Page:An Old Fashioned Girl.djvu/104

88 very uncomfortable seat and call himself hard names for five or ten minutes before she relented.

"Come, now, do say a word to a fellow. I'm getting the worst of it, any way; for there's Fan, crying her eyes out upstairs, and here are you stowed away in a dark closet as dumb as a fish, and nobody but me to bring you both round. I'd have cut over to the Smythes and got ma home to fix things, only it looked like backing out of the scrape; so I didn't," said Tom, as a last appeal.

Polly was glad to hear that Fan was crying. It would do her good; but she couldn't help softening to Tom, who did seem in a predicament between two weeping damsels. A little smile began to dimple the cheek that wasn't hidden, and then a hand came slowly out from under the curly head, and was stretched toward him silently. Tom was just going to give it a hearty shake, when he saw a red mark on the wrist, and knew what made it. His face changed, and he took the chubby hand so gently, that Polly peeped to see what it meant.

"Will you forgive that, too?" he asked, in a whisper, stroking the red wrist.

"Yes; it don't hurt much now." And Polly drew her hand away, sorry he had seen it.

"I was a beast, that's what I was!" said Tom, in a tone of great disgust; and just at that awkward minute down tumbled his father's old beaver over his head and face, putting a comical quencher on his self-reproaches.

Of course, neither could help laughing at that; and when he emerged, Polly was sitting up, looking as