"I must admit," I said, "that I am afraid you are going to have a tough job."
"I don't believe it!" warmly exclaimed my wife. "Lilian Budworth is a girl of good, solid sense, and when she knows just exactly what has happened, it is my opinion she will not object a bit."
"Madam," said Mr. Kilbright, "you greatly embolden me, and I shall speak to Miss Budworth this very day."
Notwithstanding my wife's confidence in Miss Lilian's good sense, she was as much surprised as I when, the next morning, Mr. Kilbright informed us that he had been accepted. As it was yet an hour before the library would open, she hurried around to Miss Budworth's home to know all about it.
The young lady was found, pale, but very happy. "When he left me last night," she said, "my mind was in a strange hubbub. He had told me that he loved me, and had asked me to marry him, and my heart would not let me say anything but 'yes;' and yet, after he had gone, his wondrous story came up before me as it had not come when he told it, having just told something else. I did not sleep all night, thinking of it. I have read and pondered a great deal upon these subjects, but have never been able to make up my mind whether or not to put faith in the strange spiritual manifestations of which we are told. So I determined, a good while ago, not to consider the matter at all. I could do nothing with it, and it would be better that I should let it alone. To this same determination I came early this morning in the case of Mr. Kilbright. None of us know what we may once have been, nor what we may become. All we know is what we are. Mr. Kilbright may be mistaken as to what he was, but I know what he is. And to that man I give myself as I am. I am perfectly satisfied with the present."
Mrs. Colesworthy enfolded her in an approbatory embrace, and hurried home to tell me about it. "There now!" she exclaimed, "didn't I say that Lilian Budworth was a girl of good, sound common-sense?"
"That is what you said," I answered, "but I must admit that I was afraid her common-sense would interfere with her acceptance of his story. We had outside evidence in regard to it, but she had only his simple statement."
"Which is quite enough, when a woman truly loves," said Mrs. Colesworthy.
When old Mr. Scott was informed what had happened, he put down his newspaper, took off his spectacles, and smiled a strange, wide smile. "I have been reading," he said, "about a little machine, or box, that you can talk into and then cork up and send by mail across the ocean to anybody you know there. And then he can uncork it, and out will come all you have said in your very words and voice, with the sniffles and sneezes that might have got in accidental. So that if one of the Old Testament Egyptians that they've been diggin' up lately had had one of these boxes with him it might have been uncorked and people could have heard in his own voice just who he was and what was his personal opinion of Moses and his brother Aaron. Now, when an old man like me has just come to know of a thing of this kind, it isn't for him to have a word to say when he is told that Lilian Budworth is to be his step-grandmother; he must take it in along with the other wonders."
As to Mr. Kilbright and his lady-love they troubled themselves about no wonders. Life was very real to them, and very delightful; and they were happy. Despite her resolutions to give no consideration whatever to her lover's previous existence, Miss Budworth did consider it a good deal, and talked and thought about it, and at last came to understand and appreciate the fact as thoroughly as did Mrs. Colesworthy and myself; and she learned much more of Mr. Kilbright's former life than his modesty had allowed him to tell us. And some of these things she related with much pride. He had been a soldier during the Revolution, having enlisted, at the age of twenty-three, under General Sullivan, when his forces lay near Newport. He afterward followed that commander in his Indian campaigns in Western New York, and served during the rest of the war. It was when the army was in winter quarters in 1780 that Tatlow Munson painted his portrait in payment of an old debt. Miss Budworth's glowing rendition of Mr. Kilbright's allusions to some of the revolutionary incidents in which he had had a part, made us proud to shake hands with a man who had fought for our liberties and helped to give us the independence which we now enjoy.