There was something thrilling in the jostling
crowds, and the electric signs flashing out one by one down the long gay
thoroughfare.
Post-Office Square, at the end of the day, was always littered with
papers and trash. In its center was a battered, weather kiosk, and facing
it, was a huge electric advertisement which indulged in the glittering
generality, that "You get what you pay for."
It was not a place to inspire romance, yet every Saturday its benches
were crowded with boys and girls who had no place to visit except on
the street.
Through the long spring dusks, with their tender skies and silver stars,
Nance and Dan kept company, unconcerned with the past or the future,
wholly content with the May-time of the present. At a word or touch from
Dan, Nance's inflammable nature would have taken fire but Dan, under Mrs.
Purdy's influence, was passing through an acute stage of religious
conversion, and all desires of the flesh were sternly repressed by that
new creed to which he was making such heroic efforts to conform. With the
zeal of a new convert, he considered it his duty to guard his small
companion against all love-making, including his own.
Nance at an early age had developed a protective code that even without
Dan's forbidding looks and constant surveillance might have served its
purpose. Despite the high spirits and free speech that brought her so
many admiring glances from the boys in the factory, it was soon
understood that the "Molloy kid" was not to be trifled with.
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