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 went trundling down the garden path toward home.

Then the judge and I both laughed. We couldn't help it. The judge 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 eyes, and just at that moment another awful thing happened. Aunt Adeline came out of the front door, and said in the most frozen tone of voice—

"Mary, I wish to speak to you in the house," and then walked back through the front door without even looking in Judge Wade's direction, though he had waved his hat 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 I laugh. I did it then, and it saved the day, for we both laughed into each other's eyes, and, before we realised it, we were within whispering distance.

"No, I don't—don't—need any dog," I said softly, hardly glancing out from under my lashes, because I was afraid to risk looking straight at him again so soon. I could fairly feel Aunt Adeline's eyes boring into my back.

"It would take the hydra-headed monster of—may I bring my mother to call on you and the—Mrs. Henderson?" he asked, and poured the wonder smile all over me. Again I almost caught my breath.

"I do wish you would, Aunt Adeline 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 bowed 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 the third cold plunge of the day when I reached the front hall.

"Mary," said Aunt Adeline in a voice that sounded as if it had been buried and never resurrected, "if you are 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 Adeline, I'll go take it off this very minute," I heard myself answer her airily, to my own astonishment. I might have known that if I ever got one of those smiles it would go to my head! Without another word I sailed into my room and closed the door softly.

Slowly I unbuttoned that black dress that symbolised the ending of six years of the blackness, and the rosy dimpling thing in snowy lingerie with tags of blue ribbon that stood in front of my mirror was as new-born as any other hour-old similar bundle of linen and lace in Hillsboro. 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 that room was ready for life—and a lot of it.

And again, fortunately, Aunt Adeline 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 thick 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 is flanked by two rows of tall purple and white iris that stand in line ready for a Virginia reel with a delicate row of the poet's narcissus across the broad path. I love my flowers. I love them swaying on 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 cool 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 have wondered if the little narcissus weren't shaking their ruffles at them.

A real love-letter ought to be like a cream puff with a drop of dynamite in it. Alfred's was that kind. I felt warm and happy down to my toes as I read it, and I 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 his letter about the Ancient City on her seven hills was a prose-poem in itself. I was so interested that I read on and on and forgot it was almost toast-apple time.

Of course, anybody that is anybody would be interested in Father Tiber and the old Colosseum, but what made me forget the one 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 I was over here lighting up Hillsboro. 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 over.

That's just what I mean—love boiled down and sugared over is apt to get an explosive flavour, 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 more 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. 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 bombshell 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. "Bill came to apologise 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 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 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 bother that man, and I'll hit 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.