"Molly, for heaven's sake, go to Judy. I think she's losing her mind. She has overstudied and it has affected her brain. I can't do anything with her at all."
"What?" cried Molly, rushing down the hall, her long, gray wrapper trailing after her in voluminous folds.
She opened Judy's door unceremoniously and marched in.
The room looked as if a cyclone had struck it. The contents of the bureau drawers were dumped onto the floor; the closet was emptied, clothes and books piled about on the bed and chairs, and Judy's two trunks filled up what floor space remained.
Judy herself was working feverishly. She had packed a layer of books in one of the trunks and was now folding up her best dresses.
"Julia Kean, what are you doing?" cried Molly in a stern voice.
"Don't bother me now. There's a dear. I'm in a dreadful hurry."
Molly shook her violently by the shoulder. She had a feeling that Judy was asleep and must be waked up.
"Get up from there this minute and answer my question," she commanded.
"What was your question?" asked Judy with an embarrassed little laugh. "Oh, yes, you asked what I was doing. I should think you could see I wasn't gathering cowslips on the campus."
"Are you running away, Judy?" asked Molly, trying another tack.
"Yes, my Mariucci," cried Judy, quoting a popular song, "'_I'm gona packa my trunk and taka my monk and sail for sunny It._'"
Molly refused even to smile at this witticism.
"I know what you're doing," she exclaimed. "You are running away from examinations. You're a coward. You are no better than a deserter from the army in time of war. It's bad enough in time of peace, but just before the battle--I'm so ashamed and disappointed in you that I can hardly understand how I ever could have loved you so much."
Judy went on stolidly packing, rolling her clothes into little bundles and stuffing them in anywhere she could find a place between her numerous books.
"Have you lost your nerve, Judy, dear?" said Molly, after a minute, kneeling down beside her friend and seizing her hands.
"I suppose so," said Judy, extricating her hands, and speaking in a hard, strained voice in an effort to keep from breaking down. "I'd rather not stay here and be disgraced by flunking, but there's another reason beside that, Molly. I know I look like a deserter and deserve to be shot, but there's another reason," she wailed; "there's another good reason."