he had felt and written that poem descriptive of old Tiber, and the moonlight had lit up the Colosseum just because I was over here lighting up Hillsboro, Tennessee, with Mr. Carter dead. Of course that is not the way he put it all, but there is no place to really copy what he did say down into this imp book and, anyway, that is the sentiment he expressed, boiled down and sugared off.

That's just what I mean—love boiled down and sugared off is mighty 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 am ready for a little taste of life, so I read on without fear. And, to be fair, Alfred had well boiled his own last paragraph. It snapped; and I jumped and gasped both. I almost thought I didn't quite like it and was going to read it over again to see, when there came a procession from over to Doctor John's and I laid the bombshell down on the bench.

First came the red setter that is always first with Doctor 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 the voice he always uses when he's punishing Billy and me. "Bill 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 are 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 with a perfect rapture of chuckles in his voice, "now you look just as pretty as you do when you go to bed; all whity all over. You can kiss my kiss-spot a hundred times while I bear-hug you for that nice not-black dress," and before any stern person could have stopped us I was on 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 summer-before-last.

And Doctor 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, anyway.

"Bill," he said, with his voice dancing, "that's the most effective apology I 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 damn that man and I'll git him yet!"

What could we say? What could we do? We didn't try. I busied myself in tying the string on Billy's blouse that had come untied in the bear-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 string-bean state of existence, Mrs. Molly?" he asked me before I had finished tying the blouse, in the nicest voice in the world, fairly crackling with friendship and good humor and hateful things like that. Why I should have wanted him to huff over that letter is more than I can say. But I did; and he didn't.

"Over twenty, and most of the time I am so hungry I could eat Aunt Adeline. I dream about Billy, fried with cream gravy," I answered, as I kissed again the back of the head that was beginning to nod down against my breast. Long shadows lay across the garden and the white-headed old snow-ball was signaling out of the dusk to a Dorothy Perkins down the walk in a scandalous way. At best, spring is just the world's match-making old chaperon and ought to be watched. I still sat on the grass and I began to cuddle Billy's bare knees in the skirt of my dress so the chigres couldn't get at them.

"But, Mrs. Molly, isn't it worth it all?" 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 plucky as a girl can be and in only a little over two months you have grown as lightfooted and hearty as a boy. I think nothing could be lovelier than you are right now, but you can get off those other few pounds if you want to. You know, don't you, that I have 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 wife to go out into the world with him. And as lovely as you are I think it is wonderful of you to make all this sacrifice to be still lovelier for him. I am 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 Bill and you get your apple and toast. Don't forget to take your letter in out of the dew." I sat perfectly still and held Billy tighter in my arms as I looked up at his father, and then after I had thought as long as I could stand it, I spoke right out at him as mad as hops and I don't to this minute know why.

"Nobody in the world ever doubted that a 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 a woman flowers, only it takes a man to pick his posy." With which I marched into the house and left him standing with Billy in his arms, I hope dumfounded. 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 to 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 with Aunt Adeline enough before I go to bed to find out why he has never married.