A JAPANESE SPREAD.
One morning every girl at Queen's discovered by her plate at the
breakfast table a strange rice paper document some twelve inches in
length and very narrow as to width, rolled compactly on a small stick.
"What's this?" demanded Margaret Wakefield, unrolling her scroll and
regarding it with the legal eye of an attorney perusing documentary
evidence.
Across the top of the scroll swung a gay little row of Japanese lanterns
done in delicate water colors, and in characters strangely Japanese was
inscribed the following invitation:
"Greetings from
Otoyo Sen:
Your honorable
presence is
requested on
Saturday evening
at the insignificant fete
in the unworthily
apartment of
Otoyo Sen.
Otoyo muchly
flattered by
joyful acceptance."
Fortunately, the little Japanese girl, overcome by shyness after this
rash venture, had not appeared at breakfast and was spared the mirthful
expressions on the faces of the girls around the table.
"Well, of all the funny children," laughed Molly. "Nance, let's offer
her our room. She can't get the crowd into her little place."
"Of course," said Nance, agreeable to anything her roommate might
suggest.
Not a single girl declined the quaint invitation and formal acceptances
were sent that very day.
Otoyo was so excited and happy over these missives that she seemed to be
in a state of semi-exaltation for the better part of a week. She rushed
to the village and sent off a telegram and before Saturday morning
received at least a dozen mysterious boxes by express. They were piled
one on top of the other in her room like an Oriental pyramid and no one
was permitted to see their contents.
All offers of assistance were refused the day of the party. Otoyo wished
to carry out her ideas in her own peculiar way and needed only a
step-ladder. If it was not asking too much, would the beautiful and kind
friends not enter their room until that evening? Removing all things
needful in the way of books and clothes to Judy's room, the beautiful
and kind friends good-naturedly absented themselves from their apartment
from ten in the morning to seven-thirty that evening. Molly spent the
afternoon in the library studying, and Nance called on Mrs. McLean and
drank a cup of tea and ate a buttered scone, while she cast an
occasional covert glance in the direction of Andy junior's photograph
on the mantel.
It was well before eight o'clock when the inquisitive guests assembled,
and there were at least twenty of them; for Otoyo's acquaintance was
large and numbered girls from all four classes. They met downstairs in a
body and then marched up to the third story together.
"Let's give her a serenade before we knock," suggested Judy, and they
sang: "The sweetest girl in Wellington is O-to-yo." Any name could be
fitted into this convenient and ingenious song.
Otoyo flung open the door and stood smiling before them. Her manner was
the very quintessence of hospitality. She wore a beautiful embroidered
kimono and her hair was fixed Japanese fashion. Even her shoes were
Japanese, and she carried a little fan which she agitated charmingly to
express her excited emotions.
All her English forsook her in the excitement of greeting her guests and
she could only repeat over and over again:
"Otoyo delightly--Otoyo delightly."
"Well, I never," ejaculated Nance, entering her old familiar room, now
transformed into a gay Japanese bazaar.
"Is this the parent of all the umbrella family?" demanded Judy, pointing
to an enormous parasol swung in some mysterious manner from the centre
of the ceiling and resembling a large fish swimming among a numerous
small-fry of lanterns. The divans were spread with Japanese covers, and
over the white dimity curtains were hung cotton crepe ones of pale blue
with a pink cherry-blossom design. In one corner stood a vase, from
which poured the incense of smoking joss-sticks. Funny little handleless
cups were ranged on the table and lacquered trays of candied fruits,
rice cakes and other indescribable Japanese "meat-sweets," as Otoyo had
called them. The little hostess flew about the room exactly as the
_Three Little Maids_ did in "The Mikado," waving her fan and bowing
profoundly to her guests. Presently, sitting cross-legged on the floor,
she sang a song in her own language, accompanying herself on a curious
stringed instrument, a kind of Japanese banjo. She was, in fact, the
funniest, queerest, most captivating little creature ever seen. She
loaded her guests with souvenirs, little lacquered boxes, fans and
diminutive toys.
