“I found it, Molly, I found it!” he exclaimed as he let the heavy pipe drop almost on the bare pink toes.  “You can git a hammer and pound the end sharp and bend it so no whale we ketch can git away for nothing.  You and father kin put it in your trunk ’cause it’s too long for mine, and I can carry father’s shirts and things in mine.  Git the hammer quick, and I’ll help you do it!” The pain in my breast was almost more than I could bear.

“Lover,” I said as I knelt down by him in the dim old hall and put my arms around him as if to shield him from some blow I couldn’t help being aimed at him, “you wouldn’t mind much, would you, if just this time your Molly couldn’t go with you?  Your father is going to take good care of you and—­and maybe bring you back to me some day.”

“Why, Molly,” he said, flaring his astonished blue eyes at me, “’tisn’t me to be took care of!  I’m not going to leave you here for maybe a a bear to come out of a circus and eat you up, with me and father gone.  ’Sides, father isn’t very useful and maybe wouldn’t help me hold the rope right to keep the whale from gitting away.  He don’t know how to do like I tell him like you do.”

“Try him, lover, and maybe he will—­will learn to—­” I couldn’t help the tears that came to stop my words.

“Now you see, Molly, how you’d cry with that kiss-spot gone,” he said with an amused, manly little tenderness in his voice that I had never heard before, and he cuddled his lips against mine in almost the only voluntary kiss he had given me since I had got him into his ridiculous little trousers under his blouses.  “You can have most a hundred kisses every night if you don’t say no more about not going, and make that whale-hook for me quick,” he coaxed against my cheek.

Oh, little lover, little lover, you didn’t know what you were saying with your baby wisdom, and your rust-grimy little hand burned the sleep-place on my breast like a terrible white heat from which I was powerless to defend myself.  You are mine, you are, you are! You are soul of my soul and heart of my heart and spirit of my spirit.

I don’t know how I managed to answer Mrs. Johnson’s call from my front gate, but I sometimes think that women have a torture-proof clause in their constitutions.

She and Aunt Bettie had just come up the street from Aunt Bettie’s house, and the Pollard cook was following them with a large basket, in which were packed things Aunt Bettie was contributing towards the entertainment of the distinguished citizen.  Mr. Johnson is Alfred’s nearest kinsman in Hillsboro, and, of course, he is to be their guest while he is in town.

“He’ll be feeding his eyes on Molly, so he’ll not even know he’s eating my Kensington almond pudding with Thomas’s old port in it,” teased Aunt Bettie with a laugh as I went across the street with them.