 I don't know how old this is going to end, and I wish my mind wasn't in a kind of tingle. However, I'll do the best I can and not hold myself at all responsible for myself, and then who will be there to blame? There are great many kinds of good feeling in this world, from radiant joy down to perfect bliss. But this spring I have gotten a tech of just old-fashioned happiness. That looks as if it might become chronic. I am so happy that I planted my garden all crooked. My eyes upon the clouds was the bird sailing against them, and when I became conscious I found wicked flaunting poppies sprouted right up against the sweet modest cloth pinks. The whole paper of bachelor's buttons was sewed over everything, which I immediately began to dig right up again, rushing furiously to myself over the drawer, and glad that I caught myself before they grew up to laugh in my face. However, I got that laugh anyway, and might just as well have left them, for Billy ran to the gate and called Dr. John to come in and make Molly stop digging up his buttons. Billy claims everything in this garden, and he thought they would grow up into the kind of buttons you pop out of a gun. So you are digging up the bachelor buttons, Mrs. Molly, the doctor asked, as he leaned over the gate. I went on digging without looking up at him. I could not look up because it was still blushing worse. Sometimes I hate that man, and if he wasn't Billy's father, I wouldn't be as friendly with him as I am, but somebody has to look after Billy. I believe it will be a real relief to write down how I feel about him in his old book, and I shall do it whenever I can't stand him any longer, and if he gave that horrid old letter thing to me to make me miserable, he can't do it. Not this spring. I wish I'd burn it up and forget about it, but at the end. This record on the first page is enough to reduce me to tears, and I wonder why it doesn't. I weigh 160 pounds, set down in black and white. It is a tragedy. I don't believe that man at the waiting machine is so very reliable in his weights, though he had a very pleasant smile while he was weighing me. Still, I had better get some scales of my own. Smiles are so deceptive. I am 5'3 inches taller short, whichever way one looks at me. I thought I was taller, but I suppose I shall have to believe my own yardstick. But as for my waist measure, I positively refuse to write that down, even if I have half-promised Dr. John a dozen times over to do it, while I only really left him to suppose I would. It is bad enough to know that your belt has to be reduced to 23 inches without putting down how much it measures now in figures to insult your surface. No, I intend to have this from a happy spring. Yes, I suppose it would have been lots better from a happiness if I had kept quiet about it all, but at the time I thought I'd better consult him over the matter. Now, I'm sorry I did. This is one thing about being a widow. You are accustomed to consulting a man, whether you want to or not, and you can't get over the habit immediately. Poor Mr. Carter, my husband, hasn't been dead much over six years, and I must be missing him most awfully, though just lately I can't remember not to forget about him a great deal of the time. Still, that letter was enough to upset anybody and no wonder he ran right across the garden, through Billy's hedge hole and over to Dr. John's surgery to tell him about it. But I ought not have been agitated enough to let him take the letter, write out of my hand and read it. So, after ten years, all Fort Bennett is coming back to offer the specialist buttons to you, Mrs. Molly. He said in the voice he always uses when he makes fun of Billy and me, and which never fails to make us both mad. I didn't look at him directly, but I felt his hand shake with the letter in it. Not ten, only eight. He went away when I was seventeen, I answered with dignity, wishing I dared be snappy at him, though I never am. And after eight years, he wants to come back and find you squeezed into a twenty-inch waist blue muslin rag you wore at parting. No wonder Alfred didn't succeed as a bank clerk, but had to make his hit in the colonies. He is such a big gun that it is a pity he had to return to his native heath and find even such a slight disappointment as the one-yard waist mesher around his... his... Oh, it's not much, it's not that much. A fairly gasp and I couldn't help the tears coming into my eyes. I have never said much about it. But nobody knows how it hurts me to be as... as large as I am. Just writing it down in the book mortifies me dreadfully. It's been coming on worse and worse every year, since I married. Poor Mr. Carter had a very good appetite, and I don't know why I should have felt that I had to eat so much every day to keep him company. I wasn't always so considerate about him. Then he didn't want me to go for long walks with the dogs anymore, as married women oughtn't to, or ride horseback either. No amusement left but himself end, and just I couldn't help the tears coming and tripping as I thought about it all, and that awful waist mesher in inches. Stop crying this minute, Molly, said Dr. John suddenly in the deep voice he uses to Billy and me when we are really ill or tired. You know, I was only teasing you, and I won't let you. But I sobbed some more. I like him when his eyes come out from under his bushy brows and are all tender and full of sorry for us. I can't help it. I gulped into my sleeve. I did used to like Alfred Bennett. My heart almost broke when he went away. I used to be beautiful and slim, and now I feel as if my own fat ghost has come to haunt me all my life. I'm so ashamed. If a woman can't cry over her own dead beauty, what can she cry over? By this time, I was rarely crying. Then what happened to me was that Dr. John took me by the shoulders and gave me a good shake. You foolish child, he said in the deepest voice. I almost ever heard him use. You are just a lovely perfect flower. But if you will be happier to have Alfred Bennett come and find you as slim as his scarlet runner, I can show you how to do it. Will you do, just as I tell you? Yes, I will, as Nifred, in a comforted voice. But woman wouldn't be comforted by being called a perfect flower. I looked out between my fingers to see what more he was going to say. But he had turned to a shelf and taken down two books. Now, he said in his most business-like voice, it's cool as a packet of fresh water from a spring. It is no trouble at all to take off your surplus avoir du poir at the rate of two and a half pounds a week if you follow these directions. As I take it, you are about 25 pounds over your normal weight. It will take over two months to reduce you, and we will allow an extra month for further beautifying. So that when Mr. Bennett arrives, he will find the lady of his adoration in proper trim to be adored. Yes, just be still until I write these directions in this little red-letter blank book for you, and every day I want you to keep an exact record of the conditions of which I make note. No, don't talk while I make out these diet lists. I wish you would go upstairs and see if you don't think we ought to get Billy a thinner set of nightgowns. It seems to me he must be too warm in the ones he is wearing. When he speaks to me in that tone of voice, I always do it, and I need it Billy badly at that very moment. I took him out of his little cot by Dr. John's big bed and sat down with him in my arms over by the window, through which the early moon came streaming. Billy is so little, so very little, not to have a mother to rock him all the time he needs it. And I take every opportunity to give it to him I find when he is unconscious and can't help himself. She died before she even ever saw him, and I always try to do what I can to make it up to him. Poor Mr. Carter said when Billy cut his teeth and the neighbor's baby can be worse than your own. He didn't like children, but the baby's crying disturbed him so many a night I walked Billy out in the garden until daylight when Mr. Carter and Dr. John both slept. Always his little warm-wilty body has comforted me for the emptiness of not having a little one of my own. He's very congenial, too, for his slim and flowery, pink and dimply, and as many as his father in funny little flashes. I get the stick and punch it, Molly. He was murmuring