from the window.

"It will be a great adventure for the man of the house, Nancy, so never
mind. What would the Pathfinder have done if she had gone, instead of
her brother?"

"I? Oh! Millions of things!" said Nancy, pacing the sitting-room floor,
her head bent a little, her hands behind her back. "I should be going to
the new railway station in Boston now, and presently I should be at the
little grated window asking for a return ticket to Greentown station.
'Four ten,' the man would say, and I would fling my whole eight dollars
in front of the wicket to show him what manner of person I was.

"Then I would pick up the naught-from-naught-is-naught,
one-from-ten-is-nine, five-from-eight-is-three,--three dollars and
ninety cents or thereabouts and turn away.

"'Parlor car seat, Miss?' the young man would say,--a warm, worried
young man in a seersucker coat, and I would answer, 'No thank you; I
always go in the common car to study human nature.' That's what the
Admiral says, but of course the ticket man couldn't know that the
Admiral is an intimate friend of mine, and would think I said it myself.

"Then I would go down the platform and take the common car for
Greentown. Soon we would be off and I would ask the conductor if
Greentown was the station where one could change and drive to Beulah,
darling little Beulah, shiny-rivered Beulah; not breathing a word about
the yellow house for fear he would jump off the train and rent it first.
Then he would say he never heard of Beulah. I would look pityingly at
him, but make no reply because it would be no use, and anyway I know
Greentown _is_ the changing place, because I've asked three men before;
but Cousin Ann always likes to make conductors acknowledge they don't
know as much as she does.

"Then I present a few peanuts or peppermints to a small boy, and hold an
infant for a tired mother, because this is what good children do in the
Sunday-school books, but I do not mingle much with the passengers
because my brow is furrowed with thought and I am travelling on
important business."

You can well imagine that by this time Mother Carey has taken out her
darning, and Kathleen her oversewing, to which she pays little attention
because she so adores Nancy's tales. Peter has sat like a small statue
ever since his quick ear caught the sound of a story. His eyes follow
Nancy as she walks up and down improvising, and the only interruption
she ever receives from her audience is Ka