Two young girls in an opposite seat noticed her and tittered. They
had considerable merriment over her, twisting their pretty silly
faces, and rolling their blue eyes in her direction, and then
averting them with soft repressed chuckles.

Occasionally Mrs. Field looked over at them, thought of her Lois, and
noted their merriment gravely. She never dreamed that they were
laughing at her. If she had, she would not have considered it twice.

It was four o'clock when Mrs. Field arrived in Boston. She had been
in the city but once before, when she was a young girl. Still she set
out with no hesitation to walk across the city to the depot where she
must take the cars for Elliot. She could not afford a carriage, and
she would not trust herself in a street car. She knew her own head
and her old muscles; she could allow for their limitations, and
preferred to rely upon them.

Every few steps she stopped and asked a question as to her route,
listening sharply to the reply. Then she went straight enough,
speeding between the informers like guide-posts. This old provincial
threaded the city streets as unappreciatively as she had that morning
the country one. Once in a while the magnificence of some shop
window, a dark flash of jet, or a flutter of lace on a woman's dress
caught her eye, but she did not see it. She had nothing in common
with anything of that kind; she had to do with the primal facts of
life. Coming as she was out of the country quiet, she was quite
unmoved by the thundering rush of the city streets. She might have
been deaf and blind for all the impression it had upon her. Her own
nature had grown so intense that it apparently had emanations, and
surrounded her with an atmosphere of her own impenetrable to the