I.

Men are very strange people. They are like those sums in algebra that
you think about and worry about and cry about and try to get help from
other women about, and then, all of a sudden, X works itself out into
perfectly good sense.

I know now that I really never got any older than the poor, foolish,
eighteen-years child that Aunt Adeline married off "safe." But all that
was a mild sort of exasperation to what a widow has to go through with
in the matter of--of, well, I think worrying interference is about the
best name to give it.

"Molly Carter," said Mrs. Johnson just day before yesterday, after the
white-dress, Judge-Wade episode that Aunt Adeline had gone to all the
friends up and down the street to be consoled about, "if you haven't got
sense enough to appreciate your present blissful condition, somebody
ought to operate on your mind."

I was tempted to say, "Why not my heart?" I was glad she didn't know how
good that heart did feel under my blouse when the boy brought that
basket of fish from Judge Wade's fishing expedition Saturday. I have
firmly determined not to blush any more at the thought of that gorgeous
man--at least outwardly.

"Don't you think it is very--very lonely to be a widow, Mrs. Johnson?"
I asked timidly to see what she would say about Mr. Johnson, who is
really a kind-hearted sort of man, I think. He gives me the gentlest
understanding smile when he meets me in the street of late weeks.

"Lonely, _lonely_, Molly? You talk about the married state exactly
like an old maid. Don't do it--it's foolish, and you will get the lone
notion really fastened in your mind and let some man find out that is
how you feel. Then it will be all over with you. I have only one regret;
and it is that if I ever should be a widow Mr. Johnson wouldn't be here
to see how quickly I turned into an old maid." Mrs. Johnson sews by
assassinating the cloth with the needle, and as she talked she was
mending the sleeve of Mr. Johnson's lounge coat.

"I think an old maid is just a woman who has never been in love with a
man who loves her. Lots of them have been married for years," I said,
just as innocently as the soft face of a pan of cream, and went on
darning one of Billy's socks.

"Well, be that as it may, they are the blessed members of the women
tribe," she answered, looking at me sharply. "Now I have often told Mr.
Johnson--" but here we were interrupted in what might have been the
rehearsal of a glorious