"What did you bring me, Molly?" he finally kissed under my right ear.

"A real base-ball and bat, lover, and an engine with five cars, a rake
and a spade and a hoe, two blow-guns that pop a new way and something
that squirts water and some other things. Will that be enough?" I hugged
him up anxiously, for sometimes he is hard to please and I might not
have got the very thing he wanted.

"Thank you, Molly, all them things is what I want, but you oughter brung
more'n that for three days not being here with me." Did any woman ever
have a more lovely lover than that? I don't know how long I should have
rocked him in the twilight if Doctor John's voice hadn't come across the
hall in command.

"Put him down now, Mrs. Molly, and come and say other how-do-you-does,"
he called softly.

It was a funny glad-to-see-him I felt as I came into the office where he
was standing over by the window looking out at my garden in its twilight
glow. I think it is wrong for a woman to let her imagination kiss a man
on the back of his neck even if she has known for some time that there
is a little drake-tail lock of hair there just like his own son's. I
gave him my hand and a good deal more of a smile and a blush than I
intended.

He very far from kissed the hand; he held it just long enough to turn me
around into the light and give me one long looking-over from head to
feet.