"On with the dance, then, let joy be unconfined," cried Andy. "We'll call for you at a quarter of eight, girls—at O'Reilly's, you say? I'll have to trot along now and tell the mater."
The three boys hurried off while Molly and Judy rushed home to look over their party clothes.
"Isn't life a pleasant thing, after all?" exclaimed Judy, and Molly readily agreed that it was.
Such a jolly impromptu Christmas Eve party as it was that night at the McLeans'! Mrs. McLean had a niece visiting her from Scotland, an interesting girl with snappy brown eyes and straight dark hair. She was rather strangely dressed, Molly thought, in a red merino with a high white linen collar and a black satin tie, and she looked at Molly and Judy in their pretty evening gowns with evident disapproval. Just as Jimmy Lufton and Molly had completed the glide waltz for the fifth time that evening and had sunk down on a sofa breathless, the parlor door opened and in walked Professor Edwin Green, looking as well as he had ever looked in his life, with a fine glow of color in his cheeks.
"My dear Professor!" cried Mrs. McLean.
"Ed, I thought you were going to spend Christmas in the south," exclaimed his brother.
"You are a disobedient young man," ejaculated the doctor,—all in one chorus.
"Don't scold the returned wanderer," said the Professor, glancing about the room swiftly until he caught Molly's eye, and then smiling and nodding. "It's dangerous for convalescents to be bored, and realizing that Christmas in the tropics might bring on a relapse, I decided to lose no time in getting back home."
"And glad we are to see you, lad," said the doctor, seizing his hand and shaking it warmly. "You did quite right to come back before the ennui got in its work. It's worse than the fever."
Molly left Jimmy Lufton's side to shake hands with the Professor, and then the Professor remembered the young newspaper man and greeted him cordially, and after that all the company went back into the dining-room for hot chocolate and sandwiches. And here it was that all the mischief started which came very near to breaking up the great friendship that existed between Molly and the Professor.