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she had just gone out to walk; was dressing; or engaged with her milliner; or taking her lesson; and the music-master would not be gone for an hour; and then Miss Caroline will be very busy with some very important matters belonging to her father.

"What can keep Charles from our house?" thought Caroline. "Is he of fended? have papa and he differed about some of their nautical affairs? I wish Dædalus, if it be true he invented ships, had been drowned as well as Icarus: 'tis very strange; day after day; a week, why, 'tis more than a week, it's a fortnight since Charles was here; surely he has not gone to sea; and yet I can't well ask рара ;

but I will: I'll ask the servants too."

The poor Caroline ventured to ask the admiral, but her question was briefly answered.

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don't know well what they are about; they may be good officers, but till they get a ship of the line, nobody countenances them much; 'twont do for a veteran of Neptune to descend it's a difficult matter to get him made a post-captain; Stuart does not take the right way; he should go to sea."

"Bless me, papa, I have heard you extol Mr. Stuart to the skies, and say, that after a young man had gone through some good, rough service ;rough enough, heaven knows, to lose an arm or a leg, and be mauled, and unfit for sea;-yes, sir, you have said, in this very room, that when they saw service, London is the only place to get forward, it's the fountain-head of preferment! an ——

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"Yes, my dear, it is, when they have interest enough to get forward.” "And won't you use all your interest for Mr. Stuart ?"

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My dear child, you don't understand it; and I beg you'd not use your interest with me any more about him. Every one has enough to do for himself; so be a good girl, and attend to the affairs of my house, and to your masters, and see that your milliner does not cheat me.

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Caroline was silenced, but not satisshe determined, therefore, to learn from Stuart himself, whether her papa had quarrelled with him; for she thought Charles too inoffensive to be at odds with papa; and she knew that, except being a little jovial with a brother sailor, the vices in which most officers gloried were to Charles the most odious and hateful.

She pretended to her father to want to purchase an article in Bond-street, where she knew that, between four and five, Charles was frequently in the habit of walking; and, as fortunate

as distressed about him, Charles she met.

They were, or seemed to be, equally astonished to meet there. He accompanied her to the perfumer's, and then home. She related the conversation with papa; he told her how often, but in vain, he had sought her; and since he was thus forcibly interdicted her father's house, would she permit him to come in disguise?" 'Twas just what she had been thinking of.

"Come, do come, as the hairdresser's man; nobody will suspect you, if it be before breakfast."

"But shall I not be discovered? The servants all know me,"

"That does not signify. I'll desire my own maid to receive you, and conduct you to my study; 'tis there the hairdresser is put; make you the disguise complete, and leave the rest to me."

"But what, if your regular hairdresser come?"

"I'll prevent that this night. I'll write Mr. Curl not to send his oldfashioned man to our house, till he receive notice from me, as we are going out of town; and so we are, as soon as papa has made some arrangement with the Lords of the Admiralty; we have been in this horrible place a month too long this season already. There's nobody in London now; every body's gone to the sea-side, or to the country, except papa.'

They were now arrived at the southeast corner of Hanover-square; and the lieutenant, who judged it not pru dent to come in sight of the admiral's, with his daughter under his arm, bade Caroline good-bye for the present, but wondered, as he left her, how she could possibly talk about nobody being in town except her papa,

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