Nell Speed - Molly Brown's Post-Graduate Days

“Mother, I don’t mean to be ever, and really and truly I have done nothing to mislead Mr. Lufton, and maybe I am mistaken and conceited about his feeling for me, and I truly hope I am. I have never done anything but be my natural self with him.”

Mrs. Brown smiled, well knowing that just being her natural self was where Molly did the damage, if damage had been done.

“Mother, there is something else.” Mrs. Brown knew there was, and was patiently waiting. “You know Professor Green? Well, I gave him your invitation to come to Kentucky.”

“And what did he say?”

“He said, ‘Thank you.’”

“Is he coming?”

“I don’t know.” Molly found talking to her mother about Professor Green more difficult than she had imagined it would be. “When you wrote me two years ago that some eccentric person had bought the orchard and I could finish my college course, I told Professor Green about it, and also told him I should like to meet the old man who had saved me from premature school-teaching. And when he asked me what I’d do if I should happen to meet him, I told him I would give him a good hug.” Molly faltered. “Well, mother, when I told him good-by and gave him your invitation, I went back and – I just gave him a good hug.”

Mrs. Brown sat up so vigorously that Molly, sitting by her side, was almost jolted off the bed.

“Why, Molly Brown! And what did Professor Green do?”

“He? Oh, he took it very philosophically and bowed his head ’til the storm was over.”

Mrs. Brown gave a gasp of relief.

“He must be a good old gentleman, indeed. About how old is he, Molly?”

“The girls say every day of thirty-two.”

“Why, the poor old thing! Do you think he could take the trip out here to Kentucky all by himself?”

“Mother, please don’t tease. There is something else. Jimmy Lufton wrote a little note which I found in the bottom of the basket of fruit he had put on the train for us. It was wrapped around a lemon and said, ‘Here is a lemon you can hand me if, when I come to Kentucky this summer, you don’t want me to stay.’”

“Oh! The plot thickens! So he is coming, too.”

“Yes, but he lives in Lexington, and is coming out to see his family, anyhow.”

“Well, Molly, darling, you must go to bed now, but before you go tell me one thing: do you want Professor Green to come to Chatsworth?”

“Yes, mother, I think I do,” and giving her mother a hug that made that lady gasp again and say, “Molly, what a hugger you are,” she flew from the room and raced upstairs two steps at a time.

Judy was sitting up in bed, the moon lighting her enough for Molly to see a wild, startled look on her face.

“Molly, Molly, I hear something!”

“You hear me making more noise than I have any business to at this time o’ night. I have been having a good old talk with muddy.”

“Oh, no, it wasn’t that. I knew you were downstairs. I haven’t been truly asleep. I was ’possuming.’ It is out by the chicken yard, and I am so afraid it is burglars after the pullets Aunt Mary told me she was saving for chicken salad for the wedding supper. Lewis was to kill them to-morrow.”

Judy had entered so intensely into the Browns’ household affairs that Molly herself was no more interested in the festive preparations than was her guest. Molly drew cautiously to the window and peeped out; she beckoned Judy, and the excited girls saw a sight to freeze the marrow in their chicken-salad-loving bones: the thief had a wheelbarrow, and some great gunny sacks over his arm, and was in the act of boldly opening the chicken-yard gate.

“If we call he will get away, and how else can we let the boys know? The wretch may have those sacks full of chickens even now,” moaned Molly.

There was a three-room cottage or “office,” as they called it, on the side of the house next the garden where all of the young men slept in summer. The girls feared that, in trying to let them know of the burglar, if they went out of the front door they would startle Mrs. Brown. And if they should try to go out the back door, in getting to the cottage they would have to run across a broad streak of moonlight in plain view of the thief, and thus give him ample time to get away with his booty before they could arouse the boys.

“Why shouldn’t we take the matter in our own hands and make him drop his sacks and run?” said Molly. “I am not afraid, are you?”

“Me afraid? Bless your soul, no. I am only afraid he will get off with the chickens,” replied the intrepid Judy. “I have my little revolver in the tray of my trunk, the one papa gave me when we were camping in Arizona. I can load it in a jiffy. But what weapon will you take?”

“I don’t see anything but my tennis racket. I’ll take that and some balls, too, in case I have to hit at long range. There is really no danger for us, as a chicken thief has never been known to go armed with anything more dangerous than a bag.”

They slipped on their raincoats, as they were darker than their kimonos, and crept softly down the back stairs, out on the back porch, and down the steps into the yard, keeping close in the shadow of the house until they came to an althea hedge. Skirting this, still in the shadow, they got near enough to the chicken-yard gate to have a good look at the burglar. That burly ruffian, instead of bagging the pullets that were peacefully roosting in a dog-wood tree, totally unconscious that they were sleeping the last sleep of the condemned, had taken a spade from his wheelbarrow, carefully spread out his gunny sacks and was digging with great care around the holly-hocks, digging so deep and so far from the roots that he soon got up a great sod without injuring the plants. This he placed with great care in the barrow, and as he stepped into the broad moonlight the girls recognized Kent. They clutched each other and were silent, except for a little choking noise from Judy which might easily have come from one of the condemned, having premonitory dreams of the morrow.

Kent worked on until his wheelbarrow was full of the lovely flowers. Then he stuck in the spade and trundled it away toward the garden, the girls silently following, still keeping as well in the shadow as was possible, and holding tight to their weapons, although they no longer had any use for them. On reaching the garden, they realized that Kent must have been working many hours. He had already moved dozens of the stately plants, and they now stood in the garden where they belonged, no doubt glad of the transplanting from their former homely surroundings. So deeply and well had Kent dug that they were uninjured by the move, and he completed the job by dousing them plentifully with water from a great tub that he had filled at the cistern.

The effect was wonderful, as Judy had known that it would be, but her surprise and pleasure that Kent should be so anxious to gratify her every wish was great. She felt her cheeks glowing with excitement and her heart pit-a-patting as it would not have done, even had Kent proved to be the chicken thief they had imagined him to be.

That young man finished his job, cleaned his spade, shook out the gunny sacks, raked the débris from the walk, and then, giving a tired yawn and stretching himself until he looked even taller than the six feet one he measured in his stocking feet, he said out loud in a perfectly conversational tone:

“Now, Miss Judy, you may have the master mind that can imagine things and see beforehand how they are going to look, but I’ll have you know it takes work to create and drudgery to accomplish; and only by the sweat of the brow can we ‘give to airy nothing a local habitation and a name.’ You and Molly can step out of the bushes and view the landscape.”