“I know it, Father,” said the girl, recovering her gravity, turning her large eyes lovingly upon him and speaking very tenderly. “I know it—oh, I know it; and many, many times when I have thought of it, and then again of your old kindly faith; all the warm wealth of your love; and our old home here, and all the happiness it ever held for me and you alike—oh, I have tried hard—indeed, indeed I have—to put all other thought away and live for you alone! But, Pop’m! dear old Pop’m—”And even as the great strong breast made shelter for her own, the woman’s heart within her flowed away in mists of gracious tears.
“Couldn’t live without old Pop’m, could her?” half cried and laughed the happy Mr. Twiggs, tangling his clumsy fingers in the long dark hair that fell across his arm, and bending till his glad face touched her own.—“Couldn’t live without old Pop’m?”
“Never! never!” sobbed the girl, lifting her brimming eyes and gazing in the kind old face. “Oh, may I always live with you, Pop’m? Always?—Forever?—”
“—And a day!” said Mr. Twiggs, emphatically.
“Even after I’m—” and she hid her face again.
“Even after—what, Tudens?”
“After I’m—after I’m—married?” murmured Tudens, with a longing pressure.
“Nothink short!” said Mr. Twiggs;—“perwidin’,” he added, releasing one hand and smoothing back his scanty hair—“perwidin’, of course, that your man is a’ honest, straitforrerd feller, as ain’t no lordly notions nor nothink o’ that sort.”
“Nor rich?”
“Well, I ain’t so p’ticklar about his bein’ pore, adzackly.—Say a feller as works for his livin’, and knows how to ’usband his earnin’s thrifty-like, and allus ’as a hextry crown or two laid up against a rainy day—and a good perwider, of course,” said Mr. Twiggs, with a comfortable glance around the room.—“’Ll blow me if I didn’t see a face there a-peerin’ in the winder!”