YOUNG Jones stood in the telegraph office—the one at Twenty-third Street and Broadway. There was an air of triumph about Jones, an atmosphere of insolent sagacity, which might belong to one who, by some sudden, skilful sleight had caught a starling. Yet Jones's victory was in nowise uncommon. Others had achieved it many a time and oft. It was simply a baby; young Jones had become a papa, and it was this that gave him those frills which we have chronicled. The presence of young Jones in the telegraph office might be explained by looking over his shoulder. This is the message he wrote:

New York City, Dec. 8, '99.

Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps,

Albany, N. Y.

I still take it you are interested in the census of your family. Recent events in this city have altered the figures. Don't attempt to write a history of the tribe of Van Epps without consulting Sanford Jones.

“There!” said young Jones, “that ought to fetch him. He won't know whether I mean the birth of a baby or Mary's death. If he doesn't come to see her now, I will mark him off my list for good. I would as it stands, if it were not for Mary.”

“Won't father worry, dear?” asked Mary, when young Jones repeated the ambiguous message he had aimed at his up-the-State father-in-law.

“I expect him to shed apprehensive tears all the way to New York,” replied young Jones. “But don't fret, Mary; I am sure he will come; and a tear or two won't hurt him. They will help his eyes, even though they do his heart no good. I don't resent his treatment of me, but his neglect of you is not so easy to forgive.”

II

This was the story:

Back four years, Albany would have shown you young Jones opening his law office in that hamlet. Mary was “Mary Van Epps.” At that time seventeen years was all the family register allowed to her for age.

Her father, Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps, was one of the leading citizens of Albany. While not a millionaire, he was of sufficient wealth to dazzle the local eye, and he was always mentioned by the denizens of his native place as “rich.”

Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps had a weakness. He was slave to the pedigree habit. Never a day went by but he called somebody's attention to those celebrities who aforetime founded and set flowing the family of Van Epps; and he proposed at some hour in the future to write a history of that eminent house. With his wealth and his family pride to prompt him, it came easy one day for Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps to object with decision and vigour to a match between young Jones and his daughter Mary.

“They were both fools!” he said.

Then he pointed out that the day would never dawn when a plebeian like unto Jones, without lineage or lucre, boasting nothing better than a law office vacant of practice, and on which the rent was in arrears three months, would wed a daughter of the Van Epps. Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps, in elaboration of his objection, showed that beyond a taste to drink whiskey and a speculative bent toward draw poker, he knew of nothing which young Jones possessed. Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps closed, as he began, with the emphatic announcement that no orange blossoms would ever blow for the nuptials of young Jones and Mary Van Epps.

Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps in his attitude will have the indorsement of all good Christian people. He was right as a father. As a prophet touching orange blossoms, however, he was what vulgar souls call “off.” Of that anon.

III

YOUNG Jones more than half believed that Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps was right. So far as whiskey and draw poker were concerned, he went with him; but with Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps' objections to him, based on the lack of pedigree and a failure of pocket-book, he didn't sympathise.

“I may be poor, and my family tree may be a mullein stalk, but I am still a fitting mate for any member of the Van Epps tribe.”

Thus spake young Jones to Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps. He then took the earliest private occasion to kiss Mary good-bye, give her his picture, and make her his promise to wed her within five years.

“Would she wait?”

“I would wait a century,” said Mary.

Young Jones kissed Mary again after that. The next day Albany was short one citizen, and that citizen was young Jones. Albany is short to this day.

IV

Let us drop details. Good luck came to young Jones, hard on the lonely heels of his evacuation of Albany. He was named a junior partner of a New York City law firm. His income equalled his hope. He dismissed whiskey and draw poker, and he wrote to Mary Van Epps:

“Could he claim her now?”

Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps said “No” again. Young Jones still lacked ancestry, and a taste for whiskey and four aces still lurked in his blood. Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps would not consent. This served for a time to abate the bridal preparations.

V

Two years deserted the future for the past. A great deal of water will run under a bridge in two years. Mary Van Epps was nineteen. She went on a visit to a Trenton relative. Young Jones became abundant in Trenton at that very time. They took in a parson while on a stroll one day, and when that experienced divine got through with them they were man and wife. They wired their entangled condition to Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps. He sent them a message of wrath.

“I cast Mary off for ever! Never let me see her face again!”

“Very well!” remarked young Jones as he read the wire; “I shall need Mary myself, in New York. Casting her off, therefore, at Albany, cuts no great figure. As for Mary's face, I will look at it all the more to make up for her brutal dad's abatement of interest therein.”

Then he kissed Mary as if the feat were entirely fresh. And while Mary wept, she still felt very happy. Next they came to a modest home in the city.

VI

Two years more trailed the otners into history. Young Jones was held a fortunate man. His work was a success. Whiskey and poker were now so far astern as to be hull-down in the horizon. And he loved Mary better than ever. She was the triumph of his life, and he told her so every day.

“It is certainly wonderful,” he said, “how much more beautiful you become every day.”

This pleased Mary; and while her heart turned to her hard old father, she did not repent that episode at Trenton, which changed her name to Jones.

Once a month Mary faithfully addressed a letter, new and fresh each time with the love that fails and fades not, to “Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps, Albany, N. Y.” And once a month Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps read it, gulped a little, and made no reply.

“I will never see her again!” Colonel Stuyvesant

Van Epps remarked to himself on these letter occasions.

All the time he knew he lived for nothing else. But he thought of his family and mustered his pride, and of course became a limitless fool at once, as do those who give way to an attack of pedigree.

But the Jones baby was born; and young Jones concluded to try his hand on Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps. Mary wanted him to come, and that settled the whole matter so far as young Jones was concerned. In his new victory as a successful father, he felt that he could look down on Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps. He therefore wrote the message referred to in our first chapter with perfect confidence, that, turn as matters might, he had nothing to fear.

“The past, at least, is secure!” said young Jones; “and, come what may, I have Mary and the baby.” Both Mary and young Jones, however, awaited the returns from Albany with anxiety;—Mary, because she loved her father and mourned for his old face, and young Jones because he loved Mary. They were relieved when the bell rang at 7 P. M., and a bicycle boy handed in a yellow paper, which read: “Will be there to-morrow on the 8:30.—Stuyvesant Van Epps.”

Mary was all gladness. Young Jones was calm, but gave way sufficiently to say:

“Mary, we will call the cub 'Stuyvesant Van Epps Jones.'”

YOUNG Jones met Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps at the Forty-Second Street station. The old gentleman had been torn by doubts and grievous misgivings all the way down. What did young Jones' ambiguous message mean? Was Mary dead? Was he bound to a funeral? or a christening? Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps knew that something tremendous had happened. But what?

Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps walked up to young Jones at the station, and without pausing to greet him, remarked:

“Crib or coffin?”

“Crib!” said young Jones.

Then Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps fell into a storm of tears, and began to shake young Jones by the hand for the first time in his life.

VIII

The three happiest people in the world that night were Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps, Mary and young Jones. The baby was the one member of the family who did not give way to emotion. He received his grandfather with a stolid phlegm which became a Van Epps.

“And his name is Stuyvesant Van Epps Jones,” said Mary.

Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps kissed Mary again at this cheering news, and shook hands with young Jones for the second time in his life.

That is all there is to a very true story. Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps lives now in New York City, and Albany is shy a second citizen. Mary is happy, young Jones feels like a conqueror, and the infant, Stuyvesant Van Epps Jones, beneath the eye of his grandsire, waxes apace.