"Would you ask him, dear?"
"Well, I don't think I would," replies Marcia, with a rather forced laugh; "for this reason, that it would not be of the slightest use. I might as well ask him for the moon. If there is one thing he distinctly abhors, it is a ball."
"But he might go to bed early, if he wished," persists Cecil; "none of us would interfere or find fault with that arrangement. We would try and spare him, dear old thing. I don't see why our enjoyment should put him out in the least, if he would only be reasonable. I declare I have a great mind to ask him myself."
"Do," says Molly, eagerly, who is struck with admiration at the entire idea, having never yet been to a really large ball.
"I would rather somebody else tried it first," confesses Cecil, with a frank laugh. "A hundred times I have made up my mind to ask a favor of him, but when I found myself face to face with him, and he fixed me with his eagle eye, I quailed. Molly, you are a new importation; try your luck."
"Well, I don't mind if I do," says Molly, valiantly. "He can't say worse than 'No.' And here he is, coming slowly along under the balcony. Shall I seize the present opportunity and storm the citadel out of hand? I am sure if I wait I shall be like Bob Acres and find my courage oozing out through my fingers."
"Then don't," says Cecil. "If he molests you badly, I promise to interfere."
Molly steps on to the balcony, and, looking down, awaits the slow and languid approach of her grandfather. Just as he arrives beneath her she bends over until he, attracted by her presence, looks up.
She is laughing down upon him, bent on conquest, and has a blood-red rose in one hand. She waves it slightly to and fro, as though uncertain, as though dallying about giving utterance to some thought that pines for freedom.
The old man, pausing, looks up at her, and, looking, sighs,—perhaps for his dead youth, perhaps because she so much resembles her mother, disowned and forgotten.