A LITTLE PHILOSOPHER.
NAN.[1]
BY MRS. JOHN LILLIE,
Author of "Mildred's Bargain," "Aunt Ruth's Temptation," etc.
Chapter III.
Nan's visitor, Miss Rolf, left the little shop, and walked away in the winter's dusk up the main street, and down one of the more secluded streets, where the "upper ten" of Bromfield lived. Bromfield was a large dull town, full of factories and smoke, and had a general air of business and money-making. The houses on the pretty street to which Miss Rolf directed her steps seemed to be shut away from all the dust and noise of the town, and Mrs. Grange's gateway was the finest and most aristocratic-looking one in the row. Miss Rolf went in at the gate, past a pretty lawn dotted with cedars, to the side entrance of a long low stone house, within the windows of which lights were already twinkling. She had a curious, amused smile on her face as she went down the hall, and it had not faded when she entered the parlor fronting the garden and the lawn.
Three people were seated in the fire-light—an elderly lady with a pale sweet face, a tall boy of fifteen, and a gentleman whose face was like Miss Rolf's in regularity of feature, but much softer in expression.
In the luxurious room Miss Rolf looked much more in her place than in Mr. Rupert's butter shop, and if Nan could have seen her "second cousin Phyllis" there, she would have been more than ever certain that she belonged to those who had the money.