"Why? What for? Why are we going?"
"I didn't say you. I said I was. Papa and mamma mean to take me with them. And Den too."
"And not—me!"
Molly held up her head resolutely, trying not to let even her lips quiver. She gazed hard at the opposite wall.
Roy was far too much absorbed with his own prospects to notice her distress. To leave Molly for the delights of foreign travel meant nothing to him, though, had she been the one to go, and he the one to stay behind, he would no doubt have felt differently. In all their lives the twins had never yet been separated for more than one or two nights. Naturally, however, when the first real separation came, it would mean more to the girl than to the boy. Roy had to the full a boy's love of novelty.
"We shall go over the sea, and then I shall know how the sailors feel. If I wasn't going to be a soldier I should want to be a sailor; but of course I'm going to be what papa and Den are, and I like that best, only I've got to wait longer for it. And we shall stay in Paris, and there will be mounseers everywhere. Won't that be funny? And I shall write and tell you all about it"—as her silence dawned upon him. "And you'll have Jack and Polly, you know."
"If I was going to Paris, would you think Jack and Polly enough instead?" demanded Molly, out of her sore heart, still staring fixedly at the wall. A great lump was struggling in her throat.
"But you're not going, and I am. And you and Jack can have fun together."
"Jack's grown up; he isn't a boy, like you." Molly would have liked much to add, "He isn't my twin, Roy," but at the bare idea of saying such words her whole heart seemed to rise up in one huge billow, and very nearly swamped her self-control. She had to clench her hands and to bite her lips fiercely. If Roy did not care about leaving her, she was not going to let him see that she cared about losing him.
Roy seated himself astride on a chair, with his face to the back, and told his tale. He described his position outside the drawing-room window, and related the stray words which had reached his ears, making no secret of the fact that he had done his best to hear more. A glitter appeared in Molly's eyes, as she listened, and when the story was ended she said, with a catch of her breath—