Ah! my young friend, _you_ will rue the day when you kept me sitting on the top of that wall--" I break off.
"Go on! go on!" in five different voices of impatience.
"Well, then, father has sent a message by mother to the effect that _I_ am to dine with them to-night--_I_, if you please--_I!_--you must own" (lengthening my neck as I speak, and throwing up my untidy flax head) "that sweet Nancies are looking up in the world." A silence of stupefaction falls on the assembly.

After a pause-- "YOU ?" "Yes, _I!_" "And how do you account for it ?" "I believe," reply I, simpering, "that our future benefac--, no! I really must give up calling him that, or I shall come out with it to his face, as Bobby did last night.

Well, then, Sir Roger asked me why I did not appear yesterday.

I suppose he thought that I looked so _very_ grown up, that they must be keeping me in pinafores by force." Algy has risen.

He is coming toward me.