in his sleep. Then I heard the doctor call me, and I had to kiss him and put him back in his bed and go downstairs. Dr. John was standing by the table with his horrid small book in his hand, and his mouth was set in a straight line and his eyes were deep back under their prose. I didn't like him that way. Yet my heart jumped, so it was hard to look as meek as I fell best under the circumstances. But I looked out from under my lashes cautiously. There you are, Miss Molly, he said briskly, as he handed me this book, get waited and measured and seized up generally in the morning and follow all the directions. Also make every record I've noted so that I can have a proper date to help you as you go along, or rather down. And if you will be faithful about it to me, or rather all for it, I think we can be sure of buttoning the blue muslin dress without even the aid of the buttonhook. His voice had the, if you can, note in it that always sets me off. Had we better get the kitty some dinner night drinking, he hastened to ask, just as it was about to explode. He knows the signs. Thank you, Dr. Moore. I hate the very ground you walk on, and I'll attend to those nightclothes as myself tomorrow, I answered, and sailed out of the surgery and down the path to my own house beyond his hedge. But I carried this book tight in my hand and made up my mind that I would do it all if it killed me. I would show him I could be faithful, to whom I would decide later on, but I hadn't read fine to this book when I committed myself to myself like that. I don't know just how long a set by the open window all by myself, based in a perfect flood of moonlight and loneliness. It was not a bit of comfort to hear Aunt Aitlin snoring away in her room upstairs. It takes the greatest congeniality to make a person snoring a pleasure to anybody. And Aunt Aitlin and I are not that way. When poor Mr. Carter died, the next day she said, Now Mary, you are entirely too young to live all your long years of widowhood alone. And as I'm on the same condition, I will let my cottage and move up the street into your house to protect and console you. And she did, the moving and the protecting. Mr. Henderson has been dead for 42 years. He only lived three months after he married Aunt Aitlin and her crepe rail is over a yard long yet. Men are the dust under her feet, but she likes Dr. John to come over and sit with us, because she can consult with him about what Mr. Henderson really died of and talk with him about the sad state of poor Mr. Carter's liver for a year before he died. I just go on rocking Billy and singing hymns to him in such a way that I can't hear the conversation. Mr. Carter's liver got on my nerves alive and that it does worse. But it hurts me when the doctor has to take the little sleep boy out of my arms to carry him home. Though I like it when he says under his breath, thank you Molly. And as I said and thought, how near he and I had been to each other in all our troubles, I excused myself for running to him with that letter and I acknowledged to myself that I had no right to get vexed when he teased me. For he had been kind and interested about helping me get sin by the time Alfred came back to see me. I couldn't tell which I was blushing all over to myself about the perfect flower he called me or the lovely lily Alfred had reminded me in his letter that I had been when he left me. Why don't people realize that the 17-year-old's heart is a sensitive wildflower that may be shattered with a press? Mine shattered when Alfred went away to find something he could do to make a living. And Aunt Adeline gave her heart-green stem to Mr. Carter when she insisted on marrying me to him. Poor Mr. Carter. No, I wasn't 19 and this town was full of women who were aunts and cousins and log in to me and nobody did anything for me. They all said with a sigh of relief, it will be such a nice safe-sing for you, Molly. And they really didn't mean anything by trying up a gay folly-king prancing, cult of a girl, to a terribly ponderous bridle. No, the town didn't mean anything but kindness by marrying me to Mr. Carter and they didn't consider him in the matter at all, poor man. Of that they feel sure. His borough is like that. It settled itself here in this North country a few hundred years ago and has been hatching and clucking over its own small town affairs ever since. All the houses stand back from the street with their wings spread out over their gardens and matters here go on hovering even to the third and first generation. Lots of times young, long-legged boys scramble out of the nests and go off and decide to grow up by their own grow will be heard by the world. Alfred was one of them and two, occasionally, some man comes along from the big world and marries a girl and takes her away with him but mostly they stay and go to hovering life on a corner of the family estate. That's what I did. I was a poor little lonely chick with frivolous tendencies and they all clucked me over into this Carter nest which they considered well-feathered for me. It gave them all a sensation when they found out from the well just how well it was feathered and it gave me one too. All that money would make me nervous if Mr. Carter hadn't made Dr. Johnny's guardian though I sometimes feel that the responsible of me makes him treat me as if he were my step-grandfather-in-law but all in all, though stiff in its manners, lusperu is lovely and loving and couldn't inquisitiveness be called just real affection with the kind of turn in its eye? And there I sat in my front room being embraced by a perfume of everybody's lilacs and horse horns and affectionate interest and moonlight with a letter in my hand from a man whose two paragraphs and letters are used to get blocked in my desk. Is it any wonder I tingled when he told me that he had never come back because he couldn't help me and that now the minute he landed in England he was going to lay his heart at my feet? I added his colonial hours to his prostrate heart myself and my own beat at the prospect. All the eight years faded away and I was again back in the old garden down at Aunt Adeline's cottage saying goodbye, folded up in his arms. That's the way my memory put the scene to me but the word folded made me remember the blue muslin dress again. I had promised to keep it and to wear it for him when he came back and I couldn't forget that the blue belt was just 23 inches and minus. No, I won't write it. I had got the dress out of the old trunk not 10 minutes after I had read the letter and measured it. No, nobody would blame me for running right across the garden to Dr. John with such a real trouble as that. All of a sudden I hacked the letter and the little book and laughed until tears ran down my cheeks. Then before I went to bed I went around my garden and had family prayers with my flowers. I do that because they are all the family I've got and God knows that all his budding things need encouragement whether it is a widow or a snowball bush. He'll give it to us and I am praying again as I sit here and watch the doctor's light go out. I hate to go to sleep and leave it burning for he sits up so late and he's so gaunt and thin and tired looking most of the times. That's what the last prayer is about, almost always. Sleep for him and no night call. End of LEAF 1, recording by Ellie, July 2009. LEAF 2, of The Melting of Molly. