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+Project Gutenberg's By the Light of the Soul, by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: By the Light of the Soul
+       A Novel
+
+Author: Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
+
+Illustrator: Harold M. Brett
+
+Release Date: January 21, 2006 [EBook #17564]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BY THE LIGHT OF THE SOUL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jeff Kaylin and Andrew Sly
+
+
+
+
+
+
+By the Light of the Soul
+
+A Novel
+
+By
+Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
+
+
+Author of
+"The Debtor" "The Portion of Labor"
+"Jerome" "A New England Nun"
+Etc. etc.
+
+
+Illustrations by
+Harold M. Brett
+
+
+New York and London
+Harper & Brothers Publishers
+1907
+
+
+
+Copyright, 1906, by Harper & Brothers.
+All rights reserved.
+Published January, 1907.
+
+
+
+To Harriet and Carolyn Alden
+
+
+
+Chapter I
+
+
+Maria Edgham, who was a very young girl, sat in the church vestry
+beside a window during the weekly prayer-meeting.
+
+As was the custom, a young man had charge of the meeting, and he
+stood, with a sort of embarrassed dignity, on the little platform
+behind the desk. He was reading a selection from the Bible. Maria
+heard him drone out in a scarcely audible voice: "Whom the Lord
+loveth, He chasteneth," and then she heard, in a quick response, a
+soft sob from the seat behind her. She knew who sobbed: Mrs. Jasper
+Cone, who had lost her baby the week before. The odor of crape came
+in Maria's face, making a species of discordance with the fragrance
+of the summer night, which came in at the open window. Maria felt
+irritated by it, and she wondered why Mrs. Cone felt so badly about
+the loss of her baby. It had always seemed to Maria a most
+unattractive child, large-headed, flabby, and mottled, with ever an
+open mouth of resistance, and a loud wail of opposition to existence
+in general. Maria felt sure that she could never have loved such a
+baby. Even the unfrequent smiles of that baby had not been winning;
+they had seemed reminiscent of the commonest and coarsest things of
+life, rather than of heavenly innocence. Maria gazed at the young man
+on the platform, who presently bent his head devoutly, and after
+saying, "Let us pray," gave utterance to an unintelligible flood of
+supplication intermingled with information to the Lord of the state
+of things on the earth, and the needs of his people. Maria wondered
+why, when God knew everything, Leon Barber told him about it, and she
+also hoped that God heard better than most of the congregation did.
+But she looked with a timid wonder of admiration at the young man
+himself. He was so much older than she, that her romantic fancies,
+which even at such an early age had seized upon her, never included
+him. She as yet dreamed only of other dreamers like herself,
+Wollaston Lee, for instance, who went to the same school, and was
+only a year older. Maria had made sure that he was there, by a
+glance, directly after she had entered, then she never glanced at him
+again, but she wove him into her dreams along with the sweetness of
+the midsummer night, and the morally tuneful atmosphere of the place.
+She was utterly innocent, her farthest dreams were white, but she
+dreamed. She gazed out of the window through which came the wind on
+her little golden-cropped head (she wore her hair short) in cool
+puffs, and she saw great, plumy masses of shadow, themselves like the
+substance of which dreams were made. The trees grew thickly down the
+slope, which the church crowned, and at the bottom of the slope
+rushed the river, which she heard like a refrain through the
+intermittent soughing of the trees. A whippoorwill was singing
+somewhere out there, and the katydids shrieked so high that they
+almost surmounted dreams. She could smell wild grapes and pine and
+other mingled odors of unknown herbs, and the earth itself. There had
+been a hard shower that afternoon, and the earth still seemed to cry
+out with pleasure because of it. Maria had worn her old shoes to
+church, lest she spoil her best ones; but she wore her pretty pink
+gingham gown, and her hat with a wreath of rosebuds, and she felt to
+the utmost the attractiveness of her appearance. She, however, felt
+somewhat conscience-stricken on account of the pink gingham gown. It
+was a new one, and her mother had been obliged to have it made by a
+dress-maker, and had paid three dollars for that, beside the
+trimmings, which were lace and ribbon. Maria wore the gown without
+her mother's knowledge. She had in fact stolen down the backstairs on
+that account, and gone out the south door in order that her mother
+should not see her. Maria's mother was ill lately, and had not been
+able to go to church, nor even to perform her usual tasks. She had
+always made Maria's gowns herself until this pink gingham.
+
+Maria's mother was originally from New England, and her conscience
+was abnormally active. Her father was of New Jersey, and his
+conscience, while no one would venture to say that it was defective,
+did not in the least interfere with his enjoyment of life.
+
+"Oh, well, Abby," her father would reply, easily, when her mother
+expressed her distress that she was unable to work as she had done,
+"we shall manage somehow. Don't worry, Abby." Worry in another
+irritated him even more than in himself.
+
+"Well, Maria can't help much while she is in school. She is a
+delicate little thing, and sometimes I am worried about her."
+
+"Oh, Maria can't be expected to do much while she is in school," her
+father said, easily. "We'll manage somehow, only for Heaven's sake
+don't worry."
+
+Then Maria's father had taken his hat and gone down street. He always
+went down street of an evening. Maria, who had been sitting on the
+porch, had heard every word of the conversation which had been
+carried on in the sitting-room that very evening. It did not alarm
+her at all because her mother considered her delicate. Instead, she
+had a vague sense of distinction on account of it. It was as if she
+realized being a flower rather than a vegetable. She thought of it
+that night as she sat in meeting. She glanced across at a girl who
+went to the same school--a large, heavily built child with a
+coarseness of grain showing in every feature--and a sense of
+superiority at once exalted and humiliated her. She said to herself
+that she was much finer and prettier than Lottie Sears, but that she
+ought to be thankful and not proud because she was. She felt vain,
+but she was sorry because of her vanity. She knew how charming her
+pink gingham gown was, but she knew that she ought to have asked her
+mother if she might wear it. She knew that her mother would scold
+her--she had a ready tongue--and she realized that she would deserve
+it. She had put on the pink gingham on account of Wollaston Lee, who
+was usually at prayer-meeting. That, of course, she could not tell
+her mother. There are some things too sacred for little girls to tell
+their mothers. She wondered if Wollaston would ask leave to walk home
+with her. She had seen a boy step out of a waiting file at the vestry
+door to a blushing girl, and had seen the girl, with a coy readiness,
+slip her hand into the waiting crook of his arm, and walk off, and
+she had wondered when such bliss would come to her. It never had. She
+wondered if the pink gingham might bring it to pass to-night. The
+pink gingham was as the mating plumage of a bird. All unconsciously
+she glanced sideways over the fall of lace-trimmed pink ruffles at
+her slender shoulders at Wollaston Lee. He was gazing straight at
+Miss Slome, Miss Ida Slome, who was the school-teacher, and his young
+face wore an expression of devotion. Maria's eyes followed his; she
+did not dream of being jealous; Miss Slome seemed too incalculably
+old to her for that. She was not so very old, in her early thirties,
+but the early thirties to a young girl are venerable. Miss Ida Slome
+was called a beauty. She, as well as Maria, wore a pink dress, at
+which Maria privately wondered. The teacher seemed to her too old to
+wear pink. She thought she ought wear black like her mother. Miss
+Slome's pink dress had knots of black velvet about it which
+accentuated it, even as Miss Slome's face was accentuated by the
+clear darkness of her eyes and the black puff of her hair above her
+finely arched brows. Her cheeks were of the sweetest red--not pink
+but red--which seemed a further tone of the pink of her attire, and
+she wore a hat encircled with a wreath of red roses. Maria thought
+that she should have worn a bonnet. Maria felt an odd sort of
+instinctive antagonism for her. She wondered why Wollaston looked at
+the teacher so instead of at herself. She gave her head a charming
+cant, and glanced again, but the boy still had his eyes fixed upon
+the elder woman, with that rapt expression which is seen only in the
+eyes of a boy upon an older woman, and which is primeval, involving
+the adoration and awe of womanhood itself. The boy had not reached
+the age when he was capable of falling in love, but he had reached
+the age of adoration, and there was nothing in little Maria Edgham in
+her pink gingham, with her shy, sidelong glances, to excite it. She
+was only a girl, the other was a goddess. His worship of the teacher
+interfered with Wollaston's studies. He was wondering as he sat there
+if he could not walk home with her that night, if by chance any _man_
+would be in waiting for her. How he hated that imaginary man. He
+glanced around, and as he did so, the door opened softly, and Harry
+Edgham, Maria's father, entered. He was very late, but he had waited
+in the vestibule, in order not to attract attention, until the people
+began singing a hymn, "Jesus, Lover of my Soul," to the tune of "When
+the Swallows Homeward Fly." He was a distinctly handsome man. He
+looked much younger than Maria's mother, his wife. People said that
+Harry Edgham's wife might, from her looks, have been his mother. She
+was a tall, dark, rather harsh-featured woman. In her youth she had
+had a beauty of color; now that had passed, and she was sallow, and
+she disdained to try to make the most of herself, to soften her stern
+face by a judicious arrangement of her still plentiful hair. She
+strained it back from her hollow temples, and fastened it securely on
+the top of her head. She had a scorn of fashions in hair or dress
+except for Maria. "Maria is young," she said, with an ineffable
+expression of love and pride, and a tincture of defiance, as if she
+were defying her own age, in the ownership of the youth of her child.
+She was like a rose-bush which possessed a perfect bud of beauty, and
+her own long dwelling upon the earth could on account of that be
+ignored. But Maria's father was different. He was quite openly a vain
+man. He was handsome, and he held fast to his youth, and would not
+let it pass by. His hair, curling slightly over temples boyish in
+outlines, although marked, was not in the least gray. His mustache
+was carefully trimmed. After he had seated himself unobtrusively in a
+rear seat, he looked around for his daughter, who saw him with
+dismay. "Now," she thought, her chances of Wollaston Lee walking home
+with her were lost. Father would go home with her. Her mother had
+often admonished Harry Edgham that when Maria went to meeting alone,
+he ought to be in waiting to go home with her, and he obeyed his
+wife, generally speaking, unless her wishes conflicted too
+strenuously with his own. He did not in the least object to-night,
+for instance, to dropping late into the prayer-meeting. There were
+not many people there, and all the windows were open, and there was
+something poetical and sweet about the atmosphere. Besides, the
+singing was unusually good for such a place. Above all the other
+voices arose Ida Slome's sweet soprano. She sang like a bird; her
+voice, although not powerful, was thrillingly sweet. Harry looked at
+her as she sang, and thought how pretty she was, but there was no
+disloyalty to his wife in the look. He was, in fact, not that sort of
+man. While he did not love his Abby with utter passion, all the women
+of the world could not have swerved him from her.
+
+Harry Edgham came of perhaps the best old family in that vicinity,
+Edgham itself had been named for it, and while he partook of that
+degeneracy which comes to the descendants of the large old families,
+while it is as inevitable that they should run out, so to speak, as
+flowers which have flourished too many years in a garden, whose soil
+they have exhausted, he had not lost the habit of rectitude of his
+ancestors. Virtue was a hereditary trait of the Edghams.
+
+Harry Edgham looked at Ida Slome with as innocent admiration as
+another woman might have done. Then he looked again at his daughter's
+little flower-like head, and a feeling of love made his heart warm.
+Maria could sing herself, but she was afraid. Once in a while she
+droned out a sweet, husky note, then her delicate cheeks flushed
+crimson as if all the people had heard her, when they had not heard
+at all, and she turned her head, and gazed out of the open window at
+the plumed darkness. She thought again with annoyance how she would
+have to go with her father, and Wollaston Lee would not dare accost
+her, even if he were so disposed; then she took a genuine pleasure in
+the window space of sweet night and the singing. Her passions were
+yet so young that they did not disturb her long if interrupted. She
+was also always conscious of the prettiness of her appearance, and
+she loved herself for it with that love which brings previsions of
+unknown joys of the future. Her charming little face, in her
+realization of it, was as the untried sword of the young warrior
+which is to bring him all the glory of earth for which his soul longs.
+
+After the meeting was closed, and Harry Edgham, with his little
+daughter lagging behind him with covert eyes upon Wollaston Lee, went
+out of the vestry, a number inquired for his wife. "Oh, she is very
+comfortable," he replied, with his cheerful optimism which solaced
+him in all vicissitudes, except the single one of actually witnessing
+the sorrow and distress of those who belonged to him.
+
+"I heard," said one man, who was noted in the place for his
+outspokenness, which would have been brutal had it not been for his
+naivete--"I heard she wasn't going to get out again."
+
+"Nonsense," replied Harry Edgham.
+
+"Then she is?"
+
+"Of course she is. She would have come to meeting to-night if it had
+not been so damp."
+
+"Well, I'm glad to hear it," said the man, with a curious
+congratulation which gave the impression of disappointment.
+
+Little Maria Edgham and her father went up the village street; Harry
+Edgham walked quite swiftly. "I guess we had better hurry along," he
+observed, "your mother is all alone."
+
+Maria tagged behind him. Her father had to stop at a grocery-store on
+the corner of the street where they lived, to get a bag of peaches
+which he had left there. "I got some peaches on my way," he
+explained, "and I didn't want to carry them to church. I thought your
+mother might like them. The doctor said she might eat fruit." With
+that he darted into the store with the agility of a boy.
+
+Maria stood on the dusty sidewalk in the glare of electric light, and
+waited. Her pink gingham dress was quite short, but she held it up
+daintily, like a young lady, pinching a fold between her little thumb
+and forefinger. Mrs. Jasper Cone, with another woman, came up, and to
+Maria's astonishment, Mrs. Cone stopped, clasped her in her arms and
+kissed her. As she did so, she sobbed, and Maria felt her tears of
+bereavement on her cheek with an odd mixture of pity and awe and
+disgust. "If my Minnie had--lived, she might have grown up to be like
+her," she gasped out to her friend. "I always thought she looked like
+her." The friend made a sympathetic murmur of assent. Mrs. Cone
+kissed Maria again, holding her little form to her crape-trimmed
+bosom almost convulsively, then the two passed on. Maria heard her
+say again that she always had thought the baby looked like her, and
+she felt humiliated. She looked after the poor mother's streaming
+black veil with resentment. Then Miss Ida Slome passed by, and
+Wollaston Lee was clinging to her arm, pressing as closely to her
+side as he dared. Miss Slome saw Maria, and spoke in her sweet, crisp
+tone. "Good-evening, Maria," said she.
+
+Maria stood gazing after them. Her father emerged from the store with
+the bag of peaches dangling from his hand. He looked incongruous. Her
+father had too much the air of a gentleman to carry a paper bag. "I
+do hope your mother will like these peaches," he said.
+
+Maria walked along with her father, and she thought with pain and
+scorn how singular it was for a boy to want to go home with an old
+woman like Miss Slome, when there were little girls like her.
+
+
+
+Chapter II
+
+
+Maria and her father entered the house, which was not far. It was a
+quite new Queen Anne cottage of the better class, situated in a small
+lot of land, and with other houses very near on either side. There
+was a great clump of hydrangeas on the small smooth lawn in front,
+and on the piazza stood a small table, covered with a dainty white
+cloth trimmed with lace, on which were laid, in ostentatious
+neatness, the evening paper and a couple of magazines. There were
+chairs, and palms in jardinieres stood on either side of the flight
+of wooden steps.
+
+Maria's mother was, however, in the house, seated beside the
+sitting-room table, on which stood a kerosene lamp with a singularly
+ugly shade. She was darning stockings. She held the stocking in her
+left hand, and drew the thread through regularly. Her mouth was
+tightly closed, which was indicative both of decision of character
+and pain. Her countenance looked sallower than ever. She looked up at
+her husband and little girl entering. "Well," she said, "so you've
+got home."
+
+"I've brought you some peaches, Abby," said Harry Edgham. He laid the
+bag on the table, and looked anxiously at his wife. "How do you feel
+now?" said he.
+
+"I feel well enough," said she. Her reply sounded ill-humored, but
+she did not intend it to be so. She was far from being ill-humored.
+She was thinking of her husband's kindness in bringing the peaches.
+But she looked at the paper bag on the table sharply. "If there is a
+soft peach in that bag," said she, "and there's likely to be, it will
+stain the table-cover, and I can never get it out."
+
+Harry hastily removed the paper bag from the table, which was covered
+with a white linen spread trimmed with lace and embroidered.
+
+"Don't you feel as if you could eat one to-night? You didn't eat much
+supper, and I thought maybe--"
+
+"I don't believe I can to-night, but I shall like them to-morrow,"
+replied Mrs. Edgham, in a voice soft with apology. Then she looked
+fairly for the first time at Maria, who had purposely remained behind
+her father, and her voice immediately hardened. "Maria, come here,"
+said she.
+
+Maria obeyed. She left the shelter of her father's broad back, and
+stood before her mother, in her pink gingham dress, a miserable
+little penitent, whose penitence was not of a high order. The
+sweetness of looking pretty was still in her soul, although Wollaston
+Lee had not gone home with her.
+
+Maria's mother regarded her with a curious expression compounded of
+pride and almost fierce disapproval. Harry went precipitately out of
+the room with the paper bag of peaches. "You didn't wear that new
+pink gingham dress that I had to hire made, trimmed with all that
+lace and ribbon, to meeting to-night?" said Maria's mother.
+
+Maria said nothing. It seemed to her that such an obvious fact
+scarcely needed words of assent.
+
+"Damp as it is, too," said her mother.
+
+Mrs. Edgham extended a lean, sallow hand and felt of the dainty
+fabric. "It is just as limp as a rag," said she, "about spoiled."
+
+"I held it up," said Maria then, with feeble extenuation.
+
+"Held it up!" repeated her mother, with scorn.
+
+"I thought maybe you wouldn't care."
+
+"Wouldn't care! That was the reason why you went out the other door
+then. I wondered why you did. Putting on that new pink gingham dress
+that I had to hire made, trimmed with all that lace and ribbon, and
+wearing it out in the evening, damp as it is to-night! I don't see
+what you were thinking of, Maria Edgham."
+
+Maria looked down disconsolately at the lace-trimmed ruffles on her
+skirt, but even then she thought how pretty it was, and how pretty
+she must look herself standing so forlornly before her mother. She
+wondered how her mother could scold her when she was her own
+daughter, and looked so sweet. She still felt the damp coolness of
+the night on her cheeks, and realized a bloom on them like that of a
+wild rose.
+
+But Mrs. Edgham continued. She had the high temper of the women of
+her race who had brought up great families to toil and fight for the
+Commonwealth, and she now brought it to bear upon petty things in
+lieu of great ones. Besides, her illness made her irritable. She
+found a certain relief from her constant pain in scolding this child
+of her heart, whom secretly she admired as she admired no other
+living thing. Even as she scolded, she regarded her in the pink dress
+with triumph. "I should think you would be ashamed of yourself, Maria
+Edgham," said she, in a high voice.
+
+Harry Edgham, who had deposited the peaches in the ice-box, and had
+been about to enter the room, retreated. He went out the other door
+himself, and round upon the piazza, when presently the smoke of his
+cigar stole into the room. Then Mrs. Edgham included him in her wrath.
+
+"You and your father are just alike," said she, bitterly. "You both
+of you will do just what you want to, whether or no. He will smoke,
+though he knows it makes me worse, besides costing more than he can
+afford, and you will put on your best dress, without asking leave,
+and wear it out in a damp night, and spoil it."
+
+Maria continued to stand still, and her mother to regard her with
+that odd mixture of worshipful love and chiding. Suddenly Mrs. Edgham
+closed her mouth more tightly.
+
+"Stand round here," said she, violently. "Let me unbutton your dress.
+I don't see how you fastened it up yourself, anyway; you wouldn't
+have thought you could, if it hadn't been for deceiving your mother.
+You would have come down to me to do it, the way you always do. You
+have got it buttoned wrong, anyway. You must have been a sight for
+the folks who sat behind you. Well, it serves you right. Stand round
+here."
+
+"I am sorry," said Maria then. She wondered whether the wrong
+fastening had showed much through the slats of the settee.
