CHAPTER XII
AN OLD-TIME PARTY
The first one of the old girls to arrive was Otoyo, Mrs. Matsuki, with the little Cho-Cho-San. Otoyo had changed not at all in the years that had elapsed since college days. Perhaps an added matronly dignity was hers, but this was not much in evidence when she was with her dear old friends. She was beautifully and elegantly dressed. All her clothes were made of the most exquisite fabrics. Her blouses were of the finest and sheerest, if of linen; and the heaviest and richest, if of silk. Her furs were the furriest and her suits of the most approved cut and material. Her little boots were a marvel of fit and style.
“Perfect, like a Japanese puzzle!” Judy declared. “Every little part made to fit every other little part!”
“Yes, and the whole a wonderful creation like some rare print or bit of pottery!” agreed Molly.
Otoyo had adapted herself to the manners and customs of her adopted country, wearing them with the same grace she did the garments. She had an English nurse for the little Cho-Cho-San and the child was being reared as much like American children as possible. A tiny little thing, she was, with coal black hair and slanting eyes. There was much mischief peeping from those eyes around the tip-tilted nose. The mouth was a crimson bow, ever ready to break into a tinkling laugh. She and Mildred rushed together as though their short lives had been spent waiting for this opportunity. Mildred was younger by several months but taller by several inches than the little Japanese. What a picture the two children made! Mildred, with her red gold hair curling in little ringlets all over her head, her round rosy face and wide hazel eyes, was exactly the opposite to Cho-Cho-San, with her straight, bobbed, ebony black hair, her oval, olive face and almond eyes.
“I b’lieve I can tote you,” said Mildred, who often used words current in Kizzie’s vernacular.
“Tote! Tote! What is tote?” and the tinkling laugh rang out like glass chimes assailed by a sudden gust of wind.
“Why I tote my dolly – an’ Mr. Murphy totes the coal – an’ – an’ Daddy totes his books to lexures – an’ – an’ – ”
“May I tote something, also?”
“Oh, yes, you can tote Dodo. He’s my baby brother.”
“Oh, I’m so ’appee! I’m so ’appee!” and the little thing danced in glee. “My honorable mother told me when I came for a visit to her friends that it would be all ’appiness.” The English nurse had left her stamp upon her charge just as Kizzie had upon Mildred. The occasional dropping of an h was the result. Cho-Cho-San’s lingo was most amusing with its mixture of Cockney and Japanese.
“You’d look ’zactly like my Jap dolly if you only had a bald spot on top,” said Mildred as she led her new friend to the sunny nursery where she and Dodo reigned supreme with the Irish Katy to do their bidding.
“And phwat Haythen is this?” cried Katy when she saw the little Japanese girl. “And ain’t she the cutey?”
“She’s my bes’ beloved,” announced Mildred. “Me’n’ Cho-Cho-San is gonter be each other’s doll babies. I’m a-gonter be her kick-up dolly an’ she’s gonter be my Jap dolly.”
“Oh, I’m so ’appee! I’m so ’appee!” was all the tiny Haythen could say as she danced around the nursery.
“Aunt Nance done said we could be her flower girls, too,” went on the loquacious Mildred. “We’s all gonter get married day after another day.”
“All the doll babies going to be married!” sang the guest. “Kick-up dolls and Japanese dolls!”
The Williams girls arrived next and close on their heels Margaret and Jessie. I cannot bring myself to designate the girls by their married names any more than they could one another. Husbands were not much in evidence at that gathering. The talk was all of the past. Of course Andy, the soon-to-be husband, was allowed some consideration, although the first night after the arrival of the guests even he was debarred and the old chums had a kimono party in the library. The host fortunately had an engagement that took him from home, otherwise he would have had to spend his evening shut up in his den.
The revellers opened the ball by singing “Drink her down,” to each one in the crowd. Molly’s old guitar was brought out and Otoyo produced a tiny ukelele which added much to the harmony. After the singing was finished and every one drunk down, the words that were used most often were: “Do you remember?” All of the scrapes were recalled and talked over. Bits of gossip were recounted that had never come to light before, the noblesse oblige of the college spirit having kept matters dark, but now that the years had rolled by there seemed to be no longer reason for silence.
