"'Dinner will be a little early,'" he wrote, "'because Mr. Kean is planning to take us all to the play afterwards. He will call for you in'----what shall I call for you in?"

"The bus," promptly answered every girl in the room.

"'--the bus at six fifteen. Antic.i.p.ating much pleasure in having you with us to-morrow, believe me,

Most cordially yours, JULIA S. KEAN.'"

"Now, Julia, my love, sit down and copy what I've written in your best handwriting, and we'll try to smooth down this fiery young person's ruffled feathers."

Mrs. Kean obediently copied the note. After all, it wasn't an unkind revenge, and Otoyo delivered it at Judith's door while the others chatted quietly and absorbed quant.i.ties of hot fudge and crackers.

Presently Otoyo stole softly back into the room.

"What did she say, little one?" asked Judy.

"She was very stilly," answered Otoyo shyly. "She spoke nothing whatever. I thought it more wisely to departing go."

The laugh that was raised at this lucid report restored good humor in the company.

A vehicle called for Mr. and Mrs. Kean at a quarter before ten to take them down into the village, and it was not long before every light was out in Queen's Cottage but one in a small single room in an upper story.

Here, in front of the mirror over the dressing table, sat a black-eyed girl in a red silk dressing gown.

"Judith," she said fiercely to her image in the gla.s.s, "can't you remember that you are too poor to insult people any longer?"

Then she rolled up Mrs. Kean's note into a little ball and flung it across the room with such force that it hit the other wall and bounded back again to her feet, and she ground it under her heel. After this exhibition of impotent rage, she put out her light and flung herself into the bed, where she tossed about uneasily and exclaimed to herself:

"I won't be poor! I won't work. I hate this hideous little room and I loathe Queen's Cottage. I wish I had never been born."

Nevertheless, Judith Blount did humble herself next day to accept Mrs.

Kean's invitation. At the dinner she was sullen and quiet, but she could not hide her enjoyment of the melodrama later.

The one taste which she had in common with her brother Richard was an affection for the theatre, no matter how crude the acting, nor how hackneyed the play.

But the insulting letter that she had sent to Judy Kean widened the breach between her and the Queen's girls, and no amount of effort on her part after that could bridge it over.

CHAPTER XVI.

CHRISTMAS EVE PLOTS.

Molly was not sorry to spend Christmas in Wellington this year. Numbers of invitations had come to her, but even Mary Stewart could not tempt her away from Queen's Cottage.

"Otoyo and I shan't be lonesome," she said. "We have a lot of work to do before the mid-year exams. and by the time you come back, Otoyo's adverbs are going to modify verbs, adjectives and other adverbs. You'll see," she a.s.sured her friends cheerfully.

And when the last train-load pulled out of Wellington, and she trudged back along the deserted avenue, there was a strange gladness in her heart.

"I'm not homesick and I'm not lonesome," she said to herself. "I'm just happy. Except for Otoyo's lessons, I'm going to give myself a holiday.

I'm going to read--poetry--lots of it, all I want, and to sit in the library and think. I'm going to take long walks alone. It will be like seeing the last of a dear friend, because Wellington will not be Wellington to me when I am installed at O'Reilly's."

Hardly half a dozen girls remained at college that Christmas, and Molly was glad that she knew them only by sight. She was almost glad that the doctor and Mrs. McLean had taken Andy south. She could not explain this unusual lack of sociability on her part, but she did not want to be asked anywhere. It was a pleasure to sit with Otoyo at one end of the long table in Queen's dining room, and talk about the good times they had been having. As for the future, Molly hung a thick veil between these quiet days and the days to come. Through it dimly she could see the bare little room at O'Reilly's, sometimes, but whenever this vision rose in her mind, she resolutely began to think of something else.

It would be time enough to look it in the face at the end of the semester, when she must break the news to Nance and Judy and pack her things for the move.

Most of the girls had left on Sat.u.r.day, and it seemed to Molly that Sunday was the quietest day of her whole life. Scarcely a dozen persons appeared at the Chapel for Vespers and the responses had to be spoken, the choir having departed for the holidays. Monday was Christmas Eve, and on that morning Mrs. Murphy, kind, good-natured soul that she was, carried Molly's breakfast to her room with a pile of letters from home.

Molly read them while she drank her coffee, and saw plainly through their thinly veiled attempts at cheerfulness. It was evident that her family's fortunes were at a low ebb. Her mother was glad that Miss Walker had arranged for her to stay at college and she hoped Molly would be happy in her new quarters.

Molly finished her dressing.

"If I could only _do_ something," she said to herself fiercely as she pinned on the blue tam, b.u.t.toned up her sweater and started out for a walk. Otoyo, that model of industry, was deep in her lessons as Molly pa.s.sed her door.

"I'll be back for lunch, Otoyo," she called as she hurried downstairs.

She had no sooner left the house than Queen's Cottage became the scene of the most surprising activities. Little Otoyo leaped to her feet as if she had unexpectedly sat on a hornet's nest and trotted downstairs as fast as her diminutive legs could carry her.

"Mrs. Murphee, I am readee," she called.

There was no telling what plot they were hatching, these two souls from nations as widely different as night from day. Boxes were pulled from mysterious closets. Mrs. Murphy and one of the maids emerged from the cellar with their arms full of greens and, stranger still, the dignified Professor of English Literature actually made his appearance at the kitchen door with a big market basket on one arm and--but what the Professor carried under the other arm had been carefully concealed with wrapping paper. These things he deposited with Mrs. Murphy.

"It's a pleasant sight, surely, to see you this Christmas Eve marnin', Professor," exclaimed the Irish woman. "You're as ruddy as a holly berry, sir, and no mistake."

"Well, Mrs. Murphy, I'm a Christmas Green, you know," answered the Professor, and Mrs. Murphy laughed like a child over the little joke.

"As for the young j.a.panese lady, she is that busy, sir. You would niver expect a haythen born to take on so about the birthday of our blessed Lord. But she's half a Catholic already, sir, and she's bought a holy candle to burn to-night."

"You're a good woman, Mrs. Murphy," said the Professor, standing beside the well-laden kitchen table, "and whatever she learns from you will do her good, too. She's a long way from home and I have no doubt she'll be very thankful for a little mothering, poor child."

"Indade, and she's as cheerful as the day is long, sir. And so is the other young lady, and she's used to a deal of rejicin' in her family, too. I can tell by the way she loves the entertainin'. Her company niver goes away hungry and thirsty, sir. It's tea and cake always and more besides. 'Have you a little spare room in your oven so that I can bake some m.u.f.fins for some friends this mornin', Mrs. Murphy?' she'll say of a Sunday. She's that hospitable and kind, sir. There's n.o.body like her in Queen's. I'd be sorry ever to lose her."

"Should you call her hair red, Mrs. Murphy?" asked the Professor irrelevantly.

"It's more red than anything else, sir, especially when the weather's damp."

"And what color should you say her eyes were, Mrs. Murphy?"

"An' you've not seen her eyes, surely, sir, if you can be askin' me that question. They're as blue--as blue, sir, like the skies in summer."

The Professor blinked his own brown eyes very thoughtfully.

"Well, good day, Mrs. Murphy, I must be off. Do you think you and Miss Sen together can manage things?"

"We can, surely," said Mrs. Murphy. "She's as neat and quick a little body as I've seen this side the Atlantic."

"My sister gets here at noon. Good day," and the Professor was off, around the house, and across the campus, before Mrs. Murphy could take breath to continue her conversation.

In the meantime, Molly was hastening through the pine woods to a grove where she had once seen some holly bushes. In the pocket of her sweater were a pair of scissors and a penknife.