“Are you glad we are going home, Lou—oh, I beg pardon, I forgot,” Dot cried, tenderly, as the hot flush mounted to Molly’s cheek.
“It does not matter,” the latter said, sadly, and Nina exclaimed:
“Do you know I think that your middle name—Ernestine—is beautiful? May we not call you by that? It is softer, I think, than the other.”
“As you please,” Molly answered, and Mrs. Laurens said, coldly:
“I think it will be a good idea, Nina. Ernestine is a more aristocratic name. I’m glad you suggested it.”
Then Dot began again:
“Are you glad, Ernestine, that we are going home so soon?”
“I did not know we were going,” she replied, faintly, wondering if Cecil was going to send her home alone.
Mrs. Laurens moved a little nearer, and said, in her usual cold tones:
“It is principally on your account we are going, that your child may be born at Maple Shade, where all the Laurens family have been born for almost a century.”