in
a book mortifies me dreadfully. It's been coming on worse and worse
every year since I married. Poor Mr. Carter had a very good appetite and
I don't know why I should have felt that I had to eat so much every day
to keep him company; I wasn't always so considerate of him. Then he
didn't want me to dance any more because married women oughtn't, or ride
horseback either--no amusement left but himself and weekly
prayer-meetings, and--and--I just couldn't help the tears coming and
dripping as I thought about it all and that awful waist measure in
inches.

"Stop crying this minute, Molly," said Doctor John suddenly in the deep
voice he uses to Billy and me when we are really sick or stump-toed.
"You know I was only teasing you and I won't stand for--"

But I sobbed some more. I like him when his eyes come out from under his
bushy brows and are all tender and full of sorry for us.

"I can't help it," I gulped in my sleeve. "I did used to like Alfred
Bennett. My heart almost broke when he went away. I used to be beautiful
and slim, and now I feel as if my own fat ghost has come to haunt me all
my life. I am so ashamed! If a woman can't cry over her own dead beauty,
what can she cry over?" By this time I was really crying.

Then what happened to me was that Doctor John took me by the shoulders
and gave me one good shake and then made me look him right in the eyes
through the tears and all.

"You foolish child," he said in the deepest voice I almost ever heard
him use. "You are just a lovely, round, luscious peach, but if you will
be happier to have Al Bennett come and find you as slim as a string-bean
I can show you how to do it. Will you do just as I tell you?"

[Illustration: "Will you do just as I tell you?"]

"Yes, I will," I sniffed in a comforted voice. What woman wouldn't be
comforted by being called a "luscious peach". I looked out between my
fingers to see what more he was going to say, but he had turned to a
shelf and taken down two books.

"Now," he said in his most businesslike voice, as cool as a bucket of
water fresh from the spring, "it is no trouble at all to take off your
surplus avoirdupois at the rate of two and a half pounds a week if you
follow these directions. As I take it you are about twenty-five pounds
over your normal weight. It will take over two months to reduce you and
we will allow an extra month for further beautifying, so that when Mr.
Bennett arrives he will find the lady of his ad