Speed Nell
Molly Brown's College Friends

CHAPTER XV
THE PROFESSOR AT A KIMONO PARTY

The Welsh rarebit was just assuming its required thickness and smoothness and the toast was done to a turn ready to receive its libation of cheese, when the wanderers came pattering in.

“Where is Edwin?” demanded Judy.

“In his den! You see this is a kimono party and gentlemen are not admitted,” said Molly, helping Judy off with her coat and veil. “Now tell us all about it! Something has happened, I can see by your eyes and hair.”

“Happened! I should say it has! Something has bounced! Call Edwin! I don’t give a hang if we are in kimonos! I’ll be bound he does not know a kimono from a ball gown – I can’t tell it twice.”

“Otoyo and I are not dumb. We might help out when you fall by the wayside,” laughed Katherine, “but I, for one, don’t mind the professor.”

“Nor I! Nor I!” chorused the others.

“I think mine is vastly becoming,” Jessie whispered to Margaret, who called her a vain puss.

Edwin came in, rather pleased at being admitted and being allowed to have some of the party.

“I never expected to get in on a fudge party,” he said, contentedly settling himself by Judy, who was bursting with news.

“Now begin!” commanded Margaret, rapping for order in much the old manner of class president and presiding officer.

“Begin at the beginning!” begged Edith.

“Well, first we went by Prexy’s, just to get the feeling of youth back in our veins. She saw us, but we chased by.”

“So it was you! I wish I had run you down,” cried the brother-in-law.

“It is a blessing you did not or a good story would have been ruined,” said Katherine.

Margaret rapped for order and Judy took up the tale.

“Then we went to call on Mattie Math. She was burning the midnight oil, at least the 10 p. m. oil, and when we acted the Musicians of Bremen, she threw up the sash.”

“The hash? What hash?” asked Jessie, who often arrived a bit late. Shrieks and more rappings from Margaret.

“My, how much I have missed in never being asked to a kimono party before,” whispered the male guest in Judy’s ear.

“After we had brayed and crowed and meouwed and a dog had barked for us – ”

“All together!” cried Katherine, and the musicians gave a sample of their performance, Mrs. Matsuki outdoing all cats by her lifelike caterwauling.

“After that, we went silently down to the village.”

“I don’t believe it, not silently!” asserted Edwin.

“No interruptions from the minority! We went silently down to the village, veils down, steps stealthy, eyes open and mouths shut. The garden at the Misels’ was most inviting in its sweetness and beauty. Of course we wanted to go in and rest on the nice warm stone benches, so we walked through the turnstile and seated ourselves in the little dark summer-house, there to await Adventure.”

“Bang! Adventure comes stalkingly in!” cried Otoyo.

“Leaping was more like it!” from Katherine.

“Yes! Who should come springing from the side door, totally oblivious of us, but Misel, stripped for running and looking like a detail from a Greek frieze!”

“Monsieur Misel! Why, Judy, you are mad! Misel is so lame he can’t stand alone without crutch and cane!” cried Molly.

“Lame your grandmother! He is a perfect circus actor. I have never seen a private citizen with such control of his muscles. He actually turned somersaults over the hedge in the labyrinth, walked on his hands better than I can on my feet, and cleared the five-foot hedge that borders the street with as much ease as – as – I eat this fudge,” reaching for another piece.

“But, Judy, are you sure it was he?” asked Edwin excitedly.

“Of course I am sure!” And then Judy repeated the conversation they had overheard between Misel and his wife. “My German is shady when I have to use it, but I can understand very well.”

“So can I,” declared Katherine.

“And while I am constructionally verily faultily, I comprehend can,” said Otoyo, so excited that she ran off to adverb forms as was her wont in times of stress.

“This is serious,” said Edwin solemnly. “So serious that I feel I must do something about it and do it immediately. What time is it, honey?” he asked Molly.

“Eleven-fifty! Why, what can you do? Not go fight Misel – not that!”

“No, not that, at least not that yet, although I should like to break his lying crutch over his traitorous head. I must get in touch with the Secret Service. War will be declared any day now and Germany is getting busy even in quiet Wellington.”

“You forget Exmoor College is so near,” put in Margaret. “Our college boys will officer the new army in part. I’ll wager anything that this man has already begun his pacifist propaganda here in Wellington and at Exmoor, too. Has he been to Exmoor?”

“Why, certainly! He got me to take him over and introduce him, the beast!” stormed Edwin. “Please pack my little grip for me, honey,” he asked, drawing Molly to him. “I can catch the twelve-forty to New York. Don’t give out that I am away. We had better do a little camouflage act of our own. I am ill, very ill! That will do! Let it be – what shall it be?”

“Mumps!” cried Edith.

“Not mumps, please!” cried Jessie. “Nothing contagious or we might catch it!”

