Page:An Old Fashioned Girl.djvu/358

340 Polly went without another word, but she wore a curiously anxious look, and stopped on the threshold of the den, as if a little afraid of its occupant. Tom was sitting in his favorite attitude, astride of a chair, with his arms folded and his chin on the top rail; not an elegant posture, but the only one in which, he said, he could think well.

"Did you want me, Tom?"

"Yes. Come in, please, and don't look scared; I only want to show you a present I've had, and ask your advice about accepting it."

"Why, Tom, you look as if you had been knocked down!" exclaimed Polly, forgetting all about herself, as she saw his face when he rose and turned to meet her.

"I have; regularly floored; but I'm up again, and steadier than ever. Just you read that, and tell me what you think of it."

Tom snatched a letter off the table, put it into her hands, and began to walk up and down the little room, like a veritable bear in its cage. As Polly read that short note, all the color went out of her face, and her eyes began to kindle. When she came to the end, she stood a minute, as if too indignant to speak, then gave the paper a nervous sort of crumple and dropped it on the floor, saying, all in one breath,—

"I think she is a mercenary, heartless, ungrateful girl! That's what I think."

"Oh, the—deuce! I didn't mean to show that one; it's the other." And Tom took up a second paper, looking half angry, half ashamed at his own mistake. "I don't care, though; every one will know