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 forbeare To digg ye dust encloased heare Bleste be ye man yt spares thes stones And 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 gla.s.s were, to say the least, grimy.

"Oh!" she faltered, "I didn't know it was so--so--dusty in 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." She _said_ sun came in the window but she plainly _meant_ Fern 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 suddenly realized, 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 said it 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 Epimenides 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? I thought 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 gla.s.s 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 sc.r.a.p book of fugitive verse. This sc.r.a.p 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 a.s.suming 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 great friends. 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 chastis.e.m.e.nt, 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 dust on 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 fair That kissed in some forgotten May."

"It is lovely, exquisite!" breathed Molly. "I don't feel nearly so bad about it as I did."