"Not slow our eyes to find it—well we knew who stood behind it,
Though the earthwork hid them from us, and the stubborn walls were dumb.
Here were sister, wife and mother, looking wild upon each other,
And their lips were white with terror, as they said 'The Hour is Come!'"
"Bravo!" cried the others as Nora finished this quotation from Holmes' well-known poem. "If there were time," added Miss South, "we might ask Nora, or perhaps you Julia, to cap these stanzas with some other historical poem.
"The North End would be well worth another visit," continued Miss South, as they turned away. "I hope that some time you will both come to a service in the old church, and if you choose the first Sunday of the month, you will be able to see the fine communion service presented by George the Second, and you will find the high backed pews and the frescoes on the wall the same as they were a hundred and twenty-five years ago."
"What lots of little children there are playing about," cried Nora; "I should think that they would be run over a dozen times a day, for there are certainly more in the middle of the street than on the sidewalks. Why see there, why just look, it really is——"
"Manuel," broke in Julia, as Nora rushed forward and took the little fellow by the hand—"why how are you, Manuel?"
"My mother sick," he replied, smiling at Nora whom evidently he remembered very well.
"Oh, couldn't we just go to see him, I mean his mother," cried Nora.
"But if she is sick—" replied Miss South with hesitation.
"Let us wait here at the corner—this is the very corner," pleaded Nora, "and you can see whether there would be any harm in our going there; Julia wants to see the house, and perhaps Mrs. Rosa only has a cold."
As this seemed to be a sensible suggestion, Miss South with Manuel by the hand went down the little street where the Rosas were living.