+
+Her mother unfastened, with fingers that were at once gentle and
+nervous, the pearl buttons on the back of the dress. "Take your arms
+out," said she to Maria. Maria cast a glance at the window. "There's
+nobody out there but your father," said Mrs. Edgham, harshly, "take
+your arms out."
+
+Maria took her arms out of the fluffy mass and stood revealed in her
+little, scantily trimmed underwaist, a small, childish figure, with
+the utmost delicacy of articulation as to shoulder-blades and neck.
+Maria was thin to the extreme, but her bones were so small that she
+was charming even in her thinness. Her little, beautifully modelled
+arms were as charming as a fairy's.
+
+"Now slip off your skirt," ordered her mother, and Maria complied and
+stood in her little white petticoat, with another glance of the
+exaggerated modesty of little girlhood at the window.
+
+"Now," said her mother, "you go and hang this up in the kitchen where
+it is warm, on that nail on the outside door, and maybe some of the
+creases will come out. I've heard they would. I hope so, for I've got
+about all I want to do without ironing this dress all over."
+
+Maria gazed at her mother with sudden compunction and anxious love.
+After all, she loved her mother down to the depths of her childish
+heart; it was only that long custom had so inured her to the loving
+that she did not always realize the warmth of her heart because of
+it. "Do you feel sick to-night mother?" she whispered.
+
+"No sicker than usual," replied her mother. Then she drew the
+delicate little figure close to her, and kissed her with a sort of
+passion. "May the Lord look out for you," she said, "if you should
+happen to outlive me! I don't know what would become of you, Maria,
+you are so heedless, wearing your best things every day, and
+everything."
+
+Maria's face paled. "Mother, you aren't any worse?" said she, in a
+terrified whisper.
+
+"No, I am not a mite worse. Run along, child, and hang up your dress,
+then go to bed; it's after nine o'clock."
+
+It did not take much at that time to reassure Maria. She had
+inherited something of the optimism of her father. She carried her
+pink dress into the kitchen, with wary eyes upon the windows, and
+hung it up as her mother had directed. On her return she paused a
+moment at the foot of the stairs in the hall, between the dining-room
+and sitting-room. Then, obeying an impulse, she ran into the
+sitting-room and threw her soft little arms around her mother's neck.
+"I'm real sorry I wore that dress without asking you, mother," she
+said. "I won't again, honest."
+
+"Well, I hope you will remember," replied her mother. "If you wear
+the best you have common you will never have anything." Her tone was
+chiding, but the look on her face was infinitely caressing. She
+thought privately that never was such a darling as Maria. She looked
+at the softly flushed little face, with its topknot of gold, the
+delicate fairness of the neck, and slender arms, and she had a
+rapture of something more than possession. The beauty of the child
+irradiated her very soul, the beauty and the goodness, for Maria
+never disobeyed but she was sorry afterwards, and somehow glorified
+faults seem lovelier than cold virtues. "Well, run up-stairs to bed,"
+said she. "Be careful of your lamp."
+
+When Maria was in her own room she set the lamp on the dresser and
+gazed upon her face reflected in the mirror. That was her nightly
+custom, and might have been regarded as a sort of fetich worship of
+self. Nothing, in fact, could have been lovelier than that face of
+childish innocence and beauty, with the soft rays of the lamp
+illuminating it. Her blue eyes seemed to fairly give forth light, the
+soft pink on her cheeks deepened until it was like the heart of a
+rose. She opened her exquisitely curved lips, and smiled at herself
+in a sort of ecstasy. She turned her head this way and that in order
+to get different effects. She pulled the little golden fleece of hair
+farther over her forehead. She pushed it back, revealing the bold yet
+delicate outlines of her temples. She thought how glad she should be
+when her hair was grown. She had had an illness two years before, and
+her mother had judged it best to have her hair cut short. It was now
+just long enough to hang over her ears, curving slightly forward like
+the old-fashioned earlocks. She had her hair tied back from her face
+with a pink ribbon in a bow on top of her head. She loosened this
+ribbon, and shook her hair quite loose. She peeped out of the golden
+radiance of it at herself, then she shook it back. She was charming
+either way. She was undeveloped, but as yet not a speck of the mildew
+of earth had touched her. She was flawless, irreproachable, except
+for the knowledge of her beauty, through heredity, in her heart,
+which was older than she herself.
+
+Suddenly Maria, after a long gaze of rapture at her face in the
+glass, gave a great start. She turned and saw her mother standing in
+the door looking at her.
+
+Maria, with an involuntary impulse of concealment, seized her brush,
+and began brushing her hair. "I was just brushing my hair," she
+murmured. She felt as guilty as if she had committed a crime.
+
+Her mother continued to look at her sternly. "There isn't any use in
+your trying to deceive me, Maria," said she. "I am ashamed that a
+child of mine should be so silly. To stand looking at yourself that
+way! You needn't think you are so pretty, because you are not. You
+don't begin to be as good-looking as Amy Long."
+
+Maria felt a cold chill strike her. She had herself had doubts as to
+her superior beauty when Amy Long was concerned.
+
+"You don't begin to be as good-looking as your aunt Maria was at your
+age, and you know yourself how she looks now. Nobody would dream for
+a minute of calling her even ordinary-looking," her mother continued
+in a pitiless voice.
+
+Maria shuddered. She seemed to see, instead of her own fair little
+face in the glass, an elderly one as sallow as her mother's, but
+without the traces of beauty which her mother's undoubtedly had. She
+saw the thin, futile frizzes which her aunt Maria affected; she saw
+the receding chin, indicative at once of degeneracy and obstinacy;
+she saw the blunt nose between the lumpy cheeks.
+
+"Your aunt Maria looked very much as you do when she was your age,"
+her mother went on, with the calm cruelty of an inquisitor.
+
+Maria looked at her, her mouth was quivering. "Did I look like Mrs.
+Jasper Cone's baby that died last week when I was a baby?" said she.
+
+"Who said you did?" inquired her mother, unguardedly.
+
+"She did. She came up behind me with Mrs. Elliot when I was waiting
+for father to get the peaches, and she said her baby that died looked
+just like me; she had always thought so."
+
+"That Cone baby look like you!" repeated Maria's mother. "Well, one's
+own always looks different to them, I suppose."
+
+"Then you don't think it did?" said Maria. Tears actually stood in
+her beautiful blue eyes.
+
+"No, I don't," replied her mother, abruptly. "Nobody in their sober
+senses could think so. I am sorry poor Mrs. Cone lost her baby. I
+know how I felt when my first baby died, but as for saying it looked
+like you--"
+
+"Then you don't think it did, mother?"
+
+"It was one of the homliest babies I ever laid my eyes on, poor
+little thing, if it did die," said Maria's mother, emphatically. She
+was completely disarmed by this time. But when she saw Maria glance
+again at the glass she laid hold of her moral weapons, the wielding
+of which she believed to be for the best spiritual good of her child.
+"Your aunt Maria was very much better looking than you at her age,"
+she repeated, firmly. Then, at the sight of the renewed quiver around
+the sensitive little mouth her heart melted. "Get out of your clothes
+and into your night-gown, and get to bed, child," said she. "You look
+well enough. If you only behave as well as you look, that is all that
+is necessary."
+
+
+
+Chapter III
+
+
+Maria fell asleep that night with the full assurance that she had not
+been mistaken concerning the beauty of the little face which she had
+seen in the looking-glass. All that troubled her was the
+consideration that her aunt Maria, whose homely face seemed to glare
+out of the darkness at her, might have looked just as she did when
+she was her age. She hoped, and then she hoped that the hope was not
+wicked, that she might die young rather than live to look like her
+aunt Maria. She pictured with a sort of pleasurable horror, what a
+lovely little waxen-image she would look now, laid away in a nest of
+white flowers. She had only just begun to doze, when she awoke with a
+great start. Her father had opened her door, and stood calling her.
+
+"Maria," he said, in an agitated voice.
+
+Maria sat up in bed. "Oh, father, what is it?" said she, and a vague
+horror chilled her.
+
+"Get up, and slip on something, and go into your mother's room," said
+her father, in a gasping sort of voice. "I've got to go for the
+doctor."
+
+Maria put one slim little foot out of bed. "Oh, father," she said,
+"is mother sick?"
+
+"Yes, she is very sick," replied her father. His voice sounded almost
+savage. It was as if he were furious with his wife for being ill,
+furious with Maria, with life, and death itself. In reality he was
+torn almost to madness with anxiety. "Slip on something so you won't
+catch cold," said he, in his irritated voice. "I don't want another
+one down."
+
+Maria ran to her closet and pulled out a little pink wrapper. "Oh,
+father, is mother very sick?" she whispered again.
+
+"Yes, she is very sick. I am going to have another doctor to-morrow,"
+replied her father, still in that furious, excited voice, which the
+sick woman must have heard.
+
+"What shall I--" began Maria, but her father, running down the
+stairs, cut her short.
+
+"Do nothing," said he. "Just go in there and stay with her. And don't
+you talk. Don't you speak a word to her. Go right in." With that the
+front door slammed.
+
+Maria went tiptoeing into her mother's room, still shaking from head
+to foot, and her blue eyes seeming to protrude from her little white
+face. Even before she entered her mother's room she became conscious
+of a noise, something between a wail and a groan. It was
+indescribably terrifying. It was like nothing which she had ever
+heard before. It did not seem possible that her mother, that anything
+human, in fact, was making such a noise, and yet no animal could have
+made it, for it was articulate. Her mother was in fact both praying
+and repeating verses of Scripture, in that awful voice which was no
+longer capable of normal speech, but was compounded of wail and
+groan. Every sentence seemed to begin with a groan, and ended with a
+long-drawn-out wail. Maria went close to her mother's bed and stood
+looking at her. Her poor little face would have torn her mother's
+heart with its piteous terror, had she herself not been in such agony.
+
+Maria did not speak. She remembered what her father had said. As her
+mother lay there, stretched out stiff and stark, almost as if she
+were dead, Maria glanced around the room as if for help. She caught
+sight of a bottle of cologne on the dresser, one which she had given
+her mother herself the Christmas before; she had bought it out of her
+little savings of pocket-money. Maria went unsteadily over to the
+dresser and got the cologne. She also opened a drawer and got out a
+clean handkerchief. She became conscious that her mother's eyes were
+upon her, even although she never ceased for a moment her cries of
+agony.
+
+"What--r you do--g?" asked her mother, in her dreadful voice.
+
+"Just getting some cologne to put on your head, to make you feel
+better, mother," replied Maria, piteously. She thought she must
+answer her mother's question in spite of her father's prohibition.
+
+Her mother seemed to take no further notice; she turned her face to
+the wall. "Have--mercy upon me, O Lord, according to Thy loving
+kindness, according to the multitude of Thy tender mercies," she
+shrieked out. Then the words ended with a long-drawn-out "Oh--oh--"
+
+Had Maria not been familiar with the words, she could not have
+understood them. Not a consonant was fairly sounded, the vowels were
+elided. She went, feeling as if her legs were sticks, close to her
+mother's bed, and opened the cologne bottle with hands which shook
+like an old man's with the palsy. She poured some cologne on the
+handkerchief and a pungent odor filled the room. She laid the wet
+handkerchief on her mother's sallow forehead, then she recoiled, for
+her mother, at the shock of the coldness, experienced a new and
+almost insufferable spasm of pain. "Let--me alone!" she wailed, and
+it was like the howl of a dog.
+
+Maria slunk back to the dresser with the handkerchief and the cologne
+bottle, then she returned to her mother's bedside and seated herself
+there in a rocking-chair. A lamp was burning over on the dresser, but
+it was turned low; her mother's convulsed face seemed to waver in
+unaccountable shadows. Maria sat, not speaking a word, but quivering
+from head to foot, and her mother kept up her prayers and her verses
+from Scripture. Maria herself began to pray in her heart. She said it
+over and over to herself, in unutterable appeal and terror, "O Lord,
+please make mother well, please make her well." She prayed on,
+although the groaning wail never ceased.
+
+Suddenly her mother turned and looked at her, and spoke quite
+naturally. "Is that you?" she said.
+
+"Yes, mother. I'm so sorry you are sick. Father has gone for the
+doctor."
+
+"You haven't got on enough," said her mother, still in her natural
+voice.
+
+"I've got on my wrapper."
+
+"That isn't enough, getting up right out of bed so. Go and get my
+white crocheted shawl out of the closet and put it over your
+shoulders."
+
+Maria obeyed. While she was doing so her mother resumed her cries.
+She said the first half of the twenty-third psalm, then she looked
+again at Maria seating herself beside her, and said, in her own
+voice, wrested as it were by love from the very depths of mortal
+agony. "Have you got your stockings on?" said she.
+
+"Yes, ma'am, and my slippers."
+
+Her mother said no more to her. She resumed her attention to her own
+misery with an odd, small gesture of despair. The cries never ceased.
+Maria still prayed. It seemed to her that her father would never
+return with the doctor. It seemed to her, in spite of her prayer,
+that all hope of relief lay in the doctor, and not in the Lord. It
+seemed to her that the doctor must help her mother. At last she heard
+wheels, and, in her joy, she spoke in spite of her father's
+injunction. "There's the doctor now," said she. "I guess he's
+bringing father home with him."
+
+Again her mother's eyes opened with a look of intelligence, again she
+spoke in her natural voice. She looked towards the clothes which she
+had worn during the day, on a chair. "Put my clothes in the closet,"
+said she, but her voice strained terribly on the last word.
+
+Maria flew, and hung up her mother's clothes in the closet just
+before her father and the doctor entered the room. As she did so, the
+tears came for the first time. She had a ready imagination. She
+thought to herself that her mother might never put on those clothes
+again. She kissed the folds of her mother's dress passionately, and
+emerged from the closet, the tears streaming down her face, all the
+muscles of which were convulsed. The doctor, who was a young man,
+with a handsome, rather hard face, glanced at her before even looking
+at the moaning woman in the bed. He said something in a low tone to
+her father, who immediately addressed her.
+
+"Go right into your own room, and stay there until I tell you to come
+out, Maria," said he, still in that angry voice, which seemed to have
+no reason in it. It was the dumb anger of the race against Fate,
+which included and overran individuals in its way, like Juggernaut.
+
+At her father's voice, Maria gave a hysterical sob and fled. A sense
+of injury tore her heart, as well as her anxiety. She flung herself
+face downward on her bed and wept. After a while she turned over on
+her back and looked at the room. Not one little thing in the whole
+apartment but served to rack her very soul with the consideration of
+her mother's love, which she was perhaps about to lose forever. The
+dainty curtains at the windows, the scarf on the dresser, the chintz
+cover on a chair--every one her mother had planned. She could not
+remember how much her mother had scolded her, only how much she had
+loved her. At the moment of death the memory of love reigns
+triumphant over all else, but she still felt the dazed sense of
+injury that her father should have spoken so to her. She could hear
+the low murmur of voices in her mother's room across the hall.
+Suddenly the cries and moans ceased. A great joy irradiated the
+child. She said to herself that her mother was better, that the
+doctor had given her something to help her.
+
+She got off the bed, wrapped her little pink garment around her, and
+stole across the hall to her mother's room. The whole hall was filled
+with a strange, sweet smell which made her faint, but along with the
+faintness came such an increase of joy that it was almost ecstasy.
+She turned the knob of her mother's door, but, before she could open
+it, it was opened from the other side, and her father's face, haggard
+and resentful as she had never seen it, appeared.
+
+"Go back!" he whispered, fiercely.
+
+"Oh, father, is mother better?"
+
+"Go back!"
+
+Maria went back, and again the tempest of woe and injury swept over
+her. Why should her father speak to her so? Why could he not tell her
+if her mother were better? She sat in her little rocking-chair beside
+the window, and looked out at the night. She was conscious of a
+terrible sensation which seemed to have its starting-point at her
+heart, but which pervaded her whole body, her whole consciousness.
+She was conscious of such misery, such grief, that it was like a
+weight and a pain. She knew now that her mother was no better, that
+she might even die. She heard no more of the cries and moans, and
+somehow now, the absence of them seemed harder to bear than they
+themselves had been. Suddenly she heard her mother's door open. She
+heard her father's voice, and the doctor's in response, but she still
+could not distinguish a word. Presently she heard the front door open
+and close softly. Then her father hurried down the steps, and got
+into the doctor's buggy and drove away. It was dark, but she could
+not mistake her father. She knew that he had gone for another doctor,
+probably Dr. Williams, who lived in the next town, and was considered
+very skilful. The other doctor was remaining with her mother. She did
+not dare leave her room again. She sat there watching an hour, and a
+pale radiance began to appear in the east, which her room faced. It
+was like dawn in another world, everything had so changed to her. The
+thought came to her that she might go down-stairs and make some
+coffee, if she only knew how. Her father might like some when he
+returned. But she did not know how, and even if she had she dared not
+leave her room again.
+
+The pale light in the east increased, suddenly rosy streamers, almost
+like northern lights, were flung out across the sky. She could
+distinguish things quite clearly. She heard the rattle of wheels, and
+thought it was her father returning with Dr. Williams, but instead it
+was the milkman in his yellow cart. He carried a bottle of milk
+around to the south door. There was something horribly ghastly in
+that every-day occurrence to the watching child. She realized the
+interminable moving on of things in spite of all individual
+sufferings, as she would have realized the revolution of a wheel of
+torture. She felt that it was simply hideous that the milk should be
+left at the door that morning, just as if everything was as it had
+been. When the milkman jumped into his wagon, whistling, it seemed to
+her as if he were doing an awful thing. The milk-wagon stopped at the
+opposite house, then moved on out of sight down the street. She
+wished to herself that the milkman's horse might run away while he
+was at some door. The rancor which possessed her father, the kicking
+against the pricks, was possessing her. She felt a futile rage, like
+that of some little animal trodden underfoot. A boy whom she knew ran
+past whooping, with a tin-pail, after the milkman. Evidently his
+mother wanted some extra milk. The sun was reflected on the sides of
+the swinging pail, and the flash of light seemed to hurt her, and she
+felt the same unreasoning wrath against the boy. Why was not Willy
+Royce's mother desperately sick, like her mother, instead of simply
+sending for extra milk? The health and the daily swing of the world
+in its arc of space seemed to her like a direct insult.
+
+At last it occurred to her that she ought to dress herself. She left
+the window, brushed her hair, braided it, and tied it with a blue
+ribbon, and put on her little blue gingham gown which she commonly
+wore mornings. Then she sat by the window again. It was not very long
+after that that she saw the doctor coming, driving fast. Her father
+was with him, and between them sat a woman. She recognized the woman
+at once. She was a trained nurse who lived in Edgham. "They have got
+Miss Bell," she thought; "mother must be awful sick." She knew that
+Miss Bell's wages were twenty-five dollars a week, and that her
+father would not have called her in except in an extreme case. She
+watched her father help out the woman, who was stout and middle-aged,
+and much larger than he. Miss Bell had a dress-suit case, which her
+father tugged painfully into the house; Miss Bell followed him. She
+heard his key turn in the lock while the doctor fastened his horse.
+
+She saw the doctor, who was slightly lame, limp around to the buggy
+after his horse was tied, and take out two cases. She hated him while
+he did it. She felt intuitively that something terrible was to come
+to her mother because of those cases. She watched the doctor limp up
+the steps with positive malevolence. "If he is such a smart doctor,
+why doesn't he cure himself?" she asked.
+
+She heard steps on the stairs, then the murmur of voices, and the
+sound of the door opening into her mother's room. A frightful sense
+of isolation came over her. She realized that it was infinitely worse
+to be left by herself outside, suffering, than outside happiness. She
+tried again to pray, then she stopped. "It is no good praying," she
+reflected, "God did not stop mother's pain. It was only stopped by
+that stuff I smelled out in the entry." She could not reason back of
+that; her terror and misery brought her up against a dead wall. It
+seemed to her presently that she heard a faint cry from her mother's
+room, then she was quite sure that she smelled that strange, sweet
+smell even through her closed door. Then her father opened her door
+abruptly, and a great whiff of it entered with him, like some ghost
+of pain and death.
