"Why not come with me and keep my room tidy? Now that Denis Quirk is home you have no call to be spending your life slaving for the old man."
A hammering at the door prevented Kathleen O'Connor from replying.
"A gentleman would be asking to see you--Mr. Cairns," Mrs. Gorman answered from the passage.
"Now, what would he be wanting with me?" asked Molly. "Tell him I am coming," she cried. "Am I tidy, Kathleen?"
"Of course you are," replied Kathleen. "I will put the smaller things in your bag for you while you entertain him."
Molly found Cairns waiting for her in the passage. Always punctilious in his dress to-day he was exceptionally spruce, his tie very new, and clothes without one crease.
"Come into the garden, Molly," he said, and there was an unaccustomed nervousness in his voice that caused Molly to ask:
"Oh, yes--perfectly well," he answered. "Why do you ask?"
"You look pale, and there is a kind of a quiver in your voice," she answered as they strolled to a seat in the garden that overlooked the town, a favourite place for Father Healy when saying his Office.
"Sit down and rest yourself," Molly advised. "You get no peace down there in the office. Denis Quirk believes you are all machinery like himself."
But Cairns remained standing behind the seat on which she sat. After a short silence Molly Healy asked:
"Now, what are you doing to my hair? Do be leaving it alone; it is untidy enough already."
"Molly," he said, and his voice caused her to turn suddenly.
"I knew you were ill," she said. "It's the rest cure that would be doing you good. Denis Quirk has overworked you."
"Serious? There is no need for me to be serious. Your face is solemn enough for the whole town. Just let my hair alone. There it was just put up in a hurry and you have pulled it down."
Molly had glorious brown hair, her one real beauty, and she rose with it falling in waves to her waist.
"If you only knew the work it is to build it up you would be down on your knees begging forgiveness of me," she cried.
"If you only knew that," he began, and ended with a mumbled "that I love you?"
Molly Healy dropped her hair and gazed at him in absolute surprise.
"Did you come all this way to joke with me?" she asked.
"Please take me seriously for once," said Cairns. "I don't want you to go away from Grey Town if I can keep you here."
