For a year after the funeral they forget about the poor bereaved, and when they do remember her they speak to and of her in the same tones of voice they used at the obsequies.  Then sooner or later some neighbour is sure to see some man walk home from church with her, or hear some masculine voice in her front garden.  Mr. Blake gave Mrs. Caruther’s little Jessie a ride in his trap and helped her out at her mother’s gate just before last Christmas, and if the poor widow hadn’t acted quickly the town would have noticed them to death before he proposed to her.  They were married the day after New Year’s Day, and she lost lots of good friends because she didn’t give them more time to talk about it.

I don’t intend to run any risk of losing my friends that way, and I want them to have all the enjoyment they can get out of it.  I’m going to serve out doses of excitement until the dear old place is running as it did when it was a two-year old.  Why get annoyed when people are interested in you?  It’s a compliment, after all, and gives them more to think about.  I remembered the two trunks I had brought home with me, and hugged my knees up under my chin with pleasure at the thought of the town-talk they contained.

Then just as I had got the first plan well going and was deciding whether to wear the mauve crepe de Chine or the white chiffon with the rosebud embroidery as a first dose for my friends, a sweetness came in through my window that took my breath away, and I lay still with my hand over my heart and listened.  It was Billy singing right under my window, and I’ve never heard him do it before in all his five years.  It was the dearest old-fashioned tune ever written, and Billy sang the words as distinctly as if he had been a boy chorister doing a difficult recitative.  My heart beat so it shook the lace on my breast, like a breeze from heaven, as he took the high note and then let it go on the last few words.

  “If you love me, Molly darling,
  Let your answer be a kiss!”

A confused recollection of having heard the words and tune sung by my mother when I was at the rocking age myself brought the tears to my eyes as I flew to the window and parted the curtains.  If you heard a little boy-angel singing at your casement, wouldn’t you expect a cherub face upturned with heaven-lights all over it?  Billy’s face was upturned as he heard me draw up the blind, but it was streaked like a wild Indian’s with decorations of brown mud, and he held a slimy frog in one hand while he wiped his other grimy hand down the front of his linen blouse.

“I say, Molly, look at the frog I bringed you!” he exclaimed as he came close under the sill, which is not high from the ground.  “If you put your face down to the mud and sing something to ’em, they’ll come out of their holes.  A beetle comed, too, but I couldn’t ketch ’em both.  Lift me up, and I can put him in the waterglass on your table.”  He held up one muddy hand to me, and promptly I lifted him up into my arms.  From the embrace in which he and the frog and I indulged my lace and cambric came out much the worse.