Page:An Old Fashioned Girl.djvu/396

376 touching that she felt for her handkerchief; but Tom took it away, and made her laugh instead of cry, by saying, in a wheedlesome tone,—

"I don't believe you did as much for all your romance. Did you, now?"

"If you won't laugh, I'll show you my treasures. I began first, and I've worn them longest."

As she spoke, Polly drew out the old locket, opened it, and showed the picture Tom gave her in the bag of pea-nuts, cut small and fitted in on one side; on the other was a curl of reddish hair and a black button. How Tom laughed when he saw them!

"You don't mean you've kept that frightful guy of a boy all this time? Polly! Polly! you are the most faithful 'loveress,' as Maud says, that was ever known."

"Don't flatter yourself that I've worn it all these years, sir; I only put it in last spring because I didn't dare to ask for one of the new ones. The button come off the old coat you insisted on wearing after the failure, as if it was your duty to look as shabby as possible, and the curl I stole from Maud. Aren't we silly?"

He did not seem to think so, and after a short pause for refreshments, Polly turned serious, and said anxiously,—

"When must you go back to your hard work?"

"In a week or two but it won't seem drudgery now, for you'll write every day, and I shall feel that I'm working to get a home for you. That will give me a forty-man-power, and I'll pay up my debts and get a good start, and then Ned and I will be married and go into partnership, and we'll all be the happiest, busiest people in the West."