AN INVITATION AND AN APOLOGY.
Millicent Porter invited Molly to go to New York with her for the
holidays and visit in the grand Porter mansion. Molly understood it was
a palace filled with tapestries and fine pictures. Millicent had
mentioned all those things casually. They would go to the theaters and
the opera and ride about in motor cars. But Molly was glad she had kept
her head and declined.
"I have some work to do, Millicent," she said. "I appreciate your
invitation, but I can't accept it."
"You must," exclaimed Millicent, too accustomed to having her own way to
take no for an answer. "Is it clothes?" she added. Somehow, she gave the
impression of not being used to wealth.
Molly hardly felt intimate enough with her to go into the subject of
her own poverty and answered briefly:
"Not entirely."
Millicent was not famous for generosity and the basket of red roses sent
to Molly on the night of the junior play had been her one outburst; but
she was determined to have Molly go home with her at any cost.
"Because," she continued, "if it's a question of clothes, I can arrange
that perfectly. My dresses will fit you if they are lengthened
and--well, there'll be plenty of clothes. Don't bother about that. Your
yellow dress is good enough for anything----"
"I should say it was," thought Molly, rather indignantly. "Good enough
for the likes of you or anybody else."
"I'll lend you my mink coat and turban," went on this munificent young
person, "and I have a big black velvet hat that would look awfully well
on you. Now, you must come, please. I want you to see my studio at the
top of the house. To tell you the truth, I'm rather lonesome in New
York. I don't know any girls well, because I've never stayed at one
school long enough to make friends."
"What's the reason of that?" asked Molly.
"Oh, I always get tired or something," answered the other carelessly.
"But say you'll come, do, please," she went on pathetically. Then,
unable to stifle her grand airs, she said: "I doubt if you have such
fine houses as ours in the south."
"Oh, no," answered Molly, quickly, "I doubt if we have. Our homes are
very old and simple. The only works of art are family portraits. We have
no tapestry or statuary. The house I was born in," she went on
half-smiling to herself, "was built by my great-grandfather. Most of the
furniture came down from him, too. Some of it's quite decrepit now, but
we keep it polished up. My earliest recollection is rubbing the
mahogany. You would doubtless think our house very empty and plain. We
have some old crimson damask curtains in the parlor, but the rest of the
curtains are made of ten-cent dimity. There is no furnace. We depend on
coal fires in the bedrooms and wood fires in the other rooms and we
nearly freeze if there's a cold winter. We have no plumbing. Every
member of the family has his own tub and there are six extra ones for
company. A little colored boy named Sam brings us hot water every
morning for our baths. He gets it from a big boiler attached to the
kitchen stove, and when we are done bathing he has to carry it all down
again. Rather a nuisance, isn't it? But Sam doesn't mind. Oh, I daresay
you'd think our house was a kind of a hovel." Molly paused and looked at
Millicent strangely. There was a hidden fire in her deep blue eyes. "As
for me," she said, "no palace in all New York or anywhere else could be
as beautiful to me as my home."
Millicent looked uncomfortable.
"Be it ever so homely, there's no face like one's own," cried Judy, who
at that moment had come into the room and caught Molly's last words.
"What's all this talk about home?"
"I was just telling Millicent about the old-fashioned, whitewashed
brick palace wherein I was born," answered Molly.
"I'm sorry you won't accept my invitation," said Millicent, taking no
notice of Judy whatever. "Perhaps, after you think about it awhile
you'll change your mind." Her manner was heavy and patronizing, and
implied without words:
"After you have had time to consider the honor I am paying you and the
advantages of visiting in my splendid home, you cannot fail to accept."
"You are very kind, Millicent, but I shall not reconsider it," announced
Molly coldly. "I have made up my mind to spend Christmas right here in
the Quadrangle. I hope you'll have a beautiful time. Good-bye." They
shook hands formally.
"I'll try to see the best in her," she thought, "but I'd rather not see
it at close hand. She grates on me."
Judy waved an open letter with a dramatic gesture.
"Oh, Molly, dearest, I'm glad you didn't accept. It's my own selfish
pleasure that makes me glad, but I'm going to spend Christmas right here
in the Quadrangle, too."
Molly looked at her friend's eager, excited face in surprise.
"Do you mean your mother and father are coming here?"
"No, no. They're on the Pacific Coast, you know, and will be detained
until spring. It's too far for me to take the trip just for the few days
I could spend with them, so I'm going to stay here."
A year ago Judy would have been in the depths of despair over a
separation from her beloved parents at this holiday time. But whether
she had gained poise by her recent sufferings or whether spending
Christmas with her friend in the big empty Quadrangle appealed to her
romantic nature, it would be difficult to tell. Through all the
complexities of her nature her devotion to Molly was interwoven like a
silver thread, and the shame and remorse she still felt in looking back
on that unhappy evening when she had denounced her friend only seemed
to draw the two girls more closely together.
Molly gave her a joyous hug.
"Oh, Judy, I am so happy. I never dreamed of such a blessing as this.
