'Dear Aunt,' her mother wrote to me, 'I'm going to marry Mr.Mortimer on Saturday week, and I hope you'll come to the wedding, but you're not to wear your blue gown.

Your affectionate niece, EMILY GRANT.' That was every word she said, and I'd never heard there was anything between her and Mr.Mortimer before." "And why were you not to wear your blue gown ?" inquired John Mortimer.
"Well," replied Miss Christie, "I don't deny that if she hadn't been beforehand with me I might just slyly have said that my blue gown would do, for I'd _only_ had it five years.

I was aye thrifty; she knew it was as good as ever--a very excellent lutestring, and made for her wedding when she married Mr.Grant--so she was determined to take my joke against her out of my mouth." If Miss Christie had not found plenty to do during the next six weeks, she would have grumbled yet more than she did over her wrongs.

As it was, Master Augustus John Mortimer came home from school for his long holidays, and he and his friends excited more noise, bustle, and commotion in the house than all the other children put together.
John Mortimer's eldest son, always called Johnnie, to distinguish him from his father, was ridiculously big for his age, portentously clever and keen-witted, awkward, blunt, rude, full of fun, extremely fond of his father, and exceedingly unlike him in person.

His hair was nearly black, his forehead was square and high, his hands and feet almost rivalled those of his parent in size, and his height was five feet three.
In any other eyes than those of a fond parent he must have appeared as an awkward, noisy, plain, and intolerably active boy; but his father (who almost from his infancy had pleased himself with a mental picture of the manner of man he would probably grow into) saw nothing of all this, but merely added in his mind two inches to the height of the future companion he was to find in him, and wished that the boy could get over a lisp which still disfigured some of his words.
He brought such a surprising account of his merits with him--how he could learn anything he pleased, how he never forgot anything, how, in fact, his master, as regarded his lessons, had not a fault to find with him, that when his twin sisters had seen it, there seemed to them something strange in his being as fond of tarts and lollipops as ever.
As for John, nothing surprised him.