THE FAMILIAR SPIRIT. NOW there was a skeleton in the cupboard of General Napoleon Smith. No distinguished family can be respectable without at least one such. But that of the new field-marshal was particularly dark and disgraceful. N Very obediently Janet Sheepshanks vanished from the sick-room, and presently returned with an oblong parcel, which she handed to the hero of battles. "Thank you," he said; "are you sure that the children are out?" "They are sailing paper boats on the mill-dam," said Janet, going to the window to look. Hugh John sighed a sigh. He wished he could sail boats on the mill-dam. "I hope every boat will go down the mill lade, and get mashed in the wheel," he said pleasantly. "For shame, Master Hugh!" replied Janet[47] Sheepshanks, shaking her head at him, but conscious that he was exactly expressing her own mind, if she had been lying sick a-bed and had been compelled to listen to some other housekeeper jingling keys that once were hers, ransacking her sacredest repositories, and keeping in order the menials of the house. [47] Hugh John proceeded cautiously to unwrap his family skeleton. Presently from the folds of tissue paper a very aged and battered "Sambo" emerged. Now a "Sambo" is a black woolly-haired negro doll of the fashion of many years ago. This specimen was dressed in simple and airy fashion in a single red shell jacket. As to the rest, he was bare and black from head to foot. Janet called him "that horrid object"; but, nevertheless, he was precious in the eyes of Hugh John, and therefore in hers. Though twelve years of age, he still liked to carry on dark and covert intercourse with his ancient "Sambo." In public, indeed, he preached, in season and out of season, against the folly and wickedness of dolls. No one but a lassie or a "lassie-boy" would do such a thing. He laughed at Priscilla for cleaning up her doll's kitchen once a week, and for organising afternoon tea-parties for her quiet harem. But secretly he would have liked very well to see Sambo sit at that bounteous board. Nevertheless, he instructed Toady Lion every day with doctrine and reproof that it was "only for girls" to have dolls. And knowing well that none of his common
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