A Little Country Girl

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Coolidge Susan. A Little Country Girl

CHAPTER I. ON THE "EOLUS."

CHAPTER II. THE FIRST EVENING

CHAPTER III. A WALK ON THE CLIFFS

CHAPTER IV. THE MANUAL OF PERFECT GENTILITY

CHAPTER V. DOWN TO BEAVER TAIL

CHAPTER VI. A TALK ABOUT SHYNESS

CHAPTER VII. TWO PICNICS

CHAPTER VIII. BRIC-A-BRAC

CHAPTER IX. PERPLEXED

CHAPTER X. A WORD FITLY SPOKEN

CHAPTER XI. FIVE AND ONE MAKE SIX

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CANDACE ARDEN'S mother had not only been Mrs. Gray's cousin, but her particular friend as well. The two girls had been brought up together, had shared their studies and secrets and girlish fun, and had scarcely ever been separated for a week, until suddenly a change came which separated them for all the rest of their lives.

Pretty Candace Van Vliet went up to New Haven on her nineteenth birthday to see what a college commencement was like, and at the President's reception afterward met Henry Arden, the valedictorian of the graduating class, a handsome fellow just twenty-one years old. He came of plain farming-people in the hill country of Connecticut; but he was clever, ambitious, and his manners had a natural charm, to which his four years of college life had added ease and the rubbing away of any little rustic awkwardness with which he might have begun. Candace thought him delightful; he thought her more than delightful. In short, it was one of the sudden love-affairs with which college commencements not infrequently end, and in the course of a few weeks they engaged themselves to each other.

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Spanish mackerel was the next course. Candace inadvertently took up the steel knife placed beside her plate, instead of the silver one meant for use with fish. The result was that when the saddle of mutton was served, she had no usable knife. Mr. Gray observed her difficulty, and directed Frederic to bring a steel knife for Mademoiselle, which Frederic did, first casting a scrutinizing glance about as if in search of something; and again Candace felt that she was somehow out of the way.

The climax of her discomfort came with the pretty tinted fruit plates and finger-bowls. Candace's tumbler was empty, and without particularly thinking about the matter she took a drink out of her finger-bowl, which she mistook for some sort of lemonade, from the bit of lemon which floated in the water.

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