the Westons'
summer cottage in Newport. He said he should run up to Andersonville
early--very early; just as soon as I was back from college, in fact,
so that he might meet Father and Mother, and put that ring on my
finger.

And while I read the letter, I just knew he would do it. Why, I could
even see the sparkle of the ring on my finger. But in five minutes
after the letter was folded and put away, I knew, with equal
certitude--that he wouldn't.

It was like that all that spring term. While under the spell of the
letters, as I read them, I saw myself the adored wife of Jerry Weston,
and happy ever after. All the rest of the time I knew myself to be
plain Mary Marie Anderson, forever lonely and desolate.

I had been at home exactly eight hours when a telegram from Jerry
asked permission to come at once.

As gently as I could I broke the news to Father and Mother. He was
Helen's brother. They must have heard me mention him, I knew him well,
very well, indeed. In fact, the purpose of this visit was to ask them
for the hand of their daughter.

Father frowned and scolded, and said, "Tut, tut!" and that I was
nothing but a child. But Mother smiled and shook her head, even while
she sighed, and reminded him that I was twenty--two whole years older
than she was when she married him; though in the same breath she
admitted that I _was_ young, and she certainly hoped I'd be willing to
wait before I married, even if the young man was all that they could
ask him to be.

Father was still a little rebellious, I think; but Mother--bless her
dear sympathetic heart!--soon convinced him that they must at least
consent to see this Gerald Weston. So I sent the wire inviting him to
come.

More fearfully than ever then I awaited the meeting between my lover
and my father and mother. With the Westons' mansion and manner of
living in the glorified past, and the Anderson homestead, and _its_
manner of living, very much in the plain, unvarnished present, I
trembled more than ever for the results of that meeting. Not that I
believed Jerry would be snobbish enough to scorn our simplicity, but
that there would be no common meeting-ground of congeniality.

I need not have worried--but I did not know Jerry then so well as I do
now.

Jerry came--and he had not been five minutes in the house before it
might easily have seemed that he had always been there. He _did_ know
about stars; at least, he talked with Father about them, and so as
t