HOW O'REILLY'S BECAME QUEEN'S.
Molly often looked back on that famous bitter Monday as the most
exciting day of her entire life. Surprises began in the morning when
they learned for a fact that it was ten degrees below zero. Barometers
in a house always make the weather seem ten times worse. In the night
the water pipes had burst and flooded the kitchen floor, which by
morning was covered with a layer of ice. On this, the unfortunate Mrs.
Murphy, entering unawares, slipped and sprained her ankle. The gas was
frozen, and neither the gas nor the coal range could be used that
eventful morning. The girls prepared their own breakfasts on chafing
dishes, and wrapped in blankets they shivered over the registers, up
which rose a thin stream of heat that made but a feeble impression on
the freezing atmosphere.
"We do look something like a mass meeting of Siberian exiles," observed
Judy grimly, looking about her in Chapel a little later.
Miss Walker herself wore a long fur coat and a pair of arctic shoes and
in the assembled company of students there appeared every variety of
winter covering known to the civilized world, apparently: ulsters, golf
capes, fur coats, sweaters, steamer rugs and shawls.
Molly was numb with cold; fur coats were the only garments warm enough
that day, and a blue sweater under a gray cloth jacket was as nothing
against the frigid atmosphere.
"Bed's the only comfortable place to be in," she whispered to Judy, "and
here we've got classes till twelve thirty and moving in the afternoon!
The trunks are going this morning. Oh, heavens, how I do dread it!"
"At least O'Reilly's couldn't be any colder than Queen's is at present,"
replied Judy, "and there's a grate in the room I am to have. We'll have
a big coal fire and cheer things up considerably."
Everything was done on the run that day. Groups of girls could be seen
tearing from one building to another. They dashed through corridors like
wild ponies and rushed up and down stairs as if the foul fiends were
chasing them.
The weather was like a famous invalid rapidly sinking. They frequently
took his temperature and cried to one another:
"It's gone down two degrees."
"The bulletin says it will be fifteen by night."
"Oh," groaned Molly, thinking of her friends at that dismal O'Reilly's.
Having half an hour to spare between classes, she went to the library
where she met Nance.
"There are some letters for you, Molly. They came by the late mail. I
saw them in the hall," Nance informed her.
But Molly was not deeply interested in letters that morning.
"Never mind mail," she said. "I can only think of two things. How cold I
am this minute, and how uncomfortable you and Judy are going to be for
my sake."
"Don't think about it, Molly, dear," said Nance. "We'll soon get
adjusted at O'Reilly's with you, and we never would at Queen's without
you."
Molly could not find her mail when she returned to Queen's for lunch,
which had been prepared with much difficulty on several chafing dishes
and a small charcoal brazier by Mrs. Markham and the maid. Nobody seemed
to know anything about letters in the upset and half-frozen household,
until it was finally discovered that Mr. Murphy had taken Molly's mail
down to O'Reilly's when he had moved the trunks.
Having disposed of indifferently warmed canned soup and creamed boned
chicken that was chilled to its heart, the three friends went down to
the village. They looked at the rooms; they stood gazing pensively at
their trunks; it seemed too cold to make the physical effort to unpack
their clothes. Again the fugitive letters had escaped Molly. Mr. Murphy,
finding she was not to come down until afternoon had kept them in his
pocket and was at that moment at the station awaiting the three fifteen
train.
"It's too cold to follow him," said Molly, never dreaming that Mr.
Murphy was carrying about with him a letter which was to change the
whole tenor of her life. "I'm so homesick," she exclaimed, "let's go
back to Queen's for awhile."
And back they hastened. Somehow they didn't know what to do with
themselves in their new quarters. It seemed unnatural to sit down and
chat in those strange rooms.
As they neared the avenue they noticed groups of girls ahead of them,
all running. The three friends began to run, too, beating their hands
together to stir up the circulation. A bell was ringing violently. Its
clang in the frosty air sounded harsh and unnatural.
"That's the fire bell," cried Judy.
They dashed into the avenue. The campus was alive with students all
running in the same direction.
"It's Queen's," shrieked Nance. "Queen's is burning!"
Smoke was pouring from every window in the old brown house. The lawn in
front was filled with a jumbled mass of furniture and clothes. Margaret
and Jessie appeared on the porch dragging a great bundle of their
belongings tied up in a bedspread. Otoyo rushed from the house, her arms
filled with things. Mrs. Murphy, seated in a big chair on the campus,
was rocking back and forth and moaning:
"Queen's is gone. Nothing can save her. The pipes is froze."
Out of the front door Edith Williams now emerged, quite calmly, with an
armload of books.
"Edith," cried Katherine, who had run at full speed all the way from the
Quadrangle, "why didn't you bring our clothes?"
For an answer her sister pointed at a pile of things on the ground.
"I made two trips," she replied.
All this the girls heard as in a dream as they stood in a shivering row
on the campus. Old brown Queen's was about to be reduced to ashes and
cinders! No need to summon the fire brigade or call in the volunteer
fire department from the village, although this organization presently
came dashing up with a small engine. Flames were already licking their
way hungrily along the lower story of the house, and the slight stream
of water from the engine hose only seemed to rouse them to greater fury.
"I'm only thankful it didn't happen at night," they heard Miss Walker
cry as she pushed her way through the throng of girls. "And you, my dear
child," she continued, laying a hand on Molly's shoulder, "did you save
your things?"
Molly started from her lethargy. She was so cold and unhappy, she had
forgotten all about her belongings.
"Oh, yes, Miss Walker," she answered. "You see, we moved this morning.
Wasn't it fortunate?"
"We?" repeated Miss Walker.
