“I’m real sorry you folks should be so set back in your journey, but it’s real pleasant for me to have company,” said Mrs. Pierce, with a smiling look at her young visitors. “It’s days and weeks sometimes without my seeing any one but my husband and the boys. Now we’ll sit down here and you tell me all about your journey.”
“It’s just like a story!” declared Mrs. Pierce, when they had finished. “And now you are going to Boston, and you will see the streets and shops, and churches.” She gave a little sigh as she finished, and Anne and Rose wished that it was possible for Mrs. Pierce to go to Boston with them.
“I don’t suppose you could mark out a little plan of Boston, could you?” she said to Rose. “I like to imagine things to myself when I’m here alone, and if I knew how the streets went, and where you lived, why, I could say to myself, ‘To-day Rose and Anne are going up King Street toward the State House, and up Long-acre Street to the Common,’ and it would seem almost as if I saw you when I looked at the plan.”
“Yes, I think I could,” said Rose, and Mrs. Pierce brought a sheet of paper and a red crayon from a big desk in the corner and laid them on the table.
Mrs. Pierce and Anne watched Rose mark out the Common and the Mall. “The Mall is where the fine people walk in the afternoon,” she said. “Mr. Hancock’s mansion is right here, on Beacon Hill, where you get a fine view across the Charles River to Charlestown.”
Then she marked Copp’s Hill. “This is where the British had their guns when the great battle was fought at Bunker Hill,” she said.
Mrs. Pierce listened eagerly. “I can ’most see it all!” she exclaimed. “Now show me where your house is,” and Rose made a little square for her home.
“We are nearer the harbor than many houses are,” she explained, “for my father owns a wharf, and it is convenient to be where he can see boats and vessels coming in.”