Newark evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1916, 1913-04-12

| your long years of WidoWhood alone,
and as l am in the same condition
l will rent my cottage and move
right up the street into your house
to protect and console you" And
she did-the moving and the pro-
tecting.
Mr.. Henderson has been dead
forty-two years. He only lived three
months after he married Aunt AIDE
line and her crepe veil is over a yard
long yet Men are the dust under
her feet, but she likes for Doctor
John to come over and sit on the
porch with us because she can con-
suit with him about what Mr.. Hen
derson really died of and talk with
him about the sad state of poor Mr..
Carter's liver for q year before he
died. / just, go on rocking Billy and
singing hymns TO him ia such a way
that | can't hear the conversation.
Mr.. Carriers 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 l like
it when he says under his breath,
THANK you, Molly
And as / sat and thought how
near he and had been to each other
in all our troubles. l excused myself
for running to him with that letter
and I acknowledged to myself that
I had no right to get mad when he
leased me, for he had been kind and
interested about helping me get thin
by the time Alfred came back to see
me. l couldn't tell which l was
blushing all to myself about the
luscious peach" he had called me
or the lovely lily Alfred had re-
minded me in his letter that l had
Il been when he left me.
Why don't people realize that a
seventeen year-old girls heart is
a sensitive Whatsoever that may be
shattered by breath? Mine shat
tered 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 married me to him. Poor Mr..
Carter!
No, I wasn't twenty. and this town
was full of women who were aunts
and cousins and law-lIin to me, and
nobody did anything for me. They
all said with a sigh of relief 1T will
be such nice. safe thing for you,
Molly" And they really didn't dream
anything by tying up a gay, dancing,
| frolicl1ing, prancing colt of a girl with
a terribly ponderous bride. But God
didn't want to see me always trotting
along slow and tired and not caring
what happened to me. even pounds
and pounds of plumpness, so he
found use for Mr.. Carter in some
other part of this world, and / feel
that He is going to see me through,
whatever happens. If some of the
women in my missionary society
knew how friendly l feel with God
they would put me out for contempt
of court.
No, the town didn't mean anything
by Christening my spirit with Mr..
Carter, and they didn't consider him
in the matter at all, poor man. OF
that feel sure Hillsboro is like that.
! 1t settled itself here in a Tennessee
valley few hundreds of years ego,
and has been Matching and cluckipg
over its own small affairs ever since.
All the houses set back from the
street, with their wings spread out
over their gardens, and mothers here
go on lowering even to the third and
fourth generations. Lots of times
young, long-legged, frying size boys
scramble out of the nest and go off
to college 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 plump little broiler and
takes her away with him, but most
lysthey stay and go to lowering life
on a corner of the family estate.
That's what | did.
| was a poor, little, lost chick with
frivolous tendencies and they all
clucked me over into this empty Car
ter nest which they considered we'll
feathered for me. 1t gave them all a
sensation when they found out from
the will just how we'll it was feath-
cred, and it gave me one, too. All
that money would make me nervous
If Mr.. Carter hadn't made Doctor
John it's guardian, though | some
times feel that the responsibility of
me makes him treat me as II he We're
my p-father-in-law; but all in all,
| though stiff in his knees with aris-
Itocracy, Hillsboro is lovely and low
ing, and couldn't inquisitiveness be
called Just real affection with a kind
of squint in its eye?
And there | sat on my front steps.
being embraced in perfume of
eVerybody's lilacs and peachblow
and sweet syringa and affectionate
interest and moonlight, with letter
in my hand from the man whose two
photographs and many letters / had
kept locked up in the garrett for
years. Is it any wonder | tingled
when he told me that he had never
come back because he couldn't have
me. and that now the minute he
landed in America he was going to
lay his heart at my feet? ! added
his honors to his PROSTATE heart
myself and my own beat at the pros
poet All the eight years faded away
and / was again back in the old gar
den down at Aunt Adelines cottage
saying goodby, folded up in his
arms. That's the way my mem
Dry put the scene to me, but the
word efolded" made me remember
that blue muslin dress again. l had
promised to keep it and wear 1t for
him when he came back-and /
couldn't forget that the blue belt was
just twenty three inches and mine is
no, I won't write it. | had got that
dress out of the old trunk not ten
minutes after / had read thu letter
and measured it.
No, nobody would blame me for
running right across the garden 10
Doctor John with such a real trouble