Molly Brown of Kentucky. Speed Nell
Her hair had turned a little greyer since Molly’s marriage, but not much; her step was still light and active; her grey eyes as full of life; and in her heart the same eternal youth.
“Well, children! Did you get any mail? How is my precious little granddaughter? I’ve a letter from Kent. It just did beat him home. Paul ’phoned from Louisville that he is in town now, just arrived and will be here with him this afternoon. I am so excited!”
Dear Mrs. Brown’s life was made up of such excitements now: her children always going and returning. Mildred, Mrs. Crittenden Rutledge, had left for Iowa only two days before, having spent two months with her little family at Chatsworth; now Kent was almost home; and in less than a month the Greens would make their annual move to Wellington. Sue, the eldest daughter, married to young Cyrus Clay, lived within a few miles of Chatsworth and seemed the only one who was a fixture. Paul’s newspaper work kept him in Louisville most of the time and John, the doctor, made flying visits to his home but had to make his headquarters in the city for fear of missing patients. Ernest, the eldest son, was threatening to come home and settle at Chatsworth, but that was still an uncertainty.
“I must read you Judy’s letter, Mother. I know you will feel as uneasy as we do about her. Edwin thinks she should come home, but I think she could hardly leave, not knowing something more definite about her mother and father, who may be bottled up in Germany indefinitely.”
“Only think of the sizzle Mr. Kean will make when they finally draw the cork,” laughed Mrs. Brown; but when Molly read the whole of Judy’s letter to her, the laughter left her countenance and she looked very solemn and disturbed.
“Poor Kent!” she sighed.
“I wonder what he will do,” from Molly.
“Do? Why, he will do what the men of his blood should do!” Mrs. Brown held her head very high and her delicate nostrils quivered in the way her family knew meant either anger or high resolve. “He will go to France and either stay and protect Judy or bring her back to his mother.”
“But, Mother, are you going to ask this of him? Maybe he won’t think it is the right thing to do.”
“Of course, I am not going to ask it of him. I just know the ‘mettle of his pasture.’”
“But the expense!”
“Expense! Molly, you don’t sound like yourself. What is expense when your loved ones are in danger?”
“But I can’t think that Judy could be in real danger.”
“I can’t think anything else. You surely have not read the morning paper. The Germans are advancing so rapidly… The atrocities in Belgium! Ugh! I can’t contemplate our Judy being anywhere in their reach.”
“But, Mother, they must be exaggerated! People could not do what they say they have done, not good, kind German soldiers.”
“Molly! Molly! Your goodness will even let you love the Germans. I am not made that way. The Anglo Saxon in me is so uppermost and I feel such a boiling and bubbling in my veins that nothing but my grey hairs keeps me from joining the Red Cross myself and helping the Allies!”
“Well, then you don’t blame Miss Judy Kean,” laughed Professor Green, who never loved his mother-in-law more than when, as old Aunt Mary expressed it, “her nose was a-wuckin’.”
“Blame her! No, indeed! If I were her age, I’d do exactly what she is doing, but I should certainly have expected Molly’s father to come over and protect me while I was being so foolhardy.”
“Judy doesn’t say she is going as a nurse,” said Molly, referring to the letter. “Jo Williams is to fly and Judy seems uncertain what she is going to do, – just see the fight, as far as I can make out. I know Judy so well I just can’t feel uneasy about her. You mustn’t think I am mercenary, Mother, or careless of my friend. Judy always lands on her feet and is as much of an adept in getting out of scrapes as she is in getting in them.”
“My darling, of course I didn’t mean you were mercenary,” cried Mrs. Brown, seeing in Molly’s blue eyes a little hurt look at the vigorous tone she had taken when Molly merely suggested expense. “I just think in your desire to think well of every one, nations as well as individuals, that you are blind to the terrors of this war. If Judy will only go to Sally Bolling, she will be taken care of. I fancy Sally is at La Roche Craie now.”
“Oh, I had forgotten to think of what this must mean to Cousin Sally!” exclaimed Molly. “The truth of the matter is that it is so peaceful here my imagination cannot picture what it is over there. I am growing selfish with contentment. Of course Philippe d’Ochtè will join his regiment and poor Cousin Sally and the Marquis will suffer agonies over him.”
“Yes and over France!” said Edwin solemnly. “I remember so well a conversation I had with the Marquis d’Ochtè on the subject of his country. I believe he really and truly puts his country above even his adored wife and son. That is more patriotism than I could be capable of – ”
“Not a bit of it, my dear Edwin,” broke in Mrs. Brown.
“‘I could not love thee half so well
Loved I not honour more.’
“Molly and your little baby Mildred are but a part of your country, and if the time should come and your country called you, you would answer the call just as I hope my own sons would.”
“Oh, Mother, you are a Spartan! I am not so brave, I am afraid,” said Molly. “Even now at the thought of war, I am thanking God my Mildred baby is a girl.”
Little Mildred, at mention of her name, although it would be many a day before she would know what her name was, awakened and gave an inarticulate gurgle. Mrs. Brown dropped the rôle of Spartan Mother and turned into a doting grandmother in the twinkling of an eye.
“And was um little tootsie wootsies cold? Come to your Granny and let her warm them. Molly, this baby has grown a foot, I do believe, and look what a fine, strong, straight back she has! And does oo want your Granny to rub your back? Only look, her eyes have brown lights in them! I said all the time she would have brown eyes.”
“And not Molly’s blue eyes! Oh, Mother, that is very bad news to me. Why, the baby’s eyes are as blue as the sea now. They could not change,” and Edwin Green peered into his offspring’s face with such intentness that the little thing began to whimper.
The proper indignation being expressed by the females and the baby dangled until smiles came and a crow, Mrs. Brown informed the ignorant father that all young animals have blue eyes and there is no determining the actual colour of a baby’s eyes until it is several months old, but that the minute brown or golden lights begin to appear in blue eyes, you can get ready to declare for a brown-eyed youngster.
“Well, she will surely have Molly’s hair,” he insisted.
“That we can’t tell, either,” said the all-knowing grandmother. “You see, she is almost bald now except for this tiny fringe that is rapidly being worn off in the back. That does seem a little pinkish.”
“Pinkish! Oh, Mother-in-law, what a word to express my Molly’s hair!”
“Can’t you see she is getting even with you for making Mildred almost cry?” laughed Molly. “I know she is going to have my hair because when you slip a little bit of blue under that little lock that is on the side, where it hasn’t rubbed off, the ‘pink’ comes out quite plainly. My Mildred will be a belle. I have always heard it said that a girl with brown eyes and golden hair is born to be a belle. Oh, yes, I will call the baby’s hair golden although I have always called my own red.”
“I don’t know whether I want her to be a belle or not,” objected Edwin. “She might be frivolous.”
“Frivolous with your eyes! Heavens, Daddy, she couldn’t be!”
Mrs. Brown contentedly smiled and rocked the baby, who crowed and cooed and kicked her pretty pink tootsies. The sun shone on the orchard home and a particularly obliging mocking bird burst into song from one of the gnarled old apple trees,