t, Cannie, and see if I am
not right. And now we will not talk any more about ourselves or our
shyness, but drive into the Fort and listen to the music. I caught a
strain from the Band just then, and I recollect that this is a 'Fort
Day.'"

So in they drove, clattered between walls and embankments, and over a
steep paved incline beneath a great arch, and found themselves in an
open square, with buildings of solid masonry on all sides, in the midst
of which the band was stationed. Other carriages were drawn up to listen
to the music, and officers in uniform were coming and going, and
talking to the ladies in the carriages. One of these officers, a nice
old Major, with a bald spot under his gold-banded cap, knew Mrs. Gray,
and came to welcome her. His "girls" were gone over to Newport to a
lawn-party, he said; but he insisted on taking Mrs. Gray and Cannie in
to see their quarters, which were in a casemate, in close neighborhood
to one of the great guns. Here he brewed them a delicious cup of tea;
and afterward, at Mrs. Gray's request, he took Candace to see the
magazines, and some of the curious underground passages which connect
one side of the Fort with the other. Cannie thought these extremely
interesting, and like all the caves on desert islands which she had ever
read about; for they were narrow, dark, and mysterious, they smelt very
close, and all sorts of odd funguses and formations were growing on the
roofs overhead.

These adventures chased the worry from her mind and the anxious puckers
from her forehead; and she went home quite happily, without recurring
again to the subject of their late conversation. But she did not forget
it, and it bore fruit. Mrs. Gray noted, without seeming to be on the
watch, the efforts which Candace thenceforward made to overcome her
shyness. She saw her force herself to come forward, force herself to
smile, to speak, when all the time she was quaking inwardly; and she
felt that there was real power of character required for such an effort.
Quiet Candace would always be; modest and retiring it was her nature to
be: but gradually she learned not to seem cold and stiff; and when her
cousin saw her, as she sometimes did, forgetting herself in talking to
some one, and lighting up into her easy, natural, bright manner, she
felt that the rather hard lesson administered that afternoon on the
ocean drive had not been in vain. Rome was not built in a day, and ease
of manner is not acquired i