"What about, Stonie?" came in a much clearer voice from the pillow,
and Rose Mary curled herself over nearer to the little bird perched on
the edge of her bed.

"About a husband for you," answered Stonie in the reluctant voice that
a man usually uses when circumstances force him into taking a woman
into his business confidence. "Looked to me like everybody here was
a-going to marry everybody else and leave you out, so I asked him to
get you one up in New York and I'd pay him for doing it. He's a-going
to bring him here on the cars his own self lest he get away before I
get him." And the picture that rose in Rose Mary's mind, of the
reluctant husband being dragged to her at the end of a tether by
Everett, cut off the sob instantly.

"What--what did you--he say when you asked him about--getting the
husband--for you--for me?" asked Rose Mary in a perfect agony of mirth
and embarrassment.

"Let me see," said Stonie, and he paused as he tried to repeat
Everett's exact words, which had been spoken in a manner that had
impressed them on the General at the time. "He said that you wasn't
a-going to have no husband but the best kind if he had to kill
him--no, he said that if he was to have to go dead hisself he would
come and bring him to me, when he got him good enough for you by doing
right and such."

"Was that all?" asked Rose Mary with a gurgle that was well nigh
ecstatic, for through her had shot a quiver of hope that set every
pulse in her body beating hot and strong, while her cheeks burned in