“Mother, please don’t tease. There is something else. Jimmy Lufton wrote a little note which I found in the bottom of the basket of fruit he had put on the train for us. It was wrapped around a lemon and said, ‘Here is a lemon you can hand me if, when I come to Kentucky this summer, you don’t want me to stay.’” “Oh! The plot thickens! So he is coming, too.” “Yes, but he lives in Lexington, and is coming out to see his family, anyhow.” “Well, Molly, darling, you must go to bed now, but before you go tell me one thing: do you want Professor Green to come to Chatsworth?” “Yes, mother, I think I do,” and giving her mother a hug that made that lady gasp again and say, “Molly, what a hugger you are,” she flew from the room and raced upstairs two steps at a time. CHAPTER IV.—BURGLARS. Judy was sitting up in bed, the moon lighting her enough for Molly to see a wild, startled look on her face. “Molly, Molly, I hear something!” “You hear me making more noise than I have any business to at this time o’ night. I have been having a good old talk with muddy.” “Oh, no, it wasn’t that. I knew you were downstairs. I haven’t been truly asleep. I was ’possuming.’ It is out by the chicken yard, and I am so afraid it is burglars after the pullets Aunt Mary told me she was saving for chicken salad for the wedding supper. Lewis was to kill them to-morrow.” Judy had entered so intensely into the Browns’ household affairs that Molly herself was no more interested in the festive preparations than was her guest. Molly drew cautiously to the window and peeped out; she beckoned Judy, and the excited girls saw a sight to freeze the marrow in their chicken-salad-loving bones: the thief had a wheelbarrow, and some great gunny sacks over his arm, and was in the act of boldly opening the chicken-yard gate. “If we call he will get away, and how else can we let the boys know? The wretch may have those sacks full of chickens even now,” moaned Molly. There was a three-room cottage or “office,” as they called it, on the side of the house next the garden where all of the young men slept in summer. The girls feared that, in trying to let them know of the burglar, if they went out of the front door they would startle Mrs. Brown. And if they should try to go out the back door, in getting to the cottage they would have to run across a broad streak of moonlight in plain view of the thief, and thus give him ample time to get away with his booty before they could arouse the boys. “Why shouldn’t we take the matter in our own hands and make him drop his sacks and run?” said Molly. “I am not afraid, are you?” “Me afraid? Bless your soul, no. I am only afraid he will get off with the chickens,” replied the intrepid Judy. “I have my little revolver in the tray of my trunk, the one papa gave me when we were camping in Arizona. I can load it in a jiffy. But what weapon will you take?”