The door opened, and Mrs. Gaylord surprised them in the celebration of
these discoveries,--or, rather, she surprised herself, for she stood
holding the door and helpless to move, though in her heart she had an
apologetic impulse to retire, and she even believed that she made some
murmurs of excuse for her intrusion. Bartley was equally abashed, but
Marcia rose with the coolness of her sex in the intimate emergencies which
confound a man. "Oh, mother, it's you! I forgot about you. Come in! Or I'll
set the table, if that's what you want." As Mrs. Gaylord continued to look
from her to Bartley in her daze, Marcia added, simply, "We're engaged,
mother. You may as well know it first as last, and I guess you better know
it first."

Her mother appeared not to think it safe to relax her hold upon the door,
and Bartley went filially to her rescue--if it was rescue to salute her
blushing defencelessness as he did. A confused sense of the extraordinary
nature and possible impropriety of the proceeding may have suggested her
husband to her mind; or it may have been a feeling that some remark was
expected of her, even in the mental destitution to which she was reduced.

"Have you told Mr. Gaylord about it?" she asked of either, or neither, or
both, as they chose to take it.

Bartley left the word to Marcia, who answered, "Well, no, mother. We
haven't yet. We've only just found it out ourselves. I guess father can
wait till he comes in to dinner. I intend to keep Bartley here to prove
it."

"He said," remarked Mrs. Gaylord, whom Bartley had led to her chair and
placed on her cushion, "'t he had a headache when he first came in," and
she appealed to him for corroboration, while she vainly endeavored to