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GADSBY

tor could! Gadsby, way down in front, couldn’t fathom it, at all. Why should a woman want Big Four? A solitary animal, possibly, but four! So His Honor, turning and making his way toward that back row, ran smack into Nancy.

“Daddy! Lady Standish is outbidding all this crowd!”

“Oho! So that’s it!”

So Gadsby, pushing his way again through that jam, and coming to that most worthy woman, said:—

“By golly, Sally! It’s plain that you want Big Four.”

“John Gadsby, you ought to know that I do. Why! A man might buy that big pair of roans to hitch up to a plow! Or hook a big black onto an ash cart!”

“I know that, Sally, but that small back yard of yours is——

John!! Do your Municipal occupations knock all past days’ doings out of your skull? You know that I own a grand, big patch of land out in our suburbs, half as big as Branton Hills. So this Big Four will just run around, jump, roll, kick, and loaf until doomsday, if I can wallop this mob out of bidding.”

As Lady Standish was long known as

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