* * * * *

You can just take any recipe for a party and it will make a good debut for a girl, but it takes more time to concoct one for a widow, especially if it is for yourself.  I spent all the rest of the day doing almost nothing and thinking until I felt light-headed.  Finally I had just about given up any idea of a party and had decided to leak out in general society as quietly as my clothes would let me, when a real conflagration was lighted inside me.

If Tom Pollard wasn’t my own first cousin I would have loved him desperately, even if I am a week older than he.  He was about the only oasis in my childhood’s days, though I don’t think anybody would think of calling him at all green.  He never stopped coming to see me occasionally, and Mr. Carter liked him.  He was the first man to notice the white ruche I sewed in the neck of my old black silk four or five months ago, and he let me see that he noticed it out of the corner of his eyes as we were coming out of church, under Aunt Adeline’s very elbow.

And when that conflagration was lighted in me about my debut, Tom did it.  I was sitting peaceably in my own summer-house, dressed in the summer-before-last that Jane washes and irons every day while I am deciding how to hand out the first sip of my trousseau to the neighbours, when Tom, in a dangerous blue-striped shirt, with a tie that melted into it in tone, jumped over my fence and landed at my side.  He kissed the lace ruffle on my sleeve while I reproved him severely and settled down to enjoy him.  But I didn’t have such a good time as I generally do with him.  He was too full of another woman, and even a first cousin can be an exasperation in that condition.

“Now, Mrs. Molly, truly did you ever see such a flower as she is?” he demanded after I had expressed more than a dozen delighted opinions of Miss Clinton.  His use of the word “flower” riled me, and before I stopped to think, I said, “She reminds me more of a scarlet runner.”

“Now, Molly, don’t be jealous just because old Wade has taken her out driving behind the greys after kissing your hand under the lilacs yesterday, which, fortunately, nobody saw but little me!  I’m not sore, why should you be?  Aren’t you happy with me?”

I withered him with a look, or rather tried to wither him, for Tom is no mimosa bud.

“The way that girl has managed to wake up this little old town is a marvel,” he continued enthusiastically.  “Let’s don’t let the folks know that they are off until I get everybody in a full swing of buzz over my queen.”  I had never seen Tom so enthusiastic over a girl before, and I didn’t like it.  But I decided not to let him know that, but to get to work putting out the Clinton blaze in him and starting one on my own account.

“That’s just what I’m thinking about, Tom,” I said with a smile that was as sweet as I could make it, “and as she came with messages to me from one of my best old friends I think I ought to do something to make her have a good time.  I was just planning a gorgeous dinner-party I want to have for her when you came so suddenly.  Do you think we could arrange it for Tuesday evening?”