The Bents' studio apartment proved to be exactly the thing for Mrs. Brown and the girls, and arrangements were made with the artist and his wife to have it turned over to them in ten days, which would just fill out their time at Maison Pace.

The apartment consisted of a large studio, kitchenette and two small bedrooms. The plan was for Mrs. Brown to have one of the bedrooms and Elise O'Brien the other, while Molly and Judy, to their unbounded delight, were to sleep in a balcony that ran across one end of the studio. The Marquise d'OchtÈ explained to them that this was quite customary in Bohemia, and that she and her husband had occupied a similar roost for several years during their early married life.

"I am versed in many a makeshift and this minute could come to live in the Latin Quarter on half of what you, with your extravagant American notions, will spend," declared the marchioness, as she showed our friends over the apartment. "Now this is my advice for the conducting of your mÉnage, Milly, but I am not like Henny Pace to get riled if you do not take it. Get your own breakfast, which is a simple matter in France, having fresh rolls and butter sent in every morning and making your own coffee or chocolate; take your dÉjeuner À la fourchette, I mean your luncheon at a restaurant; and then leave your dinners to circumstances, sometimes having them at home or going out as the occasion offers.

"Get a servant to come in and clean for you every morning by the hour, but do not have a regular bonne. It would be a useless expense and then there is no sense in your having to slave over housekeeping. The way for foreigners to become acquainted with Paris is to see the restaurants, and there are so many you need not get tired of the cooking in any one. All I ask of you is to have a regular Kentucky supper for me some night with——but never mind what with, it will be sure to be what I want if Molly cooks it."

Molly was busy inspecting the kitchenette, which Mrs. Bent was showing with much pride as it was quite unique in the Latin Quarter. There was a tiny gas range, a convenience not often enjoyed as gas was a luxury not as a rule afforded in Bohemia. The floor was of octagonal, terra cotta tiles and there was a high mullioned window over the infinitesimal sink. Long-handled copper skillets and stew pans were ranged along the walls, suspended from hooks; and a strangely colored china press filled with an odd assortment of dishes was at one side.

Mrs. Bent laughed when she saw Molly examining the press. "That is inherited from Mr. Bent's student days. It is a plain deal closet, colored with palette scrapings. It is always a great stunt with students to make something like this. Mr. Bent has long ago outgrown it as a studio furnishing and will have nothing short of mahogany around him, but it is too roomy and useful for me to give up, so it is banished to the limbo of the kitchen. I have known students to clean their palettes many times a day just to get a little more scrapings on their presses."

The effect was a peculiarly deep, rich tone and Judy declared that she liked it.

"It looks like the shadows in some of Monet's landscapes, dark, but clear, with light all through them. Some day I am going to make a press just like this one if I have to clean my palette a hundred times a day to get scrapings."

The apartment was on the ground floor and one entered across a very pretty paved court which had green tubs of evergreens here and there along the wall. The indoor studio balcony, where Judy and Molly were to sleep, had a long casement that opened on a tiny iron balcony which overhung the court. There were four similar balconies belonging to the neighboring studios and all had porch boxes filled with ivy or chrysanthemums, making a wonderful effect of color.

Judy was Judy-like, entranced. She stepped upon the balcony and holding out her arms to the tubbed spruce trees, exclaimed in a melodramatic voice:

Suddenly what should she see, from the open door of the opposite studio, but the faun-like face of Pierce Kinsella, grinning delightedly at the unexpected encounter. He proved himself equal to the occasion and said in a low and feeling voice:

And Judy came back with:

And Pierce answered:

By this time Mr. Kinsella had come out into the court and Molly, hearing the spouting of so much poetry, joined Judy on the balcony to see what was going on. She and Mr. Kinsella applauded loudly until the windows of the two other balconies opened, and from one the head of a long-haired man and from the other that of a short-haired woman were poked out.

"Poetry aside, Mr. Kinsella, what are you and Pierce doing here in the Rue Brea?" called Judy.

"We are looking at a studio that is for rent. And what are you doing here, please?"

"Sitting under our own vine and fig tree, sir! At least, it will be ours in about ten days," answered Molly.

"You don't mean it! Well, if this isn't luck! Pierce, I'll go back and sign up with the concierge immediately. Such neighbors as these would make the meanest studio desirable and, after all, these are pretty good rooms. We could hardly do better in the Quarter."

