They say among the lawyers that it is a good thing that Benton Wade is on the bench, for it is no use to try a case against him when he has the handling of a jury.  He just looks them in the face and tells them how to vote.  To-night he looked me in the face and told me how to marry, and I’m not sure yet that I won’t do as he says.  Of course I’m in love with Alfred, but if he wants me he had better get me away quick before the judge makes all his arrangements.  A woman loves to be courted with poems and flowers and deference, but she’s mighty apt to marry the man who says, “Don’t argue, but put on your bonnet and come with me.”  The fact that it was too late to get into the clerk’s office saved me to-night, but in two days—­

Oh, I’m crying, crying in my heart, which is worse than in my eyes, as I sit and look across my garden, where the cold moon is hanging low over the tall trees behind the doctor’s house and his light in his room is burning warm and bright.  They are right; he doesn’t care if I am going away for ever with Alfred.  His quick toast to him and the lovely warm look he poured over poor frightened me at his side, as he drank his champagne, told me that once and for all.  Still we have been so close together over his baby and I have grown so dependent on him for so many things that it cuts into me like a hot knife that he shouldn’t care if he lost me—­even for a neighbor.  I shouldn’t mind not having any husband if I could always live close by him and Billy like this, and if I married Judge Wade I could at least have him for a family physician. No—­I don’t like that!  Of course I’m going with Alfred now that an accident has made me announce the fact to the whole town before he even knows it himself, but wherever I go that light in the room with that lonely man is going to burn in my heart.  Hope it will throw a glow over Alfred!

LEAF SEVENTH

DASHED!

I do believe God gave that wise angel charge concerning me lest I get dashed, but I just got dashed anyway, and its my own fault, not the angel’s.  I have suffered this day until I want to lay my face down against the hem of His garment and wait in the dust for Him to pick me up.  I shall never be able to do it myself, and how He’s going to do it I can’t see, but He will.

That dinner-party last night was bad enough, but to-day’s been worse.  I didn’t sleep until long after daylight and then Judy came in before eight o’clock with a letter for me that looked like a state document.  I felt in my trembly bones that it was some sort of summons affair from Judge Wade; and it was.  I looked into the first paragraph and then decided that I had better get up and dress and have a cup of coffee and a single egg before I tried to read it.

Incidental to my bath and dressing, I weighed and found that I had lost all four of those last surplus pounds and two more in three days.  Those two extra pounds might be construed to prove love, but exactly on whom I was utterly unprepared to say.  I didn’t even enjoy the thinness, but took a kind of already-married look in my glass and tried to slip the egg past my bored lips and get myself to chew it down.  It was work; and then I took up the judge’s letter, which also was work and more of it.