"I'm engaged to Nancy Tresize."
"What!"
Bob repeated the news.
"Aren't you pleased, mother?"
She lifted herself up in the bed and threw her arms around his neck.
"You don't mean it really, Bob? Why, I never dreamed that such a thing was possible."
"Neither did I until to-day. I—I—mother, what are you crying about?
Aren't you pleased?"
"Of course I am; but oh, my dear boy! Oh, if only your father had lived!"
"He knows. I've been telling him," said Bob, who had a strain of the mystic in his nature. "I'm sure I have his blessing."
"Nancy is the finest, sweetest girl in Cornwall," she cried; "I couldn't have wished for anything better. I've always loved her. But I never thought that——"