HEROES AND HERO WORSHIPERS.
The next morning poor Molly slept late again. With all good intentions
of waking early and going down stairs in time to see about her husband's
neglected breakfast, when morning came she did not stir. Mildred had
given her another wakeful night after all, finding out more things about
her little pigs. Finally the little monkey had given up and dropped off
to sleep, and she and her doting mother were both dead to the world when
the time came for Professor Green to go to lectures.
Again he gave instructions to Katy not to disturb the mistress and crept
out of the house as still as a mouse. Breakfast had been a little
better. Molly was rubbing off on Katy evidently. Just to associate with
such a culinary genius as Molly must have its effect even on the worst
cook in the world, which Katy surely seemed to be.
Coming across the campus, he ran into Billie McKym, Josephine Crittenden
and Thelma Olsen. They looked very bright and rosy as they gave him a
cheery good morning. Each carried a bundle. He wondered that they were
going away from lecture halls instead of toward them. But after all, it
was not his business to be the whipper-in for lectures. Wellington was a
college and not a boarding school. If students chose to cut lectures, it
was their own affair until the final reckoning.
"Just our luck to meet Epimenides Antinous!" cried Billie. "He should
have been out of the house five minutes ago, at least."
"His legs are so long he doesn't have to start early," declared Jo.
"Just see him sprint!"
"I am certainly sorry to cut his lecture to-day," sighed Thelma, "but
this thing must be done."
The Greens' front door was never locked except at night, so the girls
crept quietly in. Billie peeped into the kitchen, where she discovered
Katy on her knees "scroobing" the part of the kitchen she could not
finish the evening before, when Molly was so hard-hearted as to make
her stop and prepare vegetables. Such a sea of suds!
"Katy," whispered Billie.
"Merciful Mither! And phwat is it? Ye scart me," and the girl sat back
on her heels and looked at Billie with round, wide eyes.
"We are great friends of Mrs. Green and we have come to dust her books
and--ahem--do a few little things. Is she still asleep?"
"Yis, and the master was after saying she must not be distoorbed, not on
no account."
"Of course she must not be! That is why we have come to dust the things.
We think she looks so tired."
"And so she is, the scwate lamb; but she do fly around so, and she do
cook up so mooch. I tell her that she thinks more of her man's insides
thin she do of her own outsides."
"Well, Katy, we want you to let us have a broom and a wall brush. We
brought our own aprons and rags," and Billie pressed a round, hard
something into Katy's hand. It was not so large as a church door nor
so deep as a well, but it served to get the Irish girl up off of her
run-down heels; and in a trice the coveted broom and wall brush were in
possession of the three conspirators, as well as a stepladder, which
they decided would be needful.
"Don't say a word to Mrs. Green, Katy,--now remember. We are going to
work very quietly and hope to finish before she gets downstairs. We
don't want her to know who did it, but we mean to get it all done
before noon," said Jo, rolling up her sport shirtsleeves and disclosing
muscular arms, that showed what athletics had done for her and what she
could do for athletics.
"Where must we begin, Thelma?" asked Billie, who was as willing as could
be but knew no more about cleaning than a hog does about holidays, Jo
declared.
"Begin at the top," laughed Thelma, tying up her yellow head in a great
towel and rolling up her sleeves.
"Gee, your arms are beautiful!" exclaimed Billie. "I'd give my head for
such arms. I'd like to drape them in a silver scarf. Think how they
would gleam through." The arms were snow white and while Thelma's
strength was much greater than Jo's, her muscles did not show as they
did on that athletic young person.
Thelma blushed and laughed as she balanced herself on a stepladder and
began taking down pictures. A cloud of dust floated down and enveloped
her.
"Look, look! She looks like the 'white armed Gudrun'! Don't you remember
in William Morris's 'Fall of the Neiblungs'? The battle in Atli's Hall?
"'Lo, lo, in the hall of the Murder where the white-armed
Gudrun stands,
Aloft by the kingly high-seat, and nought empty are her
hands;
For the litten brand she beareth, and the grinded war-sword
bare:
Still she stands for a little season till day groweth white
and fair.