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org recording by Ellie, The Melting of Molly by Maria Thompson Davis. LEAF 2, a love letter loaded. The very worst page in this red book is the fifth. It says, breakfast, one slice of dry toast, one egg, fruit and a small cup of coffee, no sugar, no cream. And me with two churrosic house full of the richest cream in Hillsboro out in my meadow. Dinner, one small lean chop, slice of toast, spinach, a lettuce salad, no sweet or desert. My poultry yard is full of fat little chickens and the fish are very sheep. If I have to eat lettuce and spinach for grass, at least I'd have more than one chop inside me then. Supper, slice of toast and an apple. Why an apple? Why supper at all? Oh, I'm hungry, hungry, until I cry in my sleep when I dream about the muffin. I thought at first that getting out of bed before my eyes are fairly open and turning myself into a circus acrobat by doing every kind of overhand, foot, arm and leg contortion that the mind of a cruel man could invent to torture a human being with would kill me before I had been at it a week. But when I read on page 16 that as soon as all the toil was over, I must jump right into a tub of cold water. I kicked metaphorically speaking and I've been kicking ever since, literally to keep from freezing. But as cruel as freezing is, it doesn't compare to the tortures of being melted. Jane administers it to me and her faithful heart is so round with compassion that she perspires almost as much as I do. She brings a linen sheet out in a cold room of hot water and shrouds me in it and then more and more blanket windings envelop me until I'm like the mummy of some Egyptian giantess. Once I got so discouraged that the idea of having all this misery in this life that I mingled tears with the beads of perspiration that rolled down my cheeks and she snatched me out of those streaming wrappings less time than it takes to tell it. Soothed me in a tub of cold water, fed me with a chicken wing and mashed potatoes and the information that I was could looking enough for anybody to eat up a life without this foolishness, all in a very few seconds. Now I have to beg her to help me and I heard her tell her nephew who does the gardening that she felt like an undertaker with such goings on. At any rate, if it all kills me, it won't be my fault if people tell untruths in saying that they was beautiful in death. But now that more than a month has passed, I really don't mind it so much. I feel so strong and prancy all the time that I can't keep from bubbling. I have to smile at myself. Then another thing that helps is Billy and his ball. I could never really play ball with him before and now I can't help it. But an awful thing happened about that yesterday. We were in the garden playing over by the lilac bushes and Billy always beats me because when it goes down the slope, he throws himself down and rolls over on the grass. I went after him. And what did Billy do but begin the kind of a tussle we always have in the big armchair in the living room? Billy chuckled and squealed while I laughed myself all out of breath and then looking right over my front hedge, I discovered judge weight. I wish I could write down how I felt for I never had that sensation before and I don't believe I'll ever have it again. I've always thought that judge weight was really the most wonderful man in Hillsboro. Not because he's a judge so young in life that there is only a bright sprinkle in his lovely black hair that grows back of his head like Napoleon's and Charles Wesley's but because of his smile, which you wait for so long that you glow all over when you get it. I have seen him do it once or twice at his mother when he seats her in their pure church and once at little May with Johnson when she gave him a flowers through the fence as he passed by one day last week but I never thought I should have one all to myself but there it was, a most beautiful one, long and slow and distinctly mine. At least I didn't think much of it was for Billy. I sat up and blushed his head all over as I do when I first hit the tub of cold water. I hope you'll forgive an intruder, Mrs. Carter. But how could a mortal resist a peep into such a fairy garden if he spied the queen and her fondled play? He said in a voice as wonderful as the smile. By that time I had pushed in all my hairpins. Billy stood spread-legged as far in front of me as he could get and said in the proudest possible tone of voice, get away from my molly man. I never was so mortified in all my life and I scrambled to my feet and came over to the hedge to get between him and Billy. It's a lovely day, isn't it? Judge Wade, I asked, was the greatest interest, which I didn't really feel in the weather. But what could I think of to say a woman is apt to keep the image of a good many of grand men she sees passing around her in clear niches of her brain? And when one steps out and speaks to her for the first time, it is confusing. Of course, I've known that Judge and his mother all my life for she's one of Aunt Aileen's best friends. But I had a feeling from the look in his eye that that very minute was the first time he'd ever seen me. It was lovely, and I still blushed more as he put my hand on my cheek so that I wouldn't have to look right at him. About the loveliest day that ever happened in Hillsboro, he said, and there was still more of the delicious smile, though I hadn't noticed it so especially until. But I never knew what he had intended to say for Billy suddenly sweared up like a little turkey cock and cut out his switch at the church. Go away, man, and let my molly alone, he said in a perfect, thunder-toned voice and I almost laughed. For it had such a sound in it like Dr. John's. It is most positive times with Billy and me. No, no, Billy, the church is just looking over the hedge at our flowers. Don't you want to give him a rose? I hurried to say as the smile died out of Judge Wade's face and he looked at Billy intently. How much like John more the youngster is, he said, and his voice was so cold to Billy that it hurt me and I was afraid Billy would notice it. Coldness in people's voices always makes me feel just like ice cream tastes, but Billy's answer was still more rude. You'd better go, man. Before I bring my father to set our dog on you, he exploded and before I could stop him, his thin little legs were trundling down the garden paths toward home. Then the church and I both laughed. We couldn't help it. The church leaned farther over the fence and I went a little nearer before I knew it. You don't need to keep a personal dog, do you, Mrs. Carter? He asked with a twinkle that might have been a spark in his eye and just at that moment another awful thing happened. Aunt Edling came out of the front door and said in the most frozen voice of tone, Mary, I wish to speak to you in the house. And then she walked back through the front door without ever looking in Judge Wade's direction, though he had waved his head with one of his mother's own smiles when he had seen her before I did. One of my most impossible habits is when there is nothing else to do or laugh. I did it then and it saved the day, for we both laughed into each other's eyes and before we realized it, we were within whispering distance. No, I don't. Don't need a dog. I said softly, hardly flancing out from under my lashes because I was afraid to risk looking straight at him so soon. I could fairly feel Aunt Edling's eyes pouring into my back. It would take the hydrated monster off. May I bring my mother to call on you and the... Mrs. Henderson? He asked and put the wonderful smile all over me. Again, I almost caught my breath. I do wish you would, Aunt Edling is so fond of Mrs. Wade. I said in a positive flutter that I hope he didn't see, but I am afraid he did, for he hesitated as if he wanted to say something to calm me. Then both mercifully and went on down the street. He didn't put on the hat. He had held in his hand all the while he stood by the hedge until he had looked back and bowed again. Then I felt still more fluttered as I went into the house, but I received a third cold plunge of the day when I reached the front hall. Mary said Aunt Edling in a voice that sounded as if it had been buried and never resurrected. If you're going to continue in such an unseemly course of conduct, I hope you will remove your mourning, which is an empty mockery and an insult to my own widowhood. Yes, Aunt Edling, I'll take it off this minute. I heard myself answer her eerily to my own astonishment. I might have known that if I would ever get one of those smiles, it would go to my head. Without an utter word, I sailed into my room and closed the door softly. Slowly I embattened the black dress that symbolized the ending of six years of the blackness and the rosy dimpling thing in snowlingery with tacks of blue ribbon that stood in front of my mirror was as newborn as any other hour old similar bundle of linen and lace in Hillsborough. Fortunately, an old white lawn dress could be pulled from the top shelf of the cupboard in a hurry and the molly that came out of the room was ready for life and a lot of it. And again, fortunately, Aunt Edling had retired with a violent headache and Jane was carrying her in a hot water bottle with a broad smile on