"Not when her hair curled like that and had glints of gold in it."
"You're teasing me because I'm only a sophomore," she said, and turned her head away.
"No, by Jove, I'm not though," protested Raymond Bellaire, looking much pained. But Molly was talking to Willie Stewart at her right.
That young man was the most correct individual in the matter of clothes, deportment and small talk she had ever seen. She thought of his splendid father, who had started life as a bootblack.
"I wonder if he's pleased with his fashion-plate son?" she pondered.
She didn't care for him or his friends. They were not like the jolly boys over at Exmoor, who talked about basket-ball and football, and swopped confidences regarding Latin and Greek and that awful French Literature examination, and what this professor was like, and what the Prexy said or was supposed to have said, and so on. It was all college gossip, but Molly enjoyed it and contributed her share eagerly. She tried a little of it on Brother Willie.
"Are you taking up Higher Math. this year, Mr. Stewart?" she asked.
"Oh, after a fashion," he answered. "I don't expect to stay at college after this year. I'm going to Paris to finish off."
Molly wondered what "Higher Math. after a fashion" really meant.
At the concert later it was a relief to find herself next to Professor Green, who had scarcely looked in her direction all through dinner. At first she felt a little embarrassed, sitting next to the Professor, who was a great man at Wellington. She began silently to admire the packed audience of young girls in light dresses with a generous sprinkling of young men in evening clothes.