College students -- Juvenile fiction; Young women -- Juvenile fiction
"Oh," groaned Molly, thinking of her friends at that dismal O'Reilly's.
Having half an hour to spare between classes, she went to the library
where she met Nance.
"There are some letters for you, Molly. They came by the late mail. I
saw them in the hall," Nance informed her.
But Molly was not deeply interested in letters that morning.
"Never mind mail," she said. "I can only think of two things. How cold I
am this minute, and how uncomfortable you and Judy are going to be for
my sake."
"Don't think about it, Molly, dear," said Nance. "We'll soon get
adjusted at O'Reilly's with you, and we never would at Queen's without
you."
Molly could not find her mail when she returned to Queen's for lunch,
which had been prepared with much difficulty on several chafing dishes
and a small charcoal brazier by Mrs. Markham and the maid. Nobody seemed
to know anything about letters in the upset and half-frozen household,
until it was finally discovered that Mr. Murphy had taken Molly's mail
down to O'Reilly's when he had moved the trunks.
Having disposed of indifferently warmed canned soup and creamed boned
chicken that was chilled to its heart, the three friends went down to
the village. They looked at the rooms; they stood gazing pensively at
their trunks; it seemed too cold to make the physical effort to unpack
their clothes. Again the fugitive letters had escaped Molly. Mr. Murphy,
finding she was not to come down until afternoon had kept them in his
pocket and was at that moment at the station awaiting the three fifteen
train.
"It's too cold to follow him," said Molly, never dreaming that Mr.
Murphy was carrying about with him a letter which was to change the
whole tenor of her life. "I'm so homesick," she exclaimed, "let's go
back to Queen's for awhile."
And back they hastened. Somehow they didn't know what to do with
themselves in their new quarters. It seemed unnatural to sit down and
chat in those strange rooms.
As they neared the avenue they noticed groups of girls ahead of them,
all running. The three friends began to run, too, beating their hands
together to stir up the circulation. A bell was ringing violently. Its
clang in the frosty air sounded harsh and unnatural.
"That's the fire bell," cried Judy.
They dashed into the avenue. The campus was alive with students all
running in the same direction.
"It's Queen's," shrieked Nance. "Queen's is burning!"
Smoke was pouring from every window in the old brown house. The lawn in
front was filled with a jumbled mass of furniture and clothes. Margaret
and Jessie appeared on the porch dragging a great bundle of their
belongings tied up in a bedspread. Otoyo rushed from the house, her arms
filled with things. Mrs. Murphy, seated in a big chair on the campus,
was rocking back and forth and moaning:
"Queen's is gone. Nothing can save her. The pipes is froze."
Out of the front door Edith Williams now emerged, quite calmly, with an
armload of books.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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