The girls looked at one another meaningly.
“I want all of you to like my friend,” continued Molly, as though she could divine their thoughts. “She has had a hard time and she needs the companionship of young people more than anyone I know.”
Molly then told them of Nance’s devotion to her mother and father, of her thwarted ambition, of her unselfishness and cleverness.
“It seems strange for her not to wear mourning for her mother,” said Lilian.
“Perhaps it does, but when you think of it, what you wear has nothing to do with your feelings. It is in a way part of Nance’s unselfishness that she did not put on mourning. Her father disliked it, her mother could not abide it, and as she said, it meant a new outfit which she could ill afford. It is a great deal easier just to give up to grief and exude gloom than it is to be cheerful and radiate light and happiness.”
Molly was in a measure irritated by Lilian’s criticism of her beloved Nance, but Lilian was a person who always spoke her mind no matter what was involved, and she had a certain sturdiness and honesty of opinion that disarmed one.
“Well, that’s all right,” she answered bluntly, “but while she is being so unselfish about her clothes, why doesn’t she spunk up a bit about the ‘Would-be Authors?’”
“What about them?”
“Why, postponing the meeting because she is in such deep grief.”
“That wasn’t Nance. I am responsible for that foolishness. She only found out about it to-day and declares she will go back to Vermont if I dare make a single change in my way of living. I want all of you to get messages to the club to be sure and come this evening.”
“Bully for Nance!” cried Billie McKym.
Nance came into the room just as Billie was cheering her.
“I’m mighty glad it’s bully for me, if I’m the Nance. But why ‘Bully for Nance’?”
“Just because you are here with Mrs. Green and can come to our literary club this evening,” said Billie with a straight face.
“But I am no scribbler,” declared Nance.
“But you are a wonderful critic,” said Molly. “Among so many scribblers it is well to have one sane person willing to compose the audience. It is my turn to read to-night and I want your criticism.”
“If I can come in that capacity, I am more than willing,” smiled Nance as she settled herself to her knitting.
“I remember many times you saved me from making a bombastic goose of myself on my college themes,” laughed Molly. “What I flattered myself was pathos, under your cool judgment turned out often to be bathos.”
Molly leaned over and gave her friend an affectionate pat. At this show of love, Mary Neil jumped up so suddenly that she upset little Mildred, who was sitting on the sofa by her, and without saying a word rushed from the room.
“What on earth!” exclaimed Molly.
“The suddenness of Mary, – that’s all,” declared Billie.
“Good title for a story!” said Lilian, getting out a note-book.
“Oh, you scribblers!” laughed Nance.
Little Mildred was picked up and comforted and in a short while the visitors took their departure.
“Molly, do you know what was the matter with that interesting looking red-headed girl?” asked Nance as they settled to the delights of a twilight chat, while Nance busily plied her knitting needles on the long drab scarf that seemed to grow under her agile fingers like magic.
“I have no idea.”
“She was jealous of me. I noticed how she looked at me when I came in and she never said a single word while all of us were chatting. Then the moment you gave me a little pat, she jumped up as though she had received an electric shock and fled.”
“Absurd! I hate to think it of Mary.”
“It’s true all the same. Didn’t you know she was crazy about you?”
“No, and I don’t want to know it. A girl had better be beau-crazy than have these silly cases with other girls. I am going to put a stop to it in some way.”
“How, may I ask?”
“I might do like Peg Woffington and put my hair up in curl papers and appear at my very worst.”
“Well, dearie, your worst might be so much better than some person’s best that that might not work. But don’t think I’ve got a case on you.”
“Never! We were foolish enough college girls but we never were that foolish. I can’t remember anyone in our crowd having these silly mashes. Can you?”
“Unless it was the affair Judy Kean had with Adele Windsor. Do you remember when poor Judy turned up with her hair dyed a blue black?”
“Do I?” and the friends went off into peals of laughter just as Mrs. McLean ushered herself into the firelit room.
“The door was open so I came right in,” announced that dear woman. She caught Nance’s hands in a strong grasp and drew the girl towards her. “I am glad to see you, my dear,” she said simply. Her well-remembered Scotch accent fell pleasingly on Nance’s ear.
“The violets were lovely. I thank you so much,” faltered Nance.
Molly wondered at the embarrassment of her friend. She had longed to talk to Nance about Andy McLean but did not know how to begin. She shrank from prying into her guest’s affairs, but the eternal feminine in her was on the alert for the romance she had no doubt was there.
“And now I must tell you all about Andy,” said his fond mother. “I know you want to hear about him, – eh?”
“Indeed we do,” put in Molly quickly, while Nance tried to go on with her knitting, but I am afraid dropped more stitches than she picked up.
“He has resigned from the hospital staff in New York where he was doing so splendidly and is to go to France as an ambulance surgeon.”
“Oh!” came involuntarily from Nance.
“Splendid!” cried Molly.
“It is what he should do,” declared his Spartan mother. “His father and I would not have it otherwise. Of course, the States will be at war before the month is out and Andy might wait and enlist with his own country, but in the meantime he is needed, and sadly needed, by my country, mine and his father’s.”
“He will come see you before he sails, will he not?” asked Molly.
“Of course! He may spend a month with us.”
“That will be splendid indeed.”
Nance said nothing, but the flames that sprang from the wood fire lit up a very rosy countenance.
“I must be going now. I only ran in for a moment to bring the news of my Andy and to see this little friend again. Come to see me, both of you,” and the doctor’s wife was gone.
“Molly! I should never have come to you!” said Nance the moment the door closed on their visitor. Katy, the Irish nurse, had come for the baby. Little Mildred had fallen asleep, her head in Nance’s lap.
“My darling girl! Why?”
“I can’t spoil Andy’s visit to his mother. If I am here, it will be spoiled.”
“Nance, how can you say so?”
“Because it is the truth. He will have to see me, and he hates me.”
“He couldn’t!”
“He left me two years ago in a rage and swore it was over for good and all; and