it was so—so—dustyin here. Katy, the new maid, was supposed to have cleaned it before I came.”
“What do you care for a few Irishman’s curtains?” said the hero-worshipping Billie. “No one noticed them until—ahem—until the sun came in the window.” Shesaidsun came in the window but she plainlymeantFern came in the door.
“I haven’t had time to do much housekeeping since I got back,” continued Molly, lamely. “The new maid, Katy, that Edwin got from New York, is most inefficient but so good-natured that I am hoping to train her. The truth of the matter is that she and I spent the whole morning doing things for Mildred and we let the house go. I am going to have a big cleaning to-morrow.”
Molly felt like weeping with mortification and she began to hate herself for making explanations and excuses to Alice Fern. Even if she kept Professor Green’s house festooned in cobwebs from attic to cellar and had dust over everything thick enough to write your name, what business was it of this perfect person? She suddenlyrealized, too, that that perfect person had never uttered a word although she had looked volumes.
Miss Fern arose from her prim seat and made a rather hasty retreat. The relieved Molly excused herself to the girls and rushed to the kitchen to start Katy on the dinner that should have been on half an hour before. What was her chagrin to find the fire only just kindled, as Katy had let it go out so that she might polish the stove. The Irish girl was on her knees “scroobing,” happy in a sea of soap suds.
Molly almost had hysterics. How could she ever get things done? Edwin would be home any moment now and she could not stand having a miserable underdone dinner for him, nor could she stand having his dinner hours late. She realized that there was no use in reprimanding Katy,—the girl was simply ignorant. She asked her gently to postpone her “scroobing” until later and to wash her hands and prepare the vegetables. Then she piled kindling wood in the range until the chimney roared so that Katy saidit sounded like a banshee. The oven must be hot for the roast.
“I tell you what to do, Katy: make some tea immediately and slice some bread quite thin, open this box of peanut cookies, and we will have such a grand tea that the master won’t be hungry until the roast is done.”
“And phwat a schmart trick!” laughed the girl.
When Miss Fern made her adieux, Molly had flown so quickly to the kitchen that she had not seen her husband crossing the campus. Alice Fern had seen him, however, and her greeting of him was so warm and friendly, her smile so charming and her manner so cordial that she hardly seemed the same person who had just left poor Molly stuttering and stammering apologies over her Irishman’s curtains.
“Look at the pill!” exclaimed Jo. “She is about to eat up Epiménides Antinous Green.” That was the name Professor Green was known by at Wellington.
“Did you ever see any one cast such a damper over a crowd without saying a single word? Ithought Molly was going to cry,” declared Billie.
“I think our friend is looking very tired,” said Thelma. “I wish we could do something for her. She says this new maid is almost worse than none at all.”
“I’ve got a scheme!” squealed Billie. “I know of a way to help. Gather ’round me, girls!” And then such another whispering as went on in the house—while Molly behaved like triplets in the kitchen, being in at least three places at one time in her determination to get dinner on the stove. Mildred lay on the divan, happy with her newly found toes, and Edwin helped Alice Fern into her glass show case.
“I appreciate your coming to see my wife so soon, Alice. I should so like to have you and Molly be close friends.”
“Thank you, Edwin, I am sure nothing would please me more. You must bring Molly out to see us.” Could this be the same person who had made the living room look so dusty and ill kempt only a few minutes before, this gracious, charming,sweet, friendly creature, who doted on babies? She had paid no attention to Mildred except to give her a tentative poke with her daintily gloved finger, but to hear her conversation with Edwin, one would have gathered that she was a supreme lover of children.
The girls would not stay to tea, although Molly pressed them, but full of some scheme, they hurried off.
Dinner was not so very late, after all, and the tea and bread and peanut cookies saw to it that the professor was not too hungry before the leg of lamb had reached the proper stage of serving. Molly was too much of a culinary artist not to feel elated when things turned out right, which they usually did if she could get her finger in the pie. The day had been a very trying one for her. The sleepless night had left her little strength to grapple with it and the slow stupidity of Katy was very irritating. It was over at last, however, and dear little Mildred had decided to let her pigs rest and had gone quietly to sleep at the proper time that a well-trained infant should.Edwin was smoking his after-dinner pipe and everything was very peaceful and pleasant. Molly was trying to keep her eyes open, ashamed to confess that she was so sleepy she could hardly see.
