ad decided to open a new street from St. Mary Street
to Jefferson. It seemed a most unwarrantable thing to her that they
had a right to buy her property against her will. It was so provoking,
that, after so much annoyance from the noise of St. Mary Street during
the last dozen years, she must submit to having another public
thoroughfare at the side of her house also. If it had only been at the
other side, she would not have minded it particularly; for she rarely
sat in her drawing-room, which was at the left of the hall. On the
right was the library, stately, dismal, and apt to be musty in damp
weather; and it would take many bright people, and a blazing wood-fire,
and a great deal of sunshine, to make it pleasant. Behind this was the
dining-room, which was really bright and sunny, and which opened by
wide glass doors into a conservatory. The rattle and clatter of St.
Mary Street was not at all troublesome here; and by little and little
Miss Sydney had gathered her favourite possessions from other parts of
the house, and taken one end of it for her sitting-room. The most
comfortable chairs had found their way here, and a luxurious great sofa
which had once been in the library, as we'll as the bookcase which held
her favourite books.

The house had been built by Miss Sydney's grandfather, and in his day
it had seemed nearly out of the city: now there was only one other
house left near it; for one by one the quiet, aristocratic old street
had seen its residences give place to shops and warehouses, and Miss
Sydney herself had scornfully refused many offers of many thousand
dollars for her home. It was so changed! It made her so sad to think
of the dear old times, and to see the houses torn down, or the
small-paned windows and old-fashioned front-doors replaced with French
plate-glass to display better the wares which were to take the places
of the quaint furniture and well-known faces of her friends! But Miss
Sydney was an old woman, and her friends had diminished sadly. "It
seems to me that my invitations are all for funerals in these days,"
said she to her venerable maid Hannah, who had helped her dress for her
parties fifty years before. She had given up society little by little.
Her friends had died, or she had allowed herself to drift away from
them, while the acquaintances from whom she might have filled their
places were only acquaintances still. She was the last of her own
family, and, for years before