Page:The Semi-detached House.djvu/315

 home; and do, Janet, pick up my bonnet, I shall want it for the wedding, and then both of you sit down and tell me how all this came about, and you may both talk at once this time, though I do not like it in general."

They availed themselves of this permission, and Mrs. Hopkinson turned from one to the other, sometimes in a state of delight at their prospects, sometimes in a fit of desperation at her own, and finally she sank into a reverie, from which she awoke with a placid smile, saying, "My daughters, Mrs. Greydon and Mrs. Harcourt; well, if that is not droll; I had quite forgotten that you were not mere children still. Ah! there is John at last, how shall we tell him?"

But there was nothing to tell; he had been detained by the lovers, not greatly to his surprise, as he had been more observant than his wife of the proceedings of the day, and he walked straight up to his daughters, and, with much emotion, congratulated them affectionately on their happy prospects.

"I assure you," he said to his wife, when