When Harry came home his face showed he had something pleasant to say.
“Well, dear,” he said as soon as he was ready for dinner, “you’ve done it, and no mistake.”
“Done what?” She would have been alarmed if his face had not looked so very happy.
“You’ve captured my father.”
“Oh Harry, what do you mean?”
“He came into my office to-day, and told me he had enjoyed himself out here very much, and he was good enough to add that his opinion of me had not changed in the least, that I had been as wrong-headed as possible, and that if I had chanced to pick up a pearl instead of a pebble, no thanks to my own wisdom. I couldn’t agree, and told him I knew all along you were a jewel, but he had the best of me, for he said,
“‘Rubbish, sir! You didn’t know that she could boil an egg or sew a button on; no boy in love ever asks that! and you might have been a pretty miserable pair!’
“And it’s quite true, Molly. If you could not have mended your own clothes, and I knew it, I should have married you just the same; but I’m glad to have a fortune in my wife, and so I told the dad.”
“Well, is that all he said?” asked Molly, her cheeks flushed with pleasure, her eyes dancing.
“Oh, dear, no, he didn’t begin that way. He began by asking me how I expected to meet my quarter’s bills. I told him there would be none. At first he could not believe me, and I really believe he had come to give me a check to get us out of the need he thought we were likely to be in; but when I told him all, and showed him your first month’s accounts—stop a minute” (Molly made a dart forward to her desk)—“I abstracted that first month’s figuring, my dear, and have it in my pocket, and it will remain there; that is my property, my trophy. Well, when I showed that, and told him that I, with my little income, lived just as well as he did, he was conquered.