The Melting of Molly

Leaf IV.

Sleep is one of the most delightful and undervalued amusements known to the human race. I have never had enough yet, and every second of time that I'm not busy with something interesting, I curl up on the bed and go dream-hunting—only I sleep too hard to do much catching. But this torture book found that out about me, and stopped it the very first thing on page three. The command is to sleep as little as possible to keep the nerves in a good condition—"eight hours at the most, and seven would be better." What earthly good would a seven-hour nap do me? I want ten hours to sleep and twelve if I get a good tired start. To see me stagger out of my perfectly nice bed at six o'clock every morning now would wring the sternest heart with compassion and admiration at my faithfulness—to whom?

Yes, it was the day after poor Mr. Carter's funeral that Aunt Adeline moved up here into my house and settled herself in the big south room across the landing from mine. Her furniture weighs a ton each piece, and Aunt Adeline is not light herself in disposition. The next morning, when I went in to breakfast she sat in the "vacant chair" in a way that made me see that she was obviously trying to fill the vacancy. I am sorry she worried herself about that. Anyhow, it made me take a resolve. After breakfast, I went into the kitchen to speak to Jane.

"Jane," I said, looking past her head, "my health is not very good, and you can bring my breakfast to me in bed after this." Poor Mr. Carter always wanted breakfast on the stroke of seven. Jane has buried husbands. Also her mother is our washerwoman, and influenced by Aunt Adeline. Jane understands everything I say to her. After I had closed the door I heard a laugh that sounded like a war-whoop, and I smiled to myself. But that was before my martyrdom to this book had begun. I get up now!

But the day after I came from London I lay in bed just as long as I wanted to, and ignored the thought of the exercises and deep breathing and the icy unsympathetic tub. I couldn't even take very much interest in the lonely egg on the lonely slice of dry toast. I was thinking about things.

Hillsboro is a very peculiar little speck on the universe; even more peculiar than being like a hen. It is one of the oldest towns in the North, and the moss on it is so thick that it can't be scratched off except in spots. But when it does get stirred up to take an interest in anything, it certainly goes the pace. It hasn't had any real excitement for a long time, and I felt that it needed it. I rolled over and laughed into my pillow.

The subject of the conduct of widows is a serious one. Of all the things old Tradition is most set about, it is that; and what was decided to be the proper thing a million years ago this town still dictates shall be done, and spends a good deal of its time seeing its directions carried out.

For a year after the funeral they forget about the poor bereaved, and when they do remember her they speak to and of her in the same tones of voice they used at the obsequies. Then sooner or later some neighbour is sure to see some man walk home from church with her, or hear some masculine voice in her front garden. Mr. Blake gave Mrs. Caruther's little Jessie a ride in his trap and helped her out at her mother's gate just before last Christmas, and if the poor widow hadn't acted quickly the town would have noticed them to death before he proposed to her. They were married the day after New Year's Day, and she lost lots of good friends because she didn't give them more time to talk about it.

I don't intend to run any risk of losing my friends that way, and I want them to have all the enjoyment they can get out of it. I'm going to serve out doses of excitement until the dear old place is running as it did when it was a two-year old. Why get annoyed when people are interested in you? It's a compliment, after all, and gives them more to think about. I remembered the two trunks I had brought home with me, and hugged my knees up under my chin with pleasure at the thought of the town-talk they contained.

Then just as I had got the first plan well going and was deciding whether to wear the mauve crêpe de Chine or the white chiffon with the rosebud embroidery as a first dose for my friends, a sweetness came in through my window that took my breath away, and I lay still with my hand over my heart and listened. It was Billy singing right under my window, and I've never heard him do it before in all his five years. It was the dearest old-fashioned tune ever written, and Billy sang the words as distinctly as if he had been a boy chorister doing a difficult recitative. My heart beat so it shook the lace on my breast, like a breeze from heaven, as he took the high note and then let it go on the last few words.

A confused recollection of having heard the words and tune sung by my mother when I was at the rocking age myself brought the tears to my eyes as I flew to the window and parted the curtains. If you heard a little boy-angel singing at your casement, wouldn't you expect a cherub face upturned with heaven-lights all over it? Billy's face was upturned as he heard me draw up the blind, but it was streaked like a wild Indian's with decorations of brown mud, and he held a slimy frog in one hand while he wiped his other grimy hand down the front of his linen blouse.

"I say, Molly, look at the frog I bringed you!" he exclaimed as he came close under the sill, which is not high from the ground. "If you put your face down to the mud and sing something to 'em, they'll come out of their holes. A beetle comed, too, but I couldn't ketch 'em both. Lift me up, and I can put him in the waterglass on your table." He held up one muddy hand to me, and promptly I lifted him up into my arms. From the embrace in which he and the frog and I indulged my lace and cambric came out much the worse.

"That was a lovely song you sang about 'Molly darling,' Billy," I said. "Where did you hear it?"

"That's a good frog-song, Molly, and I believe I can git a squirrel with it, too, if I sing it quite low." He began to squirm out of my arms toward the table and the glass.

"Who taught it to you, sugar-sweet?" I persisted as I poured water in on the frog under his direction.

"Nobody taught it to me. Father sings it to me when Tilly, nurse, nor you aren't there to put me to bed. He don't know no good songs like 'Black-eyed Susan' or 'Little Boy Blue.' I go to sleep quick 'cause he makes me feel tired with his slow tune what's only good for frogs and things. Get a piece of cloth to tie over the top of the glass, Molly, quick!"

