street and stripping off their shoes and stockings, and sending the
little things home with them in their hands. However, their mothers
put on the shoes and stockings, and thought she must mean well. Very
few of them said anything to her by way of expostulation; but the
children finally ran when they saw her coming, so they would not have
their shoes and stockings taken off.

All this time, while Mrs. H. Boardman Jameson was striving to improve
us, her daughter Harriet was seemingly devoting all her energies to
the improvement of Harry Liscom, or to the improvement of her own
ideal in his heart, whichever it may have been; and I think she
succeeded in each case.

Neither Mrs. Liscom nor Mrs. Jameson seemed aware of it, but people
began to say that Harry Liscom and the eldest Jameson girl were going
together.

I had no doubt of it after what I had seen in the grove; and one
evening during the last of July I had additional evidence. In the
cool of the day I strolled down the road a little way, and finally
stopped at the old Wray house. Nobody lived there then; it had been
shut up for many a year. I thought I would sit down on the old
doorstep and rest, and I had barely settled myself when I heard
voices. They came around the corner from the south piazza, and I
could not help hearing what they said, though I rose and went away
as soon as I had my wits about me and fairly knew that I was
eavesdropping.

"You are so far above me," said a boy's voice which I knew was Harry
Liscom's.