"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:
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."
"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:
"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.