Without the garth of King Atli, but within, a wavering
cloud
Rolls, hiding the roof and the roof-sun; then she stirrith
and crieth aloud.'"
"Cut it out! Cut it out!" cried Jo, "and come lend a hand."
"Mustn't we dust before we sweep?" innocently asked Billie.
"If you want to, but you'll have to dust again afterwards," said the
white-armed Gudrun from her ladder. "The books are really so dirty that
I don't think it would hurt to wipe down the walls without covering
them, but that is a mighty poor cleaning method. Poor Molly! Didn't she
look tired yesterday? I hope she won't think we are cheeky to take a
hand in her affairs."
"Cheeky! She will think we are her good friends, not like that snippy
Miss Fern who stared so at the cobwebs and then went out and palavered
over Epimenides Antinous. She used to claim him, so I am told. One of
the nurses at the infirmary told me that when Epi Anti had typhoid
there, years ago, Miss Fern came and dressed herself up like a nurse and
almost bored the staff to death taking care of her sick cousin," said
Billie, delighted with the job that had been given her of wiping down
walls. "Isn't this splendid? Just look at all the dirt I got on my
rag!"
"Well, don't rub it back on the wall," admonished Jo.
"No. Well, what must I do with it?"
"Can't say, but don't put it back on the walls."
"Jo, you and Billie dust the books and I will finish up the pictures.
I can't trust myself to dust Professor Green's books. I am afraid of
breaking the tenth commandment all the time," sighed Thelma. "I'll wash
the windows, too."
"Oh, Thelma! The white-armed Gudrun sitting in windows washing them!
That's not occupation meet for a queen. Let me do it."
"You, Billie McKym, wash a window! Did you ever wash one in your life?"
"Well, no, not exactly, but I bet I could. What's the use of a college
education if one can't wash windows when she gets to be a full grown
senior?"
But since the object of the girls was to get the room clean, it was
decided that Thelma was to wash the windows. My, how they worked! Jo
found she had muscles that her athletics had never revealed. She found
them because they began to ache.
"Why, to dust all these books and books is as bad as building a house,"
she said, straightening up and stretching when she had finished the
poet's corner.
"Exactly like laying brick," declared Billie. "I'm going to join the
Hod-carriers' Union. I'll be no scab."
Katy had occasionally poked her head in at the door, entreating "whin
they coom to the scroobing" to call her.
The cleaners made very little noise, so little that the sleeping Molly
and Mildred were not at all disturbed.
"I wish she knew it was almost done," said Thelma, perched in the window
sill and rubbing vigorously on a shining pane. "She would be so glad. I
know she is worrying about it in her sleep. Hark! There is the baby!"
Then began the business of the day upstairs. Katy was called, for water
must be heated as Katy, according to her habit, had let the fire go out
before the boiler was hot.
"Katy, we must hurry up with Mildred this morning and get to the
library. It is filthy," said Molly, as she slipped the little French
flannel petticoat over Mildred's bald head.
"Yes, mum!" grinned Katy.
"We have luncheon almost ready, with the cold lamb to start with."
"Yes, mum."
"Don't you think you could get the dining room cleaned while I am
attending to the baby?"
"Yes, mum, if yez can schpare me."
"Oh, I think I can. But, Katy, before you go hand me that basket. And,
Katy, perhaps you had better wash out this flannel skirt. I am so afraid
she might run short of them. You can empty the water now--and, Katy,
please hold the baby's hand while I tie this ribbon, she is such a
wiggler--and, Katy--a little boiled water now for her morning tipple.
She must drink lots of water to keep in good health."
"Yes, mum, and how aboot breakfast for yez, mum?"
"Oh, I forgot my breakfast! Of course I must eat some breakfast. I'll
come down to it."
"Oh, no, mum! And let me be after bringing it oop to yez, mum," insisted
the wily Katy, who was anxious for the youthful house cleaners to
accomplish their dark and secret mission without interruption. Not only
was it great fun, a huge joke, in fact, for her to be paid fifty cents
to let others do her work, but it meant that since others were doing it,
she would not have to, and she could have just that much more time for
"scroobing" and resting. A tray was accordingly got ready and Molly
found she had a little more appetite than the morning before; also, that
Katy's food was really a little better.
