Faneuil Hall and the Athenaeum, to Doll and Richards's, where was an
exhibition of pictures, to the Granary Graveyard, and the Old South.
Then the girls did a little shopping; and by that time they were quite
tired enough to make the idea of luncheon agreeable, so they took the
path across the Common to the Joy Street Mall.

Katy was charmed by all she had seen. The delightful nearness of so many
interesting things surprised her. She perceived what is one of Boston's
chief charms,--that the Common and its surrounding streets make a
natural centre and rallying-point for the whole city; as the heart is
the centre of the body and keeps up a quick correspondence and regulates
the life of all its extremities. The stately old houses on Beacon
Street, with their rounded fronts, deep window-casements, and here and
there a mauve or a lilac pane set in the sashes, took her fancy greatly;
and so did the State House, whose situation made it sufficiently
imposing, even before the gilding of the dome.

Up the steep steps of the Joy Street Mall they went, to the house on Mt.
Vernon Street which the Reddings had taken on their return from
Washington nearly three years before. Rose had previously shown Katy the
site of the old family house on Summer Street, where she was born, now
given over wholly to warehouses and shops. Their present residence was
one of those wide old-fashioned brick houses on the crest of the hill,
whose upper windows command the view across to the Boston Highlands; in
the rear was a spacious yard, almost large enough to be called a garden,
walled in with ivies and grapevines, under which were long beds full of
roses and chrysanthemums and marigolds and mignonette.

Rose carried a latch-key in her pocket, which she said had been one of
her wedding-gifts; with this she unlocked the front door and let Katy