"Did the orchard yield a good crop this year?" asked the professor irrelevantly.
"Oh, splendid. The apples were packed in barrels and sent away. Several of them were sent to mother as a present. Very nice of the owner, wasn"t it?"
"Very," replied the professor, fingering something in his pocket absently.
"The owner of the orchard has it kept in fine condition. The trees have been trimmed and the ground cleared. Mother says she"s ashamed of her own shiftlessness whenever she looks at it. The gra.s.s was as smooth as velvet all summer until the drought came and dried it brown. I used to go there summer mornings and lie in a hammock and read. I didn"t think any one would care. There"s no harm in attaching a hammock to two trees.
Mother says I don"t seem to remember that we are no longer the owners of the orchard. I have played in it and lived in it so much of my life that I"ve got the habit, I suppose."
The professor cleared his throat.
"You said the ground sloped slightly, did you not?"
"Yes, just a gradual slope to a little brook at the bottom of the hill.
The water seems to cool the air in summer. It never goes dry and there is a little basin in one place we used to call "the birds" bath tub."
Such birds you never imagined! They are attracted by the apples, I suppose. But there are hundreds of them. They sing from morning to night."
"You paint a very attractive picture, Miss Brown. It must have been hard to give up this charming property."
"But you see we haven"t given it up exactly. It"s there right against us. We can still look at it and even walk under the trees. No one minds.
And see what I have for it! Nothing could ever take the place of college--not even an apple orchard."
A sharp voice broke in on this pleasant conversation.
"Cousin Edwin, I"ve been looking for you everywhere."
Judith Blount appeared hastening down the walk.
The professor watched the advancing figure calmly.
"Well, now you have found me, what do you want?" he asked.
Molly detected a slight note of annoyance in his voice. She had a notion that Judith was one of the trials of his life.
"I have rewritten the short story you criticized for me last week, and I want you to look it over again."
He took the roll of paper without a word and thrust it into his coat pocket.
Molly rose.
"I must be going," she said. "It must be nearly six o"clock."
Judith promptly sat down on the bench facing her cousin, who still leaned against the stone pillar.
"Don"t you think it"s a little chilly to be lingering here, Judith?" he remarked politely, as he joined Molly.
"It wasn"t too chilly for you a moment ago," answered Judith hotly.
But she rose and walked on the other side of the professor.
"How do you like your rooms?" he asked presently.
"I hate them," she replied, with such fierce resentment that Molly was sure that Judith was glad to have something on which to vent her angry mood. "Thank heavens, this is my last year. I detest Wellington. I have never been happy here. It"s brought shame and misfortune on me. It"s a horrid old place."
"Oh, Judith," protested Molly, unable to endure this libel on her beloved college.
"My dear child, you can"t blame Wellington for your misfortunes,"
interposed the professor, who himself cherished a deep affection for the two gray towers.
"It is hard to live in the village instead of at college," said Molly, feeling suddenly very sorry for the unhappy Judith.
But Judith was in no state to be sympathized with. All day she had been nursing a grievance. One of her friends in prosperity at the Beta Phi House had turned a cold shoulder on her that morning; and Judith was so enraged by the slight that her feelings were like an open sore.
She turned on Molly angrily.
"You ought to know," she said. "You had to do it long enough."
"Judith, Judith," remonstrated the professor. "Can"t you understand that you gain nothing, and always lose something, by giving way like this?
Denouncing and hating make the object you are working for recede. You"ll never get it that way."
"How do you know what I"m working for?" she demanded, more quietly.
"We are all of us working for the same thing," he answered. "Happiness.
None of us proposes to get it in the same way, but all of us propose to reach the same goal. What would give me happiness no doubt would never satisfy you."
"You don"t know that, either. What would give you happiness?" Judith asked, with some curiosity.
The professor paused a moment, then he said calmly:
"A little home of my own in a shady quiet place with plenty of old trees, where I could work in peace. I have always fancied an old orchard. There might be a brook at one end----"
Molly smiled.
"He"s thinking of my orchard," she thought.
"There must be hundreds of birds in my orchard," went on the professor, "and the gra.s.s must always be thick and green, except perhaps when the drought comes and it can"t help itself----"
The six o"clock bell boomed out.
"Have an apple," he said, taking two red apples from his pocket and giving one to each of the girls.
Then he opened the small oak door and stood politely aside while they pa.s.sed out.
CHAPTER IV.
A LITERARY EVENING.