“Oh, I’ll wear some of Polly’s shoes and stuff out the toes. I bet I’ll walk like Charlie Chaplin, but when one is flying, it doesn’t make much difference about feet.”
Nothing is going to stop her. She is to start to Paris to-morrow, and I will go, too. I know all of you think I should stay here in G – until I can get into communication with Bobby, but Molly Brown, I can’t do it. When history is being made, I simply can’t stand aside and see it. I’ve got to get in it by hook or crook.
Don’t be scared – I am not going to fly! I wish I could, but I promised Kent Brown I would never fly with any man but him, and while it was done in jest, in a way I still feel that a promise must be kept. I wish I were not made that way. I’d like to dress up like Jo Bill Perkins and pass as a man, and I could do it quite as well as Jo, in spite of her having practiced being a boy all her life, but I can’t help thinking what Bobby has always said to me: “Just remember you are a lady and you can’t go far wrong.” Somehow, I am afraid if I cut off my hair and discarded skirts, I might forget I am a lady. It is an awful nuisance being one, anyhow.
I don’t know just what I am going to do, but I certainly can’t cross the Atlantic, with Bobby and poor little Mamma somewhere in Germany, maybe locked up in dungeons or something. I know it won’t help them any for me to be in France, but at least I will be nearer to them geographically.
My letter of credit on the Paris bankers will put me on easy street financially, so as far as money is concerned, Bobby will know I am all right. I can’t think the war will last very long. Surely all the neutral countries will just step in and stop it. The French are looking to United States. It is very amusing to hear the old peasants talk about Lafayette. They seem to think tit for tat: if they helped us out more than a century ago, we will have to help them out now.
I can’t tell what I think just yet. Everything is in too much of a turmoil. I wish I knew what Bobby thinks. He is always so sane in his political opinions. I get more and more uneasy about them, Bobby and Mamma. Such terrible tales of the Germans are coming to us. I don’t believe them, at least not all of them. How could a kindly, rather bovine race suddenly turn into raging tigers? Why should any one want to do anything to Bobby? I comfort myself with that thought and then I remember how hot-headed and impulsive he is, inherited directly from me, his daughter, and I begin to tremble.
Jo and I are settling up our affairs here. Madame Gaston is to take charge of our few belongings. I have a hunch it will be best to lighten our luggage all we can. Jo is not going to turn into a man until we get to Paris. She is too funny in her envy of old Mère Gaspard because of her big moustache. You know how many of the French peasant women have quite mannish beards and moustaches. Mother Gaspard has the largest and most formidable one I have ever seen, although she is a most motherly old soul, not a bit fatherly.
I will write from Paris again. I know Kent is in a state of grouch with himself for sailing when he did. I believe he feels as I do about things happening. I don’t want houses to burn down, but if they do burn, I want to see the fire; I don’t want dogs to fight, but if there is a dog fight going on, I am certainly going to stand on my tiptoes and look over the crowd and see them tear each other up; I certainly don’t want the Nations to go to war, but if they will do it, I am going to have experiences.
Please give my best love to all the family and a thoroughly sterilized kiss to that marvelous infant. I verily believe if it had not been for Kent’s overweening desire to behold that baby, he would have waited over for another steamer and in that way found himself in the thick of the fight. I am glad he went, however. If Polly Perkins developed a chin and rushed off, what might Kent have done with an overdevelopment of chin already there?
CHAPTER II.
THE ORCHARD HOME
“R. F. D., late as usual,” laughed Molly, as Mr. Bud Woodsmall’s very ramshackle Ford runabout came careening through the lane and up the hill to the yard gate. “I fancy he has had to stop and talk war at every mail box on his route.”
“I think I’ll go meet him,” said Professor Edwin Green, rather reluctantly arising from the chaise longue that seemed to have been built to fit his lack of curves, he declared. He had been sitting on the porch of the bungalow, eyes half closed to shut out everything from his vision but the picture of Molly holding the sleeping baby in her arms.
“You know you want to gossip with him – now ’fess up!”
“Well, I do like to hear his views of the situation in Europe. They are original, at least. He says Yankee capitalists are the cause of it all. Don’t you want me to put Mildred down? She has been asleep for half an hour,” and the young husband and father stood for a moment and looked down on his treasures with what Judy Kean always called his faithful-collie-dog eyes.
“I know I oughtn’t to hold her while she is asleep, but she seems so wonderful I can’t bear to let her go. I think she is growing more like you, Edwin.”
“Like me! Nonsense! That would be a sad thing to have wished on the poor innocent when there are so many handsome folks in the Carmichael and Brown family from whom she could inherit real beauty.”
“But Edwin, you are handsome, I think. You are so noble looking.”
“All right, honey, have it your own way,” and he stooped and kissed her. “I will allow that the baby has inherited my bald head if you like – Hi there!” he called to Mr. Woodsmall, who was preparing to unlock the mail box, “I’ll come get it,” and he sprinted down the walk where the garrulous postman held him enthralled for a good fifteen minutes. A blue envelope with a foreign postmark told him there was a letter from Julia Kean that would be eagerly welcomed by Molly, but there was no stopping the flow of R. F. D.’s eloquence. The causes of the war being thoroughly threshed out, he finally took his reluctant departure.
“A letter from Judy Kean! Now you will have to put the baby down!”
So little Mildred was tenderly placed in her basket on the porch and Molly opened the voluminous epistle from the beloved Judy.
“Oh, Edwin, she is not coming home! I was afraid she would want to do something Judyesque. Only listen!” and Molly read the Giverny letter to her husband.
“What do you think Kent will say to this? I know he is very uneasy about her anyhow since the war broke out, and now – well, I’m glad I’m not in his shoes. She is not very considerate of him, I must say.”
“Oh, you men folks!” laughed Molly. “I can’t see how she could leave France until she knows something about her mother and father, and after all, I don’t believe Kent and Judy are engaged.”
“Not engaged! What do you think Kent has been doing this whole year in Paris if he wasn’t getting engaged?”
“Studying Architecture at the Beaux Arts. Sometimes persons can know one another a long time and be together a lot and not get engaged,” she teased. It was a very well-known fact that Professor Edwin Green had been in love with Molly Brown for at least five years, and maybe longer, before he put the all important question.
“Yes, I know, but then – ”
“Then what? My brother Kent is certainly not able to support a wife yet, and maybe they are opposed to long engagements.”
“Well, all the same I am sorry for Kent. It was bad enough when you went abroad and the ocean was between us and I knew you were being well taken care of by your dear mother, – but just suppose it had been war time and you had been alone! The news from France is very grave. It looks as though the Germans would eat Christmas dinner in Paris as they boast they will.”
“Oh, Edwin, no!” and Molly turned pale.
“Well, look at these head lines in to-day’s paper. It looks very ominous. When did you say you were expecting Kent home?”
“By to-morrow at latest. He wrote Mother he was to stay some time in New York to try to land a job that looked very promising.”
“Here