"So you see, my dear," he finished, "that this party is really Charlie's party. We are doing it for his sake. It would be just the sort of thing he would have done himself. I remember he brought his entire class home once to Sunday morning breakfast. He had invited them and forgotten to mention it to Mother."
"And they made a wreath for him?" asked Mrs. Fern irrelevantly, as she wiped a tear from her eye.
The Major blinked and went on slicing ham industriously.
"It's as fresh in my mind as if it had happened yesterday," he said presently in a low voice.
"How handsome and gay he was," added his wife, sighing, as she counted out a pile of napkins.
And now there came the sound of singing in front of the house. The seniors had arrived and were serenading the Major and his family. "Wellington, my Wellington," they sang, and Mrs. Fern paused in her counting to listen to the song she herself had sung as a girl.
"Listen to the children, they are serenading us, Major. Do come out with me and meet them."
The Major laid down his carving knife and fork and followed his wife to the front door, and presently the girls found themselves in the comfortable, sunny parlor of the big old house that seemed to ramble off at each side into wings and meander back into other additions in the rear. They forgot their grievances in the fun of that lunch party. By the miracle which always provides for generosity to give, there was plenty of lunch, just as Molly had predicted.
"It wasn't a very difficult guess," she observed to Nance. "If you had lived in the country and were subject to unexpected arrivals, you'd know just how to go about getting up an impromptu meal for a lot of people."
As for the good old Major, he was quite determined to enjoy himself. He wanted to hear all the college jokes and songs. He even told some Exmoor jokes, and after each joke he laughed until his face turned an apoplectic red and the tears rolled down his cheeks. Mrs. Fern laughed, too. She was an old Wellington girl and her eldest daughter, Natalie, had graduated from the college a year before Molly had entered. It had been a great disappointment to Mrs. Fern that Alice, the youngest daughter, was not inclined to college and had gone to a fashionable boarding school.