unishing Billy and me. "Bill came to apologise to you
for being rude to your--your guest. He told me all about it, and I think
he's sorry. Tell Mrs. Carter you are sorry, son." When that man speaks
to me as if I were just any old body else, I hate him so it is a wonder
I don't show it more than I do. But there was nothing to say, and I
looked at Billy, and Billy looked at me.

Then suddenly he stretched out his little arms to me, and the dimples
winked at me from all over his darling face.

"Molly, Molly," he said, with a perfect rapture of chuckles in his
voice, "now you look just as pretty as you do when you go to bed--all
whity all over. You can kiss my kiss-spot a hundred times while I
bear-hug you for that nice not-black dress," and before any stern person
could have stopped us I was on my knees on the grass kissing my fill
from the "kiss-spot" on the back of his neck, while he hugged all the
starch out of the old white dress.

And Dr. John sat down on the bench quick, and laughed out loud one of
the very few times I ever heard him do it. He was looking down at us,
but I didn't laugh up into _his_ eyes. I was afraid. I felt it was
safer to go on kissing the kiss-spot for the present.

"Bill," he said, with his voice dancing, "that's the most effective
apology I ever heard. You were sorry to some point."

Then suddenly Billy stiffened right in my arms, and looked me straight
in the face, and said in the doctor's own brisk tones, even with his
Cupid mouth set in the same straight line--

"I say I'm sorry, Molly, but bother that man, and I'll hit him yet!"

What could we say? What could we do? We didn't try. I busied myself in
tying the string on Billy's blouse that had come untied in the bear-hug,
and the doctor suddenly discovered the letter on the bench. I saw him
see it without looking in his direction at all.

"And how many pounds are we nearer the scarlet-runner state of
existence, Mrs. Molly?" he asked me before I had finished tying the
blouse, in the nicest voice in the world, fairly cracking with
friendship and good humour and hateful things like that. Why I should
have wanted him to get huffy over that letter is more than I can say.
But I did; and he didn't.

"Over twenty, and most of the time I am so hungry I could eat Aunt
Adeline. I dream about Billy, fried with cream gravy," I answered, as I
kissed again the back of the head that was beginning to nod down against
my breast. Long shadows lay acr