e all those children to start with, but I know Billy
wouldn't get on with them at all. I can't even consider it on his
account, but I'll let the nice old gentleman come for a few times more
to see me, for he really is interesting, and we have suffered things in
common. Mrs. Graves lacked the kind of temperament poor Mr. Carter did.
I'd like to make it all up to him, but if Billy wouldn't be happy, that
settles it, and I don't know how good his boys are. I couldn't have
Billy corrupted.

And so, as there is nobody else exactly suitable in town, it all simmers
down to one or the other of these or Alfred. In my heart I knew that I
couldn't hesitate a minute--and in the flash of a second I _decided_.
Of course I love Alfred, and I'll take him gladly and be the wife he has
waited for all these six lonely years. I'll make everything up to him,
if I have to diet to keep thin for him the rest of my life. Probably
I shall have that very thing to do, and I get weak at the idea. Before
I burn this book I'll have to copy it all out and be chained to it for
life. At the thought my heart dropped like a sinker to my toes; but I
hauled it up to its normal place with picturing to myself how Alfred
would look when he saw me in that old blue muslin remade into a Rene
wonder. However, my old heart would show a strange propensity for
sinking down into my slippers without any reason at all. Tears were even
coming into my eyes when Tom suddenly came over the fence and picked me
and the heart up together and put us into an adventure of the first
water.

"Molly," he said in the most nonchalant manner imaginable, "we've got a
jolly, strolling, German band up at the hotel; and we're going to have
an evening's gaiety. Get into a pretty dress, and don't keep me
waiting."

"Tom!" I gasped.

"Oh, don't spoil sport, Moll! You said you would wake up this town, and
now do it. It seems twenty instead of six years since I went to a party
with you, and I'm not going to wait any longer. Everybody is there, and
they can't all have Miss Clinton."

That settled it--I couldn't let a visiting girl be worn out with
attention. Of course, I had planned to make a dignified debut under my
own roof, backed up by the presence of ancestral and marital rosewood,
silver and mahogany, as a widow should; but _duty_ called me to
de-weed myself amidst the informality of an impromptu _soiree_ at the
little town hotel. And in the fifteen minutes Tom gave me I de-weeded
t