Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. Let us strike hands as hearty friends No more, no less; and friendship's good; Only don't keep in view ulterior ends And points not understood In open treaty. Rise above Quibbles and shuffling off and on; Here's friendship for you if you like; but love, ?- No, thauk you, John. Chkistiica Kobsetti. Bride, dear, you -won't very much mind the trouble of taking Mrs. Joseph Maynard out shopping this morning, will you ? She has set her heart on going to aome sale in the Tottenham Court Eoad, and I have ordered the carriage at twelve; and you had better take your purse with you, for she is sure to forget hers, and want to buy lots of little things. And oh, by the way, there's Johnnie and Bobbie and Wattie; could you drop them at the Polytechnic on your way, and call for them some time in the afternoon, when you think they will be tired ? Something must beinvented for them to do this morning, and I really don't think I dare leave them to plague John again. So your hospitality has arrived at the vicarious stage already, Lesbia, has it ? John himself remarked from the end of the drawing-room he had just entered with his hands full of letters. It is sooner than I expected. I gave you an entire fortnight for the glory of patronizing your old tyrants to overweigh the trouble of entertaining them, and here at the end of ten days you are rolling the burden on Bride's shoulders, who has no old grudges to balance it with. Lesbia, who was standing before Bride's writing-table attired in a riding habit, and with the most becoming possible little feathered hat on her head, turned round quickly? Now, John, the Maynards have been here three weeks at least, and I am sure if you were not so absent you would have seen how I have devoted myself to t...