Horace convinces Rosa Alethea to marry her in order to buy her way back home. He learns that Rosa Alethea claims she will never get married and that she doesn’t believe in it. 

He tells her that it’s just a crazy agreement marriage means nothing the Egyptian marriage contract won’t be valid in the United States anyway. 

Or better than that he tells her since you don’t believe in marriage maybeMaybe you can help me out here and we can get married so that I can get my aunt off my back. 

What the reader doesn’t know is what they will find out later in the book. Horace has actually been pursuing Rosa Alethea.  He has tried to bring her closer to him so that they could be together. 

At the end of the story Horace reveals to her that he has known her all his life. That he was the one who placed the book in her lap on the bleachers on the table at school. He was the one who tried to get her attention with the book, but she never noticed him. It was only after sometime that he realized he was going to have to change his tactics. He placed the news article of his mother Florence in the book.  How?  After college?