liking. It is only fair for me to inform him,
however, that one morning last spring as I
was passing, portmanteau in hand, from the
station at Rivermouth to the old gambrel-roofed
house in a neighboring street where I always
find welcome, I saw a little man swinging on
a gate.



PRUDENCE PALFREY. 311

I had never seen this small personage before,
but there was something absurdly familiar in
the dark hair and alert black eyes, something
absurdly familiar in the lithe, wiry figure (it
was as if John Dent had been cut down from
five feet eight to three feet four) ; and when
he returned my salutation with that cavalier
air which stamps your six-year-old man of the
world, there was an intonation in his voice so
curiously like Prue's, that I laughed all to
myself !



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