I found some, and I don't know why my hand trembled as I handed it to Billy. As soon as he got it he climbed out of the window, glass, frog and all, and I saw him and the old setter go down the garden walk together in pursuit of the desired squirrel, I suppose. I closed the blinds and drew the curtains again and flung myself on my pillow. Something warm and sweet seemed to be sweeping over me in great waves, and I felt young and close up to some sort of big world-good. It was delicious, and I don't know how long I would have stayed there just feeling it if Jane hadn't brought in my letter.

He had written from London, and it was many pages of wonderful things all flavoured with me. He told me about Miss Clinton and what good friends they were, and how much he hoped she would be in Hillsboro when he got here. He said that a great many of her dainty ways reminded him of his "own slip of a girl," especially the turn of her head like a "flower on its stem." At that I got right out of bed like a jack jumping out of a box and looked at myself in the mirror.

There is one exercise here on page twenty that I hate worst of all. You screw up your face tight until you look like a Christmas mask to get your neck muscles taut, and then wobble your head round like a new-born baby until it swims. I did that one twenty extra times and all the others in proportion to make up for those two hours in bed. Hereafter I'll get up at the time directed on page three, or maybe earlier. It frightens me to think that I've got only a few weeks more to turn from a cabbage-rose into a lily. I won't let myself even think "perfect flower" and "scarlet runner." If I do, I get warm and happy all over. I try when I get hungry to think of myself in that blue muslin dress.

I haven't been really willing before to write down in this wretched volume that I took that garment to the city with me and what Madame Rene did to it—remade it into the loveliest thing I ever saw, only I wouldn't let her alter the size one single inch. I'm honourable, as all women are at peculiar times. I think she understood, but she seemed not to, and worked a miracle on it with ribbon and lace. I've put it away on the top shelf of a cupboard, for it is a torment to look at it.

You can just take any recipe for a party and it will make a good début for a girl, but it takes more time to concoct one for a widow, especially if it is for yourself. I spent all the rest of the day doing almost nothing and thinking until I felt light-headed. Finally I had just about given up any idea of a party and had decided to leak out in general society as quietly as my clothes would let me, when a real conflagration was lighted inside me.

If Tom Pollard wasn't my own first cousin I would have loved him desperately, even if I am a week older than he. He was about the only oasis in my childhood's days, though I don't think anybody would think of calling him at all green. He never stopped coming to see me occasionally, and Mr. Carter liked him. He was the first man to notice the white ruche I sewed in the neck of my old black silk four or five months ago, and he let me see that he noticed it out of the corner of his eyes as we were coming out of church, under Aunt Adeline's very elbow.

And when that conflagration was lighted in me about my début, Tom did it. I was sitting peaceably in my own summer-house, dressed in the summer-before-last that Jane washes and irons every day while I am deciding how to hand out the first sip of my trousseau to the neighbours, when Tom, in a dangerous blue-striped shirt, with a tie that melted into it in tone, jumped over my fence and landed at my side. He kissed the lace ruffle on my sleeve while I reproved him severely and settled down to enjoy him. But I didn't have such a good time as I generally do with him. He was too full of another woman, and even a first cousin can be an exasperation in that condition.

"Now, Mrs. Molly, truly did you ever see such a flower as she is?" he demanded after I had expressed more than a dozen delighted opinions of Miss Clinton. His use of the word "flower" riled me, and before I stopped to think, I said, "She reminds me more of a scarlet runner."

"Now, Molly, don't be jealous just because old Wade has taken her out driving behind the greys after kissing your hand under the lilacs yesterday, which, fortunately, nobody saw but little me! I'm not sore, why should you be? Aren't you happy with me?"

I withered him with a look, or rather tried to wither him, for Tom is no mimosa bud.

"The way that girl has managed to wake up this little old town is a marvel," he continued enthusiastically. "Let's don't let the folks know that they are off until I get everybody in a full swing of buzz over my queen." I had never seen Tom so enthusiastic over a girl before, and I didn't like it. But I decided not to let him know that, but to get to work putting out the Clinton blaze in him and starting one on my own account.

"That's just what I'm thinking about, Tom," I said with a smile that was as sweet as I could make it, "and as she came with messages to me from one of my best old friends I think I ought to do something to make her have a good time. I was just planning a gorgeous dinner-party I want to have for her when you came so suddenly. Do you think we could arrange it for Tuesday evening?"

"Good gracious, Molly, don't knock the town down like that! Let 'em have more than a week to get used to this white rag of a dress you've been waving in their faces for the last few days. Go slow!"

"I've been going so slow for so many years that I've turned round and I'm going fast backward," I said with a blush that I couldn't help.

"Help! Let my kinship protect me!" exclaimed Tom in alarm, and he pretended to move an inch away from me.

"Yes," I said slowly, and as I looked out of the corner of my eyes from under the lashes that Tom himself had once told me were "too long and black to be tidy," I saw that he was in a condition to get the full shock. "If anybody wakes up this town it will be I," I said as I flung down the gauntlet with a high head.

"Here, Molly, here are the keys of my office, and the spark-plug to the car; you can cut off a lock of my hair, and if Jane has got a cake I'll eat it out of your hands. Shall it be Switzerland or Japan? And I prefer my bride served in light grey tweed." Tom really is delightful. Then we both laughed and began to plan what Tom called a conflagration. But I kept that delicious rose-embroidered treasure all to myself. I wanted him to meet it entirely unprepared.

I was glad we had both got over our excitement and were sitting decorously drinking tea, when the judge drew the greys up to the gate, and we both went out to the kerb to ask him and the lovely long lady to come in. They couldn't; but we stood and talked to them long enough for Mrs. Johnson to get a good look at us from across the street, and I was afraid I should find Aunt Adeline in a faint when I went into the house.

