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36 be a valuable companion to his indulged and sometimes overbearing girls, that he was disappointed as well as greatly mortified at his wife's prejudice. He knew her prejudices to be things that there was no chance of reasoning away; it was a good thing that she had not many of them. He had a great reverence for his wife, who in all great matters governed him, his children, and his household with a generally comfortable but occasionally inconvenient sway. She saved Mr. Hammond a great deal of trouble by her decided views and her managing ways; she was generally very attentive to his personal comforts and indulgent to his tastes, so he knew he must submit to be thwarted now and then. But to be evidently thwarted by the wife of his bosom before the family of the Lindsays, to be outdone in liberality on ground especially his own, was humiliating. If Hugh Lindsay's wife was rather hasty in forestalling her husband's more cautious proffers, she took the right ground, and her husband acquiesced in her views more cheerfully than Mr. Hammond could submit to the low position occupied by his wife.

The matter, however, was settled; the inquest was to be held on the morrow, and the orphan was to remain at Branxholm.

"Somebody must write to the friends, though,"