"I feel as if I were a belle at a grand cotillion with all these lovely
favors," exclaimed Jessie Lynch.
"Of course, you would always be laden with favors," said Judy; "that is,
if you could get all your beaux to come to the same cotillion. You are
like the sailor who had a lass in every port. I strongly suspect you of
having an admirer in every prominent city in the country."
Jessie laughed and dimpled.
"No," she said; "I stopped at the Rocky Mountains."
Otoyo, who had been listening closely to this dialogue, suddenly
bethought herself of a new sensation she had provided for her friends,
which she was about to forget.
"Oh," she cried, "I nearlee forgetting. American girl love fortune
telling? So do Japanese. You like to have your fortune told?" she
asked, cocking her head on one side like a little bird and blinking at
Jessie.
"Would she?" cried a dozen ironical voices.
"I hope it's nothing disagreeable and there's no bad luck in it," said
Jessie, drawing a slip of paper from a flat, shiny box. "But it's all in
Japanese," she added, with much disappointment.
"Otoyo will translate it. Won't you, you cunning little sugar-lump?"
asked Molly.
"Everybodee choose and then I will make into English," said the small,
busy hostess, flying from one to another on her marshmallow soles.
"Me first of all," cried the eager Jessie. "I had first draw."
Otoyo took the slip and, holding it under a lantern, translated in a
high, funny voice:
"He happy who feesh for one and catch heem, than feesh for many and
catch none."
The wild whoop of joy that went up at this unexpectedly appropriate
statement made the lanterns quiver and the teacups rattle.
Some of the others were not so appropriate, but they were all very
amusing. Mabel Hinton, who had been nicknamed "old maid" the year
before, drew one which announced:
"Your daughters will make good matches."
The girls laughed till the tears ran down their cheeks at this
prediction, and Mabel was quite teased.
"I'd like to know why I shouldn't have a family of marriageable
daughters some day," she exclaimed, blinking at them with near-sighted
eyes while she wiped the moisture from her large round glasses.
Nance's fortune was a very sentimental one and caused her to blush as
red as a rose.
"Love will not change, neither in the cold weenter time nor in the warm
spreengtime under the cherry-blossoms when the moon ees bright."
"Oh, thou blushing maiden," cried Judy, "canst look us in the eye after
this?"
Molly's was rather comforting to her troubled and unquiet heart.
"Look for cleer weather when the sky ees blackest."
Of all the mottoes, Judy's was the funniest.
"Eef thy hus-band beat thee, geeve heem a smile."
"Smile indeed," exclaimed that young woman when the laughter had died
down; "I'll just turn the tables on him and beat him back, Otoyo.
American young lady quite capable of giving honorable husband a good
trouncing with a black-snake whip."
Otoyo opened her eyes at this. It was doubtful whether she could
appreciate the humor of her mottoes, but she enjoyed hearing the girls
laugh; she realized they must be having a good time if they laughed like
that--really genuine, side-shaking laughter and no lip-smiles for
politeness' sake.
"Who's heard the news about Judith Blount?" asked one of the Williamses,
after the party had broken up and only the Queen's girls remained.
Molly and Judy and Nance exchanged telegraphic glances. They had been
careful to keep secret what Mrs. Kean had written her daughter, and they
were curious to know just how much the others knew on the subject,
which was now always uppermost, at least in Molly's mind.
"She's sub-let her apartment, furnished, to that rich freshman from New
York, whose father's worth a fortune a minute from gold mines and oil
wells, and she, I mean Judith, is taking the empty singleton here."
"You don't mean it!" cried a chorus of voices.
"It seems to me I heard that a Mr. Blount lost a lot of money," observed
Margaret. "It must have been her father."
"How are the mighty fallen!" exclaimed Edith Williams. "I should think
she'd have gone anywhere rather than here."
"She couldn't get in any of the less expensive places unless she had
taken a room over the post office in the village."
