for being rude to your--your guest. He told me all about it and I think
he's sorry. Tell Mrs. Carter you are sorry, son." When that man speaks
to me as if I were just any old body else, I hate him so it is a wonder
I don't show it more than I do. But there was nothing to say and I
looked at Billy and Billy looked at me.

Then suddenly he stretched out his little arms to me and the dimples
winked at me from all over his darling face.

"Molly, Molly," he said with a perfect rapture of chuckles in his voice,
"now you look just as pretty as you do when you go to bed; all whity all
over. You can kiss my kiss-spot a hundred times while I bear-hug you
for that nice not-black dress," and before any stern person could have
stopped us I was on my knees on the grass kissing my fill from the
"kiss-spot" on the back of his neck, while he hugged all the starch out
of the summer-before-last.

And Doctor John sat down on the bench quick and laughed out loud one of
the very few times I ever heard him do it. He was looking down at us,
but I didn't laugh up into _his_ eyes. I was afraid. I felt it was
safer to go on kissing the kiss-spot for the present, anyway.

"Bill," he said, with his voice dancing, "that's the most effective
apology I ever heard. You were sorry to some point."

Then suddenly Billy stiffened right in my arms and looked me straight in
the face and said in the doctor's own brisk tones, even with his cupid
mouth set in the same straight line:

"I say I'm sorry, Molly, but damn that man and I'll git him yet!"