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Stockton, Frank Richard, 1834-1902

"The Girl at Cobhurst"

We shall have them for
supper, even if they give him the nightmare. I am not going to have him
say again that he wished the new cook, as he kept calling Dora
Bannister, had stayed a little longer."
Alas! at dinner time Ralph had been guilty of that indiscretion. Without
exactly knowing it, he had missed in the meal a certain very pleasant
element, which had been put into the supper and breakfast by Dora's
desire to gratify his especial tastes. While he missed their visitor in
many other ways, he alluded to her premature departure only in connection
with their domestic affairs.
But so far as Miriam was concerned, he could have done nothing worse
than this. To have heard her brother say that Dora Bannister was the most
lovely girl he had ever seen, and that he was filled with grief at losing
the delights of her society, might have been disagreeable to her, or it
might not. But to have him even in the lightest way intimate that her
housekeeping was preferable to that of his own sister nettled her
self-esteem.
"I will show him," she said, "that he is mistaken.


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