her face. Jane sees the world from the kitchen window and understands everything. She had laid a large sick letter on the hall table where I couldn't fail to see it. I took possession of it and carried it to a bench in the garden that backs up against the purple sprayed lilacs and this flanked by two rows of tall purple and white irises that stand in line ready for a Virginia reel with a delicate row of poet's narcissists across the broad paths. I love my flowers. I love them swaying with their stems in the wind and I like to snatch them and crush the life out of them against my breast and face. I have been to bed every night this spring with a bunch of cold violets against my cheek and I feel that I am going to dance with my tall row of hollyhocks as soon as they are old enough to hold up their heads and take notice. They always remind me of very stately gentlemen and I've wondered if the little narcissists weren't shaking the ruffles at them. A real love letter ought to be like a cream puff with a drop of dynamite in it. All threats was that kind. I felt warm and happy down to my toes as I read it and turned round so that old lilac bush couldn't peep over my shoulder at what he said. He wrote from Rome this time where he had been sent on some sort of diplomatic mission to the Vatican and he's led about the ancient city on her seven hills was a post poem in itself. I was so interested that I read on and on and forgot it was almost toast-apper time. Of course anybody that is anybody would be interested in Father Tiber and the old Colosseum. But what made me forget about the slice of dry toast and the apple was the way he seemed to be connecting me up with all those wonderful old antiquities that had never even seen me. Because of me he had felt and written that poem, descriptive of old Tiber and the moonlight had lit up the Colosseum just because it was over here lightening up Elspuru. Of course that is not the way he put it all but there is no place to really copy what he did say into his ink book. And anyway that is the sentiment he expressed boiled down and sugared over. That's just what they mean. Love boiled down and sugared over is apt to get an explosive flavor and one had better be careful with that kind if one is timid, which I'm not. As I said also I'm ready for a little more of life so I read on without fear and to be fair, Alfred had well boiled his own last paragraph, it snapped and the jumped and gasped. I almost thought I didn't quite like it and was going to read it over again to see when I saw a procession coming over from Dr. John's and I laid the boom shell down on the bench. First came the red setter that is always first with Dr. John and then he came himself leading Billy by the hand. It was Billy but the most subdued Billy I ever saw and I held out my arms and started for him. Wait a minute, please Molly. Said the doctor in a voice he always uses when he's punishing Billy and me. Billy came to apologize to you for being rude to your, your guest, he told me all about it and I think he's sorry. Tell Mrs. Carter you're sorry son. When that man speaks to me as if I were just any old body else, I hate him so, it is a wonder, I don't show it more than I do. But there was nothing to say and I looked at Billy and Billy looked at me then suddenly he stretched out his little arms to me and the dimples winked at me from all over his darling face. Molly, Molly, he said, is the perfect rapture of chuckles in his voice. Now you look just as pretty as you do when you go to bed all white all over. You can kiss my kiss spot a hundred times while I beer hug you for that nice, not black dress. And before any stern person could have stopped us, I was in my knees on the grass kissing my fill from the kiss spot on the back of his neck while he hugged all the starch out of the old white dress. And Dr. John sat down on the bench quick and laughed out loud one of the very few times I ever heard him do it. He was looking down at us, but I didn't laugh up into his eyes, I was afraid. I felt it was safer to go on kissing the kiss spot for the present. Bill, he said, with his waist dancing, that's the most effective apology I've ever heard. You were sorry to some point. Then suddenly Billy stiffened right in my arms and looked me straight in the face and said in the doctor's own brisk tones, even with his cupid mouth set in the same straight line. I say I'm sorry, Molly, but bother that man and I'll hit him yet. What could we say? What could we do? We didn't try. I busyed myself in trying to string on Billy's blouse that had come untied in the beer hug and the doctor suddenly discovered the letter on the bench. I saw him see it without looking in his direction at all. And how many pounds are we nearer the scarlet runner's date of existence, Miss Molly? He asked me before I had finished tying the blouse in the nicest voice in the world, fairly cracking his friendship and good humor and hateful things like that. Why should I have wanted him to get happy over that letter is more than I can say, but I did and he didn't. Oh, 20 and most of the time I'm so hungry I could eat Aunt Adeline. I dream about Billy, right with cream gravy, I answered, as he kissed again the back of the head that was beginning to nod against my breast. Long shadows lay across the garden and the white-headed old snowball was signaling out the dusk to a Dorothy Perkins rose down the walk in a scandalous way. At best, spring is just the world's matchmaking old chaperone and ought to be watched. I still sat on the grass and began to cuddle Billy's bare knees in the skirt of my dress so that the nets couldn't get at them. But Miss Molly, isn't it worse at all? I asked the doctor as he bent over toward us and looked down with something wonderful and kind in his eyes that seemed to rest on us like a benediction. You have been just as blocky as a girl can be and in only over two months you have grown as light-footed and hearty as a boy. I think nothing could be lovelier than you are now but you can get off those other few pounds if you want to. You know, don't you? That I've known how hard some of it was and I haven't been able to eat as much as I usually do thinking how hungry you are. But isn't it all worth it? I think it is. Alfred Bennett is a very great man and it is right that he should have a very lovely life to go out into the world with him. And as lovelier as you are, I think it is wonderful of you to make all this sacrifice to be still lovelier for him. I'm glad I can help you and it has taught me something to see how how faithful a woman can be across years and then in this smaller thing. Now give me bear and you'll get your apple and toast. Don't forget to take your letter out of the tube. I said perfectly still and helped Billy tighten my arms as I looked up at his father. And then after it saw the slung as I could stand it, I spoke right out at him as mad as it could be and I don't to this minute know why. Nobody in the world ever doubted that the woman could be faithful if she had anything to be faithful to. I said as I let him take Billy out of my arms at last. Faithfulness is what the woman flowers. Only it takes a man to be kiss posy. We switched and marched into the house and left him standing with Billy in his arms. I hope them found it. I didn't look back to see. I always leave that man's presence so mad I can never look back at him. And wouldn't it make any woman rage to have a man pick out another man for her to be faithful too when she hadn't made any decision about it, her own self? I wonder just how old Judge Wade is. I believe I will make up without Adeline enough before I go to bed to find out why he has never married. End of leave two, recording by Ellie, July 2009. Leaf three of The Melting of Molly. