"You're going to marry Mr. Ditmar!"

Edward was still inarticulate. His face twitched, his eyes watered as he
stared at her.

"Not right away," said Janet.

"Well, I must say you take it rather cool," declared Hannah, almost
resentfully. "You come in and tell us you're going to marry Mr. Ditmar
just like you were talking about the weather."

Hannah's eyes filled with tears. There had been indeed an unconscious
lack of consideration in Janet's abrupt announcement, which had fallen
like a spark on the dry tinder of Hannah's hope. The result was a
suffocating flame. Janet, whom love had quickened, had a swift perception
of this. She rose quickly and took Hannah in her arms and kissed her. It
was as though the relation between them were reversed, and the daughter
had now become the mother and the comforter.

"I always knew something like this would happen!" said Edward. His words
incited Hannah to protest.

"You didn't anything of the kind, Edward Bumpus," she exclaimed.

"Just to think of Janet livin' in that big house up in Warren Street!" he
went on, unheeding, jubilant. "You'll drop in and see the old people once
in a while, Janet, you won't forget us?"

"I wish you wouldn't talk like that, father," said Janet.

"Well, he's a fine man, Claude Ditmar, I always said that. The way he
stops and talks to me when he passes the gate--"

"That doesn't make him a good man," Hannah declared, and added: "If he
wasn't a good man, Janet wouldn't be marrying him."

"I don't know whether he's good or not," said Janet.

"That's so, too," observed Hannah, approvingly. "We can't any of us tell
till we've tried 'em, and then it's too late to change. I'd like to see
him, but I guess he wouldn't care to come down here to Fillmore Street."
The difference between Ditmar's social and economic standing and their
own suggested appalling complications to her mind. "I suppose I won't get
a sight of him till after you're married, and not much then."

"There's plenty of time to think about that, mother," answered Janet.

"I'd want to have everything decent and regular," Hannah insisted. "We
may be poor, but we come of good stock, as your father says."

"It'll be all right--Mr. Ditmar will behave like a gentleman," Edward
assured her.

"I thought I ought to tell you about it," Janet said, "but you mustn't
mention it, yet, not even to Lise. Lise will talk. Mr. Ditmar's very busy
now,--he hasn't made any plans."

"I wish Lise could