"Of course we forgive you, dear. And won't you tell us what you saw?"

"No, no, no. It was notheeng."

"We ought to be going, at any rate," said the Professor. "Miss Sen isn't accustomed to celebrations like this when old people turn into children and children turn into infants."

"Am I an infant?" asked Molly, "or a child?"

"I am afraid you still belong to the infant cla.s.s, Miss Brown," replied the Professor regretfully.

They attributed Otoyo's fright to nervousness caused from over-excitement, and a few minutes later the party broke up.

It was one o'clock when the two girls finally climbed upstairs to the lonely silent third floor. Molly escorted Otoyo to her little room and turned on the light.

"Now, little one," she said, putting her hands on the j.a.panese girl's shoulders and searching her face, "what was it you saw at the window?"

Otoyo closed the door carefully and, tipping back to Molly's side, whispered:

"The greatly beeg black eyes of Mees Blount look in from the window outside. She was very angree. Oh, so angree! She look like an eevil spirit."

"Then she didn't go to New York, after all! But how silly not to have joined us. What a jealous, strange girl she is!"

Molly could not know, however, with what care and secrecy the Greens had guarded their Christmas plans from Judith, who had caught a glimpse of the Professor and his sister at the general store that afternoon. It was revealed to her that her cousins would much rather not spend Christmas with her, and with a sullen, stubborn determination she changed her mind about going to New York. There was a good deal of the savage in her untamed nature, and that night, wandering unhappily about the college grounds and hearing sounds of laughter and singing from Queen's, she pressed her face against the window and the gay picture she saw inflamed her mind with rage and bitterness. The poor girl did resemble an evil spirit at that moment. There was hatred in her heart for every merrymaker in the room, and if she had had a dynamite bomb she would have thrown it into the midst of the company without a moment's hesitation.

When Molly went to her own room after her talk with Otoyo, she found a note on her dressing table which did not worry her in the least considering she was quite innocent of the charge.

"You told me a falsehood this morning with all your preaching.

I'd rather live over the post-office next to an incessant talker who does laundry work than stay in the same house with a person as deceitful and untruthful as you. J. B."

"I'm sorry for the poor soul," thought Molly, as she contemplated her own happy image in the gla.s.s. "She is like a traveller who deliberately takes the hardest road and chooses all the most disagreeable places to walk in. If she would just turn around and go the other way she would find it so much more agreeable for herself and all concerned."

Nevertheless, Molly felt a secret relief that Judith had chosen to stay over the post-office.

As for the incorrigible Judith, she did leave for New York early next morning and spent the rest of the holidays with her mother and brother.

Molly saw a great deal of the Greens for the next few days. They had tea together and long walks, and once the Professor read aloud to his sister and the little girl from Kentucky in the privacy of his own study. Miss Green and her two brothers left Wellington on New Year's Eve to visit some cousins in the next county, and still Molly was not lonely, for Lawrence Upton put in a great deal of time teaching her to skate and showing Otoyo and her the country around Wellington.

CHAPTER XVIII.

BREAKING THE NEWS.

Mrs. Markham had received due notice that Molly Brown of Kentucky would be obliged to give up her half of the big room on the third floor at Queen's. The matron was very sorry. Miss Blount also was moving to other quarters, she said; but she was too accustomed to the transitory tenants of Queen's to feel any real grief over sudden departures.

"It only remains to break the news to the others," thought Molly, but she mercifully determined to wait until after the mid-year examinations.

She was very modest regarding her popularity, but she was pretty sure that Judy's highly emotional temperament might work itself into a fever from such a shock. Remembering her last year's experience at mid-years, Molly guarded her secret carefully until after the great crisis.

At last, however, the fateful moment came. All the Queen's circle was gathered in that center of hospitality in which Molly had spent so many happy months. The walls never looked so serenely blue as on that bright Sunday morning in January, nor the j.a.panese scroll more alluring and ornamental. A ray of sunlight filtering through the white dimity curtains cast a checkered shadow on the antique rug. Even the imperfections of the old room were dear to Molly's heart now that she must leave them forever; the spot in the ceiling where the roof had leaked; the worn place in the carpet where they had sat around the register, and the mischievous chair with the "game leg" which precipitated people to the floor unexpectedly.

Everybody was in a good humor.

"There are no shipwrecks on the strand this year," Margaret Wakefield was saying. "Everybody's safe in harbor, glory be."

"Even me," put in Jessie meekly. "I never thought I'd pull through in that awful chemistry exam., and I was morally certain I'd flunk in math., too. I'm so afraid of Miss Bowles that my hair stands on end whenever she speaks to me."

"She is rather formidable," said Edith Williams. "Why is it that Higher Mathematics seems to freeze a body's soul and turn one into an early Puritan?"

"It simply trains the mind to be exact," said Margaret, who always defended the study of mathematics in these discussions. "And exactness means sticking to facts, and that's an excellent quality in a woman."

"Meaning to say," broke in Katherine Williams, "that all un-mathematical minds are untruthful----"

"Nothing of the sort," cried Margaret hotly. "I never made any such statement. Did I, girls? I said----"

There was a b.u.mping, tumbling noise in the hall. Judy, the ever-curious, opened the door.

"The trunks are here, Miss," called Mr. Murphy, "and sorry we are to lose you, the old woman and I."

"Thank you, Mr. Murphy," answered Molly.

"Well, for the love of Mike," cried Judy, turning around and facing Molly. "What are you talking about?"

"I'm not talking about anything," answered Molly, trying to keep her voice steady.

"Did you flunk in any of the exams., Molly Brown?" asked Edith in a whisper.

"No," whispered Molly in reply. It was going to be even worse than she had pictured to herself. "No," she repeated. A pulse throbbed in her throat and made her voice sound all tremolo like a beginner's in singing. "I waited to tell you until after mid-years. I'm not going very far away--only to O'Reilly's."

Nance, who had been sitting on the floor with her head against Molly's knee, began softly to weep. It was certainly one of the most desolating experiences of Molly's life.

"O'Reilly's?" they cried in one loud protesting shriek.

"Yes, you see, we--we've lost some money and I have to move," began Molly apologetically. "We can be friends just the same, only I won't see quite as much of you--it--it will be harder on me than on you----"

It would have been gratifying if it had not been so sad, this circle of tear-stained faces and every tear shed on her account.

"We simply can't do without you, Molly," cried pretty, affectionate Jessie Lynch. "You belong to the 'body corporate' of Queen's, as Margaret calls it, to such an extent that if you leave us, we'll--well, we'll just fall to pieces, that's all."

It remained for Judy Kean, however, that creature of impulse and emotion, to prove the depths of her affection. When she rushed blindly from the room, her friends had judged that she wished to be alone. Molly had once been a witness to the awful struggle of Judy in tears and she knew that weeping was not a surface emotion with her.

For some time, Molly went on quietly explaining and talking, answering their questions and a.s.suring them that there would be many meetings at O'Reilly's of Queen's girls.

"I expect you'll have to move into Judith Blount's singleton, Nance,"

she continued, patting her friend's cheek. "That is, unless you can arrange to get someone to share this one with you."

"Don't, don't," sobbed Nance. "I can't bear it."