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VEN with all its ingenious but inexpensive improvements, the renovated cottage would probably have failed to satisfy a genuine rent-paying family, but to the contented girls, it seemed absolutely perfect.

It looked, at last, to everybody as if the long deferred dinner party were actually to take place. There, in readiness, were the girls, the money, the cottage and Mr. Black, and nothing had happened to Mrs. Bartholomew Crane, who might easily, as Mabel suggested harrowingly, have moved away or died at any moment during the summer.

One day, very soon after the cottage was settled, not-at-all-surprised Mr. Black and very-much-astonished Mrs. Crane each received a formal invitation to dine under its 277