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recorded by Rachel, New Jersey, US, summer 2009. The Melting of Molly by Maria Thompson Davis. Leaf three. Men are very strange people. They're like those sums in algebra that you think about and worry about and cry about and try to get help from other women about and then all of a sudden, X works itself out into perfectly good sense. I know now that I really never got any older than the poor, foolish 18 years child that Aunt Adeline married off safe. But all that was a mild sort of exasperation to what a widow has to go through within the matter of, of, well, I think worrying interference is about the best aim to give it. Molly Carter, said Mrs. Johnson just day before yesterday, after the white-dressed Judge Wade episode that Aunt Adeline had gone to all of the friends up and down the street to be consoled about. If you haven't got sense enough to appreciate your present blissful conditions, somebody ought to operate on your mind. I was tempted to say, why not my heart? I was glad she didn't know how good that heart did feel under my blouse when the boy brought that basket of fish from Judge Wade's fishing expedition Saturday. I have firmly determined not to blush anymore at the thought of that gorgeous man, at least outwardly. Don't you think it is very, very lonely to be a widow, Mrs. Johnson? I asked timidly to see what she would say about Mr. Johnson, who is really a kind-hearted sort of man, I think. He gives me the gentlest understanding smile when he meets me in the middle of the street of late weeks. Lonely, lonely, Molly, you talk about the married state exactly like an old maid. Don't do it, it's foolish, and you will get the lone notion really fastened in your mind and let some man find out that is how you feel. Then it will all be over with you. I have only one regret, and it is that if I ever should be a widow, Mr. Johnson wouldn't be here to see how quickly I turned into an old maid. Mrs. Johnson sows by assassinating the cloth with the needle, and as she talks she was mending the sleeve in Mr. Johnson's lounge coat. I think an old maid is just a woman who has never been in love with a man who loves her. Lots of them have been married for years. I said, just as innocently as the soft face of a pan of cream and went on darning one of Billy's socks. Well, be that as it may, they are the blessed members of the women's tribe, she answered, looking at me sharply. Now I have often told Mr. Johnson, but here we were interrupted in what might have been the rehearsal of a glorious scrap by the appearance of Aunt Betty Pollard, and with her came a long, tall, lovely vision of a woman in the most wonderful, close, clingy dress and hat that you wanted to eat the minute you saw it. I hated her instantly with the most intense adoration that made me want to lie down at her feet, and also made me feel as though I had gained all the more than twenty pounds that I have slaved off me and doubled them on again. I would have liked to lead her that minute into Dr. Johnson's office, and just to have looked at him and said one word, Scarlet Runner, and Betty introduced her as Miss Clinton from London. Oh, my dear Mrs. Carter, how glad I am to meet you. She said as she towered over me in a willowy way, and her voice was lovely and cool, almost to slimness. I am the bearer of so many gracious messages that I am anxious to deliver them safely to you. Not six weeks ago I left Alfred Bennett in Paris, and really, really his greetings to you almost amounted to a pile of luggage. He came down to Cherbourg to see me off, and almost the last thing he said to me was, Now, don't fail to see Mrs. Carter as soon as you get to Hillsborough, and the more you see of her the more you'll enjoy your visit to Mrs. Pollard. Isn't he the most delightful of men? She asked me the question, but she had the most wonderful way of seeming to be talking to everybody at one time, so Mrs. Johnson got in the first answer. Delightful indeed! But Alfred Bennett is a man of sense not to marry any of the string of women who I suppose are running after him, she said. Miss Clinton looked at her in a mild kind of wonder, but she went on hacking Mr. Johnson's clothesleeve with the needle without noticing the glance at all. Well, well, dearie, I don't know about that, said Aunt Betty as she fanned and rocked with her great, big, darling fat self in the strong working chair I always kept for her. It is not old enough to have proved himself entirely and from what I hear. She paused with a big hearty smile that she always wears when she begins to tease or matchmake, and she does them both most of her time. But at whom do you suppose she looked? Not me. Miss Clinton! That was cold tub number two for that day, and I didn't react as quickly as I might, but when I did I was in the proper glow all over. When I revived and saw the lovely pale blush on her face I felt like a cabbage rose beside a tea-bud. I was glad Aunt Adeline came in just then, so I could go in and tell Julia to bring out the tea and cakes. When I came in from the kitchen I stepped into my room and took out one of Alfred's letters from the desk drawer and opened it at random, and put my finger down on a line with my eyes shut. This was what it was. And all these years I have walked the world, blindfolded to its loveliness with the blackness that came to me when I found that you— I didn't read any more, but pushed back in a hurry and went back to the company, comforted in a way, but feeling a little more in sympathy with Mrs. Johnson that I had before Aunt Betty and her guests from London had interrupted our algebraic demonstration on the man-subject. You can't always be sure of the right answer to X in any proposition of life. That is, a woman can't. And furthermore, I didn't like that next hour much, just as a sample of life, for instance. Aunt Betty had got her joining-together humor well started, and there, before my face, she made a present of every nice man in Hillsborough to that lovely, distinguished, strange girl who could have slipped through a bucket-hoop if she had tried hard. I had to sit there, listen to the presentations, watch her drink two delicious cups of tea full of sugar and cream, and consume without fear three of Jane's puffy cakes, while I crumbled mine in secret, and sit half the cup of tea out of sight behind a fern-pot. It was bad enough to hear Aunt Betty just offer her Tom, who, if he is her own son, is my favourite cousin, but I believe the worst minute I almost ever faced was when she began on the judge, for I could see from Aunt Adeline's shoulder beyond Miss Clinton how she was enjoying that, and she added another distinguished ancestor to his pedigree every time Aunt Betty paused for breath. I couldn't say a word about the fish, and Aunt Adeline wouldn't. I almost loved Mrs. Johnson when she bit off a thread viciously and said, Humpf, as she rose to start the tea-party home. That night I did so many exercises that at last I sank exhausted in a chair in front of my mirror, and put my head down on my arms and cried the real tears you cry when nobody is looking. I felt terribly old and ugly and dowdy and widowed. Couldn't have been jealous, see, for I just love that girl. I want most awfully to hug her very slimness, and it was more what she might think of poor, dumpy me than what any man in Hillsborough or Paris could possibly feel on the subject that hurt so hard. But then, looking back on it, I am afraid that jealousy sheds feathers every night so you wouldn't know him in the morning, for something made me sit up suddenly with a spark in my eyes and reach out to the desk for my pencil and check-book. It took me more than an hour to reckon it all up, but I went to bed a happier, though, in prospects, a poorer woman. As I sat in the train on my way to town early the next morning I thought a good deal about poor Mr. Carter. After this I shall always appreciate and admire him for the way he made money, and his kindness in leaving it to me since, for the first time I fully realized what it could buy, and I bought things. First I went to see Madame Côtier for corsets. I had heard about her, and I knew it meant a fortune. But that didn't matter. She came in and looked at me for about five minutes without saying a word, and then she ran her hands down and down over me until I could feel the superfluous flesh just walking off of me. It was delicious. Then she and two girls wearing fashionable frocks and fashionable hair came in and did things to a corset they laced on me that I can't even write down, for I didn't understand the process. But when I looked in that long glass I almost dropped to the floor. I wasn't tight, and I wasn't stiff, and I looked. I'm too modest to write how lovely I really looked to myself. I was spellbound with delight. Next I signed the cheque for three of those wonders, and I had sewn the clouds I didn't