"Then, I've had some luck, too," said Molly, making an effort to keep the Professor from seeing how really joyously happy she was. "Some perfectly delightful and charming person has bought my two acres of apple orchard at last, and I shall not be down at O'Reilly's next winter. I'm going to be in the Quadrangle with the others. Isn't it wonderful?"
The Professor looked at her with his quizzical brown eyes; then he shook hands with her again.
"Does it really make you very happy?" he asked.
"Oh, you can't think!" she cried. "You can never know how relieved and happy I am. I've been walking on air all day. I shall always feel that the man who bought that orchard did it just for me, although of course he has never heard of me. Some day I am going to thank him, myself."
"You are?" he asked, "and how will you thank him?"
"Why," she replied, "why, I think I'll just give him a hug. I have a feeling that he's an old gentleman."
The Professor sat down in his chair very suddenly and began to laugh, and he was still laughing when Molly sped down the corridor to the door into the court. She did not see him again until the day of the farewell tea in the garden of O'Reilly's.
* * * And it is in the garden that we will leave our girls now, at the close of their sophomore year.
They look very charming in their long white dresses, dispensing tea and lemonade and sandwiches to the small company of guests. It is the last time we shall see the old Queen's circle as a separate group. O'Reilly's had filled the need of the moment, but the friends agreed that nothing could ever take the place of Queen's unless it were the long-coveted quarters in the dormitories behind the twin gray towers of Wellington.
There we shall find them during "Molly Brown's Junior Days," living broader and less secluded lives in the fine old Quadrangle which had always been the center of interest and influence at Wellington College and now promised to add a unique chapter to her history.