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CHAPTER XXI.
IN THE GARDEN

"Who would have thought this place could ever blossom like the rose," exclaimed Margaret Wakefield, settling comfortably in a long steamer chair and looking about her with an expression of extreme contentment.

"It's the early summer that did it," remarked Judy Kean. "It came to console us after that brutal winter."

"It's Mrs. O'Reilly's labors chiefly," put in Katherine Williams. "She told me that this garden had been the comfort of her life."

"It's the comfort of mine," said Margaret lazily. "Watching you girls there hoeing and raking and pulling up weeds reminds me of a scene from the opera of 'The Juggler of Notre Dame,' – the monks in the cloister working among their flowers."

Molly paused in her operation of the lawn mower.

"It is a peaceful occupation," she said. "It's the nicest thing that ever happened to us, this garden, because it was such a surprise. I never suspected it was anything but a desert until one day I looked down and saw Mrs. O'Reilly digging up the earth around some little green points sticking out of the ground, and then it only seemed a few days before the points were daffodils and everything had burst into bloom at once. This apple tree was like a bride's bouquet."

"That's stretching your imagination a bit," interrupted Judy, reclining at full length on a steamer rug on the ground. "Think of the gigantic bride who could carry an apple tree for a bouquet."

"Get up from there and go to work," cried Molly, poking her friend in the side with her foot. "Here's company coming this afternoon, and you at your ease on the ground!"

"I don't notice that Margaret W. is bestirring herself," answered Judy.

"A President never should work," answered Molly. "It's her office to look on and direct."

Judy pulled herself lazily from the ground.

"I'll be official lemon squeezer, then," she said. "I will not weed; I refuse to cut grass, or to pick up sticks with the Williamses. You look like a pair of peasant fagot gatherers," she called to the two sisters who were clearing away a small pile of brush gathered by the industrious hands of Mrs. O'Reilly.

"And what do you think you are? A bloomin' aristocrat?" demanded Edith.

"If I am," answered Judy, "my noblesse has obleeged me to squeeze lemons for the party. It's a lowly job, but I'd rather do it than pick up sticks."

"Anything like work is lowly to you, Miss Judy," said Katherine.

Summer had really come on the heels of spring with such breathless haste that before they knew it they were plunged into warm weather. And nobody rejoiced more than Molly over the passing of the long cold winter. When at last the sun's rays broke through the crust of the frost-bound earth and wakened the sleeping things underneath, it had seemed to the young girl that her cup of happiness was overflowing. Not even to Judy and Nance could she explain how much she loved the spring. One day, seizing a trowel from some tools on the porch, she rushed into the garden and began digging in the flower beds.

"You don't mind, do you, Mrs. O'Reilly?" she apologized. "I'm so glad spring is here at last that I've got to take it out in something besides book-learning."

"I'm only too happy, Miss," said the widow. "Young ladies ain't often so fond of the smell of the earth."

It was Molly who had introduced the cult of the garden to the other girls, and it was she who had first induced Mrs. O'Reilly to resurrect some garden seats from the cellar and a rustic table. Even as early as the first of May they had tea under the apple trees, and as the days grew warmer their friends found them reading and studying in the sunny enclosure.

They had no idea of the charming picture they made grouped about in their garden; nor did they dream that Mrs. O'Reilly had occasionally allowed a visitor or two to peer at them through a crack in the dining room shutters. Mrs. McLean and Professor Green were two such privileged characters one afternoon when they called at O'Reilly's to leave notes of acceptance to a tea to which they had been invited by the old Queen's circle. The invitations in themselves were rather unusual. They were little water-color sketches done by Judy and Otoyo on oblong cards. Each sketch showed a bit of the garden, and the invitations stated that on the afternoon of June second there would be tea in the Garden of O'Reilly's.

"Where is this garden, Mrs. O'Reilly?" Mrs. McLean had demanded, and the Irish woman, beckoning mysteriously, had shown them the scene through the crack in the shutter.

