"I thought you'd sit up."
"Howard! I don't believe it."
"It's true. I met Mrs. Payton, and she told me. She kept me standing on the corner for a quarter of an hour while she explained that she was going to do up her Christmas presents now, so she could get the house in order for the wedding. It's to be in January. The engagement comes out to-morrow. It's been cooking since September, but they didn't really tie up until last week. I'm pledged to secrecy, but your Aunt Nelly said I could tell you."
"I never was so astonished in my life!" Laura gasped.
"I was—surprised, myself," Howard said.
"Well," said Laura, "I'm glad poor old Fred is going to be married—but how can she! Of course I know he's been gone on her for ages; but I don't see how he dared to propose to her—he's old enough to be her father! Maybe she took pity on him and proposed to him," Laura declared, giggling.
"The baby has a double chin," her husband said, hurriedly.
"Fred converted him to suffrage last summer," Laura said; "that showed which way the wind was blowing."
Howard stopped tickling his daughter's neck, and frowned, as if trying to remember something. "Weston a suffragist? That's interesting! Leighton—you remember?—the man who went to the Philippines with me?"
Laura nodded abstractedly.