Page:An Old Fashioned Girl.djvu/77

Rh "I'll come every evening, then. I'd like to, for I haven't studied a bit since I came. You shall try and make me like algebra, and I'll try and make you like Latin; will you?"

"Oh, I'd like it well enough, if there was any one to explain it to me. Old Deane puts us through double-quick, and don't give a fellow time to ask questions when we read."

"Ask your father; he knows."

"Don't believe he does; shouldn't dare to bother him, if he did."

"Why not?"

"He'd pull my ears, and call me a 'stupid,' or tell me not to worry him."

"I don't think he would. He's very kind to me, and I ask lots of questions."

"He likes you better than he does me."

"Now, Tom!—it's wrong of you to say so. Of course he loves you ever so much more than he does me," cried Polly, reprovingly.

"Why don't he show it, then?" muttered Tom, with a half-wistful, half-defiant glance toward the library door, which stood ajar.

"You act so, how can he?" asked Polly, after a pause, in which she put Tom's question to herself, and could find no better reply than the one she gave him.

"Why don't he give me my velocipede? He said, if I did well at school for a month, I should have it; and I've been pegging away like fury for most six weeks, and he don't do a thing about it. The girls get their duds, because they tease. I won't do that, any way; but you don't catch me studying myself to death, and no pay for it."