"I suppose Judy will think I'm dead," she thought, "but it won't do her any harm to be guessing about me for once."
She hoped the Professor would leave in a moment and go to his rooms. He had filled a short briar wood pipe and was leaning back in his chair musing, but he couldn't stay forever in Mrs. Brady's kitchen.
"Mrs. Brady, that was a very dainty and delicious little meal you prepared for me," she heard him say. "I was a bit low in my mind but I feel cheered up. A cup of coffee—if it's good—as this was—is often enough to restore a man's ambition." And now the kitchen was filled with the fragrance of tobacco smoke while the Professor mused in his chair, blowing out great clouds at intervals.
"A bachelor is a poor pitiful soul, sir," answered the woman; "now, if ye had a wife to look after ye, you'd be afther havin' the like breakfasts ivery mornin'."
The Professor blew out a ring of purple smoke and watched it float lazily in the air and gradually dissipate.
"Didn't you know I was a woman hater, Mrs. Brady?"
"Indade, I should think ye might be, seein' so many of them every day and all the time," answered the housekeeper sympathetically. "Too much of a good thing, sir. But, whin old age comes to ye, you'll miss 'em, sir. You'll miss a good wife to look after your comforts then."
"I've got something better than that for my old age, Mrs. Brady. I've got a bit of land; it's an orchard on the side of a hill sloping down to a brook——"
Molly, sitting on the pantry floor, felt a sudden jolt as if some one had shaken her by the shoulder. Faintness came over her and her heart beat so fast and loud she wondered that the two in the kitchen did not hear its palpitations.
"The trees bear plenty of apples; I'll have lots of fruit in my old age. I've only to hobble out and knock them down with my cane when I get too old to climb up and shake the limbs, and where once swung a hammock in my orchard I may build a little hut."