The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1913-06-19
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 enteen-year-old girls heart is a sensi- tive wild flower that may be shattered by a breath? Mine shattered when Alfred vent away to find something he could do to make a living, and Aunt Adeline gave the hard, green stem to Mfr. Carter when she married me to him. Poor MT. Garter!
 No, wasn't twenty, 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 8 nice, safe thing for you, Molly" And they really didn't mean anything by tying up a gay, dancing, frolicking, prancing colt of girl with 2 terribly ponderous bridle. But God didn't want to see me always trotting along slow and tired and not caring what happened to me, even bounds and pounds of plumpness. so he found use for MT. Carter in some other place but 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 I feel with God they would put me. out for contempt of court.
 No, the town didn't mean anything by cAastening my spirit With MT. Car ter, and they didn't consider him in the matter at all, poor man! Of that I feel sure Hi1lsboro is like that It settled itself here in a Tennessee valley a few hundreds of years ago and has been matching and clucking over it's 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 hover ing even to the third and fourth gen.
 A. legged, frying size boys scramble out of the nests 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 woEld and rnarries plump little brofIer and takes her away win him, but mostly they stay and go. to lowering life on cor ner of the family estate. That's what I did
 was a poor little lost chick with frivolous tendencies, and they all chuck ed me over into this empty Carter nest which they considered well feathered1 for me If gave them all a sensation when they found out from the will just how well it was feRthered- And it gave me one too. All that money would make me nervous if MT. Carter hadn't made Dr. John its guardian, though I sometimes feel that the respOnSibinty ty of me makes him treat me as if he were my gtepgrandfat ather-in-law. But all tn all. though stir in its knees with aHistocracy, Hinsboro is lovely and low ing. and couldn't inquisitfveaess be called iust real affection with a kind of squtnt in it's eye7
 And there sat on my front steps, being embraced in perfume of every bedyss 1ilacs and peachblow and sweet syFinga and affecttonate interest and moonlight, with a letter in my hand from the man whose two photographs and many letters had kept locked up in the gaFret for years. Is it any won der tingied 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 feet2 added his honors to his prostrate heart myself. and my own beat at the pros pect- All the eight years faded away and was again back in the old gar den down at Aunt AdeIine's cottage saying goodby, folded up in his arms. That's the way my memory put the scene to me, but the word folded made me remember that blue muslin dreeE again. Ilhad promised to keep it and wear iEe for him when he came back-and I couldn't forget that the blue belt was just twenty three inches and mine is-no, won't write it. II had got that dress out of the old trunk not ten minutes after I had read the letter and measured it.
 No, nobody would blame me for run hing right across the garden to Dr. John with such a real trouble as that. All of a sudden I hugged the letter and the little book up close to my breast and laughed until the tears ran down my cheeks. Then before I went into the house I assembled my garden and had family i prayers with my flowers. do that be- eaUsa they are all the family I've got | and God knows that all his budding 1 things need encoura cement, whether it | is a widow or a snowfall bush He'll l give it to us. And I'm praying again as I sit here and watch for the doctors light to go out I hate to go to sleep and leave it l burning. for he sits up so late, and he is 90 gaunt and thin and tired looking most times. That's what the last pray CT is about, almost always-sleep for him and no night caIli-
 LEAF SECOND.
 4 Love Letter, Lcaded.
 [" HE very worst page in this red
 red devf1-I'm glad I've FFF%F7E%E written 1t at Iast-of book Is the fifth It says:
 ~Breakfast-one slice of dry toast, 1 one egg, fruit and tablespoonful of 1 baked cereal, small cup of coffee, no sugar. no cream And me with two | Jersey cows full of the richest cream In Hillsboro. Harpeth valley, out in my | pastureI aeDinner-one small lean chop. slice |