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 "So must I, so I will call for you in my dog-cart, and we will go together."

Captain Hopkinson shook his head, and said he looked upon a dog-cart as an outrigger on wheels, but still he accepted the offer, and hearing the sound of the baronial coach, hurried home.

The Sampsons came in great force, for Miss Monteneros offered to accompany her uncle and aunt, much to their surprise, as she usually declined morning visiting; and she established herself in the bow window where Janet and Rose were both busily at work embroidering a table cover, which ought to have been finished before their father's return, and at which they were now working with great zeal. Mrs. Hopkinson had of course warned John privately, it was to be a surprise, so, though he ran against it and stumbled over it ten times a day, he was nominally unaware of its existence till the girls went up to bed, when he would light a candle and stand for a quarter of an hour admiring it to his heart's content.