world, reasonably certain, but a little vague and distant. It was a
more important thing than anybody understood, for a dear and familiar
chapter of life was ended when the expectant pair drove out of the
village on their way to the far-off railway station, as another had
been closed when the door of the Thacher farm-house had been shut and
padlocked, and Nan had gone home one snowy night to live with the
doctor. The weather at any rate was different now, for it was early
June, the time when doctors can best give themselves a holiday; and
though Dr. Leslie assured himself that he had little wish to take the
journey, he felt it quite due to his ward that she should see a little
more of the world, and happily due also to certain patients and his
brother physicians that he should visit the instrument-makers' shops,
and some bookstores; in fact there were a good many important errands
to which it was just as well to attend in person. But he watched Nan's
wide-open, delighted eyes, and observed her lack of surprise at
strange sights, and her perfect readiness for the marvelous, with
great amusement. He was touched and pleased because she cared most for
what had concerned him; to be told where he lived and studied, and to
see the places he had known best, roused most enthusiasm. An afternoon
in a corner of the reading-room at the Athenæum library, in which he
had spent delightful hours when he was a young man, seemed to please
the young girl more than anything else. As he sat beside the table
where he had gathered enough books and papers to last for many days,
in his delight at taking up again his once familiar habit, Nan looked
on with sympathetic eyes, or watched the squirrels in the trees of the
quiet Granary Burying Ground, which seemed to her like a bit of
country which the noisy city had caught and imprisoned. Now that she
was fairly out in the world she felt a new, strange interest in her
mysterious aunt, for it was this hitherto unknown space outside the
borders of Oldfields to which her father and his people belonged. And