Shepherdstown register. [volume] (Shepherdstown, Va. [W. Va.]) 1849-1955, 1902-06-19
"PA" AND POLLY.

The girls were having good time
in the sitting-room. 1t was well
warmed and lighted, and there was
sound of laughter and the hum of
merry voices. Some one was tuning
a mandolin to the piano, and there
was futtering ofmusic leaves. Com
pany had come in, as usual, to spend
the evening. The Moberly girls, that
is, the three older ones, all had light
hair, blue eyes, and lively, vivacious
manners that proved very attractive
to the young people in the quiet vii
lage.
"Pa" Moberly nobody knew much
about. He sat out in the kitchen
most of the time. 1t was dingy
little room, and often in the evening
he had no light; only the dull glow
Of the stove and the red sparks OF his
old-fashioned pipe.
Pa Moberly was q little, timid'
shrinking man. He had faded blue
eyes, bent shoulders and toil-worn
hands. He had worked hard for his
girls. He had ungrudgingly given
them his best. 1t seemed too bad
that now he was old and they were
grown to womanhood they did not
care.
When Mrs. Moberly was alive,
things were different. He had his
comfortable easy chair then in the
sitting-room his slippers, too, and
and there was the lounge to rest on
when he was tired.
But as the girls grew up, pretty,
strong-willed and altogether selfish,
Pa Moberly found himself banished
from his comfortable quarters. A
number of cushions too fine for use
adorned the old sofa, and his armchair
had three tides on it. He was soon
made to understand that he was not
wanted.
1t was not long before he began to
stay in the kitchen, and by and by he
sat nowhere else. He knew every fig
ure on the dingy papered walls, and
the only chair he had to sit in was a
straight-backed wooden one, in which
he could not rest.
He used to long sometimes for his
old corner in the sitting-room, with
its lights, its laughter, and its music,
but to his gentle hints the girls gave
scant encouragement. "They didn't
want pa round" they told themselves.
The lonely, tired old man had many
thought as he sat in the kitchen night
after night in solitude, and he used
sometimes to ponder the question in
his gentle heart as to whether, after
all, it paid to bring up girls who were
ashamed of you when you were old.
Polly did not know about the changed
condition of affairs. Polly was the
youngest, and more like her mother
than any of the others. being small,
quiet and brown-eyed
She had been staying for three years
out in Pennsylvania with an invalid
aunt for whom she had been named.
Poor Aunt Bassett was dead now, and
to-day Polly had come home again.
She was upstairs now, busy in the
small back room that the girls had
forgotten to make ready for her.
As Pa Moberly sat alone in the
kitchen tonight he was thinking Of
Polly. In his yearning, fatherly
heart there was faint stirring Of hope.
There was chance that he might
take some comfort with this, his young
est daughter. He had felt that from
the time she was born. She wasen't
like the other girls, and she had seemed
so unfeignedly glad to see him. He
felt the pressure of her young arms
vet about his neck, and her kisses still
lay warm upon his furrowed cheek.
In the darkness of the old kitchen
he brushed tear from his eye. HI
was thinking Of Ma Moberly, too, and
of her gentle. tender, womanly ways
He wished the girls were more like
their mother.
Just then Polly came in. She went
quickly to his side.
"Why, pa" she cried, "what ar
you sitting in the kitchen for, and il
the dark, too? Is anything the mat
| ter ?"
In the friendly darkness Pa Mober