Father frowned and scolded, and said, "Tut, tut!" and that I was
nothing but a child. But Mother smiled and shook her head, even while
she sighed, and reminded him that I was twenty--two whole years older
than she was when she married him; though in the same breath she
admitted that I _was_ young, and she certainly hoped I'd be willing to
wait before I married, even if the young man was all that they could
ask him to be.

Father was still a little rebellious, I think; but Mother--bless her
dear sympathetic heart!--soon convinced him that they must at least
consent to see this Gerald Weston. So I sent the wire inviting him to
come.

More fearfully than ever then I awaited the meeting between my lover
and my father and mother. With the Westons' mansion and manner of
living in the glorified past, and the Anderson homestead, and _its_
manner of living, very much in the plain, unvarnished present, I
trembled more than ever for the results of that meeting. Not that I
believed Jerry would be snobbish enough to scorn our simplicity, but
that there would be no common meeting-ground of congeniality.

I need not have worried--but I did not know Jerry then so well as I do
now.

Jerry came--and he had not been five minutes in the house before it
might easily have seemed that he had always been there. He _did_ know
about stars; at least, he talked with Father about them, and so as
to hold Father's interest, too. And he knew a lot about innumerable
things in which Mother was interested. He stayed four days; and all