“I’d like to get into some mischief this very night!” cried Judy. “I’ve been good and pious so long I feel like whooping life up a bit.”
“I’m game,” drawled Katherine Williams.
“Did I hear an aye from the eminent educator?” questioned Judy.
“That’s me!”
“I’ll do whatever it is if I don’t have to walk too far,” said lazy Jessie.
“But what are you to do?” from Margaret, in whom the spirit of adventure was not so rampant.
“Listen to the Gentleman from Missouri!” cried Judy. “Come on and we’ll show you.”
“I like very muchly to be in the vehicle of musicians but I also like muchly to know what is the ultimately destination,” said Otoyo softly.
“She means the band wagon! She means the band wagon!” cried Judy. “Oh, my dear little Otoyo, if you were changed I could not bear this sad grey world.”
“Others, too, have notly changed,” said Otoyo slyly.
“What are you planning, Judy honey?” asked Molly, laughing.
“I haven’t any plan – nothing but something crazy and adventurous. I am dead tired of being so good and proper. I have rolled bandages and drawn threads and cut gauze until I feel like a machine. I want to have a romantic adventure. I’d like to put a tick-tack on Miss Walker’s window – I’d like to burn asafetida on the teacher’s stove, or put red pepper in the Bible so when she opens it to read she would sneeze her head off. I might content myself with making an apple pie bed for my dear brother-in-law – ”
“Oh, please not that!” begged Molly. “My supply of sheets is stretched to the limit.”
“O. Henry would advise you to go out in the night and await Adventure. Adventure is always just around the corner. Step up to him and tap him on the shoulder,” suggested Katherine.
“It is very comfortable in here,” purred Jessie.
“Infirm of purpose!” cried Judy.
“Well, I’m not infirm of purpose,” said Molly. “I’ve been purposing all along to have a Welsh rarebit and make some cloudbursts and I’m still going to do it. If you Don Quixotes want to go off and hunt trouble in the meantime, though, you are welcome, only don’t stay too long.”
“Ain’t Molly the broad-minded guy, though? Live and let live was always Molly. Aren’t you coming, Nance?” And Judy sprang from her cross-legged position on the rug ready for any fray. “Come on, Margaret! Come on, Edith.”
“Don’t you know Edith is too stuffy to do such a thing? She’s afraid her perfectly good husband would not approve,” teased her sister.
“No such thing, but I’m not going. I mean to help Molly. You crazy kids go get in all the trouble you want to. Me for the house this night!”
“And Margaret? You, too, must keep the ‘home fires burning,’ I fancy.”
“I am going to stir the rarebit,” announced Margaret firmly.
“I’m going to pick out nuts for the cloudbursts,” purred Jessie.
“I must whip lace,” blushed Nance.
“Oh, you middle-aged persons! I bite my thumb at you!” cried Judy. “Who among you is young enough to go hunt adventure?”
“I told you I intended to go,” said Katherine, looking rather longingly at the crowded shelves of poetry that she was simply dying to poke in. “No one is going to call me middle-aged.”
“And I, too, will take greatly pleasure to knock the kindling from the shoulder of Adventure,” said little Otoyo.
“She means the chip! She means the chip!” screamed the delighted Judy. “Oh, Otoyo, I love you in all the world next to my immediate family!”
It took but a moment to slip on great coats over kimonos and then, heavily veiled, the three adventuresses started forth, with admonitions from Molly not to be gone more than half an hour.
“And please don’t get arrested!” she called after them. “Kent says he always expects Judy to get arrested some day. This spirit of adventure seizes her every now and then and nothing will stop her.”
“It is well it struck her here at Wellington instead of in New York. She can’t get into very much mischief here,” laughed Edith.
“She could in the old days,” put in Margaret, “but now that she is not compelled to keep rules I fancy she will not care to break them. What a Judy she is! It must be great to have her in the family, Molly.”
“Indeed it is! She is the favorite in-law with the whole lot of Browns. Mother adores her and all the boys think she is just about perfect. Even Aunt Clay can’t help liking her.”
