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Many Kingdoms by Elizabeth Garver Jordan
page 34 of 226 (15%)
What, indeed, but another little girl! A real little girl, a flesh-
and-blood little girl, a jolly, active little girl, who, as Mr.
Prescott inelegantly put it to himself, "would make Lily Bell, with
her ringlets and her pantalettes, look like thirty cents." Surely in
the circle of their friends and relatives there must be a little girl
who could be borrowed and introduced--oh, casually and with infinite
tact!--into their menage for a few months. Mr. Prescott, well pleased
with himself, winked a Machiavellian wink and sought his wife,
ostensibly to consult her, but in reality to inform her that he had
made up his mind, and that it would be her happy privilege to attend
to the trivial details of carrying out his plan.

In exactly three weeks Margaret Hamilton Perry was established in the
Prescott homestead for a visit of indefinite length, and in precisely
three hours after her arrival Margaret Hamilton had annexed the
Prescott homestead and its inmates and all the things appertaining
thereto and made them her own. She was the most eager and adorable of
small, fat girls--alive from the crown of her curly head to the soles
of her sensible little spring-heeled shoes. As Mr. Prescott
subsequently remarked in a moment of extreme self-appreciation, if she
had been made to order she couldn't have filled the bill better. Born
and bred in the city, the country was to her a mine of unexplored
delights. The shyness of Raymond Mortimer, suddenly confronted by this
new personality and the immediate need of entertaining it, gave way
before the enthusiasm of the little girl over his pets, his favorite
haunts, the works of his hands--everything in which he had a share.
Clinging to his hand in a rapturous panic as they visited the animals,
she expatiated on the privileges of those happy beings who lived
always amid such delights.

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