consciousness was
pervaded by a joyful thankfulness which knew no limits. 'She must have
been named after her grandmother. He surely married Mildred.' And Miss
Amanda gazed on the scapegrace John with more affection than she had
ever known before. But in the midst of her joy she could not help
wondering who it was that that Rebecca Hendricks had finally succeeded
in getting. That she got somebody Miss Amanda had not the slightest
doubt.

"'Mildred,' said the old gentleman, 'just listen to me. This is a most
important thing you have told me, and I have only this to say about it:
if you can't make up your mind which one of those young men you will
take when they propose, make up your mind now, this minute, not to have
either of them. If you love either one of them as you ought to love the
man who shall be your husband, you will have no difficulty in deciding.
Therefore, if you have a difficulty, you do not really love either of
them.'

"For a few minutes the girl sat quietly looking down at the flowers
in her lap, and then she said: 'But, grandpa, suppose I do not
understand myself properly? Perhaps after a while I might come to a--'

[Illustration: Miss Amanda listened with the most eager and overpowering
attention.]

"'After a while,' interrupted her grandfather. 'That will not do. You
want to understand yourself before a lover proposes to you, not
afterwards.'"

The captain sat up straight in his chair. "Now look here," he said;
but he addressed the Mistress of the House, not the story-teller. "How
does this daughter of ours come to know all these things about lovers,
and the weather-signs which indicate proposals of marriage, and all
that? Has she been going about in society, making investigations into
the rudiments of matrimony, during my last cruise? And would you
mind telling me if any young men have been giving her lessons in
love-affairs? John Gayther, have you seen any stray lovers prowling
about your garden of late?"

The gardener smiled, and said he had seen no such persons. But he said
nothing about a very true friend of the Daughter of the House, who lived
in a small house in the garden, and who would have been very well
pleased to break the head of any stray lover who should wander into his
precincts.

"You don't know girls, my dear," said the Mistress of the House, "and
you don't know what comes to them naturally, and how much they have to
learn. So please let the story go on."

"'Of course,'