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266 to have a strange chap set over me, and that's all I am going to tell you. But about you? How far have you come to-day?"

"About ninety miles, I should think," said Charling; "at least, my legs feel exactly like that."

"And what made you do such a silly thing?" he said, smiling at her, and she thought his blue eyes looked quite different now, so that she did not mind his calling her silly. "You know, it's no good girls running away; they always get caught, and then they put them into convents or something."

She slipped her hand confidingly under his arm, and put her head against the sleeve of his Norfolk jacket.

"Not girls with eternal friends, they don't," she said. "You'll take care of me now? You won't let them catch me?"

"Tell me why you did it, then."

Charling told him at some length.

"And father never told me a word about it," she ended; "and I wasn't going to stay to be made to wash the dishes and things, like Cinderella. I wouldn't stand that, not if I had to run