The Melting of Molly | Page 9

just as pretty as you do when you go to bed; all whity all
over. You can kiss my kiss-spot a hundred times while I bear-hug you
for that nice not-black dress," and before any stern person could have
stopped us I was on my knees on the grass kissing my fill from the
"kiss-spot" on the back of his neck, while he hugged all the starch out
of the summer-before-last.
And Doctor John sat down on the bench quick and laughed out loud

one of the very few times I ever heard him do it. He was looking down
at us, but I didn't laugh up into his eyes. I was afraid. I felt it was safer
to go on kissing the kiss-spot for the present, anyway.
"Bill," he said, with his voice dancing, "that's the most effective
apology I ever heard. You were sorry to some point."
Then suddenly Billy stiffened right in my arms and looked me straight
in the face and said in the doctor's own brisk tones, even with his cupid
mouth set in the same straight line:
"I say I'm sorry, Molly, but damn that man and I'll git him yet!"
What could we say? What could we do? We didn't try. I busied myself
in tying the string on Billy's blouse that had come untied in the
bear-hug and the doctor suddenly discovered the letter on the bench. I
saw him see it without looking in his direction at all.
"And how many pounds are we nearer the string-bean state of existence,
Mrs. Molly?" he asked me before I had finished tying the blouse, in the
nicest voice in the world, fairly crackling with friendship and good
humor and hateful things like that. Why I should have wanted him to
huff over that letter is more than I can say. But I did; and he didn't.
"Over twenty, and most of the time I am so hungry I could eat Aunt
Adeline. I dream about Billy, fried with cream gravy," I answered, as I
kissed again the back of the head that was beginning to nod down
against my breast. Long shadows lay across the garden and the
white-headed old snow-ball was signaling out of the dusk to a Dorothy
Perkins down the walk in a scandalous way. At best, spring is just the
world's match-making old chaperon and ought to be watched. I still sat
on the grass and I began to cuddle Billy's bare knees in the skirt of my
dress so the chigres couldn't get at them.
"But, Mrs. Molly, isn't it worth it all?" asked the doctor as he bent over
toward us and looked down with something wonderful and kind in his
eyes that seemed to rest on us like a benediction. "You have been just
as plucky as a girl can be and in only a little over two months you have
grown as lightfooted and hearty as a boy. I think nothing could be
lovelier than you are right now, but you can get off those other few
pounds if you want to. You know, don't you, that I have known how
hard some of it was and I haven't been able to eat as much as I usually
do thinking how hungry you are? But isn't it all worth it? I think it is.
Alfred Bennett is a very great man and it is right that he should have a

very lovely wife to go out into the world with him. And as lovely as
you are I think it is wonderful of you to make all this sacrifice to be still
lovelier for him. I am glad I can help you and it has taught me
something to see how--how faithful a woman can be across years--and
then in this smaller thing! Now give me Bill and you get your apple and
toast. Don't forget to take your letter in out of the dew." I sat perfectly
still and held Billy tighter in my arms as I looked up at his father, and
then after I had thought as long as I could stand it, I spoke right out at
him as mad as hops and I don't to this minute know why.
"Nobody in the world ever doubted that a woman could be faithful if
she had anything to be faithful to," I said as I let him take Billy out of
my arms at last. "Faithfulness is what a woman flowers, only it takes a
man to pick his posy." With which I marched into the house and left
him standing with Billy in his arms, I hope dumfounded. I didn't look
back to see. I always leave that man's presence so mad I can never look
back at him. And wouldn't it make