's lessons, I'm going to give myself a holiday.
I'm going to read--poetry--lots of it, all I want, and to sit in the
library and think. I'm going to take long walks alone. It will be like
seeing the last of a dear friend, because Wellington will not be
Wellington to me when I am installed at O'Reilly's."

Hardly half a dozen girls remained at college that Christmas, and Molly
was glad that she knew them only by sight. She was almost glad that the
doctor and Mrs. McLean had taken Andy south. She could not explain this
unusual lack of sociability on her part, but she did not want to be
asked anywhere. It was a pleasure to sit with Otoyo at one end of the
long table in Queen's dining room, and talk about the good times they
had been having. As for the future, Molly hung a thick veil between
these quiet days and the days to come. Through it dimly she could see
the bare little room at O'Reilly's, sometimes, but whenever this vision
rose in her mind, she resolutely began to think of something else.

It would be time enough to look it in the face at the end of the
semester, when she must break the news to Nance and Judy and pack her
things for the move.

Most of the girls had left on Saturday, and it seemed to Molly that
Sunday was the quietest day of her whole life. Scarcely a dozen persons
appeared at the Chapel for Vespers and the responses had to be spoken,
the choir having departed for the holidays. Monday was Christmas Eve,
and on that morning Mrs. Murphy, kind, good-natured soul that she was,
carried Molly's breakfast to her room with a pile of letters from home.
Molly read them while she drank her coffee, and saw plainly through
their thinly veiled attempts at cheerfulness. It was evident that her
family's fortunes were at a low ebb. Her mother was glad that Miss
Walker had arranged for her to stay at college and she hoped Molly would
be happy in her new quarters.

Molly finished her dressing.

"If I could only _do_ something," she said to herself fiercely as she
pinned on the blue tam, buttoned up her sweater and started out for a
walk. Otoyo, that model of industry, was deep in her lessons as Molly
passed her door.

"I'll be back for lunch, Otoyo," she called as she hurried downstairs.

She had no sooner left the house than Queen's Cottage became the scene
of the most surprising activities. Little Otoyo leaped to her feet as if
she had unexpectedly sat on a hornet's nest and trotted downstairs as
fast as her