know what I was doing. But I came too with a jolt when the prettiest girl began to get me into that black silk bag I had worn down to the West End. I must have shrunk the whole remaining pounds I had felt obliged to lose for Alfred and Ruth Clinton, from the horror I felt when I looked at myself. The girl was really sympathetic, and said with a smile that was true kindness. Shall I call a taxi for Madame and have it take her to clients? They have wonderful gowns by Rene, all ready to be fitted at short notice. Really Madame's figure is such that it commands a perfect costume now. Men do business well, but when women enter the field they are geniuses at money extracting. I felt myself already clothed perfectly when that girl said my figure commanded a proper dress. Of course Klein pays Madame Quartier a commission for the customers she passes on to him. The one for me must have looked to her like a big transaction. I spent the next three days in the great Klein establishment, only going to the hotel to sleep, and most of the time I forgot to eat. Madame Rene must have been Madame Quartier's twin sister and youth, and Madame Telières in the hat department was a triplet to them both. When women have genius it breaks out all over them like measles, and they never recover from it. Those women had the confluent kind. But I know that Madame Rene really approved of me, for when I blushed and asked her if she could recommend a good beauty doctor she held up her hands and shuddered. Never, Madame, never pour fou, Rene sent charmante, it is tout foolish, never, jamais, jamais de la vie. I had to calm her down and she bowed over my hand when we parted. I thought Klein was going to do the same thing or worse when I signed the cheque which would be enough to provide him with a new motor-car, but he didn't. He only said politely, and I am delighted that the trousseau is perfectly satisfactory to you, Madame. That was an awful shock, and I hope I didn't show it as I murmured, perfectly, thank you. The word trousseau can be spoken in a woman's presence for many years with no effect, but it is an awful shock when she first really hears it. I felt queer all the afternoon as I packed those trunks for the five o'clock train. Yes, the word trousseau ought to have a definite surname after it always, and that's why my loyalty dragged poor Mr. Carter out into the light of my conscience. The thinking of him had a definite effect on me. I laid out the trim and dark grey-blue cloth, tailored almost beyond endurance to air in the trim going home, and had thrown the old black silk bag across the chair to give to the hotel-maid. But the decision of the session between conscience and loyalty made me pack the precious blue wonder and put on once more the black rags of remembrance in a kind of panic of respect. I would lots rather have bought poor Mr. Carter the monument I have been planning for months to keep up conversation with Aunt Adeline, than wear that dress again. I felt conscience would prove me once more with loyalty looking on and disapproval as I buttoned the old thing up for the last time, because I really ought to have stayed a day longer to buy that monument, but to tell the truth I wanted to see Billy so desperately that his sleep-place above my heart hurt as if it might have prickly heat break out at any minute. So I hurried and stuffed the grey-blue darling into the top tray, lapped the old black silk around my waist and belted it with a black belt of a new green linen I had bought for morning walks. Down to the butchers and the high street, I suppose. That is about the only mourning dissipation in Hillsborough that I can think of, and it all depends on whom you meet, how much of a dissipation it is. The next thing that happens after you have done a noble deed is you either regard it as a reward of virtue or as a punishment for having been foolish. I felt both ways when Judge Wade came down the platform at St. Pancras, looking so much grander than any other man in sight that I don't see how they ever stand him. At that minute the noble black silk deed felt foolish, but at the next minute I was glad I had done it. It is nice to watch for a person to catch sight of you if you feel sure how they are going to take it, and somehow in this case I felt sure. I was not disappointed, for his smile broke his face up into a joy laugh. Off came his hat instantly so I could catch a glimpse of the fascinating frost over his temples, and with a positive sigh of pleasure he got into the same carriage and took a seat beside me. I turned with an echo smile all over me when suddenly his face became grave and considerate, and he looked at me as all the people in Hillsborough have been doing ever since poor Mr. Carter's funeral. Mrs. Carter, he said very kindly, in a voice that pitched me out of the carriage window and left me a mile behind on the rails, all by myself, I wish I had known of your sad errand in town, so that I could have offered you some assistance in your selection. You know, we have just had our family grave in the cemetery finally arranged, and I found the dealers and memorial-stones very confusing in their ideas and designs. Mrs. Henderson just told my mother of your absence from home last night, and I could only come up to town for the day on important business, or I would have arranged to see you. I hope you found something that satisfied you. What is a woman going to say when she has a tombstone thrown in her face like that? I didn't say anything, but what I thought about Aunt Annaline filled in a dreadful pause. Perfectly dumb and quiet I sat for a space of time and wondered just what I was going to do. It was beyond me at the moment, and the molly that is ready for life quick didn't know what to say. I shut my eyes, counted three to myself as I do when I go over into the cold tub, and then told him all about it. We both got a satisfactory reaction, and I never enjoyed myself so much as that before. I understand now why Judge Wade has had so many women martyr themselves over him and live unhappily ever afterward, as everyone says Henrietta Mason is doing. He's a very inspiring man, and he fairly bristles with fascinations. Some men are what you call taking. They take you if they want you, while others are it drawing, and after you are drawn to them they will consider the question of taking you. The judge is like that. In the meantime I feel that it will be good for his judgeship for me to let him draw me on at least a little way. I may get hurt, but I shall at least have only myself to thank for it. When we reached home the judge stopped under the old lie-like bush that leans over my side gate and kissed my hand. Old lie-like shook a laugh of perfume all over us, and I believe signaled the event with the top of his bow to the white clump on the other side of the garden. I'm glad Aunt Adeline isn't in the flower fraternity. Suppose she had seen or heard. And it didn't take many minutes for me to slip into the old summer before last, also for the last time inside of those buttons, and run through the garden, my heart singing, Billy, Billy, in a perfect rapture of tune. I ran past the surgery door and found him in his cot almost asleep, and we had a bare reunion in the wicker chair by the window that made us both breathless. What did you bring me, Molly? He finally kissed under my right ear. A real cricket-ball and bat-lover, and an engine with five carriages, a rake and a spade and a hoe, two guns that pop a new way and something that squirts water and some other things. Will that be enough? I hugged him anxiously, for some time see as hard to please, and I might not have got the very thing he wanted. Thank you, Molly. All them things is what I want, but you ought to have bringed me more in that for three days not being here with me. Did any woman ever have a more lovely lover than that? I don't know how long I should have rocked him in the twilight if Dr. John's voice hadn't come across the hall in command. Put him down now, Mrs. Molly, and come and say other how-do-you-dos. He called softly. It was a funny kind of glad to see him, I felt as I came into the surgery where he was standing over by the window looking at at my garden in its twilight glow. I gave him my hand and a good deal more of a smile and a blush than I intended. He very far from kissed the hand. He