But the other surprise wa'n't nothing to this one. The Seabury girl was mightily set back, but old Van was paralyzed. His eyes and mouth opened and kept on opening.
“Cereal, sir?” asks Jones, polite as ever.
“Why! why, you—you rascal!” hollers Van Wedderburn. “What are you doing here?”
“I have a few days' vacation from my position at Providence, sir,” answers Jones. “I'm a waiter at present.”
“Why, ROBERT!” exclaims Mabel Seabury.
Van swung around like he was on a pivot. “Do you know HIM?” he pants, wild as a coot, and pointing.
'Twas the waiter himself that answered.
“She knows me, father,” he says. “In fact she is the young lady I told you about last spring; the one I intend to marry.”
Did you ever see the tide go out over the flats? Well, that's the way the red slid down off old Van's bald head and across his cheeks. But it came back again like an earthquake wave. He turned to Mabel once more, and if ever there was a pleading “Don't tell” in a man's eyes, 'twas in his.
“Cereal, sir?” asks Robert Van Wedderburn, alias “Jonesy.”