Page:The principal girl (IA principalgirl00snai).pdf/227

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Toddles with something suspiciously like a wink at the future Lady Shelmerdine of Potterhanworth.

"Oh, no, for God's sake!"

"You shouldn't have given it away, Mr. Toddles," expostulated Mary.

"You won't half get a licking to-morrow," said the shop boy with broad satisfaction as he tied up the parcel. "The Albion's playing its full league team."

"But the Olympians are playing the team that won the Arthur Dunn Cup," said the future Lady Shelmerdine of Potterhanworth, with something suspiciously like a wink at Toddles, "and if you've any sense, boy—and you ought to have lots with that high forehead—you won't put your weekly sixpence on the Albion to-morrow."

Great things were promised for the morrow, but Mary put in some more useful work that afternoon. About four o'clock she carried round Granny's apparatus, together with the book of the words, to Pa at the Suffolk. She was received by His Britannic Majesty's Ex-Ambassador to Persia; had the honor of drinking tea with him; discussed rheumatism in general; showed the working of the apparatus, and even demonstrated it, not without symptoms of success; and in less than half an hour had made such an incursion upon the regard of this widower of ripe experience, that he was fain to inform the seventh unmarried daughter over dinner,