It was with a very gratified mind that Miss Prince walked down the
street with her niece and bowed to one and another of her
acquaintances. She was entirely careless of what any one should say,
but she was brimful of excitement, and answered several of Nan's
questions entirely wrong. The old town was very pleasant that Sunday
morning. The lilacs were in full bloom, and other early summer flowers
in the narrow strips of front-yards or the high-fenced gardens were
in blossom too, and the air was full of sweetness and delight. The
ancient seaport had gathered for itself quaint names and treasures; it
was pleased with its old fashions and noble memories; its ancient
bells had not lost their sweet voices, and a flavor of the past
pervaded everything. The comfortable houses, the elderly citizens, the
very names on the shop signs, and the worn cobblestones of the streets
and flagstones of the pavements, delighted the young stranger, who
felt so unreasonably at home in Dunport. The many faces that had been
colored and fashioned by the sea were strangely different from those
which had known an inland life only, and she seemed to have come a
great deal nearer to foreign life and to the last century. Her heart
softened as she wondered if her father knew that she was following his
boyish footsteps, for the first time in her life, on that Sunday
morning. She would have liked to wander away by herself and find her
way about the town, but such a proposal was not to be thought of, and
all at once Miss Nancy turned up a narrow side street toward a
high-walled brick church, and presently they walked side by side up
the broad aisle so far that it seemed to Nan as if her aunt were
aiming for the chancel itself, and had some public ceremony in view,
of a penitential nature.
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