Molly had glorious brown hair, her one real beauty, and she rose with it falling in waves to her waist.
"If you only knew the work it is to build it up you would be down on your knees begging forgiveness of me," she cried.
"If you only knew that," he began, and ended with a mumbled "that I love you?"
Molly Healy dropped her hair and gazed at him in absolute surprise.
"Did you come all this way to joke with me?" she asked.
"Please take me seriously for once," said Cairns. "I don't want you to go away from Grey Town if I can keep you here."
Molly had fixed her hair up in haste. It formed a great tower on her head, for she needed time to arrange it in order. Slowly dawning surprise crept into her eyes as he spoke, surprise with perhaps a not unnatural triumph.
"I really believe you are in earnest," she said; "but I can't understand it. They call me 'plain Molly Healy,' and I believe it from what the glass tells me."
"In my eyes you are beautiful," he replied.
"No blarney, if you please," she said. "I don't love you, and that is a fact, Mr. Cairns. But I will think of you—and perhaps—that is, if you don't find someone else in the meantime—when I come back——."