"Your coffee is better this morning, Katy," she said, believing that
praise for feats accomplished but egged on the servitor to other and
greater effort.
"Yes, mum, so the master said."
"Poor Edwin," thought Molly, "how I have neglected him. I must do
better. But if I don't wake up, I don't wake up. If I could only get a
little nap in the day time. Mother always wanted me to take one, but how
can I? The living room must be cleaned to-day." She felt weary at the
thought. Accustomed as she was to being out of doors a great deal, she
really needed the fresh air.
"As soon as luncheon is over, we must get busy with the cleaning. I wish
we might have done it in the forenoon, but I am afraid it is too late."
"Yes, mum, it's too late!" and Katy indulged in such a hearty giggle
that her mistress began to think perhaps she was feeble-minded as well
as inefficient.
"Is the table in the dining room cleared off, Katy, so you can set it
for luncheon?"
"No, mum, it is not!"
"Oh, Katy! What have you been doing all morning?"
"Well, mum, I scroobed my kitchen, and--and----"
"And what?" demanded Molly.
"And I did a little head work in the liberry, that is, I----"
"Oh, Katy, did you clean the living room, clean it well?"
"Well, mum, yez can wait and see if it schoots yez," and Katy beat a
hasty retreat to warn the cleaners that the mistress was about to
descend.
The room presented a very different appearance to what it had before the
girls rolled up their sleeves. The slanting afternoon sun would seek out
no dusty corners now; everything was spick and span. The books no longer
had to be beaten and blown before you dared open them, and they stood in
neat and orderly rows; the walls held no decorations in the shape of
Irishman's curtains now; the picture glass shone, as did the window
panes; the rugs were out in the back yard sunning after a vigorous
beating and brushing from Thelma, whom Billie called "the powerful
Katrinka."
The floor, being the one part of the room that Katy had put some licks
on, did not need anything more serious than a dusting after everything
else was done.
"Katy, you might bring in the rugs now as we have done everything else,"
suggested Billie. Katy went out into the back yard and bundled up the
rugs. Molly, seeing her from an upper window, smiled her approval.
"I believe she is going to do very well," she said to herself. "She
seems to be trying, and she is so fond of Mildred."
"Come on, girls, we must hurry and get off! Molly will be down stairs
any minute now and she must not see us," and Thelma unwound the towel
from her head and took off her apron.
"Well, surely the white-armed Gudrun is not going across the campus with
a black face," objected Billie. "Why, both of you look like negro
minstrels----"
"And you!" interrupted Jo. "You should see yourself before you talk
about kettles. You'd have not a leg to stand on and not a handle to your
name. I told you to tie up your head. I believe nothing short of a
shampoo and a Turkish bath will get the grime off you."
"Let's hide behind the sofa and after Molly goes on the porch with the
baby, we can sneak up to the bath room," suggested Thelma. The girls
then crouched on the floor behind a sofa that stood near the poet's
corner.
In a minute Molly came down the stairs, little Mildred in her arms and
on her face a contented and rested expression. She stood in the doorway
of the living room and exclaimed with delight over its polished
cleanliness.
"Oh, Katy, how splendid it is! Did you do it all by yourself and in such
a short time? I don't see how you managed it. Why, you have even dusted
the books. That is almost a day's work in itself. I was dreading it
so,--it is such a back breaking job."
Jo rubbed her aching back, with a grim smile, and nudged Billie.
"And you have kept yourself so clean, too!" Molly began to feel that she
had the prize servant of the east: one who could clean such an Augean
Stable as that room had looked, dust all the books, wash the windows and
wipe down walls, beat rugs, polish picture glass, etc., etc., and still
be neat and tidy. "Why, I would have been black all over if I had done
such a great work."
