interest in her mysterious aunt, for it was this hitherto unknown space outside the borders of Oldfields to which her father and his people belonged.  And as a charming old lady went by in a pretty carriage, the child’s gaze followed her wistfully as she and the doctor were walking along the street.  With a sudden blaze of imagination she had wished those pleasant eyes might have seen the likeness to her father, of which she had been sometimes told, and that the carriage had been hurried back, so that the long estrangement might be ended.  It was a strange thing that, just afterward, Dr. Leslie had, with much dismay, caught sight of the true aunt; for Miss Anna Prince of Dunport had also seen fit to make one of her rare visits to Boston.  She looked dignified and stately, but a little severe, as she went down the side street away from them.  Nan’s quick eyes had noticed already the difference between the city people and the country folks, and would have even recognized a certain provincialism in her father’s sister.  The doctor had only seen Miss Prince once many years before, but he had known her again with instinctive certainty, and Nan did not guess, though she was most grateful for it, why he reached for her hand, and held it fast as they walked together, just as he always used to do when she was a little girl.  She was not yet fully grown, and she never suspected the sudden thrill of dread, and consciousness of the great battle of life which she must soon begin to fight, which all at once chilled the doctor’s heart.  “It’s a cold world, a cold world,” he had said to himself.  “Only one thing will help her through safely, and that is her usefulness.  She shall never be either a thief or a beggar of the world’s favor if I can have my wish.”  And Nan, holding his hand with her warm, soft, childish one, looked up in his face, all unconscious that he thought with pity how unaware she was of the years to come, and of their difference to this sunshine holiday.  “And yet I never was so happy at her age as I am this summer,” the doctor told himself by way of cheer.

They paid some visits together to Dr. Leslie’s much-neglected friends, and it was interesting to see how, for the child’s sake, he resumed his place among these acquaintances to whom he had long been linked either personally in times past, or by family ties.  He was sometimes reproached for his love of seclusion and cordially welcomed back to his old relations, but as often found it impossible to restore anything but a formal intercourse of a most temporary nature.  The people for whom he cared most, all seemed attracted to his young ward, and he noted this with pleasure, though he had not recognized the fact that he had been, for the moment, basely uncertain whether his judgment of her worth would be confirmed.  He laughed at the insinuation that he had made a hermit or an outlaw of himself; he would have been still more amused to hear one of his old friends say that this was the reason they