“Good gracious, Molly, don’t knock the town down like that!  Let ’em have more than a week to get used to this white rag of a dress you’ve been waving in their faces for the last few days.  Go slow!”

“I’ve been going so slow for so many years that I’ve turned round and I’m going fast backward,” I said with a blush that I couldn’t help.

“Help!  Let my kinship protect me!” exclaimed Tom in alarm, and he pretended to move an inch away from me.

“Yes,” I said slowly, and as I looked out of the corner of my eyes from under the lashes that Tom himself had once told me were “too long and black to be tidy,” I saw that he was in a condition to get the full shock.  “If anybody wakes up this town it will be I,” I said as I flung down the gauntlet with a high head.

“Here, Molly, here are the keys of my office, and the spark-plug to the car; you can cut off a lock of my hair, and if Jane has got a cake I’ll eat it out of your hands.  Shall it be Switzerland or Japan?  And I prefer my bride served in light grey tweed.”  Tom really is delightful.  Then we both laughed and began to plan what Tom called a conflagration.  But I kept that delicious rose-embroidered treasure all to myself.  I wanted him to meet it entirely unprepared.

I was glad we had both got over our excitement and were sitting decorously drinking tea, when the judge drew the greys up to the gate, and we both went out to the kerb to ask him and the lovely long lady to come in.  They couldn’t; but we stood and talked to them long enough for Mrs. Johnson to get a good look at us from across the street, and I was afraid I should find Aunt Adeline in a faint when I went into the house.

Miss Clinton was delightfully gracious about the dinner—­I almost called it the debut dinner—­and the expression on the judge’s face when he accepted!  I was glad she was sitting beside him and couldn’t see.  Some women like to make other women unhappy, but I think it is best for you to keep them blissfully unconscious until you get what you want.  Anyhow, I like that girl all over, and I can’t see that her neck is so absolutely impossibly flowery.  However, I think she might have been a little more considerate about discussing Alfred’s triumph over the Italian mission.  As a punishment I let Tom take my arm as we stood watching them drive off, and then was sorry for the left grey horse that shied and came in for a crack of the judge’s irritated whip.

Then I refused to let Tom come inside the gate, and he went down the street whistling, only when he got to the purple lilac he turned and kissed his hand to me.  That, Mrs. Johnson just couldn’t stand, and she came across the street immediately and called me back to the gate.

“You are tempting Providence, Molly Carter,” she exclaimed decidedly.  “Don’t you know Tom Pollard is nothing but a scatter-brained fly-away?  As a husband there’d be no dependence on him.  Besides being your cousin, he’s younger than you.  What do you mean?”