held it just long enough to turn me round into the light and give me one long looking over from head to feet. Just where does that corset press you worst? He asked in the turn of voice, he says to say, put out your tongue. So much of my bad temper rose to my face that it is a wonder it didn't make a scar, but I was cold enough to all outward appearances. I am making a call on a friend, Dr. Morne, at a consultation visit to my physician. I said, looking into his face as though I had never seen him before. I beg your pardon, Molly. He exclaimed, and his face was redder than mine, and that it went white with a mortification. I couldn't stand that. Don't do that, I exclaimed, and before I knew it I had taken hold of his hand and had it in both of mine. I know I look as if I was shrunk or laced, but I'm not. I was going to tell you all about it. I'm really inches bigger in the right place and just—just—controls the woman called it in the wrong place. The blood came back into his face, and he laughed as he gave me a little shake that pushed me away from him. Don't you ever scamry like that again, child, or it might be serious? He said in the Billy and Me tone of voice that I like a little only. I never will, I said in a hurry. I want you to ask me anything in the world you want to, and I'll always do it. Well, let me take you home to the garden then. And yes, I believe I'll stay to supper with Mrs. Henderson. Don't you want to tell me what a little girl like you did in a big city and—and read me part of that Paris letter I saw the postman give Jane this afternoon? Again I ask myself the question why his friendliness to Alfred Bennett's letters always makes me so instantly cross. End of LEAF 3. LEAF 4 of The Melting of Molly by Maria Thompson Davis. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. And by Rachel, New Jersey, United States, summer 2009. The Melting of Molly by Maria Thompson Davis. LEAF 4. 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 sped at six o'clock every morning now would ring 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 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-woop, 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. Little Spurrow is a very peculiar little speck on the universe, even more peculiar than being 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 the 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 said 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 her and of her in the same tones of voice they used at the obsequies. Then sooner or later some neighbor 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. Carruthers little Jesse 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 it gives them more to think about. I remember the two trunks I had brought home with me, and hugged my knees up under my chin with pleasure 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 crepe to sheen, or the white chiffon with the rosebud embroidery is a first dose for my friends, a sweetness came in through my window that took my breath away, and 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-choraster 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. If you love me, Molly, darling, let your answer be a kiss. A confused recollection of having heard the words in 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 bring to 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 him, they'll come out of their holes. A beetle comes too, but I couldn't catch him both. Lift me up, and I can put him in the water-glass 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 face and Canberra 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 get a squirrel with it, too, if I sing it quite low. He began to squirm out of my arms toward the table in 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, because he makes me feel tired with his slow tune what's only good for frogs and things. Get a piece of cloth, the 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 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 flavored with me. He told me about Miss Clinton and what good friends they were, and how much he hoped she would be in Hillsborough 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 20 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 newborn baby until it swims. I did that one twenty extra times in 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 only got 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 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 debut 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 quickly as my clothes would let me, when a real configuration 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 ruch 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 configuration was lighted in me about my debut, 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 true sew to the neighbors, 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 grays after kissing your hand under the lilacs yesterday, which, fortunately, nobody saw but little me. Miss Sore, why should you be, aren't you happy with me? I withered him with a look, or, rather, tries 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? Could grace us, Molly, don't knock the town down like that. Let them 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 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 in 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, in the spark plug to the car you can cut off a lock of my head 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. And 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, we both went out to the curb 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 debut 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 forget 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 scatterbrained flyaway? 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 weak 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. Fie! Nonsense! Marrying is roping in with ball and chain to my mind, and a weak 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. 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 the 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 to spend the day kind with relatives or more relatives to supper. That's what most entertaining in Hillsborough 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 a bridesmaid for Carolyn Evans when she married a Birmingham magnate from which Hillsborough has never yet recovered. It was the week before the wedding. I was sixteen, felt dreadfully unclothed without a tucker in my dress, until I offered for the first time in the 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. Candlelight, 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 nestle-road 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 astralized 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 Renee's masterpiece of a negligé. 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, it 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 for the spoon. You don't know what it is to want something sweet so bad you're 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 die, molly. He asked softly, after looking straight in my eyes for a long minute, that made me drop my head into the blue bow I had tied on the end of my long plait almost caught in the scattered jam. Even at such a moment as that I felt how glad Madame Renee would be to have given such a nice man as a doctor a treat like that blue silk-chef doofah of hers. I was glad myself. Don't die, 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 of 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 across his face when I reached across him to catch an inquisitive rose that I saw peeping in the window at us? End of Leaf Four. Leaf Five of the Melting of Molley. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Chris McElvoy. The Melting of Molley by Maria Thompson Davies. Leaf Five. The Juice of the Lemon in two glasses of cold water to be drunk immediately on awakening, page 11. 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. Sometime 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. Molley. 