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though I don't know as I can wait for you to read it, but must tell you at once that father is coming to see us soon."

"Oh!" exclaimed the little wife, joyfully, as she took the proffered sheet, "how delighted we shall be! and I wonder what he will think of baby."

"No doubt he will think him a prodigy," the husband returned, while his wife tried to box him, playfully, with the open sheet which she held in her hand.

Nattie heard all this; and after the letter was read, said to the little woman who had been her kind nurse:

"If you are going to have company, I must go away. There will not be room for me; and I am afraid of strangers, too."

"Nonsense!" said the husband, who caught the low words; "father is one of the cleverest old chaps in the world; he used to make much of the little girl that he lost. I expect that we shall find him changed since that, Dimple, and mother