“I wonder what they will find to-night. I almost wish I had left the lace off of this old camisole and gone with them,” said Nance.
“I think you need not hunt adventure right now,” drawled Jessie. “Any girl who is deliberately getting married and going to the war zone will have enough to keep her busy for a lifetime. I don’t believe they will do more than go to the drug store and get limeades.”
“You don’t know Judy and Katherine,” said Edith, “and little Otoyo with her determination to knock the kindling from the shoulder of Adventure. I wonder what Mr. Matsuki would say if he could know that his sedate little wife is engaged in such a harum scarum pursuit.”
“Why, he would just smile and bow and look more like an ivory Buddha than ever. Otoyo has the charming little gentleman completely under her thumb. She works a kind of mental jiu jitsu on him and he just lets her have her way. The joke of it is he thinks she is the most docile, obedient little wife in all the world, and so she is. She simply makes him want what she wants,” explained Molly.
Molly was busily engaged in the preparations for the midnight feast. It would have been simpler and easier just to have gone to the kitchen and made the rarebit over the gas stove, but that would not have been at all like college days and this night must be as near a reproduction of those times as possible. Chafing dishes must be used and dishes must be scarce or the spell would be broken.
CHAPTER XIII
ADVENTURE
It was after ten o’clock as the three veiled figures glided from the square house on the campus. The night was dark, fit for the deed they had to do. They did not know what the deed was but whatever it was the intrepid females were fully prepared to do it.
“First we’ll go by Prexy’s house and perchance she may see us and then we’ll run. That will be fun!” suggested Judy. “Nothing would so warm my old blood as to be taken for a junior.”
It so happened that a consultation was being held at the president’s home and as they passed, Miss Walker opened the front door and Professor Green emerged.
“Ministers and saints defend us! My brother-in-law!” cried Judy.
“Who is that?” called Miss Walker as the three girls ran swiftly out of the broad band of light pouring from the open door.
“Run for your lives!” hissed Judy.
“Shall I chase them?” laughed Professor Green. “I’d much rather not.”
“No,” sighed poor Prexy. “I fancy they are up to no harm, but it is late for girls to be out alone. Such terrible things seem to be happening all over the world. I’ll have to deliver a lecture to the whole student body, I am afraid, about late rambles and pranks.”
“Those girls were veiled, so evidently whatever they were doing they did not want to be recognized. I’d hate to hold your job, Miss Walker. I’d much rather be the humble professor of English.”
“Surely it is not a sinecure,” laughed the president, “but when all is told, my girls are a pretty good lot. Their mischief is never, at least hardly ever, serious. How glad I am to see Judy Kean again, – Mrs. Kent Brown! She is the same old Judy. Such pranks as that child could play! I shall never forget when she dyed her hair purple-black.”
“Judy is a great girl. I am glad we married into the same family,” declared the professor. “But tell me, Miss Walker, how Misel is doing. I feel quite responsible for him since it was I who introduced him to you.”
“The students like him. He seems to be able to impart knowledge. I am afraid he is too handsome, however. It isn’t quite safe to have a professor too good-looking. College girls are very impressionable.” Then Miss Walker realized she had made quite a break. Edwin Green was certainly a very good-looking man but not the type to make girls languish with love. While M. Misel was a much more romantic figure with his flashing eyes and lameness.
“Are the girls losing their hearts to him?” laughed Edwin. “Again I am thankful I am what I am and not what others are.”
And so the two old friends chatted in the doorway while the three veiled figures made their way towards the village.
“We got them going that time,” panted Judy after the run through the dark. “I bet you anything Prexy lectures the girls to-morrow morning. Dear Prexy!”
“Let’s tick-tack the math teacher. I bet you she’s still out of bed thinking up deviltry to make the girls miserable with on the morrow,” suggested Katherine.
“I can make a noise very muchly like a cat. Would not that be as gruesomely as a mathematicktack? We might be the Musicians of Bremen, as one reads in the beautifully fairy story.”
“Fine, Otoyo! Here’s her domicile! Cut loose!” whispered Judy. “I’ll be the donkey and Katherine crow like the rooster.”
