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 "I'll bet you. It'd sure take a whopper to do that."

"He'll stay here always, he'll never go away!" she moaned.

"He does look like a pretty good stayer," Rawlins granted cheerfully.

"I want you to help me out!" impetuously, her hands held out in that ingenuous appeal.

"What do you want me to do? take him off and drop him in a hole somewhere?"

"Oh, can't you be serious?" a bit pettishly, very much ashamed of her fix.

"Seriously, then, I'll do what I can to relieve you of him, Miss Stone. You remember the story of the unwelcome suitors?"

"I wouldn't ask you to shoot him, though," she replied, answering him doubly, but too serious for even a smile.

"But I'm afraid that ancient gentleman's method with self-appointed beaux is about the only one that will ever break Mr. Peck loose."

"If he thought there was somebody else—if I gave him to understand there was somebody else," earnestly, her troubled eyes holding his own, her troubled voice like a reproving finger laid on the smile that twitched his lips—"if I could tell him I'm already engaged, and show him the ring."

"Fine! That's the ticket. Slip on a ring and tell him somebody beat him to it. That ought to put him right."

"Yes, and the first thing he'd want to know would be the man's name, simple!" she said. "There's got to be a man, and men aren't so plentiful up in this country