with a letter in my hand from the man whose two photographs and letters I used to keep locked up in my desk. Is it any wonder I tingled when he told me that he had never come back because he couldn't have me, and that now the minute he landed in England he was going to lay his heart at my feet? I added his colonial honours 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 good-bye, folded up in his arms. That's the way my memory put the scene to me, but the word "folded" made me remember that blue muslin dress again. I had promised to keep it and wear it for him when he came back—and I couldn't forget that the blue belt was just twenty-three inches and mine is—no, I won't write it. I had got that dress out of the old trunk not ten 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 hugged the letter and the little book and laughed until the tears ran down my cheeks.

Then, before I went to bed, I went round 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'm praying again as I sit here and watch for the doctor's light to go out. I hate to go to sleep and leave it burning, for he sits up so late and he is so gaunt and thin and tired-looking most times. That's what the last prayer is about, almost always—sleep for him and no night call!

Leaf II.

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 Jersey cows full of the richest cream in Hillsboro, out in my meadow!

"Dinner, one small lean chop, slice of toast, spinach or lettuce salad. No dessert or sweet." My poultry-yard is full of fat little chickens, and I wish I were a 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 the apple? Why supper at all?

Oh, I'm hungry, hungry until I cry in my sleep when I dream about a 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 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 sixteen that as soon as all that horror was over I must jump right into the 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 wrung with compassion that she perspires almost as much as I do. She wrings a linen sheet out in a cauldron of hot water and shrouds me in it—and then more and more blanket windings envelop me until I am like the mummy of some Egyptian giantess.

Once I got so discouraged at 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 steaming wrappings in less time than it takes to tell it, soused me in a tub of cold water, fed me with a chicken wing and mashed potatoes, and the information that I was "good-looking enough for anybody to eat up alive without all 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 I 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 never could really play with him before, but 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 Wade. 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 have always thought that Judge Wade was really the most wonderful man in Hillsboro, not because he is a judge so young in life that there is only a white sprinkle in his lovely black hair that grows back off 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 pew at church, and once at little Mamie Johnson when she gave him a flower through their 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 as red all over as I do when I first hit that 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 faun at 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 near in front of me as he could get, and said, in the rudest 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 with 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 the grand men she sees passing around her in queer niches in her brain, and when one steps out and speaks to her for the first time it is confusing. Of course, I have known the judge and his mother all my life, for she is one of Aunt Adeline's best friends, but I had a feeling from the look in his eyes that that very minute was the first time he had ever seen me. It was lovely, and I blushed still more as I put my hand up to 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 swelled up like a little turkey-cock and cut out with his switch at the judge.

"Go away, man, and let my Molly alone!" he said, in a perfect thunder-tone of voice; but I almost laughed, for it had such a sound in it like Dr. John's at his most positive times with Billy and me.

"No, no, Billy; the judge 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 like John Moore 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