The Melting of Molly | Page 2

I positively refuse to write that down, even
if I have promised Doctor John a dozen times over to do it, while I only
really left him to suppose I would. It is bad enough to know that your
belt has to be reduced to twenty-three inches without putting down how
much it measures now in figures to insult yourself with. No, I intend to

have this for my happy spring.
Yes, I suppose it would have been lots better for my happiness if I had
kept quiet about it all, but at the time I thought I had to advise with him
over the matter. Now I'm sorry I did. That is one thing about being a
widow, you are accustomed to advising with a man, whether you want
to or not, and you can't get over the habit right away. Poor Mr. Carter
hasn't been dead much over a year and I must be missing him most
awfully, though just lately I can't remember not to forget about him a
great deal of the time. Now if he had been here--horrors!
Still, that letter was enough to upset anybody, and no wonder I ran right
across my garden, through Billy's hedge-hole and over into Doctor
John's office to tell him about it; but I ought not to have been agitated
enough to let him take the letter right out of my hand and read it.
"So after ten years Al Bennett is coming back to pop his
bachelor's-buttons at you, Mrs. Molly?" he said in the deep drawling
voice he always uses when he makes fun of Billy and me and which
never fails to make us both mad. I didn't look at him directly, but I felt
his hand shake with the letter in it.
"Not ten, only eight! He went when I was seventeen," I answered with
dignity, wishing I dared be snappy at him; though I never am.
"And after eight years he wants to come back and find you squeezed
into a twenty-inch-waist, blue muslin rag you wore at parting? No
wonder Al didn't succeed at bank clerking, but had to make his hit at
diplomacy and the high arts. Some hit at that to be legationed at Saint
James! He's such a big gun that it is a pity he had to return to his native
heath and find even such a slight disappointment as a one-yard waist
measure around his--his--"
"Oh it's not, it's not that much." I fairly gasped and I couldn't help the
tears coming into my eyes. I have never said much about it, but nobody
knows how it hurts me to be all this fat! Just writing it down in a book
mortifies me dreadfully. It's been coming on worse and worse every
year since I married. Poor Mr. Carter had a very good appetite and I
don't know why I should have felt that I had to eat so much every day
to keep him company; I wasn't always so considerate of him. Then he
didn't want me to dance any more because married women oughtn't, or
ride horseback either--no amusement left but himself and weekly
prayer-meetings, and--and--I just couldn't help the tears coming and

dripping as I thought about it all and that awful waist measure in
inches.
"Stop crying this minute, Molly," said Doctor John suddenly in the
deep voice he uses to Billy and me when we are really sick or
stump-toed. "You know I was only teasing you and I won't stand for--"
But I sobbed some more. I like him when his eyes come out from under
his bushy brows and are all tender and full of sorry for us.
"I can't help it," I gulped in my sleeve. "I did used to like Alfred
Bennett. My heart almost broke when he went away. I used to be
beautiful and slim, and now I feel as if my own fat ghost has come to
haunt me all my life. I am so ashamed! If a woman can't cry over her
own dead beauty, what can she cry over?" By this time I was really
crying.
Then what happened to me was that Doctor John took me by the
shoulders and gave me one good shake and then made me look him
right in the eyes through the tears and all.
"You foolish child," he said in the deepest voice I almost ever heard
him use. "You are just a lovely, round, luscious peach, but if you will
be happier to have Al Bennett come and find you as slim as a
string-bean I can show you how to do it. Will you do just as I tell you?"
[Illustration: "Will you do just as I tell you?"]
"Yes, I will," I sniffed in a