"I think you are wonderful," cried Molly. "I should never even have hoped to make anything like that go."
"It's Madeleine who is the wonder," broke in Judith loyally. "She has the brains and energy of a real genius."
"Are you down at O'Reilly's this winter? I haven't seen either one of you to speak to before."
"Oh, yes, we have the same old rooms. I'm working up in two or three different subjects and taking a course in physical culture with a view to teaching it. You know, we are going to open a school, Madeleine and I?"
"Where?" demanded Molly, filled with interest in her old-time enemy's schemes.
"We don't know yet. It may be in the South. Madeleine has two more years here. I shall go to Paris next year for a course at the Sorbonne, so that I shall be up in French by the time we are ready to start."
Molly was almost too amazed over the change Madeleine had wrought in Judith to comment politely on the glowing future Judith mapped out for herself. She recalled how Judith had once insulted the little Southern girl at a Sophomore ball, and she remembered how Madeleine had said: "I shall make a friend of her, yet. You'll see."
"I wish I could make plans and stick to them," Molly thought. "How can I ever get anywhere when I don't even know where I want to get? If I am not to teach school, then what am I to do?"
Many times a day Molly asked herself this question. There were times during the summer when she heard the call still infinitely far away to write, and on hot afternoons when the others were napping she would steal down to the big cool parlor with a pencil and pad. Here in the quiet of the darkened room, with strained mind and thoughts on tiptoe for inspiration, she would try to write, but the stories were crude and childish. Sometimes she would read over Professor Green's letter of advice about writing. "Be as simple and natural as if you were writing a letter," he had said, and her efforts to be natural and simple were invariably elaborately studied and self-conscious.
"I don't see why I want to do what I can't do," she would cry with despair in her heart, and then the next day perhaps she would try it again.
So it was that Molly had a feeling of unrest that was quite new to her. It was like entertaining a stranger within the gates to admit this unfamiliar spirit into her mind. And now, as she parted with Judith with a friendly handclasp, she felt the dissatisfaction more keenly than ever before.