"I do wish you would, Aunt Adeline is so fond of Mrs. Wade!" I said in a
positive flutter that I hope he didn't see, but I am afraid he did, for
he hesitated as if he wanted to say something to calm me, then bowed
mercifully and went on down the street. He didn't put on the hat he had
held in his hand all the while he stood by the fence until he had looked
back and bowed again. Then I felt still more fluttered as I went into
the house, but I received the third cold plunge of the day when I
reached the front hall.

"Mary," said Aunt Adeline in a voice that sounded as if it had been
buried and never resurrected, "if you are going to continue in such an
unseemly course of conduct I hope you will remove your mourning, which
is an empty mockery and an insult to my own widowhood."

"Yes, Aunt Adeline, I'll go take it off this very minute," I heard
myself answer her airily to my own astonishment. I might have known that
if I ever got one of those smiles it would go to my head! Without
another word I sailed into my room and closed the door softly.

I wonder if God could have realized what a tender thing He was leaving
exposed to life in the garden of the world after He had finished making
a woman? Traditionally, we are created out of rose-leaves and star-dust
and the harmony of the winds, but we need a steel-chain netting to fend
us. Slowly I unbuttoned that black dress that symbolized the ending of
six years of the blackness of a married life, from which I had been
powerless to fend myself, and the rosy dimpling thing in snowy lingerie
with tags of blue ribbon that stood in front of my mirror was as
new-born as any other hour-old similar bundle of linen and lace in
Hillsboro, Tennessee. Fortunately, an old, year-before-last, white lawn