Katy stood by, quite delighted with the undeserved praise. The young
ladies had told her not to tell and far be it from her to refuse to
accept the unaccustomed praise from any one. She had never been very apt
in any work she had undertaken and no one had ever taken any great pains
to teach her, and now if this pretty lady wanted to praise her, why she
was more than willing. She felt in her pocket for her fifty cent piece,
that still seemed a great joke to her. The sweet taste of the praise did
one great thing in her kindly Irish soul: it was so pleasant, she
determined to have more of it, and through her slow intelligence there
filtered the fact that to get more praise, she must deserve more praise,
and to deserve it she must work for it. She beat a hasty retreat to the
dining room and actually cleared off the table, where the master had
eaten his solitary breakfast, in a full run. She broke no dishes that
morning, either, which was a great step forward.
Molly could not tear herself away from the wonder room. She moved
around, busying herself changing ornaments a bit and placing chairs at
a slightly different angle, doing those little things that make a room
partake of a certain personality.
"Here, baby, lie on the sofa, honey. Muddy is going to give you a little
ride. Do you know, darling, that Katy knows how to put things in place
just like a lady? She must have an artistic soul. Look how she has
arranged the mantel-piece! Servants usually make things look so stiff.
Actually there is nothing for me to do in the room, she has done it so
beautifully."
Billy here dug an elbow into Jo's lame back that almost made her squeal,
but she held on to her emotions and in turn gave her chum a fourth
degree pinch.
"Now, Muddy is going to ride her baby--this sofa must go closer to the
wall," and Molly put Mildred on the sofa and gave it a vigorous push.
The law of impenetrability, that two things cannot be in the same place
at the same time, prevented the baby from having much of a ride. Molly
gave a harder push. "I must be very feeble if I can't budge this sofa."
Then came a smothered groan from the huddled girls, and one by one they
emerged from their corner, clutching their bundles of dust rags and
aprons and exposing to Molly's amazed eyes three of the very blackest,
dirtiest faces that ever Wellington had boasted in her senior class.
They sat on the floor and laughed and giggled, and Molly sat down beside
them and would have felt like a college girl again herself if it had not
been for little Mildred, who took all the laughter as an entertainment,
got up for her express amusement, and gurgled accordingly.
"Now you must all stay to luncheon!" cried the hospitable Molly.
"Oh, indeed we mustn't," said Billie, who never could quite get used to
Molly's wholesale hospitality, having been brought up in the lap of
luxury but with no privileges of inviting persons off hand to meals.
"But you must. I won't do a thing for you but just put on more plates.
I was going to have the very simplest meal and I'll still have it."
The girls stayed, after giving themselves a vigorous scrubbing, and
Molly's luncheon was ready when Professor Green arrived. The cold leg of
lamb played a noble part at the impromptu party, flanked by a lettuce
salad that Billie insisted upon dressing, reminding Molly more than ever
of her darling Judy. A barrel of preserves had just arrived, some that
Molly and Kizzie had put up during the summer. On opening it, a jar of
blackberry jam, being on top, was chosen to grace the occasion. Molly
made some of the tiny biscuit that her husband loved and that seemed
such a joke to Katy. When she came in bearing a plate of hot ones, she
spread her mouth in a grin so broad that Professor Green declared she
could easily have disposed of six at one mouthful.
"I always call them Gulliver biscuit," he said, helping himself to three
at a time, "because in the old Gulliver's Travels I used to read when I
was a kid there was a picture of Gulliver being fed by the Lilliputians.
He was represented by a great head, and the Lilliputians were climbing
up his face by ladders and pouring down his throat barrels of little
biscuit that were just about the size of these."
They had a merry time at that meal. Molly told her husband why his prize
pupils had cut his lectures and all others that morning, and how she had
almost passed a steam roller over them in form of the library sofa.
"We were terribly afraid we would offend her," explained Thelma, "but
she was dear to us."
"Offend me! Why, I can't think of anything in all my life that has ever
happened to me that has touched me more. I don't see how you ever
thought of doing anything so nice."
"'Twas Billie," from Thelma.
"Thelma and Jo did all the dirty work," declared Billie.
"Dirty work, indeed! You looked as though you had used yourself to wipe
down the walls with," laughed Jo.
