Millicent Porter invited Molly to go to New York with her for the holidays and visit in the grand Porter mansion. Molly understood it was a palace filled with tapestries and fine pictures. Millicent had mentioned all those things casually. They would go to the theaters and the opera and ride about in motor cars. But Molly was glad she had kept her head and declined.

“I have some work to do, Millicent,” she said. “I appreciate your invitation, but I can’t accept it.”

“You must,” exclaimed Millicent, too accustomed to having her own way to take no for an answer. “Is it clothes?” she added. Somehow, she gave the impression of not being used to wealth.

Molly hardly felt intimate enough with her to go into the subject of her own poverty and answered briefly:

“Not entirely.”

Millicent was not famous for generosity and the basket of red roses sent to Molly on the night of the junior play had been her one outburst; but she was determined to have Molly go home with her at any cost.

“Because,” she continued, “if it’s a question of clothes, I can arrange that perfectly. My dresses will fit you if they are lengthened and—well, there’ll be plenty of clothes. Don’t bother about that. Your yellow dress is good enough for anything——”

“I should say it was,” thought Molly, rather indignantly. “Good enough for the likes of you or anybody else.”

“I’ll lend you my mink coat and turban,” went on this munificent young person, “and I have a big black velvet hat that would look awfully well on you. Now, you must come, please. I want you to see my studio at the top of the house. To tell you the truth, I’m rather lonesome in New York. I don’t know any girls well, because I’ve never stayed at one school long enough to make friends.”

“What’s the reason of that?” asked Molly.

“Oh, I always get tired or something,” answered the other carelessly. “But say you’ll come, do, please,” she went on pathetically. Then, unable to stifle her grand airs, she said: “I doubt if you have such fine houses as ours in the south.”

“Oh, no,” answered Molly, quickly, “I doubt if we have. Our homes are very old and simple. The only works of art are family portraits. We have no tapestry or statuary. The house I was born in,” she went on half-smiling to herself, “was built by my great-grandfather. Most of the furniture came down from him, too. Some of it’s quite decrepit now, but we keep it polished up. My earliest recollection is rubbing the mahogany. You would doubtless think our house very empty and plain. We have some old crimson damask curtains in the parlor, but the rest of the curtains are made of ten-cent dimity. There is no furnace. We depend on coal fires in the bedrooms and wood fires in the other rooms and we nearly freeze if there’s a cold winter. We have no plumbing. Every member of the family has his own tub and there are six extra ones for company. A little colored boy named Sam brings us hot water every morning for our baths. He gets it from a big boiler attached to the kitchen stove, and when we are done bathing he has to carry it all down again. Rather a nuisance, isn’t it? But Sam doesn’t mind. Oh, I daresay you’d think our house was a kind of a hovel.” Molly paused and looked at Millicent strangely. There was a hidden fire in her deep blue eyes. “As for me,” she said, “no palace in all New York or anywhere else could be as beautiful to me as my home.”

Millicent looked uncomfortable.

“Be it ever so homely, there’s no face like one’s own,” cried Judy, who at that moment had come into the room and caught Molly’s last words. “What’s all this talk about home?”

“I was just telling Millicent about the old-fashioned, whitewashed brick palace wherein I was born,” answered Molly.

“I’m sorry you won’t accept my invitation,” said Millicent, taking no notice of Judy whatever. “Perhaps, after you think about it awhile you’ll change your mind.” Her manner was heavy and patronizing, and implied without words:

“After you have had time to consider the honor I am paying you and the advantages of visiting in my splendid home, you cannot fail to accept.”

“You are very kind, Millicent, but I shall not reconsider it,” announced Molly coldly. “I have made up my mind to spend Christmas right here in the Quadrangle. I hope you’ll have a beautiful time. Good-bye.” They shook hands formally.

“I’ll try to see the best in her,” she thought, “but I’d rather not see it at close hand. She grates on me.”

Judy waved an open letter with a dramatic gesture.

“Oh, Molly, dearest, I’m glad you didn’t accept. It’s my own selfish pleasure that makes me glad, but I’m going to spend Christmas right here in the Quadrangle, too.”

Molly looked at her friend’s eager, excited face in surprise.

“Do you mean your mother and father are coming here?”

“No, no. They’re on the Pacific Coast, you know, and will be detained until spring. It’s too far for me to take the trip just for the few days I could spend with them, so I’m going to stay here.”

A year ago Judy would have been in the depths of despair over a separation from her beloved parents at this holiday time. But whether she had gained poise by her recent sufferings or whether spending Christmas with her friend in the big empty Quadrangle appealed to her romantic nature, it would be difficult to tell. Through all the complexities of her nature her devotion to Molly was interwoven like a silver thread, and the shame and remorse she still felt in looking back on that unhappy evening when she had denounced her friend only seemed to draw the two girls more closely together.

Molly gave her a joyous hug.

“Oh, Judy, I am so happy. I never dreamed of such a blessing as this. Even Otoyo is going away this year and hardly half a dozen girls are left in the Quadrangle. I am truly glad I had the courage to decline Millicent’s invitation. It was only for one instant I was tempted to go, but she ruined it by a patronizing speech.”

