Chapter III: Part 3

That settled it--I couldn't let a visiting girl be danced to death. Of course I had planned to make a dignified début 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 dance 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 old Rene had made me there was one, what she called "simple" lingerie frock. And it looked just as simple as the check it called for, a one and two ciphers back of it. It was of linen as sheer 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 dangerous breast-knot of shimmery blue, the color of my eyes, and I looked new-born in it.

I'm glad that poor Mr. Carter was so stern with me about rats and things in my hair, now that they are out of style, for I've got lots of my own left in consequence of not wearing other peoples'. It clings and coils to my head just any old way that 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 Judy had gone.

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 and I only succeeded in suppressing him after he had landed two kisses on my shoulder, one on my hair and one on the back of my neck.

"Molly," he said, standing off and looking at me with shining eyes, "you are one lovely dream. Your shoulders are flushed velvet, your cheeks are peaches under cream, your eyes are blue absinthe and your mouth a red devil. Come on before I get drunk 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 up to 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 college boys home for vacation, and while they are a few years younger than me, 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 Chester 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 danced with me he could see her, and when he danced with her I pouted at him, even over Judge Wade's arm. I verily believe it was from being really rattled that he asked little Pet Buford to dance with him--by mistake as it were. After that if Pet breathed a single strain of music out of his arms I didn't see it. I knew that gone expression on his face and it made me feel so lonesome that I was more gracious to the judge than was exactly safe. He dances just as magnificently as he exists in life and it is a kind of ceremonial to do it with him. The boys all wore white flannels, and most of the men, but the judge was as formally dressed as he would have been in mid-winter, and I wondered if Alfred could be half as distinguished to look at. I suppose my eyes must have been telling on me about how grand I thought he was looking because he--well, I was rather relieved when one of the boys took me out of his arms for a good, long, swinging two-step.

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 Chester 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. And after that I really didn't know with whom I was dancing, I began to get so intoxicated with it all.

I never heard musicians play better or get more of the spirit of dance in their music than those did to-night. They had just given us the most lovely swinging things, one after another, when suddenly they all stopped and the leader drew his bow across his violin. Never in all my life have I ever heard anything like the call of that waltz from that gipsy's strings. It laughed you a signal and you felt yourself follow the first strain.

Just then somebody happened to take me from whomever I was with and I caught step and glided off the universe. The strongest arms that I had felt that evening--or ever--held me and I didn't have to look up to see who it was. I don't know why I knew but I did. I wasn't clasped so very close to him or left to float by myself an inch; I was just a part of him like the arms themselves or the hand that mine molded into. And while that wonder-music teased and cajoled and mocked and rocked and sobbed and throbbed, I laid my cheek against his coat sleeve and gave myself away, I didn't care to whom.

Again that strange sense of some wonderful eternal good came to me and I found myself humming Billy's little "soul to keep" prayer against the doctor's sleeve to the tune of that magic waltz. I had never danced with him before, of course, but I felt as if I had been doing it always, and I melted in his arms as that baby had wilted to his mother out in the cabin a few hours earlier and I don't see how such happiness as that _could_ stop. But with a soft entreating wail the music came to an end and there the doctor was, smiling down into my face with his whimsical friendly smile that woke me up all over.

"Somebody has stolen a rose from the Carter garden and brought it to the dance," he said with a laugh that was for me alone.

"No," I flashed back, "a string-bean." And with that I danced off again with the judge, while the doctor disappeared through the door, and I heard the chuck of his car as it whirled away. He had just stopped in for a second to see the fun and God had given me that gipsy waltz with him, because He knew I needed something like that in my life to keep for always.

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 SIXTH

THE RESURRECTION RAZOO

Most parties are just bunches of selfish people who go off in the corners and have good times all by themselves, but in Hillsboro, Tennessee, 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 neighbors had made their prize contributions. It took Aunt Bettie and Judy 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 a sponge soaked in sherry for ever since New Year's. It was ripe, or smelled so. It made me gnaw under my belt.

