Second—if not Alfred, who? Judge Wade is so delightful that I flutter at the thought, but his mother is Aunt Adeline's own best friend and they have ideas in common. She is so religious that living with her would be like having the sacrament for daily bread. Still, living with him might have adventures. I never saw such eyes! The girl he wanted to marry died of tuberculosis and he wears a locket with her in it yet. I'd like to reward him for such faithfulness with a nice husky wife to wear instead of the locket. But then Alfred's been faithful too! I look at Ruth Chester and realize how faithful, and my heart melts to him in my breast—my hips have almost all melted away, too, so I had better keep the heart cold enough to handle if I want anything left at all for him to come home to.
In some ways Tom Pollard is the most congenial man I ever knew. You have to say "don't" to him all the time, but what woman doesn't like a little impertinence once in a while? I flavor all Tom's dare-devil kisses with kinship when I feed them to my conscience, and I truly try to make him be serious about the important things in life like going to church with his mother and working all day, even if he is rich. I wish he wasn't so near kin to me! Now, there, I feel in Ruth Chester's way again! One of the things that keeps the devil so busy is taking helpless widows to the heights of knowledge and showing them kingdoms of men that girls never dream even exist. If all women could have been born with widow-eyes, things would run much more smoothly along the marriage and giving-in-marriage line. And the poor men are most of them as ignorant as girls about what to do.
I suppose I really would be doing a righteous thing to marry Mr. Graves, and I would adore all those children to start with, but I know Billy wouldn't get on with them at all. I can't even consider it on his account, but I'll let the nice old chap come on for a few times more to see me, for he really is interesting and we have suffered things in common. Mrs. Graves lacked the kind of temperament poor Mr. Carter did. I'd like to make it all up to him, but if Billy wouldn't be happy, that settles it, and I don't know how good his boys are. I couldn't have Billy corrupted.
And so, as there is nobody else exactly suitable in town, it all simmers down to one or the other of these or Alfred. In my heart I knew that I couldn't hesitate a minute—and in the flash of a second I decided. Of course I love Alfred and I'll take him gladly and be the wife he has waited for all these six lonely years. I'll make everything up to him if I have to diet to keep thin for him the rest of my life. I likely will have that very thing to do and I get weak at the idea. Before I burn this book I'll have to copy it all out and be chained to it for life. At the thought my heart dropped like a sinker to my toes; but I hauled it up to its normal place with picturing to myself how Alfred would look when he saw me in that old blue muslin done over into a Rene wonder. However, old heart would show a strange propensity for sinking down into my slippers without any reason at all. Tears were even coming into my eyes when Tom suddenly came over the fence and picked me and the heart up together and put us into an adventure of the first water.
"Molly," he said in the most nonchalant manner imaginable, "we've got a dandy, strolling, gipsy band up at the hotel; the dining-room floor is all waxed and I'm asking for the first dance with the young and radiant Mrs. Carter. Get into a glad rag and don't keep me waiting."
"Tom," I gasped!
"Oh, be a sport, Moll, and don't take water! You said you would wake up this town, and now do it. It seems twenty instead of six years since I had my arms around you to music and I'm not going to wait any longer. Everybody is there and they can't all dance with Miss Chester."
That settled it—I couldn't let a visiting girl be danced to death. Of course I had planned to make a dignified début under my own roof, backed up by the presence of ancestral and marital rosewood, silver and mahogany, as a widow should, but duty called me to de-weed myself amidst the informality of an impromptu dance at the little town hotel. And in the fifteen minutes Tom gave me I de-weeded to some purpose and flowered out to still more. I never do anything by halves.
In that—that—trousseau old Rene had made me there was one, what she called "simple" lingerie frock. And it looked just as simple as the check it called for, a one and two ciphers back of it. It was of linen as sheer as a cobweb, real lace and tiny delicious incrustations of embroidery. It fitted in lines that melted into curves, had enticements in the shape of a long sash and a dangerous breast-knot of shimmery blue, the color of my eyes, and I looked new-born in it.