+
+"The doctors have neither of them had any breakfast, and they can't
+leave her," he said, with a jerk of his elbow, and speaking still
+with that angry tone towards the unoffending child. "Can you make
+coffee?"
+
+"I don't know how."
+
+"Good for nothing!" said her father, and shut the door with a subdued
+bang.
+
+Maria heard him going down-stairs, and presently she heard a rattle
+in the kitchen, a part of which was under her room. She went out
+herself and stole softly down the stairs. Her father, with an air of
+angry helplessness, was emptying the coffee-pot into her mother's
+nice sink. Maria stood trembling at his elbow. "I don't believe
+that's where mother empties it," she ventured.
+
+"It has got to be emptied somewhere," said her father, and his tone
+sounded as if he swore. Maria shrank back. "They've got to have some
+coffee, anyhow."
+
+Maria's father carried the coffee-pot over to the stove, in which a
+freshly kindled fire was burning, and set it on it, in the hottest
+place. Maria stealthily moved it back while he was searching for the
+coffee in the pantry. She did not know much, but she did know that an
+empty coffee-pot on such a hot place would come to ruin.
+
+Her father emerged from the pantry with a tin-canister in his hand.
+"I've sent a telegram to our aunt Maria for her to come right on,"
+said he, "but she can't get here before afternoon. I don't suppose
+you know how much coffee your mother puts in. I don't suppose you
+know about anything."
+
+Maria realized dimly that she was a scape-goat, but there was such
+terrible suffering in her father's face that she had no impulse to
+rebel. She smelled of the canister which her father held out towards
+her with a nervously trembling hand. "Why, father, this is tea; it
+isn't coffee," said she.
+
+"Well, if you don't know anything that a big girl like you ought to
+know, I should think you might know enough not to try to make coffee
+with tea," said her father.
+
+Maria looked at her father in a bewildered sort of way. "I guess the
+coffee is in the other canister," said she, meekly.
+
+"Why didn't you say so then?" demanded her father.
+
+Maria was silent. It seemed to her that her father had gone mad.
+Harry Edgham made a ferocious stride across the kitchen to the
+pantry. Maria followed him. "I guess that is the coffee canister,"
+said she, pointing.
+
+"Why didn't you say so, then?" asked her father, viciously, and again
+Maria made no reply. Her father seized the coffee canister and
+approached the stove. "I don't suppose you know how much she puts in.
+I don't suppose you know anything," said he.
+
+"I guess she puts in about a cupful," said Maria, trembling.
+
+"A cupful! with coffee at the price it is now? I guess she doesn't,"
+said her father. He poured the coffee-pot full of boiling water from
+the tea-kettle, then he tipped the coffee canister into his hand, and
+put one small pinch into the pot.
+
+"Oh, father," ventured Maria. "I don't believe--"
+
+"You don't believe what?"
+
+"I don't believe that is enough."
+
+"Of course it's enough. Don't you suppose your father knows how to
+make coffee?"
+
+Her father set the coffee-pot on the stove, where it immediately
+began to boil. Then he carried back the canister into the pantry, and
+returned with a panful of eggs. "You can set the table, I suppose,
+anyhow?" said he. "You know enough to do as much as that?"
+
+"Yes, I can do that," replied Maria, with alacrity, and indeed she
+could. Her mother had exacted some small household tasks from her,
+and setting the table was one of them. She hurried into the
+dining-room and began setting the table with the pretty blue-flowered
+ware that her mother had been so proud of. She seemed to feel tears
+in her heart when she laid the plates, but none sprang to her eyes.
+Somehow, handling these familiar inanimate things was the acutest
+torture. Presently she smelled eggs burning. She realized that her
+father was burning up the eggs, in his utter ignorance of cookery.
+She thought privately that she didn't believe but she could cook the
+eggs, but she dared not go out in the kitchen. Her father, in his
+anxiety, had actually reached ferocity. He had always petted her, in
+his easy-going fashion, now he terrified her. She dared not go out
+there.
+
+All at once, as she was getting the clean napkins from the sideboard,
+she heard the front door open, and one of the neighbors, Mrs. Jonas
+White, entered without knocking. She was a large woman and carelessly
+dressed, but her great face was beaming with kindness and pity.
+
+"I just heard how bad your ma was," she said, in a loud whisper, "an'
+I run right over. I thought mebbe--How is she?"
+
+"She is very sick," replied Maria. She felt at first an impulse to
+burst into tears before this broadside of sympathy, then she felt
+stiff.
+
+"You are as white as a sheet," said Mrs. White. "Who is burnin' eggs
+out there?" She pointed to the kitchen.
+
+"Father."
+
+"Lord! Who's up-stairs?"
+
+"Miss Bell and the doctors. They've sent for Aunt Maria, but she
+can't come before afternoon."
+
+Mrs. White fastened a button on her waist. "Well, I'll stay till
+then," said she. "Lillian can get along all right." Lillian was Mrs.
+White's eighteen-year-old daughter.
+
+Mrs. White opened the kitchen door. "How is she?" she said in a
+hushed voice to Harry Edgham, frantically stirring the burned eggs,
+which sent up a monstrous smoke and smell. As she spoke, she went
+over to him, took the frying-pan out of his hands, and carried it
+over to the sink.
+
+"She is a very sick woman," replied Harry Edgham, looking at Mrs.
+White with a measure of gratitude.
+
+"You've got Dr. Williams and Miss Bell, Maria says?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Maria says her aunt is coming?"
+
+"Yes, I sent a telegram."
+
+"Well, I'll stay till she gets here," said Mrs. White, and again that
+expression of almost childish gratitude came over the man's face.
+Mrs. White began scraping the burned eggs off the pan.
+
+"They haven't had any breakfast," said Harry, looking upward.
+
+"And they don't dare leave her?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, you just go and do anything you want to, Maria and I will get
+the breakfast." Mrs. White spoke with a kindly, almost humorous
+inflection. Maria felt that she could go down on her knees to her.
+
+"You are very kind," said Harry Edgham, and he went out of the
+kitchen as one who beats a retreat before superior forces.
+
+"Maria, you just bring me the eggs, and a clean cup," said Mrs.
+White. "Poor man, trying to cook eggs!" said she of Maria's father,
+after he had gone. She was one of the women who always treat men with
+a sort of loving pity, as if they were children. "Here is some nice
+bacon," said she, rummaging in the pantry. "The eggs will be real
+nice with bacon. Now, Maria, you look in the ice-chest and see if
+there are any cold potatoes that can be warmed up. There's plenty of
+bread in the jar, and we'll toast that. We'll have breakfast in a
+jiffy. Doctors do have a hard life, and Miss Bell, she ought to have
+her nourishment too, if she's goin' to take care of your mother."
+
+When Maria returned from the ice-box, which stood out in the
+woodshed, with a plate of cold potatoes, Mrs. White was sniffing at
+the coffee-pot.
+
+"For goodness sake, who made this?" said she.
+
+"Father."
+
+"How much did he put in?"
+
+"He put in a little pinch."
+
+"It looks like water bewitched," said Mrs. White. "Bring me the
+coffee canister. You know where that is, don't you?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am."
+
+Maria watched Mrs. White pour out the coffee which her father had
+made, and start afresh in the proper manner.
+
+"Men are awful helpless, poor things," said Mrs. White. "This sink is
+in an awful condition. Did your father empty all this truck in it?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am."
+
+"Well, I must clean it out, as soon as I get the other things goin',
+or the dreen will be stopped up." Mrs. White's English was not
+irreproachable, but she was masterful.
+
+Maria continued to stand numbly in the middle of the kitchen,
+watching Mrs. White, who looked at her uneasily.
+
+"You must be a good girl, and trust in the Lord," said she, and she
+tried to make her voice sharp. "Now, don't stand there lookin' on;
+just fly round and do somethin'. I don't believe but the dinin'-room
+needs dustin'. You find somethin' and dust the dinin'-room real nice,
+while I get the breakfast."
+
+Maria obeyed, but she did that numbly, without any realization of the
+task.
+
+The morning wore on. The doctors, one at a time came down, and the
+nurse came down, and they ate a hearty breakfast. Maria watched them,
+and hated them because they could eat while her mother was so ill.
+Miss Bell also ate heartily, and she felt that she hated her. She was
+glad that her father refused anything except a cup of coffee. As for
+herself, Mrs. White made her drink an egg beaten up with milk. "If
+you won't eat your breakfast, you've got to take this," said she.
+
+Mrs. White took her own breakfast in stray bites, while she was
+clearing away the table. She stayed, and put the house in order,
+until Maria's aunt Maria arrived. One of the physicians went away.
+For a short time Maria's mother's groans and wailings recommenced,
+then the smell of chloroform was strong throughout the house.
+
+"I wonder why they don't give her morphine instead of chloroform?"
+said Mrs. White, while Maria was wiping the dishes. "It is dreadful
+dangerous to give that, especially if the heart is weak. Well, don't
+you be scart. I've seen folks enough worse than your mother git well."
+
+In the last few hours Maria's face had gotten a hard look. She no
+longer seemed like a little girl. After a while the doctors went away.
+
+"I don't suppose there is much they can do for a while, perhaps,"
+remarked Mrs. White; "and Miss Bell, she is as good as any doctor."
+
+Both physicians returned a little after noon, and previously Mrs.
+Edgham had made her voice of lamentation heard again. Then it ceased
+abruptly, but there was no odor of chloroform.
+
+"They are giving her morphine now, I bet a cooky," Mrs. White said.
+She, with Maria, was clearing away the dinner-table then. "What time
+do you think your aunt Maria will get here?" she asked.
+
+"About half-past two, father said," replied Maria.
+
+"Well, I'm real glad you've got some one like her you can call on,"
+said Mrs. White. "Somebody that 'ain't ever had no family, and 'ain't
+tied. Now I'd be willin' to stay right along myself, but I couldn't
+leave Lillian any length of time. She 'ain't never had anything hard
+put on her, and she 'ain't any too tough. But your aunt can stay
+right along till your mother gits well, can't she?"
+
+"I guess so," replied Maria.
+
+There was something about Maria's manner which made Mrs. White
+uneasy. She forced conversation in order to make her speak, and do
+away with that stunned look on her face. All the time now Maria was
+saying to herself that her mother was going to die, that God could
+make her well, but He would not. She was conscious of blasphemy, and
+she took a certain pleasure in it.
+
+Her aunt Maria arrived on the train expected, and she entered the
+house, preceded by the cabman bearing her little trunk, which she had
+had ever since she was a little girl. It was the only trunk she had
+ever owned. Both physicians and the nurse were with Mrs. Edgham when
+her sister arrived. Harry Edgham had been walking restlessly up and
+down the parlor, which was a long room. He had not thought of going
+to the station to meet Aunt Maria, but when the cab stopped before
+the house he hurried out at once. Aunt Maria was dressed wholly in
+black--a black mohair, a little black silk cape, and a black bonnet,
+from which nodded a jetted tuft. "How is she?" Maria heard her say,
+in a hushed voice, to her father. Maria stood in the door. Maria
+heard her father say something in a hushed tone about an operation.
+Aunt Maria came up the steps with her travelling-bag. Harry forgot to
+take it. She greeted Mrs. White, whom she had met on former visits,
+and kissed Maria. Maria had been named for her, and been given a
+silver cup with her name inscribed thereon, which stood on the
+sideboard, but she had never been conscious of any distinct affection
+for her. There was a queer, musty odor, almost a fragrance, about
+Aunt Maria's black clothes.
+
+"Take the trunk up the stairs, to the room at the left," said Harry
+Edgham, "and go as still as you can." The man obeyed, shouldering the
+little trunk with an awed look.
+
+Aunt Maria drew Mrs. White and Maria's father aside, and Maria was
+conscious that they did not want her to hear; but she did
+overhear--"...one chance in ten, a fighting chance," and "Keep it
+from Maria, her mother had said so." Maria knew perfectly well that
+that horrible and mysterious thing, an operation, which means a duel
+with death himself, was even at that moment going on in her mother's
+room. She slipped away, and went up-stairs to her own chamber, and
+softly closed the door. Then she forgot her lack of faith and her
+rebellion, and she realized that her only hope of life was from that
+which is outside life. She knelt down beside her bed, and began to
+pray over and over, "O God, don't let my mother die, and I will
+always be a good girl! O God, don't let my mother die, and I will
+always be a good girl!"
+
+Then, without any warning, the door opened and her father stood
+there, and behind him was her aunt Maria, weeping bitterly, and Mrs.
+White, also weeping.
+
+"Maria," gasped out Harry Edgham. Then, as Maria rose and went to
+him, he seized upon her as if she were his one straw of salvation,
+and began to sob himself, and Maria knew that her mother had died.
+
+
+
+Chapter IV
+
+
+Without any doubt, Maria's self-consciousness, which was at its
+height at this time, helped her to endure the loss of her mother, and
+all the sad appurtenances of mourning. She had a covert pleasure at
+the sight of her fair little face, in her black hat, above her black
+frock. She realized a certain importance because of her grief.
+
+However, there were times when the grief itself came uppermost; there
+were nights when she lay awake crying for her mother, when she was
+nothing but a bereft child in a vacuum of love. Her father's
+tenderness could not make up to her for the loss of her mother's.
+Very soon after her mother's death, his mercurial temperament jarred
+upon her. She could not understand how he could laugh and talk as if
+nothing had happened. She herself was more like her mother in
+temperament--that is, like the New-Englander who goes through life
+with the grief of a loss grown to his heart. Nothing could exceed
+Harry Edgham's tenderness to his motherless little girl. He was
+always contriving something for her pleasure and comfort; but Maria,
+when her father laughed, regarded him with covert wonder and reproach.
+
+Her aunt Maria continued to live with them, and kept the house. Aunt
+Maria was very capable. It is doubtful if there are many people on
+earth who are not crowned, either to their own consciousness or that
+of others, with at least some small semblance of glories. Aunt Maria
+had the notable distinction of living on one hundred dollars a year.
+She had her rent free, but upon that she did not enlarge. Her married
+brother owned a small house, of the story-and-a-half type prevalent
+in New England villages, and Maria had the north side. She lived,
+aside from that, upon one hundred dollars a year. She was openly
+proud of it; her poverty became, in a sense, her riches. "Well, all I
+have is just one hundred a year," she was fond of saying, "and I
+don't complain. I don't envy anybody. I have all I want." Her little
+plans for thrift were fairly Machiavellian; they showed subtly. She
+told everybody what she had for her meals. She boasted that she lived
+better than her brother, who was earning good wages in a
+shoe-factory. She dressed very well, really much better than her
+sister-in-law. "Poor Eunice never had much management," Maria was
+wont to say, smoothing down, as she spoke, the folds of her own gown.
+She never wore out anything; she moved carefully and sat carefully;
+she did a good deal of fancy-work, but she was always very
+particular, even when engaged in the daintiest toil, to cover her
+gown with an apron, and she always held her thin-veined hands high.
+She charged this upon her niece Maria when she had her new black
+clothes. "Now, Maria," said she, "there is one thing I want you to
+remember, here is nothin'--" (Aunt Maria elided her final "g" like
+most New-Englanders, although she was not deficient in education, and
+even prided herself upon her reading.) "Black is the worst thing in
+the world to grow shiny. Folks can talk all they want to about black
+bein' durable. It isn't. It grows shiny. And if you will always
+remember one thing when you are at home, to wear an apron when you
+are doin' anything, and when you are away, to hold your hands high,
+you will gain by it. There is no need of anybody gettin' the front
+breadths of their dresses all shiny by rubbin' their hands on them.
+When you are at school you must remember and hold your school-books
+so they won't touch your dress. Then there is another thing you must
+remember, not to move your arms any more than you can help, that
+makes the waist wear out under the arms. There isn't any need of your
+movin' your arms much if any when you are in school, that I can see,
+and when you come home you can change your dress. You might just as
+well wear out your colored dresses when you are home. Nobody is goin'
+to see you. If anybody comes in that I think is goin' to mind, you
+can just slip up-stairs, and put on your black dress. It isn't as if
+you had a little sister to take your things--they ought to be worn
+out."
+
+It therefore happened that Maria was dressed the greater part of the
+time, in her own home, where she missed her mother most, in
+bright-colored array, and in funeral attire outside. She told her
+father about it, but he had not a large income, and it had been
+severely taxed by his wife's almost tragic illness and death.
+Besides, if the truth were known, he disliked to see Maria in
+mourning, and the humor of the thing also appealed to him.
+
+"You had better wear what your aunt says, dear. You feel just the
+same in your heart, don't you?" asked Harry Edgham, with that light
+laugh of his, which always so shocked his serious little daughter.
+
+"Yes, sir," she replied, with a sob.
+
+"Well, then, do just as your aunt says, and be a good little girl,"
+said Harry, and he went hastily out on the porch with his cigar.
+
+Nothing irritated him so much as to see Maria weep for her mother. He
+was one of those who wrestle and fight against grief, and to see it
+thrust in his face by the impetus of another heart exasperated him,
+although he could say nothing. It may be that, with his temperament,
+it was even dangerous for him to cherish grief, and, for that very
+reason, he tried to put his dead wife out of his mind, as she had
+been taken out of his life.
+
+"Well, men are different from women," Aunt Maria said to her niece
+Maria one night, when Harry had gone out on the piazza, after he had
+talked and laughed a good deal at the supper-table.
+
+Harry Edgham heard the remark, and his face took on a set expression
+which it could assume at times. He did not like his sister-in-law,
+although he disguised the fact. She was very useful. His meals were
+always on time, the house was as neatly kept as before, and Maria was
+being trained as she had never been in household duties.
+
+Maria was obedient, under silent protest, to her aunt. Often, after
+she had been bidden to perform some household task, and obeyed, she
+had gone to her own room and wept, and told herself that her mother
+would never have put such things on her. She had no one in whom to
+confide. She was not a girl to have unlimited intimates among other
+girls at school. She was too self-centred, and, if the truth were
+told, too emulative.
+
+"Maria Edgham thinks she's awful smart," one girl would say to
+another. They all admitted, even the most carping, that Maria was
+pretty. "Maria Edgham is pretty enough, and she knows it," said they.
+She was in the high school, even at her age, and she stood high in
+her classes. There was always a sort of moral strike going on against
+Maria, as there is against all superiority, especially when the
+superiority is known to be recognized by the possessor thereof.
+
+In spite of her prettiness, she was not a favorite even among the
+boys. They were, as a rule, innocent as well as young, but they would
+rather have snatched a kiss from such a pretty, dainty little
+creature than have had her go above them in the algebra class. It did
+not seem fitting. Without knowing it, they were envious. They would
+not even acknowledge her cleverness, not even Wollaston Lee, for whom
+Maria entertained a rudimentary affection. He was even rude to her.
+
+"Maria Edgham is awful stuck up," he told his mother. He was of that
+age when a boy tells his mother a good deal, and he was an only child.
+
+"She's a real pretty little girl, and her aunt says she is a good
+girl," replied his mother, who regarded the whole as the antics of
+infancy.
+
+The Lees lived near the Edghams, on the same street, and Mrs. Lee and
+Aunt Maria had exchanged several calls. They were, in fact, almost
+intimate. The Lees were at the supper-table when Wollaston made his
+deprecatory remark concerning Maria, and he had been led to do so by
+the law of sequence. Mrs. Lee had made a remark about Aunt Maria to
+her husband. "I believe she thinks Harry Edgham will marry her," she
+said.
+
+"That's just like you women, always trumping up something of that
+kind," replied her husband. His words were rather brusque, but he
+regarded, while speaking them, his wife with adoration. She was a
+very pretty woman, and looked much younger than her age.
+
+"You needn't tell me," said Mrs. Lee. "She's just left off bonnets
+and got a new hat trimmed with black daisies; rather light mourning,
+I call it, when her sister has not been dead a year."
+
+"You spiteful little thing!" said her husband, still with his adoring
+eyes on his wife.
