"Rebosa," says I, earnest, drawing upon my display of knowledge concerning the feminine intuitions of reason--"ain't there a young man in Piña--a nice young man that you think a heap of?" "Yep," says Rebosa, nodding her pansies--"Sure there is! What do you think! Gracious!" "Does he like you?" I asks. "How does he stand in the matter?" "Crazy," says Rebosa. "Ma has to wet down the front steps to keep him from sitting there all the time. But I guess that'll be all over after to-night," she winds up with a sigh. "Rebosa," says I, "you don't really experience any of this adoration called love for old Mack, do you?" "Lord! no," says the girl, shaking her head. "I think he's as dry as a lava bed. The idea!" "Who is this young man that you like, Rebosa?" I inquires. "It's Eddie Bayles," says she. "He clerks in Crosby's grocery. But he don't make but thirty-five a month. Ella Noakes was wild about him once." "Old Mack tells me," I says, "that he's going to marry you at six o'clock this evening." "That's the time," says she. "It's to be at our house." "Rebosa," says I, "listen to me. If Eddie Bayles had a thousand dollars cash--a thousand dollars, mind you, would buy him a store of his own--if you and Eddie had that much to excuse matrimony on, would you consent to marry him this evening at five o'clock?" The girl looks at me a minute; and I can see these inaudible cogitations going on inside of her, as women will. "A thousand dollars?" says she. "Of course I would." "Come on," says I. "We'll go and see Eddie." We went up to Crosby's store and called Eddie outside. He looked to be estimable and freckled; and he had chills and fever when I made my proposition. "At five o'clock?" says he, "for a thousand dollars? Please don't wake me up! Well, you _are_ the rich uncle retired from the spice business in India! I'll buy out old Crosby and run the store myself." We went inside and got old man Crosby apart and explained it. I wrote my check for a thousand dollars and handed it to him. If Eddie and Rebosa married each other at five he was to turn the money over to them. And then I gave 'em my blessing, and went to wander in the wildwood for a season. I sat on a log and made cogitations on life and old age and the zodiac and the ways of women and all the disorder that goes with a lifetime. I passed myself congratulations that I had probably saved my old friend Mack from his attack of Indian summer. I knew when he got well of it and shed his infatuation and his patent leather shoes, he would feel grateful. "To keep old Mack disinvolved," thinks I, "from relapses like this, is worth more than a thousand dollars." And most of all I was glad that I'd made a study of women, and wasn't to be deceived any by their means of conceit and evolution.