“Or worse than that, even, be quarantined!” laughed Nance.

“Pretty hard on you, honey, as it would stop the ceremony,” suggested Molly.

“What do you usually have when you have anything?” asked Margaret with her judicial manner.

“Neuralgia!”

“Then neuralgia would be the natural thing to have when you have not anything.”

“Of course! Then, Molly, all day to-morrow your poor husband is ill with neuralgia. Not even the servants and children must come in my darkened room. I’ll be home in the night and wake up the next morning feeling much better,” and Molly hurried off to pack the grip.

“In time to give the bride away!” suggested Judy.

“May I tell Andy all about it?” asked Nance shyly.

“Of course! We would not be so cruel as to make you start out with a secret from your lord and master,” said Edwin.

“It makes me so mad to think how kind Andy was to that man, offering his medical services to him and what not. I know the brutes had a good laugh over his gullibility. Andy told me afterwards that he could not understand the case, and if the man wasn’t shamming, it was the most peculiar thing he had ever seen: the way he jumped up out of his chair when he was so lame.”

“Now I remember that very night that I heard Madame Misel call her husband a fool on the way into the dining-room. I had forgotten all about it until this minute. I kept wondering what she meant,” said Molly.

“I tell you they are deep ones,” put in Katherine.

“Not a bit of it!” stormed Judy. “They are the worst of all fools because they think no one else has any sense. Bobby, my beloved parent, always says that is the worst kind of fool. That the wise man, who wants to put over anything, must go to work with the idea that all the persons he wants the scheme to get by with have as much and more sense than he has. Now these Huns think they are the only pebbles on the beach and take for granted that they are dealing with children and fools, and as a rule they get caught up with.”

“Not before they do lots of damage, however,” said Nance.

“I hope in this instance their machinations have not done any,” said Edwin devoutly. “Be sure and give the Misels no inkling they are suspected. All of you remember to be as polite as usual to them if you happen to run across them.”

“I’ll try, but it will surely go against the grain,” said Judy, her eyes flashing.

“Prove your father’s statements, dear little sister, and we shall let these foreigners know that we are not the blockheads they call us.”

“Also we are not the sleepily heads that must go bedwardly at such earlyly hour,” and little Otoyo opened her almond eyes very wide to show that she at least would neither slumber nor sleep until the enemies to her country and her adopted country were safely caught up with.

Molly came in with the grip packed. Some fudge was tucked in to help out his journey and Edwin, with the warm wishes of the kimono party, started on his patriotic travels.

“Remember to let Prexy know I am almost dead with neuralgia and do not let a soul but Andy on to the fact that I am off on a journey. I’ll creep in to-morrow night. Keep your eyes open for deviltries that the Misels may be up to, but don’t let them know you are not the dummies they think you. They will not be classed as alien enemies until war is formally declared, and that will be day after to-morrow, according to the latest news.”

Nance was quietly stitching while most of the above conversation was going on, but her thoughts were very busy. The idea that was uppermost in her mind was that the day United States was to form an alliance with the nations, she was to form one equally strong with her Andy.

CHAPTER XVI
WAR RELIEF

Edwin Green occasionally had an attack of neuralgia that incapacitated him for work for at least a day, so when Molly solemnly gave out the news that her poor husband was suffering with one of his spells of that painful malady, sympathy was expressed by servants, teachers, and students. Blinds in the invalid’s room were carefully closed and the door locked, with the key in Molly’s pocket. Instructions were sternly given that nobody must disturb him. When he felt better he would ask for what he wanted. Little Mildred was very sad that she was not allowed to take him his “tup of toffee.”

“I weckon he’s a-gonter die, sho,” she confided to Cho-Cho-San. “Only my mother don’t know it or she wouldn’t be a-smilin’ an’ laughin’ so hard.”

“I am going to work this morning at my war relief, even if we are to get married to-morrow,” declared Molly at breakfast. “If I let anything short of death interfere I get into bad habits, and the work simply must be done. They are crying out for more and more dressings.”

“Let’s all of us go help! We can turn out oodlums of work if we try,” cried Judy.

“Not Nance!” insisted Molly. “I know she has a lot of little stitches to put in before to-morrow.”

“If you will excuse me, I will beg off,” blushed Nance. “Andy is coming in this morning for a few moments, besides.”

“I tell you, you must stay at home to take care of poor dear Edwin,” laughed Judy. “It would look terribly heartless for all of us to go leave him.”

“Oh, I forgot Edwin!” declared Molly, just as Kizzie came in with a stack of waffles. The girl looked at her mistress in astonishment. What was coming over her Miss Molly, “fergittin’ of the boss and then a-larfin’ about it?”

“Shall I take Andy up to see him?” asked Nance soberly.

“Perhaps!”

