The Melting of Molly by Maria Thompson Daviess


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Page 1

I believe it will be a real relief to write down how I feel about him in
his old book, and I shall do it whenever I can't stand him any longer;
and if he gave the horrid, red leather thing to me to make me miserable
he can't do it; not this spring! I wish I dare burn it up and forget
about it, but I daren't! This record on the first page is enough to
reduce me--to tears, and I wonder why it doesn't.

I weigh one hundred and sixty pounds, set down in black and white, and
it is a tragedy! I don't believe that man at the weighing machine is so
very reliable in his weights, though he had a very pleasant smile while
he was weighing me. Still, I had better get some scales of my own,
smiles are so deceptive.

I am five feet three inches tall or short, whichever way one looks at
me. I thought I was taller, but I suppose I shall have to believe my own
yardstick.

But as to my waist measure, I positively refuse to write that down, even
if I have half promised Dr. John a dozen times over to do it, while I
only really left him to _suppose_ I would. It is bad enough to know
that your belt has to be reduced to twenty-three inches without putting
down how much it measures now in figures to insult yourself with. No, I
intend to have this for my happy spring.

Yes, I suppose it would have been lots better for my happiness if I had
kept quiet about it all, but at the time I thought I had better consult
him over the matter. Now I'm sorry I did. That is one thing about being
a widow, you are accustomed to consulting a man, whether you want to or
not, and you can't get over the habit immediately. Poor Mr. Carter, my
husband, hasn't been dead much over six years, and I must be missing him
most awfully, though just lately I can't remember not to forget about
him a great deal of the time.

Still, that letter was enough to upset anybody, and no wonder I ran
right across my garden, through Billy's hedge-hole and over into Dr.
John's surgery to tell him about it; but I ought not to have been
agitated enough to let him take the letter right out of my hand and read
it.

"So after ten years Alfred Bennett is coming back to offer his
bachelor's-buttons to you, Mrs. Molly?" he said in the voice he always
uses when he makes fun of Billy and me, and which never fails to make us
both mad.

I didn't look at him directly, but I felt his hand shake with the letter
in it.

"Not ten, only _eight!_ He went away when I was seventeen," I answered
with dignity, wishing I dared be snappy at him: though I never am.

"And after eight years he wants to come back and find you squeezed into
a twenty-inch waist, blue muslin rag you wore at parting? No wonder
Alfred didn't succeed as a bank clerk, but had to make his hit in the
colonies. He's such a big gun that it is a pity he had to return to his
native heath and find even such a slight disappointment as a one-yard
waist measure around his--his--"

"Oh, it's not, it's not that much," I fairly gasped and I couldn't help
the tears coming into my eyes. I have never said much about it, but
nobody knows how it hurts me to be as--large as I am. Just writing it
down in a book mortifies me dreadfully. It's been coming on worse and
worse every year since I married. Poor Mr. Carter had a very good
appetite, and I don't know why I should have felt that I had to eat so
much every day to keep him company; I wasn't always so considerate about
him. Then he didn't want me to go for long walks with the dogs any more,
because married women oughtn't to, or ride horseback either--no
amusement left but himself; and--and--I just couldn't help the tears
coming and dripping as I thought about it all and that awful waist
measure in inches.

"Stop crying this minute, Molly," said Dr. John suddenly in the deep
voice he uses to Billy and me when we are really ill or tired. "You know
I was only teasing you and I won't let you--"

But I sobbed some more. I like him when his eyes come out from under his
bushy brows and are all tender and full of sorry for us.

"I can't help it," I gulped in my sleeve. "I did use to like Alfred
Bennett. My heart almost broke when he went away. I used to be beautiful
and slim, and now I feel as if my own fat ghost has come to haunt me all
my life. I am so ashamed! If a woman can't cry over her own dead beauty,
what can she cry over?" By this time I was really crying.

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Books | Photos | Paul Mutton | Fri 29th Mar 2024, 10:02