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Boylston Street,” I agreed.
    “You are returning?” asked Sylvia with delight.
    Mrs. Deeds came out of Mrs. Percy’s front door just then. She looked pale, and her hand still clutched the pearl collar around her throat. She leaned heavily on her husband’s arm and looked, as the saying goes, as if she had seen a ghost.
    “Most astonishing, most astonishing,” she repeated several times, fanning herself despite the cold of the early evening. “Who is this Mickey? Have you a past, Mr. Deeds?” she asked in an unpleasant voice.
    “Never, my love!” he protested, quaking. Even as their carriage drove off, we could hear her voice, loud and demanding to know who his trollop was.
    “Poor Mr. Deeds.” Mr. Barnum sighed. “Thank heavens my own wife, Charity, has not a covetous nature.” He heartily shook my hand and trudged off into the night.
    Mr. Phips was the next to leave, having been detained, it seemed, by the considerable number of buttons on his overcoat.
    “My sincere regard to your father, young woman,” he said to me. “It was a pleasure to make your acquaintance, though I fear this séance was a disappointment.”
    “You had a message from your wife,” Sylvia pointed out.
    “I doubt it,” he said. “Emily was never so brief in her statements. No, this has been a great disappointment. The past should be buried with the dead, not bandied about for a game.” He seemed angry, and when he turned down the sidewalk he was muttering.
    Miss Amelia Snodgrass was the last to come out of the house. She said not a word to us as she glided by in her brown hat and coat.
    “Marriage,” whispered Sylvia to herself as we began our walk home. “Father wishes it,” she said to me.
    “Don’t you require a beau first?” I asked, teasing.
    “Quite right, Louy.”
    Boston, Dec. 2, 1856
    Dearest Father,
    I am well and happy and earnestly going about the business of earning my living. Independence suits me, though I miss my own beloved family, and count it a good day when the activities of the hours bring you foremost to my thoughts. Today was such a day. Sylvia and I (she sends her regards) attended a séance given by Mrs. Percy of Arlington Street. Fear not, kind parent, I have not succumbed to this new pastime but went as a protector of Sylvia, to see if I might mitigate the effects of this, her newest occupation—speaking with the dearly departed.
    Mrs. Agatha Percy, our crystal gazer, has trained well for this calling, and I suspect she is not unfamiliar with the dramas between Sylvia and her mother in the Shattuck household, for her one-word message to Sylvia was this: Marry! And I am to have a surprise visitor.
    None of this will be of interest, of course, to a man whose intelligence is of the highest, who knows “humbug” when he hears it. Humbug introduces my next little piece of information. I have met Mr. Phineas T. Barnum, who was at the séance, and he spoke so highly of you, our own philosopher! He asks if you will consider appearing at his American Museum. I did not encourage him in this expectation.
    I am wearing the birthday pin you gave me, and send a heart full of love to its giver.
    Good-bye, from your ever-loving child,
              
Louisa
    I stitched at the reverend’s shirts the next morning till my back ached and I longed for fresh air. I allowed my mind towander over the events of the previous day, thinking of modest Miss Snodgrass, blustering but jovial Mr. Barnum, the loud Mrs. Deeds and her cringing husband, and the heroic Mr. Phips. What an assorted group Mrs. Percy had gathered!
    A running stitch allows you to place six stitches at once on the needle, thus saving considerable time and speeding the work. My seams that morning were all running stitches, though they are not as fine as French stitches. I was impatient with the work and eager for life, for activity and event. I was bored, kind reader. Sewing is a fine activity, but not for me. And so I let my mind wander back to