+
+"Well, it's so, anyway."
+
+"Well, she would make Harry a good wife, I guess," said her husband,
+easily; "and she would think more of the girl."
+
+It was then that Wollaston got in his remark about poor Maria, who
+had herself noticed with wonder that her aunt had bought a new hat
+that spring instead of a bonnet.
+
+"Why, Aunt Maria, I thought you always wore a bonnet!" said she,
+innocently, when the hat came home from the milliner's.
+
+"Nobody except old women are wearing bonnets now," replied her aunt,
+shortly. "I saw Mrs. Rufus Jones, who is a good deal older than I, at
+church Sunday with a hat trimmed with roses. The milliner told me
+nobody of my age wore a bonnet."
+
+"Did she know how old you really are, Aunt Maria?" inquired Maria
+with the utmost innocence.
+
+Harry Edgham gave a little chuckle, then came to his sister-in-law's
+rescue. He had a thankful heart for even small benefits, and Aunt
+Maria had done a good deal for him and his, and it had never occurred
+to him that the doing might not be entirely disinterested. Besides,
+Aunt Maria had always seemed to him, as well as to his daughter, very
+old indeed. It might have been that the bonnets had had something to
+do with it. Aunt Maria had never affected fashions beyond a certain
+epoch, partly from economy, partly from a certain sense of injury.
+She had said to herself that she was old, she had been passed by; she
+would dress as one who had. Now her sentiments underwent a curious
+change. The possibility occurred to her that Harry might ask her to
+take her departed sister's place. She was older than that sister,
+much older than he, but she looked in her glass and suddenly her
+passed youth seemed to look forth upon her. The revival of hopes
+sometimes serves as a tonic. Aunt Maria actually did look younger
+than she had done, even with her scanty frizzes. She regarded other
+women, not older than herself, with pompadours, and aspiration seized
+her.
+
+One day she went to New York shopping. She secretly regarded that as
+an expedition. She was terrified at the crossings. Stout, elderly
+woman as she was, when she found herself in the whirl of the great
+city, she became as a small, scared kitten. She gathered up her
+skirts, and fled incontinently across the streets, with policemen
+looking after her with haughty disapprobation. But when she was told
+to step lively on the trolley-cars, her true self asserted its
+endurance. "I am not going to step in front of a team for you or any
+other person," she told one conductor, and she spoke with such
+emphasis that even he was intimidated, and held the car meekly until
+the team had passed. When Aunt Maria came home from New York that
+particular afternoon, she had an expression at once of defiance and
+embarrassment, which both Maria and her father noticed.
+
+"Well, what did you see in New York, Maria?" asked Harry, pleasantly.
+
+"I saw the greatest lot of folks without manners, that I ever saw in
+my whole life," replied Aunt Maria, sharply.
+
+Harry Edgham laughed. "You'll get used to it," he said, easily.
+"Everybody who comes from New England has to take time to like New
+York. It is an acquired taste."
+
+"When I do acquire it, I'll be equal to any of them," replied Aunt
+Maria. "When I lose my temper, they had better look out."
+
+Harry Edgham laughed again.
+
+It was the next morning when Aunt Maria appeared at the early
+breakfast with a pompadour. Her thin frizzes were carefully puffed
+over a mystery which she had purchased the afternoon before.
+
+Maria, when she first saw her aunt, stared open-mouthed; then she ate
+her breakfast as if she had seen nothing.
+
+Harry Edgham gave one sharp stare at his sister-in-law, then he said:
+"Got your hair done up a new way, haven't you, Maria?"
+
+"Yes, my hat didn't set well on my head with my hair the way I was
+wearing it," replied Aunt Maria with dignity; still she blushed. She
+knew that her own hair did not entirely conceal the under structure,
+and she knew, too, why she wore the pompadour.
+
+Harry Edgham recognized the first fact with simple pity that his
+sister-in-law's hair was so thin. He remembered hearing a hair-tonic
+recommended by another man in the office, and he wondered privately
+if Maria would feel hurt if he brought some for her. Of the other
+fact he had not the least suspicion. He said: "Well, it's real
+becoming to you, Maria. I guess I like it better than the other way.
+I notice all the girls seem to wear their hair so nowadays."
+
+Aunt Maria smiled at him gratefully. When her sister had married him,
+she had wondered what on earth she saw in Harry Edgham; now he seemed
+to her a very likeable man.
+
+When Maria sat in school that morning, her aunt's pompadour diverted
+her mind from her book; then she caught Gladys Mann's wondering eyes
+upon her, and she studied again.
+
+While Maria could scarcely be said to have an intimate friend at
+school, a little girl is a monstrosity who has neither a friend nor a
+disciple; she had her disciple, whose name was Gladys Mann. Gladys
+was herself a little outside the pale. Most of her father's earnings
+went for drink, and Gladys's mother was openly known to take in
+washing to make both ends meet, and keep the girl at school at all;
+moreover, she herself came of one of the poor white families which
+flourish in New Jersey as well as at the South, although in less
+numbers. Gladys's mother was rather a marvel, inasmuch as she was
+willing to take in washing, and do it well too, but Gladys had no
+higher rank for that. She was herself rather a pathetic little soul,
+dingily pretty, using the patois of her kind, and always at the fag
+end of her classes. Her education, so far, seemed to meet with no
+practical results in the child herself. Her brain merely filtered
+learning like a sieve; but she thought Maria Edgham was a wonder, and
+it was really through her, and her alone, that she obtained any
+education.
+
+"What makes you always say 'have went'?" Maria would inquire, with a
+half-kindly, half-supercilious glance at her satellite.
+
+"What had I ought to say," Gladys would inquire, meekly--"have came?"
+
+"Have gone," replied Maria, with supreme scorn.
+
+"Then when my mother has came home shall I say she has gone?"
+inquired Gladys, with positive abjectness.
+
+"Gladys, you are such a ninny," said Maria. "Why don't you remember
+what you learn at school, instead of what you hear at home?"
+
+"I guess I hear more at home than I learn at school," Gladys replied,
+with an adoring glance at Maria.
+
+Maria half despised Gladys, and yet she had a sort of protective
+affection for her, as one might have for a little clinging animal,
+and she confided more in her than in any one else, sure, at least, of
+an outburst of sympathy. Maria had never forgotten how Gladys had
+cried the first morning she went to school after her mother died.
+Every time Gladys glanced at poor little Maria, in her black dress,
+her head went down on a ring of her little, soiled, cotton-clad arms
+on her desk, and Maria knew that she was sorrier for her than any
+other girl in school.
+
+Gladys had a sort of innocent and ignorant impertinence; she asked
+anything which occurred to her, with no reflection as to its effect
+upon the other party.
+
+"Say, is it true?" she asked that very morning at recess.
+
+"Is what true?"
+
+"Is your father goin' to marry her?"
+
+"Marry who?" Maria turned quite pale, and forgot her own grammar.
+
+"Why, your aunt Maria."
+
+"My aunt Maria? I guess he isn't!" Maria left Gladys with an offended
+strut. However, she reflected on Aunt Maria's pompadour. A great
+indignation seized her. After this she treated Aunt Maria stiffly,
+and she watched both her and her father.
+
+There was surely nothing in Harry Edgham's behaviour to warrant a
+belief that he contemplated marrying his deceased wife's sister.
+Sometimes he even, although in a kindly fashion, poked fun at her, in
+Maria's presence. But Aunt Maria never knew it; she was, in fact,
+impervious to that sort of thing. But Maria came to be quite sure
+that Aunt Maria had designs on her father. She observed that she
+dressed much better than she had ever done; she observed the fairly
+ostentatious attention which she bestowed upon her brother-in-law,
+and also upon herself, when he was present. She even used to caress
+Maria, in her wooden sort of way, when Harry was by to see. Once
+Maria repulsed her roughly. "I don't like to be kissed and fussed
+over," said she.
+
+"You mustn't speak so to your aunt," said Harry, when Aunt Maria had
+gone out of the room. "I don't know what we should have done without
+her."
+
+"You pay her, don't you, father?" asked Maria.
+
+"Yes, I pay her," said Harry, "but that does not alter the fact that
+she has done a great deal which money could not buy."
+
+Maria gazed at her father with suspicion, which he did not recognize.
+
+It had never occurred to Harry Edgham to marry Aunt Maria. It had
+never occurred to him that she might think of the possibility of such
+a thing. It was now nearly a year since his wife's death. He himself
+began to take more pains with his attire. Maria noticed it. She saw
+her father go out one evening clad in a new, light-gray suit, which
+he had never worn before. She looked at him wonderingly when he
+kissed her good-bye. Harry never left the house without kissing his
+little daughter.
+
+"Why, you've got a new suit, father," she said.
+
+Harry blushed. "Do you like it, dear?" he asked.
+
+"No, father, I don't like it half as well as a dark one," replied
+Maria, in a sweet, curt little voice. Her father colored still more,
+and laughed, then he went away.
+
+Aunt Maria, to Maria's mind, was very much dressed-up that evening.
+She had on a muslin dress with sprigs of purple running through it,
+and a purple ribbon around her waist. She made up her mind that she
+would stay up until her father came home, in that new gray suit, no
+matter what Aunt Maria should say.
+
+However, contrary to her usual custom, Aunt Maria did not mention, at
+half-past eight, that it was time for her to go to bed. It was
+half-past nine, and her father had not come home, and Aunt Maria had
+said nothing about it. She appeared to be working very interestedly
+on a sofa-cushion which she was embroidering, but her face looked, to
+Maria's mind, rather woe-begone, although there was a shade of wrath
+in the woe. When the little clock on the sitting-room shelf struck
+one for half-past nine, Maria looked at her aunt, wondering.
+
+"Why, I wonder where father has gone so late?" she said.
+
+Aunt Maria turned, and her voice, in reply, was both pained and
+pitiless. "Well, you may as well know first as last," said she, "and
+you'd better hear it from me than outside: your father has gone
+courtin'."
+
+
+
+Chapter V
+
+
+Maria looked at her aunt with an expression of almost idiocy. For the
+minute, the term Aunt Maria used, especially as applied to her
+father, had no more meaning for her than a term in a foreign tongue.
+She was very pale. "Courtin'," she stammered out vaguely, imitating
+her aunt exactly, even to the dropping of the final "g."
+
+Aunt Maria was, for the moment, too occupied with her own personal
+grievances and disappointments to pay much attention to her little
+niece. "Yes, courtin'," she said, harshly. "I've been suspectin' for
+some time, an' now I know. A man, when he's left a widower, don't
+smarten up the way he's done for nothin'; I know it." Aunt Maria
+nodded her head aggressively, with a gesture almost of butting.
+
+Maria continued to gaze at her, with that pale, almost idiotic
+expression. It was a fact that she had thought of her father as being
+as much married as ever, even although her mother was dead. Nothing
+else had occurred to her.
+
+"Your father's thinkin' of gettin' married again," said Aunt Maria,
+"and you may as well make up your mind to it, poor child." The words
+were pitying, the tone not.
+
+"Who?" gasped Maria.
+
+"I don't know any more than you do," replied Aunt Maria, "but I know
+it's somebody." Suddenly Aunt Maria arose. It seemed to her that she
+must do something vindictive. Here she had to return to her solitary
+life in her New England village, and her hundred dollars a year,
+which somehow did not seem as great a glory to her as it had formerly
+done. She went to the parlor windows and closed them with jerks, then
+she blew out the lamp. "Come," said she, "it's time to go to bed. I'm
+tired, for my part. I've worked like a dog all day. Your father has
+got his key, an' he can let himself in when he gets through his
+courtin'."
+
+Maria crept miserably--she was still in a sort of daze--up-stairs
+after Aunt Maria.
+
+"Well, good-night," said Aunt Maria. "You might as well make up your
+mind to it. I suppose it had to come, and maybe it's all for the
+best." Aunt Maria's voice sounded as if she were trying to reconcile
+the love of God with the existence of hell and eternal torment. She
+closed her door with a slam. There are, in some New England women,
+impulses of fierce childishness.
+
+Maria, when she was in her room, had never felt so lonely in her
+life. A kind of rage of loneliness possessed her. She slipped out of
+her clothes and went to bed, and then she lay awake. She heard her
+father when he returned. The clock on a church which was near by
+struck twelve soon after. Maria tried to imagine another woman in the
+house in her mother's place; she thought of every eligible woman in
+Edgham whom her father might select to fill that place, but her
+little-girl ideas of eligibility were at fault. She thought only of
+women of her mother's age and staidness, who wore bonnets. She could
+think of only two, one a widow, one a spinster. She shuddered at the
+idea of either. She felt that she would much rather have had her
+father marry Aunt Maria than either of those women. She did not
+altogether love Aunt Maria, but at least she was used to her.
+Suddenly it occurred to her that Aunt Maria was disappointed, that
+she felt badly. The absurdity of it struck her strongly, but she felt
+a pity for her; she felt a common cause with her. After her father
+had gone into his room, and the house had long been silent, she got
+up quietly, opened her door softly, and crept across the hall to the
+spare room, which Aunt Maria had occupied ever since she had been
+there. She listened, and heard a soft sob. Then she turned the knob
+of the door softly.
+
+"Who is it?" Aunt Maria called out, sharply.
+
+Maria was afraid that her father would hear.
+
+"It's only me, Aunt Maria," she replied. Then she also gave a little
+sob.
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+Maria groped her way across the room to her aunt's bed. "Oh, Aunt
+Maria, who is it?" she sobbed, softly.
+
+Aunt Maria did what she had never done before: she reached out her
+arms and gathered the bewildered little girl close, in an embrace of
+genuine affection and pity. She, too, felt that here was a common
+cause, and not only that, but she pitied the child with unselfish
+pity. "You poor child, you are as cold as ice. Come in here with me,"
+she whispered.
+
+Maria crept into bed beside her aunt, but she would rather have
+remained where she was. She was a child of spiritual rather than
+physical affinities, and the contact of Aunt Maria's thin body, even
+though it thrilled with almost maternal affection for her, repelled
+her.
+
+Aunt Maria began to weep unrestrainedly, with a curious passion and
+abandonment for a woman of her years.
+
+"Has he come home?" she whispered. Aunt Maria's hearing was slightly
+defective, especially when she was nervously overwrought.
+
+"Yes. Aunt Maria, who is it?"
+
+"Hush, I don't know. He hasn't paid any open court to anybody, that I
+know of, but--I've seen him lookin'."
+
+"At whom?"
+
+"At Ida Slome."
+
+"But she is younger than my mother was."
+
+"What difference do you s'pose that makes to a man. He'll like her
+all the better for that. You can thank your stars he didn't pitch on
+a school-girl, instead of the teacher."
+
+Maria lay stretched out stiff and motionless. She was trying to bring
+her mind to bear upon the situation. She was trying to imagine Miss
+Ida Slome, with her pink cheeks and her gay attire, in the house
+instead of her mother. Her head began to reel. She no longer wept.
+She became dimly conscious, after a while, of her aunt Maria's
+shaking her violently and calling her by name, but she did not
+respond, although she heard her plainly. Then she felt a great jounce
+of the bed as her aunt sprang out. She continued to lie still and
+rigid. She somehow knew, however, that her aunt was lighting the
+lamp, then she felt, rather than saw, the flash of it across her
+face. Her aunt Maria pulled on a wrapper over her night-gown, and
+hurried to the door. "Harry, Harry Edgham!" she heard her call, and
+still Maria could not move. Then she also felt, rather than saw, her
+father enter the room with his bath-robe slipped over his pajamas,
+and approach the bed.
+
+"What on earth is the matter?" he said. He also laid hands on Maria,
+and, at his touch, she became able to move.
+
+"What on earth is the matter?" he asked again.
+
+"She didn't seem able to speak or move, and I was scared," replied
+Aunt Maria, with a reproachful accent on the "I"; but Harry Edgham
+was too genuinely concerned at his little daughter's white face and
+piteous look to heed that at all.
+
+He leaned over and began stroking her soft little cheeks, and kissing
+her. "Father's darling," he whispered. Then he said over his shoulder
+to Aunt Maria, "I wish you would go into my room and get that flask
+of brandy I keep in my closet."
+
+Aunt Maria obeyed. She returned with the flask and a teaspoon, and
+Maria's father made her swallow a few drops, which immediately warmed
+her and made the strange rigidity disappear.
+
+"I guess she had better stay in here with you the rest of the night,"
+said Harry to his sister-in-law; but little Maria sat up
+determinately.
+
+"No, I'm going back to my own room," she said.
+
+"Hadn't you better stay with your aunt, darling?"
+
+Harry Edgham looked shamefaced and guilty. He saw that his
+sister-in-law and Maria had been weeping, and he knew why, in the
+depths of his soul. He saw no good reason why he should feel so
+shamed and apologetic, but he did. He fairly cowered before the
+nervous little girl and her aunt.
+
+"Well, let father carry you in there, then," he said; and he lifted
+up the slight little thing, carried her across the hall to her room,
+and placed her in bed.
+
+It was a very warm night, but Maria was shivering as if with cold. He
+placed the coverings over her with clumsy solicitude. Then he bent
+down and kissed her. "Try and keep quiet, and go to sleep, darling,"
+he said. Then he went out.
+
+Aunt Maria was waiting for him in the hall. Her face, from grief and
+consternation, had changed to sad and dignified resignation.
+
+"Harry," said she.
+
+Harry Edgham stopped.
+
+"Well, sister," he said, with pleasant interrogation, although he
+still looked shamefaced.
+
+Aunt Maria held a lamp, a small one, which she was tipping
+dangerously.
+
+"Look out for your lamp, Maria," he said.
+
+She straightened the lamp, and the light shone full upon her swollen
+face, at once piteous and wrathful. "I only wanted to know when you
+wanted me to go?" she said.
+
+"Oh, Lord, Maria, you are going too fast!" replied Harry, and he
+fairly ran into his own room.
+
+The next morning when Maria, in her little black frock--it was made
+of a thin lawn for the hot days, and the pale slenderness of her arms
+and neck were revealed by the thinness of the fabric--went to school,
+she knew, the very moment that Miss Ida Slome greeted her, that Aunt
+Maria had been right in her surmise. For the first time since she had
+been to school, Miss Slome, who was radiant in a flowered muslin,
+came up to her and embraced her. Maria submitted coldly to the
+embrace.
+
+"You sweet little thing," said Miss Slome.
+
+There was a man principal of the school, but Miss Slome was first
+assistant, and Maria was in most of her classes. She took her place,
+with her pretty smile as set as if she had been a picture instead of
+a living and breathing woman, on the platform.
+
+"You are awful sweet all of a sudden, ain't you?" said Gladys Mann in
+Maria's ear.
+
+Maria nodded, and went to her own seat.
+
+All that day she noted, with her sharp little consciousness, the
+change in Miss Slome's manner towards her. It was noticeable even in
+class. "It is true," she said to herself. "Father is going to marry
+her."
+
+Aunt Maria was a little pacified by Harry's rejoinder the night
+before. She begun to wonder if she had been, by any chance, mistaken.
+
+"Maybe I was wrong," she said, privately, to Maria. But Maria shook
+her head.
+
+"She called me a sweet little thing, and kissed me," said she.
+
+"Didn't she ever before?"
+
+"No, ma'am."
+
+"Well, she may have taken a notion to. Maybe I was mistaken. The way
+your father spoke last night sort of made me think so."
+
+Aunt Maria made up her mind that if Harry was out late the next
+Sunday, and the next Wednesday, that would be a test of the
+situation. The first time had been Wednesday, and Wednesday and
+Sunday, in all provincial localities, are the acknowledged courting
+nights. Of course it sometimes happens that an ardent lover goes
+every night; but Harry Edgham, being an older man and a widower,
+would probably not go to that extent.
+
+He soon did, however. Very soon Maria and her aunt went to bed every
+night before Harry came home, and Miss Ida Slome became more loving
+towards Maria.
