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 'spect I will, when I get big enough to kill a bear," answered Billy
decidedly. "I say, do you think Mamie saved even a little piece of that
cake? I 'spect I had 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 Primm'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 littl