But Mother smiled and shook her head, even while she sighed, and reminded him that I was twenty--two whole years older than she was when she married him; though in the same breath she admitted that I _was_ young, and she certainly hoped I'd be willing to wait before I married, even if the young man was all that they could ask him to be.
Father was still a little rebellious, I think; but Mother--bless her dear sympathetic heart!--soon convinced him that they must at least consent to see this Gerald Weston.

So I sent the wire inviting him to come.
More fearfully than ever then I awaited the meeting between my lover and my father and mother.

With the Westons' mansion and manner of living in the glorified past, and the Anderson homestead, and _its_ manner of living, very much in the plain, unvarnished present, I trembled more than ever for the results of that meeting.

Not that I believed Jerry would be snobbish enough to scorn our simplicity, but that there would be no common meeting-ground of congeniality.
I need not have worried--but I did not know Jerry then so well as I do now.
Jerry came--and he had not been five minutes in the house before it might easily have seemed that he had always been there.

He _did_ know about stars; at least, he talked with Father about them, and so as to hold Father's interest, too.