cordially that I felt warranted in holding it a moment.

"I hope it's in order for me to say how very much my wife and I are
interested in the news we've heard about one of your daughters? May I
offer our best wishes for her happiness?"

"Oh, thank you," my neighbor said. "You're very good indeed. Yes, it's
rather exciting--for us. I guess that's all for to-night, Al," he said,
in dismissal of his man, before turning to lay his arms comfortably on
the fence top. Then he laughed, before he added, to me, "And rather
surprising, too."

"Those things are always rather surprising, aren't they?" I suggested.

"Well, yes, I suppose they are. It oughtn't be so in our case, though,
as we've been through it twice before: once with my son--he oughtn't to
have counted, but he did--and once with my eldest daughter. Yes, you
might say you never do quite expect it, though everybody else does.
Then, in this case, she was the baby so long, that we always thought of
her as a little girl. Yes, she's kept on being the pet, I guess, and we
couldn't realize what was in the air."

I had thought, from the first sight of him, that there was something
very charming in my neighbor's looks. He had a large, round head, which
had once been red, but was now a russet silvered, and was not too large
for his manly frame, swaying amply outward, but not too amply, at the
girth. He had blue, kind eyes, and a face fully freckled, and the girl
he was speaking of with a tenderness in his tones rather than his
words, was a young feminine copy of him; only, her head was little,
under its load of red hair, and her figure, which we had lately noticed