Miss Clinton was delightfully gracious about the dinner—I almost called it the début dinner—and the expression on the judge's face when he accepted! I was glad she was sitting beside him and couldn't see. Some women like to make other women unhappy, but I think it is best for you to keep them blissfully unconscious until you get what you want. Anyhow, I like that girl all over, and I can't see that her neck is so absolutely impossibly flowery. However, I think she might have been a little more considerate about discussing Alfred's triumph over the Italian mission. As a punishment I let Tom take my arm as we stood watching them drive off, and then was sorry for the left grey horse that shied and came in for a crack of the judge's irritated whip.

Then I refused to let Tom come inside the gate, and he went down the street whistling, only when he got to the purple lilac he turned and kissed his hand to me. That, Mrs. Johnson just couldn't stand, and she came across the street immediately and called me back to the gate.

"You are tempting Providence, Molly Carter," she exclaimed decidedly. "Don't you know Tom Pollard is nothing but a scatter-brained fly-away? As a husband there'd be no dependence on him. Besides being your cousin, he's younger than you. What do you mean?"

"He's just a week younger, Mrs. Johnson, and I wouldn't tie him for worlds, even if I married him," I said meekly. Somehow I like Mrs. Johnson enough to be meek with her, and it always brings her to a higher point of excitement.

"Tie, nonsense; marrying is roping in with ball and chain, to my mind. And a week between a man and a woman in their cradles gets to be fifteen years between them and their graves. Well, I must go home now to see that Sally cooks up a few of Mr. Johnson's crotchets for supper." And she began to hurry away.

Marriage is the only worm in the bud of Mrs. Johnson's life, and her laugh has a snap to it even if it is not very sugary sweet.

When I told Jane about the dinner-party and asked her to get her mother to come and help her, and her nephew to wait at table, she smiled such a wide smile that I was afraid of being swallowed. She understood that Aunt Adeline wouldn't be interested in it until I had time to tell her all about it. Anyway, Aunt will be going over to Springfield on a pilgrimage to see Mr. Henderson's sister next week. She doesn't know it yet; but I do.

After that I spent all the rest of the evening in planning my dinner-party, and I had a most royal good time. I always have had lots of company, but mostly the spend-the-day kind with relatives, or more relatives to supper. That's what most entertaining in Hillsboro is like, but, as I say, once in a while the old slow pacer wakes up.

I'll never forget my first real party. I was bridesmaid for Caroline Evans, when she married a Birmingham magnate, from which Hillsboro has never yet recovered. It was the week before the wedding. I was sixteen, felt dreadfully unclothed without a tucker in my dress, and saw Alfred for the first time in evening clothes—his first. I can hardly stand thinking about how he looked even now. I haven't been to very many parties in my life, but from this time on I mean to indulge in them often. Candle-light, pretty women's frocks, black coat sleeves, cut glass and flowers are good ingredients for a joy-drink, and why not?

But when I got to planning about the gorgeous food I wanted to give them all, I got into what I feel came near being a serious trouble. It was writing down the recipe for the nesselrode pudding they make in my family that undid me. Suddenly hunger rose up from nowhere and gripped me by the throat, gnawed me all over like a bone, then shook me until I was limp and unresisting. I must have astralised myself down to the pantry, for when I became conscious I found myself in company with a loaf of bread, a plate of butter and a huge jar of jam.

I sat down at the long table by the window and slowly prepared to enjoy myself. I cut off four slices and buttered them to an equal thickness, and then more slowly put a long silver spoon into the jam. I even paused to admire in Jane's mirror over the table the effect of the cascade of lace that fell across my arm and lost itself in the blue shimmer of Madame Rene's masterpiece of a negligée, then deep down I buried the spoon in the purple sweetness. I had just lifted it high in the air when out of the lilac-scented dark of the garden came a laugh.

"Why, Molly, Molly, Molly!" drawled that miserable man-doctor as he came and leaned on the sill right close to my elbow. The spoon crashed on the table, and I turned and crashed into words.

"You are cruel, cruel, John Moore, and I hate you worse than I ever did before, if that is possible. I'm hungry, hungry to death, and now you've spoiled it all! Go away before I wet this nice crisp bread and jam with tears, and turn it into a pulp I'll have to eat with a spoon. You don't know what it is to want something sweet so bad you are willing to steal it—from yourself!" I fairly blazed my eyes down into his, and moved as far away from him as the table would let me.

"Don't I, Molly?" he asked softly, after looking straight in my eyes for a long minute, that made me drop my head until the blue bow I had tied on the end of my long plait almost got into the scattered jam. Even at such a moment as that I felt how glad Madame Rene would have been to have given such a nice man as the doctor a treat like that blue silk chef-d'oeuvre of hers. I was glad myself.

"Don't I, Flower?" he asked again in a still softer voice. Again I had that sensation of being against something warm and great and good, and I don't know how I controlled it enough not to—to——

"Well, have some jam then," I managed to say with a little laugh, as I turned away and picked up the silver spoon.

"Thank you, I will, all of it, and the bread and butter, too," he answered, in that detestable friendly tone of voice, as he drew himself up and sat in the window. "Hurry, Flower, if you are going to feed me, for I'm ravenous. I've been attending Sam Benson's wife, and I haven't had any supper. You have; so I don't mind taking it all away from you."

"Supper," I sniffed, as I spread the jam on those lovely, lovely slices of bread and thick butter that I had fixed for my own self. "I am so tired of that apple-toast combination now that I forget it if I can." As I handed him the first slice of drippy lusciousness, I turned my head away. He thought it was from the expression of that jam, but it was from his eyes.

"Slice up the whole loaf, Flower, and let's have a feast. Forget——" He didn't finish his sentence, and I'm glad. We neither of us said anything more as I cut that whole loaf; but why should I want to be certain that he touched the lace on my sleeve as it brushed his face when I reached across him to catch an inquisitive rose that I saw peeping in the window at us?

