Judy still slept the sleep of the exhausted. Her tired forces craved a long rest after the storm that had lashed and beaten them. The girls crept about the room softly and spoke in low voices, and when they went down to the early dinner locked the door and took the key with them. Later, fearing callers, again they hung out a Busy sign and settled themselves comfortably for a peaceful afternoon. Nance, armed with a dictionary and notebook, was translating “Les MisÉrables,” a penitential task she had set for herself for two hours every Sunday.

Molly was also engaged in a penitential task. She was endeavoring to compose a story on simple and natural lines. It was very difficult. Her mind at this moment seemed to be an avenue for bands of roving and irrelevant thoughts and refused to concentrate on the work at hand. She made several beginnings, as: “One blustering, windy day in March a lonely little figure——” With a contemptuous stroke of her pencil, she drew a line through the words and wrote underneath: “It was a calm, beautiful morning in May——”

Twirling her pencil, she paused to consider this statement.

“No, no, that won’t do,” she thought. “It’s entirely too commonplace.” She glanced absently over at the book Nance was reading. “Victor Hugo would probably have put it this way: ‘It was the fifteenth of May, 17—. A young girl was hurrying along the Rue——. She paused at the house, No.11.’ Oh, dear,” pondered Molly, “one has to tell something very important to write in that way. It’s like sending a telegram. Just as much as possible expressed in the fewest possible words. Can the professor mean that? Would he mind if I asked him and then at the same time, perhaps——” Again the wandering thoughts broke off. “It’s rather hard he should have misunderstood about this morning. Is there no way I can explain without involving Judy? Oh, dear! Oh, dear! How complicated life is, and what a complicated nature is Judy’s.”

There were two quick raps on the door. Molly and Nance exchanged frightened glances. It was not the masonic tap of their friends, and no one else would have knocked on a door which advertised a Busy sign. There was, in fact, a note of authority in the double rap. Some instinct prevented Nance from calling out “Come in,” a matter later for self-congratulation. She rose and opened the door and President Walker entered. If Miss Walker had ever paid a visit to a student before, the girls had not heard of it. It was, so far as they knew, an entirely unprecedented happening and quite sufficient to make innocent people look guilty and set hearts to pumping blood at double-quick time.

“I saw your Busy sign,” said Miss Walker, glancing from one startled face to the other, “but I shall not keep you long. What a pretty room,” she added, looking about her approvingly.

“Thank heavens, it’s straight,” thought Nance, groaning mentally.

“Won’t you sit down, Miss Walker?” asked Molly, pushing forward one of the easy chairs.

The President sat down. There was a plate of “cloudbursts” on the table. Would it be disrespectful to offer the President some of this delectable candy? Nance considered it would be, decidedly so. But Molly, a slave to the laws of hospitality, took what might be called a leap in the dark and silently held the plate in front of the President. If this turned out to be a visit of state it was rather a risky thing to do. But Miss Walker helped herself to one piece and then demanded another.

“Delicious,” she said. “Did you make it, Miss Brown?”

“Yes, Miss Walker.”

It had been purely a stroke of luck with Molly, who had no way to know that Miss Walker had a sweet tooth.

“I must have that recipe. What makes it so light?”

“The whites of eggs beaten very stiff, and the rest of it is just melted brown sugar. It’s very easy,” added Molly, forming a resolution to make the President a plate of “cloudbursts” without loss of time.

“Who is the third girl who shares this apartment with you?” asked Miss Walker, unexpectedly coming back to business.

“Julia Kean.”

“And where is she to-day?”

Nance hesitated.

“She is sick in bed to-day, Miss Walker.”

“Ahem! Cold, I suppose?”

“It’s more excitement than anything else,” put in Molly. “The junior play——”

“Oh, yes. She was ‘Viola,’ of course,” said the President.

“You see she had a bad attack of stage fright,” continued Molly, “and Judy is so excitable and sensitive. She exaggerated what happened and it made her ill.”

“And what did happen? She forgot her lines, as I recall. But that often occurs. Even professionals have been known to forget their parts. Ellen Terry is quite notorious for her bad memory, but she is a great actress, nevertheless.”

The girls were silent. They wondered what in the world Miss Walker was driving at.

“And then what happened next?”

They looked at her blankly.

“What happened next?” repeated Molly.

“Yes. I want you to begin and tell me the whole thing from beginning to end.”

Molly rested her chin on her hand and looked out of the window. This is what had been familiarly spoken of in college as being “on the grill.”

“What do you want us to tell, Miss Walker?” asked Nance with a surprising amount of courage in her tones.

“I want to know,” said the President sternly, “where you were between twelve and one o’clock on Friday night.”

“We were on the lake,” announced Nance, with keen appreciation of the fact that when President Walker made a direct question she expected a direct answer and there was no getting around it.

“Alone?”

“Yes.”

“You mean to tell me that you three girls went rowing on the lake alone at that hour? What escapade is this?”

Her voice was so stern that it made Molly quake in her boots, but Nance was as heroic as an early Christian martyr.

