It was several days before the G.F.’s had an opportunity to practise any of their new resolutions on Frances Andrews. The eccentric girl was in the habit of skipping meals and eating at off hours at a little restaurant in the village, or taking ice cream sundaes in the drug store.

At last, however, she did appear at supper in a beautiful dinner dress of lavender crÊpe de chine with an immense bunch of violets pinned at her belt. She looked very handsome and the girls could not refrain from giving her covert glances of admiration as she took her seat stonily at the table.

It was the impetuous, precipitate Judy who took the lead in the promotion of kindliness and her premature act came near to cutting down the new club in its budding infancy.

“You must be going to a party,” she began, flashing one of her ingratiating smiles at Frances.

Frances looked at her with an icy stare.

“I—I mean,” stammered Judy, “you are wearing such an exquisite dress. It’s too fine for ordinary occasions like this.”

Frances rose.

“Mrs. Markham,” she said to the matron of Queen’s, “if I can’t eat here without having my clothes sneered at, I shall be obliged to have my meals carried to my room hereafter.”

Then she marched out of the dining room.

Mrs. Markham looked greatly embarrassed and nobody spoke for some time.

“Good heavens!” said Judy at last in a low voice to Molly, “what’s to be done now?”

“Why don’t you write her a little note,” replied Molly, “and tell her that you hadn’t meant to hurt her feelings and had honestly admired her dress.”

“Apologize!” exclaimed Judy, her proud spirit recoiling at the ignoble thought. “I simply couldn’t.”

But since her attack on Molly, Judy had been very much ashamed of herself, and she was now taking what she called “self-control in broken doses,” like the calomel treatment; that night she actually wrote a note to Frances and shoved it under the door. In answer to this abject missive she received one line, written with purple ink on highly scented heavy note paper:

“Le Grand, that’s a good name for her,” laughed Judy, sniffing at the perfumed paper with some disgust.

But she wrote an elaborate report regarding the incident and read it aloud to the assembled G.F.’s at their second meeting.

In the meantime, Sallie Marks had her innings with the redoubtable Frances, and retreated, wearing the sad and martyred smile of one who is determined not to resent an insult. One by one the G.F.’s took occasion to be polite and kind to the scornful, suspicious Frances. Her malicious speeches were ignored and her vulgarities—and she had many of them—passed lightly over. Little by little she arrived at the conclusion that refinement did not mean priggishness and that vulgarity was not humor. Of course the change came very gradually. Not infrequently after a sophomore snub, the whipped dog snarled savagely; or she would brazenly try to shock the supper table with a coarse, slangy speech. But with the persistent friendliness of the Queen’s girls, the fires in her nature began to die down and the intervals between flare-ups grew longer each day.

Frances Andrews was the first “subject” of the G.F.’s, and they were as interested in her regeneration as a group of learned doctors in the recovery of a dangerously ill patient.

In the meantime, the busy college life hummed on and Molly felt her head swimming sometimes with its variety and fullness. What with coaching Judy, blacking boots, making certain delicious sweetmeats called “cloudbursts,”—the recipe of which was her own secret,—which sold like hot cakes; keeping up the social end and the study end, Molly was beginning to feel tired. A wanness began to show in the dark shadows under her eyes and the pinched look about her lips even as early as the eventful evening when she posed for the senior living picture show.

“This child needs some make-up,” the august senior president had exclaimed. “Where’s the rouge and who’s got my rabbit’s foot? No, burned cork makes too broad a line. Give me one of the lighter colored eyebrow pencils. You mustn’t lose your color, little girl,” she said, dabbing a spot of red on each of Molly’s pale cheeks. “Your roses are one of your chief attractions.”

A great many students and some of the faculty had bought tickets for this notable occasion, and the gymnasium was well filled before the curtain was drawn back from a gigantic gold frame disclosing Mary Stewart as Joan of Arc in the picture by Bastien Le Page, which hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. There was no attempt to reproduce the atmospheric visions of the angel and the knight in armor, only the poor peasant girl standing in the cabbage patch, her face transfigured with inspiration. When Molly saw Mary Stewart pose in this picture at the dress rehearsal, she could not help recalling the story of the bootblack father.

“She has a wonderful face, and I call it beautiful, if other people don’t,” she said to herself.

As for our little freshman, so dazed and heavy was she with fatigue, the night of the entertainment, that she never knew she had created a sensation, first as Botticelli’s “Flora,” barefooted and wearing a Greek dress constructed of cheesecloth, and then as “Mrs. Hamilton,” in the blue crepe with a gauzy fichu around her neck.

After the exhibition, when all the actors were endeavoring to collect their belongings in the confusion of the green room, Sallie Marks came running behind the scenes.

“Prexy has specially requested you to repeat the Flora picture,” she announced, breathlessly.

“Is Prexy here?” they demanded, with much excitement.

“She is so,” answered Sallie. “She’s up in the balcony with Professor Green and Miss Pomeroy.”

“Well, what do you think, we’ve been performing before ‘Queen Victoria and other members of the royal family,’ like P.T. Barnum, and never knew a thing about it,” said a funny snub-nosed senior. “‘Daily demonstrations by the delighted multitude almost taking the form of ovations,’” she proceeded.

“Don’t talk so much, Lulu, and help us, for Heaven’s sake! Where’s Molly Brown of Kentucky?” called the distracted President.

Molly came forth at the summons. Overcome by an extreme fatigue, she had been sitting on a bench in a remote corner of the room behind some stage property.

“Here, little one, take off your shoes and stockings, and get into your Flora costume, quick, by order of Prexy.”