She lay back in the easy chair while Edwin read aloud from his scrap book of fugitive verse. This scrap book Professor Green had started when he was in college, putting in only the rare, fine things he found in magazine reading. Molly had helped him in his collecting and now the volume was assuming vast proportions.
Suddenly Molly’s upturned eyes rested on the terrible cobweb that had been her Waterloo of the afternoon. How black and threatening it looked! She hoped Edwin would not see it. And the books! Actually you had to open one and beat it and blow it before you dared begin to read. All this must be cleaned to-morrow and oh, how tired she was!
“Did not Alice look lovely this afternoon?” said Edwin, stopping his reading for a moment. “I hope you and she are going to be greatfriends. I think it was very nice for her to come so soon to call on you. She spoke so sweetly of the baby, too.”
Molly said nothing but gazed at the cobweb. She said nothing but she did some thinking:
“Molly Brown, what right have you, just because you are tired and Alice Fern came to call on you, looking very pretty and very beautifully dressed, and found you all frumpy and your living room looking like a pig sty, what right have you, I say, to sulk? Now you answer your husband and tell him Alice was pretty and don’t tell him anything else.” Accordingly, after giving herself the mental chastisement, Molly emitted a faint:
“Yes, very pretty!” But it was so faint and so far away that Edwin looked at her in alarm, and then it was that she could stand nothing more and broke down and shed a few tears.
“Why, Molly, my dearest girl, what is the matter?”
“Nothing, but I am tired and everything is so dirty. Look at the cobwebs! Look at the duston the books! Look at me! I am an old frowsy, untidy frump.”
“You! Why, honey, you are always lovely. As for dust—don’t bother about that. Let me read you this wonderful little poem by Gertrude Hall. I clipped it years ago.”
Professor Green saw that Molly was tired and unstrung and he well knew that nothing soothed her more than poetry. Of course, man-like, he had no idea that what he had said about Alice Fern’s looking so sweet had been too much for her, as she had contrasted herself all the afternoon with her husband’s immaculate cousin. Molly wiped away the foolish tears as Edwin read the poem.
“THE DUST.
By Gertrude Hall.
It settles softly on your things,Impalpable, fine, light, dull, gray;The dingy dust-clout Betty brings,And, singing, brushes it away:And it’s a queen’s robe, once so proud,And it’s the moths fed in its fold,It’s leaves, and roses, and the shroud,Wherein an ancient Saint was rolled.And it is beauty’s golden hair,And it is genius’ wreath of bay,And it is lips once red and fairThat kissed in some forgotten May.”
It settles softly on your things,Impalpable, fine, light, dull, gray;The dingy dust-clout Betty brings,And, singing, brushes it away:And it’s a queen’s robe, once so proud,And it’s the moths fed in its fold,It’s leaves, and roses, and the shroud,Wherein an ancient Saint was rolled.And it is beauty’s golden hair,And it is genius’ wreath of bay,And it is lips once red and fairThat kissed in some forgotten May.”
It settles softly on your things,Impalpable, fine, light, dull, gray;The dingy dust-clout Betty brings,And, singing, brushes it away:
And it’s a queen’s robe, once so proud,And it’s the moths fed in its fold,It’s leaves, and roses, and the shroud,Wherein an ancient Saint was rolled.
And it is beauty’s golden hair,And it is genius’ wreath of bay,And it is lips once red and fairThat kissed in some forgotten May.”
“It is lovely, exquisite!” breathed Molly. “I don’t feel nearly so bad about it as I did.”
But she did wish that Alice Fern had not seen that black, black cobweb.
The next morning poor Molly slept late again. With all good intentions of waking early and going down stairs in time to see about her husband’s neglected breakfast, when morning came she did not stir. Mildred had given her another wakeful night after all, finding out more things about her little pigs. Finally the little monkey had given up and dropped off to sleep, and she and her doting mother were both dead to the world when the time came for Professor Green to go to lectures.
Again he gave instructions to Katy not to disturb the mistress and crept out of the house as still as a mouse. Breakfast had been a little better. Molly was rubbing off on Katy evidently. Just to associate with such a culinary genius as Molly must have its effect even on the worst cook in the world, which Katy surely seemed to be.
Coming across the campus, he ran into Billie McKym, Josephine Crittenden and Thelma Olsen. They looked very bright and rosy as they gave him a cheery good morning. Each carried a bundle. He wondered that they were going away from lecture halls instead of toward them. But after all, it was not his business to be the whipper-in for lectures. Wellington was a college and not a boarding school. If students chose to cut lectures, it was their own affair until the final reckoning.