Leaf V.

"The juice of a lemon in two glasses of cold water, to be drunk immediately on wakening!" Page eleven! I've handed myself that lemon every morning now until I am sensitive with myself about it. If there was ever anybody "living a Noah's Ark sort of life" it's I, and I have to sit at the Ark window from dawn to dusk to get in the gallon of water I'm supposed to consume in that time. Some time I'm going to get mixed up and try to drink my bath, if I don't look out.

I don't know what I'm going to do about this book, and I've got myself into trouble about writing things besides records in it. He looked at me this morning as coolly as if I was just anybody and said—

"I would like to see that record now, Mrs. Molly. It seems to me you are about as slim as you want to be. How did you tip the scales last time you weighed, and have you noticed any trouble at all with your heart?

"I weigh one hundred and thirty-four pounds, and I've got to melt and freeze and starve off that four," I answered, ignoring the heart question and also the question of producing this book. Wonder what he would do if I gave it to him to read just as it is?

"How about the heart?" he persisted, and I may have imagined the smile in his eyes, for his mouth was purely professional. Anyhow, I lowered my lashes down on to my cheeks and answered experimentally:

"Sometimes it hurts." Then a cyclone happened to me.

"Come here to me a minute!" he said quickly, and he turned me round and put his head down between my shoulders and held me so tight against his ear that I could hardly breathe.

"Expand your chest three times and breathe as deep as you can," he ordered from against my back buttons. I expanded and breathed—pretty quickly at that.

"Now hold your breath as long as you can," he commanded, and it fitted my mood exactly to do so.

"Can't find anything," he said at last, letting me go and looking carefully at my face. His eyes were all anxiety; and I liked it. "When does it hurt you, and how?" he asked anxiously.

"Moonlight nights and lonesomely," I answered before I could stop myself, and what happened then was worse than any cyclone. He got white for a minute and just looked at me as if I was an insect stuck on a pin, then gave a short little laugh and turned to the table.

"I didn't understand you were joking," he said quietly.

That maddened me, and I would have done anything to make him think I was not the foolish thing he evidently had classified me as being.

"I'm not joking," I said jerkily; "I am lonely. And worse than being lonely, I'm scared. I ought to have stayed just the quiet relict of Mr. Carter and gone out with Aunt Adeline and let myself be fat and respectable; but I haven't got the character. You thought I went to town to buy a monument, and I didn't; I bought enough clothes for two brides, and now I'm too scared to wear 'em, and I don't know what you'll think when you see my bankbook. Everybody is talking about me and that dinner-party Tuesday night, and Aunt Adeline says she can't live in a house of mourning so desecrated any longer; she's going back to the cottage. Aunt Bettie Pollard says that if I want to get married I ought to marry Mr. Wilson Graves because of his seven children, and then everybody would be so relieved that they are taken care of, that they would forget that Mr. Carter hasn't been dead quite five years yet. Mrs. Johnson says I ought to be declared a minor and put as a ward under you. I can't help judge Wade's sending me flowers and Tom's walking over my front steps every day. I'm not strong enough to carry him away and drown him. I am perfectly miserable and I'm——"

"Now that'll do, Molly, just hush for a half-minute, and let me talk to you," said Dr. John as he took my hand in his and drew me near him. "No wonder your heart hurts if it has got all that load of trouble on it, and we'll just get a little of that 'scare' off. You put yourself in my hands, and you are to do just as I tell you, and I say—forget it! Come with me while I make a call. It is a long drive and I'm—I'm lonesome sometimes myself."

I saw the worst was over, and I breathed freely again. There was nothing for it but to go with him, and I wanted to most awfully.

To my dying day I'll never forget that little house, away out on the hillside, he took me to in his shabby little car. Just two tiny rooms, but they were clean and quiet, and a girl with the sweetest face I ever saw, lay in the bed with her eyes bright with pride, and a tiny, tiny little bundle close beside her. The young farmer was red with embarrassment and anxiety.

"She's all right to-day, but she worries because she don't think I can tend to the baby right," he said; and he did look helpless. "Her mother had to go home for two days, but is coming to-morrow. I dasn't undress and wash the youngster myself. It won't hurt him to stay bundled up until granny comes, will it, doc?"

"Not a bit," answered Dr. John in his big comforting voice.

But I looked at the girl, and I understood her. She wanted that baby clean and fresh, even if it was just five days old, and I felt all of a sudden terribly capable. I picked up the bundle and went into the other room with it where a kettle was boiling on the stove and a large bucket by the door. I found things by just a glance from her, and the hour I spent with that small baby was one of the most delicious of all my life. I never was left entirely to myself with one before, and I did all I wanted to this one, guided by instinct and desire. He slept right through and was the darlingest thing I ever saw when I laid him back on the bed by her. I never looked in Dr. John's direction once, though I felt him all the time.

But on the way home I gave myself the surprise of my life! Suddenly I turned my face against his sleeve and cried as I never had before. I felt safe, for it is a steep road, and he had to drive carefully. However, he managed to press that one arm against my cheek in a way that comforted me into stopping when I saw we were near town. I got out of the car at the garage and walked away through the garden home, without looking in his direction at all. I never seem to be able to look at him as I do at other people. We hadn't spoken two words since we had left the little house in the woods with that happy-faced girl in it. He has more sense than just a man.

It was almost dusk, and I stopped in the garden a minute to pull the earth closer round some of the bachelor's-buttons that had "popped" the ground some weeks ago. Thinking about them made me regain my spirits, and I went on in the house quite prepared to be scolded for whatever Aunt Adeline had thought of while I was gone. Jane told me with her broadest grin that she had gone down to her sister-in-law's for supper, and I sat down with a sigh of relief.