Pierce was pleased to have the matter settled, as he felt himself to be among friends and had visions of many good times in store for him after working hours with the three bright girls and Mrs. Brown, who was even more attractive to him than the girls. Mr. Kinsella had assured Mrs. Brown that Elise would be sure to fall in with any plans that good lady may have made for her, and he answered for Mrs. Huntington's acquiescence in any arrangements he saw fit to bring about for her daughter. She had really washed her hands of the matter, and had given him to understand that since he had interfered and insisted upon Elise's having a chance to go on with her much interrupted art studies, he could go ahead and place her where he chose. For her part, she declared, it made no difference one way or the other. She had seen too much of Bohemia in the old days to want ever to cross the borderland again. Mr. Kinsella felt sure she had secretly hoped that Mrs. Brown would want Elise with her, and he only awaited their arrival from Brussels to let them know of the studio apartment in the Rue Brea and of the cordial welcome Elise O'Brien would have from all three of the ladies concerned.

The next ten days were very busy and exciting ones. Judy and Pierce plunged into their drawing with renewed zest. Pierce was at Julien's, too, but as the men's school is in an entirely different part of Paris from the women's, he and Judy saw each other only in picture galleries or on the delightful jaunts that the whole crowd took. The Maison Pace was not a very pleasant place to make a call, as there was always a bunch of snuffy old maids huddled together in the parlor, knitting shawls and swapping tales of the good and bad pensions they had encountered in their travels. When a caller braved the ordeal, they always stopped knitting and talking and sat spellbound, intent on not losing one word of the visitor's conversation.

Mr. Kinsella and Pierce made one essay, but the occasion was so stiff and formal and Mrs. Pace so monopolizing that they determined never to repeat it, but to wait until their friends were installed in their own apartment. That longed-for time arrived quickly enough for Molly and her mother, who were sight-seeing in a most systematic manner, with Baedecker in one hand and Hare's "Walks in Paris" in the other. They would come home tired and footsore but very happy and enthusiastic.

Molly wrote Professor Green that she felt like the little girl at the fair, who, when her mother noticed she lagged behind and asked her if she were tired, said: "My hands and feet are tired, but my face isn't."

"We do become weary unto death but each morning we get up with renewed zest," she wrote, "with so many wonderful things to see before nightfall. One thing that bothers us is having to dress and sit through a formal dinner with the eagle eye of Mrs. Pace upon us. We are looking forward to the time when we shall be in our own apartment, where we need not dress for dinner unless we have a mind to. My Cousin Philippe d'OchtÈ declares that already my mother and I know more about Paris than he does. We are trying to be systematic in our sight-seeing and not to hurry, as we have the winter before us, but at every corner and square there is something interesting to find out about.

"Philippe is very kind to us and ready to escort us through any parts of the city where he thinks it best for women not to go alone. For my part, I think we could go anywhere we wished. The Parisians are so obliging and courteous, and so far no one has been the least rude to us. The old maids in our pension have many tales to tell of the encounters they have had with impertinent men, and one lady declares that she never goes on the street without being insulted. But I agree with Mr. Kean who says: 'If you have some business to attend to—and attend to it, you women can go anywhere in the world you want to in perfect safety.'

"I have not begun my studies yet, as my time has been so taken up with seeing the places of interest, but Philippe is going to see that I am put in the proper class in French Lit. at the Sorbonne where he has obtained a very important degree. He says there are several English and American women there, so I shall not feel strange.

"I am so glad your orchard home is coming on so well. Kent writes us that it is already beginning to look like a house. The rough stone chimneys and foundations are lovely, I know, and will make such a beautiful support for English ivy.

"We are looking forward to Christmas with great eagerness. This is the first Christmas I have had with my mother for five years and the first one she has spent away from all of her other children ever. I shall have to make a noise like seven Browns to keep her from being homesick."

Here Molly stopped and reflected that some of those five Christmases she had spent in the company of Professor Edwin Green and she wondered if he would remember it, too; and if he would miss her as she felt she was missing him, in spite of all the delightful things she was doing and seeing. "I know he is not thinking of me at all and I am a goose to waste any sentiment on him. I have never had a single letter from him I could not show mother and Judy. When Judy gets a letter from Kent she never shows it to us, but takes it to her own room and evidently gets great satisfaction from its perusal, as she always comes out beaming. Ah me! I am sure I shall die an old maid,—but anyhow I do not intend to knit shawls and sit around a boarding house talking about the food!"

