ut the Professor had drawn up a chair to the kitchen table and was
draining the orange juice at a gulp.

"You're getting very festive, Mrs. Brady. Have you been taking lessons
in my absence? That orange juice was just the appetizer I needed this
morning." Then he fell to on the breakfast and never stopped until he
had eaten every crumb and drained the coffee pot to the dregs.

In the meantime Molly had taken a seat on the pantry floor. A weakness
had invaded her knees and her head swam dizzily, since she had had no
breakfast that morning.

"I suppose Judy will think I'm dead," she thought, "but it won't do her
any harm to be guessing about me for once."

She hoped the Professor would leave in a moment and go to his rooms. He
had filled a short briar wood pipe and was leaning back in his chair
musing, but he couldn't stay forever in Mrs. Brady's kitchen.

"Mrs. Brady, that was a very dainty and delicious little meal you
prepared for me," she heard him say. "I was a bit low in my mind but I
feel cheered up. A cup of coffee--if it's good--as this was--is often
enough to restore a man's ambition." And now the kitchen was filled with
the fragrance of tobacco smoke while the Professor mused in his chair,
blowing out great clouds at intervals.

"A bachelor is a poor pitiful soul, sir," answered the woman; "now, if
ye had a wife to look after ye, you'd be afther havin' the like
breakfasts ivery mornin'."

The Professor blew out a ring of purple smoke and watched it float
lazily in the air and gradually dissipate.

"Didn't you know I was a woman hater, Mrs. Brady?"

"Indade, I should think ye might be, seein' so many of them every day
and all the time," answered the housekeeper sympathetically. "Too much
of a good thing, sir. But, whin old age comes to ye, you'll miss 'em,
sir. You'll miss a good wife to look after your comforts then."

"I've got something better than that for my old age, Mrs. Brady. I've
got a bit of land; it's an orchard on the side of a hill sloping down to
a brook----"

Molly, sitting on the pantry floor, felt a sudden jolt as if some one
had shaken her by the shoulder. Faintness came over her and her heart
beat so fast and loud she wondered that the two in the kitchen did not
hear its palpitations.

"The trees bear plenty of apples; I'll have lots of fruit in my old age.
I've only to hobble out and knock them down with my cane when I get too
old to climb up and shake the limbs, and where once