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 canvas sling chair next Miss Holborow herself.

The aunt was a bright-eyed, spare, spinster-like little matron, whose grey hair was close-hauled about a pert though elderly head. She drew in her chin with a bird-like motion, and gave Owen an odd look, half-friendly, half-suspicious, which declared—"You seem passable, but one can't be too careful." All that she said, however, was:

"How do you do, Mr. Scarlett. My niece has told me of having met you at the Tanglin dance." She spoke as one whose conscience pursues her to the minutest parts of speech. "Your name is very familiar to me: it must be that you have relatives in—" And, being satisfied on this point, Mrs. Holborow withdrew from the conversation, to become calmly engrossed in a magazine essay on "Thoreau, the Man." Evidently her mind to her a kingdom was; yet Owen, looking up from the happiest