Some days are like tin nutmeg-graters that everybody uses to grate you against, and this was one for me. For an hour I sat and grated my own self against Alfred's letter that had come in the morning. I realised that I would just have to come to some sort of decision about what I was going to do, for he wrote that he was coming in a week or two.

I like him and always have, of that I am sure. He offers me the most wonderful life in the world, and no woman could help being proud to accept it. I am lonely, more lonely than I was even willing to confess to Dr. John. I can't go on living like this any longer. Ruth Clinton has made me see that if I want Alfred it will be now or never and—quick. I know now that she loves him, and she ought to have her chance if I don't want him. The way she idolises and idealises him is a marvel of womanly stupidity.

Some women like to collect men's hearts and hide them away from other women on cold storage, and the helpless things can't help themselves.

I have contempt for that sort of a woman, and I love Ruth!

It's my duty to look the matter in the face before I look in Alfred's—and decide. If not Alfred, what then?

First—no husband. That's out of the question! I'm not strong-minded enough to crank my own motor-car and study woman's suffrage. I like men, can't help it, and seem to need one for my own.

Second—if not Alfred, who? Judge Wade is so delightful that I flutter at the thought, but his mother is Aunt Adeline's own best friend, and they have ideas in common.

Still, living with him might have adventures. I never saw such eyes! The girl he wanted to marry died of turberculosis, and he wears a locket with her in it yet. I'd like to reward him for such faithfulness. But then Alfred's been faithful too! I look at Ruth Clinton and realise how faithful, and my heart melts to him in my breast—my brain feels almost all melted away, too, so I had better keep the heart cold enough to manage, if I want anything left at all for him to come home to.

In some ways Tom Pollard is the most congenial man I ever knew. I truly try to make him be serious about the important things in life, like going to church with his mother and working all day, even if he is rich. I wish he wasn't so near kin to me! Now, there, I feel in Ruth Clinton's way again!

I suppose I really would be doing the right thing to marry Mr. Graves, and I should adore all those children to start with, but I know Billy wouldn't get on with them at all. I can't even consider it on his account, but I'll let the nice old gentleman come for a few times more to see me, for he really is interesting, and we have suffered things in common. Mrs. Graves lacked the kind of temperament poor Mr. Carter did. I'd like to make it all up to him, but if Billy wouldn't be happy, that settles it, and I don't know how good his boys are. I couldn't have Billy corrupted.

And so, as there is nobody else exactly suitable in town, it all simmers down to one or the other of these or Alfred. In my heart I knew that I couldn't hesitate a minute—and in the flash of a second I decided. Of course I love Alfred, and I'll take him gladly and be the wife he has waited for all these six lonely years. I'll make everything up to him, if I have to diet to keep thin for him the rest of my life. Probably I shall have that very thing to do, and I get weak at the idea. Before I burn this book I'll have to copy it all out and be chained to it for life. At the thought my heart dropped like a sinker to my toes; but I hauled it up to its normal place with picturing to myself how Alfred would look when he saw me in that old blue muslin remade into a Rene wonder. However, my old heart would show a strange propensity for sinking down into my slippers without any reason at all. Tears were even coming into my eyes when Tom suddenly came over the fence and picked me and the heart up together and put us into an adventure of the first water.

"Molly," he said in the most nonchalant manner imaginable, "we've got a jolly, strolling, German band up at the hotel; and we're going to have an evening's gaiety. Get into a pretty dress, and don't keep me waiting."

"Tom!" I gasped.

"Oh, don't spoil sport, Moll! You said you would wake up this town, and now do it. It seems twenty instead of six years since I went to a party with you, and I'm not going to wait any longer. Everybody is there, and they can't all have Miss Clinton."

That settled it—I couldn't let a visiting girl be worn out with attention. Of course, I had planned to make a dignified debut under my own roof, backed up by the presence of ancestral and marital rosewood, silver and mahogany, as a widow should; but duty called me to de-weed myself amidst the informality of an impromptu soirée at the little town hotel. And in the fifteen minutes Tom gave me I de-weeded to some purpose and flowered out to still more. I never do anything by halves.

In that—that—trousseau Madame Rene had made me there was one, what she called "simple" lingerie frock. And it looked just as simple as the cheque it called for. It was of lawn as transparent as a cobweb, real lace and tiny delicious incrustations of embroidery. It fitted in lines that melted into curves, had enticements in the shape of a long sash and a dazzling breast-knot of shimmery blue, the colour of my eyes, and I looked new-born in it.

I'm glad that poor Mr. Carter was so stern with me about pads in my hair, now that they are out of fashion, for I've got lots of my own left in consequence of not wearing other people's. It clings and coils to my head just anyhow, so that it looks as if I had spent an hour on it. That made me able to be ready to go down to Tom in only ten minutes over the time he gave me.

I stopped on next to the bottom step in the wide old hall and called Tom to turn out the light for me, as Jane had gone out.

I have turned out that light lots of times, but I felt it best to let Tom see me in a full light when we were alone. It is well I did! At first it stunned him—and it is a compliment to any woman to stun Tom Pollard. But Tom doesn't stay stunned long.

"Molly," he said, standing off and looking at me with shining eyes, "you are one lovely dream. Your cheeks are peaches under cream, your eyes are blue forget-me-nots, and your mouth a red blossom. Come on before I lose my head looking at you." I didn't know whether I liked that or not, and turned down the light quickly myself and went to the gate hurriedly. Tom laughed and behaved himself.

