Miss Prince's was one of the fine old houses which kept its
garden behind it, well-defended from the street, for the family's own
pleasure.
"Those are the same old bushes and trees which we used to play among;
I have hardly changed it at all," said Miss Prince, as she came in. It
must be confessed that she had lost the feeling of patroness with
which she had approached her acquaintance with Nan. She was proud and
grateful now, and as she saw the girl in her pretty white dress, and
found her as simple and affectionate and eager to please as she had
thought her the night before, she owned to herself that she had not
looked for such happiness to fall into her life. And there was
something about the younger Anna Prince which others had quickly
recognized; a power of direction and of command. There are some
natures like the Prussian blue on a painter's palette, which rules all
the other colors it is mixed with; natures which quickly make
themselves felt in small or great companies.
Nan discovered her father's silver mug beside her plate, and was fired
with a fiercer resentment than she had expected to feel again, at the
sight of it. The thought of her childhood in good grandmother
Thacher's farm-house came quickly to her mind, with the plain living,
to her share of which she had been made a thousand times welcome;
while by this richer house, of which she was also heir, such rightful
trinkets and treasures had been withheld. But at the next minute she
could meet Miss Prince's observant eyes without displeasure, and
wisely remembered that she herself had not been responsible for the
state of affairs, and that possibly her aunt had been as wronged and
insulted and beaten back as she complained.
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