“Took, by mistake, an article of value from your house. Will return with it by the next train.”
“Bless the boy! How could you have doubted him, Alice? You, of all others! I can scarcely forgive you,” her father said, affectionately chiding her.
Alice’s face was radiant with smiles then, and she whispered in her father’s ear:
“Gerald will.”
A few hours more and young Clifton was with them, and the porte-monnaie restored to the owner. The event served to bind more firmly the affection of Mr. St. James to his favorite, who, in a year after, became his son-in-law and in time not only fulfilled the great expectation of St. James, but quite reconciled Mrs. St. James to the fact of Alice’s husband bearing no lordly title, but one won by his own merit. And that worthy lady has been more cautious in pronouncing so decidedly upon the actions of literary folk, since the event of the missing porte-monnaie and the hearing of her husband’s story; and she is often heard to say now, that “deep thinkers, who are nearly all the time planning the future, cannot be expected to be anything else than absent-minded. In fact, it is a positive proof of a great mind.”
THE END.
Transcriber’s Notes:
Archaic spellings and hyphenation have been retained. Inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained. A few obvious typesetting and punctuation errors have been corrected without note.
[End of Lob Lie-by-the-Fire, The Brownies, and Other Tales by Juliana Horatia Ewing]