Miss Green was talking with Mary Stewart. Richard Blount was twirling on the piano stool, his hands deep in his pockets, and Judith was engaged at a side table in pouring lemonade into glasses.
There was a twinkle of amusement in the Professor's brown eyes, and he gave Molly a delightful smile.
"I must be going," she said anxiously, rising.
"Not till you've had a glass of lemonade, for I made it myself," said Richard, gallantly handing her one on a plate.
"I don't want to be like that young man in the rhyme," she said.
"'There was a young man so benighted, He never knew when he was slighted. He'd go to a party and eat just as hearty, As if he'd been really invited.'"
Everybody laughed, and Judith suddenly becoming a model hostess, exclaimed:
"Indeed, you must stay, Molly, and have some lemonade. Richard didn't make it at all. He only squeezed the lemons."
Molly, therefore, remained and had a beautiful time, and when she really did take her departure the entire party, including Judith, escorted her across the moonlit campus to the door of Queen's. But Molly was still certain that it was the ring episode and nothing else that made them all so polite and attentive.
And so she informed Nance and Judy that night as she unlocked her trunk for the third time in ten minutes to stuff in some overlooked belonging.
Molly smiled and went to bed, feeling that her last day at Wellington had been a decided improvement on the first one.
The next morning Queen's Cottage was a pandemonium of trunks and bags and excited young women, rushing up and down the halls. Cries could be heard from every room in the house of:
"The laundress hasn't brought my shirtwaists! Perfidious woman!"
"I can't get this top down and the trunk man's waiting!"
"Oh, dear, do hurry! We'll miss the bus!"
"Young ladies, the bus is coming," called the voice of Mrs. Markham from the front door.
And then, with a fluttering of handkerchiefs and many a last call of "good-bye," the bus-load of girls moved sedately down the avenue.
Molly, looking back at the twin gray towers of Wellington, understood why Frances Andrews wanted so much to return.
"How glad I am to be only a sophomore," she cried. "I shall have three more years at Wellington!"