“Hadn’t we better take the kids along so their noise won’t disturb poor dear Brother Edwin?” suggested Judy, “Mildred and Cho-Cho and Poilu, the puppy.” Poilu was a diminutive mongrel, the love of Mildred’s heart.

“Oh, Mother, please, please!” begged Mildred.

“I’m so ’appee! I’m so ’appee!” sang Cho-Cho as Molly smiled her consent.

“They can play in the churchyard and will be good, I am sure,” she declared.

And so Nance was left to put in her finishing stitches, to receive her lover and to take care of the fictitious case of neuralgia.

“Hot cloths on his head if he is in very great agony,” Molly called back as the gay throng started for the war relief rooms. “There is more aspirin in the top drawer if he is in much pain.”

Nance had a busy morning answering the ’phone, which rang many times with inquiries for the popular professor. Mary Neil sent a box of candy to Molly as a kind of consolation prize and Billie McKym sent Edwin a pot of flowers. Lilian Swift sent a basket of fruit.

“If their friends rally around them so for an imaginary disease, what would they do if something were really the matter?” thought Nance.

M. Misel and Andy met at the front door, Misel to inquire for the poor ill man and Andy to catch a glimpse of his Nance. Misel had walked slowly and painfully across the campus from his class room. Nance, from the window, had watched him approaching and she could but admire his patience as he made his crippled way.

“It must be worse to have to pretend to be lame than to be lame,” she said to herself. “I wonder if Andy is still fooled.”

The two men came into the library together, Andy showing great solicitude for the disabled foreigner. Misel was so extremely polite and seemed so distressed at Edwin’s illness that Nance could hardly believe that Judy and the girls could be right in the discovery they had made the night before. His manner was perfect, so respectful, so kindly and courteous.

“I believe I am to wish you joy, Dr. McLean, – and I do so with all my heart.” Andy grinned his appreciation. “My wife and I were quite charmed by Miss Oldham. I hear you are to go to the front to assist poor stricken France. I admire the courage of your fiancée to contemplate going with you.”

“It would take more for me to stay away,” whispered Nance softly.

“Ah, it is the spirit of the women which is what the Germans have to fight!”

“Is not the spirit of the German women quite as courageous as ours?” asked Nance, looking at Misel keenly.

“Ah! Wonderschön!” his eyes glowed. Suddenly the fact that he had dropped into German seemed to embarrass him. “That is – that is the word for the German women, just as ‘wonderful’ is the one for the Americans.”

“Tell me about Edwin,” interrupted Andy, as though he meant to put Misel at his ease again. “Is he very ill?”

“Oh, very!”

“Can’t I go up to see him?”

“Molly said he was not to be disturbed. These headaches just wear themselves out. He will be all right to-night.”

“But there is something to be done before it wears Edwin out as well as itself,” insisted the young doctor.

“Molly says not!” Nance shook her head at Andy as much as to tell him he was talking too much, and that young man subsided until Misel had gone. Then Nance revealed to her lover the whole nefarious plot.

“I had my doubts about that man from the first. I could not see how anyone as lame as he was could have jumped up so briskly. The beast! How could you be so polite to him?”

“Camouflage! Fighting the devil with fire!”

“I am glad old Ed took matters in hand so promptly. I tell you these college professors show up pretty well in these times! Wilson and Green forever!”

In the meantime the industrious war relief workers were hard at it. The be-aproned and be-kerchiefed ladies of Wellington held their séances in the basement of the little church. It was astonishing how large was their output, but busy fingers had been steadily at work ever since word had come from France that wounded men were dying for lack of surgical dressings, and that word had come very soon after the breaking out of the World War.

Women with earnest faces were bending over the long tables, some rolling bandages; some tearing cotton cloth; some pulling threads for careful cutting of gauze, later to be deftly folded in the prescribed shape. In one corner, cotton batting was being fluffed up for the making of fracture pillows. Huge baskets were being emptied by one group as they stuffed the pillows, while others were being filled by the fluffers, as Judy called the women whose duty it was to pick the cotton. Much sneezing went on in this corner and he who wonders why, might try once fluffing unrefined cotton.

“Let me make the tampons!” begged Jessie.

“I know why! Because they look like powder puffs,” teased Edith.

The house party was received with enthusiasm by the Wellington workers. There always seems to be more work than can be accomplished and then workers come and by hook or crook the task is completed. All of our girls had done some war relief work, so it was easy to set them to their stints. Pretty Jessie could make tampons that were so soft and so regular that they really did look like powder puffs. Katherine could pick cotton as fast as Mother Carey can chickens and her advent caused an increase of sneezing. Edith stuffed fracture pillows just to show that she could go faster than her sister. Margaret rolled bandages with a precision equal to her parliamentary ruling when she was presiding officer. Otoyo and Judy and Molly folded the gauze into the neat little six-inch squares. This is the most difficult part of the work, requiring such accuracy that only the expert should choose that table. The edges must come just together, no threads must be left on the gauze, the corners must be turned under exactly enough and the finished articles stacked in even piles.