Crouched down under the window where a light still burned for the much abused teacher of mathematics, the Musicians of Bremen, all but the dog, got ready for their song. The noise was something shocking. Judy’s bray was so lifelike that little Otoyo sprang aside as though in fear of kicking hind legs.
A dog in the neighborhood, feeling that harmony could be established by his voice alone, joined in the chorus.
Windows were opened on the campus! Silence reigned supreme!
“Don’t run!” whispered Judy. “Scrooge down close to the wall.”
“Who is there?” called the math teacher.
Mr. Dog went on howling as though he had been responsible for the whole infernal racket. His timely tact seemed to satisfy the curious ones and windows were closed, lights went out and the campus took itself off to bed.
“Once more for luck!” commanded Great Commander Judy.
“Practice makes perfect,” so this time the Musicians of Bremen outdid themselves. Otoyo made a most wonderful pussy; Maud Adams herself could not have been a more realistic chanticler than Katherine; and Judy’s donkey was so good that one could almost see the ears wagging as her great bray made night hideous.
“Now run before they have a chance to open their windows!” and Judy was up and off in the darkness with the two other girls close on her heels.
“I bet you investigating will go on at a great rate to-morrow,” gasped Katherine, as after leaving the college grounds they came to the outskirts of the village.
“It was so funnily,” giggled Otoyo. “We must amusement make for the smally Mildred and Cho-Cho when the to-morrow has come.”
“I can’t believe I am a full-fledged teacher in a model modern school in our great metropolis,” said Katherine. “I feel just exactly like a schoolgirl, – not even a college girl. I know I could run a mile and there is no mischief I would not welcome.”
“I tooly!” agreed Otoyo. “It seems but a dream that I have honorable husband and smally babee, Cho-Cho. I feel like badly naughtily Japanese girl in masque.”
“Well, it is surely great to be a boy again just for to-night,” declared Judy.
“What next?” asked Katherine.
“Next will be our great adventure! This has been only in the foothills of happenings. Soon we will have something really great come to us,” encouraged the captain.
The village was well-lighted on the principal street, but that the girls avoided and crept down the side streets where all was quiet and almost dark, except at the corners where small gas-posts sent out feeble rays of light. They passed comfortable homes surrounded by large yards where the élite of Wellington lived. The élite were evidently a well-behaved lot, as they were all safely bestowed in bed, sleeping the sleep of the just as our naughty girls crept in front of their spacious mansions.
Next to the great, came the near great: a row of pleasant cottages, each one with its little garden separated from its neighbor’s by neat whitewashed palings. After these, they approached a cottage set in a large yard and isolated as much as if it were in the country. It was well back from the street and instead of the white palings of its neighbors, it boasted a box hedge about five feet high and at least three feet broad. Generations of close clipping had made this hedge as solid as a brick wall. The yard enclosed was laid out as a formal garden with box labyrinth and winding paths. In the rear was a summer-house with stone pillars covered with ivy. Two stone benches were on each side in this quaint house where no doubt dead and gone lovers had sat and perhaps caught rheumatism. Box bushes were placed at the four sides of the garden and these had been cut to represent armchairs by some zealous gardener long since passed away. The modern shears had but followed the lines of the original ones and the armchairs were still there although somewhat lopsided and hazy in drawing. There was the sun-dial and a snub-nosed stone Hebe who held aloft her little pitcher with a cup in the other hand ready to serve the Gods with imperceptible nectar.
Our girls’ eyes had become accustomed to the darkness and they peeped over the hedge (at least Katherine and Judy did, poor little Otoyo was too short), plainly discerning the charming ensemble of the little formal garden.
“There, Adventure awaits us!” said Katherine melodramatically.
“I want muchly to see,” pleaded Otoyo. So Judy lifted her up for a peep.
“I believe that is where the Misels live,” said Judy. “It looks quite different at night, but I’m almost sure it is the place. Molly and I called at dusk and we came up on the other side, but I think it is this cottage. Isn’t it lovely? I am so sorry for them, they do seem so friendless, somehow. Madame is already working for the Red Cross. Molly says she can make surgical dressings faster than anybody she ever saw. She takes them home and does them and brings them back so neatly folded and tied up that they think it is perfect foolishness to inspect them. They are sure there will be no mistakes where such a careful worker is on the job. M. Misel is so lame he can hardly locomote.”
