I am so happy that I planted my garden all crooked, my eyes upon the clouds with the birds sailing against them, and when I became conscious I found wicked flaunting poppies sprouted right up against the sweet modest clover-pinks, while the whole paper of bachelor's-buttons was sowed over everything—which I immediately began to dig right up again, blushing furiously to myself over the trowel, and glad that I had caught myself before they grew up to laugh in my face. However, I got that laugh anyway, and I might just as well have left them, for Billy ran to the gate and called Doctor John to come in and make Molly stop digging up his buttons. Billy claims everything in this garden, and he thought they would grow up into the kind of buttons you pop out of a gun.
"So you're digging up the bachelor-pops, Mrs. Molly?" the doctor asked as he leaned over the gate. I went right on digging without looking up at him. I couldn't look up because I was blushing still worse. Sometimes I hate that man, and if he wasn't Billy's father I wouldn't neighbor with him as I do. But somebody has to look after Billy.
I believe it will be a real relief to write down how I feel about him in his old book and I shall do it whenever I can't stand him any longer, and if he gave the horrid, red leather thing to me to make me miserable, he can't do it; not this spring! I wish I dared burn it up and forget about it, but I don't! This record on the first page is enough to reduce me—to tears, and I wonder why it doesn't.
I weigh one hundred and sixty pounds, down in black and white, and it is a tragedy! I don't believe that man at the grocery store is so very reliable in his weights, though he had a very pleasant smile while he was weighing me. Still I had better get some scales of my own, smiles are so deceptive.
I am five feet three inches tall or short, whichever way one looks at me. I thought I was taller, but I suppose I will have to believe my own yardstick.
But as to my waist measure, I positively refuse to write that down, even if I have promised Doctor John a dozen times over to do it, while I only really left him to suppose I would. It is bad enough to know that your belt has to be reduced to twenty-three inches without putting down how much it measures now in figures to insult yourself with. No, I intend to have this for my happy spring.
Yes, I suppose it would have been lots better for my happiness if I had kept quiet about it all, but at the time I thought I had to advise with him over the matter. Now I'm sorry I did. That is one thing about being a widow, you are accustomed to advising with a man, whether you want to or not, and you can't get over the habit right away. Poor Mr. Carter hasn't been dead much over a year and I must be missing him most awfully, though just lately I can't remember not to forget about him a great deal of the time. Now if he had been here—horrors!
Still, that letter was enough to upset anybody, and no wonder I ran right across my garden, through Billy's hedge-hole and over into Doctor John's office to tell him about it; but I ought not to have been agitated enough to let him take the letter right out of my hand and read it.
"So after ten years Al Bennett is coming back to pop his bachelor's-buttons at you, Mrs. Molly?" he said in the deep drawling voice he always uses when he makes fun of Billy and me and which never fails to make us both mad. I didn't look at him directly, but I felt his hand shake with the letter in it.
"Not ten, only eight! He went when I was seventeen," I answered with dignity, wishing I dared be snappy at him; though I never am.