e. "Is she the awful
spectre you imagined?"

"Oh, she's nice enough," answered Alice, "only it is just as well to let
her see I need a little urging."

CHAPTER XXXIX

SOCIETY

Three more days of Alice's visit in Boston had passed, and quickly to
her. Blanch had kept her threat, and literally taken possession of her
new friend, and installed her in the guest room of the Nason residence.
Then she set out to entertain Alice to the best of her ample ability. To
be taken in hand, as it were, by a highly cultured and wealthy young
lady, and to have a liveried and obsequious coachman on duty to convey
them anywhere and everywhere, was a new experience, and a decided change
from Sandgate. The two went shopping mornings, and to matinees or made
calls afternoons, or discussed styles and effects with modistes;
evenings it was a theatre or else a quiet evening at home, when Mr.
Nason was in evidence. As for Frank, he was barely allowed the privilege
of procuring tickets and buying bonbons, or else making one of a rubber
of whist. "Don't you dare to say any sweet things while she is here,"
Blanch had cautioned him at the outset. "In the first place it is not
good form, and in the second it would offend her. Be as gallant as you
know how, but do not let mamma see that you are any more attentive to
Alice than to Ede and I. If you hope to win your pretty schoolma'am you
must pay your court in her own home, not here." It is needless to say
Frank obeyed. It was not long ere Alice began to feel herself quite at
home in the Nason family, and to notice that Mrs. Nason treated her in a
motherly way which was both nice and kind. That excellent lady also
expressed a warm sympathy for Alice in her orphaned condition, and
showed an interest in her occupation at home.

"I see that you are fond of your little charges," she said, after Alice
had described her school and some of the peculiarities of her pupils who
wore out-grown roundabouts or calico pinafores, "and I suppose they grow
fond of you as well."

"I try to make them," replied Alice, "and I find that is the easiest way
to govern them. I seldom have to punish any one, and when I do it hurts
me more than the culprit. In a way, children are like grown people and a
little tact and a few words said in the right way are more potent than
fear of punishment."

"And do you not find life in so small a place rather monotonous?" asked
Mrs. Nason.

"Oh, yes," replied Alice, "it is n