+
+Wollaston Lee, boy as he was, child as he was, really suffered. He
+lost flesh, and his mother told Aunt Maria that she was really
+worried about him. "He doesn't eat enough to keep a bird alive," said
+she.
+
+It never entered into her heart to imagine that Wollaston was in love
+with the teacher, a woman almost if not quite old enough to be his
+mother, and was suffering because of her love for Harry Edgham.
+
+One afternoon, when Harry's courtship of Ida Slome had been going on
+for about six weeks, and all Edgham was well informed concerning it,
+Maria, instead of going straight home from school, took a cross-road
+through some woods. She dreaded to reach home that night. It was
+Wednesday, and her father would be sure to go to see Miss Slome.
+Maria felt an indefinable depression, as if she, little, helpless
+girl, were being carried so far into the wheels of life that it was
+too much for her. Her father, of late, had been kinder than ever to
+her; Maria had begun to wonder if she ought not to be glad if he were
+happy, and if she ought not to try to love Miss Slome. But this
+afternoon depression overcame her. She walked slowly between the
+fields, which were white and gold with queen's-lace and golden-rod.
+Her slender shoulders were bent a little. She walked almost like an
+old woman. She heard a quick step behind her, and Wollaston Lee came
+up beside her. She looked at him with some sentiment, even in the
+midst of her depression. The thought flashed across her mind, what is
+she should marry Wollaston at the same time her father married Miss
+Slome? That would be a happy and romantic solution of the affair. She
+colored sweetly, and smiled, but the boy scowled at her.
+
+"Say?" he said.
+
+Maria trembled a little. She was surprised.
+
+"What?" she asked.
+
+"Your father is the meanest man in this town, he is the meanest in
+New Jersey, he is the meanest man in the whole United States, he is
+the meanest man in the whole world."
+
+Again the boy scowled at Maria, who did not understand; but she would
+not have her father reviled.
+
+"He isn't, so there!" she said.
+
+"He's going to marry teacher."
+
+"I don't see as he is mean if he is," said Maria, forced into justice
+by injustice.
+
+"I was going to marry her myself, if she'd only waited, and he hadn't
+butted in," said Wollaston.
+
+The boy gave one last scowl at the little girl, and it was as if he
+scowled at all womanhood in her. Then he gave a fling away, and ran
+like a wild thing across the field of golden-rod and queen's-lace.
+Maria, watching, saw him throw himself down prone in the midst of the
+wild-flowers, and she understood that he was crying because the
+teacher was going to marry her father. She went on, walking like a
+little old woman, and she had a feeling as if she had found a road in
+the world that led outside all love.
+
+
+
+Chapter VI
+
+
+Maria felt that she no longer cared about Wollaston Lee, that she
+fairly scorned him. Then, suddenly, something occurred to her. She
+turned, and ran back as fast as she could, her short fleece of golden
+hair flying. She wrapped her short skirts about her, and wormed
+through the barbed-wire fence which skirted the field--the boy had
+leaped it, but she was not equal to that--and she hastened, leaving a
+furrow through the white-and-gold herbage, to the boy lying on his
+face weeping. She stood over him.
+
+"Say?" said she.
+
+The boy gave a convulsive wriggle of his back and shoulders, and
+uttered an inarticulate "Let me alone"; but the girl persisted.
+
+"Say?" said she again.
+
+Then the boy turned, and disclosed a flushed, scowling face among the
+flowers.
+
+"Well, what do you want, anyway?" said he.
+
+"If you want to marry Miss Slome, why don't you, instead of my
+father?" inquired Maria, bluntly, going straight to the point.
+
+"I haven't got any money," replied Wollaston, crossly; "all a woman
+thinks of is money. How'd I buy her dresses?"
+
+"I don't believe but your father would be willing for you to live at
+home with her, and buy her dresses, till you got so you could earn
+yourself."
+
+"She wouldn't have me," said the boy, and he fairly dug his flushed
+face into the mass of wild-flowers.
+
+"You are a good deal younger than father," said Maria.
+
+"Your father he can give her a diamond ring, and I haven't got more'n
+forty cents, and I don't believe that would buy much of anything,"
+said Wollaston, in muffled tones of grief and rage.
+
+Maria felt a shock at the idea of a diamond ring. Her mother had
+never owned one.
+
+"Oh, I don't believe father will ever give her a diamond ring in the
+world," said she.
+
+"She's wearing one, anyhow--I saw it," said Wollaston. "Where did she
+get it if he didn't give it to her, I'd like to know?"
+
+Maria felt cold.
+
+"I don't believe it," she said again. "Teacher is all alone in the
+school-house, correcting exercises. Why don't you get right up, and
+go back and ask her? I'll go with you, if you want me to."
+
+Wollaston raised himself indeterminately upon one elbow.
+
+"Come along," urged Maria.
+
+Wollaston got up slowly. His face was a burning red.
+
+"You are a good deal younger and better looking than father," urged
+Maria, traitorously.
+
+The boy was only a year older than Maria. He was much larger and
+taller, but although she looked a child, at that moment he looked
+younger. Both of his brown hands hung at his sides, clinched like a
+baby's. He had a sulky expression.
+
+"Come along," urged the girl.
+
+He stood kicking the ground hesitatingly for a moment, then he
+followed the girl across the field. They went down the road until
+they came to the school-house. Miss Slome was still there; her
+graceful profile could be seen at a window.
+
+Both children marched in upon Miss Slome, who was in a
+recitation-room, bending over a desk. She looked up, and her face
+lightened at sight of Maria.
+
+"Oh, it's you, dear?" said she.
+
+Maria then saw, for the first time, the white sparkle of a diamond on
+the third finger of her left hand. She felt that she hated her.
+
+"He wants to speak to you," she said, indicating Wollaston with a
+turn of her hand.
+
+Miss Slome looked inquiringly at Wollaston, who stood before her like
+a culprit, blushing and shuffling, and yet with a sort of doggedness.
+
+"Well, what is it, Wollaston?" she asked, patronizingly.
+
+"I came back to ask you if--you would have me?" said Wollaston, and
+his voice was hardly audible.
+
+Miss Ida Slome looked at him in amazement; she was utterly dazed.
+
+"Have you?" she repeated. "I think I do not quite understand you.
+What do you mean by 'have you,' Wollaston?"
+
+"Marry me," burst forth the boy.
+
+There was a silence. Maria looked at Miss Slome, and, to her utter
+indignation, the teacher's lips were twitching, and it took a good
+deal to make Miss Slome laugh, too; she had not much sense of humor.
+
+In a second Wollaston stole a furtive glance at Miss Slome, which was
+an absurd parody on a glance of a man under similar circumstances,
+and Miss Slome, who had had experience in such matters, laughed
+outright.
+
+The boy turned white. The woman did not realize it, but it was really
+a cruel thing which she was doing. She laughed heartily.
+
+"Why, my dear boy," she said. "You are too young and I am too old.
+You had better wait and marry Maria, when you are both grown up."
+
+Wollaston turned his back upon her, and marched out of the room.
+Maria lingered, in the vain hope that she might bring the teacher to
+a reconsideration of the matter.
+
+"He's a good deal younger than father, and he's better looking," said
+she.
+
+Miss Slome blushed then.
+
+"Oh, you sweet little thing, then you know--" she began.
+
+Maria interrupted her. She became still more traitorous to her father.
+
+"Father has a real bad temper, when things go wrong," said she.
+"Mother always said so."
+
+Miss Slome only laughed harder.
+
+"You funny little darling," she said.
+
+"And Wollaston has a real good disposition, his mother told my aunt
+Maria so," she persisted.
+
+The room fairly rang with Miss Slome's laughter, although she tried
+to subdue it. Maria persisted.
+
+"And father isn't a mite handy about the house," said she. "And Mrs.
+Lee told Aunt Maria that Wollaston could wipe dishes and sweep as
+well as a girl."
+
+Miss Slome laughed.
+
+"And I've got a bad temper, too, when I'm crossed; mother always said
+so," said Maria. Her lip quivered.
+
+Miss Slome left her desk, came over to Maria, and, in spite of her
+shrinking away, caught her in her arms.
+
+"You are a little darling," said she, "and I am not a bit afraid of
+your temper." She hesitated a moment, looking at the child's averted
+face, and coloring. "My dear, has your father told you?" she
+whispered; then, "I didn't know he had."
+
+"No, ma'am, he hasn't," said Maria. She fairly pulled herself loose
+from Miss Slome and ran out of the room. Her eyes were almost blinded
+with tears; she could scarcely see Wollaston Lee on the road, ahead
+of her, also running. He seemed to waver as he ran. Maria called out
+faintly. He evidently heard, for he slackened his pace a little; then
+he ran faster than ever. Maria called again. This time the boy
+stopped until the girl came up. He picked a piece of grass, as he
+waited, and began chewing it.
+
+"How do you know that isn't poison?" said Maria, breathlessly.
+
+"Don't care if it is; hope it is," said the boy.
+
+"It's wicked to talk so."
+
+"Let it be wicked then."
+
+"I don't see how I am to blame for any of it," Maria said, in a
+bewildered sort of way. It was the cry of the woman, the primitive
+cry of the primitive scape-goat of Creation. Already Maria began to
+feel the necessity of fitting her little shoulders to the blame of
+life, which she had inherited from her Mother Eve, but she was as yet
+bewildered by the necessity.
+
+"Ain't it your father that's going to marry her?" inquired Wollaston,
+fiercely.
+
+"I don't want him to marry her any more than you do," said Maria. "I
+don't want her for a mother."
+
+"I told you how it would come out, if I asked her," cried the boy,
+still heaping the blame upon the girl.
+
+"I would enough sight rather marry you than my father, if I were the
+teacher," said Maria, and her blue eyes looked into Wollaston's with
+the boldness of absolute guilelessness.
+
+"Hush!" responded Wollaston, with a gesture of disdain. "Who'd want
+you? You're nothing but a girl, anyway."
+
+With that scant courtesy Wollaston Lee resumed his race homeward, and
+Maria went her own way.
+
+It was that very night, after Harry Edgham had returned from his call
+upon Ida Slome, that he told Maria. Maria, as usual, had gone to bed,
+but she was not asleep. Maria heard his hand on her door-knob, and
+his voice calling out, softly: "Are you asleep, dear?"
+
+"No," responded Maria.
+
+Then her father entered and approached the child staring at him from
+her white nest. The room was full of moonlight, and Maria's face
+looked like a nucleus of innocence upon which it centred. Harry
+leaned over his little daughter and kissed her.
+
+"Father has got something to tell you, precious," he said.
+
+Maria hitched away a little from him, and made no reply.
+
+"Ida, Miss Slome, tells me that she thinks you know, and so I made up
+my mind I had better tell you, and not wait any longer, although I
+shall not take any decisive step before--before November. What would
+you say if father should bring home a new mother for his little girl,
+dear?"
+
+"I should say I would rather have Aunt Maria," replied Maria,
+decisively. She choked back a sob.
+
+"I've got nothing to say against Aunt Maria," said Harry. "She's been
+very kind to come here, and she's done all she could, but--well, I
+think in some ways, some one else--Father thinks you will be much
+happier with another mother, dear."
+
+"No, I sha'n't."
+
+Harry hesitated. The child's voice sounded so like her dead mother's
+that he felt a sudden guilt, and almost terror.
+
+"But if father were happier--you want father to be happy, don't you,
+dear?" he asked, after a little.
+
+Then Maria began to sob in good earnest. She threw her arms around
+her father's neck. "Yes, father, I do want you to be happy," she
+whispered, brokenly.
+
+"If father's little girl were large enough to keep his house for him,
+and were through school, father would never think of taking such a
+step," said Harry Edgham, and he honestly believed what he said. For
+the moment his old love of life seemed to clutch him fast, and Ida
+Slome's radiant visage seemed to pale.
+
+"Oh, father," pleaded Maria. "Aunt Maria would marry you, and I would
+a great deal rather have her."
+
+"Nonsense," said Harry Edgham, laughing, with a glance towards the
+door.
+
+"Yes, she would, father; that was the reason she got her pompadour."
+
+Harry laughed again, but softly, for he was afraid of Aunt Maria
+overhearing. "Nonsense, dear," he said again. Then he kissed Maria in
+a final sort of way. "It will be all for the best," he said, "and we
+shall all be happier. Father doesn't think any the less of you, and
+never will, and he is never going to forget your own dear mother; but
+it is all for the best, the way he has decided. Now, good-night,
+darling, try to go to sleep, and don't worry about anything."
+
+It was not long before Maria did fall asleep. Her thoughts were in
+such a whirl that it was almost like intoxication. She could not seem
+to fix her mind on anything long enough to hold herself awake. It was
+not merely the fact of her father's going to marry again, it was
+everything which that involved. She felt as if she were looking into
+a kaleidoscope shaken by fate into endless changes. The changes
+seemed fairly to tire her eyes into sleep.
+
+The very next afternoon Aunt Maria went home. Harry announced his
+matrimonial intentions to her before he went to New York, and she
+said immediately that she would take the afternoon train.
+
+"But," said Harry, "I thought maybe you would stay and be at
+the--wedding, Maria. I don't mean to get married until the November
+vacation, and it is only the first of September now. I don't see why
+you are in such a hurry."
+
+"Yes," replied Aunt Maria, "I suppose you thought I would stay and
+get the house cleaned, and slave here like a dog, getting ready for
+you to be married. Well, I sha'n't; I'm tired out. I'm going to take
+the train this afternoon."
+
+Harry looked helplessly at her.
+
+"I don't see what Maria and I are going to do then," said he.
+
+"If it wasn't for taking Maria away from school, I would ask her to
+come and make me a visit, poor child," said Aunt Maria, "until you
+brought her new ma home. I have only a hundred dollars a year to live
+on, but I'd risk it but I could make her comfortable; but she can't
+leave her school."
+
+"No, I don't see how she can," said Harry, still helplessly. "I
+thought you'd stay, Maria. There is the house to be cleaned, and some
+painting and papering. I thought--"
+
+"Yes, I'll warrant you thought," said Aunt Maria, with undisguised
+viciousness. "But you were mistaken; I am not going to stay."
+
+"But I don't see exactly--"
+
+"Oh, Lord, you and Maria can take your meals at Mrs. Jonas White's,
+she'll be glad enough to have you; and you can hire the cleaning
+done," said Aunt Maria, with a certain pity in the midst of her
+disappointment and contempt.
+
+It seemed to Maria, when her aunt went away that afternoon, as if she
+could not bear it. There is a law of gravitation for the soul as well
+as for the body, and Maria felt as one who had fallen from a known
+quantity into strangeness, with a horrible shock.
+
+"Now, if she don't treat you well, you send word, and I'll have you
+come and stay with me," whispered Aunt Maria at the last.
+
+Maria loved Aunt Maria when she went away. She went to school late
+for the sake of seeing her off; and she was late in the geography
+class, but Miss Slome only greeted her with a smile of radiant
+reassurance.
+
+At recess, Gladys Mann snuggled up to her.
+
+"Say, is it true?" she whispered.
+
+"Is what true?"
+
+"Is your father goin' to get married to teacher?"
+
+"Yes," said Maria. Then she gave Gladys a little push. "I wish you'd
+let me alone," she said.
+
+
+
+Chapter VII
+
+
+Extreme youth is always susceptible to diversion which affords a
+degree of alleviation for grief. Many older people have the same
+facility of turning before the impetus of circumstances to another
+view of life, which serves to take their minds off too close
+concentration upon sorrow, but it is not so universal. Maria,
+although she was sadly lonely, in a measure, enjoyed taking her meals
+at Mrs. Jonas White's. She had never done anything like it before.
+The utter novelty of sitting down to Mrs. White's table, and eating
+in company with her and Mr. Jonas White, and Lillian White, and a son
+by the name of Henry, amused her. Then, too, they were all very kind
+to her. They even made a sort of heroine of her, especially at noon,
+when her father was in New York and she, consequently, was alone.
+They pitied her, in a covert sort of fashion, because her father was
+going to get married again, especially Mrs. White and Lillian.
+Lillian was a very pretty girl, with a pert carriage of blond head,
+and a slangy readiness of speech.
+
+"Well, she's a dandy, as far as looks and dress go, and maybe she'll
+make you a real good mother-in-law," she said to Maria. Maria knew
+that Lillian should have said step-mother, but she did not venture to
+correct her.
+
+"Looks ain't everything," said Mrs. White, with a glance at her
+daughter. She had thought of the possibility of Harry Edgham taking a
+fancy to her Lillian.
+
+Mr. Jonas White, who with his son Henry kept a market, thereby
+insuring such choice cuts of meat, spoke then. He did not, as a rule,
+say much at table, especially when Maria and her father, who in his
+estimation occupied a superior place in society, were present.
+
+"Guess Mr. Edgham knows what he's about," said he. "He's going to
+marry a good-looking woman, and one that's capable of supportin'
+herself, if he's laid up or anything happens to him. Guess she's all
+right."
+
+"I guess so, too," said Henry White. Both nodded reassuringly at
+Maria, who felt mournfully comforted.
+
+"Shouldn't wonder if she'd saved something, too," said Mr. White.
+
+When he and his son were on their way back to the market, driving in
+the white-covered wagon with "J. White & Son" on the sides thereof,
+they agreed that women were queer.
+
+"There's your mother and Lillian, they mean all right," said Jonas
+White, "but they were getting that poor young one all stirred up."
+
+Maria never settled with herself whether the Whites thought she had a
+pleasant prospect before her or the reverse, but they did not
+certainly influence her to love Miss Ida Slome any more.
+
+Miss Slome was so kind to Maria, in those days, that it really seemed
+to her that she ought to love her. She and her father were invited to
+take tea at Miss Slome's boarding-house, and after tea they sat in
+the little parlor which the teacher had for her own, and Miss Slome
+sang and played to them. She had a piano. Maria heard her and her
+father talking about the place in the Edgham parlor where it was to
+stand. Harry stood over Miss Slome as she was singing, and Maria
+observed how his arm pressed against her shoulder.
+
+After the song was done, Harry and Miss Slome sat down on the sofa,
+and Harry drew Maria down on the other side. Harry put his arm around
+his little daughter, but not as if he realized it, and she peeked
+around and saw how closely he was embracing Miss Slome, whose cheeks
+were a beautiful color, but whose set smile never relaxed. It seemed
+to Maria that Miss Slome smiled exactly like a doll, as if the smile
+were made on her face by something outside, not by anything within.
+Maria thought her father was very silly. She felt scorn, shame, and
+indignation at the same time. Maria was glad when it was time to go
+home. When her father kissed Miss Slome, she blushed, and turned away
+her head.
+
+Going home, Harry almost danced along the street. He was as
+light-hearted as a boy, and as thoughtlessly in love.
+
+"Well, dear, what do you think of your new mother?" he asked, gayly,
+as they passed under the maples, which were turning, and whose
+foliage sprayed overhead with a radiance of gold in the electric
+light.
+
+Then Maria made that inevitable rejoinder which is made always, which
+is at once trite and pathetic. "I can't call her mother," she said.
+
+But Harry only laughed. He was too delighted and triumphant to
+realize the pain of the child, although he loved her. "Oh, well,
+dear, you needn't until you feel like it," he said.
+
+"What am I going to call her, father?" asked Maria, seriously.
+
+"Oh, anything. Call her Ida."
+
+"She is too old for me to call her that," replied Maria.
+
+"Old? Why, dear, Ida is only a girl."
+
+"She is a good deal over thirty," said Maria. "I call that very old."
+
+"You won't, when you get there yourself," replied Harry, with another
+laugh. "Well, dear, suit yourself. Call her anything you like."
+
+It ended by Maria never calling her anything except "you," and
+referring to her as "she" and "her." The woman, in fact, became a
+pronoun for the child, who in her honesty and loyalty could never put
+another word in the place which had belonged to the noun, and feel
+satisfied.
+
+Maria was very docile, outwardly, in those days, but inside she was
+in a tumult of rebellion. She went home with Miss Slome when she was
+asked, but she was never gracious in response to the doll-like smile,
+and the caressing words, which were to her as automatic as the smile.
