Page:An Old Fashioned Girl.djvu/364

346 of confidence in himself, and energy and courage in a man of his years, makes me love and respect the dear old gentleman as I never did before."

"I'm so glad to hear you say that, Tom! I've sometimes thought you didn't quite appreciate your father, any more than he knew how much of a man you were."

"Never was till to-day, you know," said Tom, laughing, yet looking as if he felt the dignity of his one and twenty years. "Odd, isn't it, how people live together ever so long, and don't seem to find one another out, till something comes to do it for them. Perhaps this smash-up was sent to introduce me to my own father."

"There's philosophy for you," said Polly, smiling, even while she felt as if adversity was going to do more for Tom than years of prosperity.

They both sat quiet for a minute, Polly in the big chair looking at him with a new respect in her eyes, Tom on the stool near lay slowly tearing up a folded paper he had absently taken from the floor while he talked.

"Did this surprise you?" he asked, as a little white shower fluttered from his hands.

"No."

"Well, it did me; for you know as soon as we came to grief I offered to release Trix from the engagement, and she wouldn't let me," continued Tom, as if, having begun the subject, he wished to explain it thoroughly.

"That surprised me," said Polly.

"So it did me, for Fan always insisted it was the money and not the man she cared for. Her first