CHAPTER XIMOLLY A HEROINE
Onthe following Saturday The Merry Five separated. Molly, Kirke, and Weezy went back to Santa Luzia for a fortnight, and then the Rowes and the Bradstreets returned together to Silver Gate City.
“It seems nice to be at home again after all, mamma,” said Molly a few mornings after this. “I’ve missed my wheel dreadfully. Have you any errands to-day?”
“Oh, yes, Molly. Donald needs the frocks Mrs. Carillo has been making for him. I wish you’d ride over to her house and get them.”
“May I ask Polly to go along, mamma?”
“If you like. But I can’t have any ‘scorching,’dear; and remember that you two girls are not to race.”
“We won’t race, mamma. But oh! racing is such fun! you don’t know.”
As Molly guided her bicycle down the steps of the veranda, there was a shadow on her brow. She could ride very well, even better than Pauline. Why need her mamma be so cautious about “scorching”?
Mrs. Rowe must have observed the shadow; for she followed Molly out upon the veranda, adding tenderly,—
“I know this, dearie, that your papa and I cannot afford to have you reckless. You are our mainstay, Molly.”
“Your mainstay, mamma? Am I?”
“Indeed you are; and more than ever since papa’s illness.”
“Thank you, mamma.” Molly looked radiant. “I’ll try never to be reckless any more.”
She was extremely in earnest. If anybody had told her then that in another hour she would be doing a frightfully daring thing she would not have believed it. And if anybody had told Mrs. Rowe that she herself would not blame Molly for the disobedience, Mrs. Rowe would not have believed that either.
“Can you ride up to Mrs. Carillo’s with me, Polly?” Mrs. Rowe heard Molly call under the window of Pauline’s room across the way.
“In two seconds, Molly.” And Pauline hastened out, trundling her safety before her.
Mrs. Rowe watched the two girls spinning down the street on their wheels till they looked in the distance like two enormous spiders revolving on their own webs. Then calling Zip, who had begged to follow them, she went into the house.
All the way to the little brown cottage by the canyon, Molly and Pauline were talkingof the street masquerade now near at hand, and discussing what they should wear.
“I’ve a great mind to dress in light blue,” said Molly; “mask, gown, stockings, and all.”
“I wouldn’t, Molly. You always wear blue or lavender or something of that kind. People would guess you in a minute. Why don’t you wear yellow?”
“Yellow—with my red hair, Pauline!”
“Molly Rowe, your hair isn’t red, and you know it! It is the most heavenly auburn!”
“Well, then, play it’s auburn. Yellow won’t go with auburn either.”
Pauline knitted her black eyebrows.
“I have it, Molly. Pug up your tawny mane, and cover it with a Chinese handkerchief, or a turban. Oh, I’ll manage it.”
“You bright creature!”
“You must wear a yellow mask, Molly, and a yellow dress with broad black stripes, and”—
“And you must blossom out in lilac, Pauline, or thebabiestkind of baby blue.”
“I might be a shepherdess, Molly, and you could be a Spanish girl.”
“Only you and I are to walk together,” mused Molly. “Do you think it seems quite the thing for a Spanish girl to walk arm-in-arm with a shepherdess?”
“Why not, you stuck-up señorita?”
“We might. There, Pauline, let’s do this! Let’s you and me be the United States and Mexico.”
“Or the United States and California, Molly. Wouldn’t you rather be California? You’d be more sort of patriotic.”
“Yes; I’d rather be California than any State—excepting Massachusetts,” responded Molly loyally. “And you can be the Goddess of Liberty trailing around in the American flag.”
“That’s capital, Molly! I don’t believethe boys would ever suspect us of attempting anything so fine.”
“Only we must take care not to mention flags, or bunting, or stars or stripes, when the boys are around.”
“Yes, indeed; they’ll be on the watch for the least hint,” said Pauline, as she and Molly rode up to Mrs. Carillo’s cottage.
“You needn’t cautionme, Molly. Hoaxing Kirke and Paul will make half the fun of the masquerade.”
“But they’re so awfully quick-witted, Polly, I’m afraid we can’t cheat them. Have you any notion how they will be dressed themselves?”
“I caught Paul with a comic mask this morning before he had time to hide it. I fancy Auntie David is making a clown of him; but she won’t tell.”
“And your Auntie David is getting up Kirke’s costume too. Isn’t it sweet of her?”
“Oh, she likes to do such things, Molly.”
“Kirke will want to be something absurd,—an Indian boy, maybe. I saw him sneak in at your side-door yesterday noon with toggery rolled up in a blanket.”
“Did you, Molly? That accounts for the tittering in Paul’s room about that time.”
“Probably the boys were having a dress-rehearsal,” returned Molly, laughing; and her face was still in a pucker when Manuel Carillo opened the door.
“You are just starting out on your newspaper route, aren’t you, Manuel?” she said, observing that he had his leather bag slung across his shoulder. “Is your mother at home?”
“Yes; she’s sewing on her new machine,” replied Manuel, laughing in his light-hearted Spanish way.
