and iron gray hair,
but he bore a youthful look that made one feel he had not the right of
years to the gray hair. His expression was gloomy and not altogether
pleasant, but when he smiled he displayed a row of dazzling white teeth
and his eyes lost the sad look and held the smile long after his mouth
had closed with a determined click.

"'Duty before pleasure,' as King Richard said when he killed the old
king before a-smothering of the babies," said Molly as she finished Aunt
Clay's letter and opened Edwin Green's. What a nice letter it was to be
sure! She laughed aloud over his wanting to throw Rosetti at the girl
and blushed with pleasure at the compliment to her reading of the
blessed Damozel, for well she knew whom he had in mind. His praise of
Melissa would have merely pleased her as praise of her friends always
did, had she not already been somewhat disturbed by what Dicky Blount
had said to her of Professor Edwin Green and the beautiful mountain
girl.

"I am a silly girl and intend to put all such foolish notions out of my
head," declared Molly to herself. "Surely Professor Green has as much
right to make friends as I have, and I intend to know as many people and
like as many as I can. I am not the least bit in love with Edwin
Green,--but somehow I don't think he and Melissa are suited to one
another."

As the young girl sat reading over her letter, a feeling of sadness and
loneliness took possession of her and, looking up, she surprised a
furtive tear in her mother's eye. Mrs. Brown was reading a letter from
her married daughter Mildred, then living in Iowa where her husband
Crittenden Rutledge was at work as a bridge engineer.

The cabin had begun to fill with people who were leaving decks and
staterooms to hunt up their letters and belongings and generally prepare
themselves for a ten-day trip on the Atlantic.

"Mother, they say this is a small steamer, but it seems huge to me! Did
you ever see so many strange people? I don't believe we ever shall know
any of them. They all of them look at home and I feel so far from home.
Don't you?"

"Now, Molly, please don't get blue or I shall have to weep outright. Of
course we shall come to know most of the passengers and no doubt will
find many charming persons ready to know and like us. Suppose we hurry
up with our letters and go on deck again."

Just then a young man bounded into the cabin, made a hasty survey of the
crowd and came rapidly over to the dark g