The parting scene with Alice persisted in Mavering’s thought far on the way to Ponkwasset Falls.  He now succeeded in saying everything to her:  how deeply he felt her giving him her photograph to cheer him in his separation from her; how much he appreciated her forethought in providing him with some answer when his mother and sisters should ask him about her looks.  He took out the picture, and pretended to the other passengers to be looking very closely at it, and so managed to kiss it.  He told her that now he understood what love really was; how powerful; how it did conquer everything; that it had changed him and made him already a better man.  He made her refuse all merit in the work.

When he began to formulate the facts for communication to his family, love did not seem so potent; he found himself ashamed of his passion, or at least unwilling to let it be its own excuse even; he had a wish to give it almost any other appearance.  Until he came in sight of the station and the Works, it had not seemed possible for any one to object to Alice.  He had been going home as a matter of form to receive the adhesion of his family.  But now he was forced to see that she might be considered critically, even reluctantly.  This would only be because his family did not understand how perfect Alice was; but they might not understand.

With his father there would be no difficulty.  His father had seen Alice and admired her; he would be all right.  Dan found himself hoping this rather anxiously, as if from the instinctive need of his father’s support with his mother and sisters.  He stopped at the Works when he left the train, and found his father in his private office beyond the book-keeper’s picket-fence, which he penetrated, with a nod to the accountant.

“Hello, Dan!” said his father, looking up; and “Hello, father!” said Dan.  Being alone, the father and son not only shook hands, but kissed each other, as they used to do in meeting after an absence when Dan was younger.

He had closed his father’s door with his left hand in giving his right, and now he said at once, “Father, I’ve come home to tell you that I’m engaged to be married.”

Dan had prearranged his father’s behaviour at this announcement, but he now perceived that he would have to modify the scene if it were to represent the facts.  His father did not brighten all over and demand, “Miss Pasmer, of course?” he contrived to hide whatever start the news had given him, and was some time in asking, with his soft lisp, “Isn’t that rather sudden, Dan?”

“Well, not for me,” said Dan, laughing uneasily.  It’s—­you know her, father—­Miss Pasmer.”

“Oh yes,” said his father, certainly not with displeasure, and yet not with enthusiasm.

“I’ve had ever since Class Day to think it over, and it—­came to a climax yesterday.”

“And then you stopped thinking,” said his father—­to gain time, it appeared to Dan.