Mr. Nelson, enjoying an after-dinner cigar, noted the direction of the young lawyer’s glance and chuckled to himself. He liked Allen Washburn very much, and, strange as it may seem, he liked his pretty daughter even better. So it is very easy to see that everybody was happy.
After a while, like a very thoughtful and obliging parent, he went inside, ostensibly to play the phonograph, but really to ask proudly of his wife if Betty wasn’t the prettiest thing she ever saw.
To which Mrs. Nelson replied, that, though she hadn’t seen Betty yet to-night, she would agree, just on general principles, that she was.
“And the best of it is,” added the woman, softly, “Betty doesn’t know how lovely she is. She is just as sweet and unspoiled as she was at ten.”
“Let’s hope that she will always be so,” replied Betty’s father, gravely.
Meanwhile, out on the porch the last warm rays of the sun had given place to the soft summer twilight and Allen brought his chair closer to Betty’s so that he might watch the expression on her face. She was smiling a little, as though enjoying some joke that he could not share and he wondered if she were going to let him be serious. It was very seldom that she did.
“Are you laughing at me?” he asked, suddenly.
Betty’s face became, on the instant, demurely grave.
“How could you think it?” she murmured, looking up at him innocently. “What is there funny about you, Allen?”
“A good many things, I’ve come to believe,” answered Allen, ruefully. “At least, every time I see you, you seem amused.”