l not make love to her; I may be a
fool, but I'm not a hound; I love her too well to do that. But she's
bound to know it right along. You'll see it. Everybody'll know it.
That'll be all of it, I swear. But any man who wants to stop me from it
will have to kill me. I believe I have the right, before God, to do it;
but I'm going to do it anyhow. I prize your friendship. If I can keep it
while you know, and while everybody else knows, that I'm simply hanging
round waiting for you to die, I'll do it. If I can't--I can't." The
hands parted.

"That's all right, John. That's what I'd do in your place."

March gazed a moment in astonishment. Then Fannie, still drifting away,
felt Ravenel at her side and glanced up and around.

"O, you haven't let him go, have you? Why, I wanted to give him this
four-leaf clover--as a sort o' pleasant hint. Don't you see?"

"I reckon he'll try what luck there is in odd numbers," said Ravenel,
and they quickened their homeward step.

John went to tea at the Tombses in no mood to do himself credit as a
guest. His mother was still reminding him of it next day when they
alighted at home. "I little thought my son would give me so much
trouble."

But his reply struck her dumb. "I've got lots left, mother, and will
always have plenty. I make it myself."

XXX.

ANOTHER ODD NUMBER

Fannie expressed to Barbara one day her annoyance at that kind of
men--without implying that she meant any certain one--who will never
take no for an answer.

"A lover, Barb, if he's not of the humble sort, is the most
self-conceited thing alive. He can no more take in the idea that your
objection to him is _he_ than a board can draw a nail into itself.
You've got to hammer it in."

"With a brickbat," quoth Barbara, whose notions of carpentry were
feminine, and who did not care to discuss the matter. But John March, it
seemed, would not take no from fate itself.

"I don't believe yet," he mused, as he rode about his small farm, "that
Jeff-Jack will get her. She's playing with him. Why not? She's played
with a dozen. And yet, naturally, somebody'll get her, and he'll not be
worthy of her. There's hope yet! She loves me far more than she realizes
right now. That's a woman's way; they'll go along loving for years and
find it out by accident--You, Hector! What the devil are you and Israel
over in that melon-patch for instead of the corn-field?

"I've been too young for her. No, not too young for her, but t