"Why, bless the bairns," exclaimed Mrs. McLean, gazing through the opening, while Professor Green impatiently awaited his turn. "They might be a lot of wood nymphs disporting themselves under the trees."

Then the Professor had looked and had discovered Molly Brown, in her usual blue linen – which was probably only an imitation linen – raking grass. Judy was softly twanging her guitar. Nance on her knees beside a bed of lilies was digging in the earth, and the others were variously engaged while Edith read aloud.

The Professor looked long at the charming scene and then observed:

"It is a pretty picture. Wherever these girls go they create an atmosphere."

But he was thinking of only one girl.

Someone else had called at O'Reilly's privately and asked to see the garden.

It was Judith Blount who stood like a dark shadow against the window and peered through the crack in the green shutter. She had come on the pretext of looking at rooms for next year, but after watching the scene in the garden had hurried away.

"And I might have been with them now," she thought bitterly, "if it hadn't been for my vile temper that Christmas Eve."

Judith had learned a good many hard lessons during the winter. She had found out that friends in prosperity are not always friends in adversity. Her old-time rich associates at the Beta Phi House had paid her one or two perfunctory calls in the room over the post-office, but the days of her leadership were over forever. Mary Stewart came often to see her and Jenny Wren was faithful, but there was great bitterness in Judith's heart and she chose frequently to hang a "Busy" sign on her door so that she might brood over her troubles alone. She grew very sallow and thin, and sat up late at night reading, there being no ten o'clock rules at the post-office. Many times Madeleine Petit, her neighbor, was wakened by the fragrant aroma of coffee floating down the hall into her little bedroom.

"If she was my daughter," Madeleine observed to Molly one day, "I'd first put her through a course of broken doses of calomel, and then I'd put her to work on something besides lessons. Even laundry is good to keep people from brooding. If I stopped to think about all my troubles and all that is before me in the way of work and struggles to get on," she rattled along, "I wouldn't have time to study, much less do up jabots and things. But I just trust to luck and go ahead. I find it comes out all right. Mighty few people seem to understand that it makes a thing much bigger to think and think about it. I'd rather enlarge something more worth while than my misfortunes."

Molly smiled over Madeleine's philosophy.

"I mean to make friends with her next year," went on Madeleine. "She was rude to me once, but I am sorry for her because we are both going through the same struggle and I think I can give her some ideas. You may not believe me, but I always succeed in doing the thing I set out to do. College was as far off from me two years ago as Judith seems to be now – "

"It will be a fine thing for Judith if she gains a friend like you, Madeleine," interrupted Molly warmly. "See if you can't start it by bringing her to our garden party with you next Saturday."

Molly delivered the invitations with which she had called, and giving Madeleine a friendly kiss, she hastened on her way.

But Madeleine's words were prophetic, as we shall show you in the story of "Molly Brown's Junior Days." Judith Blount was to learn much from this energetic little person and to listen with the patience of a tried friend to her stream of conversation.

Molly felt very much like embracing all her friends that day and kissing both hands to the entire world besides. A letter had come from her mother which settled the one great question in Molly's mind just then: Should she be able to return to college for her junior year and share with Judy and Nance a little three-roomed apartment in the Quadrangle near their other friends, who were all engaging rooms in that same corridor? And that very morning all doubt had been dispelled. Her mother had written her the wonderful news:

"The stockholders of the Square Deal Mine will get back their money, after all. It seems that Mrs. Blount had some property which she was induced to hand over. I am sorry that they should be impoverished, but it seems just, nevertheless. It will be some time before matters are arranged, however. In the meantime, I have had the most extraordinary piece of luck in connection with the two acres of orchard on which I borrowed the money for your college expenses. I have just sold it for a splendid amount – enough to cover all debts on the land, including the one to the President of Wellington University, and to furnish your tuition and board for the next two years. Scarcely anything in all my life has pleased me more than this. I don't even know the name of the buyer. The land was purchased through an agent. But whoever the person was, he must have been charmed with our old orchard. It is a pretty bit of property. Your father used to call it 'his lucky two acres,' because it always yielded a little income."

