didn't know what to say. I shut my eyes,
counted three to myself as I do when I go over into the cold tub, and
then told him all about it. We both got a satisfactory reaction, and
I never enjoyed myself so much as that before.

I understand now why Judge Wade has had so many women martyr themselves
over him and live unhappily ever afterward, as everybody says Henrietta
Mason is doing. He's a very inspiring man, and he fairly bristles with
fascinations. Some men are what you call taking, and they take you if
they want you, while others are drawing, and after you are drawn to them
they will consider the question of taking you. The judge is like that.

In the meantime I feel that it will be good for his judgeship for me to
let him "draw" me at least a little way. I may get hurt, but I shall at
least have only myself to thank for it. When we reached home, the judge
stopped under the old lilac bush that leans over my side-gate and kissed
my hand. Old Lilac shook a laugh of perfume all over us, and I believe
signalled the event with the top of his bough to the white clump on the
other side of the garden. I'm glad Aunt Adeline isn't in the flower
fraternity. Suppose she had seen or heard!

And it didn't take many minutes for me to slip into old
summer-before-last--also for the last time inside of those buttons--and
run through the garden, my heart singing, "Billy, Billy," in a perfect
rapture of tune. I ran past the surgery door and found him in his cot
almost asleep, and we had a bear reunion in the wicker chair by the
window that made us both breathless.

"What did you bring me, Molly?" he finally kissed under my right ear.

"A real cricket-ball and bat, lover, and an engine with five carriages,
a rake and a spade and a hoe, two guns that pop a new way, and something
that squirts water, and some other things. Will that be enough?" I
hugged him up anxiously, for sometimes he is hard to please, and I might
not have got the very thing he wanted.

"Thank you, Molly, all them things is what I want, but you oughter have
bringed more'n that for three days not being here with me."

Did any woman ever have a more lovely lover than that? I don't know how
long I should have rocked him in the twilight if Dr. John's voice hadn't
come across the hall in command.

"Put him down now, Mrs. Molly, and come and say other how-do-you-does,"
he called softly.

It was a funny glad-to-see-him I felt as I came into the surgery where
he was