Page:An Old Fashioned Girl.djvu/45

Rh "Will you?" and Tom paused to consider the offer in all its bearings.

"Yes, and Polly will help; won't you?"

"I'd rather not have anything to do with it; but I'll be quiet, and not do any harm."

"Why won't you?" asked Tom, curiously.

"Because it seems like deceiving."

"Well; papa needn't be so fussy," said Fan, petulantly.

"After hearing about that Carrie, and the rest, I don't wonder he is fussy. Why don't you tell right out, and not do it any more, if he don't want you to?" said Polly, persuasively.

"Do you go and tell your father and mother everything right out?"

"Yes, I do; and it saves ever so much trouble."

"Ain't you afraid of them?"

"Of course I'm not. It's hard to tell sometimes; but it's so comfortable when it's over."

"Let's!" was Tom's brief advice.

"Mercy me! what a fuss about nothing! said Fanny, ready to cry with vexation.

"'T isn't nothing. You know you are forbidden to go gallivanting round with those chaps, and that's the reason you're in a pucker now. I won't make any bargain, and I will tell," returned Tom, seized with a sudden fit of moral firmness.

"Will you if I promise never, never to do so any more?" asked Fanny, meekly; for when Thomas took matters into his own hands, his sister usually submitted in spite of herself.

"I'll think about it; and if you behave, maybe I