oice. What woman wouldn't be
comforted by being called a "perfect flower"? I looked out between my
fingers to see what more he was going to say, but he had turned to a
shelf and taken down two books.

"Now," he said in his most businesslike voice, as cool as a bucket of
water fresh from the spring, "it is no trouble at all to take off your
surplus avoirdupois at the rate of two and a half pounds a week if you
follow these directions. As I take it, you are about twenty-five pounds
over your normal weight. It will take over two months to reduce you,
and we will allow an extra month for further beautifying, so that when
Mr. Bennett arrives he will find the lady of his adoration in proper trim
to be adored. Yes, just be still until I write these directions in this
little red leather blank-book for you, and every day I want you to keep
an exact record of the conditions of which I make note. No, don't talk
while I make out these diet lists! I wish you would go upstairs and see
if you don't think we ought to get Billy a thinner set of nightgowns.
It seems to me he must be too warm in the ones he is wearing."

When he speaks to me in that tone of voice I always do it. And I needed
Billy badly at that very moment. I took him out of his little cot by
Dr. John's big bed and sat down with him in my arms over by the window,
through which the early moon came streaming. Billy is so little, so very
little not to have a mother to rock him all the times he needs it, that
I take every opportunity to give it to him I find--when he's unconscious
and can't help himself. She died before she ever even saw him, and I've
always tried to do what I could to make it up to him.

Poor Mr. Carter said when Billy cut his teeth that a neighbour's baby
can be worse than your own. He didn't like children, and the baby's
crying disturbed him, so many a night I walked Billy out in the garden
until daylight, while Mr. Carter and Dr. John both slept. Always his
little, warm, wilty body has comforted me for the emptiness of not
having a little one of my own. And he's very congenial, too, for he's
slim and flowery, pink and dimply, and as mannish as his father, in
funny little flashes.

"Git a stick to punch it, Molly," he was murmuring in his sleep. Then I
heard the doctor call me and I had to kiss him, put him back in his bed,
and go downstairs.

Dr. John was standing by the table with this horrid small book in his
hand, and his mouth was set in a straig