Excerpt......I don't know how all this is going to end, and I wish my mind wasn't in a kind of tingle. However, I'll do the best I can and not hold myself at all responsible for myself, and then who will there be to blame? There are a great many k ... Read more

Excerpt......I don't know how all this is going to end, and I wish my mind wasn't in a kind of tingle. However, I'll do the best I can and not hold myself at all responsible for myself, and then who will there be to blame? There are a great many kinds of good-feeling in this world, from radiant joy down to perfect bliss; but this spring I have got an attack of just old-fashioned happiness that looks as if it might become chronic. I am so happy that I planted my garden all crooked, my eyes upon the clouds with the birds sailing against them, and when I became conscious I found wicked flaunting poppies sprouted right up against the sweet modest clove-pinks, while the whole paper of bachelor's-buttons was sowed over everything—which I immediately began to dig right up again, blushing furiously to myself over the trowel, and glad that I had caught myself before they grew up to laugh in my face. However, I got that laugh anyway, and I might just as well have left them, for Billy ran to the gate and called Dr. John to come in and make Molly stop digging up his buttons. Billy claims everything in this garden, and he thought they would grow up into the kind of buttons you pop out of a gun. "So you're digging up the bachelor-buttons, Mrs. Molly?" the doctor asked as he leaned over the gate. I went on digging without looking up at him. I couldn't look up because I was blushing still worse. Sometimes I hate that man, and if he wasn't Billy's father I wouldn't be as friendly with him as I am. But somebody has to look after Billy. 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. Less