"Poor Judith!" ejaculated Jessie. "I've known it for a week."
To save her life Molly could not keep a tiny little barbed thought from
piercing her mind: "Is it fair for Judith to stay at college when I
have to leave? Has she any right to the money that's paying her
tuition?"
Molly turned quickly and began gathering up the debris from the
tea-tables. Anything to get that bitter notion out of her head.
"Let's be awfully nice to her, girls," she said presently. "I'm sure
she's terribly unhappy. Remember what success we had with Frances
Andrews last year just through a little kind treatment."
"Judith is a different subject altogether," said Margaret,
argumentatively. "She has such a dreadful temper. You never can tell
when it's going to break loose."
With the Goddess of War sitting among them at this moment, nobody dared
betray by the flick of an eyelash that there were others whose tempers
were rather uncertain. Only Jessie observed:
"Well, Margaret, dear, you got the better of her that time at the
Ledges, temper or no temper."
"I doubt if she takes to poverty as a duck to water," here put in Judy.
"She'll make a very impatient tutor, and I'd hate to have her black my
boots. She might throw them at my head."
"She is certainly not subdued by her reverses," remarked Jessie. "She's
just like a caged animal. I never saw anything to equal her. I went over
there this afternoon and she was packing. She almost pitched me out of
the room. Of course, it's very luxurious at Beta Phi House, but her
little room here isn't to be scorned. It's really quite pretty, with
lovely paper and matting and chintz curtains and wicker chairs."
Suddenly a wave of indignation swept over Molly. Nobody had ever seen
her look as she looked now, burning spots of color on her cheeks and her
eyes black.
"What right has she--how dare she--she should be thankful--" she burst
out incoherently. Then she stamped both feet up and down like an angry
child and flung herself face down on the couch in an agony of tears. It
was a kind of mental tempest, resembling one of those sudden storms
which come with a flash of lightning, a roaring crash of thunder and
then a downpour of rain.
"Why, Mary Carmichael Washington Brown," exclaimed Judy, kneeling beside
poor Molly, "whatever has come over you?"
Little Otoyo was so frightened that she hid behind a Japanese screen,
while the other girls sat dumb with amazement.
The Williams girls were intensely interested, and Margaret, always
consistent and logical in her decisions, knew very well that there was
something serious back of it.
"Please forgive me," said Molly presently, wiping her eyes and sitting
up as limp as a rag. "I'm awfully sorry to have spoiled the evening like
this. I didn't mean it. It just slipped out of me before I knew it was
coming."
"Why, you old sweetness," exclaimed the affectionate Judy, "of course,
you are forgiven. I guess you ought to be allowed a few outbursts. But
what caused it?"
"I think it was nervousness," answered Molly evasively.
But the girls began to realize that it was not entirely nervousness. It
occurred to them now that Molly had been preoccupied and strangely
silent for some time. Occasionally she gave way to forced gaiety. Twice
she had started on walks, changed her mind and come back, without giving
any excuse except that she was a little tired. It was, in fact, a
condition that had come about so gradually that they were hardly aware
they had noticed it until this sudden breakdown.
"She's dead tired and ought to get to bed this minute," remarked Nance,
caressing her friend's hand.
"Dearest Molly," said Jessie, who was moved by a gentle sympathy always
for those in trouble, "go to bed and get a good rest. It was just nice
and human of you to get mad once in a thousand years and we love you all
the better for it."
They were good friends, all of them, Molly felt, as they kissed her or
pressed her hand good-night, while Nance and Judy hastened to clear off
the divan and put up the windows to blow out the heavy, incense-scented
air.
It was Otoyo, however, who brought the tears back to poor Molly's eyes.
"Dear, beautiful Mees Brown," she said. "You must not think it will come
wrong. It will come right, I feel, surelee."
"What is it, Nance?" whispered Judy, after they had got their friend to
bed.
Nance shook her head.
"Heaven knows," she answered. "But it's something, and it must be
serious, Judy, or she never would have let go like that."