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 134 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 onto my cheeks and answered experimentally. Sometimes it hurts. Then a cyclone happened to me. Come here to me a minute, he said quickly as he turned me around 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 wife 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 jirically. I am lonely and worse than being lonely, I'm scared. I ought to have stayed just the quiet relic 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 them and I don't know what you'll fake when you see my bank book. Everybody is talking about me in 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 Betty 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 his award under you. I can't help Judge Wade 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 perspically 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 hands and 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 won't some 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 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 today but she worries because she don't think I contend to the baby right, he said and he did look helpless. Her mother had to go home for two days but is coming tomorrow. I gasped undress and watched the youngster myself. It won't hurt him to stay bundled up till granny comes will it gap? 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. 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 seemed 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 close around some of the bachelor 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-laws for supper and I sat down with a sigh of relief. Some days are like tin nutmeg graders that everybody uses to create you against and this was one for me. For an hour I sat and graded my own self against Alfred's letter that had come in the morning. I realized 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 idolizes him, idealizes 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 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, I 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 that his mother isn't Adelaide'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 tuberculosis and he was a locket with her in it yet. I like to reward him for such faithfulness but then Alfred's been faithful too. I look at Ruth Clinton and realize 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 him 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 a 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. I don't know how good his boys are and 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 them for him the rest of my life. Probably I shall have that very thing to do and I got 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 halted 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 Renee 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, Maul. You said you would wake up this town and now do it. It seems 20 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 soiree at the little town hotel. And in the 15 minutes Tom gave me, I de-weeded to some purpose and flowered out to still more. I never do anything by haves. In that, that trousseau Madame Renee had made me, there was one, what she's called simple, lingerie fra. And it seemed just as simple as the check it called for. It was a flaunt 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 color of my eyes. And I looked newborn 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 where I've got lots of my own left in consequence of not wearing other people's. It crings in 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 10 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. 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 was 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 Betty 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 Edelang 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 that 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. Ms. 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'm 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'm 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 today and I don't know how I shall ever get to 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. End of leaf five recording by Christina McAvoy What's in Lucy, Florida? Leaf six of The Melting of Molly. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Christine Blashford. The Melting of Molly by Maria Thompson Davies. Leaf six, Conflagration. Most parties are just bunches of selfish people who go off in the corners and have good times all by themselves but in Hillsborough 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 Betty came up my front steps before breakfast with a large basket full 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 Betty 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 baskets. 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 smelt when Mrs. Wade had sent me word that she was going to bake some brook trout by a recipe of the judge's grandmothers? 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. Carruth's cane 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 underway everything smelling grand and Aunt Betty 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 Easter rooms done up with blue chints 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 Hillsborough since Tom put on long trousers, Betty Pollard and they are just as they have been for 15 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 tablespoon full 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. Humpf, 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 Betty, I said regretfully. I always take every chance to rub in Tom's and my relationship on Aunt Betty 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 Hillsborough. 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 show 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 Betty 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 Betty 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 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 him 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 Betty 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 flocks 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 Hillsborough 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 whetted it with tears. I knew then that I had taken his coming back lightly, had first 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. Mammy Johnson did it, poked her finger down her throat and mine too, he wailed against my breast. We was full of things people give 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 gonna die dead, dead. No, no, pet, you'll be all right in a second. Stay quiet here in your Molly's lap and you'll 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 Mammy? I thought to ask with the greatest apprehension. In the garden eating cupcake 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 gonna live in that house with him more than 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 expect I will when I get big enough to kill a bear," answered Billy decidedly. I say, do you think Mammy saved even a little piece of that cake? I expect I'd 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 crepe 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-Prime'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 the 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 neighbor 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 in 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-waven linen feels like oriental silk across one's knees. Suddenly I felt very stately and grandamie 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 tome 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 Betty and Mrs. Johnston 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 nitroglycerin 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 Hillsborough 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 Pett 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, or 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 Pett, 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. John 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 goodbye 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. Tonight 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 forever 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 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. End of LEAF 6