Nell Speed - Molly Brown's Sophomore Days

"Art ready?" asked Katherine Williams, appearing at the door in a natty brown corduroy walking suit.

"Can'st have the face to ask the question when we've been waiting for you ten minutes?" replied Judy.

It was a glorious September day when the walking club from Queen's started on its first expedition. The rules of the club were few, very elastic and susceptible to changes. It met when it could, walked until it was tired and had no fixed object except that of resting the eyes from the printed page, relaxing the mind from its arduous labors and accelerating the circulation. Anyone who wanted to invite a guest could, and those who wished to remain at home were not bound to go.

"Did anybody decide where we were going?" asked Molly.

"Yes, I did," announced Margaret. "Knob Ledge is our destination. It's the highest point in Wellington County and commands a most wonderful view of the surrounding country-side – "

"Dear me, you sound like a guide book, Margaret," put in Judy.

"Professor Green is the guide book," answered Margaret. "He told me about it. You know he is the only real walker at Wellington. Twenty miles is nothing to him and Knob Ledge is one of his favorite trips."

"I hope that isn't twenty miles," said Jessie anxiously.

"Oh, no, it's barely six by the short way and ten by the road. We shall go by the short way."

"Isn't Molly lovely to-day?" whispered Nance to Judy, after the walking expedition had crossed the campus and started on its way in good earnest.

Molly was a picture in an old gray skirt and a long sweater and tam of "Wellington blue," knitted by one of her devoted sisters during the summer.

"She's a dream," exclaimed Judy with loyal enthusiasm. "She glorifies everything she wears. Just an ordinary blue tam o'shanter, exactly the same shape and color that a hundred other Wellington girls wear, looks like a halo on a saint's head when she wears it."

"It's her auburn hair that's the halo," said Nance.

"And her heavenly blue eyes that are saint's eyes," finished Judy.

Molly, all unconscious of the admiration of her friends, walked steadily along between Otoyo and Jessie, a package of sandwiches in one hand and a long staff, picked up on the road, in the other.

They were not exactly out for adventure that day, being simply a jolly party of girls off in the woods to enjoy the last sunny days in September, and they were not prepared for all the excitements which greeted them on the way.

Scarcely had they left the path along the bank of the lake and skirted the foot of "Round Head," at the top of which Molly and her two chums had once met Professor Green and his brother, when Margaret Wakefield, well in advance of the others, gave a wild scream and rushed madly back into their midst. Trotting sedately after her came an amiable looking cow. The creature paused when she saw the girls, emitted the bovine call of the cow-mother separated from her only child, turned and trotted slowly back.

"Why, Margaret, I didn't know you were such a coward," began Jessie reproachfully.

"Coward, indeed," answered the other indignantly. "I don't believe Queen Boadicea herself in a red sweater would have passed that animal. Listen to the creature. She's begun mooing like a foghorn. I suppose she held me personally responsible for her loss. Anyhow, she began chasing me and I wasn't going to be gored to death in the flower of my youth."

There was no arguing this fact, and several daring spirits, creeping along the path until it curved around the hill, hid behind a clump of trees and took in the prospect. There stood the cow with ears erect and quivering nostrils. She had a suspicious look in her lustrous eyes and at intervals she let out a deep bellow that had a hint of disaster in it for all who passed that way.

The brave spirits went back again.

"What are we to do?" exclaimed Katherine. "If it got out in college that an old cow kept ten sophomores from having a picnic, we'd never hear the last of it."

"Unless we behave like Indian scouts and creep along one at a time, I don't see what we are to do," said Molly. "If we went further up the hill, she'd see us just the same and if we crossed the brook and took to the meadow, we'd get stuck in the swamp."

"Suppose we make a run for it," suggested Judy with high courage. "Just dash past until we reach that group of trees over there."

"Not me," exclaimed Jessie, shaking her head vigorously. "Excuse me, if you please."

There was another conference in low voices behind the protecting clump of alder bushes. At last the cow began to ease her mental suffering by nibbling at the damp green turf on the bank of the little brook.

"She's forgotten all about us. Let's make a break for it," cried Molly. There was a certain stubbornness in her nature that made her want to finish anything she began no matter whether it was a task or a pleasure.

The cow flicked a fly from her flank with her tail and went on placidly cropping grass. Apparently, creature comforts had restored her equanimity.

"One, two, three, run!" shouted Judy, and the ten students began the race of their lives.

Not once did the flower and wit of 19 – pause to look back, and so closely did they stick together, the strong helping the weak, that to the watchers on the hill – and, alas! there were several of them – they resembled all together an enormous animal of the imagination with ten pairs of legs and a coat of many colors. At last they fell down, one on top of the other, in a laughing, tumbling heap, in the protecting grove of pine trees, and pausing to look back beheld the ferocious cow amiably swishing her tail as she cropped the luscious turf on the bank of the little stream.

"Asinine old thing," cried Margaret. "She's just an alarmist of the worst kind."

"Who was the alarmist, did you say, Margaret?" asked Edith, with a wicked smile. But Margaret made no answer, because, as her close friends well knew, she never could stand being teased.

And now the watchers on the hill, having witnessed the entire episode from behind a granite boulder and enjoyed it to the limit of their natures, proceeded to return to Wellington with the story that was too good to keep, and Queen's girls went on their way rejoicing as the strong man who runs a race and wins.

At two o'clock, after a long, hard climb, they reached the ledges. To Molly and Judy, the leading spirits of the expedition, the beautiful view amply repaid their efforts, but there were those who were too weary to enjoy the scenery. Jessie was one of these.

"I'm not meant for hard work," she groaned, as she reposed on one of the flat rocks which gave the place its name and pillowed her head on Margaret's lap.

They opened the packages of luncheon and ate with ravenous appetites, finishing off with fudge and cheese sticks. Then they spread themselves on the table rocks and regarded the scenery pensively. Having climbed up at great expense of strength and effort, it was now necessary to retrace their footsteps. The thought was disconcerting.

Edith, who never moved without a book, pulled a small edition of Keats from her pocket and began to read aloud:

A short laugh interrupted this scene of intellectual repose. Edith paused and looked up, annoyed.

"I see nothing to laugh at," she said. But the faces of her classmates were quite serious.

"No one laughed," said Molly.

"A rudely person did laugh," announced Otoyo decisively. "But not of us. Another hidden behind the rock."

The girls looked around them uneasily. There was no one in sight, apparently, and yet there had been a laugh from somewhere close by. Coming to think of it, they had all heard it.