"'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 n.o.body 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. Of course, 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 that had 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.

"'Which I wish to remark, And my language is plain, That for ways that are dark And for tricks that are vain, The heathen Chinee is peculiar.'"

"All the same, I bet old Epi Anti doesn't tell Molly any more what a sweet thing Alice Fern is."

"How do you know he did?"

"Insight into human nature," and Billie made a saucy moue.

"Gee, my back aches!" said Jo. "I think I'll do housework often. It certainly does reach muscles we don't know about. But didn't it pay just to see dear old Molly's face when we rolled out from behind the sofa?"

And all of them agreed it had.

"Edwin," said Molly, after the girls had gone, "I think I'll send for Kizzie to come help me. I may put her in the kitchen and take Katy for a nurse."

"Good! I am certainly glad you have come to that decision. What changed you?"

"Well, it seems to me that when it comes to the pa.s.s that my college girls feel so sorry for me they cut such lectures as yours to give the whole morning to cleaning up for me I must do something, and the only thing I can think of doing is to send for Kizzie."

"Can you mix the black and white without coming to grief?"

"Remember, Katy is more green than white, and she is so good-natured, she could get along with anything."

"I can't tell you how relieved I am, honey. I wanted you to do what pleased you, but I could not see how I was coming in on this. I felt very lonesome, and while I wasn't jealous of the baby, I was certainly envious of her. If Kizzie comes, you can be with me more and nurse me some."

"Yes, dearie, I missed it, too, but somehow I couldn't get through. If Katy had been more competent----"

"But she wasn't and isn't."

"No, she certainly isn't, but she adores Mildred already and Mildred actually cries for her. I believe she would make a fine nurse. If only she doesn't feel called upon to scrub the baby."

Edwin laughed and, settling himself for a pleasant smoke, opened the morning paper, which neither he nor Molly had found time to read.

"Oh, what a shame!" he exclaimed. "The Germans dropping bombs on Paris!

Infamous!"

"Paris! How can they? Oh, Edwin, Judy and Kent both there!"

CHAPTER XVIII.

CIRc.u.mSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.

When the teller of a tale has to fly from one side of the ocean to the other in the twinkling of an eye, as it were, at any rate between chapters, and the persons in the tale have no communication with one another except by letters that are more than likely to be tampered with on the high seas, it is a great comfort to find that all the characters have at last arrived at the same date. On that morning after the dropping of bombs when Judy, dressed in her sad mourning garb, was selling spinach and tarts to the hungry occupants of the Montparna.s.se quarter, Molly, allowing for the difference in time, was oversleeping herself after a wakeful night and the college girls were quietly cleaning her living room. Kent and Jim Castleman were stretching themselves luxuriously in the not too comfortable beds of the _Haute Loire_ preparatory to making themselves presentable, first to find Judy, and then to find the general who, no doubt, would be glad to have the Kentucky giant enlist in the ranks, even though his letter of introduction and credentials had gone to the bottom with the _Hirondelle de Mer_. Jim Castleman's appearance was certainly credential enough that he would make a good fighter.

A bath and a shave did much towards making our young men presentable.

Kent with a needle and thread, borrowed from the chambermaid, darned the knees of his trousers so that they did very well just so long as he did not try to sit down; then the strain would have been too much. Jim's were hopelessly short.

"Nothing but a flounce would save me, so I'll have to go around at high water mark; but I'll soon be in a uniform, I hope."

They had breakfast in a little cafe where Kent had often gone while he was a student at the Beaux Arts, and there Jim Castleman astonished the madame by ordering four eggs. She couldn't believe it possible that any one could eat that much _dejeuner_ and so cooked his eggs four minutes.

His French was quite sketchy but he plunged manfully in with what he had and finally came out with breakfast enough to last until luncheon. Kent was willing to do the talking for him but he would none of it.

"Let me do it myself! I'll learn how to get something to eat if I starve in the attempt."

And now for Judy! Kent could hardly wait for his famished friend to eat his two orders of rolls and coffee and his four eggs, but at last he was through.

First to the bank! No, they did not know where Mlle. Kean was. She had been in once to get money but they were sorry they could not honour her letter of credit. She had left no address.

Then to the American Club! Judy had been in the day before for mail, and had had quite a budget. She had left no address, but came for letters always when the American mail was reported in.

Where could she be?

Next, to his cousin, the Marquise d'Ochte, on the Faubourg!

The venerable porter, at the porte-cochere, who came in answer to the vigorous ring that the now very uneasy Kent gave the bell, said that none of the family was within and they had no visitor. Madame the Marquise had gone to the front only the day before, but was coming home soon to open a hospital in her own home. Even then the workmen were busy carrying out her orders, packing away books, pictures, ornaments, rugs and what not so that the house would be the more suitable to care for the wounded. The Marquis and Philippe were both with their regiments.

The old porter was sad and miserable. Jules, the butler, was gone; also Gaston, the chef whose sauces were beyond compare. Madame had taken great hampers of food with her, even going to Montparna.s.se for tarts from Tricots'.

Kent turned sadly away. Judy was somewhere, but where? Her letter to Molly telling of her being in the Bents' studio had come after Kent left Kentucky and he had no way of knowing that she was there. Polly Perkins and his wife, he knew were in the thick of the battle from the first letter he had seen from Judy. Where was Pierce Kinsella? He had not heard from his studio mate and friend but he rather thought there was little chance of finding him. At any rate, he determined to go to the Rue Brea and see if the concierge there knew anything of the lost damsel.

They found a crowd at the entrance to the court on which the studios fronted. The concierge in the midst of them was waving her arms and talking excitedly.

"Yes, and the first I heard was a click! click! click! and that, it seems, was the terrible thing flying over us and then an explosion that deafened me. They say it was meant for the Luxembourg and they missed their mark. That I know nothing about----"

"What is it? Tell me quick!" demanded Kent, elbowing his way through the crowd with the help of Jim, that renowned center rush.