A little later Judy was exclaiming over a two-year-old ham that had been simmered in port and larded with egg dressing, when Mrs. Johnson came in and began to unpack her basket, which was mostly bottles of things she said she used to "stick" food. The ginger-colored barber got the run of them before the dinner was over and got badly stuck, so Judy says. That's what made him make the mistake.

I had planned to have a lot of strange food and had ordered some things up from a caterer in the city, but I telephoned the express man not to deliver them until the next day, even if they did spoil. How could I use soft shelled crabs 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 corn-pone and green sage, and _fillet mignon_ 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, to be shipped alive and to be served broiled in their own shells.

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 over in blue chintz for her. I think that would be the best thing to set off her blue eyes and corn silk 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 over 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 danced 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 Chester. 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 she won't notice our flirtation.

"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 Chester girl took to visiting 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 Doctor 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 you all say a word, for John's mighty timid, and I don't believe, in spite of all these years, he's had a single notion yet. If he had had he'd have tried a set-to with you, Molly, like all the rest of the shy birds in town. 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, Judy, what has boiled over now?" And in the excitement that ensued I escaped to the garden.

Yes, Aunt Bettie is right about Doctor John; he doesn't see a woman, and there is no way to make him. What she had said about it made me realize 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 Chester 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 trip-hammer. He had sailed the day he had posted it and he was due to arrive in New York almost as soon as it did, just any hour now I calculated in a flash. And "from New York 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 transubstantiated into a heart that beat against mine and I bowed my head over it as I wet 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 melting away of my fatness seemed just a lack of confidence in his love for me; he wouldn't have minded if I weighed five hundred, 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 flightiness, 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 right 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 as handsome as the young god of love himself. 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 sick 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 folks gived us to eat and couldn't eat no more. She said if we did that with our fingers it would all come up and we would have room for some more then. She did it and I'm going to die dead--dead!"

"No, no, lover; 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 Judy baked hot for both of us. She didn't frow up as much as I did--or maybe more." 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 you can hold and then still want more. What would your father say?"

"Doc ain'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 ain't a-going to live in that house with him more'n two days longer. I want to come over and sleep in your bed with blue ribbons on the posts and have you to play with me, Molly."

"Don't say that, lover, 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 bet I will, when I get big enough to kill a bear," answered Billy decidedly. "Say, do you reckon 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.

Uncle Thomas Pollard had sent me a quart bottle of his private stock with the message to put the mint to soak just one hour and twenty minutes before the men came. I made room for it beside the case of champagne on the cellar shelf and wondered how they would stand it all. We don't have champagne often in Hillsboro, and when we do nobody seems to want to cut down on the juleps, consequently--well, nothing ever really happens! However, it must have been the champagne that made Tom act as he did. He was never like that before.

Somehow I didn't enjoy dressing to-night for my dinner as I did for the dance, and when I was through 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 when I put on my Sunday clothes to go to church with Mr. Carter. He was always in a hurry and I didn't care about looking at myself in the mirror anyway; nobody else ever looked at me and what was the use? 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 almost out of the dress 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 around my feet until they got my slippers stained with green. Only Billy's bachelor's-button stood up stiff and sturdy, slightly flushed with imbibing the night dew, and tipped me an impertinent wink. I felt cheered at the sight of them and bent down to gather a bunch of them to wear, even if they did swear at 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. Peaches," said Doctor 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 show for 'em 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--Mr. Carter didn't know anything about anything and I never cared to ask him, but I wonder how you know when--

