tying the string on Billy's blouse that had come untied in the bear-hug,
and the doctor suddenly discovered the letter on the bench. I saw him
see it without looking in his direction at all.

"And how many pounds are we nearer the scarlet-runner state of
existence, Mrs. Molly?" he asked me before I had finished tying the
blouse, in the nicest voice in the world, fairly cracking with
friendship and good humour and hateful things like that. Why I should
have wanted him to get huffy over that letter is more than I can say.
But I did; and he didn't.

"Over twenty, and most of the time I am so hungry I could eat Aunt
Adeline. I dream about Billy, fried with cream gravy," I answered, as I
kissed again the back of the head that was beginning to nod down against
my breast. Long shadows lay across the garden, and the white-headed old
snow-ball was signalling out of the dusk to a Dorothy Perkins rose down
the walk in a scandalous way. At best, spring is just the world's
match-making old chaperon, and ought to be watched. I still sat on the
grass, and I began to cuddle Billy's bare knees in the skirt of my dress
so the gnats couldn't get at them.

"But, Mrs. Molly, isn't it worth it all?" asked the doctor as he bent
over toward us and looked down with something wonderful and kind in his
eyes that seemed to rest on us like a benediction. "You have been just
as plucky as a girl can be, and in only a little over two months you
have grown as lightfooted and hearty as a boy. _I_ think nothing
could be lovelier than you are now, but you can get off those other few
pounds if you want to. You know, don't you, that I have known how hard
some of it was, and I haven't been able to eat as much as I usually do,
thinking how hungry you are? But isn't it all worth it? I think it is.