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 paints are deleterious, child; there is white lead, and red lead, and verdigris, and gamboge, and twenty other poisons in those colour cakes. Lock them up! lock them up! Get your bonnet on: I want you to make a call with me."

"With you, uncle?"

This question was asked in a tone of surprise. She was not accustomed to make calls with her uncle: she never rode or walked out with him on any occasion.

"Quick! quick! I am always busy, you know: I have no time to lose."

She hurriedly gathered up her materials, asking, meantime, where they were going.

"To Fieldhead."

"Fieldhead! "What, to see old James Booth, the gardener? Is he ill?"

"We are going to see Miss Shirley Keeldar?"

"Miss Keeldar! Is she come to Yorkshire? Is she at Fieldhead?"

"She is. She has been there a week. I met her at a party last night:—that party to which you would not go. I was pleased with her: I choose that you shall make her acquaintance: it will do you good."

"She is now come of age, I suppose?"