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

“Now, Molly, don’t be mean just because old Wade has got her out driving behind the grays after kissing your hand under the lilacs yesterday, which, praise be, 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 started in to wake up this little old town reminds me of the feeling you get under your belt seven minutes after you’ve sipped an absinthe frappe for the first time—­you are liable for a good jag and don’t know it,” 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 Chester 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?”

“Lord love us, 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 around 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 Hup; you can cut off a lock of my hair, and if Judy has got a cake I’ll eat it out of your hands.  Shall it be California or Nova Scotia?  And I prefer my bride served in light gray tweed.”  Tom really is adorable and I let him snuggle up just one cousinly second, then we both laughed and began to plan what Tom was horrible enough to call the resurrection razoo.  But I kept that delicious rose-embroidered treasure all to myself.  I wanted him to meet it entirely unprepared.