"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 up something to wither the doctor with, and he and Ruth Chester 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 neighbor was so much more fun, 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 grand-damey and responsible as I looked at them all across the roses and sparkling glasses. 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 husband would have for me, would I sit at salt 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 all the love-fragrance seemed to go to my head--Tom's mixing of that julep had been skilful, too--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 Doctor John's kind voice teased into my ears: "Steady, Mrs. Peaches, 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, the ginger barber and Judy 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 blue telegram, but it might have been nitro-glycerin on a tear for the way it acted. It was for me, but the ginger barber handed it to Tom and he opened it and, looking at me over his full--after many times emptied--glass, he solemnly read it out loud. It said:

"Landed 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 color 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 Chester, 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 would 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, as he raised his glass. 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 paralyzed 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 shined 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 one 'hot time' for him when he lands in the old town, and here's to him, God bless him. Every glass high!" They all drank, and I suppose it helped them. I wish I could have drained a quart, but I couldn't swallow a sip, though I did a good stunt of pretending.

The rest of this evening has paid me off for every sin I have ever committed or am ever going to commit. 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 loving enough in the moonlight could comfort for anything. I'm not at all worried about him, but--

The hour I sat on my front steps and talked to Judge Wade must have brought gray hairs to my head if it was daylight and I could see them. Ruth Chester had said good-by with the loveliest haunted look in her great dark eyes and I had felt as if I had killed something that was alive and that I hadn't killed it enough. Doctor 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.

They say among the lawyers that it is a good thing that Benton Wade is on the bench, for it is no use to try a case against him when he has the handling of a jury. He just looks them in the face and tells them how to vote. 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 mighty apt to marry the man who says, "Don't argue, but put on your bonnet and come with me." The fact that it was too late to get into the clerk's office saved me to-night, but in two days--

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 toast to him and the lovely warm look he poured over poor frightened me at his side, as he drank his champagne, 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 neighbor. 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 I could at least have him for a family physician. _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. Hope it will throw a glow over Alfred!

LEAF SEVENTH

DASHED!

I do believe God gave that wise angel charge concerning me lest I get dashed, but I just got dashed anyway, and its my own fault, not the angel's. I have suffered this day until I want to lay my face down against the hem of His garment and wait in the dust for Him to pick me up. I shall never be able to do it myself, and how He's going to do it I can't see, but He will.

That dinner-party last night was bad enough, but to-day's been worse. I didn't sleep until long after daylight and then Judy came in before eight o'clock with a letter for me that looked like a state document. I felt in my trembly bones that it was some sort of summons affair from Judge Wade; and it was. I looked into the first paragraph and then decided that I had better get up and dress and have a cup of coffee and a single egg before I tried to read it.

Incidental to my bath and dressing, I weighed and found that I had lost all four of those last surplus pounds and two more in three days. Those two extra pounds might be construed to prove love, but exactly on whom I was utterly unprepared to say. I didn't even enjoy the thinness, but took a kind of already-married look in my glass and tried to slip the egg past my bored lips and get myself to chew it down. It was work; and then I took up the judge's letter, which also was work and more of it.

He started in at the beginning of everything, that is at the beginning of the tuberculosis girl and I cried over the pages of her as if she had been my own sister. At the tenth page we buried her and took up Alfred and I must say I saw a new Alfred in the judge's bouquet-strewn appreciation of him, but I didn't want him as bad as I had the day before when I read his own new and old letters, and cried over his old photographs. I suppose that was the result of some of what the judge manages the juries with. He'd be apt to use it on a woman and she wouldn't find out about it until it was too late to be anything but mad. Still when he began on me at page sixteen I felt a little better, though I didn't know myself any better than I did Alfred when I got to page twenty.

What I am, is just a poor foolish woman, who has a lot more heart than she can manage with the amount of brains she got with it at birth. I'm not any star in a rose-colored sky, and I don't want to inspire anybody; it's too much of a job. I want to be a healthy happy woman and a wife to a man who can inspire himself and manage me. I want to marry a thin man and have from five to ten thin children, and when I get to be thirty I want my husband to want me to be as fat as Aunt Bettie, but not let me. An inspiration couldn't be fat and I'm always in danger from hot muffins and chicken gravy. However, if I should undertake to be all the things Judge Wade said in that letter he wanted me to be to him, I should soon be skin and bones from mental and physical exercise. Still, he does live in Hillsboro and I won't let myself know how my heart aches at the thought of leaving my home--and other things. It's up in my throat and I seem always to be swallowing it, the last few days.

