weather so mild that they pushed on to
Charlestown, and went to the top of the monument, which Tom had not
done since he was a very small boy. After this they saw what else they
could of historic Boston, on the fleetest and lightest of feet, and
talked all the way, until they were suddenly astonished to hear the
bells in all the steeples ring at noon.

"Oh dear, my nice mornin' 's all gone," said Nancy regretfully. "I
never had such a beautiful time in all my life!"

She looked quite beautiful herself as she spoke: her eyes shone with
lovely light and feeling, and her cheeks were bright with color like a
fresh-bloomed rose, but for the first time that day she was wistful
and sorry.

"Oh, you needn't go back yet!" said Tom. "I've nothing in the world to
do."

"Uncle Ezra thought I'd better go up to cousin Snow's in Revere
Street. I'm afraid she'll be all through dinner, but never mind. They
thought I'd better go there on mother's account; it's her cousin, but
I never saw her, at least not since I can remember. They won't like it
if I don't, you know; it wouldn't be very polite."

"All right," assented Tom with dignity. "I'll take you there at once:
perhaps we can catch a car or something."

"I'm ashamed to ask for anything more when you've been so kind," said
Nancy, after a few moments of anxious silence. "I don't know that you
can think of any good chance, but I'd give a great deal if I could
only go somewhere and see some pretty dancing. You know I'm always
dreamin' and dreamin' about pretty dancing!" and she looked eagerly at
Tom to see what he would say. "It must be goin' on somewhere in
Boston," she went on with pleading eyes. "Could you ask somebody? They
said at uncle Ezra's that if cousin Abby Snow wanted me to remain
until to-morrow it might be just as well to stay; she used to be so
well acquainted with mother. And so I thought--I might get some nice
chance to look on."

"To see some dancing," repeated Tom, mindful of his own gay evening
the night before, and of others to come, and the general impossibility
of Nancy's finding the happiness she sought. He never had been so
confronted by social barriers. As for Nancy's dancing at East Rodney,
in the schoolhouse hall or in Jacob Parker's new barn, it had been one
of the most ideal things he had ever known in his life; it would be
hard to find elsewhere such grace as hers. In seaboard towns one often
comes upon strange foreign inheritances, and the soul of