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on my back the king's proclamation, inside out, and written on it in large letters--'By order of my sister I do this.' Then what will be said of you, if they only kill me? My feelings might be very sad, but I should not envy yours, Faith." "Kiss me, at any rate, before you perish, in token of forgiveness;" and Dolly (who dearly loved her sister at the keenest height of rebellion) ran up and kissed Faith, with a smile for her, and a tear for her own self-sacrifice. "I shall put on my shell-pink," she said, "and they won't have the heart to fire shells at it." The dress of the ladies of the present passing period had been largely affected by the recent peace, which allowed the "French babies"--as the milliners' dolls were called--to come in as quickly as they were conceived. In war time scores of these "doxy-dummies"--as the rough tars called them--were tossed overboard from captured vessels or set up as a mark for tobacco-juice, while sweet eyes in London wept for want of them. And even Mr. Cheeseman had failed to bring any type genuinely French from the wholesale house in St. Mary's Axe, which was famed for canonical issue. But blessed are the patient, if their patience lasts long enough. The ladies of England were now in full enjoyment of all the new French discoveries, which proved to be the right name, inasmuch as they banished all reputable forms of covering. At least, so Mrs. Twemlow said; and the Rector went further than she did, obtaining for his sympathy a recommendation to attend to his own business. But when he showed the Admiral his wife's last book of patterns--from a drawer which he had no right to go to--great laughter was held between the twain, with some glancing over shoulders, and much dread of bad example. "Whatever you do, don't let my girls see it; I'll be bound you won't let your Eliza," said the Admiral, after a pinch of snuff to restore the true balance of his principles; "Faith would pitch it straight into the fire; but I am not quite so sure that my Dolly would. She loves a bit of finery, and she looks well in it." "Tonnish females," as the magazine of fashion called the higher class of popinjays, would have stared with contempt at both Faith and Dolly Darling in their simple walking-dress that day. Dowdies would have been the name for them, or frumps, or frights, or country gawks, because their attire was not statuesque or classic, as it should have been, which means that they were not h
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