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 Hillsboro 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 to 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 in 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 Adeline 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 everybody says Henrietta Mason is doing. He's a very inspiring man, and he fairly bristles with fascinations. Some men are what you call taking, and they take you if they want you, while others are 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 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 lilac bush that leans over my side-gate and kissed my hand. Old Lilac shook a laugh of perfume all over us, and I believe signalled the event with the top of his bough 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 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 bear 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 up anxiously, for sometimes he is 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 oughter have bringed more'n 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-does," he called softly.

It was a funny glad-to-see-him I felt as I came into the surgery where he was standing over by the window looking out 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 tone of voice he uses 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. Moore, and not 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 then it went white with 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 'controlled,' 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 scare me 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 through 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.