It is nice to watch for a person to catch sight of you if you feel sure how they are going to take it and somehow in this case I felt sure.  I was not disappointed, for his smile broke his face up into a joy-laugh.  Off came his hat instantly so I could catch a glimpse of the fascinating frost over his temples, and with a positive sigh of rapture he subsided into the seat beside me.  I turned with an echo smile all over me when suddenly his face became grave and considerate, and he looked at me as all the men in Hillsboro have been doing ever since poor Mr. Carter’s funeral.

“Mrs. Carter,” he said very kindly, in a voice that pitched me out of the car window and left me a mile behind on the track, all by myself, “I wish I had known of your sad errand to town so I could have offered you some assistance in your selection.  You know we have just had our lot in the cemetery finally arranged and I found the dealers in memorial stones very confusing in their ideas and designs.  Mrs. Henderson just told my mother of your absence from home last night, and I could only come down to the city for the day on important business or I would have arranged to see you.  I hope you found something that satisfied you.”

What’s a woman going to say when she has a tombstone thrown in her face like that?  I didn’t say anything, but what I thought about Aunt Adeline filled in a dreadful pause.

Perfectly dumb and quiet I sat for an awful space of time and wondered just what I was going to do.  Could a woman lie a monument into her suit case?  It was beyond me at that speaking and the Molly that is ready for life quick, didn’t want to.  I shut my eyes, counted three to myself as I do when I go over into the cold tub, and told him all about it.  We both got a satisfactory reaction and I never enjoyed myself so much as that before.

I understand now why Judge Wade has had so many women martyr themselves over him and live unhappily ever afterward, as everybody says Henrietta Mason is doing.  He’s a very inspiring man and he fairly bristles with fascinations.  Some men are what you call taking and they take you if they want you, while others are drawing and after you are drawn to them they will consider the question of taking you.  The judge is like that.

In the meantime it tingles me up to a very great degree to have a man use his eyes on me as it is the privilege of only womankind to do, and I feel that it will be good for his judgeship for me to let him “draw” me at least a little way.  I may get hurt, but I shall at least have an interesting time of it.  I started right then and got results, for he stopped under the old lilac bush that leans over my side gate and kissed my hand.  Old Lilac shook a laugh of perfume all over us and I believe signaled the event at the top of his bough to the white clump on the other side of the garden.  I’m glad Aunt Adeline isn’t in the flower fraternity or sorority.  Suppose she had seen or heard!