“Just our luck to meet Epiménides Antinous!” cried Billie. “He should have been out of the house five minutes ago, at least.”
“His legs are so long he doesn’t have to start early,” declared Jo. “Just see him sprint!”
“I am certainly sorry to cut his lecture to-day,” sighed Thelma, “but this thing must be done.”
The Greens’ front door was never locked except at night, so the girls crept quietly in. Billie peeped into the kitchen, where she discovered Katy on her knees “scroobing” the part of the kitchen she could not finish the evening before,when Molly was so hard-hearted as to make her stop and prepare vegetables. Such a sea of suds!
“Katy,” whispered Billie.
“Merciful Mither! And phwat is it? Ye scart me,” and the girl sat back on her heels and looked at Billie with round, wide eyes.
“We are great friends of Mrs. Green and we have come to dust her books and—ahem—do a few little things. Is she still asleep?”
“Yis, and the master was after saying she must not be distoorbed, not on no account.”
“Of course she must not be! That is why we have come to dust the things. We think she looks so tired.”
“And so she is, the scwate lamb; but she do fly around so, and she do cook up so mooch. I tell her that she thinks more of her man’s insides thin she do of her own outsides.”
“Well, Katy, we want you to let us have a broom and a wall brush. We brought our own aprons and rags,” and Billie pressed a round, hard something into Katy’s hand. It was not solarge as a church door nor so deep as a well, but it served to get the Irish girl up off of her run-down heels; and in a trice the coveted broom and wall brush were in possession of the three conspirators, as well as a stepladder, which they decided would be needful.
“Don’t say a word to Mrs. Green, Katy,—now remember. We are going to work very quietly and hope to finish before she gets downstairs. We don’t want her to know who did it, but we mean to get it all done before noon,” said Jo, rolling up her sport shirtsleeves and disclosing muscular arms, that showed what athletics had done for her and what she could do for athletics.
“Where must we begin, Thelma?” asked Billie, who was as willing as could be but knew no more about cleaning than a hog does about holidays, Jo declared.
“Begin at the top,” laughed Thelma, tying up her yellow head in a great towel and rolling up her sleeves.
“Gee, your arms are beautiful!” exclaimed Billie.“I’d give my head for such arms. I’d like to drape them in a silver scarf. Think how they would gleam through.” The arms were snow white and while Thelma’s strength was much greater than Jo’s, her muscles did not show as they did on that athletic young person.
Thelma blushed and laughed as she balanced herself on a stepladder and began taking down pictures. A cloud of dust floated down and enveloped her.
“Look, look! She looks like the ‘white armed Gudrun’! Don’t you remember in William Morris’s ‘Fall of the Neiblungs’? The battle in Atli’s Hall?
“‘Lo, lo, in the hall of the Murder where the white-armed Gudrun stands,Aloft by the kingly high-seat, and nought empty are her hands;For the litten brand she beareth, and the grinded war-sword bare:Still she stands for a little season till day groweth white and fair.Without the garth of King Atli, but within, a wavering cloudRolls, hiding the roof and the roof-sun; then she stirrith and crieth aloud.’”
“‘Lo, lo, in the hall of the Murder where the white-armed Gudrun stands,Aloft by the kingly high-seat, and nought empty are her hands;For the litten brand she beareth, and the grinded war-sword bare:Still she stands for a little season till day groweth white and fair.Without the garth of King Atli, but within, a wavering cloudRolls, hiding the roof and the roof-sun; then she stirrith and crieth aloud.’”
“‘Lo, lo, in the hall of the Murder where the white-armed Gudrun stands,Aloft by the kingly high-seat, and nought empty are her hands;For the litten brand she beareth, and the grinded war-sword bare:Still she stands for a little season till day groweth white and fair.Without the garth of King Atli, but within, a wavering cloudRolls, hiding the roof and the roof-sun; then she stirrith and crieth aloud.’”
“Cut it out! Cut it out!” cried Jo, “and come lend a hand.”
“Mustn’t we dust before we sweep?” innocently asked Billie.
“If you want to, but you’ll have to dust again afterwards,” said the white-armed Gudrun from her ladder. “The books are really so dirty that I don’t think it would hurt to wipe down the walls without covering them, but that is a mighty poor cleaning method. Poor Molly! Didn’t she look tired yesterday? I hope she won’t think we are cheeky to take a hand in her affairs.”
