Uncle Thomas Pollard had sent me a quart bottle of his private stock with the message to put the mint to soak just one hour and twenty minutes before the men came.  I made room for it beside the case of champagne on the cellar shelf and wondered how they would stand it all.  We don’t have champagne often in Hillsboro, and when we do nobody seems to want to cut down on the juleps, consequently—­well, nothing ever really happens!  However, it must have been the champagne that made Tom act as he did.  He was never like that before.

Somehow I didn’t enjoy dressing to-night for my dinner as I did for the dance, and when I was through I stood before the mirror and looked at myself a long time.  I was very tall and slim and—­well, I suppose I might say regal in that amethyst crepe with the soft rose-point, but I looked to myself about the eyes as I had been doing for years when I put on my Sunday clothes to go to church with Mr. Carter.  He was always in a hurry and I didn’t care about looking at myself in the mirror anyway; nobody else ever looked at me and what was the use?  And to-night that Rene triumph made me feel no different from one of Miss Hettie Primm’s conceptions that I had been wearing for ages with indifference and total lack of style.  I shrugged my shoulder almost out of the dress with what I thought was sadness, though it felt a trifle like temper, too, and went on down into the garden to see if any of my flowers had a cheer-up message for me.

But it was a bored garden I stepped into just as the last purple flush of day was being drunk down by the night.  The tall white lilies laid their heads over on my breast and went to sleep before I had said a word to them, and the nasturtiums snarled around my feet until they got my slippers stained with green.  Only Billy’s bachelor’s-button stood up stiff and sturdy, slightly flushed with imbibing the night dew, and tipped me an impertinent wink.  I felt cheered at the sight of them and bent down to gather a bunch of them to wear, even if they did swear at my amethyst draperies, when an amused smile that was done out loud came from the path just behind me.

“Don’t gather them all to-night, Mrs. Peaches,” said Doctor John teasingly, as he stooped beside me.  “Leave a few for—­for the others.”  I waked up in a half-second and so did all those prying flowers, I felt sure.

“I was just gathering them for place bouquets for—­for the girls,” I said stupidly as I moved over a little nearer to him.  Why it is that the minute that man comes near me I get warm and comfortable and stupid, and as young as Billy, and bubbly and sad and happy and cross is more than I can say, but I do.  I never possibly know how to answer any remark that he may happen to make unless it is something that makes me lose my temper.  His next remark was the usual spark.

“Better give them the run of the garden—­alone, Mrs. Molly.  No show for ‘em unless you do,” he said laughingly, “or the buttons’ either,” he added under his breath so I could just hear it.  I wish Mrs. Johnson could have heard how soft his voice lingered over that little half-sentence.  She is so experienced she could have told me if it meant—­but of course he isn’t like other men!