"I'm not at all pleased with you," said Molly severely.
"How can you say such savage things! And me an orphan, too!
What's the trouble? What have I done?"
"You know perfectly well. Making fun of father like that."
"My dear girl, he loved it. Brainy badinage of that sort is exchanged every day in the best society. You should hear dukes and earls! The wit! the esprit! The flow of soul! Mine is nothing to it. What's this in the iron pot? Is this what you feed them? Queer birds, hens—I wouldn't touch the stuff for a fortune. It looks perfectly poisonous. Flock around, you pullets. Come in your thousands. All bad nuts returned, and a souvenir goes with every corpse. A little more of this putrescent mixture for you, sir. Certainly, pick up your dead, pick up your dead."
An unwilling dimple appeared on Molly's chin, like a sunbeam through clouds.
"All the same," she said, "you ought to be ashamed of yourself,
Jimmy."
"I haven't time when I find myself stopping in the same house with a girl I've been looking for for three years."
Molly looked away. There was silence for a moment.
"Used you ever to think of me?" she said quietly.
That curious constraint which had fallen upon Jimmy in the road came to him again, now, as sobering as a blow. Something which he could not define had changed the atmosphere. Suddenly in an instant, like a shallow stream that runs babbling over the stones into some broad, still pool, the note of their talk had deepened.