she might keep it now and take the rest.

Mrs. March was altogether too sacred in her own eyes to be in haste at
such a juncture. Her truly shrinking spirit was a stranger to all manner
of auctioning, but she believed in fair play, and could not in
conscience quite forget her exhilarating skirmish with Mr. Ravenel on
the day of Susie's wedding.

It had not brought on a war of roses. Something kept him away from
Widewood. Was it, she wondered, the noble fear that he might subject her
to those social rumors that are so often all the more annoying because
only premature? Ah, if he could but know how lightly she regarded such
prattle! But she would not tell him, even in impersonal verse. On the
contrary, she contributed to the _Presbyterian Monthly_--a non-sectarian
publication--those lines--which caught one glance of so many of her
friends and escaped any subsequent notice--entitled,

"LOVE-PROOF.

"She pities much, yet laughs at Love
For love of laughter! Fadeless youth"--

But the simple fact is that Mr. Ravenel's flatteries, when rare chance
brought him and the poetess together, were without purpose, and
justified in his liberal mind by the right of every Southern gentleman
to treat as irresistible any and every woman in her turn.--"Got to do
something pleasant, Miss Fannie; can't buy her poetry."

On the evening when March received from Leggett the draft of An Act
Entitled, etc., the mother and son sat silent through their supper,
though John was longing to speak. At last, as they were going into the
front room he managed to say:

"Well, mother, Fair's gone--goes to-night."

He dropped an arm about her shoulders.

"Oh!--when I can scarcely bear my own weight!" She sank into her
favorite chair and turned away from his regrets, sighing,

"Oh, no, youth and health never do think."

The son sat down and leaned thoughtfully on the centre-table.

"That's so! They don't think; they're too busy feeling."

"Ah, John, you don't feel! I wish you could."

"Humph! I wish I couldn't." He smoothed off a frown and let his palm
fall so flat upon the bare mahogany that a woman of less fortitude than
Mrs. March would certainly have squeaked. "Mother, dear, I believe I'll
try to see how little I can feel and how much I can think."

"Providence permitting, my reckless boy."

"Oh, bless your dear soul, mother, Providence'll be only too glad! yes,
I've a notion to try thinking. Fact is, I've begun already. Now,