d into the light and give me one long looking-over from head to
feet.

"Just where does that corset press you worst?" he asked in the tone of
voice he uses to say "poke out your tongue." So much of my Tennessee
shooting-blood rose to my face that it is a wonder it didn't drip; but I
was cold enough to have hit at forty paces if I had had a shooting-iron
in my hand. As it was the coldness was the only missile that I had, but
I used it to some effect.

"I am making a call on a friend, Doctor Moore, and not a consultation
visit to my physician," I said, looking into his face as though I had
never seen him before.

"I beg your pardon, Molly," he exclaimed and his face was redder than
mine and then it went white with mortification. I couldn't stand that.

"Don't do that way!" I exclaimed, and before I knew it I had taken
hold of his hand and had it in both of mine. "I know I look as if I
was shrunk or laced, but I'm not! I was going to tell you all about
it and show it to you. I'm really inches bigger in the right place and
just--just 'controlled', the woman called it, in the wrong place. Please
feel me and see," and I offered myself to him for examination in the
most regardless way. He's not at all like other people.

The blood came back into his face and he laughed as he gave me a little
shake that pushed me away from him. "Don't you ever scare me like that
again, child, or it might be serious," he said in the Billy-and-me tone
of voice that I like some, only--

"I never will," I said in a hurry; "I want you to ask me anything in the
world you want to and I'll always do it."

"Well, let me take you home through the garden then--and, yes, I believe
I'll stay to break a muffin with Mrs. Henderson. Don't you want to tell
me what a little girl like you did in a big city and--and read me part
of that London letter I saw the postman give Judy this afternoon?"

Again I ask myself the question why his friendliness to Alfred Bennett's
letters always makes me so instantly cross.

LEAF FOURTH

SCATTERED JAM

Sleep is one of the most delightful and undervalued amusements known
to the human race. I have never had enough yet and every second of time
that I'm not busy with something interesting I curl up on the bed and
go dream hunting--only I sleep too hard to do much catching. But this
torture book found that out on me and stopped it the very first thing on
page three. The command is to sleep as little as possible