+Sometimes it seemed to Maria that if she could only have her own
+mother scold her, instead of Miss Slome's talking so sweetly to her,
+she would give the whole world.
+
+For some unexplained cause, the sorrow which Maria had passed through
+had seemed to stop her own emotional development. She looked at
+Wollaston Lee sometimes and wondered how she had ever had dreams
+about him; how she had thought she would like him to go with her,
+and, perhaps, act as silly as her father did with Miss Slome. She
+remembered how his voice sounded when he said she was nothing but a
+girl, and a rage of shame seized her. "He needn't worry," she
+thought. "I wouldn't have him, not if he was to go down on his knees
+in the dust." She told Gladys Mann that she thought Wollaston Lee was
+a very homely boy, and not so very smart, and Gladys told another
+girl whose brother knew Wollaston Lee, and he told him. After a
+little, Wollaston and Maria never spoke when they met. The girl did
+not seem to see the boy; she was more delicate in her manner of
+showing aversion, but the boy gazed straight at her with an insolent
+stare, as at one who had dared him. He told the same boy who had told
+him what Maria had said, that he thought Amy Long was the prettiest
+girl in school, and Maria was homely enough to crack a looking-glass,
+and that came back to Maria. Everything said in the school always
+came back, by some mysterious law of gravitation.
+
+There was one quite serious difficulty involved in Aunt Maria's
+deserting her post, and that was, Maria was too young to be left
+alone in the house every night while her father was visiting his
+fiancee. She could not stay at Mrs. White's, because it was obviously
+unfair to ask them to remain up until nearly midnight to act as her
+guardian every, or nearly every, night in the week. However, Harry
+submitted the problem to Miss Slome, who solved it at once. She had,
+in some respects, a masterly brain, and her executive abilities were
+somewhat thrown away in her comparatively humble sphere.
+
+"You must have the house cleaned," said she. "Let the woman you get
+to clean stay over until you come home. She won't be afraid to go
+home alone afterwards. Those kind of people never are. I suppose you
+will get Mrs. Addix?"
+
+"They tell me she is about the best woman for house-cleaning," said
+Harry, rather helplessly. He was so unaccustomed to even giving a
+thought to household details, that he had a vague sense of self-pity
+because he was now obliged to do so. His lost Abby occasionally, he
+believed, had employed this Mrs. Addix, but she had never troubled
+him about it.
+
+It thus happened that every evening little Maria Edgham sat guarded,
+as it were, by Mrs. Addix. Mrs. Addix was of the poor-white race,
+like the Manns--in fact, she was distantly related to them. They were
+nearly all distantly related, which may have accounted for their
+partial degeneracy. Mrs. Addix, however, was a sort of anomaly.
+Coming, as she did, of a shiftless, indolent family, she was yet a
+splendid worker. She seemed tireless. She looked positively radiant
+while scrubbing, and also more intelligent. The moment she stopped
+work, she looked like an automatic doll which had run down: all
+consciousness of self, or that which is outside self, seemed to leave
+her face; it was as if her brain were in her toiling arms and hands.
+Moreover, she always went to sleep immediately after Harry had gone
+and Maria was left alone with her. She sat in her chair and breathed
+heavily, with her head tipped idiotically over one shoulder.
+
+It was not very lively for Maria during those evenings. She felt
+afraid to go to bed and leave the house alone except for the heavily
+sleeping woman, whom her father had hard work to rouse when he
+returned, and who staggered out of the door, when she started home,
+as if she were drunk. She herself never felt sleepy; it was even hard
+for her to sleep when at last her father had returned and she went to
+bed. Often after she had fallen asleep her heart seemed to sting her
+awake.
+
+Maria grew thinner than ever. Somebody called Harry Edgham's
+attention to the fact, and he got some medicine for her to take. But
+it was not medicine which she needed--that is, not medicine for the
+body, but for the soul. What probably stung her most keenly was the
+fact that certain improvements, for which her mother had always
+longed but always thought she could not have, were being made in the
+house. A bay-window was being built in the parlor, and one over it,
+in the room which had been her father's and mother's, and which Maria
+dimly realized was, in the future, to be Miss Ida Slome's. Maria's
+mother had always talked a good deal about some day having that
+bay-window. Maria reflected that her father could have afforded it
+just as well in her mother's day, if her mother had insisted upon it,
+like Miss Slome. Maria's mother had been of the thrifty New England
+kind, and had tried to have her husband save a little. Maria knew
+well enough that these savings were going into the improvements, the
+precious dollars which her poor mother had enabled her father to save
+by her own deprivations and toil. Maria heard her father and Miss
+Slome talk about the maid they were to have; Miss Slome would never
+dream of doing her own work, as her predecessor had done. All these
+things the child dwelt upon in a morbid, aged fashion, and,
+consequently, while her evenings with Mrs. Addix were not enjoyable,
+they were not exactly dull. Nearly every room in the house was being
+newly papered and painted. Maria and Mrs. Addix sat first in one
+room, then in another, as one after another was torn up in the
+process of improvement. Generally the room which they occupied was
+chaotic with extra furniture, and had a distracted appearance which
+grated terribly upon the child's nerves. Only her own room was not
+touched. "You shall have your room all fixed up next year," her
+father told her. "I would have it done now, but father is going to
+considerable expense as it is." Maria assured him, with a sort of
+wild eagerness, that she did not want her room touched. It seemed to
+her that if the familiar paper which her mother had selected were
+changed for something else, and the room altered, that the last
+vestige of home would disappear, that she could not bear it.
+
+"Well," said Harry, easily, "your paper will do very well, I guess,
+for a while longer; but father will have your room fixed up another
+year. You needn't think you are going to be slighted."
+
+That night, Maria and Mrs. Addix sat in Maria's room. The parlor was
+in confusion, and so was the dining-room and the guest-chamber;
+indeed, the house was at that time in the height of its repairs. That
+very day Maria's mother's room had been papered with a beautiful
+paper with a sheenlike satin, over which were strewn garlands of pink
+roses. Pink was Miss Slome's favorite color. They had a new hard-wood
+floor laid in that room, and there was to be a pink rug, and white
+furniture painted with pink roses; Maria knew that her father and
+Miss Slome had picked it out. That evening, after her father had
+gone, and she sat there with the sleeping Mrs. Addix, a sort of
+frenzy seized her, or, rather, she worked herself up to it. She
+thought of what her mother would have said to that beautiful new
+paper, and furniture, and bay-window. Her mother also had liked pink.
+She thought of how much her mother would have liked it, and how she
+had gone without, and not made any complaint about her shabby old
+furnishings, which had that very day been sold to Mrs. Addix for an
+offset to her wages, and which Maria had seen carried away. She
+thought about it all, and a red flush deepened on her cheeks, and her
+blue eyes blazed. For the time she was abnormal. She passed the limit
+which separates perfect sanity from mania. She had some fancy-work in
+her hands. Mrs. White had suggested that she work in cross-stitch a
+cover for the dresser in her new mother's room, and she was engaged
+upon that, performing, as she thought, a duty, but her very soul
+rebelled against it. She made some mistakes, and whenever she did she
+realized with a sort of wicked glee that the thing would not be
+perfect, and she never tried to rectify them.
+
+Finally, Maria laid her work softly on the table, beside which she
+was sitting. She glanced at Mrs. Addix, whose heavy, measured
+breathing filled the room, then she arose. She took the lamp from the
+table, and tiptoed out. Maria stole across the hall. The room which
+had been her father's and mother's was entirely empty, and the roses
+on the satiny wall-paper gleamed out as if they were real. There was
+a white-and-silver picture-moulding. Maria set her lamp on the floor.
+She looked at the great bay-window, she looked at the roses on the
+walls. Then she did a mad thing. The paper was freshly put on; it was
+hardly dry. Maria deliberately approached the wall near the
+bay-window, where the paper looked somewhat damp; she inserted her
+slender little fingers, with a scratching of her nails under the
+edge, and she tore off a great, ragged strip. Then she took up her
+lamp and returned to her room.
+
+Mrs. Addix was still asleep. She had begun to snore, in an odd sort
+of fashion, with deep, regular puffs of breath; it was like the
+beating of a drum to peace and rest, after a day of weary and
+unskilled labor unprofitable to the soul. Maria sat down again. She
+took up her work. She felt very wicked, but she felt better.
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII
+
+
+When Maria's father returned that night, he came, as usual, straight
+to the room wherein she and Mrs. Addix were sitting. Maria regarded
+her father with a sort of contemptuous wonder, tinctured with
+unwilling admiration. Her father, on his return from his evenings
+spent with Miss Ida Slome, looked always years younger than Maria had
+ever seen him. There was the humidity of youth in his eyes, the flush
+of youth on his cheeks, the triumph of youth in his expression. Harry
+Edgham, in spite of lines on his face, in spite, even, of a shimmer
+of gray and thinness of hair on the temples, looked as young as youth
+itself, in this rejuvenation of his affection, for he was very much
+in love with the woman whom he was to marry. He had been faithful to
+his wife while she lived, even the imagination of love for another
+woman had not entered his heart. His wife's faded face had not for a
+second disturbed his loyalty; but now the beauty of this other woman
+aroused within him long dormant characteristics, like some wonderful
+stimulant, not only for the body, but for the soul. When he looked in
+Ida Slome's beautiful face he seemed to drink in an elixir of life.
+And yet, down at the roots of the man's heart slept the memory of his
+wife; for Abby Edgham, with her sallow, faded face, had possessed
+something which Ida Slome lacked, and which the man needed, to hold
+him. And always in his mind, at this time, was the intention to be
+more than kind to his motherless little daughter, not to let her
+realize any difference in his feeling for her.
+
+When he came to-night, he looked at the sleeping Mrs. Addix, and at
+Maria, taking painful stitches in her dresser cover, at first with a
+radiant smile, then with the deepest pity.
+
+"Poor little soul," he said. "You have had a long evening to
+yourself, haven't you?"
+
+"I don't mind," replied Maria. She was thinking of the torn
+wall-paper, and she did not look her father fully in the eyes.
+
+"Has she been asleep ever since I went?" inquired Harry, in a whisper.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Poor little girl. Well, it will be livelier by-and-by for you. We'll
+have company, and more going on." Harry then went close to Mrs.
+Addix, sitting with her head resting on her shoulder, still snoring
+with those puffs of heavy breath. "Mrs. Addix," he said.
+
+Mrs. Addix did not stir; she continued to snore.
+
+"Mrs. Addix!" repeated Harry, in a louder tone, but still the
+sleeping woman did not stir.
+
+"Good Lord, what a sleeper!" said Harry, still aloud. Then he shook
+her violently by the shoulder. "Come, Mrs. Addix," said he, in a
+shout; "I've got home, and I guess you'll want to be going yourself."
+
+Mrs. Addix moved languidly, and glanced up with a narrow slit of eye,
+as dull as if she had been drugged. Harry shook her again, and
+repeated his announcement that he was home and that she must want to
+go. At last he roused her, and she stood up with a dazed expression.
+Maria got her bonnet and shawl, and she gazed at them vaguely, as if
+she were so far removed from the flesh that the garments thereof
+perplexed her. Maria put on her bonnet, standing on tiptoe, and Harry
+threw the shawl over her shoulders. Then she staggered out of the
+room with a mumbled good-night.
+
+"Take care of the stairs, and do not fall," Harry said.
+
+He himself held the light for her, until she was safely down, and the
+outer door had closed after her.
+
+"The fresh air will wake her up," he said, laughing. "Not very lively
+company, is she, dear?"
+
+"No, sir," replied Maria, simply.
+
+Harry looked lovingly at her, then his eyes fell on the door of the
+room which had been papered that day. It occurred to him to go in and
+see how the new paper looked.
+
+"Come in with father, and let's see the improvements," he said, in a
+gay voice, to Maria.
+
+Maria followed him into the room. It would have been difficult to say
+whether triumphant malice and daring, or fear, prevailed in her heart.
+
+Harry, carrying the lamp, entered the room, with Maria slinking at
+his heels. The first thing he saw was the torn paper.
+
+"Hullo!" said he. He approached the bay-window with his lamp.
+"Confound those paperers!" he said.
+
+For a minute Maria did not say a word. She was not exactly struggling
+with temptation; she had inherited too much from her mother's Puritan
+ancestry to make the question of a struggle possible when the duty of
+truth stared her, as now, in the face. She simply did not speak at
+once because the thing appeared to her stupendous, and nobody, least
+of all a child, but has a threshold of preparation before stupendous
+things.
+
+"They haven't half put the paper on," said her father. "Didn't half
+paste it, I suppose. You can't trust anybody unless you are right at
+their heels. Confound 'em! There, I've got to go round and blow 'em
+up to-morrow, before I go to the city."
+
+Then Maria spoke. "I tore that paper off, father," said she.
+
+Harry turned and stared at her. His face went white. For a second he
+thought the child was out of her senses.
+
+"What?" he said.
+
+"I tore that paper off," repeated Maria.
+
+"You? Why?"
+
+The double question seemed to hit the child like a pistol-shot, but
+she did not flinch.
+
+"Mother never had paper as pretty as this," she said, "nor new
+furniture." Her eyes met her father's with indescribable reproach.
+
+Harry looked at her with almost horror. For the moment the child's
+eyes looked like her dead mother's, her voice sounded like her's. He
+continued gazing at her.
+
+"I couldn't bear it," said Maria. "She" [she meant Mrs. Addix] "was
+asleep. I was all alone. I got to thinking. I came in here and tore
+it off."
+
+Harry heaved a deep sigh. He did not look nor was he in the least
+angry.
+
+"I know your poor mother didn't have much," said he. He sighed again.
+Then he put his arm around Maria and kissed her. "You can have your
+room newly papered now, if you want it," said he, in a choking voice.
+"Father will send you over to Ellisville to-morrow with Mrs. White,
+and you can pick out some paper your own self, and father will have
+it put right on."
+
+"I don't care about any," said Maria, and she began to sob.
+
+"Father's baby," said Harry.
+
+She felt his chest heave, and realized that her father was weeping as
+well as she.
+
+"Oh, father, I don't want new paper," she sobbed out, convulsively.
+"Mother picked out that on my room, and--and--I am sorry I tore this
+off."
+
+"Never mind, darling," said Harry. He almost carried the child back
+to her own room. "Now get to bed as soon as you can, dear," he said.
+
+After Maria, trembling and tearful, had undressed and was in bed, her
+father came back into the room. He held a small lamp in one hand, and
+a tumbler with some wine in the other.
+
+"Here is some of the wine your mother had," said Harry. "Now I want
+you to sit right up and drink this."
+
+"I--don't want it, father," gasped Maria.
+
+"Sit right up and drink it."
+
+Maria sat up. The tumbler was a third full, and the wine was an old
+port. Maria drank it. Immediately her head began to swim; she felt in
+a sort of daze when her father kissed her, and bade her lie still and
+go right to sleep, and went out of the room. She heard him, with
+sharpened hearing, enter her mother's room. She remembered about the
+paper, and the new furniture, and how she was to have a new mother,
+and how she had torn the paper, and how her own mother had never had
+such things, but she remembered through a delicious haze. She felt a
+charming warmth pervade all her veins. She was no longer unhappy.
+Nothing seemed to matter. She soon fell asleep.
+
+As for Harry Edgham, he entered the empty room which he had occupied
+with his dead wife. He set the lamp on the floor and approached the
+paper, which poor little Maria, in her fit of futile rebellion, had
+torn. He carefully tore off still more, making a clean strip of the
+paper where Maria had made a ragged one. When he had finished, it
+looked as if the paper had in reality dropped off because of
+carelessness in putting on. He gathered up the pieces of paper and
+stood looking about the room.
+
+There is something about an empty room, empty except of memories, but
+containing nothing besides, no materialities, no certainties as to
+the future, which is intimidating to one who stops and thinks. Harry
+Edgham was not, generally speaking, of the sort who stop to think;
+but now he did. The look of youth faded from his face. Instead of the
+joy and triumph which had filled his heart and made it young again,
+came remembrance of the other woman, and something else, which
+resembled terror and dread. For the first time he deliberated whether
+he was about to do a wise thing: for the first time, the image of Ida
+Slome's smiling beauty, which was ever evident to his fancy, produced
+in him something like doubt and consternation. He looked about the
+room, and remembered the old pieces of furniture which had that day
+been carried away. He looked at the places where they had stood. Then
+he remembered his dead wife, as he had never remembered her before,
+with an anguish of loss. He said to himself that if he only had her
+back, even with her faded face and her ready tongue, that old,
+settled estate would be better for him than this joy, which at once
+dazzled and racked him. Suddenly the man, as he stood there, put his
+hands before his face; he was weeping like a child. That which Maria
+had done, instead of awakening wrath, had aroused a pity for himself
+and for her, which seemed too great to be borne. For the instant, the
+dead triumphed over the living.
+
+Then Harry took up the lamp and went to his own room. He set the lamp
+on the dresser, and looked at his face, with the rays thrown upward
+upon it, very much as Maria had done the night of her mother's death.
+When he viewed himself in the looking-glass, he smiled involuntarily;
+the appearance of youth returned. He curled his mustache and moved
+his head this way and that. He thought about some new clothes which
+he was to have. He owned to himself, with perfect ingenuousness, that
+he was, in his way, as a man, as good-looking as Ida herself.
+Suddenly he remembered how Abby had looked when she was a young girl
+and he had married her; he had not compared himself so favorably with
+her. The image of his dead wife, as a young girl, was much fairer in
+his mind than that of Ida Slome.
+
+"There's no use talking, Abby was handsomer than Ida when she was
+young," he said to himself, as he began to undress. He went to sleep
+thinking of Abby as a young girl, but when once asleep he dreamed of
+Ida Slome.
+
+
+
+Chapter IX
+
+
+Harry and Ida Slome were to be married the Monday before
+Thanksgiving. The school would close on the Friday before.
+
+Ida Slome possessed, along with an entire self-satisfaction, a vein
+of pitiless sense, which enabled her to see herself as others might
+see her, and which saved her from the follies often incident to the
+self-satisfied. She considered herself a beauty; she thought, and
+with reason, that she would be well worth looking at in her
+wedding-clothes, but she also told herself that it was quite possible
+that some remarks might be made to her disparagement if she had the
+wedding to which her inclination prompted her. She longed for a white
+gown, veil, bridesmaids, and the rest, but she knew better. She knew
+that more could be made of her beauty and her triumph if she
+curtailed her wish. She realized that Harry's wife had been dead only
+a little more than a year, and that, although still a beauty, she was
+not a young girl, and she steered clear of criticism and ridicule.
+
+The ceremony was performed in the Presbyterian church Monday
+afternoon. Ida wore a prune-colored costume, and a hat trimmed with
+pansies. She was quite right in thinking that she was adorable in it,
+and there was also in the color, with its shade of purple, a delicate
+intimation of the remembrance of mourning in the midst of joy. The
+church was filled with people, but there were no bridesmaids. Some of
+Ida's scholars acted as ushers. Wollaston Lee was among them. To
+Maria's utter astonishment, he did not seem to realize his trying
+position as a rejected suitor. He was attired in a new suit, and wore
+a white rosebud in his coat, and Maria glanced at him with mingled
+admiration and disdain.
+
+Maria sat directly in front of the pulpit, with Mrs. Jonas White and
+Lillian. Mrs. White had a new gown of some thin black stuff,
+profusely ornamented with jet, and Lillian had a new pink silk gown,
+and wore a great bunch of roses. The situation, with regard to Maria,
+in connection with the wedding ceremony and the bridal trip, had been
+a very perplexing one. Harry had some western cousins, far removed,
+both by blood and distance. Aunt Maria and her brother were the only
+relatives on his former wife's side. Aunt Maria had received an
+invitation, both from Harry and the prospective bride, to be present
+at the wedding and remain in the house with Maria until the return of
+the bridal couple from their short trip. She had declined in a few
+stilted words, although Harry had sent a check to cover the expenses
+of her trip, which was returned in her letter.
