ked, while a sudden fear shot all over me
like lightning. "You're just playing go-away, aren't you?"

"No, I'm not playing, Molly!" he exclaimed excitedly. "Me and you and
father is going across the ocean for a long, long time away from here.
Father ast me about it this morning, and I told him all right, and you
could come with us if you was good. He said couldn't I go without you if
you was busy and couldn't come, and I told him you would put things down
and come if I said so. Won't you, Molly? It won't be no fun without you,
and you'd cry all by yourself with me gone." His little face was all
drawn up with anxiety and sympathy at my lonely estate with him out of
it, and a cry rose up from my heart with a kind of primitive savagery at
what I felt was coming down upon me.

Without waiting to take him with me, or think, or do anything but feel
deadly savage anger, I hurried across the garden and into Dr. Moore's
surgery, where he was just taking off his gloves and dust-coat.

"What do you mean, John Moore, by daring, daring to think you can go and
take Billy away from me?" I demanded, looking at him with what must have
been such fear and madness in my face that he was startled as he came
close to the table against which I leaned. His face had grown white and
quiet at my attack, and he waited to answer for a long horrible minute
that pulled me apart like one of those inquisition machines they used to
torture women with when they didn't know any better modern way to do it.

"I didn't know Bill would tell you so soon, Mrs. Molly," he said at last
gently, looking past me out of the window into the garden. "I was coming
over just as soon as I got back from this call to talk with you about
it, even if it did seem to intrude Bill's and my affairs into a day
that--that ought to be all yours to be--be happy in. But Bill, you see,
is no respecter of--of other people's happy days if he wants them in his."

"Billy's happy days are mine and mine are his, and he has the heart
not to leave me out even if you would have him!" I exclaimed, a sob
gathering in my heart at the thought that my little lover hadn't even
taken in a situation that would separate him from me across an ocean.

"Bill is too young to understand when he is--is being bereaved, Molly,"
he said, and still he didn't look at me. "I have been appointed a
delegate to attend the Centennial Congress in Paris the middle of next
month--and somehow I--feel a bit run down lat