Page:E Nesbit - The Literary Sense.djvu/228

216 "It's a complicated nuisance," the father mused; "it isn't even as if I knew anything of the chap. I oughtn't to have allowed the child to make these long visits to her aunt. Or I ought to have gone with her. But I never could stand my sister Fanny. Well, well," and he went back to his work with the plain unvarnished heartache of the anxious father—not romantic and pretty like the lover's pangs, but as uncomfortable as toothache, all the same.

He had another caller that afternoon; he whom we know as the Onlooker came to thank him for the influence that had got him the appointment as doctor to the Influential Insurance Company.

The father opened his heart to the Onlooker—and the Onlooker had to bear it. It was an hour full of poignant sentiments. The only definite thought that came to the Onlooker was this—"I must hold my tongue. I must hold my tongue." He held it.

Three days later he took up his new work. And the very first man who came to him for medical examination was the man in whose arms he had seen the girl he loved.