Mollie crept nearer to the fire and gave another little shudder.
“It was—somebody else,” she returned, with a triumphant little half-laugh. “Guess who!”
“Who!” repeated Aimée. “Somebody else! It was not any one I know.”
“It was somebody Phil knows.”
The wise one arose and came to the fire herself.
“It was some one taller than Brown!”
“Brown!” echoed Mollie, with an air of supreme contempt. “He is twice as tall. Brown is only about five feet high, and he wears an overcoat ten times too big for him, and it flaps—yes, it flaps about his odious little heels. I should think it wasn't Brown. It was a gentleman.”
The wise one regarded her pretty, scornful face dubiously.
“Brown is n't so bad as all that implies, Mollie,” she said. “His coat is the worst part of him. But if it was n't Brown and it was n't Mr. Gowan, who was it?”
Mollie laughed and shrugged her shoulders again, and then looked up at her small inquisitor charmingly defiant.