for romance.

The gong rang for dinner and there was a general move toward the cabin.

"Please tell Mother I am all right and will sit here while she is at
dinner, and that she must not hurry. I believe 'discretion would be the
better part of valor' for me and I had better not try to eat anything
more for a while."

After the deck was clear except for a few helplessly, hopelessly sick
persons who lay like mummies in their chairs, ranged along the deck,
Molly decided to get up and walk around a little, feeling anxious to try
her sea legs. Then as the wind had shifted, she determined to move her
chair to a sheltered nook behind one of the life-boats. She bundled
herself up in her rug, pulling the corner of it over her head and lay
for all the world like the rest of the mummies. "Only, thank goodness, I
am no longer sick," she thought gratefully.

Her soul was at peace, after the night and day of agony, and she dropped
off easily into a doze. She dreamed that she was at home in the old
apple tree that they had called "The Castle" and that Kent was gently
shaking the tree, trying to make her get out so Professor Green could
build his bungalow there; and when she refused and declared it was her
Castle and she intended to stay in it, the Professor himself had come,
with his kind brown eyes looking into hers, and said: "But, Miss Molly,
the bungalow is yours, too, and the Orchard is still your home." She
awoke but lay quite still wondering at the reality of her dream.

CHAPTER IV.

WHAT MOLLY OVERHEARD.

It had grown quite dark. The passengers were evidently still at dinner.
A man loomed up close to her and then stopped, evidently unaware of her
presence. Leaning over the rail and gazing into the black depths of
water, he emitted a sigh that seemed to come from his soul. Suddenly a
woman joined him. Molly was still half asleep, thinking of the orchard
at Chatsworth and of what Professor Green's bungalow would look like
among the apple trees. Her thoughts came back to the ship with a bounce
when she heard the woman say:

"Tom, why do you avoid me? Can't you let bygones be bygones?"

"That is exactly what I am doing, Mrs. Huntington: letting bygones be
bygones. It seems a useless thing for us to rake up the past."

"'Mrs. Huntington' sounds very cold and formal coming from your lips."

"Well, I gathered you did not think much of the name of Lizzie since you
have changed your daughter's to Elise."

"Oh, To