In a few minutes, Molly stood poised on the tips of her toes in the gold frame. The lights went down, the bell rang, and the curtains were parted by two freshmen appointed for this duty. For one brief fleeting glance the audience saw the immortal Flora floating on thin air apparently, and then the entire gymnasium was in total darkness.

A wave of conversation and giggling filled the void of blackness, while on the stage the seniors were rushing around, falling over each other and calling for matches.

“Who’s light manager?”

“Where’s Lulu?”

“Lulu! Lulu!”

“Where’s the switch?”

“Lulu’s asleep at the switch,” sang a chorus of juniors from the audience.

“I’m not,” called Lulu. “I’m here on the job, but the switch doesn’t work.”

“Telephone to the engineer.”

“Light the gas somebody.”

But there were no matches, and the only man in the house was in the balcony. However, he managed to grope his way to the steps leading to the platform, where he suddenly struck a match, to the wild joy of the audience. Choruses from various quarters had been calling:

“Don’t blow out the gas!”

“Keep it dark!”

And one girl created a laugh by announcing:

“The present picture represents a ‘Nocturne’ by Whistler.”

Then the janitor began lighting gas jets along the wall and finally a lonesome gas jet on the stage faintly illumined the scene of confusion.

The gigantic gilt frame outlined a dark picture of hurrying forms, and huddled in the foreground lay a limp white object, for Botticelli’s “Flora” had fainted away.

The confusion increased. The President joined the excited seniors and presently the doctor appeared, fetched by the Professor of English Literature. “Flora” was lifted onto a couch; her own gray cape thrown over her, and opening her eyes in a few minutes, she became Molly Brown of Kentucky. She gazed confusedly at the faces hovering over her in the half light; the doctor at one side, the President at the other; Mary Stewart and Professor Green standing at the foot and a crowd of seniors like a mob in the background.

Suddenly Molly sat up. She brushed her auburn hair from her face and pointed vaguely toward the hall:

“I saw her when she——” she began. Her eye caught Professor Green’s, and she fell back on the couch.

“You saw what, my child?” asked the President kindly.

“I reckon I was just dreaming,” answered Molly, her Southern accent more marked than ever before.

The President of the senior class now hurried up to the President of Wellington University.

“Miss Walker,” she exclaimed, her voice trembling with indignation, “we have just found out, or, rather, the engineer has discovered, that some one has cut the electric wires. It was a clean cut, right through. I do think it was an outrage.” She was almost sobbing in her righteous anger.

The President’s face looked very grave.

“Are you sure of this?” she asked.

“It’s true, ma’am,” put in the engineer, who had followed close on the heels of the senior.

Without a word, President Walker rose and walked to the centre of the platform. With much subdued merriment the students were leaving the gymnasium in a body. Lifting a small chair standing near, she rapped with it on the floor for order. Instantly, every student faced the platform, and those who had not reached the aisles sat down.

“Young ladies,” began the President in her calm, cultivated tones that could strike terror to the heart of any erring student, “I wish to speak a word with you before you leave the gymnasium to-night. Probably most of you are aware by this time that the accident to the electric lighting was really not an accident at all, but the result of a deliberate act by some one in this room. Of course, I realize, that in so large a body of students as we have at Wellington University there must, of necessity, be some black sheep. These we endeavor, by every effort, to regenerate and by mid-years it is usually not a difficult matter to discover those who are in earnest and those who consider Wellington College merely a place of amusement. Those who do consider it as such, naturally, do not—er—remain with us after mid-years.”

To Molly, sitting on the platform, and to other trembling freshmen in the audience, the President seemed for the moment like a great and stern judge, who had appointed mid-years as the time for a general execution of criminals.

“I consider,” went on the speaker in slow and even tones, “idleness a most unfortunate quality, and I am prepared to combat it and to convince any of my girls who show that tendency that good hard work and only good hard work will bring success. A great many girls come here preferring idleness and learn to repent it—before mid-years.”

A wave of subdued laughter swept over the audience.

“But,” said the President, her voice growing louder and sterner, “young ladies, I am not prepared to combat chicanery and trickery by anything except the most severe measures, and if there is one among you who thinks and believes she can commit such despicable follies as that which has been done to-night, and escape—I would say to her that she is mistaken. I shall not endure such treachery. It shall be rooted out. For the honor and the illustrious name of this institution, I now ask each one of you to help me, and if there is one among you who knows the culprit and does not report it to me at once, I shall hold that girl as responsible as the real culprit. You may go now, and think well over what I have said.”

The President retired and the students filed soberly and quietly from the gymnasium.

“How do you feel now, dear?” asked President Walker, leaning over Molly and taking her hand.

“Much better, thank you,” answered Molly, timidly.

“Could you hear what I was saying to the girls?” continued the President, looking at her closely.

“Yes,” faltered Molly.

“Think over it, then. And you had better stay in bed a few days until you feel better. Have you prescribed for her, doctor?”

The doctor nodded. He was a bluff, kindly Scotchman.

“A little anÆmic and tired out. A good tonic and more sleep will put her to rights.”

Mary Stewart had telephoned for a carriage to take Molly home, and Judy, filled with passionate devotion when anything was the matter, hurried ahead to turn down the bed, lay out gown and wrapper and make a cup of bouillon out of hot water and a beef juice capsule; and finally assist her beloved friend—whom she occasionally chastened—to remove her clothes and get into bed.

“I may not have many chances to wait on you, Molly, darling,” she exclaimed, when Molly protested at so much devotion. “I may not have a chance after mid-years.”

If she had mentioned death itself, she could not have used a more tragic tone.

“Judy,” cried Molly, slipping her arms around her friend’s neck, “I’m not going to let you go at mid-years if I have to study for two.”