Mr. Mortimer need hardly
add, that should Miss Crampton think of taking another situation, he
should do himself the pleasure to speak as highly of her qualifications
as she could desire."
Aunt Christie gone, Miss Crampton gone also! What a happy state of
things for the young Mortimers! If Crayshaw had been with them, there is
no saying what they might have done; but Johnnie, by his father's
orders, had brought a youth of seventeen to spend three weeks with him,
and the young fellow turned out to be such a dandy, and so much better
pleased to be with the girls than with Johnnie scouring the country and
skating, that John for the first time began to perceive the coming on
of a fresh source of trouble in his house. Gladys and Barbara were
nearly fourteen years old, but looked older; they were tall, slender
girls, black-haired and grey-eyed, as their mother had been, very
simple, full of energy, and in mind and disposition their father's own
daughters. Johnnie groaned over his unpromising companion, Edward
Conyngham by name; but he was the son of an old friend, and John did
what he could to make the boys companionable, while the girls, though
they laughed at young Conyngham, were on the whole more amused with his
compliments than their father liked.
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