occasionally to the great hotel when there was a hop, of evenings, and listened to the bands; but Mercedes' beauty was too striking and her manners were too independent to inspire quick confidence in the Nantasket matrons; while Jamie missed his pipe and shirt-sleeves after supper. He had asked, and been forbidden, to invite John Hughson down to stay. Still less would Sadie have her girl acquaintances; and all Salem Street's kindliest feelings were soured in consequence. There was an invitation from Nahant that summer, but it seemed, to Mercedes' quick sense, formal, and she would not go.
She had had her piano moved down "to the beach," at much expense; and for a week she played in the afternoons. But even this accomplishment brought her no notice. People would look at her in passing, and then, more curiously, at her foster-father: that was all. Mercedes, in her youth, could not realize how social confidence is a plant of slow growth. The young girls of the place were content with saying she "was not in their set;" the young men who desired her acquaintance must seek it surreptitiously, and this Mercedes would
