Molly spoke quietly, but there was a slight tremor of lip and a deepening of color that the sharp Judy saw and noted, but nothing would have made her let Molly know that she had betrayed herself in the least.
“Molly was perfectly unconscious of what she was doing last night,” thought Judy, “but all the same she was making poor Professor Green live up to his name with jealousy. I don’t know but it might make Molly open her childlike old eyes if the patient professor should kick up his staid heels and jump the fence and go grazing in another paddock for a while.” And then aloud she said, “All right, honey, I’ll take forty winks and then get up and come down to the tennis court.”
Mr. Kean’s letter arrived in due time and, sure enough, Mrs. Woodsmall’s surmises were correct. He was on the way to Kentucky with Mrs. Kean, and expected to be in Louisville the next day at a hotel, and would motor out to Chatsworth in the afternoon.
“Your father and mother must not think of stopping at a hotel, Judy,” declared Mrs. Brown. “We have an abundance of room. Miss Rogers and Miss Ormsby are going in town after supper to-night with Ernest and Professor Green. Mr. Lufton expects to go back to Lexington to-morrow, and Professor Green is only waiting for some mail and will take his departure, too. We shall be forlorn, indeed, when all of them go. I’ll make Kent look up what train Mr. Kean will come in on and he will meet it and send them both right out here.”
“Oh, Mrs. Brown, you are so good. I would love for mamma and papa to be here and to know all of you and have you know them. They are as wonderful in their way as you are in yours, and your meeting would be a grand combination.”
Molly rather dreaded the coming of evening. She had promised Jimmy to take a walk with him by moonlight, and she had a terrible feeling that he might bring up the subject of “lemons” again. She was not prepared for the question that she felt almost sure he was going to ask her.
“I am nothing but a kid, after all,” moaned Molly to herself. “Professor Green was right in calling me ‘dear child.’ Mother was married when she was my age, but somehow I can’t seem to grow up. Jimmy is so nice, and I do like him so much, but as for spending the rest of my life with him—oh, I just simply can’t contemplate it. Why, why doesn’t he see how it is without having to talk it over? I wish none of them would ever get sentimental over me.” And then she blushed and told herself that she was a big story teller and sentimentality from some one who should be nameless would not be so trying, after all.
Supper was over, Professor Green and Ernest had gone gaily off, driving Miss Rogers and Miss Ormsby to Louisville, Judy and Kent were making a long-talked-of duty call on Aunt Clay, “just to show Miss Hunt there is no hard feeling,” laughed Judy. And now it was time to take the promised walk with Jimmy Lufton.
“You look a little tired, Miss Molly. Maybe you would rather not go. You must not let me bore you,” said Jimmy, a little wistfully.
“Oh, no, I’m all right. I fancy it will take all of us a few days to get over last night. I have wanted to tell you how fine you were and what it meant to all of us to have you so cheerful and tactful. The boys can’t say enough in your praise. We had to have some safety valve, and if we had not been laughing we might have been crying.”