“Cheeky! She will think we are her good friends, not like that snippy Miss Fern who stared so at the cobwebs and then went out and palavered over Epiménides Antinous. She used to claim him, so I am told. One of the nurses at the infirmary told me that when Epi Anti had typhoid there, years ago, Miss Fern came and dressed herself up like a nurse and almost bored the staff to death taking care of her sick cousin,” said Billie, delighted with the job that had been given her of wiping down walls. “Isn’t thissplendid? Just look at all the dirt I got on my rag!”
“Well, don’t rub it back on the wall,” admonished Jo.
“No. Well, what must I do with it?”
“Can’t say, but don’t put it back on the walls.”
“Jo, you and Billie dust the books and I will finish up the pictures. I can’t trust myself to dust Professor Green’s books. I am afraid of breaking the tenth commandment all the time,” sighed Thelma. “I’ll wash the windows, too.”
“Oh, Thelma! The white-armed Gudrun sitting in windows washing them! That’s not occupation meet for a queen. Let me do it.”
“You, Billie McKym, wash a window! Did you ever wash one in your life?”
“Well, no, not exactly, but I bet I could. What’s the use of a college education if one can’t wash windows when she gets to be a full grown senior?”
But since the object of the girls was to get the room clean, it was decided that Thelma was towash the windows. My, how they worked! Jo found she had muscles that her athletics had never revealed. She found them because they began to ache.
“Why, to dust all these books and books is as bad as building a house,” she said, straightening up and stretching when she had finished the poet’s corner.
“Exactly like laying brick,” declared Billie. “I’m going to join the Hod-carriers’ Union. I’ll be no scab.”
Katy had occasionally poked her head in at the door, entreating “whin they coom to the scroobing” to call her.
The cleaners made very little noise, so little that the sleeping Molly and Mildred were not at all disturbed.
“I wish she knew it was almost done,” said Thelma, perched in the window sill and rubbing vigorously on a shining pane. “She would be so glad. I know she is worrying about it in her sleep. Hark! There is the baby!”
Then began the business of the day upstairs.Katy was called, for water must be heated as Katy, according to her habit, had let the fire go out before the boiler was hot.
“Katy, we must hurry up with Mildred this morning and get to the library. It is filthy,” said Molly, as she slipped the little French flannel petticoat over Mildred’s bald head.
“Yes, mum!” grinned Katy.
“We have luncheon almost ready, with the cold lamb to start with.”
“Yes, mum.”
“Don’t you think you could get the dining room cleaned while I am attending to the baby?”
“Yes, mum, if yez can schpare me.”
“Oh, I think I can. But, Katy, before you go hand me that basket. And, Katy, perhaps you had better wash out this flannel skirt. I am so afraid she might run short of them. You can empty the water now—and, Katy, please hold the baby’s hand while I tie this ribbon, she is such a wiggler—and, Katy—a little boiled water now for her morning tipple. She must drink lots of water to keep in good health.”
“Yes, mum, and how aboot breakfast for yez, mum?”
“Oh, I forgot my breakfast! Of course I must eat some breakfast. I’ll come down to it.”
“Oh, no, mum! And let me be after bringing it oop to yez, mum,” insisted the wily Katy, who was anxious for the youthful house cleaners to accomplish their dark and secret mission without interruption. Not only was it great fun, a huge joke, in fact, for her to be paid fifty cents to let others do her work, but it meant that since others were doing it, she would not have to, and she could have just that much more time for “scroobing” and resting. A tray was accordingly got ready and Molly found she had a little more appetite than the morning before; also, that Katy’s food was really a little better.
“Your coffee is better this morning, Katy,” she said, believing that praise for feats accomplished but egged on the servitor to other and greater effort.
“Yes, mum, so the master said.”
“Poor Edwin,” thought Molly, “how I haveneglected him. I must do better. But if I don’t wake up, I don’t wake up. If I could only get a little nap in the day time. Mother always wanted me to take one, but how can I? The living room must be cleaned to-day.” She felt weary at the thought. Accustomed as she was to being out of doors a great deal, she really needed the fresh air.
“As soon as luncheon is over, we must get busy with the cleaning. I wish we might have done it in the forenoon, but I am afraid it is too late.”
“Yes, mum, it’s too late!” and Katy indulged in such a hearty giggle that her mistress began to think perhaps she was feeble-minded as well as inefficient.
“Is the table in the dining room cleared off, Katy, so you can set it for luncheon?”
“No, mum, it is not!”
“Oh, Katy! What have you been doing all morning?”
