CHAPTER XX. THE JUBILEE.

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Molly Brown, in a state of wild excitement, rushed into No. 5 one morning waving a slip of yellow paper in her hand.

"They're coming," she cried ecstatically but vaguely.

"Who?" demanded her two bosom friends from the floor where they were engaged in fitting a paper pattern to a strip of velvet much too narrow.

"My brother and sister, Minnie and Kent. Isn't it glorious? They get here to-morrow morning to stay for the Jubilee. Oh, I'm so happy, I am so happy," she sang.

"I'm so glad," said the two friends in one breath.

"I'm getting rooms for them at O'Reilly's and they will arrive on the ten train. Isn't it lucky Mrs. O'Reilly is our bright, particular friend? We never could have got the rooms. Everything in the village is taken."

The crowds had indeed come pouring into Wellington for the great Jubilee celebration for which every student at the college had been working for months past. And now, almost the first of May, everything was in readiness, the pageants, the costumes, the plays—all the splendid and complicated arrangements for an Old English May Day Festival. Judy, as she had planned on the opening night of college all those long months ago, was to be a gentleman of the court and was now engaged in constructing a velvet cape with Nance's assistance. Furthermore all the girls were to take part in the senior outdoor play to be given on the afternoon of the Jubilee celebration, and Molly, wonderful as it seemed to her afterward, had won for herself by excellent recitation the part of Rosalind. There had been many Rosalind competitors but Professor Green and the professional who had come down to coach chose Molly from them all.

How they had practiced and rehearsed and worked over that play not one of the senior cast will ever forget. But now it was ready and the time was ripe for the grand performance. In two days it was to take place.

The next morning, in response to the telegram, the three friends met Molly's brother and sister at the station. They were a good looking pair, as Nance pronounced them, but not the least like Molly. Minnie or Mildred Brown was as pretty as Molly in her way. She had an aquiline nose that spoke of family, brown hair curling bewitchingly about her face and a beautifully modeled mouth and chin. Kent was different, too—tall with gravely humorous gray eyes, his mouth rather large and shapely, his nose a little small—but he was very handsome and his manners were perfection. He took to Judy at once. She amused and mystified him and she volunteered after lunch to show him all the sights of Wellington. Another visitor at Wellington was Jimmy Lufton, who had come down to see the celebration regardless of work and expenses, and ordered Molly a beautiful bouquet of narcissus to be handed to her when she appeared as Rosalind.

Molly introduced him to Kent and Minnie and the three were soon good friends and looking for the best places along the campus to see the sights, while Molly rushed off to attire herself for the morning as a Maypole dancer. Old Wellington presented a strange and unusual aspect on that beautiful May morning. Far back under the trees gathered the people of the pageant waiting for the cue to start the march. Carts drawn by yokes of oxen rumbled along the avenue, filled with rustics from the country, mostly freshmen dressed in all manner of early English costumes. There were shepherds and shepherdesses, maids of low and high degree. Gentlemen of the court and plow boys in smock frocks elbowed each other on the green. Booths had been set up of a seventeenth century pattern, where anachronisms in the form of modern refreshments were sold.

Bands of singers and rustic dancers trooped by, jesters in cap and bells, page boys and trumpeters. A more animated and brilliantly colored scene would be difficult to imagine.

Providence had smiled on Wellington's Jubilee and sent a glorious day for the May Day Festival. It was an early spring and everything that could do honor to the day had burst into blossom: daffodils that bordered the lawns of the campus houses nodded their delicate yellow heads in the morning sunlight; clumps of lilac bushes formed bouquets of purple and white and from an occasional old apple tree showers of pink petals fell softly on the grass.

"It's almost as beautiful as Kentucky, Kent," observed Mildred Brown, and Jimmy Lufton laughed joyfully.

"Almost, but not quite," he said. "In Kentucky there would be twice as much of everything, and, besides the elms, there would be beech trees and maples with a good sprinkling of walnut and locust."

"Twice as many Mildreds, too," observed Kent. "But for my part I think the young ladies I have seen here are quite as pretty as the girls at home."

"I think you'd have a hard time finding two to match Miss Molly and Miss Mildred," put in Jimmy, looking with admiration at the charming Mildred, dressed in a cool white linen, a broad brimmed straw hat trimmed with pink roses shading her face.

"There's Miss Judy Kean," argued Kent.

What would this young man have thought if at that moment he could have had a glimpse of the fair Judy dressed as a court gentleman in lavender satin knickers, a long cape of purple velvet, an immense cavalier hat with a great plume and over her shapely mouth a flaring yellow mustachio?

And all of our other friends, how strange and unnatural they seemed. Their most intimate friends would scarcely have recognized them. Margaret was a fat, jolly Falstaff, stuffed out to immense proportions. Edith was entirely disguised as a jester and enjoyed her own quips immensely when she tapped a visitor on the shoulder with her bauble and said, "Good morrow, fair maid, art looking for a swain?"

And now four little heralds advanced down the campus bearing long trumpets, antique in shape, on which the sun sparkled brilliantly. At the center of the campus they paused and blew four long resonant blasts and then cried in one voice:

"Make way for their Majesties, the King and Queen, and all the Royal Court." And the pageant began to unwind its sinuous length along the campus lawn, and all the rustic players who formed the rabble fell in behind the royal personages and their brilliant train.

It was really a wonderfully beautiful picture, one to be remembered always with pride by Wellingtonians and with pleasure by outsiders who had gathered by the hundreds on the lawn. After the pageant came the May pole dancers and the wandering musicians, the Morality Play and the rustic dances.

There were hundreds of things to see. Mildred Brown, rushing from one charming performance to another, felt almost as if it really was an old English May Day Festival. The spirit of the actor rustics pervaded her and she was full of excitement and wonder at the whole marvelous performance.

At last the entire company gathered in front of the now historic site of Queen's Cottage and there amid the shrubbery and the tall old forest trees the seniors gave their performance of "As You Like It."

"I don't believe Marlowe and Sothern could do it a bit better," exclaimed Mildred proudly. "Aren't they wonderful?"

"Isn't Miss Molly wonderful?" said Jimmy Lufton.

"Yes, indeed, I am proud of my little sister to-day, prouder than ever of her."

A man in a gray suit fanning himself with a straw hat turned around and looked at Mildred curiously. His face was lined with fatigue, for nobody had worked harder than he over the Festival. But he was not too tired to be interested in Mildred Brown.

"So they are the brother and sister," he said to himself. "And a very good-looking pair they are. I must try and meet them to-morrow. Ask them to tea in the Quadrangle. Miss Molly would like that, I think. But not that young Lufton," he added half angrily. "Not that young buccaneering newspaper fellow."

"Professor Green," said Mrs. McLean, standing next to him, "I think we owe most of the success of this day to you. But how about that charming Rosalind? Did you train her to act so prettily?"

"No," he replied, "I couldn't do that. It's in her already. One has only to bring it out."

Among the flowers which were handed over the row of potted cedars to Molly after that charming performance was a big bunch of yellow daffodils, and tied to the yellow ribbon was a large yellow apple.

"You've won your second golden apple to-day, Miss Molly, and I am proud of my pupil," read the card attached.


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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