wn mother. As soon as
I've made this widowhood hurdle--well, I'm going to spend a lot of time
buying tobacco with him in his Hup runabout, which sounds as if it was
named for himself.

And when that conflagration was lighted in me about my debut, Tom did
it. I was sitting peaceably on my own front steps, dressed in the
summer-before-last that Judy washes and irons every day while I'm
deciding how to hand out the first sip of my trousseau to the neighbors,
when Tom, in a dangerous blue-striped shirt, with a tie that melted into
it in tone, blew over my hedge and landed at my side. He kissed the lace
ruffle on my sleeve while I reproved him severely and settled down to
enjoy him. But I didn't have such an awfully good time as I generally do
with him. He was too full of another woman, and even a first cousin can
be an exasperation in that condition.

"Now, Mrs. Molly, truly did you ever see such a peach as she is?" he
demanded after I had expressed more than a dozen delighted opinions of
Miss Chester. His use of the word "peach" riled me and before I stopped
to think, I said: "She reminds me more of a string-bean."

"Now, Molly, don't be mean just because old Wade has got her out driving
behind the grays after kissing your hand under the lilacs yesterday,
which, praise be, nobody saw but little me! I'm not sore, why should you
be? Aren't you happy with me?"

I withered him with a look, or rather _tried_ to wither him, for
Tom is no Mimosa bud.

"The way that girl has started in to wake up this little old town
reminds me of the feeling you get under your belt seven minutes after
you've sipped an absinthe frappe for the first time--you are liable for
a good jag and don't know it," he continued enthusiastically. "Let's
don't let the folks know that they are off until I get everybody in a
full swing of buzz over my queen." I had never seen Tom so enthusiastic
over a girl before and I didn't like it. But I decided not to let him
know that, but to get to work putting out the Chester blaze in him and
starting one on my own account.

"That's just what I'm thinking about, Tom," I said with a smile that was
as sweet as I could make it, "and as she came with messages to me from
one of my best old friends I think I ought to do something to make her
have a good time. I was just planning a gorgeous dinner-party I want to
have for her when you came so suddenly. Do you think we could arrange it
for Tuesday evening?"

"Lord love u