Everybody in town was at the hotel, and everybody was nice to me, girls and all. There is a bunch of lovely posy girls in this town, and they were all in full flower. Most of the men were a few years younger than I. I have been friends with them for always, and they know how I dance. I didn't even get near enough to the wall to know it was there, though I was conscious of Aunt Bettie and Mrs. Johnson sitting on it at one end of the room, and every time I passed them I flirted with them until I won a smile from them both. I wish I could be sure of hearing Mrs. Johnson tell Aunt Adeline all about it.

And it was well I did come to save Ruth Clinton from a dancing death, for she is as light as a feather and sails on the air like thistle-down. I felt sorry for Tom, for when he was with me he could see her, and when he was with her I pouted at him, even over Judge Wade's arm. I verily believe it was from being really jealous that he asked little Pet Buford to dance with him—by mistake as it were.

And how I did enjoy it all, every single minute of it! My heart beat time to the music as if it would never tire of doing so. Miss Clinton and I exchanged little laughs and scraps of conversation in between times, and I fell deeper and deeper in love with her. Every pound I have melted and frozen and starved off me has brought me nearer to her, and I just can't think about how I am going to hurt her in a few days now. I put the thought from me, and so let myself swing out into thoughtlessness with one of the boys.

This has been a happy night, in which I betrothed myself to Alfred, though he doesn't know it yet. I am going to take it as a sign that life for us is going to be brilliant and gay, and full of laughter and love.

I haven't had Billy in my arms to-day, and I don't know how I shall ever get myself to sleep if I let myself think about it. His sleep-place on my breast aches. It is a comfort to think that the great big God understands the women folk that He makes, even if they don't understand themselves.

Leaf VI.

Conflagration.

Most parties are just bunches of selfish people who go off in the corners and have good times all by themselves; but in Hillsboro it is not that way. Everybody that is not invited helps the hostess get ready and have nice things for the others, and sometimes I think they really have the best time of all.

This morning Aunt Bettie came up my front steps before breakfast with a large basketful of things for my dinner, and I wondered what I would have collected to be served to those people by the time all my neighbours had made their prize contributions. It took Aunt Bettie and Jane a half-hour to unpack her things and set them in the refrigerator and on the pantry shelves. One was a plump fruit-cake that had been keeping company, in a tight box, with other equally rich cakes ever since the New Year. It was ripe, or smelt so. It made me feel very hungry.

A little later Jane was exclaiming over a two-year-old ham that had been simmered in some wonderful liquor and larded with egg dressing, when Mrs. Johnson came in and began to unpack her basket.

I had planned to have a lot of food and had ordered some things up from a caterer in the city, but I telegraphed to them not to deliver them until the next day, even if they did spoil. How could I use smelts when Mrs. Wade had sent me word that she was going to bake some brook trout by a recipe of the judge's grandmother's? Mrs. Hampton Buford had let me know about two fat little summer turkeys she was going to stuff with chestnuts, and roast fowl seemed foolish eating beside them. But when the little bit of a baby pig, roasted whole with an apple in its mouth, looking too frisky and innocent for worlds with his little baked tail curled up in the air, arrived from Mrs. Caruthers Cain, I went out into the garden and laughed at the idea of having spent money for lobsters.

When I got back in the kitchen things were well under way, everything smelling grand, and Aunt Bettie in full swing matching up my dinner guests.

"Nobody in this town could suit me better than Pet Buford for a daughter-in-law, and I believe I'll have all the east rooms done up with blue chintz for her. I think that would be the best thing to set off her blue eyes and fair hair," she was saying as she cut orange peel into strips.

"You've planned the refurnishing of that east wing to suit the style of nearly every girl in Hillsboro since Tom put on long trousers, Bettie Pollard, and they are just as they have been for fifteen years since you did up the whole house," said Mrs. Johnson as she poured a wine-glass half full from one bottle and added a tablespoonful from another.

"Well, I think he is really interested now from the way he spent most of his time with her down at the hotel the other night, and I have hopes I never had before. Now, Molly, do put him between you and her, sort of cornered, so he can't even see Ruth Clinton. She is too old for him." And Tom's mother looked at me over the orange-peel as to a confederate.

"Humph, I'd like to see you or Molly or any woman 'corner' Tom Pollard," said Mrs. Johnson with a wry smile as she tasted the concoction in the wine-glass.

"I have to put him at the end of the table because he is my kinsman and the only host I've got at present, Aunt Bettie," I said regretfully. I always take every chance to rub in Tom's and my relationship on Aunt Bettie, so that she won't notice our friendliness.

"I'd put John Moore at the head of the table if I were you, Molly Carter, because he's about the only man you've invited that has got any sense left since you and that Clinton girl took to going about Hillsboro. He's a host of steadiness in himself, and the way he ignores all you women, who would run after him if he would let you, shows what he is. He has my full confidence," and as she delivered herself of this judgment of Dr. John, Mrs. Johnson drove in all the corks tight and began to pound spice.

"He's not out of the widower-woods yet, Caroline," said Aunt Bettie with her most speculative smile. "I have about decided on him for Ruth since the judge has taken to following Molly about as bad as Billy Moore does. But don't any of you say a word, for John's very timid, and I don't believe, in spite of all these years, he's had a single notion yet. He doesn't see a woman as anything but a patient at the end of a spoon, and mighty kind and gentle he does the dosing of them, too. Just the other day—dearie me, Jane, what has boiled over now?" And in the excitement that ensued I escaped to the garden.

