ing to give word for Garnet's equipage to be sent to him.

"I must mind Johanna and her plunder," said the Major; "but I'll look
after your mother, too." And he did so, though he found time to part
fondly with the Proudfits.

"He won't do," thought John, as he glanced back from a rise of ground.
"Fannie's right. And she's right about me, too; the only way to get her
is to keep away till I've shown myself fit for her; that's what she
means; of course she can't say so; but I'm satisfied that's what she
means!"

He passed two drunken men. Here in town at the end of Suez's wedding so
many had toasted it so often, it was as if Susie's own eyes were
blood-shot and her steps uncertain. "It's my wedding, too," he
soliloquized. "This Widewood business and I are married this day; it
alone, to me alone, till it's finished. Garnet shall see
whether--humph!--Jake, my horse and buggy!" And soon he was rattling
back down the stony slopes toward his mother.

"Hope of Suez!" he grimly laughed. "We'll be its despair if we don't get
something done. And I've got to do it alone. Why shouldn't I? Yes, it's
true, times have changed; and yet if this was ever rightly a private
matter in my father's hands, I can't see why it has or why it should
become a public matter in mine!"

He said this to himself the more emphatically because he felt, somehow,
very uncertain about it. He wished his problem was as simple as a
railroad question. A railroad can ask for public aid; but fancy him
asking public aid to open and settle up his private lands! He could
almost hear Susie's horse-laugh in reply. Why should she not laugh? He
recalled with what sweet unboastful tone his father had always condemned
every scheme and symptom of riding on public shoulders into private
fortune. In the dear _old_ Dixie there had been virtually no public, and
every gentleman was by choice his own and only public aid, no matter
what--"Look out!"

He hauled up his horse. A man pressed close to the side of the halted
buggy, to avoid a huge telegraph pole that came by quivering between two
timber wheels. He offered John a freckled, yellow hand, and a smile of
maudlin fondness.

"Mr. Mahch, I admiah to salute you ag'in, seh. _Hasn't_ we had a
glo'ious day? It's the mos' obtainable day Susie eveh see, seh!"

"Well, 'pon my soul!" said John, ignoring the proffered hand. "If I'd
seen who it was, I'd 'a' driven straight over you." Both laughed.
"Cornelius, did you see my mothe