know exactly what he ought to do. It was a novel situation
for him to be in, with a girl sobbing on his bosom, and his first
impulse was to push her off; but when he remembered that she represented
a million of dollars, he did what half the men in the world would have
done in his place: he held her close and tried to quiet her, and told
her he was not half good enough for her, and knew in his heart he was
telling the truth, and felt within him that stirring of a resolve that
she should never know he did not love her, and that he would make her
happy, if he could.

And so they were betrothed without much billing and cooing, and Peterkin
came in with Mary Jane and made a speech half-an-hour long to his future
son-in-law, and settled just when they were to be married and what they
were to do.

Christmas week was the time, and he vowed he'd give 'em a wedding which
should take the starch entirely out of Gusty Browne, whose mother, Mrs.
Rossiter Browne, would think Gusty was never married at all when she saw
what he could do. Greatly he lamented that Harold and Jerry could not be
present. 'But they'll see it in the papers,' he said, 'for I'll have a
four column notice, if I write it myself, and pay for it too! And when
you meet 'em in Europe you can tell 'em what they missed.'

To all this Tom listened, with great drops of cold sweat running down
his back as he thought of the ridicule he should incur if Peterkin
should carry out his intentions to 'take the rag off the bush,' as he
expressed it. The trip to Europe pleased him, but the party filled him
with a horror from which he saw no escape, until he consulted his
mother, to whom he at once announced his engagement, but did not tell
her of the check on a Springfield bank for $2,000 which Peterkin had
slipped into his hand at parting with him, saying, when he protested
against taking it:

'Don't be a fool, Thomas. I'm to be your dad, so take it; you'll need
it. I know your circumstances; they ain't what they was, and I don't
s'pose you've got enough to buy the engagement ring, I want a big one. A
solitary--no cluster for me. I know what 'tis to be poor. Take it,
Thomas.'

So Tom took it with a sense of shame which prompted him several times to
tear it in shreds and throw them to the winds. But this he did not do,
for he knew he should need money, as he had none of his own; and when, a
few days before, he had asked Colvin for some, that worthy man, who had
never taken k