Katherine rolled her eyes up into her head until only the whites could be seen, which gave her the horrible aspect of a corpse.
There was a long and eloquent silence. Presently Minerva took her departure, and Molly, hospitable to the last gasp, saw her to the door and invited her to come again.
With the door safely locked and Minerva out of earshot, there was a general collapse. Nobody laughed, but the room was filled with painful sounds, moans and groans. Judy pretended to faint on top of Edith, and Molly sat in a remote corner of the room.
Somehow, they felt beaten, vanquished.
“I am sore all over with repressed emotions,” cried Judy. “I couldn’t stand another séance like that.”
“Does she know as much as she claims?” asked Nance.
“Of course not,” exclaimed Margaret irritably. “If she really knew she wouldn’t claim anything. It’s only ignorant people who boast of knowledge. I suppose she has been looked up to for so long that she regards herself as a fountain of wisdom.”
“She must be taken down,” said Edith firmly. “This mustn’t be allowed to go on at Wellington.”
“But hazing isn’t allowed,” put in Molly.
“Not by hazing, goosie. By some homely little practical joke that will show herself to herself as others see her.”
“All right,” consented Molly. She felt indeed that something should be done to save poor Minerva Higgins from eternal ridicule.
“If anybody has suggestions to make,” here announced Margaret Wakefield, self-constituted chairman of all committees, impromptu or otherwise, “they may be stated in writing or announced by word of mouth to-morrow night in our rooms at a fudge party.”
“Accepted,” they cried in one breath.
In the meantime, Minerva Higgins was writing home to her mother that she had been, if not the guest of honor, almost that, at a junior tea, and had found the girls rather interesting though poor talkers. In fact, it was necessary to do almost all the talking herself.
CHAPTER III.
IN THE CLOISTERS
Life in the Quadrangle hummed busily on. The girls found themselves in the very heart of college affairs. As a matter of fact the old Queen’s circle had been somewhat restricted, having narrowed down to less than a dozen; whereas now, they associated with many times that number and were invited to a bewildering succession of teas and fudge parties.
Also they were nearer to the library, the gymnasium, the classrooms and the cloisters. Here, during the warm, hazy days of Indian summer Molly loved to walk. It was not such a popular place as she had imagined with the Quadrangle girls, and often she was quite alone in the arcade, bordered now with hydrangeas turning a delicate pink under the autumn suns.
One afternoon, a few days after Margaret’s fudge party to discuss the question of Minerva Higgins, Molly sought a few quiet moments in the cloistered walk. It was a half hour before closing-up time, but she would not miss the six strokes of the tower clock again, as she had on her first day at college two years before.
She usually confined her walks to the far side of the arcade, keeping well away from the side of the cloisters on which the studies of some of the faculty opened. That afternoon she carried her volume of Rossetti with her, and pacing slowly up and down, she read in a low musical voice to herself:
“‘The blessed damozel leaned out
From the gold bar of Heaven;
Her eyes were deeper than the depth
Of waters stilled at even;
She had three lilies in her hand,
And the stars in her hair were seven.’”
Waves of rhythm ran through Molly’s head, and when she reached the end of the walk she turned mechanically and went the other way without pausing in her reading.
Many girls studied in this way in the cloisters and it was not an unusual sight, but Molly made a picture not soon to be forgotten by any one who might chance to wander in the arcade at that hour. She was still spare and undeveloped, but the grace that was to come revealed itself in the girlish lines of her figure. Her eyes seemed never more serenely, deeply blue than now, and her hair, disordered from the tam o’shanter she had pulled off and tossed onto a stone bench, made a fluffy auburn frame about her face. Molly was by no means beautiful from the standpoint of perfection. Her eyebrows and lashes should have been darker; her chin was too pointed and her mouth a shade too large. But few people took the trouble to pick out flaws in her face or figure. Those who loved her thought her beautiful, and the few who did not could not deny her charm.
Presently she sat down on a bench, continuing to declaim the poem out aloud, making a gesture occasionally with her unoccupied hand. After reading a verse, she closed her eyes and repeated it to herself. Opening her eyes between verses, she encountered the amused gaze of Professor Edwin Green who, having seen her in the distance, had cut across the grassy court and now stood as still as a statue leaning against a stone pillar.
“Oh,” exclaimed Molly, with a nervous start.
“Did I frighten you? I am sorry. I should have walked more heavily. It’s unkind to steal up on people who are reading poetry aloud.”
“I was learning the – something by heart,” she said, blushing a little as if she had been detected in a guilty act. After all, it was the professor who had introduced her to that poem and given her the book last Christmas, but that, of course, was not the reason why she was so fond of the poem she was studying.
“How do you like the Quadrangle?” he asked. “Are you comfortable and happy?”
Molly clasped her hands in the excess of her enthusiasm.
“I was never so happy in all my life,” she cried. “It is perfect. Our rooms are beautiful, and a sitting room, too. Think of that, with yellow walls and a piano!”
The professor looked vastly pleased. For an instant his face was lighted by a beaming, radiant smile. Then he thrust his hands into his pockets and pressed his lips together in a thin line of determination.
“I feel as if I were one of the workers inside the hive now,” Molly continued.
“And all the difficulties about tuition have been settled?” he asked. “Forgive my mentioning it, but I felt an interest on account of my close relationship to the Blounts.”
“Oh, yes. The money from the two acres of orchard settled that. You see, whoever bought it, whether it was an old man or a company – for some reason the name is still a secret with the agent – paid cash. They rarely do, mother says, and the money is usually spent in driblets before you realize it. Mr. Richard Blount expects to settle with his father’s creditors in a few months. My sisters are working. They say they enjoy it, but they are both engaged to be married,” she added, smiling.
“Did the orchard yield a good crop this year?” asked the professor irrelevantly.
“Oh, splendid. The apples were packed in barrels and sent away. Several of them were sent to mother as a present. Very nice of the owner, wasn’t it?”
“Very,” replied the professor, fingering something in his pocket absently.
“The owner of the orchard has it kept in fine condition. The trees have been trimmed and the ground cleared. Mother says she’s ashamed of her own shiftlessness whenever she looks at it. The grass was as smooth as velvet all summer until the drought came and dried it brown. I used to go there summer mornings and lie in a hammock and read. I didn’t think any one would care. There’s no harm in attaching a hammock to two trees. Mother says I don’t seem to remember that we are no longer the owners of the orchard. I have played in it and lived in