class, that Tom regarded the deluded girl with a smile of lofty pity, from the heights of his vast and varied experience.
"Guess he won't hurt himself. I'll see that he don't study too hard." And Tom's eyes twinkled as they used to do, when he planned his boyish pranks.
"I'm afraid you can't be trusted as a guide, if various rumors I've heard are true," said Polly, looking up at him with a wistful expression, that caused his face to assume the sobriety of an owl's.
"Base slanders; I'm as steady as a clock, an ornament to my class, and a model young man, ain't I, mother?" And Tom patted her thin cheek with a caressing hand, sure of one firm friend in her; for when he ceased to be a harum-scarum boy, Mrs. Shaw began to take great pride in her son, and he, missing grandma, tried to fill her place with his feeble mother.
"Yes, dear, you are all I could ask," and Mrs. Shaw looked up at him with such affection and confidence in her eyes, that Polly gave Tom the first approving look she had vouchsafed him since she came.
Why Tom should look troubled and turn grave all at once, she couldn't understand, but she liked to see him stroke his mother's cheek so softly, as he stood with his head resting on the high back of her chair, for Polly fancied that he felt a man's pity for her weakness, and was learning a son's patient love for a mother who had had much to bear with him.
"I'm so glad you are going to be here all winter, for we are to be very gay, and I shall enjoy taking you round with me," began Fanny, forgetting Polly's plan for a moment.
