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 as light as his. As a girl she had not been particularly lively, but she hoped in her second girlhood her sprightlier and more freakish qualities might develop.

While thus reflecting, her door opened, and in came Miss Prudence to bid her good-*night. Prudence, as we have said, was a large, soft woman, whose kindly, if feeble, nature and unruffled temper tended to preserve her youthful roundness. In her white combing jacket, her cheeks flushed, and her still abundant nut-brown hair falling on her shoulders, she seemed to her sister to look particularly young. To be sure, there was ten years difference or more in their ages, and Miss Semaphore was always accustomed to look on Prudence as a mere girl, but even allowing for this, to-night she might have passed for thirty.

"I think, dear," she said, "you really ought to put off that dose for a day or two. We might go to Ramsgate to-morrow and engage apartments, then, if you liked, we need not return here. I could come back and fetch the luggage, if you gave Mrs. Wilcox a week's notice; she would never suspect anything. We can pretend we want change of air."