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296 He had got, clearly, a trifle more accustomed to her being extraordinary. "Are you sure we always know them apart?"

She weighed the responsibility. "I always do. Don't you?"

"Not quite every time!"

"Oh," she replied, "I don't think, thank goodness, we have positively 'every time' to distinguish."

"Yet we must always act," he objected.

She turned this over; then with her wonderful living look, "I'm glad to hear it," she exclaimed, "because, I fear, I always do! You'll certainly think," she added with more gravity, that I've taken a line today!"

"Do you mean that of mistress of the house? Yes—you do seem in possession!"

"You don't!" she honestly answered; after which, as to attenuate a little the rigour of the charge: "You don't comfortably look it, I mean. You don't look"—she was very serious—"as I want you to."

It was when she was most serious that she was funniest. "How do you 'want' me to look?"

She endeavoured, while he watched her, to make up her mind, but seemed only, after an