right to get mad when he teased me,
for he had been kind and interested about helping me get thin by the
time Alfred came back to see me. I couldn't tell which I was blushing
all to myself about, the "luscious peach" he had called me or the
"lovely lily" Alfred had reminded me in his letter that I had been when
he left me.

Why don't people realize that a seventeen-year-old girl's heart is a
sensitive wind-flower that may be shattered by a breath? Mine shattered
when Alfred went away to find something he could do to make a living,
and Aunt Adeline gave the hard green stem to Mr. Carter when she married
me to him. Poor Mr. Carter!

No, I wasn't twenty, and this town was full of women who were aunts and
cousins and law-kin to me, and nobody did anything for me. They all said
with a sigh of relief, "It will be such a nice safe thing for you,
Molly." And they really didn't mean anything by tying up a gay, dancing,
frolicking, prancing colt of a girl with a terribly ponderous bridle.
But God didn't want to see me always trotting along slow and tired and
not caring what happened to me, even pounds and pounds of plumpness, so
he found use for Mr. Carter in some other place but this world, and I
feel that He is going to see me through whatever happens. If some of the
women in my missionary society knew how friendly I feel with God they
would put me out for contempt of court.

No, the town didn't mean anything by chastening my spirit with Mr.
Carter and they didn't consider him in the matter at all, poor man. Of
that I feel sure. Hillsboro is like that. It settled itself here in a
Tennessee valley a few hundreds of years ago and has been hatching and
clucking over its own small affairs ever since. All the houses set back
from the street with their wings spread out over their gardens, and
mothers here go on hovering even to the third and fourth generation.
Lots of times young, long-legged, frying-size boys scramble out of the
nests and go off to college and decide to grow up where their crow will
be heard by the world. Alfred was one of them.

And, too, occasionally some man comes along from the big world and
marries a plump little broiler and takes her away with him, but mostly
they stay and go to hovering life on a corner of the family estate.
That's what I did.

I was a poor, little, lost chick with frivolous tendencies and they
all clucked me over into this empty Carter nest which they considered
well-feathered for me.