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Janice Meredith by Paul Leicester Ford
page 47 of 806 (05%)
"I did not take it, Charles," she stammered, "but I knew
of its taking and so brought it back to you."

The man shrugged his shoulders. "'T is not mine, nor
is it aught to me," he said, and passing the girl, walked to the
house.


V
THE VALUE OF HAIR

At the evening meal the farm hands and negro house-servants
remarked in Fownes not merely his customary
unsocial silence, but an abstraction more
obvious than usual. A gird or two from the rougher
of his fellow-labourers was wholly unnoted by him, and though
he ate heartily, it was with such entire unconsciousness of what
he was eating as to make the cook, Sukey, who was inclined to
favour him, question if after all he deserved special consideration
at her hands.

The meal despatched, Charles took his way to the stable,
but some motive caused him to stop at the horse trough, lean
over it, and examine the reflection of his face. Evidently what
he saw was not gratifying, for he vainly tried to smooth down
his short hair, and then passed his hand over the scrub of his
beard. "'T is said clothes make the gentleman," he muttered,
"but methinks 't is really the barber. How many of the belles
of the Pump Room and the Crescent would take me for other
than a clodhopper? 'T was not Charles Lor--Charles what?
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