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.