The feast passed off better than, at one time, it had promised to do. There were about twenty people present. Mr. Austin had whipped up, at a moment's notice, various relations, and also certain persons who were intimately connected with the firm of which he was head; he desired to introduce to them not only his future son-in-law, but also the probable partner in his business. Most of these people were very willing to be entertained, simple souls, easily pleased, and the dinner was a good one. Even Tom, who found himself next to a girl with mischievous eyes and a saucy tongue, was inclined to shed some of his melancholy before the menu was half-way through. "I never did meet a girl who says such things as you do," he told her, with a frankness which was perhaps meant for laudation. "You are quite too altogether." "You see," she said, with her eyes fixed demurely on her plate, "it doesn't matter what one does say to some people, does it?" "What do you mean by that?" "Of course some people don't count, do they?" "By that I suppose you mean that I'm a----" She did not wait for him to finish. "Oh, not at all." She looked at him with innocence in her glance, which was too perfect to be real. "How many times have you been ploughed?" "Who's been telling you tales about me?" "I was only thinking that it doesn't matter if one hasn't brains so long as one has looks, and you have got those, haven't you?" Tom's face, as the minx said this, in a voice which was just loud enough to reach his ears, would have made a good photographic study. Beyond a doubt he was in a fair way to lose some of his sadness, at least for the time. When the cloth had been removed the giver of the feast, getting on to his feet, made the usual half jovial, half sentimental references to the occasion which had brought them together; and, in wishing the young couple well, made special allusion to the fact that he was not only welcoming a son, but also a colleague. The toast he ended by proposing could not have been better received. Then, while the young maiden sat blushing, the young man stood up, and, in a brief yet deft little speech, told how happy they all had made him, how the hopes which he had cherished for years had at last been realised, how dear those hopes had been to him, how unworthy he was of all the good gifts which had descended on him. But of this they might be sure, that if he had health and strength--and at present he was very well and pretty strong, thanking them very much--he would do his very best in the years to come to prove that he could at least appreciate those things which Providence had bestowed on him. The young man sat down on quite a pathetic note, and the girl by his side pressed his hand and looked as if this were indeed one of those moments of which she had dreamed.