“Let’s go in their garden and sit down a little while,” suggested Katherine, who but a few moments before had declared she could run a mile. The sedentary life as a teacher had not improved her wind. Her spirits might have been those of a schoolgirl but her endurance was equal only to a full-fledged teacher in a model school.
They passed through the small green turnstile and silently crept around the labyrinth to the summer-house. The three girls sank on one of the cold stone benches and peered out into the picturesque garden. Their veils were raised but ready to be pulled down at a moment’s notice.
“Ghosts might walk in such a garden,” whispered Judy.
“The bench is coldly like a ghost,” shivered Otoyo.
CHAPTER XIV
AS SEEN FROM THE SUMMER-HOUSE
“And now, Adventure, come forth!” commanded Katherine in sepulchral tones.
The side door of the cottage, leading to the garden, now opened as though at Katherine’s orders, and a broad ribbon of light fell across the labyrinth, picking out the snub-nosed Hebe and the sun-dial and one of the box chairs to illuminate. A man’s figure was silhouetted in the doorway, a figure so beautiful that the artist in Judy gasped. He had on running togs which exposed his clean-cut limbs and shapely shoulders. A woman stood beside him and Judy recognized the outline of Madame Misel. The Greek god of a man was strange to her, although there was something familiar about the poise of his head on its column-like neck.
The woman spoke in German in a low clear voice. Judy and Katherine both knew German fairly well and Otoyo had some knowledge of it. They heard Madame Misel say distinctly:
“It is wiser if you wait until midnight for the exercises. Some of these blockheads might be out.”
“Oh, absurd!” answered the man. “There is no one in this whole stupid place with the spirit to be from under cover after ten. I am cramped enough and must run and leap. Stand aside!”
“Misel, himself!” gasped Judy. Where were his crutch and cane and his lame back?
The girls sat as still as the stone Hebe. It was inky black in their corner of the summer-house where they cowered, not afraid at all but ready to knock the chip from the shoulder of Adventure. Judy’s first instinct on recognizing Madame Misel was to make herself known and explain their presence in her garden at such a late hour, but the realization that Misel was the man in running togs, which usually means running, glued her to her bench. What did it all mean?
The door was shut and then Misel began a series of exercises of which any circus actor might have been proud. He began by leaping over the clipped hedge of the labyrinth, – back and forth with most surprising gyrations. It was so dark that it was difficult to follow his every movement, and so rapid were his leaps and bounds that he was now here, now there before eyes could be focussed to take in the impression. Then almost without the girls realizing what had happened, he had cleared the five-foot hedge and was out on the deserted street running like a deer.
“Quick, before he is back!” gasped Judy, and the seekers for sensations were out of the garden and through the little turnstile in not much more time than it had taken the master of the house to leap the hedge.
Without a word they hastened back to the college grounds. As they turned a corner, they ran plump into Misel, who seemed to have let off steam enough to be trotting contentedly home. They need not have feared him. He was much more anxious to escape from them than they were from him. He turned and ran like the wind in the opposite direction.
“Gee, I wish we could have tripped him up!” exclaimed Judy.
“And I might have jiu jitsued him most neatlily,” put in little Otoyo. “I think he is what you might call a traitor-r-r.”
“I was never more excited in my life. What will the girls think when we tell them of what has happened to us?” panted Katherine.
“Do you realize we have run against a tremendous thing?” said Judy soberly. “Almost international importance! I fancy we must keep kind of quiet about it. Of course we will tell Molly and Edwin and the girls, but I have an idea this thing will have to be worked up slowly and cautiously. I bet you it will be a case of secret service men and enemy aliens and what not. Why should Misel have pretended to be lame? Why should they come to live at Wellington? Why – a million whys about the whole matter!”
“One thing: – Misel thought we were college girls on a lark and he will have no fear of our saying we met him or anyone outside the campus at such an hour,” said Katherine wisely.