blushing furiously to myself over the trowel, and glad that I had caught
myself before they grew up to laugh in my face. However, I got that
laugh anyway, and I might just as well have left them, for Billy ran to
the gate and called Dr. John to come in and make Molly stop digging up
his buttons. Billy claims everything in this garden, and he thought they
would grow up into the kind of buttons you pop out of a gun.

"So you're digging up the bachelor-buttons, Mrs. Molly?" the doctor
asked as he leaned over the gate. I went on digging without looking up
at him. I couldn't look up because I was blushing still worse. Sometimes
I hate that man, and if he wasn't Billy's father I wouldn't be as
friendly with him as I am. But somebody _has_ to look after Billy.

I believe it will be a real relief to write down how I feel about him in
his old book, and I shall do it whenever I can't stand him any longer;
and if he gave the horrid, red leather thing to me to make me miserable
he can't do it; not this spring! I wish I dare burn it up and forget
about it, but I daren't! This record on the first page is enough to
reduce me--to tears, and I wonder why it doesn't.

I weigh one hundred and sixty pounds, set down in black and white, and
it is a tragedy! I don't believe that man at the weighing machine is so
very reliable in his weights, though he had a very pleasant smile while
he was weighing me. Still, I had better get some scales of my own,
smiles are so deceptive.

I am five feet three inches tall or short, whichever way one looks at
me. I thought I was taller, but I suppose I shall have to believe my own
yardstick.