Do come to my rescue
this once. You really might do something for them."
With a rumbling sigh he answered:
"Wait. Can't give you a penny now. Poor as a church mouse."
"Oh! Guardy
"Fact."
Mrs. Larne heaved one of her most buoyant sighs. She certainly did not
believe him.
"Well!" she said; "you'll be sorry when we come round one night and sing
for pennies under your window. Wouldn't you like to see Phyllis? I left
her in the hall. She's growing such a sweet gairl. Guardy just fifty!"
"Not a rap."
Mrs. Larne threw up her hands. "Well! You'll repent it. I'm at my last
gasp." She sighed profoundly, and the perfume of violets escaped in a
cloud; Then, getting up, she went to the door and called: "Phyllis!"
When the girl entered old Heythorp felt the nearest approach to a
flutter of the heart for many years. She had put her hair up! She was
like a spring day in January; such a relief from that scented humbug,
her mother. Pleasant the touch of her lips on his forehead, the sound of
her clear voice, the sight of her slim movements, the feeling that she
did him credit--clean-run stock, she and that young scamp Jock--better
than the holy woman, his daughter Adela, would produce if anyone were
ever fool enough to marry her, or that pragmatical fellow, his son
Ernest.
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