If Nancy’s idea was good, Mother Carey’s idea matched it!  To see Gilbert, valise in hand, eight dollars in pocket, leaving Charlestown on a Friday noon after school, was equal to watching Columbus depart for an unknown land.  Thrilling is the only word that will properly describe it, and the group that followed his departure from the upper windows used it freely and generously.  He had gone gayly downstairs and Nancy flung after him a small packet in an envelope, just as he reached the door.

“There’s a photograph of your mother and sisters!” she called.  “In case the owner refuses to rent the house to you, just show him the rest of the family!  And don’t forget to say that the rent is exorbitant, whatever it is!”

They watched him go jauntily down the street, Mother Carey with special pride in her eyes.  He had on his second best suit, and it looked well on his straight slim figure.  He had a gallant air, had Gilbert, and one could not truly say it was surface gallantry either; it simply did not, at present, go very deep.  “No one could call him anything but a fine boy,” thought the mother, “and surely the outside is a key to what is within!—­His firm chin, his erect head, his bright eye, his quick tread, his air of alert self-reliance,—­surely here is enough, for any mother to build on!”

VIII

THE KNIGHT OF BEULAH CASTLE

Nancy’s flushed face was glued to the window-pane until Gilbert turned the corner.  He looked back, took off his cap, threw a kiss to them, and was out of sight!

“Oh! how I wish I could have gone!” cried Nancy.  “I hope he won’t forget what he went for!  I hope he won’t take ‘No’ for an answer.  Oh! why wasn’t I a boy!”

Mrs. Carey laughed as she turned from the window.

“It will be a great adventure for the man of the house, Nancy, so never mind.  What would the Pathfinder have done if she had gone, instead of her brother?”

“I?  Oh!  Millions of things!” said Nancy, pacing the sitting-room floor, her head bent a little, her hands behind her back.  “I should be going to the new railway station in Boston now, and presently I should be at the little grated window asking for a return ticket to Greentown station.  ‘Four ten,’ the man would say, and I would fling my whole eight dollars in front of the wicket to show him what manner of person I was.

“Then I would pick up the naught-from-naught-is-naught, one-from-ten-is-nine, five-from-eight-is-three,—­three dollars and ninety cents or thereabouts and turn away.

“‘Parlor car seat, Miss?’ the young man would say,—­a warm, worried young man in a seersucker coat, and I would answer, ’No thank you; I always go in the common car to study human nature.’  That’s what the Admiral says, but of course the ticket man couldn’t know that the Admiral is an intimate friend of mine, and would think I said it myself.