The Melting of Molly | Page 5

budding things need encouragement,
whether it is a widow or a snowball-bush. He'll give it to us!
And I'm praying again as I sit here and watch for the doctor's light to go
out. I hate to go to sleep and leave it burning, for he sits up so late and
he is so gaunt and thin and tired-looking most times. That's what the
last prayer is about, almost always--sleep for him and no night call!

Leaf II.
A Love-Letter, Loaded.
The very worst page in this red book is the fifth. It says--
"Breakfast--one slice of dry toast, one egg, fruit and a small cup of
coffee, no sugar, no cream." And me with two Jersey cows full of the
richest cream in Hillsboro, out in my meadow!
"Dinner, one small lean chop, slice of toast, spinach or lettuce salad. No
dessert or sweet." My poultry-yard is full of fat little chickens, and I
wish I were a sheep if I have to eat lettuce and spinach for grass. At
least I'd have more than one chop inside me then.
"Supper--slice of toast and an apple." Why the apple? Why supper at
all?
Oh, I'm hungry, hungry until I cry in my sleep when I dream about a
muffin! I thought at first that getting out of bed before my eyes are
fairly open, and turning myself into a circus acrobat by doing every

kind of overhand, foot, arm and leg contortion that the mind of cruel
man could invent to torture a human being with, would kill me before I
had been at it a week, but when I read on page sixteen that as soon as
all that horror was over I must jump right into the tub of cold water, I
kicked, metaphorically speaking. And I've been kicking ever since,
literally to keep from freezing.
But as cruel as freezing is, it doesn't compare to the tortures of being
melted. Jane administers it to me, and her faithful heart is so wrung
with compassion that she perspires almost as much as I do. She wrings
a linen sheet out in a cauldron of hot water and shrouds me in it--and
then more and more blanket windings envelop me until I am like the
mummy of some Egyptian giantess.
Once I got so discouraged at the idea of having all this misery in this
life that I mingled tears with the beads of perspiration that rolled down
my cheeks, and she snatched me out of those steaming wrappings in
less time than it takes to tell it, soused me in a tub of cold water, fed me
with a chicken wing and mashed potatoes, and the information that I
was "good-looking enough for anybody to eat up alive without all this
foolishness," all in a very few seconds. Now I have to beg her to help
me, and I heard her tell her nephew, who does the gardening, that she
felt like an undertaker with such goings-on. At any rate, if it all kills me
it won't be my fault if people tell untruths in saying that I was
"beautiful in death."
But now that more than a month has passed, I really don't mind it so
much. I feel so strong and prancy all the time that I can't keep from
bubbling. I have to smile at myself.
Then another thing that helps is Billy and his ball. I never could really
play with him before, but now I can't help it. But an awful thing
happened about that yesterday. We were in the garden playing over by
the lilac bushes, and Billy always beats me because when it goes down
the slope he throws himself down and rolls over on the grass. I went
after him. And what did Billy do but begin the kind of a tussle we
always have in the big armchair in the living-room! Billy chuckled and
squealed, while I laughed myself all out of breath. And then, looking
right over my front hedge, I discovered Judge Wade. I wish I could
write down how I felt, for I never had that sensation before, and I don't
believe I'll ever have it again.

I have always thought that Judge Wade was really the most wonderful
man in Hillsboro, not because he is a judge so young in life that there is
only a white sprinkle in his lovely black hair that grows back off his
head like Napoleon's and Charles Wesley's, but because of his smile,
which you wait for so long that you glow all over when you get it. I
have seen him do it once or twice at his mother when he seats her in
their pew at church, and once at little Mamie Johnson when she gave
him