"Fan," said Barbara, as they locked arms, "would it do for me to tell him?"
"No, my dear; in the first place you wouldn't get the chance. You can't begin to try to tell him till you've clean circumgyrated yourself away down into his confidence. It's a job, Barb, and a bigger one than you can possibly want. Now, if we only knew some girl of real sense who was foolish enough to be self-sacrificingly in love with him—but where are we going to find the combination?"
"And even if we could, you say no woman in love with a man would do it."
"There are exceptions, sweet Simplicity. What we want is an exception! Law, Barb, what a fine game a girl of the true stuff could play in such a case! Not having his love yet, but wanting it worse than life, and yet taking the biggest chance of losing it for the chance of saving him from the wreck of his career. O see!" They stopped on the bridge again to watch the sun's last beams gilding the waters, and Barbara asked,
"Do you believe the right kind of a girl would do that?"
"Why, if she could do it without getting found out, yes! Why, Law, I'd have done it for Jeff-Jack! You see, she might save him and win him, too; or she might win him even if she tried and failed to save him."
"But she might," said Barbara, gazing up the river, "she might even save him and still lose."
"Yes, for a man thinks he's doing well if he so much as forgives a deliverer—in petticoats. Yet still, Barb, wouldn't a real woman sooner lose by saving him, than sit still and let him lose for fear she might lose by trying to save him?"
"I don't know; you can't imagine mom-a doing such a thing, can you?"
"What! Cousin Rose? Why, of all women she was just the sort to have done it. Barb, you'd do it!" Fannie expected her friend to look at her with an expression of complimented surprise. But the surprise was her own when Barbara gave a faint start and bent lower over the parapet. The difference was very slight, as slight as the smile of fond suspicion that came into Fannie's face.