nd bones from mental and physical exercise. Still, he does
live in Hillsboro and I won't let myself know how my heart aches at the
thought of leaving my home--and other things. It's up in my throat and
I seem always to be swallowing it, the last few days.

All the men who write me letters seem to get themselves wound up into a
skyrocket and then let themselves explode in the last paragraph and it
always upsets my nerves. I was just about to begin to cry again over the
last words of the judge when the only bright spot in the day so far
suddenly happened. Pet Buford blew in with the pinkest cheeks and the
brightest eyes I had seen since I looked in the mirror the night of the
dance. She was in an awful hurry.

"Molly, dear," she said, with her words literally falling over
themselves, "Tom says you'll give us some of your dinner left-overs to
take for lunch in the Hup, for we are going way out to Wayne County to
see some awfully fine tobacco he has heard is there. I don't want to ask
mother, for she won't let me go; and his mother, if he asked her, will
begin to talk about us. Tom said come to you and you would understand
and fix it quick. He said kiss you for him and tell you he said 'Come on
in, the water's fine.' Isn't he a joke?" And we kissed and laughed and
packed a basket, and kissed and laughed again for good-by. I felt amused
and happy for a few minutes--and also deserted. It's a very good thing
for a woman's conceit to find out how many of her lovers are just
make-believes. I may have needed Tom's deflection.

Anyway, I don't know when I ever was so glad to see anybody as I was
when Mrs. Johnson came in the front door. A woman who has proved to her
own satisfaction that marriage is a failure is at times a great tonic to
other women. I needed a tonic badly this morning and I got it.

"Well, from all my long experience, Molly," she said as she seated
herself and began to hem a dish-towel with long steady stabs, "husbands
are just stick candy in different jars. They may look a little
different, but they all taste alike and you soon get tired of them. In
two months you won't know the difference in being married to Al Bennett
and Mr. Carter and you'll have to go on living with him maybe fifty
years. Luck doesn't strike twice in the same place and you can't count
on losing two husbands. Al's father was Mr. Johnson's first cousin and
had more crochets and worse. He had silent spells that lasted a week and
family pray