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 "The greatest possible, Charlie and I are intimate friends."

"Dat we are," said Charlie, "oh, veddy imitate."

"Cannot you extend that friendship to his father?"

"I am not much given to friendship," she said carelessly, and more occupied in tying her daisy bracelets round Charlie's wrists, than in his father's remarks. "But if I had been your friend for the last twenty years, I could not have told you more crude, disagreeable truths than I did to-day. I can tell you as many again," she added, laughing, "if that proof of friendship will satisfy you."

"No, it will not," he said with some spirit; "I ask for more, the truths you have spoken were not disagreeable, because they came from you, and I hope you will see they have not been spoken in vain. When you tell me to be more cheerful, when you say my home might be happy, Miss Monteneros, it is in your power to verify your own prophecy."