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360 appeared in his amazement twice his natural size. "It has gone so far as that?"

She rose before him as if in triumph. "It has gone so far that you had better let it go the rest of the way!"

He had lost breath, but he had positively gained dignity. "It's too monstrous, to have plotted to keep me in the dark!"

"Why, it's only when you're kept in the dark that your daughter's kept in the light!" She argued it with a candour that might have served for brilliancy. "It's at her own earnest request that I plead to you for her liberty of choice. She's an honest girl—perhaps even a peculiar girl; and she's not a baby. You over-do, I think, the nursing. She has a perfect right to her preference."

Poor Mr. Prodmore couldn't help taking it from her, and, this being the case, he still took it in the most convenient way. "And pray haven't I a perfect right to mine?" he asked from his chair.

She fairly seemed to serve it up to him—to put down the dish with a flourish. "Not at her expense. You expect her to give up too much."

"And what has she," he appealed, "expected