"I know you didn't," Perry replied, thumping the table in triumph. "That's just the pint. If the world was popilated by one man and one woman, they'd be a bachelor and an old maid. If there was two men and one woman, then one of the men would marry the old maid sure." "Your meaning is more clear," I said. Though Perry did not know it, I was meeting the same opposition that so aroused his ire. In part there was truth in what he said, for while opposition does not increase one's love, it surely quickens it. I doubt if I should have been making a journey nightly up the hill if I had not expected to find Weston there. Of Perry I had no fear, and it was not egotism in me to be indifferent to him. He lives so far down the valley. It's a long walk from Buzzards Glory to Six Stars, and the road has many chuck-holes. Perry is our man-about-the-valley _par excellence_, but he is discreet, so it had chanced we met but once at Warden's, and that was on the night when we heard the story of Flora Martin and the famine in India. He knew me still as a friend, and not regarding him as a rival, I treated him as a companion in arms. To be sure, I could not see where he could be of much assistance; but we had a common aim and a common foe. That made a bond between us. With that common foe disposed of, the bond might snap. Till then I was Perry's friend. "I agree with you partly," I said. "Still, it seems to me a man should love a woman for herself--wholly, entirely for herself, and not because some other fellow has set his heart on her." "You are right there, in part," Perry answered. "I have set my heart on a particular young lady, but the fact that another--a lean, cadaverous fellow with red whiskers and no particular looks or brains--is slowly pushing himself between us makes it worse. It aggravates me; it affects my appetite." Perry smiled grimly. "It drives away sleep. You know how it 'ud have been if that Snyder County teacher had been livin' in Six Stars when you was keepin' company with Emily Holmes." "I don't know how it would have been at all," I retorted hotly. "Well, s'posin' when you'd walked four miles to set up with her, and thought you had her all to yourself, s'pose this Snyder County teacher with red whiskers, and little twinklin' eyes, and new clothes, come strollin' in, and stretched out in a chair like he owned her, and begin tellin' about all the countries he'd seen--about England and Rome, Injy and Africa--and she leaned for'a'd and looked up into his eyes and just listened to him talk, drank it all in like--s'pose all that, and then s'pose----" "I'll suppose anything you like," said I, "except that I am in love with Emily Holmes and that the Snyder County teacher is cutting me out. For example, let us put me in your place. I am enamored of this fair unknown--of course I can't guess her name--and this second man, also unknown--he of the red whiskers, is my rival. Let us suppose it that way."