The Melting of Molly | Page 8

and was going to read it over again to see,
when I saw a procession coming over from Dr. John's, and I laid the
bombshell down on the bench.
First came the red setter that is always first with Dr. John, and then he
came himself, leading Billy by the hand. It was Billy, but the most
subdued Billy I ever saw, and I held out my arms and started for him.
"Wait a minute, please, Molly," said the doctor in a voice he always
uses when he's punishing Billy and me. "Bill came to apologise to you
for being rude to your--your guest. He told me all about it, and I think
he's sorry. Tell Mrs. Carter you are sorry, son." When that man speaks
to me as if I were just any old body else, I hate him so it is a wonder I
don't show it more than I do. But there was nothing to say, and I looked
at Billy, and Billy looked at me.
Then suddenly he stretched out his little arms to me, and the dimples
winked at me from all over his darling face.

"Molly, Molly," he said, with a perfect rapture of chuckles in his voice,
"now you look 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 old white dress.
And Dr. 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.
"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 bother that man, and I'll hit 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 scarlet-runner state of
existence, Mrs. Molly?" he asked me before I had finished tying the
blouse, in the nicest voice in the world, fairly cracking with friendship
and good humour and hateful things like that. Why I should have
wanted him to get huffy 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 signalling out of the dusk to a Dorothy
Perkins rose 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 gnats 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 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