It was really the most delightful evening Molly had spent since she had been at Wellington. To Nance, it was the most delightful evening of her entire life and Judy, who always enjoyed the last time best of all, told Mrs. McLean when they left that she had never had a better time in her life.
After the dance, they sat around the big open fire, roasting chestnuts, while Dr. McLean sang a funny song called “Wee Wullie,” and Judy followed with an absurd “piece” on the piano called “Birdie’s Dead,” in schottische time, which sent them into shrieks of laughter and amused Dr. McLean so that he laid his head on his wife’s shoulder and wept with joy.
Sitting in the inglenook by the fireplace, Professor Green said to Molly:
“I have been waiting to say something to you, Miss Brown, and I will ask you to regard it as confidential.”
She looked up thinking perhaps it was the comic opera he was going to talk about, but she was vastly mistaken.
“When, as Botticelli’s Flora, you came to that night with the words, ‘I saw her——’ you did not guess, did you, that I, too, had seen her?”
They looked at each other and a flash of understanding passed between them. They now shared two secrets.
“I always wanted to tell you,” he continued in a low voice, “how much I admired your generous silence. You are a very remarkable young woman.”
With that the party broke up. Later, stretching her long slenderness in the three-quarter bed beside Judy, Molly smiled to herself, and decided that some older men were almost as nice as some young ones.