Nell Speed - Molly Brown's Freshman Days

“Frances,” called Molly softly.

Frances gave a stifled sob that was half a groan and turned over on her side.

“Frances,” called Molly again.

Frances opened her eyes and sat up.

“Is anything the matter?” she asked.

Molly went up to the bedside. Even in the moonlight she could see that Frances’ eyes were swollen with crying.

“I was afraid you were ill,” whispered Molly. “Why didn’t you come to the spread?”

“I had a bad headache. It’s better now. Good night.” Molly crept off to her room.

Was it Frances, after all, who had broken up her party?

Molly was inclined to think it was not, and yet —

“At any rate, we’ll give her the benefit of the doubt, Nance,” she whispered.

But there were no doubts in Nance’s mind.

“I tell you things do hum in this college!” exclaimed Judy Kean, closing a book she had been reading and tossing it onto the couch with a sigh of deep content.

“I don’t see how you can tell anything about it, Judy,” said Nance severely. “You’ve been so absorbed in ‘The Broad Highway’ every spare moment you’ve had for the last two days that you might as well have been in Kalamazoo as in college.”

“Nance, you do surely tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth,” said Judy good naturedly. “I know I have the novel habit badly. It’s because I had no restraint put upon me in my youth, and if I get a really good book like this one, I just let duty slide.”

“Why don’t you put your talents to some use and write, then?” demanded Nance, who enjoyed preaching to her friends.

“Art is more to my taste,” answered Judy.

“Well, art is long and time is fleeting. Why don’t you get busy and do something?” exclaimed the other vehemently. “What do you intend to be?”

Judy had a trick of raising her eyebrows and frowning at the same time, which gave her a serio-comic expression and invested her most earnest speeches with a touch of humor. But she did not reply to Nance’s question, having spent most of her life indulging her very excellent taste without much thought for the future.

“What do you intend to be?” she asked presently of Nance, who had her whole future mapped out in blocks: four years at college, two years studying languages in Europe, four years as teacher in a good school, then as principal, perhaps, and next as owner of a school of her own.

“Why, I expect to teach languages,” said Nance without a moment’s hesitation.

“Of course, a teacher. I might have known!” cried Judy. “You’ve commenced already on me – your earliest pupil!

She broke off with her song suddenly and seized Nance’s hand.

“Please don’t scold me, Nance, dear. I know life isn’t all play, and that college is a serious business if one expects to take the whole four years’ course. I’ve already had a warning. It came this morning. It’s because I’ve been cutting classes. And I have been entirely miserable. That’s the reason I’ve been so immersed in ‘The Broad Highway.’ I’ve been trying to drown my sorrows in romance. I know I’m not clever – ”

“Nonsense,” interrupted the other impatiently. “You are too clever, you silly child. That’s what is the matter with you, but you don’t know how to work. You have no system. What you really need is a good tutor. You must learn to concentrate – ”

“Concentrate,” laughed Judy. “That’s something I never could do. As soon as I try my thoughts go skylarking.”

“How do you do it?”

“Well, I sit very still and dig my toes into the soles of my shoes and my finger nails into the palms of my hands and say over and over the thing I’m trying to concentrate on.”

The girls were still laughing joyously when Molly came in. Her face wore an expression of unwonted seriousness, and she was frowning slightly. Three things had happened that morning which worried her considerably.

The first shock came before breakfast when she had looked in her handkerchief box where she kept her funds promiscuously mixed up with handkerchiefs and orris root sachet bags and found one crumpled dollar bill and not a cent more. There was a kind of blind spot in Molly’s brain where money was concerned, little of it as she had possessed in her life. She never could remember exactly how much she had on hand, and change was a meaningless thing to her. And now it was something of a blow to her to find that one dollar must bridge over the month’s expenses, or she must write home for more, a thing she did not wish to do, remembering the two acres of apple orchard which had been sunk in her education.

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