“What a singular little creature she is,” observed Judy. “She has no charm, if she can beat on silver; and she’s so awfully conscious of her wealth. I don’t know how I could ever have admired her. I suppose I was lured in the beginning by her fine clothes and her grand way of talking.”

“She is very talented,” Molly continued, “but, as you say, she lacks charm. Perhaps she would have been different if she had been poor and obliged to turn her gifts to some use. After all, I think we are happier than rich girls. We are not afraid to be ourselves. We wear old clothes and we have an object in view when we work, because we want to earn money.”

“Earn money,” repeated Judy. “I only wish I could give papa the surprise of his life by earning a copper cent.”

Molly was silent. Her own earning capacity had not been great that winter. She had kept herself in pin money by tutoring, but lately she had made an alarming discovery. When she had first started to college, teaching had been the ultimate goal of her ambitions. She intended to be a teacher in a private school and perhaps later have a school of her own, as Nance wished to do.

Now, as her horizon broadened and her tastes and perceptions began taking form and shape, she found herself drifting farther and farther away from her early ambition. Something was waking up in her mind that had been asleep. It was like a voice crying to be heard, still immensely far away and inarticulate, but growing clearer and more insistent all the time.

It made her uneasy and unsettled. She yearned to express herself, but the power had not yet arrived.

The two girls went down to the village that afternoon to see the last trainload of students pull out of Wellington station, and later to make some purchases at the general store. It was Christmas Eve and the streets were filled with shoppers from the country around Wellington. Molly was trying to recall the words of a poem she had heard ages back, the rhythm of which was beating in her head, and Judy was endeavoring to explain to herself why she felt neither homesick nor blue on this the first Christmas ever spent away from her parents.

They paused to look in at the window of a florist who did a thriving business in Wellington. A motor car was waiting in front of the shop.

“We must have some Christmas decorations, too,” exclaimed Judy about to enter, when the way was blocked by a crowd of people coming out. “What pretty girls!” continued Judy in a whisper, looking admiringly at two young women who came first.

The prettiest one, who had red hair not unlike Molly’s and brown eyes, called over her shoulder:

“Edwin, I shan’t save you a seat beside me unless you’re there to claim it.”

“I’ll be there, Alice, never fear,” answered Professor Green, hurrying after her with an armload of holly and cedar garlands.

Molly stood rooted to the spot while the shoppers crowded into the car.

“If I could only tell him how sorry I am for that cruel speech,” she thought.

With a sudden determination, she rushed toward the car, calling:

“Professor!”

The girl named Alice looked around quickly, but apparently she did not choose to see Molly, and as the car moved off she began laughing and talking in a very sprightly and vivacious manner.

Molly sighed. The longer an apology is delayed the more trivial and insignificant it becomes.

“He probably has forgotten all about it,” she thought. “He seems happy enough with Alice, whoever she is. Perhaps what I said hurt me more than it did him, but, oh, I do wish I had seen him before he went away. It would have been different then, I’m sure.”

She followed Judy into the flower store. Mrs. McLean was there with Andy.

“Why, here are two lassies left over!” cried the good woman.

“What luck, mother!” said Andy. “Now we’ll have some fun. We’ll give a dinner and a dance, and Larry and Dodo will come over. We will, won’t we, mother?”

“What a coaxer you are, Andy. You’re still a lad of ten and not nineteen, I’m sure.”

“Don’t you let him persuade you to give parties when you’re not of a mind to do it, Mrs. McLean,” put in Judy.

“I wouldn’t miss the chance, my dear. I like it as much as he does. We’ll have it to-morrow night and you’ll come prepared to be as merry as can be and cheer up the doctor. He has been so busy of late he has forgotten how to enjoy himself.”

“It doesn’t look as if we were going to spend such a quiet Christmas after all, Judy,” laughed Molly, when Mrs. McLean and Andy had gone.

Judy was engaged in selecting all the most branching and leafy boughs of holly she could find, while the florist looked on uneasily.

That afternoon they spent an hour beautifying their yellow sitting room. And all the time Molly’s mind was harking back to Christmas a year ago, when the Greens had busied themselves preparing such a delightful party for Otoyo and her.

“And I said he was not a loyal friend,” she said to herself. “Oh, if I could only unsay those words!”

She sat down at her desk and seized a pen.

“What are you going to do?” asked an inner voice.

“I am going to write a note and tell him I’m sorry, and then I’m going over to the cloisters and slip it under his door. It will ease my mind, even if he doesn’t get the note until he comes back. He’ll know then that I couldn’t go to sleep Christmas Eve until I had apologized.”

The note finished, she carefully addressed and sealed it. Judy was in her own room composing a joint letter to her mother and father, and did not see Molly when she slipped out of the room and hurried downstairs. Outside, the pale winter twilight still lingered and the sky was piled high with fleecy white clouds.

“It’s going to snow,” thought Molly, as she hurried along the arcade and opened the little oak door leading into the cloisters.