The Melting of Molly | Page 2

that letter was enough to upset anybody, and no wonder I ran right
across my garden, through Billy's hedge-hole and over into Dr. John's
surgery 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 Alfred Bennett is coming back to offer his
bachelor's-buttons to you, Mrs. Molly?" he said in the 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 away 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 Alfred didn't succeed as a bank clerk, but had to make his hit in
the colonies. 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 as--large as I am. 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 about him.
Then he didn't want me to go for long walks with the dogs any more,
because married women oughtn't to, or ride horseback either--no
amusement left but himself; 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 Dr. John suddenly in the deep
voice he uses to Billy and me when we are really ill or tired. "You
know I was only teasing you and I won't let you--"
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 use 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 Dr. John took me by the shoulders
and gave me one good shake.
"You foolish child," he said in the deepest voice I almost ever heard
him use. "You are just a lovely perfect flower, but if you will be
happier to have Alfred Bennett come and find you as slim as a scarlet
runner, I can show you how to do it. Will you do just as I tell you?"
"Yes, I will," I sniffed in a comforted voice. 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