Mr. Henderson has been dead forty-two years. He only lived three months after he married Aunt Adeline and her crepe veil is over a yard long yet. Men are the dust under her feet, but she likes for Doctor John to come over and sit on the porch with us because she can consult with him about what Mr. Henderson really died of and talk with him about the sad state of poor Mr. Carter's liver for a year before he died. I just go on rocking Billy and singing hymns to him in such a way that I can't hear the conversation.  [16]    Mr. Carter's liver got on my nerves alive, and dead it does worse. But it hurts when the doctor has to take the little sleep-boy out of my arms to carry him home; though I like it when he says under his breath, "Thank you, Molly." 

[16]

 And as I sat and thought how near he and I had been to each other in all our troubles, I excused myself for running to him with that letter and I acknowledged to myself that I had no right to get mad when he teased me, for he had been kind and interested about helping me get thin by the time Alfred came back to see me. I couldn't tell which I was blushing all to myself about, the "luscious peach" he had called me or the "lovely lily" Alfred had reminded me in his letter that I had been when he left me. 

 Why don't people realize that a seventeen-year-old girl's heart is a sensitive  [17]    wind-flower that may be shattered by a breath? Mine shattered when Alfred went away to find something he could do to make a living, and Aunt Adeline gave the hard green stem to Mr. Carter when she married me to him. Poor Mr. Carter! 

[17]

 No, I wasn't twenty, and this town was full of women who were aunts and cousins and law-kin to me, and nobody did anything for me. They all said with a sigh of relief, "It will be such a nice safe thing for you, Molly." And they really didn't mean anything by tying up a gay, dancing, frolicking, prancing colt of a girl with a terribly ponderous bridle. But God didn't want to see me always trotting along slow and tired and not caring what happened to me, even pounds and pounds of plumpness, so he found use for Mr. Carter in some other place but this world, and I feel that He is going to see me  [18]    through whatever happens. If some of the women in my missionary society knew how friendly I feel with God they would put me out for contempt of court. 

[18]

 No, the town didn't mean anything by chastening my spirit with Mr. Carter and they didn't consider him in the 

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