No, I wasn't nineteen, and this town was full of women who were aunts
and cousins and law-kin to me, and nobody did anything for me. They all
said, with a sigh of relief, "It will be such a nice safe thing for
you, Molly." And they really didn't mean anything by tying up a gay,
frolicking, prancing colt of a girl with a terribly ponderous bridle.

No, the town didn't mean anything but kindness by marrying me to Mr.
Carter, and they didn't consider him in the matter at all, poor man! Of
that I feel sure. Hillsboro is like that. It settled itself here in this
north country a few hundreds of years ago, and has been hatching and
clucking over its own small affairs ever since. All the houses stand
back from the street with their wings spread out over their gardens, and
mothers here go on hovering even to the third and fourth generation.
Lots of times young, long-legged boys scramble out of the nests and go
off and decide to grow up where their crow will be heard by the world.
Alfred was one of them.

And, too, occasionally some man comes along from the big world and
marries a girl and takes her away with him, but mostly they stay and go
to hovering life on a corner of the family estate. That's what I did.

I was a poor, little, lonely chick with frivolous tendencies, and they
all clucked me over into this Carter nest, which they considered
well-feathered for me. It gave them all a sensation when they found out
from the will just how well it was feathered. And it gave me one too.
All that money would make me nervous if Mr. Carter hadn't made Dr. John
its guardian, though I sometimes feel that the responsibility of me
makes him treat me as if he were my step-grandfather-in-law. But all in
all, though stiff in its manners, Hillsboro is lovely and loving; and
couldn't inquisitiveness be called just real affection with a kind of