“Well, mum, I scroobed my kitchen, and—and——”
“And what?” demanded Molly.
“And I did a little head work in the liberry, that is, I——”
“Oh, Katy, did you clean the living room, clean it well?”
“Well, mum, yez can wait and see if it schoots yez,” and Katy beat a hasty retreat to warn the cleaners that the mistress was about to descend.
The room presented a very different appearance to what it had before the girls rolled up their sleeves. The slanting afternoon sun would seek out no dusty corners now; everything was spick and span. The books no longer had to be beaten and blown before you dared open them, and they stood in neat and orderly rows; the walls held no decorations in the shape of Irishman’s curtains now; the picture glass shone, as did the window panes; the rugs were out in the back yard sunning after a vigorous beating and brushing from Thelma, whom Billie called “the powerful Katrinka.”
The floor, being the one part of the room that Katy had put some licks on, did not need anythingmore serious than a dusting after everything else was done.
“Katy, you might bring in the rugs now as we have done everything else,” suggested Billie. Katy went out into the back yard and bundled up the rugs. Molly, seeing her from an upper window, smiled her approval.
“I believe she is going to do very well,” she said to herself. “She seems to be trying, and she is so fond of Mildred.”
“Come on, girls, we must hurry and get off! Molly will be down stairs any minute now and she must not see us,” and Thelma unwound the towel from her head and took off her apron.
“Well, surely the white-armed Gudrun is not going across the campus with a black face,” objected Billie. “Why, both of you look like negro minstrels——”
“And you!” interrupted Jo. “You should see yourself before you talk about kettles. You’d have not a leg to stand on and not a handle to your name. I told you to tie up your head. Ibelieve nothing short of a shampoo and a Turkish bath will get the grime off you.”
“Let’s hide behind the sofa and after Molly goes on the porch with the baby, we can sneak up to the bath room,” suggested Thelma. The girls then crouched on the floor behind a sofa that stood near the poet’s corner.
In a minute Molly came down the stairs, little Mildred in her arms and on her face a contented and rested expression. She stood in the doorway of the living room and exclaimed with delight over its polished cleanliness.
“Oh, Katy, how splendid it is! Did you do it all by yourself and in such a short time? I don’t see how you managed it. Why, you have even dusted the books. That is almost a day’s work in itself. I was dreading it so,—it is such a back breaking job.”
Jo rubbed her aching back, with a grim smile, and nudged Billie.
“And you have kept yourself so clean, too!” Molly began to feel that she had the prize servant of the east: one who could clean such an AugeanStable as that room had looked, dust all the books, wash the windows and wipe down walls, beat rugs, polish picture glass, etc., etc., and still be neat and tidy. “Why, I would have been black all over if I had done such a great work.”
Katy stood by, quite delighted with the undeserved praise. The young ladies had told her not to tell and far be it from her to refuse to accept the unaccustomed praise from any one. She had never been very apt in any work she had undertaken and no one had ever taken any great pains to teach her, and now if this pretty lady wanted to praise her, why she was more than willing. She felt in her pocket for her fifty cent piece, that still seemed a great joke to her. The sweet taste of the praise did one great thing in her kindly Irish soul: it was so pleasant, she determined to have more of it, and through her slow intelligence there filtered the fact that to get more praise, she must deserve more praise, and to deserve it she must work for it. She beat a hasty retreat to the dining room and actually cleared off the table, where the master had eatenhis solitary breakfast, in a full run. She broke no dishes that morning, either, which was a great step forward.
Molly could not tear herself away from the wonder room. She moved around, busying herself changing ornaments a bit and placing chairs at a slightly different angle, doing those little things that make a room partake of a certain personality.
“Here, baby, lie on the sofa, honey. Muddy is going to give you a little ride. Do you know, darling, that Katy knows how to put things in place just like a lady? She must have an artistic soul. Look how she has arranged the mantel-piece! Servants usually make things look so stiff. Actually there is nothing for me to do in the room, she has done it so beautifully.”
Billy here dug an elbow into Jo’s lame back that almost made her squeal, but she held on to her emotions and in turn gave her chum a fourth degree pinch.
“Now, Muddy is going to ride her baby—this sofa must go closer to the wall,” and Molly putMildred on the sofa and gave it a vigorous push. The law of impenetrability, that two things cannot be in the same place at the same time, prevented the baby from having much of a ride. Molly gave a harder push. “I must be very feeble if I can’t budge this sofa.”
