"I was trying to find out whether or not I really loved him," Miss Wilburn said, after Julius and Marcella had left us and we were going on up the walk. "It was silly of me, for all the time I've been so lonesome for him that I felt as if I should scream if anybody suggested men or marrying to me!" "Yes, you pore lamb," mammy said, walking on fast to make the tea, "you loves him, you shore do. I knows them symptoms!" CHAPTER IX I think if the person which remarked, "It is not always May," had said April he would have come nearer hitting it, for I think it is the most beautiful time of all. There's something in the very feelings at this time of the year that makes you want to write pretty things, whether you know what you want to say or not. So I have got out my diary and dusted it off, it being laid away in the drawer ever since last fall, when I told about me getting Miss Wilburn's affairs so mixed up because there hasn't been anything happening. One time not long ago I did get out my diary, for I got very excited over the news that a _widow_ was here, and I sharpened seventeen pencils so as to be ready for her. But she had the misfortune to marry, before I could get introduced to her, a man from her same city which had got on the train and followed her down here. She was a lovely, high-heeled, fluffy-petticoated kind of a widow and I could have written _chapters_ out of her I know; because all the time she was down here the ladies' sewing circle met three times a week and talked so that father said he heard they had to pass around potash tablets instead of refreshments for the sake of their sore throats. Mammy Lou made fun of me when I told her how disappointed I was over not getting to meet such a pretty lady and write her experiences. "Looks like you'd a knew better than to expect a widow to waste time a-cou'tin'," she told me with that proud look coming over her face that always does when she begins to brag on herself. "_They_ don't cou't; they marries! Thar ain't nobody able to dispute with _me_ over the ways o' widows, for ain't I done been _six_ of them _myself_?" This ain't exactly so, it's just five, for she never has got that divorce from Bill Williams yet; and she says now that she's going to spend the money that the divorce would cost in beautifying herself so she can marry again. She says she wants to buy her a stylish set of bangs and a pair of kid gloves to go with them, then she is going to let the next man make her a present of the divorce for a bridal gift. "And you needn't be settin' it down in that little dairy book o' yourn, neither, for your gran'chillen to be makin' spo't o' _me_ about after I'm done dead an' gone." I told her it was diary, not dairy, but she wouldn't listen to me.