“It was not a mad escapade. We did it because we had to,” she answered.

“Why?”

Nance paused. This was the crucial point. It looked as if Miss Walker must be told about Judy’s folly, or themselves be disgraced.

“They came for me,” announced a hoarse voice from the door.

It was such an unexpected interruption that all three women started nervously, but if Molly and Nance had been more observant they would have noticed the President stifle a smile which twitched the corners of her mouth.

Judy, in a long red dressing-gown, her hair in great disorder and her eyes glittering feverishly, came trailing into the room. In one hand she grasped Nance’s slipper and with the other she made a dramatic gesture, pointing to herself.

“They came for me,” she repeated. “I had been angry and said cruel, unjust things to Molly. Everybody went off and left me after the play. I was locked out and I was so unhappy, I wanted to be alone. Water always comforts me. You see, I was born at sea, and I took a canoe from the boat house and paddled into the middle of the lake. Then those two Sweet Spirits of Niter came for me, and the canoe upset and I—I dropped my slipper somewhere, 5-B is the number—I don’t know who found it—here’s its mate——” Judy waved the slipper over her head and laughed wildly.

“The child’s delirious,” exclaimed Miss Walker, smiling in spite of herself.

They persuaded Judy to get back into bed and the President sent Nance flying for the doctor. Presently, when Judy had dropped off to sleep again, Molly finished the story of that exciting evening.

“But, my dear,” said the President, slipping her arm around Molly’s waist and drawing her down on the arm of the chair, “what prompted you to go to the lake and nowhere else?”

“I can never explain really what it was,” replied Molly. “I dreamed that someone said ‘hurry.’ I wasn’t even thinking of Judy when I started to dress. You see, we thought she had gone to bed. I hadn’t thought of the lake, either. It was just as if I was walking in my sleep, Nance said. Then we found Judy wasn’t in her room, and I knew she needed me. I remember we ran all the way to the lake.”

“Strange, strange!” said Miss Walker.

She drew Molly’s face down to her own and kissed her. There were tears on the President’s cheek and Molly looked the other way.

“Sometimes, Molly,” she said after a moment, “you remind me of my dear sister who died twenty years ago.”

It was a good while before Nance returned with Dr. McLean and in the interval of waiting Molly and Miss Walker talked of many things. Molly told her how they had buried the slipper on Round Head, and of how they had seen the Professor and been frightened. They talked of Judy’s temperament and of what kind of mental training Judy should have to learn to control her wild spirits. From that the talk drifted to Molly’s affairs, and then she asked the President to do her the honor of drinking a cup of tea in her humble apartment. The two women spent an intimate and delightful hour together, with Judy sound asleep in the next room, and no one to disturb them because of that blessed Busy sign.

At last Dr. McLean came blustering in, and, seeing the President and Molly in close converse over their cups of tea, chuckled delightedly and observed:

“They are all alike, the women folk—the talk lasts as long as the tea lasts, and there’s always another cup in the pot.”

“Have a look at your patient, doctor,” said Miss Walker, “and we’ll save that extra cup in the pot for you.”

The doctor was not disturbed over Judy’s delirium.

“It’s joost quinine and excitement that’s made her go a bit daffy,” he said. “Keep her quiet for a day or so. She’ll be all right.”

Imagine their surprise, ten minutes later, when Margaret Wakefield and the Williamses, peeping into the room, found Molly and Nance entertaining the President of Wellington and Dr. McLean at tea. The news spread quickly along the corridor and when the distinguished guests presently departed almost every girl in the Quadrangle had made it her business to be lingering near the stairway or wandering in the hall.

Only one person heard nothing of it, and that was Minerva Higgins, who, after Vespers, had taken a long walk. Nobody told her about it afterward, because she was not popular with the Quadrangle girls and had formed her associations with some freshmen in the village. When it was given out that evening that Miss Walker had come to see about Judy, who had been quite ill, the talk died down.

Having dropped the heavy load of responsibility they had been carrying for two days, Molly and Nance felt foolishly gay. Molly made Miss Walker a box of cloudbursts before she went to bed, while Nance read aloud a thrilling and highly exciting detective story borrowed from Edith Williams, whose shelves held books for every mood.

“By the way, Nance,” observed Molly, when the story was finished, “how do you suppose Miss Walker found it all out?”

“Why, Professor Green, of course,” answered Nance in a matter of fact voice. “There was never any doubt in my mind from the first moment she came into the room.”

“What?” cried Molly, thunderstruck.

“There was no other way. He saw us burying the slipper and I suppose he thought it his duty to inform on us.”

“He didn’t feel it his duty to inform on Judith Blount when she cut the electric wires that night,” broke in Molly.

“Perhaps he didn’t think that was as wrong as rowing on the lake with boys from Exmoor. Besides, she was his relative.”

Molly took off her slipper and held it up as if she were going to pitch it with all her force across the room. Then she dropped it gently on the floor.

“I’m disappointed,” she said.