terested in your family, and
along of that common interest and seeing a lot of each other and unfolding
our opinions, we got equally interested in one another. And then nature
cut the knot, Jane, and, in a word, I darned soon found I liked Nelly
Bascombe a lot better than ever I liked you, if you'll excuse my saying
so; and, what was a lot more to the purpose, she discovered how she liked
me oceans deeper than she liked your father."

"My goodness!" cried Miss Warner. "That's the brightest news I've heard
this longful time, you blessed man! Oh, Martin, can you get her away from
father? I'll love you in real earnest--to my dying day I will--if you
can!"

She sparkled out like that and amazed him yet again.

"I _have_ got her away," he said. "And that's what Mr. Warner's going to
hear from Nelly to-night, so brace yourself against he comes home."

And that's what John Warner did hear, of course, put in woman's nice
language, when he went to sup with his intended. First he was terrible
amused to learn that Ball had come courting Nelly because, when he thought
on Jane, it looked as if he had been right and she was only putting up a
fancied lover to fright him. In fact, he beamed upon Mrs. Bascombe so far,
for it looked as though everything was coming his way as usual after all.

But he stopped beaming when she went on and explained that she was forty
and Martin Ball forty-two, and that she'd come to feel Providence had
planned everything, and how, only too bitter sure, she felt that Martin
was her proper partner, and that John would find his good daughter a far
more lasting consolation and support than ever she could hope to be at her
best.

John Warner had never been known to use a crooked word, and he didn't
then. He made no fuss nor yet uproar, for he was a wonder at never wasting
an ounce of energy on a lost cause. He only asked one question:

"Are you dead sure of what you're saying, Nelly?" he inquired, looking in
her eyes; and she answered that, though cruel grieved to give such a man a
pang, she was yet convinced to the roots of her being it must be so.

Then she wept, and he said 'twas vain to work up any excitement on the
subject, and that he doubted not it would be all much the same a hundred
years hence. And she granted that he was right as usual.

So he left her, and Martin Ball waited, hid behind the hedge, to see him
go; and Jane was home before him. Then John told his daughter word for
word all that