not sacrificing my life for anybody's comfort, and I can
nevah have any little nieces and nephews to whom I can be one of those
deah old aunts Betty talks about, and there is that dreadful teacup!"

She did not hear Doctor Bradford's laughing answer, for Phil, turning
his back on the others, looked down into her upturned face and began to
hum, as if to himself, "_From the desert I come to thee!_" Only Mary
understood the significance of it as Lloyd did, and she knew why Lloyd
suddenly turned away and began passing her hands over the grass around
her, as if resuming her search. She wanted to hide her face, into which
the color was creeping.

A train whistled somewhere far across the orchard, and Rob took out his
watch. The sight of it suggested something in line with the
conversation, for when he had noted the time, he touched the spring that
opened the back of the case.

"Never you mind, Little Colonel," he said, in a patronizing,
big-brotherly tone. "If nobody else will stand between you and that
teacup, _I'll_ come to the rescue. Bobby won't go back on his old chum.
_I'll_ bring you a four-leaf clover. Here's one, all ready and waiting."

Lloyd looked across at the watch he held out to her. "Law, Bobby," she
exclaimed, giving him the old name she had called him when they first
played together, "I supposed you had lost that clovah long ago."

"Not much," he answered. "It's the finest hoodoo ever was. It helped me
through high school. I swear I never could have passed in Latin but for
your good-luck charm. It's certainly to my interest to hang on to it.

"Think of it, Mary," he added, seeing that her eyes were round with
interest, "that was given to me by a princess."

Mary darted a quick look at Lloyd and another one at him to see if he
were teasing.

"Oh, I _see_!" she remarked, in a tone of enlightenment.

"What do you see?" he demanded, laughing.

She would not answer, but, ignoring his further attempts to make her
talk, she, too, turned again to search for clovers, inwardly excited
over the discovery she thought she had made. She would make a note of it
in her journal, she decided, something like this: "The plot thickens.
The B. M. and Sir F. have a rival they little suspect. R. carries the
charm the M. of H. gave him in years gone by, and I can see many reasons
why he should be the one to bring her the diamond leaf."

Only two dozen clovers rewarded their united search, but Eugenia was
satisfied. "We'l