AN INSPIRATION.
"This is like having a bedroom _salon_," exclaimed Molly with a
hospitable smile to some dozen guests who adorned the divans and easy
chairs, the floor and window sills of her room.
Surely there was nothing Molly liked better than to entertain, and when
she had callers, she always entertained them with refreshments of some
kind. Often it had to be crackers and sweet chocolate, and she had even
been reduced to tea. But usually her family kept her supplied with good
things and her larder was generally well stocked.
She lay in bed, propped up with pillows, and scattered about the bed
were text-books and papers.
"You've been studying again, you naughty child," exclaimed Mary Stewart,
shaking her finger. "Didn't Dr. McLean tell you to go easy for the next
week?"
"Go easy, indeed," laughed Molly. "You might as well tell a trapeze
actor to do the giant-swing and hold on tight at the same time. But it's
worth losing a few days to find out what loving friends I have. Your
pink roses are the loveliest of all," she added, squeezing her friend's
hand.
"Tell us exactly who sent you each bunch?" demanded Jessie, passing
a box of ginger-snaps, while Judy performed miracles with a tea ball,
a small kettle and a varied assortment of cups and saucers. "I have
a right to ask you," continued Jessica, "because you asked the same
question of me last Tuesday when two boxes came."
"No suitor sent me any of these, Mistress Jessica," answered Molly,
"because I haven't any. Miss Stewart sent the pink ones, and the
President of the senior class sent the red ones. Judy brought me the
double violets and Nance the lilies of the valley, bless them both, and
another senior the pot of pansies. The seniors have certainly been
sweet and lovely."
"There's one you haven't accounted for," interrupted Jessie.
"The violets?" asked Molly, blushing slightly.
"Oh, ho!" cried Jessie in her high, musical voice, "trying to crawl,
were you? You can't deceive old Grandmamma Sharp-eyes. Honor bright,
who sent the violets?"
"To tell you the truth, I don't know. I suspected Frances Andrews, but
when I thanked her for them, she looked horribly embarrassed and said
she hadn't sent them. I was afraid she would go down and get some after
my break, but thank goodness, she had the good taste not to."
"You mean to say they were anonymous?" demanded Jessie.
"I mean to say that thing, but I suppose some of the seniors who
preferred to remain unknown sent them."
"It's just possible," put in Mary, and the subject was dropped.
"Let's talk about the only thing worth talking about just now," broke
in Judy. "The Flopping of Flora; or, Who Cut the Wires?"
"Why talk about it?" said Molly. "You could never reach any conclusion,
and guessing doesn't help."
"Oh, just as a matter of interest," replied Judy. "For instance, if we
were detectives and put on the case, how would we go about finding the
criminal?"
"I should look for a silly mischief-maker," said Mary Stewart. "Some
foolish girl who wanted to do a clever thing. Freshmen at boys' colleges
are often like that."
"You don't think it was a freshman, do you, Miss Stewart?" cried Mabel
Hinton, turning her round spectacles on Mary like a large, serious owl.
"Oh, no, indeed. I was only joking. I haven't the remotest notion who it
is."
"If I were a detective on the case," said Mabel Hinton, "I should look
for a junior who was jealous of the seniors. Some one who had a grudge,
perhaps."
"If I were a detective," announced Margaret Wakefield, in her most
judicial manner, "I should look for some one who had a grudge against
Molly."
"Of course; I never thought of that. It did happen just as Molly was
about to give the encore, didn't it?"
"It did," answered Margaret.
The girls had all stopped chattering in duets and trios to listen.
"Has any one in the world the heart to have a grudge against you, you
sweet child?" exclaimed Mary Stewart, placing her rather large, strong
hand over Molly's.
The young freshman looked uncomfortable.
"I hope not," she said, smiling faintly. "I never meant to give offence
to any one."
Pretty soon the company dispersed and Molly was left alone with her two
best friends.
"Judy," she said, "will you please settle down to work this instant? You
know you have to write your theme and get it in by to-morrow noon, and
you haven't touched it so far."
Nance was already deep in her English. Molly turned her face to the wall
and sighed.
"I can't do it," she whispered to herself; "I simply cannot do it." But
what she referred to only she herself knew.
In the meantime Judy chewed the end of her pencil and looked absently at
her friend's back. Presently she gave the pad on her lap an impatient
toss in one direction and the pencil in another, and flung herself on
the foot of Molly's couch.
"Don't scold me, Molly. I never compose, except under inspiration, and
inspiration doesn't seem to be on very good terms with me just now. She
hasn't visited me in an age."
"Nonsense! You know perfectly well you can write that theme if you set
your mind to it, Judy Kean. You are just too lazy. You haven't even
chosen a subject, I'll wager anything."
"No," said Judy sadly.