Madame Misel came in with the work she had taken home to finish. Never were such neat, wonderful dressings as hers. In the short time she had been at Wellington she had accomplished the work of two women, bringing in great stacks of the accurately-made dressings.

It was difficult for the girls to treat her with the courtesy they knew it was policy to employ. Behind that calm mask they could now detect the lying spy. Her expression was as demure as ever and she spoke with the same hesitation that they felt was assumed, just as her husband’s halting gait was. Why they should have taken up that particular disguise, Molly and her friends were at a loss to know.

Madame Misel was almost a beautiful woman. Animation would have made her quite beautiful, animation and better dressing. Her hair was parted in the middle and brushed as slick as glass, coiled in a tight knob at exactly the wrong angle. She habitually wore an old-fashioned basque of a bygone cut buttoned up close to the neck with a narrow band of white collar, which but accentuated the severity of her garb. Her shoes were broad and ugly with no heels, her skirt skimpy and badly hung.

Judy studied the countenance of the foreigner as she bent over her work. The nimble fingers moved very rapidly as she folded the gauze.

“Gee, I’d like to sketch her!” Judy whispered to Molly. “A mixture of Mona Lisa and the Unknown Woman and plain repressed devil!”

She whipped out her sketch book, which was never far from her, and with a few strokes had Madame Misel’s pose, then with a skill that was quite wonderful had suggested her features. The model moved uneasily as though conscious of scrutiny, but before she looked up Judy had closed her book and was demurely folding gauze. Madame arose and walked away, standing by the table where Margaret was rolling bandages. Judy again whipped out her book and made a rapid impression of the unstylish figure in its flat shoes and tight basque.

Just then little Mildred and Cho-Cho came screaming from the churchyard where they had been playing happily. Mildred had in her arms the poor little much-petted puppy. Blood was streaming from the creature’s leg and he was giving forth pathetic wails.

“A big dog done bitted him all up!” cried Mildred.

“Greatly dog ’ave ’urt little puppee!” said Cho-Cho-San.

“First aid to the injured!” exclaimed Judy, as she took the bleeding canine in her arms. The pile of beautifully made dressings Madame Misel had just brought in was on the corner of the long table. Without a by-your-leave, Judy snatched up one from the top and bound it around the poor gory leg. “There, you poor little precious! You may be part French poodle, anyhow, and surely a wound is a wound.”

Madame Misel put out a hand as though to stay her, but before she could say anything Judy had the dressing wrapped around the puppy’s little leg.

“Too bad to take one so perfectly made, but I just grabbed the one closest to hand. Now, Mildred, you and Cho-Cho can be Red Cross nurses and little Poilu can be your wounded warrior. Take him out and nurse him carefully. It isn’t much of a place and no doubt with good care he will be all well by to-morrow.”

“I – think – it – would be – advisable to – apply – iodine to the wound – is it – not so, Madame Brown? I shall be pleased to – go to – my – house – and – procure some,” faltered Madame Misel.

“I don’t think it is really necessary,” insisted Molly. “We shall be going home presently and I can put some on then. You are very kind.” Enemy alien or not, Madame Misel was certainly very thoughtful to want to take the trouble for the pet. Molly, ever ready to see the good in persons, had a feeling that this quiet, pleasant woman could not be shamming. Perhaps Misel was not what he should be, but not this wife, who was so untiring in her labors of mercy.

When they started home, the roly-poly Poilu seemed to have recovered entirely. He did not even limp, so he was spared the ordeal of having the stinging iodine poured on the wounded leg. It was nothing more than a scratch anyhow, Judy declared.

At midnight Edwin returned, letting himself quietly in the front door. Molly was waiting for him, eaten up with curiosity about what had transpired. He had been closeted with the Secret Service officials, who considered the matter of the gravest importance. Two of the cleverest and most cautious of the detective force were put on the job.

“They were no doubt on the train with me,” he said, “but I have no idea what they look like or what disguise they themselves will employ. At least a dozen persons got off the train at Wellington Station and all of them or none of them may have been Sherlock Holmeses.”

“I hope your neuralgia is better,” laughed Molly.

“Well, the joke of it is, I really did have neuralgia all day, not severe enough to keep me from enjoying a very good luncheon with your brother Kent and Jimmie Lufton at the Press Club, but quite bad enough to keep you from having told a lie.”

“Poor dear! I am so sorry for you to have suffered at all, but it is certainly considerate of you to be instrumental in saving my soul. And now, since to-morrow is the wedding day, we had better get all the sleep we can.”