The Melting of Molly | Page 9

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 could be, 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 dumbfounded. 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 any woman rage to have a man pick
out another man for her to be faithful to when she hadn't made any
decision about it her own self?
I wonder just how old Judge Wade is? I believe I will make up with
Aunt Adeline enough before I go to bed to find out why he has never
married.

Leaf III.
Men are very strange people. They are like those sums in algebra that
you think about and worry about and cry about and try to get help from
other women about, and then, all of a sudden, X works itself out into
perfectly good sense.
I know now that I really never got any older than the poor, foolish,

eighteen-years child that Aunt Adeline married off "safe." But all that
was a mild sort of exasperation to what a widow has to go through with
in the matter of--of, well, I think worrying interference is about the best
name to give it.
"Molly Carter," said Mrs. Johnson just day before yesterday, after the
white-dress, Judge-Wade episode that Aunt Adeline had gone to all the
friends up and down the street to be consoled about, "if you haven't got
sense enough to appreciate your present blissful condition, somebody
ought to operate on your mind."
I was tempted to say, "Why not my heart?" I was glad she didn't know
how good that heart did feel under my blouse when the boy brought
that basket of fish from Judge Wade's fishing expedition Saturday. I
have firmly determined not to blush any more at the thought of that
gorgeous man--at least outwardly.
"Don't you think it is very--very lonely to be a widow, Mrs. Johnson?" I
asked timidly to see what she would say about Mr. Johnson, who is
really a kind-hearted sort of man, I think. He gives me the gentlest
understanding smile when he meets me in the street of late weeks.
"Lonely, lonely, Molly? You talk about the married state exactly like an
old maid. Don't do it--it's foolish, and you will get the lone notion
really fastened in your mind and let some man find out that is how you
feel. Then it will be all over with you. I have only one regret; and it is
that if I ever should be a widow Mr. Johnson wouldn't be here to see
how quickly I turned into an old maid." Mrs. Johnson sews by
assassinating the cloth with the needle, and as she talked she was
mending the sleeve of Mr. Johnson's lounge coat.
"I think an old maid is just a woman who has never been in love with a
man who loves her. Lots of them have been married for years," I said,
just as innocently as the soft face of a pan of cream, and went on
darning one of Billy's socks.
"Well, be that as it may, they are the blessed members of the women
tribe," she answered, looking at me sharply. "Now I have often told Mr.
Johnson--" but here we were interrupted in what might have been the
rehearsal of a glorious scrap by the appearance of Aunt Bettie Pollard,
and with her came a long, tall, lovely vision of a woman in the most
wonderful close clingy dress and hat that you wanted to eat the minute
you saw it. I hated her instantly with the most intense adoration that

made me want to lie down at her feet, and also made me feel as though
I had gained all the more than