Molly looked doubtfully toward Judith.
“I don’t want to be like that young man in the rhyme,” she said.
“‘There was a young man so benighted,
He never knew when he was slighted.
He’d go to a party and eat just as hearty,
As if he’d been really invited.’”
Everybody laughed, and Judith suddenly becoming a model hostess, exclaimed:
“Indeed, you must stay, Molly, and have some lemonade. Richard didn’t make it at all. He only squeezed the lemons.”
Molly, therefore, remained and had a beautiful time, and when she really did take her departure the entire party, including Judith, escorted her across the moonlit campus to the door of Queen’s. But Molly was still certain that it was the ring episode and nothing else that made them all so polite and attentive.
And so she informed Nance and Judy that night as she unlocked her trunk for the third time in ten minutes to stuff in some overlooked belonging.
But Judy sniffed the air and exclaimed:
“Ring, nothing! It’s popularity!”
Molly smiled and went to bed, feeling that her last day at Wellington had been a decided improvement on the first one.