The Melting of Molly

by Maria Thompson Daviess

"Not a bit," answered Doctor John in his big comforting voice.

But I looked at the girl and I understood her. She wanted that baby clean and fresh even if it was just five days old, and I felt all of a sudden terribly capable. I picked up the bundle and went into the other room with it where a kettle was boiling on the stove and a large bucket by the door. I found things by just a glance from her, and the hour I spent with that small baby was one of the most delicious of all my life. I never was left entirely to myself with one before and I did all I wanted to this one, guided by instinct and desire. He slept right through and was the darlingest thing I ever saw when I laid him back on the bed by her. I never looked in Doctor John's direction once, though I felt him all the time.

But on the way home I gave myself the surprise of my life! Suddenly I turned my face against his sleeve and cried as I never had before. I felt safe, for it is a cliff road and he had to drive carefully. However, he managed to press that one arm against my cheek in a way that comforted me into stopping when I saw we were near town. I got out of the car at the garage and walked away through the garden home without looking in his direction at all. I never seem to be able to look at him as I do at other people. We hadn't spoken two words since we had left the little house in the woods with that happy-faced girl in it. He has more sense than just a man.

It was almost dusk and I stopped in the garden a minute to pull the dirt closer around some of the bachelor's-buttons that had "popped" the ground some weeks ago. Thinking about them made me regain my spirits and I went on in the house to be scolded for whatever Aunt Adeline had thought up while I was gone to do it to me about. Judy told me with her broadest grin that she had gone down to her sister-in-law's for supper and I sat down on the steps with a sigh of relief.

Some days are like tin cocoanut graters that everybody uses to grate you against and this was one for me. For an hour I sat and grated my own self against Alfred's letter that had come in the morning. I realized that I would just have to come to some sort of decision about what I was going to do, for he wrote that he was to sail in a day or two, and ships do travel so fast these days.

I love him and always have, of that I am sure. He offers me the most wonderful life in the world and no woman could help being proud to accept it. I am lonely, more lonely than I was even willing to confess to Doctor John. I can't go on living this way any longer. Ruth Chester has made me see that if I want Alfred it will be now or never and—quick. I know now that she loves him, and she ought to have her show if I don't want him. The way she idolizes and idealizes him is a marvel of womanly stupidity.

Some women like to collect men's hearts and hide them away from other women on cold storage and the helpless things can't help themselves.

I have contempt for that sort of butcher, and I love Ruth!

It's my duty to look the matter in the face before I look in Alfred's—and decide. If not Alfred, what then?

First—no husband. That's out of the question! I'm not strong-minded enough to crank my own motor-car and study woman's suffrage. I prefer to suffer at the hands of some cruel man and trust to beguiling him into doing just as I say. I like men, can't help it, and want one for my own. I don't count poor Mr. Carter.