Molly Brown's College Friends Part 31

Edwin looked searchingly into Molly's blue eyes. His gaze was long and earnest and in his brown eyes Molly read a kind of sadness she had never seen there before.

"Edwin, dearest, what is it?"

"Molly, it isn't anything unless you want it to be."

"Tell me!"

"Would you think it right or wrong if I should try to get into the service, military service, I mean?--I have taken an examination and am physically fit.--I won't apply to go into training at Fort Myer unless you approve.--It rests entirely with you, honey."

"You must go if you think it right." Molly spoke without a tremor, although it did seem to her for a moment as though her heart would burst. How could a heart get so big all of a sudden? And then it seemed to her she was sounding cold and unemotional when Edwin wanted something else. "I--I--want you to go! I think it is right for men just like you to go--men with brains and the power of taking hold and leading--I wouldn't have you stay behind for me for anything on earth. I--I--am proud of you and want you to do exactly what you think is right, and--and--I think you are right--just as right as can be--and--and--I love you more than ever."

It seemed to both Edwin and Molly that at no time since their walk in the forest of Fontainebleau when the eternal question had been settled between them had any moment been so filled with love and understanding as now when he folded her in his arms. His Molly! His own, brave, true Molly! Her Edwin! Her honorable, courageous Edwin!

"I thought that I could content myself by digging and delving, but somehow I have been feeling lately that if you would consent, it was up to me to do something else. I don't feel critical in the least towards the men of my age who are not going to the war,--not the younger ones, either, if they do not feel called upon,--but somehow when one has been called as I have, I think he should answer. I don't know why a staid college professor should think it is his vocation, but I do think it, and, oh, dearest, it is good of you to take it this way!"

"I could take it no other way. Is not my mother giving G.o.d-speed to her sons? Is not Judy encouraging Kent? Is not Nance not only sending Andy but going with him? Who am I that I should say you shall and you shan't do things for your country?"

"But you see, dear girl, there are the children to take care of in case--in case--in case I should--should--well--stump my toe."

"I can take care of them as my mother did of all of us. My father died when I was a tiny child and still my mother raised me. But don't stump your toe. Pick up your feet when you walk--and--and----"

Here Molly came very near shedding the tears that she felt must be shed sooner or later, but she was determined that it should be later and that her soldier boy should not see them. She jumped up and offered to race him to the house where Katy was laying the tea table on the porch.

Edwin knew Molly too well not to understand that this gaiety was nothing but camouflage to conceal emotions that she was too brave to show.

"What will your mother think?"

"She will think that I have married well," was her gay rejoinder.

"And what does my Mildred think when I tell her her daddy is going to be a soldier?" he asked as he held the little girl close in his arms.

Mildred had been busy with a tiny hoe and shovel on a patch of ground given over to her tender ministrations. Her hands were very grubby and her face not much better, but Edwin seemed not to mind the general griminess of his daughter.

"Oh, I say bully for Daddy! An' I bet if Dodo'll wake up, he'd say he was a-goin', too. Boys is so rombustious."

And now we must leave Molly Brown and her College Friends at the momentous hour when their country is plunged in a great and righteous war. What the future holds for them is as much a mystery as what it holds for any of us. One thing is sure: Molly is doing her duty,--doing it cheerfully and bravely. Around her are college girls and more college girls, each one doing her bit. And so the fields are ploughed, the crops are planted and gathered. Fruit and vegetables are preserved and canned.

The men and boys are training for the trenches, but the women and girls are in training, too.

Molly often thinks of that moment when she stood sniffing the up-turned mould, with her husband standing near listening to her as she recited the lines from Masefield; and now as the days multiply she finds comfort in Masefield's ending to "The Everlasting Mercy":

"'How swift the summer goes, Forget-me-not, pink, rose.

The young gra.s.s when I started And now the hay is carted, And now my song is ended, And all the summer spended; The blackbird's second brood Routs beech leaves in the wood; The pink and rose have speeded, Forget-me-not has seeded.

Only the winds that blew, The rain that makes things new, The earth that hides things old, And blessings manifold.'"

THE END