Newark evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1916, 1913-04-12
CHAPTER l..
The BacheIor's-bnttons.

corning looking after her and the
devil at the same time. They both
need it, I don't know how all this
is going to end and [ wish my mind
wasn't in a kind of tingle. However,
I'll do the best I can and not hold
myself at all responsible for myself,
and then who will there be to blame?
There are a great many kinds of
sood-feeling in this world, from ra-
diant joy down to perfect bliss, but
this spring l have got an attack of
Just old-fashioned happiness that
looks as if it might become chronic.
am so happy that l planted my
garden all crooked, my eyes upon
the clouds with the birds sailing
against them, and when ] became
conscious / found wicked Haunting
peoples sprouted right up against the
sweet modest clover-pinks, while the
whole paper of bachelor solutions
was sowed over everything-which I
Immediately began to dig right up
again, blushing furiously to myself
over the trowel, and glad that I had
caught myself before they grew up
to laugh in my face. However, ! got
that laugh, anyway, and l might just
as well have left them, for Billy ran
to the gate and called Doctor
John to come in and make Molly stop
digging up his buttons Billy claims
everything in this garden, and he
thought they would grow up into the
kind of buttons you pop out of a
gun.
80 you're digging up the bache-
M,.e 80 41nptnr
asked as he leaned over the gate. l
went right on digging without look
ing up at him. 1 couldn't look up
because | was blushing still worse.
Sometimes 1 hate that man, and if
he wasn't Billy's father I wouldn't
neighbor with him as I do; but some
body has to look after. Billy.
I believe it will be az real relief to
write down how 1 feel about him in
his old book. and / shall do it when
ever | can't stand him any longer,
and if he gave the lhorrid, red leath-
er thing to me to make me miserable
he can't do it; not this spring! l
wish / dared burn it up and forget
about it, but I don't! This record on
the first page is enough to reduce
me--to tears, and I wonder why it
doesn't
I weigh 100 pounds, down in black
and white, and it is a tragedy! I
don't believe that man at the grocery
store is so very reliable in his
weights, though he had a very pleas
ant smile while he was weighing me.
Still / had better get some scales of
my own. smiles are so deceptive.
am five feet three inches tall or
short, which ever way one looks at
me- I thought 1 was taller, but
suppose I will have to believe my
own yard-stick.
But as to my waist measure,
positively refuse to write that down,
even If l have promised Doctor John
q dozen times over to do it,
while l only really left him to
suppose / would. 1t is bad
enough to know that your belt
has to be reduced to twenty
three inches without putting down
how much it measures now in fig
ures to insult yourself with. No,
intend to have this for my happy
spring.
Yes, I suppose it would have been
lots better for my happiness if 1 had
kept quiet about it all, but at the
time I thought I had to advise with
him over the matter. Now I'm sorry
/ did. That is one thing about being
a widow, you are accustomed to ad
vising with a man, whether you
want to or not, and you can't get
over the habit right away. Poor
Mr.. Carter hasn't been dead much
I 10
him most awfully though just late
ly I can't remember not to forget
about him great deal of the time.
Now If he had been here-horrors!
Still, that letter was enough to up
set anybody, and no wonder [ ran
right across my garden, through
Billy's hedge-hole and over into Doc
tor Johns office to tell him about
it, but | ought not to have been agi-
tated enough to let him take the let
ter right out of my hand and read it.
80 after ten years AL Bennett is
coming back to pop his bachelors
buttons at you, Mrs. Molly" he said
in the deep drawing voice he always
uses when he makes fun of Billy and
me and which never fails to make
us both mad. I didn't look at him
directly, but / felt his hand shake
it'll the letter in it.
mot ten, only eight! He went
when ] was seventeen" l answered
with dignity, wishing / dared be
snappy at him; though I never am.
"And after eight years he wants
to come back and find you squeezed
into a twenty-inch waist, blue mus
lin rag you wore at parting?
No wonder AL didn't succeed at
blank clerking, but had to make his
hit at diplomacy and the high arts
Some hit, at that, to be legationed
ar Saint james, He's such a big gun
that it is a pity he had to return to
his native heath and find even such
a slight disappointment as a cne-
yard waist measure around his
his"
"Oh: it's not, it's not that much"
I fairly gasped, and Il couldn't help
the tears coming into my eyes.
have never said much about it, but
nobody knows how it hurts me to be
all this fat just writing it down in
a book mortifies me dreadfully It's
been coming on worse and worse
every year since / married. Poor Mr..
Carter had very good appetite, and
+ don't know why / should have felt
that ] had to eat SO much every day
to keep him company; ] wasn't al
ways so considerable of him. Then he
didn't want me to dance any more,
because married woman oughtn't. or
ride horseback, either-no amusement
tea -. bi,,,eaIf and weekly DraNer
meetings, and-and-I just couldn't
help the tears coming and dripping
as / thought about it all and that