+
+"The fact is, I don't know what to do with Maria," Harry said to Ida
+Slome, a week before the wedding. "Maria won't come, and neither will
+her brother's wife, and she can't be left alone, even with the new
+maid. We don't know the girl very well, and it won't do."
+
+Ida Slome solved the problem with her usual precision and promptness.
+
+"Then," said she, "she will have to board at Mrs. White's until we
+return. There is nothing else to do."
+
+It was therefore decided that Maria was to board at Mrs. White's,
+although it involved some things which were not altogether
+satisfactory to Ida. Maria could not sit all alone in a pew, and
+watch her father being married to his second wife, that was obvious;
+and, since Mrs. Jonas White was going to take charge of her, there
+was nothing else to do but to place herself and daughter in a
+position of honored intimacy. Mrs. Jonas White said quite openly that
+she was not in any need of taking boarders, that she had only taken
+Mr. Edgham and Maria to oblige, and that she now was to take poor
+little Maria out of pity. She, in reality, did pity Maria, for a good
+many reasons. She was a shrewd woman, and she gauged Miss Ida Slome
+pitilessly. However, she had to admit that she had shown some
+consideration in one respect. In the midst of her teaching, and
+preparations for her wedding, she had planned a lovely dress for
+Maria. It was unquestionable but the realization of her own
+loveliness, and her new attire had an alleviating influence upon
+Maria. There was a faint buzz of admiration for her when she entered
+the church. She looked as if enveloped in a soft gray cloud. Ida had
+planned a dress of some gray stuff, and a soft gray hat, tied under
+her chin with wide ribbons, and a long gray plume floating over her
+golden-fleece of hair. Maria had never owned such a gown, and, in
+addition, she had her first pair of kid-gloves of gray, to match the
+dress, and long, gray coat, trimmed with angora fur. She was charming
+in it, and, moreover, the gray, as her step-mother's purple,
+suggested delicately, if one so chose to understand a dim yet
+pleasing melancholy, a shade, as it were, of remembrance.
+
+Maria had been dressed at home, under Mrs. White's supervision. Maria
+had viewed herself in the new long mirror in her mother's room, which
+was now resplendent with its new furnishings, and she admitted to
+herself that she was lovelier than she had ever been, and that she
+had Miss Ida Slome to thank for it.
+
+"I will say one thing," said Mrs. White, "she has looked out for you
+about your dress, and she has shown real good taste, too."
+
+Maria turned herself about before the glass, which reflected her
+whole beautiful little person, and she loved herself so much that for
+the first time it seemed to her that she almost loved Ida. She was
+blushing and smiling with pleasure.
+
+Mrs. White sighed. "Well, maybe it is for the best," said she. "One
+never knows about such things, how they will work out."
+
+Maria listened, with a degree of indignation and awe, to the service.
+She felt her heart swelling with grief at the sight of this other
+woman being made her father's wife and put in the place of her own
+mother, and yet, as a musical refrain is the haunting and
+ever-recurrent part of a composition, so was her own charming
+appearance. She felt so sure that people were observing her, that she
+blushed and dared not look around. She was, in reality, much
+observed, and both admired and pitied.
+
+People, both privately and outspokenly, did not believe that the
+step-mother would be, in a way, good to the child by the former
+marriage. Ida Slome was not exactly a favorite in Edgham. People
+acquiesced in her beauty and brilliancy, but they did not entirely
+believe in her or love her. She stood before the pulpit with her same
+perfect, set smile, displaying to the utmost the sweet curves of her
+lips. Her cheeks retained their lovely brilliancy of color. Harry
+trembled, and his face looked pale and self-conscious, but Ida
+displayed no such weakness. She replied with the utmost self-poise to
+the congratulations which she received after the ceremony. There was
+an informal reception in the church vestry. Cake and ice-cream and
+coffee were served, and Ida and Harry and Maria stood together. Ida
+had her arm around Maria most of the time, but Maria felt as if it
+were an arm of wood which encircled her. She heard Ida Slome
+addressed as Mrs. Edgham, and she wanted to jerk herself away and
+run. She lost the consciousness of herself in her new attire.
+
+Once Harry looked around at her, and received a shock. Maria's face
+looked to him exactly like her mother's, although the coloring was so
+different. Maria was a blonde, and her mother had been dark. There
+was something about the excitement hardly restrained in her little
+face, which made the man realize that the dead wife yet lived and
+reigned triumphant in her child. He himself was conscious that he
+conducted himself rather awkwardly and foolishly. A red spot burned
+on either cheek. He spoke jerkily, and it seemed to him that
+everything he said was silly, and that people might repeat it and
+laugh. He was relieved when it was all over and he and Ida were in
+the cab, driving to the station. When they were rolling rapidly
+through a lonely part of the road, he put his arm around his new
+wife, and kissed her. She received his kiss, and looked at him with
+her set smile and the set sparkle in her beautiful eyes. Again the
+feeling of almost terror which he had experienced the night when
+Maria had torn the paper off in her mother's room, came over him.
+However, he made an effort and threw it off.
+
+"Poor little Maria looked charming, thanks to you, dearest," he said,
+tenderly.
+
+"Yes, I thought she did. That gray suit was just the thing for her,
+wasn't it? I never saw her look so pretty before," returned Ida, and
+her tone was full of self-praise for her goodness to Maria.
+
+"Well, she will be a great deal happier," said Harry. "It was a
+lonesome life for a child to lead."
+
+Harry Edgham had not an atom of tact. Any woman might have judged
+from his remarks that she had been married on account of Maria; but
+Ida only responded with her never-changing smile.
+
+"Yes," said she, "I think myself that she will be much happier,
+dear." Privately she rather did resent her husband's speech, but she
+never lost sight of the fact that a smile is more becoming than a
+frown.
+
+Maria remained boarding at Mrs. Jonas White's until her father and
+his new wife returned. She did not have a very happy time. In the
+first place, the rather effusive pity with which she was treated by
+the female portion of the White family, irritated her. She began to
+consider that, now her father had married, his wife was a member of
+her family, and not to be decried. Maria had a great deal of pride
+when those belonging to her were concerned. One day she retorted
+pertly when some covert remark, not altogether to her new mother's
+laudation, had been made by Lillian.
+
+"I think she is perfectly lovely," said she, with a toss of her head.
+
+Lillian and her mother looked at each other. Then Lillian, who was
+not her match for pertness, spoke.
+
+"Have you made up your mind what to call her?" she asked. "Mummer, or
+mother?"
+
+"I shall call her whatever I please," replied Maria; "it is nobody's
+business." Then she arose and went out of the room, with an absurd
+little strut.
+
+"Lord a-massy!" observed Mrs. Jonas White, after she had gone.
+
+"I guess Ida Slome will have her hands full with that young one,"
+observed Lillian.
+
+"I guess she will, too," assented her mother. "She was real sassy.
+Well, her mother had a temper of her own; guess she's got some of it."
+
+Mr. Jonas White and Henry were a great alleviation of Maria's
+desolate estate during her father's absence. Somehow, the men seemed
+to understand better than the women just how she felt: that she would
+rather be let alone, now it was all over, than condoled with and
+pitied. Mr. Henry White took one of the market horses, hitched him
+into a light buggy, and took Maria out riding two evenings, when the
+market was closed. It was a warm November, and the moon was full.
+Maria quite enjoyed her drive with Mr. Henry White, and he never said
+one word about her father's marriage, and her new mother--her pronoun
+of a mother--all the way. Mr. Henry White had too long a neck, and
+too large a mouth, which was, moreover, too firmly set, otherwise
+Maria felt that, with slight encouragement, she might fall in love
+with him, since he showed so much delicacy. She counted up the
+probable difference in their ages, and estimated it as no more than
+was between her father and Her. However, Mr. Henry White gave her so
+little encouragement, and his neck was so much too long above his
+collar, that she decided to put it out of her mind.
+
+"Poor little thing," Mr. Henry White said to his father, next day,
+"she's about wild, with mother and Lill harping on it all the time."
+
+"They mean well," said Mr. White.
+
+"Of course they do; but who's going to stand this eternal harping? If
+women folks would only stop being so durned kind, and let folks alone
+sometimes, they'd be a durned sight kinder."
+
+"That's so," said Mr. Jonas White.
+
+Maria's father and his bride reached home about seven on the Monday
+night after Thanksgiving. Maria re-entered her old home in the
+afternoon. Miss Zella Holmes, who was another teacher of hers, went
+with her. Ida had requested her to open the house. Ida's former
+boarding-house mistress had cooked a large turkey, and made some
+cakes and pies and bread. Miss Zella Holmes drove around for Maria in
+a livery carriage, and all these supplies were stowed in beside them.
+On the way they stopped at the station for the new maid, whose train
+was due then. She was a Hungarian girl, with a saturnine, almost
+savage visage. Maria felt an awe of her, both because she was to be
+their maid, and they had never kept one, and because of her
+personality.
+
+When they reached home, Miss Zella Holmes, who was very lively and
+quick in her ways, though not at all pretty, gave orders to the maid
+in a way which astonished Maria. She was conscious of an astonishment
+at everything, which had not before possessed her. She looked at the
+kitchen, the dining-room, the sitting-room, the parlor, all the old
+apartments, and it was exactly as if she saw old friends with new
+heads. The sideboard in the dining-room glittered with the wedding
+silver and cut-glass. New pictures hung on the sitting-room and
+parlor walls, beside the new paper. Wedding gifts lay on the tables.
+There had been many wedding gifts. Miss Zella Holmes flew about the
+house, with the saturnine Hungarian in attendance. Maria, at Miss
+Holmes's bidding, began to lay the table. She got out some new
+table-linen, napkins, and table-cloth, which had been a wedding
+present. She set the table with some new china. She looked, with a
+numb feeling, at her mother's poor old blue-and-white dishes, which
+were put away on the top shelves.
+
+"I think it would be a very good idea to pack away those dishes
+altogether, and put them in a box up in the garret," said Miss
+Holmes. Then she noticed Maria's face. "They will come in handy for
+your wedding outfit, little girl," she added, kindly and jocosely,
+but Maria did not laugh.
+
+Every now and then Maria looked at the clock on the parlor shelf,
+that was also new. The old sitting-room clock had disappeared; Maria
+did not know where, but she missed the face of it as if it had been
+the face of a friend. Miss Holmes also glanced frequently at the new
+clock. There arose a fragrant odor of warming potatoes and gravy from
+the kitchen.
+
+"It is almost time for them," said Miss Holmes.
+
+She was very much dressed-up, Maria thought. She wore a red silk gown
+with a good many frills about the shoulders. She was very slight, and
+affected frills to conceal it. Out of this mass of red frills arose
+her little, alert head and face, homely, but full of vivacity. Maria
+thought her very nice. She would have liked her better for a mother
+than Ida. When Miss Zella Holmes smiled it seemed to come from within.
+
+At last a carriage came rapidly up to their door, and Miss Holmes
+sprang to open it. Maria remained in the dining-room. Suddenly an
+uncanny fancy had seized her and terrified her. Suppose her father
+should look different, like everything else? Suppose it should be to
+her as if he had a new head? She therefore remained in the
+dining-room, trembling. She heard her father's voice, loud and merry.
+"Where is Maria?" Still, Maria did not stir. Then her father came
+hurrying into the room, and behind him she who had been Ida Slome,
+radiant and triumphant, in her plum-colored array, with the same
+smile with which she had departed on her beautiful face. Harry caught
+Maria in his arms, rubbed his cold face against her soft little one,
+and kissed her.
+
+"How is father's little girl?" he asked, with a break in his voice.
+
+"Pretty well, thank you," replied Maria. She gave a helpless little
+cling to her father, then she stood away.
+
+"Speak to your new mother, darling," said Harry.
+
+"How do _You do_?" said Maria, obediently, and Ida said, "You
+darling," and then kissed her exactly as if she had been an
+uncommonly well-constructed doll, with a clock-work system which
+fitted her to take such a part with perfect accuracy.
+
+Harry watched his wife and daughter rather anxiously. He seized the
+first opportunity to ask Maria, aside, if she had been well, and if
+she had been happy and comfortable at Mrs. White's. Then he wound up
+with the rather wistful inquiry:
+
+"You are going to love your new mother, aren't you, darling? Don't
+you think she is lovely?"
+
+Ida had gone up-stairs with Miss Holmes, to remove her wraps.
+
+"Yes, sir, I think She is lovely," replied Maria.
+
+
+
+Chapter X
+
+
+Ida Edgham was, in some respects, a peculiar personality. She was
+as much stronger, in another way, than her husband, as her
+predecessor had been. She was that anomaly: a creature of supreme
+self-satisfaction, who is yet aware of its own limits. She was so
+unemotional as to be almost abnormal, but she had head enough to
+realize the fact that absolute unemotionlessness in a woman detracts
+from her charm. She therefore simulated emotion. She had a spiritual
+make-up, a panoply of paint and powder for the soul, as truly as any
+actress has her array of cosmetics for her face. She made no effort
+to really feel, she knew that was entirely useless, but she observed
+all the outward signs and semblance of feeling more or less
+successfully. She knew that to take up her position in Harry Edgham's
+house like a marble bust of Diana, which had been one of her
+wedding-presents, would not be to her credit. She therefore put
+herself to the pace which she would naturally be expected to assume
+in her position. She showed everybody who called her new possessions,
+with a semblance of delight which was quite perfect. She was, in
+reality, less deceptive in that respect than in others. She had a
+degree of the joy of possession, or she would not have been a woman
+at all, and, in fact, would not have married. She had wanted a home
+and a husband; not as some women want them, for the legitimate desire
+for love and protection, but because she felt a degree of
+mortification on account of her single estate. She had had many
+admirers, but, although no one ever knew it, not one offer of
+marriage, the acceptance of which would not have been an absurdity,
+before poor Harry Edgham. She was not quite contented to accept him.
+She had hoped for something better; but he was good-looking, and
+popular, and his social standing, in her small world, was good. He
+was an electrical engineer, with an office in the city, and had a
+tolerably good income, although his first wife's New England thrift
+had compelled him to live parsimoniously.
+
+Ida made up her mind from the first that thrift, after the plan of
+the first woman, should not be observed in her household. Without
+hinting to that effect, or without Harry's recognizing it, she so
+managed that within a few weeks after her marriage he put an
+insurance on his life, which would insure her comfort in case she
+outlived him. He owned his house, and she had herself her little
+savings, well invested. She then considered that they could live up
+to Harry's income without much risk, and she proceeded to do so. It
+was not long before the saturnine Hungarian, who could have provided
+a regiment of her own countrymen with the coarse food of her race,
+but seemed absolutely incapable of carrying out American ideas of
+good cookery, was dismissed, and a good cook, at a price which at
+first staggered Harry, installed in her place. Then a young girl was
+found to take care of the bedrooms, and wait on table, attired in
+white gowns and aprons and caps.
+
+Ida had a reception two weeks after her return from her bridal trip,
+and an elaborate menu was provided by a caterer from New York. Maria,
+in a new white gown, with a white bow on her hair, sat at one end of
+the dining-table, shining with cut-glass and softly lighted with
+wax-candles under rose-colored shades in silver candlesticks, and
+poured chocolate, while another young girl opposite dipped lemonade
+from a great cut-glass punch-bowl, which had been one of the
+wedding-presents. The table was strewn with pink-and-white
+carnations. Maria caught a glimpse now and then of her new mother, in
+a rose-colored gown, with a bunch of pink roses on her breast,
+standing with her father receiving their guests, and she could
+scarcely believe that she was awake and it was really happening. She
+began to take a certain pleasure in the excitement. She heard one
+woman say to another how pretty she was, "poor little thing," and her
+heart throbbed with satisfaction. She felt at once beautiful and
+appealing to other people, because of her misfortunes. She turned the
+chocolate carefully, and put some whipped-cream on top of each dainty
+cup; and, for the first time since her father's marriage, she was not
+consciously unhappy. She glanced across the table at the other little
+girl, Amy Long, who was dark, and wore a pink bow on her hair, and
+she was sure that she herself was much prettier. Then, too, Amy had
+not the sad distinction of having lost her mother, and having a
+step-mother thrust upon her in a year's time. It is true that once
+when Amy's mother, large and portly in a blue satin which gave out
+pale white lights on the curves of her great arms and back, and whose
+roseate face looked forth from a fichu of real lace pinned with a
+great pearl brooch, came up behind her little daughter and
+straightened the pink bow on her hair, Maria felt a cruel little
+pang. There was something about the look of loving admiration which
+Mrs. Long gave her daughter that stung Maria's heart with a sense of
+loss. She felt that if her new mother should straighten out her white
+bow and regard her with admiration, it would be because of her own
+self, and the credit which she, Maria, reflected upon her. Still, she
+reflected how charming she looked. Self-love is much better than
+nothing for a lonely soul.
+
+That night Maria realized that she was in the second place, so far as
+her father was concerned. Ida, in her rose-colored robes, dispensing
+hospitality in his home, took up his whole attention. She was really
+radiant. She sang and played twice for the company, and her perfectly
+true high soprano filled the whole house. To Maria it sounded as
+meaningless as the trill of a canary-bird. In fact, when it came to
+music, Ida, although she had a good voice, had the mortification of
+realizing that her simulation of emotion failed her. Harry did not
+like his wife's singing. He felt like a traitor, but he could not
+help realizing that he did not like it. But the moment Ida stopped
+singing, he looked at her, and fairly wondered that he had married
+such a beautiful creature. He felt humble before her. Humility was
+not a salutary condition of mind for him, but this woman inspired it
+now, and would still more in the future. In spite of his first wife's
+scolding, her quick temper, he had always felt himself as good as she
+was. The mere fact of the temper itself had served to give him a
+sense of equality and, perhaps, superiority, but this woman never
+showed temper. She never failed to respond with her stereotyped smile
+to everything that was said. She seemed to have no faults at all, to
+realize none in herself, and not to admit the possibility of any one
+else doing so.
+
+Harry felt himself distinctly in the wrong beside such unquestionable
+right. He even did not think himself so good-looking as he had
+formerly done. It seemed to him that he looked much older than Ida.
+When they went out together he felt like a lackey in attendance on an
+empress. In his own home, it came to pass that he seldom made a
+remark when guests were present without a covert glance at his wife
+to see what she thought of it. He could always tell what she thought,
+even if her face did not change and she made no comment neither then
+nor afterwards, and she always made him know, in some subtle fashion,
+when he had said anything wrong.
+
+Maria felt very much in the same way at first, but she fought
+involuntarily against it. She had a good deal of her mother in her.
+Finally, she never looked at Ida when she said anything. She was full
+of rebellion although she was quiet and obedient, and very
+unobtrusive, in the new state of things.
+
+Ida entertained every Tuesday evening. There was not a caterer as at
+the first reception, but Ida herself cooked dainty messes in a silver
+chafing-dish, and Maria and the white-capped little maid passed
+things. It was not especially expensive, but people in Edgham began
+to talk. They said Harry was living beyond his means; but Ida kept
+within his income. She had too good a head for reckless extravagance,
+although she loved admiration and show. When there were no guests in
+the house, Maria used to go to her own room early of an evening, and
+read until it was time to go to bed. She realized that her father and
+Ida found her somewhat superfluous, although Ida never made any
+especial effort to entertain her father that Maria could see. She was
+fond of fancy-work, and was embroidering a silk gown for herself. She
+embroidered while Harry read the paper. She did not talk much. Maria
+used to wonder that her father did not find it dull when he and She
+were alone together of an evening. She looked at him reading his
+paper, with frequent glances of admiration over it at his beautiful
+wife, and thought that in his place, she should much prefer a woman
+like her mother, who had kept things lively, even without company,
+and even in a somewhat questionable fashion. However, Harry and Ida
+themselves went out a good deal. People in Edgham aped city society,
+they even talked about the "four hundred." The newly wedded pair were
+frequent guests of honor at dinners and receptions, and Ida herself
+was a member of the Edgham's Woman's Club, and that took her out a
+good deal. Maria was rather lonely. Finally the added state and
+luxury of her life, which had at first pleased her, failed to do so.
