I know now that I really never got any older than the poor, foolish, eighteen-years child that Aunt Adeline married off “safe.”  But all that was a mild sort of exasperation to what a widow has to go through with in the matter of—­of, well, I think worrying interference is about the best name to give it.

“Molly Carter,” said Mrs. Johnson just day before yesterday, after the white-dress, Judge-Wade episode that Aunt Adeline had gone to all the friends up and down the street to be consoled about, “if you haven’t got sense enough to appreciate your present blissful condition, somebody ought to operate on your mind.”

I was tempted to say, “Why not my heart?” I was glad she didn’t know how good that heart did feel under my blouse when the boy brought that basket of fish from Judge Wade’s fishing expedition Saturday.  I have firmly determined not to blush any more at the thought of that gorgeous man—­at least outwardly.

“Don’t you think it is very—­very lonely to be a widow, Mrs. Johnson?” I asked timidly to see what she would say about Mr. Johnson, who is really a kind-hearted sort of man, I think.  He gives me the gentlest understanding smile when he meets me in the street of late weeks.

“Lonely, lonely, Molly?  You talk about the married state exactly like an old maid.  Don’t do it—­it’s foolish, and you will get the lone notion really fastened in your mind and let some man find out that is how you feel.  Then it will be all over with you.  I have only one regret; and it is that if I ever should be a widow Mr. Johnson wouldn’t be here to see how quickly I turned into an old maid.”  Mrs. Johnson sews by assassinating the cloth with the needle, and as she talked she was mending the sleeve of Mr. Johnson’s lounge coat.

“I think an old maid is just a woman who has never been in love with a man who loves her.  Lots of them have been married for years,” I said, just as innocently as the soft face of a pan of cream, and went on darning one of Billy’s socks.

“Well, be that as it may, they are the blessed members of the women tribe,” she answered, looking at me sharply.  “Now I have often told Mr. Johnson—­” but here we were interrupted in what might have been the rehearsal of a glorious scrap by the appearance of Aunt Bettie Pollard, and with her came a long, tall, lovely vision of a woman in the most wonderful close clingy dress and hat that you wanted to eat the minute you saw it.  I hated her instantly with the most intense adoration that made me want to lie down at her feet, and also made me feel as though I had gained all the more than twenty pounds that I have slaved off me and doubled them on again.  I would have liked to lead her that minute into Dr. John’s office and just to have looked at him and said one word—­“Scarlet-runner!” Aunt Betty introduced her as Miss Clinton from London.