HOW do you know?"

Steps sounded on the front porch. Captain Dan strode to the hall and
stood with one hand on the knob of the front door.

"I know," he declared triumphantly, "because I telephoned John this very
day and he told me so. And now, by the everlastin', he'll tell you so
himself!"

He flung the door wide.

"Come in, John!" he shouted, in a roar which was heard even by deaf old
Ebenezer Simpkins, driver of the depot wagon, who was just piloting his
ancient steed from the Dott gate. "Come in, John!" roared Captain Dan.
"There she is, in there, waitin' for you."

And Mr. Doane came, you may be sure.

Serena and Daniel waited in the dining-room. They were obliged to wait
for some time. The captain's triumphant exuberance continued to bubble
over. He chuckled and laughed and crowed vaingloriously over his success
in keeping the secret ever since noon.

"I was bound I wouldn't tell, Serena," he declared. "I was bound I
wouldn't. I told John over the 'phone; I said: 'I won't tell a soul
you're comin', John. We'll give 'em one surprise, won't we.' And, ho!
ho! he didn't believe I could keep it to myself; he said he didn't. But
I did, I did--though I felt all afternoon as if I had a bombshell under
my jacket."

Serena laughed; she was as pleased as he. "You certainly exploded it
like a bombshell," she declared. "I didn't know at first but that you
really had gone crazy. And poor Gertie! you didn't prepare her at all.
You blurted it out all at once. The words fairly tumbled over each
other. I wonder she didn't faint."

"She isn't the faintin' kind. Serena, we never can be grateful enough
to Gertie for what she's done for us. And she sacrificed her own
happiness--or thought she did--for you and me and didn't whimper or
complain once."

"I know, Daniel, I know. And pretty soon now we must give her up to
someone else. That's the way of the world, though. WE'LL have to be
brave then, won't we."

"So we will. But I'd rather give her to John than any other man on
earth. The thought that it was all off between them and that she was
grievin' over it was about the hardest thing of all."

"So it was. Well, now we can be completely happy, every one of us."

Azuba flounced in from the kitchen. "Ain't they come out of that parlor
YET?" she demanded. "I can't keep roast chicken waitin' forever, even
for engaged folks."

But the "engaged folks" themselves appeared at that moment. As one of
those who, according to M