"So after ten years Al Bennett is coming back to pop his
bachelor's-buttons at you, Mrs. Molly?" he said in the deep drawling
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 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 Al
didn't succeed at bank clerking, but had to make his hit at diplomacy
and the high arts. Some hit at that to be legationed at Saint James!
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 all this fat! Just writing it down in
a book mortifies me dreadfully. It's been coming on worse and worse
every year since I married.
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