that I can't hear the
conversation. Mr. Carter's liver got on my nerves alive, and dead
it does worse. But it hurts when the doctor has to take the little
sleep-boy out of my arms to carry him home; though I like it when he
says under his breath, "Thank you, Molly."

And as I sat and thought how near he and I had been to each other in all
our troubles, I excused myself for running to him with that letter, and
I acknowledged to myself that I had no right to get vexed when he teased
me, for he had been kind and interested about helping me get thin by the
time Alfred came back to see me. I couldn't tell which I was blushing
all to myself about, the "perfect flower" he had called me, or the
"lovely lily" Alfred had reminded me in his letter that I had been when
he left me.

Why don't people realise that a seventeen-year-old girl's heart is a
sensitive wind-flower that may be shattered by a breath? Mine shattered
when Alfred went away to find something he could do to make a living,
and Aunt Adeline gave the hard green stem to Mr. Carter when she
insisted on marrying me to him. Poor Mr. Carter!

No, I wasn't nineteen, and this town was full of women who were aunts
and cousins and law-kin to me, and nobody did anything for me. They all
said, with a sigh of relief, "It will be such a nice safe thing for
you, Molly." And they really didn't mean anything by tying up a gay,
frolicking, prancing colt of a girl with a terribly ponderous bridle.

No, the town didn't mean anything but kindness by marrying me to Mr.
Carter, and they didn't consider him in the matter at all, poor man! Of
that I feel sure. Hillsboro is like that. It settled itself here in this
north country a few hundreds of years ago, and has been hatching and
clucking over its own small affairs ever since. All the houses stand
back from the street with their wings spread out over their gardens, and
mothers here go on hovering even to the third and fourth generation.
Lots of times young, long-legged boys scramble out of the nests and go
off and decide to grow up where their crow will be heard by the world.
Alfred was one of them.

And, too, occasionally some man comes along from the big world and
marries a girl and takes her away with him, but mostly they stay and go
to hovering life on a corner of the family estate. That's what I did.

I was a poor, little, lonely chick with frivolous tendencies, and they
all clucked me over into this Carter nest, which they cons