THE JUBILEE.
Molly Brown, in a state of wild excitement, rushed into No. 5 one
morning waving a slip of yellow paper in her hand.
"They're coming," she cried ecstatically but vaguely.
"Who?" demanded her two bosom friends from the floor where they were
engaged in fitting a paper pattern to a strip of velvet much too narrow.
"My brother and sister, Minnie and Kent. Isn't it glorious? They get
here to-morrow morning to stay for the Jubilee. Oh, I'm so happy, I am
so happy," she sang.
"I'm so glad," said the two friends in one breath.
"I'm getting rooms for them at O'Reilly's and they will arrive on the
ten train. Isn't it lucky Mrs. O'Reilly is our bright, particular
friend? We never could have got the rooms. Everything in the village is
taken."
The crowds had indeed come pouring into Wellington for the great Jubilee
celebration for which every student at the college had been working for
months past. And now, almost the first of May, everything was in
readiness, the pageants, the costumes, the plays--all the splendid and
complicated arrangements for an Old English May Day Festival. Judy, as
she had planned on the opening night of college all those long months
ago, was to be a gentleman of the court and was now engaged in
constructing a velvet cape with Nance's assistance. Furthermore all the
girls were to take part in the senior outdoor play to be given on the
afternoon of the Jubilee celebration, and Molly, wonderful as it seemed
to her afterward, had won for herself by excellent recitation the part
of Rosalind. There had been many Rosalind competitors but Professor
Green and the professional who had come down to coach chose Molly from
them all.
How they had practiced and rehearsed and worked over that play not one
of the senior cast will ever forget. But now it was ready and the time
was ripe for the grand performance. In two days it was to take place.
The next morning, in response to the telegram, the three friends met
Molly's brother and sister at the station. They were a good looking
pair, as Nance pronounced them, but not the least like Molly. Minnie or
Mildred Brown was as pretty as Molly in her way. She had an aquiline
nose that spoke of family, brown hair curling bewitchingly about her
face and a beautifully modeled mouth and chin. Kent was different,
too--tall with gravely humorous gray eyes, his mouth rather large and
shapely, his nose a little small--but he was very handsome and his
manners were perfection. He took to Judy at once. She amused and
mystified him and she volunteered after lunch to show him all the sights
of Wellington. Another visitor at Wellington was Jimmy Lufton, who had
come down to see the celebration regardless of work and expenses, and
ordered Molly a beautiful bouquet of narcissus to be handed to her when
she appeared as Rosalind.
Molly introduced him to Kent and Minnie and the three were soon good
friends and looking for the best places along the campus to see the
sights, while Molly rushed off to attire herself for the morning as a
Maypole dancer. Old Wellington presented a strange and unusual aspect on
that beautiful May morning. Far back under the trees gathered the people
of the pageant waiting for the cue to start the march. Carts drawn by
yokes of oxen rumbled along the avenue, filled with rustics from the
country, mostly freshmen dressed in all manner of early English
costumes. There were shepherds and shepherdesses, maids of low and high
degree. Gentlemen of the court and plow boys in smock frocks elbowed
each other on the green. Booths had been set up of a seventeenth century
pattern, where anachronisms in the form of modern refreshments were
sold.
Bands of singers and rustic dancers trooped by, jesters in cap and
bells, page boys and trumpeters. A more animated and brilliantly colored
scene would be difficult to imagine.
Providence had smiled on Wellington's Jubilee and sent a glorious day
for the May Day Festival. It was an early spring and everything that
could do honor to the day had burst into blossom: daffodils that
bordered the lawns of the campus houses nodded their delicate yellow
heads in the morning sunlight; clumps of lilac bushes formed bouquets of
purple and white and from an occasional old apple tree showers of pink
petals fell softly on the grass.
"It's almost as beautiful as Kentucky, Kent," observed Mildred Brown,
and Jimmy Lufton laughed joyfully.
"Almost, but not quite," he said. "In Kentucky there would be twice as
much of everything, and, besides the elms, there would be beech trees
and maples with a good sprinkling of walnut and locust."
"Twice as many Mildreds, too," observed Kent. "But for my part I think
the young ladies I have seen here are quite as pretty as the girls at
home."
"I think you'd have a hard time finding two to match Miss Molly and Miss
Mildred," put in Jimmy, looking with admiration at the charming Mildred,
dressed in a cool white linen, a broad brimmed straw hat trimmed with
pink roses shading her face.
"There's Miss Judy Kean," argued Kent.
What would this young man have thought if at that moment he could have
had a glimpse of the fair Judy dressed as a court gentleman in lavender
satin knickers, a long cape of purple velvet, an immense cavalier hat
with a great plume and over her shapely mouth a flaring yellow
mustachio?
And all of our other friends, how strange and unnatural they seemed.
Their most intimate friends would scarcely have recognized them.
Margaret was a fat, jolly Falstaff, stuffed out to immense proportions.
Edith was entirely disguised as a jester and enjoyed her own quips
immensely when she tapped a visitor on the shoulder with her bauble and
said, "Good morrow, fair maid, art looking for a swain?"
And now four little heralds advanced down the campus bearing long
trumpets, antique in shape, on which the sun sparkled brilliantly. At
the center of the campus they paused and blew four long resonant blasts
and then cried in one voice:
"Make way for their Majesties, the King and Queen, and all the Royal
Court." And the pageant began to unwind its sinuous length along the
campus lawn, and all the rustic players who formed the rabble fell in
behind the royal personages and their brilliant train.
It was really a wonderfully beautiful picture, one to be remembered
always with pride by Wellingtonians and with pleasure by outsiders who
had gathered by the hundreds on the lawn. After the pageant came the May
pole dancers and the wandering musicians, the Morality Play and the
rustic dances.
There were hundreds of things to see. Mildred Brown, rushing from one
charming performance to another, felt almost as if it really was an old
English May Day Festival. The spirit of the actor rustics pervaded her
and she was full of excitement and wonder at the whole marvelous
performance.
At last the entire company gathered in front of the now historic site of
Queen's Cottage and there amid the shrubbery and the tall old forest
trees the seniors gave their performance of "As You Like It."
"I don't believe Marlowe and Sothern could do it a bit better,"
exclaimed Mildred proudly. "Aren't they wonderful?"
"Isn't Miss Molly wonderful?" said Jimmy Lufton.
"Yes, indeed, I am proud of my little sister to-day, prouder than ever
of her."
A man in a gray suit fanning himself with a straw hat turned around and
looked at Mildred curiously. His face was lined with fatigue, for nobody
had worked harder than he over the Festival. But he was not too tired to
be interested in Mildred Brown.
"So they are the brother and sister," he said to himself. "And a very
good-looking pair they are. I must try and meet them to-morrow. Ask them
to tea in the Quadrangle. Miss Molly would like that, I think. But not
that young Lufton," he added half angrily. "Not that young buccaneering
newspaper fellow."
"Professor Green," said Mrs. McLean, standing next to him, "I think we
owe most of the success of this day to you. But how about that charming
Rosalind? Did you train her to act so prettily?"
"No," he replied, "I couldn't do that. It's in her already. One has only
to bring it out."
Among the flowers which were handed over the row of potted cedars to
Molly after that charming performance was a big bunch of yellow
daffodils, and tied to the yellow ribbon was a large yellow apple.
"You've won your second golden apple to-day, Miss Molly, and I am proud
of my pupil," read the card attached.