All the men who write me letters seem to get themselves wound up into a skyrocket and then let themselves explode in the last paragraph and it always upsets my nerves. I was just about to begin to cry again over the last words of the judge when the only bright spot in the day so far suddenly happened. Pet Buford blew in with the pinkest cheeks and the brightest eyes I had seen since I looked in the mirror the night of the dance. She was in an awful hurry.

"Molly, dear," she said, with her words literally falling over themselves, "Tom says you'll give us some of your dinner left-overs to take for lunch in the Hup, for we are going way out to Wayne County to see some awfully fine tobacco he has heard is there. I don't want to ask mother, for she won't let me go; and his mother, if he asked her, will begin to talk about us. Tom said come to you and you would understand and fix it quick. He said kiss you for him and tell you he said 'Come on in, the water's fine.' Isn't he a joke?" And we kissed and laughed and packed a basket, and kissed and laughed again for good-by. I felt amused and happy for a few minutes--and also deserted. It's a very good thing for a woman's conceit to find out how many of her lovers are just make-believes. I may have needed Tom's deflection.

Anyway, I don't know when I ever was so glad to see anybody as I was when Mrs. Johnson came in the front door. A woman who has proved to her own satisfaction that marriage is a failure is at times a great tonic to other women. I needed a tonic badly this morning and I got it.

"Well, from all my long experience, Molly," she said as she seated herself and began to hem a dish-towel with long steady stabs, "husbands are just stick candy in different jars. They may look a little different, but they all taste alike and you soon get tired of them. In two months you won't know the difference in being married to Al Bennett and Mr. Carter and you'll have to go on living with him maybe fifty years. Luck doesn't strike twice in the same place and you can't count on losing two husbands. Al's father was Mr. Johnson's first cousin and had more crochets and worse. He had silent spells that lasted a week and family prayers three times a day, though he got drunk twice a year for a month at a time. Al looks very much like him."

"Mrs. Johnson," I said after a minute's silence, while I had decided whether or not I had better tell her all about it. If a woman's in love with her husband you can't trust her to keep a secret, but I decided to try Mrs. Johnson. "I really am not engaged exactly to Alfred Bennett, though I suppose he thinks so by now if he has got the answer to that telegram. But--but something has made me--made me think about Judge Wade--that is he--what do you think of him, Mrs. Johnson?" I concluded in the most pitifully perplexed tone of voice.

"All alike, Molly; all as much alike as peas in a pod; all except John Moore, who's the only exception in all the male tribe I ever met! His marrying once was just accidental and must be forgiven him. She fell in love with him while he was treating her for typhoid, when his back was turned as it were, and it was God's own kindness in him that made him marry her when he found out how it was with the poor thing. There's not a woman in this town who could marry, that wouldn't marry him at the drop of his hat--but, thank goodness, that hat will never drop and I'll have one sensible man to comfort and doctor me down into my old age. Now, just look at that! Mr. Johnson's come home here in the middle of the morning and I'll have to get that old paper I hunted out of his desk for him last night. I wonder how he came to forget it!" It's funny how Mrs. Johnson always knows what Mr. Johnson wants before he knows himself and gets it before he asks for it!