Yes, Aunt Bettie is right about Dr. John; he doesn't see a woman, and there is no way to make him. What she had said about it made me realise that he had always been like that, and I told myself that there was no reason in the world why my heart should beat in my slippers on that account. Still I don't see why Ruth Clinton should have her head literally thrown against that stone wall, and I wish Aunt Bettie wouldn't. It seemed like a desecration even to try to match-make him, and it made me hot with indignation all over. I dug so fiercely at the roots of my phlox with a trowel I had picked up that they groaned so loud I could almost hear them. I felt as if I must operate on something. And it was in this mood that Alfred's letter found me.

It had a surprise in it, and I sat back on the grass and read it with my heart beating like a hammer. He was leaving Paris the day he had posted it, and he was due to arrive in London almost as soon as it did, just any hour now I calculated in a flash. And "from London immediately to Hillsboro" he had written in words that fairly sung themselves off the paper. I was frightened—so frightened that the letter shook in my hands, and with only the thought of being sure that I might be alone for a few minutes with it, I fled to the garret.

Surely no woman ever in all the world read such a letter as that, and no wonder my breath almost failed me. It was a love-letter in which the cold paper was turned into a heart that beat against mine, and I bowed my head over it as I wetted it with tears. I knew then that I had taken his coming back lightly; had fussed over it and been silly-proud of it; while not really caring at all. All that awful reducing my waist measure seemed just a lack of confidence in his love for me; he wouldn't have minded if I weighed five hundred pounds, I felt sure. He loved me—really, really, really; and I had sat and weighed him with a lot of men who were nothing more than amused by my chatter, or taken with my beauty, and who wouldn't have known such love if it were shown to them through a telescope.

I reached into a trunk that stood just beside me and took out a box that I hadn't looked into for years. His letters were all there, and his photographs, that were very handsome. I could hardly see them through my tears, but I knew that they were dim in places with being cried over when I had put them away years ago after Aunt Adeline decided that I was to be married. I kissed the poor little-girl cry-spots; and with that a perfect flood of tears rose to my eyes—but they didn't fall, for there, right in front of me, stood a more woe-stricken human being than I could possibly be, if I judged by appearances.

"Molly, Molly," gulped Billy, "I am so ill I'm going to die here on the floor," and he sank into my arms.

"Oh, Billy, what is the matter?" I gasped and gave him a little terrified shake.

"Mamie Johnson did it—poked her finger down her throat and mine, too," he wailed against my breast. "We was full of things people gived us to eat and couldn't eat no more. She said if we did that with our fingers it would make room for some more then. She did it, and I'm going to die dead—dead!

"No, no, pet; you'll be all right in a second. Stay quiet here in your Molly's lap and you will be well in just a few minutes," I said with a smile I hid in his yellow mop as I kissed the drake-tail kiss-spot. "Where's Mamie?" I thought to ask with the greatest apprehension.

"In the garden eating cup-cake Jane baked hot for both of us," he answered, snuggling close and much comforted.

"Don't ever, ever do that again, Billy," I said, giving him both a hug and a shake. "It's piggy to eat more than is good for you and then still want more. What would your father say?"

"Father isn't no good, and I don't care what he says," answered Billy with spirit. "He don't play no more, and he don't laugh no more, and he don't eat no more hardly, too. I'm not going to live in that house with him more'n two days longer. I want to come over and sleep in your bed and have you to play with me, Molly."

"Don't say that, darling, ever again," I said as I bent over him. "Your father is the best man in the world, and you must never, never leave him."

"I 'spect I will, when I get big enough to kill a bear," answered Billy decidedly. "I say, do you think Mamie saved even a little piece of that cake? I 'spect I had better go see," and he slipped out of my arms and was gone before I could hold him.

It is a lonely house across the garden with the big and the tiny man in it all by themselves! And tears, from another corner of my heart entirely, rose to my eyes at the thought, but they, too, never fell, for I heard Mrs. Johnson calling, and I had to run down quick and see what new delicacy had arrived for my party.

Somehow I didn't enjoy dressing to-night for my dinner, and when I was ready I stood before the mirror and looked at myself a long time. I was very tall and slim and—well, I suppose I might say regal in that amethyst crêpe with the soft rose-point, but I looked to myself about the eyes as I had been doing for years. And to-night that Rene triumph made me feel no different from one of Miss Hettie Primm's conceptions that I had been wearing for ages with indifference and total lack of style. I shrugged my shoulder with what I thought was sadness, though it felt a trifle like temper, too, and went on down into the garden to see if any of my flowers had a cheer-up message for me.

But it was a bored garden I stepped into just as the last purple flush of day was being drunk down by the night. The tall white lilies laid their heads over on my breast and went to sleep before I had said a word to them, and the nasturtiums snarled round my feet until they got my slippers stained with green. Only Billy's bachelor's-buttons stood up stiff and sturdy, slightly flushed with imbibing the night dew. I felt cheered at the sight of them, and bent down to gather a bunch of them to wear, even if they did clash with my amethyst draperies, when an amused smile, that was done out loud, came from the path just behind me.

"Don't gather them all to-night, Mrs. Molly," said Dr. John teasingly, as he stooped beside me. "Leave a few for—for the others." I waked up in a half-second, and so did all those prying flowers, I felt sure.

"I was just gathering them for place bouquets for—for the girls," I said stupidly as I moved over a little nearer to him. Why it is that the minute that man comes near me I get warm and comfortable and stupid, and as young as Billy, and bubbly and sad and happy and cross, is more than I can say, but I do. I never possibly know how to answer any remark that he may happen to make, unless it is something that makes me lose my temper. His next remark was the usual spark.

"Better give them the run of the garden—alone, Mrs. Molly. No chance for them unless you do," he said laughingly, "or the buttons, either," he added under his breath so I could just hear it. I wish Mrs. Johnson could have heard how soft his voice lingered over that little half-sentence. She is so experienced she could have told me if it meant—but, of course, he isn't like other men!

