“Why, Molly, Molly, Molly!” drawled that miserable man-doctor as he came and leaned on the sill right close to my elbow.  The spoon crashed on the table, and I turned and crashed into words.

“You are cruel, cruel, John Moore, and I hate you worse than I ever did before, if that is possible.  I’m hungry, hungry to death, and now you’ve spoiled it all!  Go away before I wet this nice crisp bread and jam with tears, and turn it into a pulp I’ll have to eat with a spoon.  You don’t know what it is to want something sweet so bad you are willing to steal it—­from yourself!” I fairly blazed my eyes down into his, and moved as far away from him as the table would let me.

“Don’t I, Molly?” he asked softly, after looking straight in my eyes for a long minute, that made me drop my head until the blue bow I had tied on the end of my long plait almost got into the scattered jam.  Even at such a moment as that I felt how glad Madame Rene would have been to have given such a nice man as the doctor a treat like that blue silk chef-d’oeuvre of hers.  I was glad myself.

“Don’t I, Flower?” he asked again in a still softer voice.  Again I had that sensation of being against something warm and great and good, and I don’t know how I controlled it enough not to—­to—­

“Well, have some jam then,” I managed to say with a little laugh, as I turned away and picked up the silver spoon.

“Thank you, I will, all of it, and the bread and butter, too,” he answered, in that detestable friendly tone of voice, as he drew himself up and sat in the window.  “Hurry, Flower, if you are going to feed me, for I’m ravenous.  I’ve been attending Sam Benson’s wife, and I haven’t had any supper.  You have; so I don’t mind taking it all away from you.”

“Supper,” I sniffed, as I spread the jam on those lovely, lovely slices of bread and thick butter that I had fixed for my own self.  “I am so tired of that apple-toast combination now that I forget it if I can.”  As I handed him the first slice of drippy lusciousness, I turned my head away.  He thought it was from the expression of that jam, but it was from his eyes.

“Slice up the whole loaf, Flower, and let’s have a feast.  Forget—­” He didn’t finish his sentence, and I’m glad.  We neither of us said anything more as I cut that whole loaf; but why should I want to be certain that he touched the lace on my sleeve as it brushed his face when I reached across him to catch an inquisitive rose that I saw peeping in the window at us?

Leaf V.

“The juice of a lemon in two glasses of cold water, to be drunk immediately on wakening!” Page eleven!  I’ve handed myself that lemon every morning now until I am sensitive with myself about it.  If there was ever anybody “living a Noah’s Ark sort of life” it’s I, and I have to sit at the Ark window from dawn to dusk to get in the gallon of water I’m supposed to consume in that time.  Some time I’m going to get mixed up and try to drink my bath, if I don’t look out.