When poor Professor Green received the letter, part of which is given above, he, too, was plunged into sad reflections. He reached for a pretty azure paper weight that always stood on his desk and reminded him of a certain pair of blue, blue eyes, and looking into it as though he were crystal-gazing, he shook his head mournfully and said: "Ah, Molly, you little know how you hurt me! And still, what right have I to expect anything else from you? I see you now being conducted around Paris by your Cousin Philippe. I'll be bound he thinks you need a courier even when you go to a Duval restaurant, the sly dog. I know his type: small and dark, with a pointed beard and insinuating manner.

"Here I am tied to Wellington and these hated classes and lectures, when I hoped to be in Paris acting courier for Molly instead of this disgusting foreigner, who won't know how to appreciate her——But what an ass I am! I don't know that Philippe is disgusting, and from what Miss Molly says of his mother, the marchioness, she must be charming.

"I do wish she would not write so coolly of my 'orchard home.' I should think she would know by telepathy that I always think of it as 'Molly Brown's Orchard Home.' I was a fool to take Mrs. Brown's advice and not tell Molly of my love. It may be too late now, and then what shall I do?"

The distinguished professor of English at Wellington College groaned aloud. His housekeeper, who was bringing in his tea, heard him and almost dropped the tray in her alarm.

"And is it the schtomic ache ye be ahfter havin'?"

"No, Mrs. Brady, it is higher up than the stomach. I am glad to see my tea. 'The beverage which cheers but does not inebriate' may make me feel better."

"Phwat ye need is a wife to look ahfter ye and keep ye straight. Schmokin', schmokin' all the time an' brroodin' over the fire is not good for a young gintleman. An' your disk and floor littered up wit' paaperrs and ashes."

The kindly old soul began to clear off the untidy desk and stooped to pick up a piece of paper that had fallen from Molly's letter without Professor Green's having read it or noticed its existence. She started to put it in the waste basket, but the professor noticed the action, being, like most scholars, impatient of having his books and papers touched. In fact, he had over his desk a framed rubbing of Shakespeare's epitaph which he had once confided to Molly he kept there especially to scare Mrs. Brady and make her let his things alone:

"Wait, my good Mrs. Brady! What is that you are throwing away?"

"Nawthin' but a bit o' blue paaperr, Profissorr. To be shure there's a schrap o' writin' on the back. Blue things always brring to me mind the swate eyes o' Miss Molly Brown, the saints protict her" and she handed the stray piece of thin, blue, foreign letter paper to the eager young man, who clutched it and smoothed it out and read the following postscript:

"My cousins, the d'OchtÈs, have been very anxious to get up a party and take us to Fontainebleau to see the palace and then drive through the forest; but I have done everything to keep from going and I hope the scheme has fallen through. You have told me so much of the wonderful forest and the walk from Fontainebleau to Barbizon that I am hoping to see the place for the first time with you. The spring is the time to see it, anyhow, I am sure, and perhaps by then you can find a suitable substitute and have a holiday."

Professor Green looked up from the perusal of the little half sheet of paper with his face beaming. What can't a woman put in a postscript? The pain, which he had confessed to Mrs. Brady was a little higher up than his stomach, had entirely disappeared. He was no longer jealous of "any little, black, dried-up Frenchman." That is the way he thought of Philippe; and it was certainly well for the young American's peace of mind that he did not know that Molly and Judy always spoke of Philippe d'OchtÈ as "the Adonis."

"Mrs. Brady, your good, strong, hot tea has done wonders for me. I am feeling so much better, I am going to take your advice and go for a long walk and not sit over the fire any longer."

He accordingly unwound his long legs, put the little blue letter with its health-giving postscript carefully in his breast pocket, (right over the spot of the vanished pain!) and went for one of his fifteen-mile tramps, humming sentimentally, "When the robins nest again, and the flowers are in bloom."

Mrs. Brady looked after him and smilingly shook her head: "He may say it's the tay, but there was some preschription in that bit o' blue paaperr I was ahfter destroyin' that was the pain-killer this toime for the poor young gintleman. Me prrivit opinion is that he, too, is a-missin' the swate eyes o' Miss Molly Brown!"

Professor Edwin Green came home from his long walk in an excellent frame of mind, happy and tired; but he was not too tired to write to Molly a letter that somehow she forgot to read to her mother and Judy.