It was almost dusk and I stopped in the garden a minute to pull the dirt closer around some of the bachelor’s-buttons that had “popped” the ground some weeks ago.  Thinking about them made me regain my spirits and I went on in the house to be scolded for whatever Aunt Adeline had thought up while I was gone to do it to me about.  Judy told me with her broadest grin that she had gone down to her sister-in-law’s for supper and I sat down on the steps with a sigh of relief.

Some days are like tin cocoanut graters that everybody uses to grate you against and this was one for me.  For an hour I sat and grated my own self against Alfred’s letter that had come in the morning.  I realized that I would just have to come to some sort of decision about what I was going to do, for he wrote that he was to sail in a day or two, and ships do travel so fast these days.

I love him and always have, of that I am sure.  He offers me the most wonderful life in the world and no woman could help being proud to accept it.  I am lonely, more lonely than I was even willing to confess to Doctor John.  I can’t go on living this way any longer.  Ruth Chester has made me see that if I want Alfred it will be now or never and—­quick.  I know now that she loves him, and she ought to have her show if I don’t want him.  The way she idolizes and idealizes him is a marvel of womanly stupidity.

Some women like to collect men’s hearts and hide them away from other women on cold storage and the helpless things can’t help themselves.

I have contempt for that sort of butcher, and I love Ruth!

It’s my duty to look the matter in the face before I look in Alfred’s—­and decide.  If not Alfred, what then?

First—­no husband.  That’s out of the question!  I’m not strong-minded enough to crank my own motor-car and study woman’s suffrage.  I prefer to suffer at the hands of some cruel man and trust to beguiling him into doing just as I say.  I like men, can’t help it, and want one for my own.  I don’t count poor Mr. Carter.

Second—­if not Alfred, who?  Judge Wade is so delightful that I flutter at the thought, but his mother is Aunt Adeline’s own best friend and they have ideas in common.  She is so religious that living with her would be like having the sacrament for daily bread.  Still, living with him might have adventures.  I never saw such eyes!  The girl he wanted to marry died of tuberculosis and he wears a locket with her in it yet.  I’d like to reward him for such faithfulness with a nice husky wife to wear instead of the locket.  But then Alfred’s been faithful too!  I look at Ruth Chester and realize how faithful, and my heart melts to him in my breast—­my hips have almost all melted away, too, so I had better keep the heart cold enough to handle if I want anything left at all for him to come home to.