He gave the laugh of a veteran _habitué_ of Boston. “Tremont Row? No. Wait till I show you Washington Street to-morrow. There's the Museum,” he said, pointing to the long row of globed lights on the façade of the building. “Here we are in Scollay Square. There's Hanover Street; there's Cornhill; Court crooks down that way; there's Pemberton Square.” His familiarity with these names estranged him to her again; she clung the closer to his arm, and caught her breath nervously as they turned in with the crowd that was climbing the stairs to the box-office of the theatre. Bartley left her a moment, while he pushed his way up to the little window and bought the tickets. “First-rate seats,” he said, coming back to her, and taking her hand under his arm again, “and a great piece of luck. They were just returned for sale by the man in front of me, or I should have had to take something 'way up in the gallery. There's a regular jam. These are right in the centre of the parquet.” Marcia did not know what the parquet was; she heard its name with the certainty that but for Bartley she should not be equal to it. All her village pride was quelled; she had only enough self-control to act upon Bartley's instructions not to give herself away by any conviction of rusticity. They passed in through the long, colonnaded vestibule, with its paintings, and plaster casts, and rows of birds and animals in glass cases on either side, and she gave scarcely a glance at any of those objects, endeared by association, if not by intrinsic beauty, to the Boston play-goer. Gulliver, with the Liliputians swarming upon him; the painty-necked ostriches and pelicans; the mummied mermaid under a glass bell; the governors' portraits; the stuffed elephant; Washington crossing the Delaware; Cleopatra applying the asp; Sir William Pepperell, at full length, on canvas; and the pagan months and seasons in plaster,--if all these are, indeed, the subjects,--were dim phantasmagoria amid which she and Bartley moved scarcely more real. The usher, in his dress-coat, ran up the aisle to take their checks, and led them down to their seats; half a dozen elegant people stood to let them into their places; the theatre was filled with faces. At Portland, where she saw the “Lady of Lyons,” with her father, three-quarters of the house was empty. Bartley only had time to lean over and whisper, “The place is packed with Beacon Street swells,--it's a regular field night,”--when the bell tinkled and the curtain rose.