College students -- Juvenile fiction; Young women -- Juvenile fiction
"The what, Molly?" demanded Judy, beside herself with curiosity.
Molly laughed again.
"I'm so happy," she cried. "It's made me warm all over. The temperature
has risen ten degrees."
"Molly Brown, will you explain yourself? Can't you see we are
palpitating to know what it is?" cried Judy.
"I've won a prize," exclaimed Molly. "I've won a prize. Can't you see
what it means to me? I needed the money and it came. A perfect windfall.
Oh, isn't this world a delightful place? I don't mind the cold weather
and O'Reilly's. I'm so happy. I prayed for rain and carried my umbrella.
Oh, I'm so happy, happy, happy!"
"Has the child gone daffy?" said Sallie Marks, while Judy seized the
envelope and drew out a check for two hundred dollars made out in the
name of "Mary C. W. Brown." Then she opened the letter and read aloud:
"'Dear Madam:
It gives us much pleasure to inform you that among several
hundred contestants you have won the prize of $200, offered by
this company for the best advertisement in prose or verse for
one of our mountain chalets. Your poem will occupy the first
page in an elaborate booklet now under way and we hope will
attract many customers. We offer you our congratulations and
good wishes for other literary successes and enclose the check
herewith.
Very cordially yours, etc., etc.'"
"Am I sleeping or waking?" cried Molly. "This, at the end of this awful
day! Isn't it wonderful?"
The reunited friends made so much noise over this triumph of their
favorite that Mrs. Markham, superintending the setting up of beds and
arranging of rooms with Mrs. O'Reilly, smilingly observed:
"Dear me, they don't seem to take their misfortune much to heart, do
they?"
"They're that glad to get in out of the cold, ma'am, and warm themselves
with some tea. It's thawed them out, I expect, the poor young things.
They was half froze when they come an hour ago."
"But where's the poem, Molly," cried Judy, when the racket had
subsided. "We must see the poem."
"It's locked in my trunk."
"Get it out, get it out," they ordered, and she had no peace until she
unlocked the trunk and, rummaging in her portfolio, found the original
manuscript of "The Chalet of the West Wind."
"I can't see why it won the prize," she said. "I hadn't even the shadow
of a hope when I sent it. It's not a bit like an ad."
"It was certainly what they wanted," said Sallie. "They didn't have to
give you the prize, seeing that they had several hundred to choose from.
But read it, because I'm in a fever of curiosity to hear it."
In the meantime, Judy had lit the gas, and taking Molly by the
shoulders, pushed her into a chair under the light.
"I'm most awfully embarrassed," announced Molly, "but here goes," and
she read the following verses:
The Chalet of the West Wind.
"Wind of the West, Wind of the West,
Breathe on my little chalet.
Blow over summer fields,
Bring all their perfume yields,
Lily and clover and hay.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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