Therefore, it was with a light heart that Molly delivered invitations that afternoon to the garden party at O'Reilly's.

She had intended to shove an envelope under the door of Professor Green's office in the cloisters and hurry on, not wishing to disturb that busy and important personage, but he had opened the door himself while she was in the very act of slipping the invitation through the crack between the door and the sill.

"Oh," she exclaimed, blushing with embarrassment. "Please excuse me. I only wanted to give you this. We hope you'll come. We shall feel it a great honor if you will accept."

"I accept without even knowing what it is, if that's the way you feel," replied the Professor, smiling. "I would go to a fudge party or a picnic or anything in the nature of an entertainment, if I felt – er – that is – " the Professor was getting decidedly mixed, and Molly saw with surprise that he was blushing. "That is, if the fire refugees wished it so much," he finished.

"You look a little tired, Professor," she remarked, noticing for the first time that he was hollow-eyed and his face was thin and worn, as if he had been working at night.

"My pallor is due entirely to disappointment," he answered laughing, "our little opera passed into oblivion the other night. Perhaps you would have brought it better luck if you had been with us."

"I would have clapped and cheered the loudest of all," exclaimed Molly. "But I'm so sorry. I am sure it must have been splendid. What was the reason?"

"It was just one of those unfortunate infants destined to die young," said the Professor. "I thought it was quite a neat little thing, myself, but Richard believes that the plot had too much story and it was a little – well – too refined, if I may put it that way. It needed more buffoonery of a lighter vein. It was a joke, my writing it in the first place. However, I haven't lost anything but time over it, and I've gained a good deal of experience."

"I am so sorry," exclaimed Molly with real sympathy, giving him her hand. "It seems rather tactless," she said starting to leave and turning back, "to tell you about our good luck just now, but of course you knew about the Square Deal. Mine, anyway."

"Oh, yes," he answered. "They are going to pay off all the creditors. An old cousin of Mrs. Blount's in Switzerland died the other day without leaving a will, and she inherits his property. It's pretty hard on her to give it up just now when she needs it dreadfully, but Richard has induced her to do it and I suppose it is right. It will take a year at least to straighten out the affair though. There is so much red tape about American heirs getting European property."

"Then, I've had some luck, too," said Molly, making an effort to keep the Professor from seeing how really joyously happy she was. "Some perfectly delightful and charming person has bought my two acres of apple orchard at last, and I shall not be down at O'Reilly's next winter. I'm going to be in the Quadrangle with the others. Isn't it wonderful?"

The Professor looked at her with his quizzical brown eyes; then he shook hands with her again.

"Does it really make you very happy?" he asked.

"Oh, you can't think!" she cried. "You can never know how relieved and happy I am. I've been walking on air all day. I shall always feel that the man who bought that orchard did it just for me, although of course he has never heard of me. Some day I am going to thank him, myself."

"You are?" he asked, "and how will you thank him?"

"Why," she replied, "why, I think I'll just give him a hug. I have a feeling that he's an old gentleman."

The Professor sat down in his chair very suddenly and began to laugh, and he was still laughing when Molly sped down the corridor to the door into the court. She did not see him again until the day of the farewell tea in the garden of O'Reilly's.

* * * And it is in the garden that we will leave our girls now, at the close of their sophomore year.

They look very charming in their long white dresses, dispensing tea and lemonade and sandwiches to the small company of guests. It is the last time we shall see the old Queen's circle as a separate group. O'Reilly's had filled the need of the moment, but the friends agreed that nothing could ever take the place of Queen's unless it were the long-coveted quarters in the dormitories behind the twin gray towers of Wellington.

There we shall find them during "Molly Brown's Junior Days," living broader and less secluded lives in the fine old Quadrangle which had always been the center of interest and influence at Wellington College and now promised to add a unique chapter to her history.