keen brown eyes over us to be sure we were listening before he began:

* * * * *

In the days when it was thought that the South End was to be the smart
part of Boston, and when streets were laid out along wide tree shaded
malls, with a square in the centre, in imitation of some quarters of
London,--for Boston was in those days much more English in appearance
than it is now,--there was in one of those squares a famous private
school. In those days it was rather smart to go to a private school.
It was in the days before Boston had much of an immigrant quarter,
when some smart families still lived in the old Colonial houses at the
North End, and ministers and lawyers and all professional men sent
their sons and their daughters to the public schools, at that time
probably the best in the world.

At this private school, there was, at the time of which I speak, what
one might almost call a "principal girl."

She was the daughter of a rich banker--his only daughter. The gods all
seemed to have been very good to her. She was not only a really
beautiful girl, she was, for her age, a distinguished girl,--one of
the sort who seemed to do everything better than any one else, and
with a lack of self-consciousness or pretension. Every one admired
her. Some of her comrades would have loved her if she had given them
the chance. But no one could ever get intimate with her. She came and
went from school quite alone, in the habit of the American girl of
those days before the chaperon became the correct thing. She was
charming to every one, but she kept every one a little at arm's
length. Of course such a girl would be much talked over by the other