Even Otoyo is going away this year and hardly half a dozen girls are
left in the Quadrangle. I am truly glad I had the courage to decline
Millicent's invitation. It was only for one instant I was tempted to go,
but she ruined it by a patronizing speech."
"What a singular little creature she is," observed Judy. "She has no
charm, if she can beat on silver; and she's so awfully conscious of her
wealth. I don't know how I could ever have admired her. I suppose I was
lured in the beginning by her fine clothes and her grand way of
talking."
"She is very talented," Molly continued, "but, as you say, she lacks
charm. Perhaps she would have been different if she had been poor and
obliged to turn her gifts to some use. After all, I think we are happier
than rich girls. We are not afraid to be ourselves. We wear old clothes
and we have an object in view when we work, because we want to earn
money."
"Earn money," repeated Judy. "I only wish I could give papa the surprise
of his life by earning a copper cent."
Molly was silent. Her own earning capacity had not been great that
winter. She had kept herself in pin money by tutoring, but lately she
had made an alarming discovery. When she had first started to college,
teaching had been the ultimate goal of her ambitions. She intended to be
a teacher in a private school and perhaps later have a school of her
own, as Nance wished to do.
Now, as her horizon broadened and her tastes and perceptions began
taking form and shape, she found herself drifting farther and farther
away from her early ambition. Something was waking up in her mind that
had been asleep. It was like a voice crying to be heard, still immensely
far away and inarticulate, but growing clearer and more insistent all
the time.
It made her uneasy and unsettled. She yearned to express herself, but
the power had not yet arrived.
The two girls went down to the village that afternoon to see the last
trainload of students pull out of Wellington station, and later to make
some purchases at the general store. It was Christmas Eve and the
streets were filled with shoppers from the country around Wellington.
Molly was trying to recall the words of a poem she had heard ages back,
the rhythm of which was beating in her head, and Judy was endeavoring to
explain to herself why she felt neither homesick nor blue on this the
first Christmas ever spent away from her parents.
They paused to look in at the window of a florist who did a thriving
business in Wellington. A motor car was waiting in front of the shop.
"We must have some Christmas decorations, too," exclaimed Judy about to
enter, when the way was blocked by a crowd of people coming out. "What
pretty girls!" continued Judy in a whisper, looking admiringly at two
young women who came first.
The prettiest one, who had red hair not unlike Molly's and brown eyes,
called over her shoulder:
"Edwin, I shan't save you a seat beside me unless you're there to claim
it."
"I'll be there, Alice, never fear," answered Professor Green, hurrying
after her with an armload of holly and cedar garlands.
Molly stood rooted to the spot while the shoppers crowded into the car.
"If I could only tell him how sorry I am for that cruel speech," she
thought.
With a sudden determination, she rushed toward the car, calling:
"Professor!"
The girl named Alice looked around quickly, but apparently she did not
choose to see Molly, and as the car moved off she began laughing and
talking in a very sprightly and vivacious manner.
Molly sighed. The longer an apology is delayed the more trivial and
insignificant it becomes.
"He probably has forgotten all about it," she thought. "He seems happy
enough with Alice, whoever she is. Perhaps what I said hurt me more
than it did him, but, oh, I do wish I had seen him before he went away.
It would have been different then, I'm sure."
She followed Judy into the flower store. Mrs. McLean was there with
Andy.
"Why, here are two lassies left over!" cried the good woman.
"What luck, mother!" said Andy. "Now we'll have some fun. We'll give a
dinner and a dance, and Larry and Dodo will come over. We will, won't
we, mother?"
"What a coaxer you are, Andy. You're still a lad of ten and not
nineteen, I'm sure."
"Don't you let him persuade you to give parties when you're not of a
mind to do it, Mrs. McLean," put in Judy.
"I wouldn't miss the chance, my dear. I like it as much as he does.
We'll have it to-morrow night and you'll come prepared to be as merry as
can be and cheer up the doctor. He has been so busy of late he has
forgotten how to enjoy himself."
"It doesn't look as if we were going to spend such a quiet Christmas
after all, Judy," laughed Molly, when Mrs. McLean and Andy had gone.
Judy was engaged in selecting all the most branching and leafy boughs of
holly she could find, while the florist looked on uneasily.
That afternoon they spent an hour beautifying their yellow sitting room.
And all the time Molly's mind was harking back to Christmas a year ago,
when the Greens had busied themselves preparing such a delightful party
for Otoyo and her.
"And I said he was not a loyal friend," she said to herself. "Oh, if I
could only unsay those words!"
She sat down at her desk and seized a pen.
"What are you going to do?" asked an inner voice.
"I am going to write a note and tell him I'm sorry, and then I'm going
over to the cloisters and slip it under his door. It will ease my mind,
even if he doesn't get the note until he comes back. He'll know then
that I couldn't go to sleep Christmas Eve until I had apologized."
The note finished, she carefully addressed and sealed it. Judy was in
her own room composing a joint letter to her mother and father, and did
not see Molly when she slipped out of the room and hurried downstairs.
Outside, the pale winter twilight still lingered and the sky was piled
high with fleecy white clouds.
"It's going to snow," thought Molly, as she hurried along the arcade and
opened the little oak door leading into the cloisters.