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Rh should be too many!" said her father, speaking as for his personal convenience, but presenting that as enough. "But where, among them all," he demanded, "is your trusty maid?"

Cora's reply made up in promptitude what it lacked in felicity. "I didn't bring her." She looked at the old portraits as if to appeal to them to help her to remember why. Apparently indeed they gave a sign, for she presently went on: "She was so extremely unwell."

Mr. Prodmore met this with reprobation. "Wasn't she to understand from the first that we don't permit"

"Anything of that sort?"—the girl recalled it at least as a familiar law. "Oh, yes, papa—I thought she did."

"But she doesn't?"—Mr. Prodmore pressed the point. Poor Cora, at a loss again, appeared to wonder if the point had better be a failure of brain or of propriety, but her companion continued to press. "What on earth's the matter with her?"

She again communed with their silent witnesses. "I really don't quite know, but I think that at Granny's she eats too much."

"I'll soon put an end to that!" Mr. Prodmore returned with decision. "You expect then to