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 On the evening of Captain Jones's Boston lecture the snow fell, the first snow of all the deep snows of that famous winter. It came without wind in great tattered flakes. In an hour it had padded the city with inches of silence. Runners replaced wheels and the cold music of the sleigh bells jingled in the crystalline air.

'I always forget snow is so thrilling,' said Mr. Fox, as he and Lanice, with their faces pressed against the panes, watched the whitening of the graveyard and the obliteration of the stones. Miss Bigley hurried in shaking the drifts out of her vast dolman and off her bonnet.

'I assure you, Miss Bardeen, the other ladies that serve as ushers are already gathered at my house to put on their costumes. Dear Mr. Jones, tired as he is, is assisting. Such brocades and gauzes and jewels were never before seen in this city.'

It had fallen upon Miss Bigley to select five girls of social eminence and sufficient beauty to usher at Mr. Jones's lecture. Mr. Jones himself had selected the sixth. Miss Bigley could not understand why he should choose one who was neither a belle nor an heiress, a mere stranger in Boston from Amherst. Lanice hurried into her wraps, tied down her bonnet, and fled to the hack waiting outside. Miss Bigley, talking breathlessly as they swished along over the snow, did not tell her that Mr. Jones, evidently scenting the social difference between Miss Bardeen from Amherst and the Boston-born Endicotts,