have come from? Perhaps there was magic in it. There must have been, for suddenly Rebecca Mary laughed softly. She straightened her shoulders and looked into Cousin Susan's kind blue eyes. "Yes, Cousin Susan," she said swiftly, as if the spell of the clover leaf might be broken if she didn't speak in a hurry, "I promise to say 'Yes, thank you' instead of 'No, I can't possibly.'"

And then before Cousin Susan could say how glad she was, right there on the crowded avenue, Rebecca Mary put her arm around Cousin Susan and hugged her.

"I haven't been a bit nice this afternoon," she confessed frankly and with considerable regret. "I've been horrid, but it was because I did feel so out of place. But I do love you and—and I shall try and be more decent to people. And if you really want me to take one of your old memory insurance[Pg 21] policies," she giggled as she thought of Cousin Susan as an insurance agent, "why, of course I shall. Perhaps—" she looked down at the mysterious clover leaf, and her eyes crinkled—"perhaps this might make a first payment."

[Pg 21]

[Pg 22]

[Pg 22]

 CHAPTER II

Rebecca Mary walked home on air. If she didn't hippity-hop outside, she did inside. She held her head high, and her gray eyes were almost black with excitement. A delightful mystery tingled through her. Usually when Rebecca Mary walked home from down town she had to wonder whether she might have bought her gloves cheaper if she had gone to the Big Store or if the shoes at Ballok's were better for the money. But as she walked swiftly home from the Waloo that May afternoon she never once remembered what might have been saved. She had pleasanter things than saving to think of.

I doubt very much if Rebecca Mary would have kept her promise to Cousin Susan if it had not been for that mysterious four-leaf clover. Not that Rebecca Mary was the sort of girl to regard a promise as a new laid egg, easily broken, for she wasn't. When Rebecca Mary made a promise it was generally as solid and unbreakable as a block of concrete. But she did think that Cousin Susan was such a sentimental old silly, and anyway her old age could never[Pg 23] be Cousin Susan's old age and consequently it didn't really matter a copper cent to Cousin Susan how poor and dependent Rebecca Mary was when she was fifty. Rebecca Mary shuddered at the mere thought of being fifty. Looking back, she saw a long stretch of yesterdays, an awful gray and uninteresting distance, and 

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