Molly had thought it would be impossible for her to go to New York to meet the incoming steamer with its precious cargo, but Edwin had declared she should go; so little Mildred was taken on the jaunt as well, with the eager Katy as nurse. Kizzie was already installed as cook and Katy was proving a most careful and reliable nurse. Molly was looking and behaving more like herself and no longer had to let her patient husband go off to his lectures like a bachelor with no wife to pour his coffee.
“And now, you and Kent and Mr. and Mrs. Kean must all come to Wellington to visit us,” announced the hospitable Molly. “Mustn’t they, Edwin?”
“Indeed they must,” said Edwin obediently, but in his heart wondering where Molly would put all of them. The old red house on the campus was large but had not very many rooms. The young professor could never quite get used to the Browns and their unbounded hospitality. His favorite story was one on his mother-in-law; how, when one of her sons brought home the whole football team to spend the night, she calmly took the top mattresses off all the beds (the beds at Chatsworth were fortunately equipped with box mattresses and top mattresses) and made up pallets on the floor, thereby doubling the sleeping capacity of her hospitable mansion.
“I can’t come, Molly,—mighty sorry,” said Kent, “but my job must be held down now. They have kept it open for me long enough.”
“And I stay with Kent!” declared Judy.
“Hurrah, hurrah! Her mother’s own daughter!” cried the delighted Bobby. “I was wondering what kind of wife my girl would make; now I know. I wouldn’t take anything for that: ‘I stay with Kent.’”
“Oh, I’m going to be terribly domestic. I found that out while I was living with the Tricots. What’s more, I can make tarts—the best ever. I can hardly wait to get a flat and a pastry board to make some for Kent.”
“You might use your drawing board for a pastry board,” teased her father. “I fancy art is through with.”
“Through with, indeed! Why, Bobby, I am astonished and ashamed of you! I am going to paint all the time that I am not making tarts, and what time is left, I am going to knit socks and make bandages for the wounded.”
“And poor me! When do I come in?” asked Kent.