Delete from recent docs list and it no longer holds 15 items

In Windows 98, I've noticed that if I delete an item from the recent
docs list (start : documents : right click on item and select delete),
the item goes away (good), but then the maximum number of files in the
recent docs list is decreased by one (bad). That is, when I open
another document, instead of just adding a shortcut to that document
to the list, to bring it up from 14 items to 15, it adds the shortcut
and drops the oldest shortcut from the list, keeping it as a list of
14 items.

In the past, I've seen my recent docs list decrease in size one by one
if I've deleted items from it, until there were just a couple entries.
They only fix seems to have been to manually emply c:\windows\recent
and then it manually rebuilds itself back up to 15.

Is there a better and faster way to keep my docs list at 15, even if I
delete from it?