"Mrs. Johnson," I said after a minute's silence, while I had decided whether or not I had better tell her all about it. If a woman's in love with her husband you can't trust her to keep a secret, but I decided to try Mrs. Johnson. "I really am not engaged exactly to Alfred Bennett, though I suppose he thinks so by now if he has got the answer to that telegram. But—but something has made me—made me think about Judge Wade—that is he—what do you think of him, Mrs. Johnson?" I concluded in the most pitifully perplexed tone of voice.
"All alike, Molly; all as much alike as peas in a pod; all except John Moore, who's the only exception in all the male tribe I ever met! His marrying once was just accidental and must be forgiven him. She fell in love with him while he was treating her for typhoid, when his back was turned as it were, and it was God's own kindness in him that made him marry her when he found out how it was with the poor thing. There's not a woman in this town who could marry, that wouldn't marry him at the drop of his hat—but, thank goodness, that hat will never drop and I'll have one sensible man to comfort and doctor me down into my old age. Now, just look at that! Mr. Johnson's come home here in the middle of the morning and I'll have to get that old paper I hunted out of his desk for him last night. I wonder how he came to forget it!" It's funny how Mrs. Johnson always knows what Mr. Johnson wants before he knows himself and gets it before he asks for it!
As she went out the gate the postman came in and at the sight of another letter my heart again slunk off into my slippers, and my brain seemed about to back up in a corner and refuse to work. In a flash it came to me that men oughtn't to write letters to women very much—they really don't plow deep enough, they just irritate the top soil. I took this missive from Alfred, counted all the fifteen pages, put it out of sight under a book, looked out the window and saw the ginger barber coming dejectedly around to the side gate from the kitchen—I knew the scene he had had with Judy, about the bottle encounters of the night before—saw Mr. Johnson shooed off down the street by Mrs. Johnson; saw the doctor's car go chucking hurriedly in the garage and then my spirit turned itself to the wall and refused to be comforted. I tried my best, but failed to respond to my own remonstrances with myself, and tears were slowly gathering in a cloud of gloom when a blue gingham, rompers-clad sunbeam burst into the room.
"Git your night-gown and your toothbresh quick, Molly, if you want to pack 'em in my trunk!" he exclaimed with his eyes dancing and a curl standing straight up on the top of his head, as it has a habit of doing when he is most excited. "You can't take nothing but them 'cause I'm going to put in a rope to tie the whale with when I ketch him, and it'll take up all the rest of the room. Git 'em quick!"
"Yes, lover, I'll get them for you, but tell Molly where it is you are going to sail off with her in that trunk of yours?" I asked, dropping into the game as I have always done with him, no matter what game of my own pressed when he called.
"On the ocean where the boats go 'cross and run right over a whale. Don't you remember you showed me them pictures of spout whales in a book, Molly? Doc says they comes right up by the ship and you can hear 'em shoot water and maybe a iceberg, too. Which do you want to ketch most, Molly, a iceberg or a whale?" His eager eyes demanded instant decision on my part of the nature of capture I preferred. My mind quickly reverted to those two ponderous and intense epistles I had got within the hour and I lay back in my chair and laughed until I felt almost merry.
"The iceberg, Billy, every time," I said at last. "I just can't manage whales, especially if they are ardent, which word means hot. I like icebergs, or I think I should if I could catch one."
"I don't believe you could, Molly, but maybe Doc will let you put a rope and a long hook in his trunk to try with if your clothes go into mine. His is a heap the biggest anyway and Nurse Tilly said he oughter put my things in his, but I cried and then he went up-stairs and got out that little one for me. Come see 'em!"
"What do you mean, Billy?" I asked, while a sudden fear shot all over me like lightning. "You're just playing go-away, aren't you?"
"No, I ain't playing, Molly!" he exclaimed excitedly. "Me and you and Doc is a-going across the ocean for a long, long time away from here. Doc ast me about it this morning and I told him all right and you could come with us, if you was good. He said couldn't I go without you if you was busy and couldn't come and I told him you would put things down and come if I said so. Won't you, Molly? It won't be no fun without you and you'd cry all by yourself with me gone." His little face was all drawn up with anxiety and sympathy at my lonely estate with him out of it and a cry rose up from my heart with a kind of primitive savagery at what I felt was coming down upon me.