The two girls sat down on the divan and began a subdued and earnest conversation.

"What are we to do with these things, Molly? We can't leave them in the piano because the moment some one sits down to play we'll be discovered."

"Murderers take up the planks in the floor and hide their bloodstained clothing underneath," observed Molly. "But we can't do that, of course."

They took the bundle from its hiding place and looked over the garments.

"I have an idea," announced Nance, who had many practical notions on the subject of clothes. "Suppose we take the dress to the cleaner's in the village and have it steamed."

"Why can't we steam it ourselves over the tea kettle?" demanded Molly.

"We can and we'll do it right now and press it on the wrong side. If it hadn't been so much admired, it wouldn't matter so very much, but some one's sure to ask to see it or borrow it or something. How about the underclothes? Can't we smooth them out with a hot iron before they go to the laundry?"

They set to work at once to heat water and irons, and presently were engaged in restoring the old rose velvet to a semblance of its former beauty.

"What are we going to do about that slipper?" demanded Molly, pausing in her labors.

"I've made up my mind to that," replied Nance. "We must bury it."

CHAPTER IX.

THE GRAVE DIGGERS.

Three times during the night Molly and Nance crept into Judy's room and looked at her anxiously. She seemed to be sleeping heavily, but she tossed about the bed with feverish restlessness, and her forehead was burning hot.

Early in the morning the faithful friends were up again, tipping about like two wraiths of the dawn in their trailing dressing gowns.

"I'll bathe her face and hands before she takes any tea," said Molly.

"She's awake. I saw her open her eyes when I peeped in just now."

Judy was awake and sitting bolt upright when they presently entered with the basin and towels. There was a strange look in her eyes. Molly remembered to have seen it before when Judy was in the grip of the wander thirst.

"Here you are, Sweet Spirits of Niter," she cried, in a hoa.r.s.e, excited voice. "Knowst thou the land of Sweet Spirits of Niter?" she began singing. "Knowst thou the Sweet Spirits? They are tall, slender, gray ladies done in long curving lines, like that." She ill.u.s.trated her ideas of these strange beings by sketching a picture on an imaginary canvas.

"They lean against slim trees. They have soft musical voices and speak gently because they are sweet. You see? And the Land of Niter, what of it? It is a land of gray mists, always in twilight, and the Sweet Spirits who live in it are shadows. It is a sad land, but it is still and quiet and there are cool fountains everywhere. Sweet spirit, wouldst give me to drink of thy cup?"

Molly and Nance laughed. They knew that Judy was delirious, but it was impossible not to laugh over her strange, poetic illusion regarding sweet spirits of niter. Setting down the basin and towel, they retreated to the next room.

"We'd better make her a cup of beef tea as quickly as we can," said Nance. "That will quench her thirst and nourish her at the same time.

Good heavens, Molly, what shall we do if she begins to talk about the slipper and the lake?"

"I don't know," replied Molly, lighting the alcohol lamp, while Nance found the jar of beef extract. "I wish you hadn't given her so much physic, Nance." Molly had a deep-rooted objection to medicine, while Nance, on the other hand, was a firm believer in old-fashioned remedies.

"Her stomach was in no condition for all that stuff. It was utterly upset. Her gastric juices had been lashed into a storm and hadn't had time to subside."

Nance smiled at Molly's ignorance.

"You are getting the emotions and the stomach mixed, Molly, dear."

Now, Molly had her own ideas on this subject, but it was vain to argue with her friend, the actual proprietor of a real medicine chest marked "Household Remedies," which contained more than a dozen phials of physics.

Judy was, in fact, paying the penalty for her mental storm when on the night of the play she had run through the whole scale of emotions, beginning with stage fright and an awful fear and pa.s.sing into mortification, disappointment, rage, remorse and finally sorrow, or it might be called self-pity, which inspired her to launch a canoe and paddle into the middle of the lake at midnight. It will never be known how near she came to jumping into the lake. It is difficult to reckon with an unrestrained, hypersensitive nature like hers, always up in the heights or down in the depths; sometimes capable of splendid acts of generosity and unselfishness, but capable also of inflicting cruel punishments for imagined offences.

Nance was for more medicine.

"Suppose I give her a big dose of castor oil, Molly," she suggested, while she stirred the tea. "She had better take it before she drinks this."

"Goodness, Nance, you'll kill her," exclaimed Molly, horrified. "Don't you see that it is entirely a mental thing with Judy? What she needs is absolute quiet, and the quinine has probably excited her and made her delirious. She doesn't need things to stimulate her. She's almost effervescent in her normal condition, anyhow."

"Castor oil isn't a stimulant, child."

"Perhaps not, but she'd better not be upset any more," and in the end Molly had her way.

Returning in a few moments to bathe Judy's face, she found the sick girl half out of bed.

"Get back into bed, Judy," she said firmly. "You're to have a nice quiet day in here and no one to bother you."

"But the slipper. I'm looking for the other slipper," began Judy, weeping. "Oh, dear, I must find the slipper. Nance, Molly, the slipper, have you seen the slipper, the old oaken slipper, the iron-bound slipper that hangs in the well. If it's in the well now, drop it to the bottom.

I hope it's a deep well, the deepest well in Well County."

It was unkind to laugh, but Molly could not keep her countenance.

"I might have known," she thought, "that Judy could be more delirious than anybody in the world."

Judy submitted to having her face bathed and drank the beef tea without a murmur. She appeared greatly refreshed and quieted and said a few rational words about having had bad dreams.

It was Sunday morning, frosty and bright. The bell of the Catholic Church in the village called devotees to early ma.s.s. It rang out joyfully and persuasively, reiterating its message to unbelievers. It was a cheerful sound and, in spite of Judy's troubles, they felt comforted. The steam heat began its pleasant matins in the pipes. The kettle on the alcohol stove hummed busily. Molly began to make preparations for breakfast. Although she was not self-indulgent, discomfort was never an acceptable state to her.

"Get your bath, Nance," she ordered, "and then you can come back and make the toast while I take mine."

Nance departed for the bathrooms with soap and towels, while Molly busied herself spreading a lunch cloth on one of the study tables and placing a blue china bowl full of oranges in the center. Then she carefully extracted four eggs from a paper bag in a box on the outer window ledge; cut four thin, even slices of bread to be inserted in Judy's patent electric toaster, and at intervals poured boiling water through the dripper into the coffee pot.

"If I were at home this morning," she said, "I would be eating hot waffles and kidney hash."

Suddenly she looked up. Judy was standing in the doorway.

"Molly," she said, "I want my slipper."

Molly took her hand and gently led her back to bed.

"Judy, would you like a cup of delicious, strong, hot coffee?" she asked, endeavoring to divert Judy's quinine-charged senses.

"Very much, but the slipper----" Judy began to whimper like a child.

Molly hurried into the next room, found one of Nance's slippers and gravely handed it to Judy, who grasped it carefully with both hands as if it were something very precious and brittle.

"When I gave her your slipper, Nance, I felt something like the old witch who had kidnapped the Queen's infant and put a changeling in its place," Molly observed later, in telling about this incident to Nance.