In greeting the girls Mrs. Carillo laughed too, and proudly exhibited the new sewing-machinewhich Kirke, with his own earnings, had helped her to purchase.
“You do beautiful work with it, Mrs. Carillo,” said Molly politely. “Are Donald’s frocks finished?”
Mrs. Carillo replied in broken English that the frocks were finished, and would the señorita pardon her for neglecting to send them home? Then, with profuse apologies, she rolled the garments into a neat parcel, and instructed Manuel to tie this under the seat of Molly’s bicycle.
“Don’t you think Manuel has lovely manners, Molly?” said Pauline as she and Molly whizzed away from the cottage.
“Lovely, yes. Weezy says she likes Manuel because he behaves so well.”
“The little witch!” Pauline rode on several blocks without speaking, and then added, “What will Weezy wear at the street masquerade?”
The two girls were coursing side by side along Alder Street, and were about to cross Summit Avenue over the track of the electric railway. Summit Avenue led down from The Heights, and was at this point very steep.
“I don’t know what she’ll wear, but she has been teasing for two masks, and”—
“Mercy, Molly!” interrupted Pauline in dismay, “see Essie Hobbs! There, there! sitting right between the rails!”
“Forevermore! and the car coming!” gasped Molly, with a horrified glance up the hill. “Run, Essie, run!”
Too startled by the unexpected cry to heed the rumbling of the motor, Essie looked around blinking.
“Run, Essie; do you hear?” shouted Pauline frantically. “Run as fast as you can!”
‘Stop the car!’ screamed Mollie“‘Stop the car!’ screamed Mollie.”Page137
“‘Stop the car!’ screamed Mollie.”Page137
“‘Stop the car!’ screamed Mollie.”
Page137
Essie shook her stubborn little head. The sun in her eyes blinded her to the approaching danger, and she did not choose to run merely because she had been told to do so.
“Stop the car! stop the car!” screamed Molly, springing from her safety, and waving her arms wildly toward the motor-man.
The man began to work the brake. Till that moment he had not observed that little brown Essie was anything more than a patch of dust in the road.
“Stop the car! Oh! why don’t you stop the car?” shrieked Pauline, as it still plunged on.
“He can’t stop it! He can’t stop it in time!” wailed Molly, darting forward.
What happened next she never afterward could recall; but somehow, in the twinkling of an eye, she had dashed in front of the bounding motor; she had caught dazed little Essie about the waist, and was dragging her off the track. Nearer and nearer down the abrupt descent thundered the terrible car.Molly had scarcely time to leap with her living burden across the rail before the heavy wheels lumbered over the very spot where Essie had been seated.
“O Molly, Molly! how dared you?” shuddered Pauline, as the car came to a stand-still a few feet farther on. “I thought you’d be crushed to pieces!”
Molly tried to reply, but seized with sudden faintness sank down in the road with her feet in the gutter. Pauline ran to the nearest house for a glass of water. When she returned with it she saw the motor-man bending over Molly, speaking vehemently.
“I believe you’re the bravest girl in this city,” he was saying in a tremulous voice. “If it hadn’t been for you I should have run over that baby. You’ve done me a good turn that I sha’n’t forget in a hurry.”
“Oh, I—Ihadto do it,” gasped Molly through her chattering teeth. “I—I wasn’tbrave. I did it—just—because I couldn’t help it.”
“You’re a heroine, Molly, an out-and-out heroine,” cried admiring Pauline, holding the glass to Molly’s lips.
After the motor-man had again mounted his platform, and the crowd gathered about the corner had dispersed, Pauline picked up Molly’s overturned bicycle. Donald’s frocks, broken from their paper wrapping, lay crushed in the mud.
“I’ll carry ’em ’ome for you, Molly,” said Harry, who had come in quest of his runaway sister; “I’ll ’old ’em in both harms.”
And the little English children skipped away, serenely unconscious that Essie had escaped a great peril.
But when their Aunt Ruth had heard the adventure, she ran over to Mr. Rowe’s house with streaming eyes to thank Molly for her noble act.
“I shall be grateful to you, Miss Molly, while the Lord lets me draw breath,” she cried brokenly. “You’ve snatched my little Hessie back from the grave.”
“Molly risked her own life for the child’s, Miss Hobbs,” said Mr. Rowe, stroking Molly’s cheek.
His hand shook like an aspen leaf. The recent exciting incident had unbraced his nerves, and he was days in rallying from it.
“It is too bad about those frocks, mamma,” said Molly that night before going to bed. “The street had just been sprinkled. They’ll all have to be washed.”
“What of that, Molly? Soiled frocks seem of very little consequence to me to-night.”
As Mrs. Rowe spoke she knelt beside Molly’s bed, and gave her a fond kiss.
“Only the clothes were new, mamma.”
“Who cares for new clothes compared to human lives, my Molly?” Mrs. Rowe’s voicewas unsteady. “I thank the good Father on my knees for letting you save Essie, and for sparing our dear daughter to her father and me.”
And she kissed Molly again and again.