street into your house to protect and console you." And she did--the
moving and the protecting.

Mr. Henderson has been dead forty-two years. He only lived three months
after he married Aunt Adeline, and her crêpe veil is over a yard long
yet. Men are the dust under her feet, but she likes Dr. John to come
over and sit with us, because she can consult with him about what Mr.
Henderson really died of, and talk with him about the sad state of poor
Mr. Carter's liver for a year before he died. I just go on rocking
Billy and singing hymns to him in such a way that I can't hear the
conversation. Mr. Carter's liver got on my nerves alive, and dead
it does worse. But it hurts when the doctor has to take the little
sleep-boy out of my arms to carry him home; though I like it when he
says under his breath, "Thank you, Molly."

And as I sat and thought how near he and I had been to each other in all
our troubles, I excused myself for running to him with that letter, and
I acknowledged to myself that I had no right to get vexed when he teased
me, for he had been kind and interested about helping me get thin by the
time Alfred came back to see me. I couldn't tell which I was blushing
all to myself about, the "perfect flower" he had called me, or the
"lovely lily" Alfred had reminded me in his letter that I had been when
he left me.

Why don't people realise that a seventeen-year-old girl's heart is a
sensitive wind-flower that may be shattered by a breath? Mine shattered
when Alfred went away to find something he could do to make a living,
and Aunt Adeline gave the hard green stem to Mr. Carter when she
insisted on marrying me to him. Poor Mr. Carter!