"But suppose your father objects?" said I.

"Well, then you will have to go back and take breakfast with
your miller," said she.

I never saw a family so little affected by surprises as those
Vincents. When I appeared on the front piazza the old gentleman
did not jump. He shook hands with me and asked me to sit down,
and when I told him everything he did not even ejaculate,
but simply folded his hands together and looked out over the
railing.

"It seemed strange to Mrs. Vincent and myself," he said,
"when we first noticed your extraordinary attachment for our
daughter, but, after all, it was natural enough."

"Noticed it!" I exclaimed. "When did you do that?"

"Very soon," he said. "When you and Cora were cataloguing
the books at my house in town I noticed it and spoke to Mrs.
Vincent, but she said it was nothing new to her, for it was plain
enough on the day when we first met you here that you were
letting the house to Cora, and that she had not spoken of it to
me because she was afraid I might think it wrong to accept the
favorable and unusual arrangements you were making with us if I
suspected the reason for them. We talked over the matter, but,
of course, we could do nothing, because there was nothing to do,
and Mrs. Vincent was quite sure you would write to us from
Europe. But when my man Ambrose told me he had seen some one
working about the place in the very early morning, and that, as