There are lots of questions I'm going to ask Alfred after I'm married to him.

"Oh, you Molly," came a hail in Tom's voice from the gate, just as I was making up my mind to try and think of something to wither the doctor with, and he and Ruth Clinton came up the front walk to meet us. I wondered why I was having a party in my house when being alone in my garden with just a neighbour was so much more interesting, but I had to begin to enjoy myself right off, for in a few minutes all the rest came.

I don't think I ever saw my house look so lovely before. Mrs. Johnson had put all the flowers out of hers and Mrs. Cain's garden all over everything, and the table was a mass of soft pink roses that were shedding perfume and nodding at one another in their most society manner. There is no glimmer in the world like that which comes from really old polished silver and rosewood and mahogany, and one's great-great-grandmother's hand-woven linen feels like Oriental silk across one's knees.

Suddenly I felt very stately and granddamey and responsible as I looked at them all across the roses and sparkling glass. They were lovely women, all of them, and could such men be found anywhere else in the world? When I left them all to go out into the big universe to meet the distinctions that I knew my future husband would have for me, would I sit at table with people who loved me like this? I saw Pet Buford say something to Tom about me that I know was lovely from the way he smiled at me; and the judge's eyes were a full cup for any woman to have offered her. Then in a flash it all seemed to go to my head, and tears rose to my eyes, and there I might have been crying at my own party if I hadn't felt a strong warm hand laid on mine as it rested on my lap and Dr. John's kind voice teased into my ears—"Steady, Mrs. Molly, there's the loving-cup to come yet," he whispered. I hated him, but held on to his thumb tight for half a minute. He didn't know what the matter really was, but he understood what I needed. He always does.

And after that everybody had a good time, Jane and her nephew as much as anybody, and I could see Aunt Bettie and Mrs. Johnson peeping in the pantry door, having the time of their lives, too.

That dinner was going like an airship on a high wind, when something happened to tangle its tail feathers, and I can hardly write it for trembling yet. It was a simple little telegram, but it might have been nitro-glycerine on a tear for the way it acted. It was for me, but the nephew handed it to Tom, and he opened it and, looking at me, he solemnly read it out loud. It said—

"Arrived this noon. Have I your permission to come to Hillsboro immediately? Answer. Alfred."

It was dreadful! Nobody said a word, and Tom laid the telegram right down in his plate, where it immediately began to soak up the dressing of his salad. He was so white and shaky that Pet looked at him in amazement, and then I am sure she had the good sense to find his hand under the cloth and hold it, for his shoulder hovered against hers, and the colour came back to his face as he smiled down at her. I don't believe I'll ever get the courage to look at Tom again until he marries Pet, which he'll do now, I feel sure.

And as for the judge and Ruth Clinton, I was glad they were sitting beside each other, for I could avoid that side of the table with my eyes until I had steadied myself a few seconds at least. The surprise made the others I had been dining seem statues from the stone age, and only Mr. Graves' fork failed to hang fire. His appetite is as strong as his nerves, and Delia Hawes looked at his composure with the relief plain in her eyes. Henrietta's smile in the judge's direction was doubtful. But they were not all my lovers, and why that awful silence?

I couldn't say a word, and I am sure I don't know what I should have done if it hadn't been for the doctor. He leaned forward, and his deep eyes came out in their wonderful way and seemed to collect every pair of eyes at the table, even the most astounded. We all held our breaths and waited for him to speak.

"No wonder we are all stricken dumb at Mrs. Carter's telegram," he said in his deep voice that commands everybody and everything, even the terrors of birth and death. "The whole town will be paralysed at the news that its most distinguished citizen is only going to give them two days to get ready to receive him. I can see the panic the brass band will have now getting the brass polished up, and I want to be the one to tell Mayor Pollard myself, so as to suggest to him to have at least a two-hour speech of welcome to hand out at the train. We'll make it a great time for him when he lands in the old town."

Tom took Pet home early, and I hope they walked in the moonlight for hours. Tom is the kind of man that any pretty girl who is sympathetic enough in the moonlight could comfort for anything. I'm not at all worried about him, but——

The hour I sat in the garden and talked to Judge Wade must have brought grey hairs to my head if it was daylight and I could see them. Ruth Clinton had said good-bye with the loveliest haunted look in her great dark eyes, and I had felt as if I had killed something that was alive. Dr. John had been called from his coffee to a patient and had gone with just a friendly word of good night, and the others had at last left the judge and me alone—also in the moonlight, which I wished in my heart somebody would put out.

To-night he looked me in the face and told me how to marry, and I'm not sure yet that I won't do as he says. Of course I'm in love with Alfred, but if he wants me he had better get me away quick before the judge makes all his arrangements. A woman loves to be courted with poems and flowers and deference, but she's wonderfully apt to marry the man who says, "Don't argue, but put on your bonnet and come with me."

Oh, I'm crying, crying in my heart, which is worse than in my eyes, as I sit and look across my garden, where the cold moon is hanging low over the tall trees behind the doctor's house and his light in his room is burning warm and bright. They are right: he doesn't care if I am going away for ever with Alfred. His quick eulogy of him, and the lovely warm look he poured over poor frightened me at his side, told me that once and for all. Still, we have been so close together over his baby, and I have grown so dependent on him for so many things, that it cuts into me like a hot knife that he shouldn't care if he lost me—even for a neighbour. I shouldn't mind not having any husband if I could always live close by him and Billy like this, and if I married Judge Wade—no, I don't like that! Of course, I'm going with Alfred, now that an accident has made me announce the fact to the whole town before he even knows it himself, but wherever I go, that light in the room with that lonely man is going to burn in my heart. I hope it will throw a glow over Alfred!