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CHAPTER XIII


AN UNPLEASANT SURPRISE


Quickly, after the first guests had arrived, came the others. Nellie Parks, Grace Lavine, friends of Nan, and Willie Porter and his sister Sadie, came first, and Freddie and Flossie let them in, the Porter children being some of their best-liked playmates.

All the children wore their best clothes, and for a time they were a bit stiff and unnatural, standing shyly about in corners, against the walls, or sitting on chairs.

The boys seemed to all crowd together in one part of the room, and the girls in another. Flossie and Freddie, Nan and Bert, were so busy answering the door that they did not notice this at first.

But Aunt Sarah, their mother's sister, who had come over to help Mrs. Bobbsey, looking

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