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432 got his pipe, and is blowing out long comfortable clouds, that make us all cough and wink again.

"Yes."

"High time he did, too: the estate's going to wrack and ruin. And he has brought his wife and son. There are queer stories abroad, I am told, about his relations with the former."

Here the governor pauses, and gives an uneasy glance at Dolly and me, as fathers and mothers have a knack of doing when they find the conversation turning more to meat than to milk.

"What are they?" asks mother, with a certain curiosity in her voice; gentle as she is, I am sure it would not grieve her to hear evil spoken of Silvia Vasher.

"A pack of lies, no doubt; they always are where a handsome woman's concerned. I am told she is magnificent. They say he left her two days after he married her, and never returned to her for a year. I don't believe a word of it myself, for the Vashers were never hasty men, they always looked before they leaped, and I never heard of one of them marrying beneath them—which is more than can be said of most good families now-a-days, where at least one cook, or housekeeper, or worse, moves in the family circle. Mrs. Vasher is one of the Flemings of shire."

Never before did I hear so long and peaceable an oration from the governor. Plainly the subject has a soothing effect upon his mind.

"If these reports are afloat," says mother, "will you wish me to call upon her? There are the girls, you know."

But this little diplomatic move avails her nothing.

"Vasher must not be slighted," says the governor; "so you will call upon her and take the girls."

Dolly turns as red as a turkey-cock, and screws up her mouth in a form that says plainly enough, "Never!" I go on with my fox's nose without a word. Mother subsides: it is never easy to argue