Mollie hesitated for a moment. "Mrs. Mercer has been talking lately," she said, "as if I had quite given them up since you came. You know--little bits stuck in every now and then, when she's talking about something else. 'Oh, of course, we can't expect to see much of you now, Mollie.' All that sort of thing. It makes me uncomfortable. And she wasn't like it at first. She was so pleased that I had made friends with you." "He has talked her over to it. That's what I meant when I said she was under his thumb. Do you think he has sent her here then to complain to your mother?" "I think she is talking me over with mother." "But Mrs. Walter was angry when _he_ interfered, wasn't she?" "Oh, yes, she was. But she has made excuses for him since. He ought not to have said what he did. But he meant well." "I think it was disgusting, what he said; perfectly outrageous. And I don't think he meant well either. It's all part of what I tell you. He hates anybody having anything to do with you but himself." She changed her tone. "Moll darling," she said coaxingly, "you might tell me about it. I've told you everything about myself." Mollie took up her work, and kept her eyes fixed upon it. "Tell you about what," she asked. "I _am_ telling you everything." "You do like him, don't you? It's quite plain he likes you." "What, the Vicar?" Beatrix laughed, on a thrushlike note of enjoyment. "You know I don't mean the Vicar," she said. "What happens when you and he go off from the tennis lawn together?" "Oh, you mean Bertie Pemberton," said Mollie, enlightened, but still keeping her eyes on her work. "They are going to give me some plants for the garden, and we have been choosing them. He knows a lot about flowers." Beatrix laughed again. "Do you like him, Mollie?" she asked. "Yes, of course I do," said Mollie. "But don't be silly about it, B. Can't a girl like a man without--without----You're just like what you complain about in the Vicar, and think so horrid in him." "No, I'm not, my dear. The Vicar takes it for granted that he means nothing except just to amuse himself with a pretty girl. I don't think that at all. I know the signs. I've seen more of the world, and of men, than you have, Mollie. I know by the way he looks at you, and by the way he talks about you." Mollie's face, which she never once raised, was pink. "It's very kind of him to interest himself in me," she said. "What does he say?"