CHAPTER XXXIX
SOCIETY
Three more days of Alice's visit in Boston had passed, and quickly to her. Blanch had kept her threat, and literally taken possession of her new friend, and installed her in the guest room of the Nason residence. Then she set out to entertain Alice to the best of her ample ability. To be taken in hand, as it were, by a highly cultured and wealthy young lady, and to have a liveried and obsequious coachman on duty to convey them anywhere and everywhere, was a new experience, and a decided change from Sandgate. The two went shopping mornings, and to matinées or made calls afternoons, or discussed styles and effects with modistes; evenings it was a theatre or else a quiet evening at home, when Mr. Nason was in evidence. As for Frank, he was barely allowed the privilege of procuring tickets and buying bonbons, or else making one of a rubber of whist. "Don't you dare to say any sweet things while she is here," Blanch had cautioned him at the outset. "In the first place it is not good form, and in the second it would offend her. Be as gallant as you know how, but do not let mamma see that you are any more attentive to Alice than to Ede and I. If you hope to win your pretty schoolma'am you must pay your court in her own home, not here." It is needless to say Frank obeyed. It was not long ere Alice began to feel herself quite at home in the Nason family, and to notice that Mrs. Nason treated her in a motherly way which was both nice and kind. That excellent lady also expressed a warm sympathy for Alice in her orphaned condition, and showed an interest in her occupation at home.
"I see that you are fond of your little charges," she said, after Alice had described her school and some of the peculiarities of her pupils who wore out-grown roundabouts or calico pinafores, "and I suppose they grow fond of you as well."
"I try to make them," replied Alice, "and I find that is the easiest way to govern them. I seldom have to punish any one, and when I do it hurts me more than the culprit. In a way, children are like grown people and a little tact and a few words said in the right way are more potent than fear of punishment."
"And do you not find life in so small a place rather monotonous?" asked Mrs. Nason.
"Oh, yes," replied Alice, "it is not much like city life as I understand it; but having lived in the country all my life, as I have, I am accustomed to it and do not mind. It is delightful to have theatres and the excitement of social duties, as I imagine you have all the time, and yet I am not sure I should like it. I fancy once in a while I should sigh for a shady spot in the woods in summer where I could read a book or hear the birds sing. It is only in winter that I should like to live in the city."
But the pleasant days of Alice's stay in Boston passed rapidly until only two were left, when Blanch said to her, "I have invited a few of my friends here to meet you to-night, and I want you to do me a favor, and that is, sing for me."
"Oh, please do not ask that," replied Alice hastily. "I do not sing well enough, and fear that some of your friends might be critics, and that would quite upset me."