“Mr. Wolf.”
I turned. Miss Grace Toppleton was on the stage with me. I looked at her with wonder.
“Mr. Wolf,” she continued, “the students of the Toppleton Institute, grateful to you for your labors on the Lake Shore Railroad, wish to present you this gold watch; and I assure you it affords me very great pleasure to be the bearer of this token to you.”
She handed me the watch, and I took it, with a red face and a trembling hand.
THE GIFT OF THE TOPPLETONIANS.—[Page 274].
CHAPTER XXV.
WOLF’S SPEECH.
I was never so “taken aback” in my life as when I heard the silvery voice of Miss Grace Toppleton, and saw the magnificent gift in her hand. At any time I should have looked at her with interest; but just then it seemed to me that the sun had ceased to shine, and all the light which flowed down upon the brilliant scene around me came from her beautiful face. I wished there was a hole in the platform beneath me, through which I might sink out of sight; but then, I am sure, if I had gone down into the gloom of the space beneath me, I should instantly have wished myself back again; for I was the hero of the occasion, and the soft eyes of Miss Grace were fixed upon me.
As I listened to the silvery tones of the fair orator, I became conscious that I was presenting a very awkward appearance. My hands seemed to be as big as the feet of an elephant, and altogether too large to go into my pockets. I did not know what to do with them, or where to put them. I felt like a great clumsy booby. But when the thought flashed upon me that Miss Grace was looking at me, and that she must consider me a boorish cub, I felt the necessity of doing something to redeem myself. When I was fully conscious that she was observing me, I quite forgot that anybody else was engaged in a similar occupation. I straightened up, stiffened the quaking muscles in my frame, and permitted my cumbrous hands to fall at my side, just as the professor of elocution in the Wimpleton Institute had instructed me to do when I spoke “in public on the stage.”