After the senior stunts, when Judy had succeeded in throwing the Major into another apoplectic fit of laughing by playing "Birdie's Dead" on the piano, it was time to go back to Fern Woods where they were to meet the wagons. While the girls were pinning on their hats the Major, in a voice husky from much laughing, asked Nance, as it happened to be, which girl had suggested the wreath he had seen at the foot of the oak tree. Nance pointed out Molly and the Major presently beckoned her to follow him into his library. Unlocking one of the desk drawers, he drew out a faded photograph. The picture showed a laughing, handsome boy not more than eighteen. His curly hair was ruffled all over his head as if he had just come in out of the wind, and his merry eyes looked straight into Molly's.
"That is Charlie," said the Major, looking over Molly's shoulder at the picture. "My younger brother, Charlie. His death was the greatest sorrow I have ever known. Poor Charlie! Poor boy!"
The old man turned away to hide the tears in his eyes and Molly laid the photograph back in the drawer.
"Charlie would have enjoyed all this even more than I have," went on the Major. "It would have been just what he would have done under the circumstances. I saw the wreath, you see, and it touched me very deeply."
"The girls will appreciate your kindness all the more when I tell them," said Molly, not knowing how else to express the sympathy she felt.
"Ah, well, it all happened half a century ago," he said, shaking her hand and patting it gently at the same time.
"He is a dear," thought Molly, following him into the hall.
She saw one other photograph in the Fern house that interested her. It was a picture of Professor Edwin Green, very elaborately framed, standing on a dressing table in one of the bedrooms.
Alice Fern kept well in the background while her mother and father and elder sister entertained the senior class of Wellington. She had done her duty by the lunch and she was not going to mingle in this crowd of unknowns.
"I never could bear a college romp," she had said to her mother who had remonstrated with her daughter.