to choir practice. If I stopped outside her gate on my way to church
and coaxed her, she usually laughed, ran in for her hat and jacket,
and went along with me. The three old ladies fostered our
friendship, and because I was "quiet," they esteemed me a good
influence for Nelly. This view was propounded in a sewing-circle
discussion and, leaking down to us through our mothers, greatly
amused us. Dear old ladies! It was so manifestly for what Nell was
that they loved her, and yet they were always looking for
"influences" to change her.

The "Queen Esther" performance had cost us three months of hard
practice, and it was not easy to keep Nell up to attending the
tedious rehearsals. Some of the boys we knew were in the chorus of
Assyrian youths, but the solo cast was made up of older people, and
Nell found them very poky. We gave the cantata in the Baptist church
on Christmas eve, "to a crowded house," as the Riverbend "Messenger"
truly chronicled. The country folk for miles about had come in
through a deep snow, and their teams and wagons stood in a long row
at the hitch-bars on each side of the church door. It was certainly
Nelly's night, for however much the tenor--he was her schoolmaster,
and naturally thought poorly of her--might try to eclipse her in his
dolorous solos about the rivers of Babylon, there could be no doubt
as to whom the people had come to hear--and to see.

After the performance was over, our fathers and mothers came back to
the dressing-rooms--the little rooms behind the baptistry where the
candidates for baptism were robed--to congratulate us, and Nell
persuaded my mother to let me go home with her. This arrangement may
not have been wholly agreeable to Scott Spinny, who stood glumly
waiting at the baptistry door; though I used to think he dogged
Nell's steps not so much for any pleasure he got from being with her
as for the pleasure of keeping other people away. Dear little Mrs.
Spinny was perpetually in a state of humiliation on account of his
bad manners, and she tried by a very special tenderness to make up
to Nelly for the remissness of her ungracious son.

Scott was a spare, muscular fellow, good-looking, but with a face so
set and dark that I used to think it very like the castings he sold.
He was taciturn and domineering, and Nell rather liked to provoke
him. Her father was so easy with her that she seemed to enjoy being
ordered about now and then. That night, when every one was praising