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THE COOK AND THE CATECHISM said, offering the only thing she had to give in all the world.

"You would, would you? But I hate kisses. In fact, I hate girls all round—big and little."

"You don't hate Julia, do you?"

"Yes, worst of all."

"Oh!" said Sophy—once more the recording, registering "Oh!"—because Julia had given quite another impression, and Sophy sought to reconcile these opposites.

The young man jumped down from the gate, with a healthy laugh at himself and at her, caught her up in his arms, and gave her a smacking kiss.

"That's toll," he said. " Now you can go through, missy."

"Thank you, Mr. Basil. It's not very hard to get through, is it?"

He set her down with a laugh, a laugh with a note of surprise in it; her last words had sounded odd from a child. But Sophy's eyes were quite grave; she was probably recording the practical value of a kiss.

"You shall tell me whether you think the same about that in a few years' time," he said, laughing again.

"When I'm grown up?" she asked, with a slow, puzzled smile.

"Perhaps," said he, assuming gravity anew.

"And cook?" she asked, with a curiously interrogative air—anxious apparently to see what he, in his turn, would think of her destiny.

"Cook? You're going to be a cook?"

"The cook," she amended. "The cook at the Hall."

"I'll come and eat your dinners." He laughed, yet looked a trifle compassionate. Sophy's quick eyes tracked his feelings. 15