“To-morrow morning?” repeated Richard Blount. “Wasn’t it lucky for me you happened in to-night. I had expected to call on you to-morrow afternoon, and think how disappointed I should have been to have found the nest empty and the bird flown.”
“So you are really off to-morrow?” broke in Professor Green. “I am so sorry. I was going to ask you to have tea in the Cloisters with my sister and me in the afternoon.”
Again Molly smiled to herself. Tea in the Cloisters, with a distinguished professor and his charming sister! Only nine months before she had been a lonely, shivering little waif of a freshman locked in the Cloisters. The words of the sophomore “croak” came back to her:
“They have locked me in the Cloisters;
They have fastened up the gate.
Oh, let me out! Oh, let me out!
It’s growing very late.”
“I am sorry that my ticket is bought and my berth engaged, and the expressman coming for my trunk to-morrow at nine,” she said. “If all those things were not so, I should love to drink soup——” she stopped and flushed a deep red.
What absurd trick of the mind had made her say “soup”? “I mean tea,” she went on hastily, hoping no one had heard the break.
Miss Green was talking with Mary Stewart. Richard Blount was twirling on the piano stool, his hands deep in his pockets, and Judith was engaged at a side table in pouring lemonade into glasses.
There was a twinkle of amusement in the Professor’s brown eyes, and he gave Molly a delightful smile.
“I must be going,” she said anxiously, rising.
“Not till you’ve had a glass of lemonade, for I made it myself,” said Richard, gallantly handing her one on a plate.