"Yes. My two friends, Miss Oldham and Miss Kean, moved, too. They--well,
they wouldn't stay at Queen's without me."
"Is it possible?" said the President. "And their trunks had gone down to
the village? Dear, dear, what a remarkably providential thing. And what
devoted friends you seem to make, Miss Brown," she added, patting
Molly's hand and then turning away to speak to Professor Green, who had
hurried up.
"Is everybody safe?" he asked breathlessly.
"Yes, yes, Professor, everybody's safe and everything has been done that
could be done. I am afraid some of the girls have lost a good many
things, but you will be glad to know that three of them had only this
morning sent their trunks to rooms in the village--Miss Brown and her
two friends."
"Miss Brown moving to the village?"
Molly looked up and caught the Professor's glance turned searchingly on
her.
"I am going to live at O'Reilly's," she said.
"And you are safe and your things are safe?" he asked her, frowning so
sternly that she felt she must have displeased him somehow. "I'm glad,
very glad," he added, turning abruptly away. "Is there nothing I can do,
Miss Walker?"
For answer she pointed to the volunteers from the village who had leaped
away from the house. The crowd swerved back. There was a crackling
sound, a crash; a great wave of heat swept across the campus and the
front wall of Queen's fell in. They had one fleeting view of the
familiar rooms, and then a cloud of ashes and smoke choked the picture.
It was not long before only the rear wall of old brown Queen's was left
standing.
"Dust to dust and ashes to ashes," said Edith Williams, solemnly.
It did seem very much like a funeral to the crowd of Queen's girls who
stood in a shivering, loyal row to the end.
"So much for Queen's," said Margaret Wakefield. "She's dead and now
what's to be done?"
It was decided that the girls should go to O'Reilly's for the time
being, all other available quarters being about filled. If they
preferred the post-office they could stay there; but they preferred
O'Reilly's.
And thither, also, went Mrs. Markham and the Murphys and the maids from
Queen's. In a few short hours, it would seem, Queen's had been changed
to O'Reilly's, or O'Reilly's to Queen's. It turned out, too, that Mrs.
O'Reilly was nearly related to Mr. Murphy, and all things, therefore,
worked together in harmony.
O'Reilly's seemed a place of warmth and comfort to the half-frozen girls
who clustered around the big fire in Judy's room at five o'clock that
afternoon, scalding their tongues with hot tea and coffee while they
discussed their plans for the future.
"Mrs. Markham told _me_," announced Margaret, a recognized authority on
all subjects, political, domestic, financial and literary, "that it
would probably be arranged to make O'Reilly's into a college house for
the rest of the winter. She said they might even do over the rooms. It
would be a smaller household than Queen's, of course--only eight or
nine--but it would be rather cosy and--there would be no breaking up of
old ties. If this isn't approved," she continued, exactly as if she were
addressing a class meeting, "we shall have to scatter. There's another
apartment in the Quadrangle and there are a few singletons left in some
of the campus houses. Now, girls,"--her voice took on an oratorical
ring--"of course, I know that we are nearly fifteen minutes' walk by the
short cut from the college and that we may not be _in_ things as much;
but the best part of college we have here at O'Reilly's. And that's
ourselves. I move that we change O'Reilly's into Queen's and make the
best of it for the rest of the winter."
"Hurrah! I second the motion," cried Katherine Williams.
"All those in favor of this motion will please say 'aye'," said the
President.
"Aye," burst from the throats of the eight friends, Otoyo's shrill high
note sounding with the others.
"Hurrah for our President," cried Molly, dancing around the room in an
excess of happiness.
"_Unitus et concordia_," said Edith gravely.
"It's really Molly that's transformed O'Reilly's into Queen's,"
continued Margaret, who had a generous, big way of saying things when
she chose. "It's Molly who has kept us all together. With Molly and
Nance and Judy gone, Queen's would have been a different place."
"It would! It would!" they cried. "Three cheers for Molly Brown!"
"'Here's to Molly Brown, drink her down!
Here's to dear old Queen's, drink her down.'"
Through the din of singing and cheering, there came a loud knocking at
the door and a voice cried:
"Open in the name of the law!"
Then the door was thrust open and Sallie Marks marched in flourishing a
hot-water bag in one hand and a thermos bottle in the other.
"Well," she exclaimed, "you're the most cheerful lot of refugees I ever
saw. I came down expecting to find eight frozen corpses stretched on the
shining strand, and here you are singing hilarious songs and yelling
like a lot of Comanche Indians."
"What are you bringing us, Sallie?" demanded Judy.
"I'm bringing you myself," said Sallie. "I've arranged to come down
here. They shelved me with a lot of freshies at Martin's and I said I'd
rather be at O'Reilly's with the Old Guard. So Mr. Murphy brought me
down with two sheet-loads of my things and some beds from the hospital,
and here I am."
"Hurrah!" they cried again, joining hands and dancing in a circle around
Sallie.
"'Here's to good old Sallie, drink her down,
Drink her down, drink her down, drink her down!'"
After this wild outburst of joy over the return of another wanderer to
the fold, Sallie began to remove her outer wrappings.
"I feel like an Egyptian mummy," she remarked as she skinned off two
long coats and unwound several scarfs.
"You look like a pouter pigeon," said Judy, "what have you got stuffed
in there?"
"Mail," said Sallie, unbuttoning another jacket, "mail for Queen's. Mr.
Murphy gave it to me when he came to get my things. And, by the way,"
she added, "I saved my rocking chair and sat in it as I drove down to
the village. Wasn't it beautiful? I suppose I'll be lampooned now as
'Sallie, the emigrant.' But it was too cold to care much. I was only
thankful I had taken the precaution to fill the hot-water bag and the
thermos bottle before I started on the drive."