more than twenty pounds that I have slaved off me and doubled them on
again. I would have liked to lead her that minute into Doctor John's
office and just to have looked at him and said one word--"string-bean!"
Aunt Betty introduced her as Miss Chester from Washington.

"Oh, my dear Mrs. Carter, how glad I am to meet you!" she said as she
towered over me in a willowy way, and her voice was lovely and cool
almost to slimness. "I am the bearer of so many gracious messages that
I am anxious to deliver them safely to you. Not six weeks ago I left
Alfred Bennett in Paris and really--really his greetings to you almost
amounted to steamer luggage. He came down to Cherbourg to see me off,
and almost the last thing he said to me was, 'Now, don't fail to see
Mrs. Carter as soon as you get to Hillsboro; and the more you see of her
the more you'll enjoy your visit to Mrs. Pollard.' Isn't he the most
delightful of men?" She asked me the question, but she had the most
wonderful way of seeming to be talking to everybody at one time, so
Mrs. Johnson got in the first answer.

"Delightful, nothing! But Al Bennett is a man of sense not to marry
any of the string of women I suppose he's got following him!" she said.
Miss Chester looked at her in a mild kind of wonder, but she went on
murdering Mr. Johnson's shirt-sleeve with the needle without noticing
the glance at all.

"Well, well, honey, I don't know about that," said Aunt Bettie as she
fanned and rocked her great, big, darling, fat self in the strong rocker
I always kept in the breezy angle of the porch for her. "Al is not old
enough to have proved himself entirely, and from what I hear--" she
paused with the big hearty smile that she always wears when she begins
to tease or match-make, and she does them both most of her time.