"Why, it's not an hour," cried John, rising, "since Jeff-Jack told me he wasn't a man of plans, other men's plans were good enough for him!"
Fannie's mouth opened and her eyes widened with merriment. "Oh—oh—mm—mm—mm." She looked up at the sky and then sidewise at the youth. "Sit down, sit down; you need the rest! Oh!" She rounded her mouth and laughed.
"Now, see here, John March, you've no right to make me behave so. Listen! I have a sneaking notion that, with some reference to your mountain lands, Brother Garnet—whom, I declare, John, I wouldn't speak to if it wasn't for Cousin Rose—has for years built you into his plans, including those he brought here last night. In a few days you'll at last be through Rosemont; but I believe he'd be glad to see you live for years yet on loves, hates, and borrowed money. Oh! for your father's sake, don't please that man that way! Why can't you plan? Why don't you guide? You plan fast enough when passion controls you; plan with your passions under your control. Build men—build him—into your plans. Why, John, owning as much of God's earth as you do, you're honor bound to plan."
"I know it, Miss Fannie. I've been feeling it a long time; now I see it." He started to catch up the rose she had dropped, but the laugh was hers; her foot was on it.
"You—don't you dare, sir! John, there's my foot's sermon. D'you see? Everybody should put his own rose and thorn, both alike, under his own foot. Shod or unshod, sir, we all have to do it. Now, why can't you bring Mr. Ravenel to see pop with a plan of your own? I believe—of course I don't know, but I suspect—Brother Garnet has left something out of his plan that you can take into yours and make yours win. Would you like to see it?" She patted her lips with her parasol handle and smiled bewitchingly.
"Would I—what do you mean, Miss Fannie?"
"Why, I've got it here in the house. It's a secret, but"—lips and parasol again, eyes wickeder than ever—"it's something that you can see and touch. Promise you'll never tell, never-never-never?"
He promised.
"Wait here." She ran into the house, trolling a song. As John sat listening for her return, the thought came abruptly, "Hasn't Jeff-Jack got something to do with this?" But there was scarcely time to resent it when she reopened the door coyly, beckoned him in, passed out, and closed it; and, watchworn, wasted, more dead than alive, there stood before John the thing Garnet was omitting—Cornelius Leggett.
When John passed out again Fannie saw purpose in his face and smiled.