After that I spent all the rest of the evening in planning my dinner-party and I had a most royal good time.  I always have had lots of company, but mostly the spend-the-day kind with relatives, or more relatives to supper.  That’s what most entertaining in Hillsboro is like, but, as I say, once in a while the old slow pacer wakes up.

I’ll never forget my first real dinner-party, as the flower girl for Caroline Evans’ wedding, when she married the Chicago millionaire, from which Hillsboro has never yet recovered.  I was sixteen, felt dreadfully naked without a tucker in my dress, and saw Alfred for the first time in evening clothes—­his first.  I can hardly stand thinking about how he looked even now.  I haven’t been to very many dinner-parties in my life, but from this time on I mean to indulge in them often.  Candle-light, pretty women’s shoulders, black coat sleeves, cut glass and flowers are good ingredients for a joy-drink, and why not?

But when I got to planning about the gorgeous food I wanted to give them all, I got into what I feel came near being a serious trouble.  It was writing down the recipe for the nesselrode pudding they make in my family that undid me.  Suddenly hunger rose up from nowhere and gripped me by the throat, gnawed me all over like a bone, then shook me until I was limp and unresisting.  I must have astralized myself down to the pantry, for when I became conscious I found myself in company with a loaf of bread, a plate of butter and a huge jar of jam.

I sat down by the long table by the window and slowly prepared to enjoy myself.  I cut off four slices and buttered them to an equal thickness and then more slowly put a long silver spoon into the jam.  I even paused to admire in Judy’s mirror over the table the effect of the cascade of lace that fell across my arm and lost itself in the blue shimmer of old Rene’s masterpiece of a negligee, then deep down I buried the spoon in the purple sweetness.  I had just lifted it high in the air when out of the lilac-scented dark of the garden came a laugh.

[Illustration:  “Why Molly, Molly, Molly!”]

“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 into a mush 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 old 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.