"Why don't you write a short story? You have plenty of material with all
your travel----"
"I know what I'll write," Judy interrupted her excitedly, "The Motives
of Crime."
"How absurd," objected Molly. "Besides, don't you think that's a little
personal just now, when the whole school is talking about the
wire-cutter?"
"Not at all. We are all trying to run down the criminal, anyhow. I shall
take the five great motives which lead to crime: anger, jealousy,
hatred, envy and greed. It will make an interesting discourse. You'll
see if it doesn't."
"The idea of your writing on such a subject," laughed Molly. "You're not
a criminal lawyer or a prosecuting attorney."
"I admit it," answered Judy, "and I suppose Lawyer Margaret Wakefield
ought to be the one to handle the subject. But, nevertheless, I am
fired with inspiration, and I intend to write it myself. I shall not see
you again until the deed is done, if it takes all night. By the way,
lend me some coffee, will you? I'm all out, and I always make some on
the samovar for keeping-awake purposes when I'm going to work at night."
"I don't know what I'm going to do with you, Judy," sighed Molly, as the
incorrigible girl sailed out of the room, a jar of coffee under one arm
and her writing pad under the other.
At first she wrote intermittently, rumpling up her hair with both hands
and chewing her pencil savagely; but gradually her thoughts took form
and the pencil moved steadily along, almost like "spirit-writing" it
seemed to her, until the essay was done. It was half-past three o'clock
and rain and hail beat a dismal tattoo on her window pane. She had not
even noticed the storm, having hung a bed quilt over her window and
tacked a dressing gown across the transom to conceal the light of the
student's lamp from the watchful matron. Putting out her light and
removing all signs of disobedience, she now cheerfully went to bed.
"Motives for crime," she chuckled to herself. "I suppose I'm committing
a small crime for disobeying the ten-o'clock rule, and my motive is to
hand in a theme on time to-morrow."
The next morning when Judy read over her night's work, she enjoyed it
very much. "It's really quite interesting," she said to herself. "I
really don't see how I ever did it."
She delivered the essay at Miss Pomeroy's office and felt vastly proud
when she laid it on the table near the desk. Her own cleverness told her
that she had done a good thing.
"I don't believe Wordsworth ever enjoyed his own works more than I do
mine," she observed, as she strolled across the campus. "And because
I've been _bon enfant_, I shall now take a rest and go forth in search
of amusement." She turned her face toward the village, where a kind of
Oriental bazaar was being held by some Syrians. It would be fun, she
thought, to look over their bangles and slippers and bead necklaces.
In the meantime, Miss Pomeroy was engaged in reading over Judy's theme,
which, having been handed in last, had come to her notice first. Such is
the luck of the procrastinator.
She smiled when she saw the title, but the theme interested her greatly,
and presently she tucked it into her long reticule, familiar to every
Wellington girl, and hastened over to the President's house.
"Emma," she said (the two women were old college mates, and were Emma
and Louise in private), "I think this might interest you. It's a theme
by one of my freshman girls. A strange subject for a girl of seventeen,
but she's quite a remarkable person, if she would only apply herself.
Somehow, it seems, whether consciously or unconsciously, to bear on what
has been occupying us all so much since last Friday."
The President put on her glasses and began to read Judy's theme. Every
now and then she gave a low, amused chuckle.
"The child writes like Marie Corelli," she exclaimed, laughing. "And yet
it is clever and it does suggest----" she paused and frowned. "I wonder
if she could and doesn't dare tell?" she added slowly.
"I wonder," echoed Miss Pomeroy.
"Is she one of the Queen's Cottage girls? They appear to be rather a
remarkable lot this year."
"Some of them are very bright," said Miss Pomeroy.
"Louise," said the President suddenly, "Frances Andrews is one of the
girls at that house, is she not?"
"Yes," nodded the other, with a queer look on her face.
"She's clever," said the President. "She's deep, Emma. It is impossible
to make any definite statement about her. One must go very slowly in
these things. But after what happened last year, you know----"
She paused. Even with her most intimate friend she disliked to discuss
certain secrets of the institution openly.
"Yes," said Miss Pomeroy, "she is either very deep or entirely
innocent."
"Some one is guilty," sighed the President. "I do wish I knew who it
was."
Judy's theme not only received especial mention by Miss Pomeroy, but it
was read aloud to the entire class and was later published in the
college paper, _The Commune_, to Judy's everlasting joy and glory. She
was congratulated about it on all sides and her heart was swollen with
pride.
"I think I'll take to writing in dead earnest," she said to Molly,
"because I have the happy faculty of writing on subjects I don't know
anything about, and no one knows the difference."
"I wish you'd take to doing anything in dead earnest," Molly replied,
giving her friend a little impatient shake.