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 angry, you really are very disrespectful, and your papa will be quite displeased. It is all about this dinner at Pleasance, John. The girls want me to go, and I mean to stay at home, and so we are playing a game at cross purposes."

"Then the girls have certainly won," said John, "for you are certainly going, I promised Arthur that I would bring you."

"Oh, John! how could you? I can't dine out, I'm so fat."

"Well, my dear, you can hardly expect to be as slim as you were at seventeen, but you are not half the size of your friend the Baroness; and this one dinner, unless you eat very voraciously, will not make you much fatter."

This idea threw Mrs. Hopkinson into one of her most comfortable fits of laughter. "You know that is not what I mean—but there is the butler, and all those footmen, they put me out; and they will snatch away my plate before I have finished; and there will be strangers who will be sure to wonder