“Yours sincerely,
“Andrew McLean, 2d.”
Of course, she would have to give up the walk now, but it was pleasant to have been remembered and perhaps he would come again.
That night at supper Nance was unusually bright and talkative. She answered all the many questions concerning her famous mother so easily and pleasantly that even Margaret Wakefield must have been deceived.
The two sophomores at Queen’s were giving a dance that evening, and while the girls sat in the long sitting room waiting for the guests to arrive, Judy took occasion to whisper to Molly:
“Why should she have to appear at the lecture, anyhow?”
“Because it would be disrespectful not to,” answered Molly. “She must be there, of course. Would you go gallivanting off with a young man if your mother was going to give a lecture here?”
“I should say not; but that’s different.”
“No, no,” persisted Molly; “it’s never different when it’s your mother, even when she doesn’t behave like one. Can’t you see that Nance would rather die than have people know that her mother isn’t exactly like other mothers?”
The next day was one of the busiest in the week for Molly. Two of her morning hours she spent coaching Judy in Latin. Then there were her lace collars to be done up, her stockings to be darned; a trip to be made to the library, where she stood in line for more than twenty minutes waiting for a certain volume of the Encyclopædia Britannica, and spent more than an hour extracting notes on “Norse Mythology.” It was well on toward lunch time when she finally hastened across the campus to Queen’s to fill some orders for “cloud-bursts,” which were intended to be part of the refreshments for certain Saturday evening suppers.
So weary was she and so intent on getting through in what she called “schedule time,” that she almost ran into Professor Edwin Green before she even recognized him.