then gave a short little laugh and turned to the table.

"I didn't understand you were joking," he said quietly.

That maddened me, and I would have done anything to make him think I was
not the foolish thing he evidently had classified me as being.

"I'm not joking," I said jerkily; "I am lonely. And worse than being
lonely, I'm scared. I ought to have stayed just the quiet relict of
Mr. Carter and gone out with Aunt Adeline and let myself be fat and
respectable; but I haven't got the character. You thought I went to town
to buy a monument, and I didn't; I bought enough clothes for two brides,
and now I'm too scared to wear 'em, and I don't know what you'll think
when you see my bankbook. Everybody is talking about me and that
dinner-party Tuesday night, and Aunt Adeline says she can't live in a
house of mourning so desecrated any longer; she's going back to the
cottage. Aunt Bettie Pollard says that if I want to get married I ought
to marry Mr. Wilson Graves because of his seven children, and then
everybody would be so relieved that they are taken care of, that they
would forget that Mr. Carter hasn't been dead quite five years yet. Mrs.
Johnson says I ought to be declared a minor and put as a ward under you.
I can't help judge Wade's sending me flowers and Tom's walking over my
front steps every day. I'm not strong enough to carry him away and drown
him. I am perfectly miserable and I'm--"

"Now that'll do, Molly, just hush for a half-minute, and let me talk to
you," said Dr. John as he took my hand in his and drew me near him. "No
wonder your heart hurts if it has got all that load of trouble on it,
and we'll just get a little of that 'scare' off. You put yourself in my
hands, and you are to do just as I tell you, and I say--forget it! Come