Page:The Plutocrat (1927).pdf/548

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brought up—timid and afraid you might do something wrong, or get mixed up with strangers and all. Well, in a way I began to kind of take a sort of fancy to you, because you were so quiet and modest. I tell you, modesty's something you don't see in so many young men nowadays, and yours is the main and principal thing I like about you. Yes, sir; it's what makes me think we can manage to get along with you in the family about as well as if it'd been somebody different, Mr. Ogle. Yes, sir; I'll say this much for you, myself: you're quiet and you got nice manners, and you're perfectly honourable and you 'tend to your own business, and, what's best of all, you're modest. Well, those things make up for a good deal; indeed they do. And since I got to give my daughter up, I'm glad it's to a man that's got those qualities anyhow!"

With that, his troubled face relaxed; he sent forth thick wreathings of blue smoke, and, sighing loudly, seemed almost content. Behind him, in the open French window that gave admission to this high veranda, there appeared a witness to his increased geniality: a little, ancient, hawk-nosed English lady in black taffeta and an Indian shawl. She looked thoughtfully at the figure of Tinker and at his