As she went out the gate the postman came in and at the sight of another letter my heart again slunk off into my slippers, and my brain seemed about to back up in a corner and refuse to work. In a flash it came to me that men oughtn't to write letters to women very much--they really don't plow deep enough, they just irritate the top soil. I took this missive from Alfred, counted all the fifteen pages, put it out of sight under a book, looked out the window and saw the ginger barber coming dejectedly around to the side gate from the kitchen--I knew the scene he had had with Judy, about the bottle encounters of the night before--saw Mr. Johnson shooed off down the street by Mrs. Johnson; saw the doctor's car go chucking hurriedly in the garage and then my spirit turned itself to the wall and refused to be comforted. I tried my best, but failed to respond to my own remonstrances with myself, and tears were slowly gathering in a cloud of gloom when a blue gingham, rompers-clad sunbeam burst into the room.

"Git your night-gown and your toothbresh quick, Molly, if you want to pack 'em in my trunk!" he exclaimed with his eyes dancing and a curl standing straight up on the top of his head, as it has a habit of doing when he is most excited. "You can't take nothing but them 'cause I'm going to put in a rope to tie the whale with when I ketch him, and it'll take up all the rest of the room. Git 'em quick!"

"Yes, lover, I'll get them for you, but tell Molly where it is you are going to sail off with her in that trunk of yours?" I asked, dropping into the game as I have always done with him, no matter what game of my own pressed when he called.

"On the ocean where the boats go 'cross and run right over a whale. Don't you remember you showed me them pictures of spout whales in a book, Molly? Doc says they comes right up by the ship and you can hear 'em shoot water and maybe a iceberg, too. Which do you want to ketch most, Molly, a iceberg or a whale?" His eager eyes demanded instant decision on my part of the nature of capture I preferred. My mind quickly reverted to those two ponderous and intense epistles I had got within the hour and I lay back in my chair and laughed until I felt almost merry.

"The iceberg, Billy, every time," I said at last. "I just can't manage whales, especially if they are ardent, which word means hot. I like _icebergs_, or I think I should if I could catch one."

"I don't believe you could, Molly, but maybe Doc will let you put a rope and a long hook in his trunk to try with if your clothes go into mine. His is a heap the biggest anyway and Nurse Tilly said he oughter put my things in his, but I cried and then he went up-stairs and got out that little one for me. Come see 'em!"

"What do you mean, Billy?" I asked, while a sudden fear shot all over me like lightning. "You're just playing go-away, aren't you?"

"No, I ain't playing, Molly!" he exclaimed excitedly. "Me and you and Doc is a-going across the ocean for a long, long time away from here. Doc ast me about it this morning and I told him all right and you could come with us, if you was good. He said couldn't I go without you if you was busy and couldn't come and I told him you would put things down and come if I said so. Won't you, Molly? It won't be no fun without you and you'd cry all by yourself with me gone." His little face was all drawn up with anxiety and sympathy at my lonely estate with him out of it and a cry rose up from my heart with a kind of primitive savagery at what I felt was coming down upon me.

Without waiting to take him with me, or think, or do anything but feel deadly savage anger, I hurried across the garden and into Doctor Moore's office, where he was just laying off his gloves and dust coat.

"What do you mean, John Moore, by daring, daring to think you can go and take Billy away from me?" I demanded looking at him with what must have been such fear and madness in my face that he was startled as he came close to the table against which I leaned. His face had grown white and quiet at my attack and he waited to answer for a long horrible minute that pulled me apart like one of those inquisition machines they used to torture women with when they didn't know any better modern way to do it.

"I didn't know Bill would tell you so soon, Mrs. Molly," he said at last gently, looking past me out of the window into the garden. "I was coming over just as soon as I got back from this call to talk with you about it, even if it did seem to intrude Bill's and my affairs into a day that--that ought to be all yours to be--be happy in. But Bill, you see, is no respecter of--of other people's happy days if he wants them in his."

"Billy's happy days are mine and mine are his and he has the heart not to leave me out even if you would have him!" I exclaimed, a sob gathering in my heart at the thought that my little lover hadn't even taken in a situation that would separate him from me across an ocean.

