Page:An Old Fashioned Girl.djvu/397

Rh "It sounds delightful; but won't it take a long time, Tom?"

"Only a few years, and we needn't wait a minute after Syd is paid, if you don't mind beginning rather low down, Polly."

"I'd rather work up with you, than sit idle while you toil away all alone. That's the way father and mother did, and I think they were very happy in spite of the poverty and hard work."

"Then we'll do it by another year, for I must get more salary before I take you away from a good home here. I wish, oh, Polly, how I wish I had a half of the money I've wasted, to make you comfortable now."

"Never mind, I don't want it; I'd rather have less, and know you earned it all yourself," cried Polly, as Tom struck his hand on his knee with an acute pang of regret at the power he had lost.

"It's like you to say it, and I won't waste any words bewailing myself, because I was a fool. We will work up together, my brave Polly, and you shall yet be proud of your husband, though he is 'poor Tom Shaw.'"

She was as sure of that as if an oracle had foretold it, and was not deceived; for the loving heart that had always seen, believed, and tried to strengthen all good impulses in Tom, was well repaid for its instinctive trust by the happiness of the years to come.

"Yes," she said, hopefully, "I know you will succeed, for the best thing a man can have, is work with a purpose in it, and the will to do it heartily."