"Well, anyhow, when that snippy Miss Fern comes again, giving her
perfunctory pokes at the baby and looking at the cobwebs until nobody
can help seeing them, I bet she won't find anything to turn up her nose
at. I'd like to use her to clean the walls with. If there is anything I
hate it is any one who is the pink of perfection in her own eyes. We
were having such a cozy time until she lit on us with her dove-colored
effects. Who cared whether there were cobwebs or not?"
"Did Miss Fern speak of the cobwebs?" asked Edwin, while the others sat
around in frozen horror, remembering that she was his cousin and that he
was evidently very fond of her.
"Oh, no, she didn't open her lips; she just pursed them up and stared
at the corner. Of course, she had already given her dig about Molly's
surely not having time to write and attend to her house, too; and then
when she fixed her eyes on that Irishman's curtain we all knew what she
was thinking, and that she wanted us to know it, just as well as though
she had spoken it and then written it and then had it put on the
minutes.... What's the matter?... Oh, Heavens! What have I done?... Oh,
Professor Green! She is your cousin! Please, please forgive me," and
Billie clasped her hands in entreaty.
"Oh, don't mind me," said the professor with a twinkle. "Go as far as
you like. If the ladies have such open minds that he who runs may read,
and they think disagreeable things about my wife, why, they deserve to
be used for house cleaning purposes, have the floor wiped up with them
and what not."
The luncheon broke up in a laugh and evidently there were no hard
feelings on the part of the host for the criticism of Miss Fern that
had so ingenuously fallen from the lips of the irrepressible Billie.
"Billie! What a break!" screamed Jo, when they got outside after Molly
had given them all an extra hug for the undying proof of friendship they
had given her.
"Break, indeed! I never forgot for an instant that Epi Anti was a near
cousin to that maidenhair fern. I just thought I'd let him know how
she had acted and how uncomfortable she had made our Molly feel. I
knew Molly would never let him know, and I could do it and make out it
was a break."
"Well, if you aren't like Bret Harte's heathen Chinee, I never saw one,"
laughed Thelma.
"'Which I wish to remark,
And my language is plain,
That for ways that are dark
And for tricks that are vain,
The heathen Chinee is peculiar.'"
"All the same, I bet old Epi Anti doesn't tell Molly any more what a
sweet thing Alice Fern is."
"How do you know he did?"
"Insight into human nature," and Billie made a saucy moue.
"Gee, my back aches!" said Jo. "I think I'll do housework often. It
certainly does reach muscles we don't know about. But didn't it pay just
to see dear old Molly's face when we rolled out from behind the sofa?"
And all of them agreed it had.
"Edwin," said Molly, after the girls had gone, "I think I'll send for
Kizzie to come help me. I may put her in the kitchen and take Katy for a
nurse."
"Good! I am certainly glad you have come to that decision. What changed
you?"
"Well, it seems to me that when it comes to the pass that my college
girls feel so sorry for me they cut such lectures as yours to give the
whole morning to cleaning up for me I must do something, and the only
thing I can think of doing is to send for Kizzie."
"Can you mix the black and white without coming to grief?"
"Remember, Katy is more green than white, and she is so good-natured,
she could get along with anything."
"I can't tell you how relieved I am, honey. I wanted you to do what
pleased you, but I could not see how I was coming in on this. I felt
very lonesome, and while I wasn't jealous of the baby, I was certainly
envious of her. If Kizzie comes, you can be with me more and nurse me
some."
"Yes, dearie, I missed it, too, but somehow I couldn't get through. If
Katy had been more competent----"
"But she wasn't and isn't."
"No, she certainly isn't, but she adores Mildred already and Mildred
actually cries for her. I believe she would make a fine nurse. If only
she doesn't feel called upon to scrub the baby."
Edwin laughed and, settling himself for a pleasant smoke, opened the
morning paper, which neither he nor Molly had found time to read.
"Oh, what a shame!" he exclaimed. "The Germans dropping bombs on Paris!
Infamous!"
"Paris! How can they? Oh, Edwin, Judy and Kent both there!"