Then came a smothered groan from the huddled girls, andone by one they emerged from their corner, clutching their bundles of dust rags and aprons and exposing to Molly’s amazed eyes three of the very blackest, dirtiest faces that ever Wellington had boasted in her senior class.
They sat on the floor and laughed and giggled, and Molly sat down beside them and would have felt like a college girl again herself if it had not been for little Mildred, who took all the laughter as an entertainment, got up for her express amusement, and gurgled accordingly.
“Now you must all stay to luncheon!” cried the hospitable Molly.
“Oh, indeed we mustn’t,” said Billie, who never could quite get used to Molly’s wholesale hospitality, having been brought up in the lap ofluxury but with no privileges of inviting persons off hand to meals.
“But you must. I won’t do a thing for you but just put on more plates. I was going to have the very simplest meal and I’ll still have it.”
The girls stayed, after giving themselves a vigorous scrubbing, and Molly’s luncheon was ready when Professor Green arrived. The cold leg of lamb played a noble part at the impromptu party, flanked by a lettuce salad that Billie insisted upon dressing, reminding Molly more than ever of her darling Judy. A barrel of preserves had just arrived, some that Molly and Kizzie had put up during the summer. On opening it, a jar of blackberry jam, being on top, was chosen to grace the occasion. Molly made some of the tiny biscuit that her husband loved and that seemed such a joke to Katy. When she came in bearing a plate of hot ones, she spread her mouth in a grin so broad that Professor Green declared she could easily have disposed of six at one mouthful.
“I always call them Gulliver biscuit,” he said, helping himself to three at a time, “because in the old Gulliver’s Travels I used to read when I was a kid there was a picture of Gulliver being fed by the Lilliputians. He was represented by a great head, and the Lilliputians were climbing up his face by ladders and pouring down his throat barrels of little biscuit that were just about the size of these.”
They had a merry time at that meal. Molly told her husband why his prize pupils had cut his lectures and all others that morning, and how she had almost passed a steam roller over them in form of the library sofa.
“We were terribly afraid we would offend her,” explained Thelma, “but she was dear to us.”
“Offend me! Why, I can’t think of anything in all my life that has ever happened to me that has touched me more. I don’t see how you ever thought of doing anything so nice.”
“’Twas Billie,” from Thelma.
“Thelma and Jo did all the dirty work,” declared Billie.
“Dirty work, indeed! You looked as though you had used yourself to wipe down the walls with,” laughed Jo.
“Well, anyhow, when that snippy Miss Fern comes again, giving her perfunctory pokes at the baby and looking at the cobwebs until nobody can help seeing them, I bet she won’t find anything to turn up her nose at. I’d like to use her to clean the walls with. If there is anything I hate it is any one who is the pink of perfection in her own eyes. We were having such a cozy time until she lit on us with her dove-colored effects. Who cared whether there were cobwebs or not?”
“Did Miss Fern speak of the cobwebs?” asked Edwin, while the others sat around in frozen horror, remembering that she was his cousin and that he was evidently very fond of her.
“Oh, no, she didn’t open her lips; she just pursed them up and stared at the corner. Ofcourse, she had already given her dig about Molly’s surely not having time to write and attend to her house, too; and then when she fixed her eyes on that Irishman’s curtain we all knew what she was thinking, and that she wanted us to know it, just as well as though she had spoken it and then written it and then had it put on the minutes.… What’s the matter?… Oh, Heavens! What have I done?… Oh, Professor Green! She is your cousin! Please, please forgive me,” and Billie clasped her hands in entreaty.
“Oh, don’t mind me,” said the professor with a twinkle. “Go as far as you like. If the ladies have such open minds that he who runs may read, and they think disagreeable things about my wife, why, they deserve to be used for house cleaning purposes, have the floor wiped up with them and what not.”
The luncheon broke up in a laugh and evidently there were no hard feelings on the part of the host for the criticism of Miss Fern thathad so ingenuously fallen from the lips of the irrepressible Billie.
“Billie! What a break!” screamed Jo, when they got outside after Molly had given them all an extra hug for the undying proof of friendship they had given her.
“Break, indeed! I never forgot for an instant that Epi Anti was a near cousin to that maidenhair fern. I just thought I’d let him know how she had acted and how uncomfortable she had made our Molly feel. I knew Molly would never let him know, and I could do it and make out it was a break.”
“Well, if you aren’t like Bret Harte’s heathen Chinee, I never saw one,” laughed Thelma.