e a few days' vacation from my position at Providence, sir,"
answers Jones. "I'm a waiter at present."

"Why, ROBERT!" exclaims Mabel Seabury.

Van swung around like he was on a pivot. "Do you know HIM?" he pants,
wild as a coot, and pointing.

'Twas the waiter himself that answered.

"She knows me, father," he says. "In fact she is the young lady I told
you about last spring; the one I intend to marry."

Did you ever see the tide go out over the flats? Well, that's the way
the red slid down off old Van's bald head and across his cheeks. But it
came back again like an earthquake wave. He turned to Mabel once more,
and if ever there was a pleading "Don't tell" in a man's eyes, 'twas in
his.

"Cereal, sir?" asks Robert Van Wedderburn, alias "Jonesy."

Well, I guess that's about all. Van Senior took it enough sight more
graceful than you'd expect, under the circumstances. He went straight
up to his room and never showed up till suppertime. Then he marches to
where Mabel and his son was, on the porch, and says he:

"Bob," he says, "if you don't marry this young lady within a month I'll
disown you, for good this time. You've got more sense than I thought.
Blessed if I see who you inherit it from!" says he, kind of to himself.

Jonadab ain't paid me the quarter yet. He says the bet was that she'd
land a millionaire, and a Van Wedderburn, afore the season ended, and
she did; so he figgers that he won the bet. Him and me got wedding cards
a week ago, so I suppose "Jonesy" and Mabel are on their honeymoon
now. I wonder if she's ever told her husband about what I heard in the
bayberry bushes. Being the gamest sport, for a woman, that ever I see,
I'll gamble she ain't said a word about it.

THE END

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