"Bill is too young to understand when he is--is being bereaved, Molly," he said and still he didn't look at me. "I have been appointed a delegate to represent the State Medical Association at the Centennial Congress in London the middle of next month--and somehow I--feel a bit pulled lately and I thought I would take the little chap and have--have a _wander-jahr._ You won't need him now, Mrs. Peaches, and I couldn't go without him, could I?" The sadness in his voice would have killed me if I hadn't let it madden me instead.

"Won't need Billy any more!" I exclaimed with a rage that made my voice literally scorch past my lips. "Was there ever a minute in his life that I haven't needed Billy? How dare you say such a thing to me? You are cruel, cruel, and I have always known it, cold and cruel like all other men who don't care how they wring the life blood out of women's hearts and are willing to use their children to do it with. Even the law doesn't help us poor helpless creatures and you can take our children and go with them to the ends of the earth and leave us suffering. I have gone on and believed that you were not like what the women say all men are and that you cared whether you hurt people or not, but now I see that you are just the same and you'll take my baby away if you want to--and I can do nothing to prevent it--nothing in the wide world--I am completely and absolutely helpless--you coward, you!"

When that awful word, the worst word that a woman can use to a man, left my lips, a flame shot up into his eyes that I thought would burn me up, but in a half-second it was extinguished by the strangest thing in the world--for the situation--a perfect flood of mirth. He sat down in his chair and shook all over with his head in his hands until I saw tears creep through his fingers. I had calmed down so suddenly that I was about to begin to cry in good earnest when he wiped his eyes and said with a low laugh in his throat:

"The case is yours, Molly, settled out of court, and the 'possession-nine-points-of-the-law clause' works in some cases for a woman against a man. Generally speaking, anyway, the pup belongs to the man who can whistle him down and you can whistle Bill from me any day. I'm just his father and what I think or want doesn't matter. You had better take him and keep him!"

"I intend to." I answered haughtily, uncertain as to whether I had better give in and be agreeable or stay prepared to cry in case there was further argument. But suddenly a strange diffidence came into his eyes and he looked away from me as he said in queer hesitating words:

"You see, Mrs. Molly, I thought from now on your life wouldn't have exactly a place for Bill. Have you considered that you have trained him to demand you all the time and all of you? How would you manage Bill--and--and other claims?"

And if there is a contagious thing in this world it is embarrassment. I never felt anything worse in all my life than the shame that swept over me in a great hot wave when that look came into his eyes and made me realize just exactly what I had been saying to him, about what, and how I had said it. I stood perfectly still, shook all over like a leaf, and wondered if I would ever be able to raise my eyes from the ground. A dizzy nauseated feeling for myself rose up in me against myself and I was just about to turn on my heels and leave him, I hoped for ever, when he came over and laid his hand on my shoulder.

"Molly," he said in a voice that might have come down from heaven on dove wings, "you can't for a moment feel or think that I don't realize and appreciate what you have been to the motherless little chap, and for life I am yours at command, as he is. I really thought it would be a relief to you to have him taken away from you for just a little while right now, and I still think it is best; but not unless you consent. You shall have him back whenever you are ready for him, and at all times both he and I are at your service to the whole of our kingdoms. Just think the matter over, won't you, and decide what you want me to do?"

Something in me died for ever, I think, when he spoke to me like that. He's not like other men and there aren't any other men on earth but him! All the rest are just bugs or bats or something worse. And I'm not anything myself. There's no excuse for my living and I wish I wasn't so healthy and likely to go on doing it. It was all over and there was nothing left for me to live for, and before I could stop myself I buried my face in my hands.

"Billy asked me to go with him on this awful whale hunt!" I sobbed out to comfort myself with the thought that somebody did care for me, regardless of just how I was further embarrassing and complicating myself in the affairs of the two men I had thought I owned and was now finding out that I had to give up. I wish I had been looking at him, for I felt him start, but he said in his big friendly voice that is so much--and never enough for me.

"Well, why not you and Al come along and make it a family party, if that is what suits Bill, the boss?"