“Cross, Puss!” He stopped and looked at her wonderingly. Had Jack comforted her? Was she no longer worried over the disaster? Jack released his arm and would have stepped forward, but she held him back. “No, Jack,--let me tell him. You said a while ago, daddy, that there were only two of us--just you and I--and that it had always been so and--” “Well, isn't it true, little girl?” It's extraordinary how blind and stupid a reasonably intelligent father can be on some occasions, and this one was as blind as a cave-locked fish. “Yes, it WAS true, daddy, when you went upstairs, but--but--it isn't true any more! There are three of us now!” She was trembling all over with uncontrollable joy, her voice quavering in her excitement. Again Jack tried to speak, but she laid her hand on his lips with-- “No, please don't, Jack--not yet--you will spoil everything.” MacFarlane still looked on in wonderment. She was much happier, he could see, and he was convinced that Jack was in some way responsible for the change, but it was all a mystery yet. “Three of us!” MacFarlane repeated mechanically--“well, who is the other, Puss?” “Why, Jack, of course! Who else could it be but Jack? Oh! Daddy!--Please--please--we love each other so!” That night a telegram went singing down the wires leaving a trail of light behind. A sleepy, tired girl behind an iron screen recorded it on a slip of yellow paper, enclosed it in an envelope, handed it to a half-awake boy, who strolled leisurely up to Union Square, turned into Fifteenth Street, mounted Peter's front stoop and so on up three flights of stairs to Peter's door. There he awoke the echoes into life with his knuckles. In answer, a charming and most courtly old gentleman in an embroidered dressing-gown and slippers, a pair of gold spectacles pushed high up on his round, white head, his index finger marking the place in his book, opened the door. “Telegram for Mr. Grayson,” yawned the boy. Ah! but there were high jinks inside the cosey red room with its low reading lamp and easy chairs, when Peter tore that envelope apart. “Jack--Ruth--engaged!” he cried, throwing down his book. “MacFarlane delighted--What!--WHAT? Oh, Jack, you rascal!--you did take my advice, did you? Well I--well! I'll write them both--No, I'll telegraph Felicia--No, I won't!--I'll--Well!--well!--WELL! Did you ever hear anything like that?” and again his eyes devoured the yellow slip. Not a word of the freshet; of the frightful loss; of the change of plans for the summer; of the weeks of delay and the uncertain financial outlook! And alas, dear reader--not a syllable, as you have perhaps noticed, of poor daddy tottering on the brink of bankruptcy; nor the slightest reference to brave young women going out alone in the cold, cold world to earn their bread! What were floods, earthquakes, cyclones, poverty, debt--what was anything that might, could, would or should happen, compared to the joy of their plighted troth! CHAPTER XXII