Mollie didn’t answer; but she tucked some pink roses in her belt. “It doesn’t really matter about me, anyway,” she decided. “I can’t expect these grown-up boys to dance with me. I will just stay by Miss Sallie.”
“All right, little Miss Wall-flower,” laughed Bab, as she pinned on a knot of blue that Ralph Ewing had asked her to wear, as a tribute to the Yale colors.
It was Mollie, after all, who was the belle of the party. Perhaps this was because the other girls whispered to their partners that Mollie was afraid nobody would dance with her; or, perhaps, because she was the youngest, and the best dancer among them all.
“I am going to take this little lady under my special protection at Newport,” Mrs. Cartwright said to Miss Stuart, late that evening. “I don’t mean my ‘butterfly girl’ to be losing her beauty sleep.”
Mollie looked at her “lovely lady” with eyes as blue as myrtle blossoms. Mrs. Cartwright was so exquisite, so young and so wealthy, she seemed to Mollie to have stepped out of a book.
Miss Sallie was vainly trying to collect her four charges all at once, in order to take them home.
“Aunt Sallie,” Hugh Post said roguishly, as that lady made a last determined stand, and gathered her girls together, “you know, from your experience yesterday, that Miss Ruth can’t handle a motor car, even though she can tackle a burglar. So we are going to follow you in my automobile to-morrow and see that you get to New London all right.”
“Oh, no, you’re not,” protested Ruth. “This I will have you know is an automobile girls’ excursion and nary a man allowed.”
“This one time, kindly permit us to follow you at a respectful distance, won’t you?” Hugh urged. “It’s only a short trip to New London. To tell you the truth, the governor’s yacht is over there and I hope to be able to persuade you to go aboard. It is not disrespectful of me, Miss Stuart, to speak so of my father; he was once governor of the state, and he rather likes to be reminded of it. Mother has a number of friends on board the yacht, and we shall be cruising up to Newport in a few days. I think it would be jolly for father and mother to know you.”