SURBITON COLLOQUIES All further conversation in the drawing-room was forbidden for that night.

Mrs.Woodward would have willingly postponed the reading of Charley's story so as to enable Katie to go to bed after the accident, had she been able to do so.

But she was not able to do so without an exercise of a species of authority which was distasteful to her, and which was very seldom heard, seen, or felt within the limits of Surbiton Cottage.

It would moreover have been very ungracious to snub Charley's manuscript, just when Charley had made himself such a hero; and she had, therefore, been obliged to read it.

But now that it was done, she hurried Katie off to bed, not without many admonitions.
'Good night,' she said to Charley; 'and God bless you, and make you always as happy as we are now.