"Oh, Mrs. Brown, you are so good. I would love for mamma and papa to be here and to know all of you and have you know them. They are as wonderful in their way as you are in yours, and your meeting would be a grand combination."
Molly rather dreaded the coming of evening. She had promised Jimmy to take a walk with him by moonlight, and she had a terrible feeling that he might bring up the subject of "lemons" again. She was not prepared for the question that she felt almost sure he was going to ask her.
"I am nothing but a kid, after all," moaned Molly to herself. "Professor Green was right in calling me 'dear child.' Mother was married when she was my age, but somehow I can't seem to grow up. Jimmy is so nice, and I do like him so much, but as for spending the rest of my life with him--oh, I just simply can't contemplate it. Why, why doesn't he see how it is without having to talk it over? I wish none of them would ever get sentimental over me." And then she blushed and told herself that she was a big story teller and sentimentality from some one who should be nameless would not be so trying, after all.
Supper was over, Professor Green and Ernest had gone gaily off, driving Miss Rogers and Miss Ormsby to Louisville, Judy and Kent were making a long-talked-of duty call on Aunt Clay, "just to show Miss Hunt there is no hard feeling," laughed Judy. And now it was time to take the promised walk with Jimmy Lufton.
"You look a little tired, Miss Molly. Maybe you would rather not go. You must not let me bore you," said Jimmy, a little wistfully.
"Oh, no, I'm all right. I fancy it will take all of us a few days to get over last night. I have wanted to tell you how fine you were and what it meant to all of us to have you so cheerful and tactful. The boys can't say enough in your praise. We had to have some safety valve, and if we had not been laughing we might have been crying."
"Oh, I'm a cheerful idiot, all right, all right. I have such a short upper lip and such an eternal grin on me that no one ever seems to think I have any feelings. I get no more sympathy than a fat man. I wish I could make people understand that I am as serious as the next, but somehow me Irish grandmither comes popping out in me and I have to joke if I am to die the next minute."