“He is here, at last! Here in New York! And he is coming up this morning.”
“That’s fine!” exclaimed Lola, her face reflecting her father’s pleasure. “I have heard so much about him all my life, and now I am really going to see him.”
“I, myself,” said the Doctor, “have only seen him once in ten years, only twice in twenty. He is a great man now, rich and famous, but he was a scamp when I first knew him.” He laughed softly as his mind travelled back to the time when he and this successful French physician were boys together at the University.
“How was it?” inquired Lola, “that a Frenchman was your chum at Heidelberg?”
“He was,” her father replied, “even as a boy, a cynic, a philosopher, and he amused me. He had a big mind, and a big heart, and I loved him.”
As he spoke he opened the second letter, and after a moment’s reading looked up at Lola, his face reflecting an almost comic dismay. “Listen, Lola! ‘My dear Doctor,’” he read slowly, his voice betraying his surprise and growing distress, “‘I am going to call upon you to-morrow, and ask you to do me a great honor. I love your daughter——’” he stopped helplessly, almost like a child, afraid to continue.
Lola rose from the table, blushing furiously, but with a happy light underlying the guilty look in her eyes.
“Father!”
He looked at her for a moment, and gradually his look softened and the surprise gave way to a humorous tenderness.
“Let’s tear it up,” he suggested, holding the unwelcome paper out before him. “I think that would be the best way out of this.”