poorest. So Nancy abandoned the dream, and enthusiastically
accepted the East Eleventh Street substitute, Bert becoming a
tenant in the "George Eliot," at a rental of thirty-five dollars a
month. Some of the old Barrett furniture was too large for the
place, but what she could use Nancy arranged with exquisite taste:
fairly dancing with pleasure over the sitting room, where her
chair and Bert's were in place, and the little droplight lighted
on the little table. In this room they were going to read Dickens
out loud, on winter nights.

They were married on a hot April morning, a morning whose every
second seemed to Nancy flooded with strange perfumes, and lighted
with unearthly light. The sky was cloudless; the park bowered in
fresh green; the streets, under new shadows, clean-swept and warm.
Her gown was perfection, her new wide hat the most becoming she
had ever worn; the girls, in their new gowns and hats, seemed so
near and dear to her to-day. She was hardly conscious of Bert, but
she remembered liking his big brother, who kissed her in so
brotherly a fashion. Winter was over, the snow was gone at last,
the trying and depressing rains and the cold were gone, too, and
she and Bert were man and wife, and off to Boston for their
honeymoon.




Chapter Four


They had been married eleven days, and were loitering over a