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148 old!' I said. (She must have seen some five-and-twenty summers.)

'Of course she is,' replied Edward scornfully. 'It's not her, it's her money he's after, you bet!'

'Didn't know she had any money,' I observed timidly.

'Sure to have,' said my brother with confidence. 'Heaps and heaps.'

Silence ensued, both our minds being busy on the same problem—how this condition of things, if it existed, could be turned to advantage.

'Bobby Ferris told me,' began Edward in due course, 'that when a Fellow was spooning his sister once, they used to employ him to carry notes and messages and things between them; and he got a shilling almost every time!'

'What, from each of them?' I innocently inquired.

Edward looked at me with scornful pity. 'Girls never have any money,' he briefly explained. 'But she did his exercises, and got him out of rows, and told stories for him when he needed it—and much better ones than he could have made up for himself. Girls