College students -- Juvenile fiction; Young women -- Juvenile fiction
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.
CHAPTER XXI.
FAREWELLS.
The rest of the time until graduation was like a dream to Molly and her
friends whose hearts were filled with a sort of two-pronged
homesickness; homesickness for home and for Wellington, which now they
were about to leave forever more.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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