MOLLY BROWN OF KENTUCKY

CHAPTER PAGE

I A LETTER 5

II THE ORCHARD HOME 19

III KENT BROWN 37

IV AFTERNOON TEA 51

V LETTERS FROM PARIS AND BERLIN 61

VI AT THE TRICOTS' 80

VII A MOTHER'S FAITH 99

VIII DES HALLES 112

IX THE AMERICAN MAIL 123

X THE ZEPPELIN RAID 132

XI "L'HIRONDELLE DE MER" 138

XII TUTNO 147

XIII THE "SIGNY" 160

XIV THE CABLEGRAM 167

XV WELLINGTON AGAIN 185

XVI IRISHMAN'S CURTAINS 200

XVII HEROES AND HERO WORSHIPERS 221

XVIII CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE 246

XIX WASTED DYE 263

XX A WAR BRIDE 270

XXI THE FLIGHT 283

XXII THE WEDDING BREAKFAST 296

XXIII THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER 304




Molly Brown of Kentucky.




CHAPTER I.

A LETTER.


From Miss Julia Kean to Mrs. Edwin Green.

Giverny, France,
August, 1914.

Dearest old Molly Brown of Kentucky:

You can marry a million Professor Edwin Greens, B.A., M.A., Ph.D., L.D.
(the last stands for lucky dog), and you can also have a million little
Green Olive Branches, but you will still be Molly Brown of Kentucky to
all of your old friends.

I came up to Giverny last week with the Polly Perkinses. They are great
fun and, strange to say, get on rather better than most married folks.
Jo is much meeker than we ever thought she could be, now that she has
made Polly cut his hair and has let her own grow out. Polly is more
manly, too, I think and asserts himself occasionally, much to Jo's
delight. I should not be at all astonished if his falsetto voice turned
into a baritone, if not a deep bass. He walks with quite a swagger and
talks about my wife this and my wife that in such masculine pride that
you would not know him.

Paris was rather excited when we came through last week. I have been at
Quimperle all summer and only stopped in Paris long enough to get some
paints and canvas. I had actually painted out. Jo had written me to join
her in this little housekeeping scheme at Giverny. I wish you could see
the house we have taken. It is too wonderful that it is ours! Such peace
and quiet! Especially so, after the turmoil in Paris. I have seen so few
papers that I hardly know what it is all about; no doubt you in Kentucky
with your _Courier Journal_ know more than I do. They talk of war, but
of course that is nonsense. Anyhow, if there is a war, I bet I am going
to be Johnny on the Spot. But of course there won't be one.

I miss Kent,--but I need hardly tell you that. I almost gave in and
sailed with him, but it was much best for me to wait in France for my
mother and father. They are now in Berlin waiting for the powers that be
to give some kind of a permit for some kind of a road that Bobby is to
build from Constantinople to the interior; that is, he is to build it if
he can get the permission of the Imperial Government. What the Germans
have to do with Turkey, you can search me, but that is what Bobby writes
me. He has done a lot of work on it already in the way of preliminary
plans. I am to hang around until I hear from them, so I am going to hang
around with the Polly Perkinses.

No doubt Kent is home by this time. I envy him, somehow. It is so
wonderful to have a home to go to. Now isn't that a silly line of talk
for Judy Kean to be getting off, I, who have always declared that a
Gypsy van was my idea of bliss? I never have had a home and I never
have wanted one until lately. I fancy that winter in Paris with your
mother in the Rue Brea was my undoing. Of course, if Bobby had been
anything but a civil engineer and Mamma had been anything but so much
married to Bobby that she had to trot around with him from one end of
the earth to the other, why then, I might have had a home. But Bobby is
Bobby and he wouldn't have been himself doing anything but building
roads, and I certainly would not have had Mamma let him build them all
by his lonesome. The truth of the matter is, I was a mistake. I
should either never have been born or I should have been born a boy.
Geewhillikins!