+She felt that she hated all the new order of things, and her heart
+yearned for the old. She began to grow thin; she did not sleep much
+nor sleep well. She felt tired all the time. One day her father
+noticed her changed looks.
+
+"Why, Maria is getting thin!" said he.
+
+"I think it is because she is growing tall," said Ida. "Everybody
+seems thin when they are growing tall. I did myself. I was much
+thinner than Maria at her age." She looked at Maria with her
+invariable smile as she spoke.
+
+"She looks very thin to me," Harry said, anxiously.
+
+He himself looked thin and older. An anxious wrinkle had deepened
+between his eyes. It was June, and the days were getting warm. He was
+anxious about Ida's health also. Ida was not at all anxious. She was
+perfectly placid. It did not seem to her that an overruling
+Providence could possibly treat her unkindly. She was rather annoyed
+at times, but still never anxious, and utterly satisfied with herself
+to that extent that it precluded any doubt as to the final outcome of
+everything.
+
+Maria continued to lose flesh. A sentimental interest in herself and
+her delicacy possessed her. She used to look at her face, which
+seemed to her more charming than ever, although so thin, in the
+glass, and reflect, with a pleasant acquiescence, on an early death.
+She even spent some time in composing her own epitaph, and kept it
+carefully hidden away in a drawer of her dresser, under some linen.
+
+Maria felt a gloomy pride when the doctor, who came frequently to see
+Ida, was asked to look at her; she felt still more triumphant when he
+expressed it as his opinion that she ought to have a change of air
+the moment school closed. The doctor said Maria was running down,
+which seemed to her a very interesting state of things, and one which
+ought to impress people. She told Gladys Mann the next day at school.
+
+"The doctor says I'm running down," said she.
+
+"You do look awful bad," replied Gladys.
+
+After recess Maria saw Gladys with her face down on her desk,
+weeping. She knew that she was weeping because she looked so badly
+and was running down. She glanced across at Wollaston Lee, and
+wondered if he had noticed how badly she looked, and yet how
+charming. All at once the boy shot a glance at her in return; then he
+blushed and scowled and took up his book. It all comforted Maria in
+the midst of her langour and her illness, which was negative and
+unattended by any pain. If she felt any appetite she restrained it,
+she became so vain of having lost it.
+
+It was decided that Maria should go and visit her aunt Maria, in New
+England, and remain there all summer. Her father would pay her board
+in order that she should not be any restraint on her aunt, with her
+scant income. Just before Maria went, and just before her school
+closed, the broad gossip of the school came to her ears. She
+ascertained something which filled her at once with awe, and shame,
+and jealousy, and indignation. If one of the girls began to speak to
+her about it, she turned angrily away. She fairly pushed Gladys Mann
+one day. Gladys turned and looked at her with loving reproach, like a
+chidden dog. "What did you expect?" said she. Maria ran away, her
+face burning.
+
+After she reached her aunt Maria's nothing was said to her about it.
+Aunt Maria was too prudish and too indignant. Uncle Henry's wife,
+Aunt Eunice, was away all summer, taking care of a sister who was ill
+with consumption in New Hampshire; so Aunt Maria kept the whole
+house, and she and Maria and Uncle Henry had their meals together.
+Maria loved her uncle Henry. He was a patient man, with a patience
+which at times turns to fierceness, of a man with a brain above his
+sphere, who has had to stand and toil in a shoe-factory for his bread
+and butter all his life. He was non-complainant because of a sort of
+stern pride, and a sense of a just cause against Providence, but he
+was very kind to Maria; he petted her as if she had been his own
+child. Every pleasant night Uncle Henry took Maria for a
+trolley-ride, or a walk, and he treated her to ice-cream soda and
+candy. Aunt Maria also took good care of the child. She showed a sort
+of vicious curiosity with regard to Maria's step-mother and all the
+new household arrangements, which Maria did not gratify. She had too
+much loyalty, although she longed to say all that she thought to her
+aunt, being sure of a violent sympathizer.
+
+"Well, I'll say one thing, she has fixed your clothes nice," said
+Aunt Maria.
+
+"She didn't do it, it was Miss Barnes," replied Maria. She could not
+help saying that much. She did not want Aunt Maria to think her
+step-mother took better care of her wardrobe than her own mother had
+done.
+
+"Good land! She didn't hire all these things made?" said Aunt Maria.
+
+"Yes'm."
+
+"Good land! I don't see how your father is going to stand it. I'd
+like to know what your poor mother would have said?" said Aunt Maria.
+
+Then Maria's loyalty came to the front. After all, she was her
+father's wife, and to be defended.
+
+"I guess maybe father is making more money now," said she.
+
+"Well, I hope to the land he is," said Aunt Maria. "I guess if She
+(Aunt Maria also treated Ida like a pronoun) had just one hundred
+dollars and no more to get along with, she'd have to do different."
+
+Maria regained her strength rapidly. When she went home, a few days
+before her school begun, in September, she was quite rosy and
+blooming. She had also fallen in love with a boy who lived next to
+Aunt Maria, and who asked her, over the garden fence, to correspond
+with him, the week before she left.
+
+It was that very night that Aunt Maria had the telegram. She paid the
+boy, then she opened it with trembling fingers. Her brother Henry and
+Maria were with her on the porch. It was a warm night, and Aunt Maria
+wore an ancient muslin. The south wind fluttered the ruffles on that
+and the yellow telegram as she read. She was silent a moment, with
+mouth compressed.
+
+"Well," said her brother Henry, inquiringly.
+
+Aunt Maria's face flushed and paled. She turned to Maria.
+
+"Well," she said, "you've got a little sister."
+
+"Good!" said Uncle Henry. "Ever so much more company for you than a
+little brother would have been, Maria."
+
+Maria was silent. She trembled and felt cold, although the night was
+so warm.
+
+"Weighs seven pounds," said Aunt Maria, in a hard voice.
+
+Maria returned home a week from that day. She travelled alone from
+Boston, and her father met her in New York. He looked strange to her.
+He was jubilant, and yet the marks of anxiety were deep. He seemed
+very glad to see Maria, and talked to her about her little sister in
+an odd, hesitating way.
+
+"Her name is Evelyn," said Harry.
+
+Maria said nothing. She and her father were crossing the city to the
+ferry in a cab.
+
+"Don't you think that is a pretty name, dear?" asked Harry, with a
+queer, apologetic wistfulness.
+
+"No, father, I think it is a very silly name," replied Maria.
+
+"Why, your mother and I thought it a very pretty name, dear."
+
+"I always thought it was the silliest name in the world," said Maria,
+firmly. However, she sat close to her father, and realized that it
+was something to have him to herself without Her, while crossing the
+city. "I don't know as I think Evelyn is such a very silly name,
+father," she said, presently, just before they reached the ferry.
+
+Harry bent down and kissed her. "Father's own little girl," he said.
+
+Maria felt that she had been magnanimous, for she had in reality
+never liked Evelyn, and would not have named a doll that.
+
+"You will be a great deal happier with a little sister. It will turn
+out for the best," said Harry, as the cab stopped. Harry always put a
+colon of optimism to all his happenings of life.
+
+The next morning, when Ida was arrayed in a silk negligee, and the
+baby was washed and dressed, Maria was bidden to enter the room which
+had been her mother's. The first thing which she noticed was a faint
+perfume of violet-scented toilet-powder. Then she saw Ida leaning
+back gracefully in a reclining-chair, with her hair carefully
+dressed. The nurse held the baby: a squirming little bundle of soft,
+embroidered flannel. The nurse was French, and she awed Maria, for
+she spoke no English, and nobody except Ida could understand her. She
+was elderly, small, and of a damaged blond type. Maria approached Ida
+and kissed her. Ida looked at her, smiling. Then she asked if she had
+had a pleasant summer. She told the nurse, in French, to show the
+baby to her. Maria approached the nurse timidly. The flannel was
+carefully laid aside, and the small, piteously inquiring and puzzled
+face, the inquiry and the bewilderment expressed by a thousand
+wrinkles, was exposed. Maria looked at it with a sort of shiver. The
+nurse laid the flannel apart and disclosed the tiny feet seeming
+already to kick feebly at existence. The nurse said something in
+French which Maria could not understand. Ida answered also in French.
+Then the baby seemed to experience a convulsion; its whole face
+seemed to open into one gape of expostulation at fate. Then its
+feeble, futile wail filled the whole room.
+
+"Isn't she a little darling?" asked Ida, of Maria.
+
+"Yes'm," replied Maria.
+
+There was a curious air of aloofness about Ida with regard to her
+baby, and something which gave the impression of wistfulness. It is
+possible that she was capable of wishing that she had not that
+aloofness. It did not in the least seem to Maria as if it were Ida's
+baby. She had a vague impression, derived she could not tell in what
+manner, of a rosebud laid on a gatepost. Ida did not seem conscious
+of her baby with the woodeny consciousness of an apple-tree of a
+blossom. When she gazed at it, it was with the same set smile with
+which she had always viewed all creation. That smile which came from
+without, not within, but now it was fairly tragic.
+
+"Her name is Evelyn. Don't you think it is a pretty name?" asked Ida.
+
+"Yes'm," replied Maria. She edged towards the door. The nurse,
+tossing the wailing baby, rose and got a bottle of milk. Maria went
+out.
+
+Maria went to school the next Monday, and all the girls asked her if
+the baby was pretty.
+
+"It looks like all the babies I ever saw," replied Maria guardedly.
+She did not wish to descry the baby which was, after all, her sister,
+but she privately thought it was a terrible sight.
+
+Gladys Mann supported her. "Babies do all look alike," said she.
+"We've had nine to our house, and I had ought to know."
+
+At first Maria used to dread to go home from school, on account of
+the baby. She had a feeling of repulsion because of it, but gradually
+that feeling disappeared and an odd sort of fascination possessed her
+instead. She thought a great deal about the baby. When she heard it
+cry in the night, she thought that her father and Ida might have
+sense enough to stop it. She thought that she could stop its crying
+herself, by carrying it very gently around the room. Still she did
+not love the baby. It only appealed, in a general way, to her
+instincts. But one day, when the baby was some six weeks old, and Ida
+had gone to New York, she came home from school, and she went up to
+her own room, and she heard the baby crying in the room opposite. It
+cried and cried, with the insistent cry of a neglected child. Maria
+said to herself that she did not believe but the French nurse had
+taken advantage of Her absence, and had slipped out on some errand
+and left the baby alone.
+
+The baby continued to wail, and a note of despair crept into the
+wail. Maria could endure it no longer. She ran across the hall and
+flung open the door. The baby lay crying in a little pink-lined
+basket. Maria bent over it, and the baby at once stopped crying. She
+opened her mouth in a toothless smile, and she held up little, waving
+pink hands to Maria. Maria lifted the baby out of her basket and
+pressed her softly, with infinite care, as one does something very
+precious, to her childish bosom, and at once something strange seemed
+to happen to her. She became, as it were, illuminated by love.
+
+
+
+Chapter XI
+
+
+Maria had fallen in love with the baby, and her first impulse, as in
+the case of all true love, was secrecy. Why she should have been
+ashamed of her affection, her passion, for it was, in fact, passion,
+her first, she could not have told. It was the sublimated infatuation
+half compounded of dreams, half of instinct, which a little girl
+usually has for her doll. But Maria had never had any particular love
+for a doll. She had possessed dolls, of course, but she had never
+been quite able to rise above the obvious sham of them, the cloth and
+the sawdust and the paint. She had wondered how some little girls
+whom she had known had loved to sleep with their dolls; as for her,
+she would as soon have thought of taking pleasure in dozing off with
+any little roll of linen clasped in her arms. It was rather singular,
+for she had a vivid imagination, but it had balked at a doll. When,
+as sometimes happened, she saw a little girl of her own age, wheeling
+with solemnity a doll in a go-cart, she viewed her with amazement and
+contempt, and thought privately that she was not altogether bright.
+But this baby was different. It did not have to be laid on its back
+to make its eyes close, it did not have to be shaken and squeezed to
+make it vociferous. It was alive, and Maria, who was unusually alive
+in her emotional nature, was keenly aware of that effect. This
+little, tender, rosy thing was not stuffed with sawdust, it was
+stuffed with soul and love. It could smile; the smile was not painted
+on its face in a doll-factory. Maria was so thankful that this baby,
+Ida's baby, did not have Her smile, unchanging and permanent for all
+observers and all vicissitudes. When this baby smiled it smiled, and
+when it cried it cried. It was honest from the crown of its fuzzy
+head to the soles of its little pink worsted socks.
+
+At the first reception which Ida gave after the baby came, and when
+it was on exhibition in a hand-embroidered robe, it screamed every
+minute. Maria was secretly glad, and proud of it. It meant much to
+her that _her_ baby should not smile at all the company, whether it
+was smiling in its heart or not, the way She did. Maria had no room
+in her heart for any other love, except that for her father and the
+baby. She looked at Wollaston Lee, and wondered how she could ever
+have had dreams about him, how she could ever have preferred a boy to
+a baby like her little sister, even in her dreams. She ceased
+haunting the post-office for a letter from that other boy in New
+England, who had asked her to correspond over the garden fence, and
+who had either never written at all, or had misdirected his letter.
+She wondered how she had thought for a moment of doing such a thing
+as writing to a boy like that. She remembered with disgust how
+overgrown that boy was, and how his stockings were darned at the
+knees; and how she had seen patches of new cloth on his trousers, and
+had heard her aunt Maria say that he was so hard on his clothes on
+account of his passion for bird-nesting, that it was all his mother
+could do to keep him always decent. How could she have thought for a
+moment of a bird-nesting sort of boy? She was so thankful that the
+baby was a girl. Maria, as sometimes happens, had a rather inverted
+system of growth. With most, dolls come first, then boys; with her,
+dolls had not come at all. Boys came first, then her little baby
+sister, which was to her in the place of a doll, and the boys got
+promptly relegated to the background.
+
+Much to Maria's delight, the French nurse, whom she at once disliked
+and stood in awe of, only remained until the baby was about two
+months old, then a little nurse-girl was engaged. On pleasant days
+the nurse-girl, whose name was Josephine, wheeled out the baby in her
+little carriage, which was the daintiest thing of the kind to be
+found, furnished with a white lace canopy lined with rose-colored
+silk. It was on these occasions that Maria showed duplicity. On
+Saturdays, when there was no school, she privately and secretly
+bribed Josephine, who was herself under the spell of the baby, to go
+home and visit her mother, and let her have the privilege of wheeling
+it herself. Maria had a small sum every week for her pocket-money,
+and a large part of it went to Josephine in the shape of chocolates,
+of which she was inordinately fond; in fact, Josephine, who came of
+the poor whites, like Gladys Mann, might have been said to be a
+chocolate maniac. Maria used to arrange with Josephine to meet her on
+a certain corner on Saturdays, and there the transfer was made:
+Josephine became the possessor of half a pound of chocolates, and
+Maria of the baby. Josephine had sworn almost a solemn oath to never
+tell. She at once repaired to her mother's, sucking chocolates on the
+way, and Maria blissfully wheeled the baby. She stood in very little
+danger of meeting Her on these occasions, because the Edgham Woman's
+Club met on Saturday afternoon. It often happened, however, that
+Maria met some of the school-girls, and then nothing could have
+exceeded her pride and triumph. Some of them had little brothers or
+sisters, but none of them such a little sister as hers.
+
+The baby had, in reality, grown to be a beauty among babies. All the
+inflamed red and aged puckers and creases had disappeared; instead of
+that was the sweetest flush, like that of just-opened rosebuds.
+Evelyn was a compact little baby, fat, but not overlapping and
+grossly fat. It was such a matter of pride to Maria that the baby's
+cheeks did not hang the least bit in the world, but had only lovely
+little curves and dimples. She had become quite a connoisseur in
+babies. When she saw a baby whose flabby cheeks hung down and touched
+its bib, she was disgusted. She felt as if there was something
+morally wrong with such a baby as that. Her baby was wrapped in the
+softest white things: furs, and silk-lined embroidered cashmeres, and
+her little face just peeped out from the lace frill of a charming
+cap. There was only one touch of color in all this whiteness, beside
+the tender rose of the baby's face, and that was a little knot of
+pale pink baby-ribbon on the cap. Maria often stopped to make sure
+that the cap was on straight, and she also stopped very often to tuck
+in the white fur rug, and she also stopped often to thrust her own
+lovely little girl-face into the sweet confusion of baby and lace and
+embroidery and fur, with soft kisses and little, caressing murmurs of
+love. She made up little love phrases, which she would have been
+inexpressibly ashamed to have had overheard. "Little honey love" was
+one of them--"Sister's own little honey love." Once, when walking on
+Elm Street under the leafless arches of the elms, where she thought
+she was quite alone, although it was a very bright, warm afternoon,
+and quite dry--it was not a snowy winter--she spoke more loudly than
+she intended, and looked up to see another, bigger girl, the daughter
+of the Edgham lawyer, whose name was Annie Stone. Annie Stone was
+large of her age--so large, in fact, that she had a nickname of
+"Fatty" in school. It had possibly soured her, or her over-plumpness
+may have been due to some physical ailment which rendered her
+irritable. At all events, Annie Stone had not that sweetness and
+placidity of temperament popularly supposed to be coincident with
+stoutness. She had a bitter and sarcastic tongue for a young girl.
+Maria inwardly shuddered when she saw Annie Stone's fat, malicious
+face surveying her from under her fur-trimmed hat. Annie Stone was
+always very well dressed, but even that did not seem to improve her
+mental attitude. Her large, high-colored face was also distinctly
+pretty, but she did not seemed to be cognizant of that to the result
+of any satisfaction.
+
+"Sister's little honey love!" she repeated after Maria, with fairly a
+snarl of satire.
+
+Maria had spirit, although she was for the moment dismayed.
+
+"Well, she is--so there," said she.
+
+"You wait till you have a few more little honey loves," said Annie
+Stone, "and see how you feel."
+
+With that Annie Stone went her way, with soft flounces of her short,
+stout body, and Maria was left. She was still defiant; her blood was
+up. "Sister's little honey love," she said to the baby, in a tone so
+loud that Annie Stone must have heard. "Were folks that didn't have
+anything but naughty little brothers jealous of her?" Annie Stone
+had, in fact, a notorious little brother, who at the early age of
+seven was the terror of his sisters and all law-abiding citizens; but
+Annie Stone was not easily touched.
+
+"Sister's little honey love," she shouted back, turning a malignant
+face over her shoulder. She had that very morning had a hand-to-hand
+fight with her naughty little brother, and finally come out
+victorious, by forcing him to the ground and sitting on him until he
+said he was sorry. It was not very reasonable that she should be at
+all sensitive with regard to him.
+
+After Annie Stone had gone out of sight, Maria went around to the
+front of the little carriage, adjusted the white fur rug carefully,
+secured a tiny, white mitten on one of the baby's hands, and
+whispered to the baby alone. "You _are_ sister's little honey love,
+aren't you, precious?" and the baby smiled that entrancing smile of
+honesty and innocence which sent the dimples spreading to the lace
+frill of her cap, and reached out her arms, thereby displacing both
+mittens, which Maria adjusted; then, after a fervent kiss, she went
+her way.
+
+However, she was not that afternoon to proceed on her way long
+uninterrupted. For some time Josephine, the nurse-girl, had either
+been growing jealous, or chocolates were palling upon her. Josephine
+had also found her own home locked up, and the key nowhere in
+evidence. There would be a good half-hour to wait at the usual corner
+for Maria. The wind had changed, and blew cold from the northwest.
+Josephine was not very warmly clad. She wore her white gown and
+apron, which Mrs. Edgham insisted upon, and which she resented. She
+had that day felt a stronger sense of injury with regard to it, and
+counted upon telling her mother how mean and set up she thought it
+was for any lady as called herself a lady to make a girl wear a
+summer white dress in winter. She shivered on her corner of waiting.
+Josephine got more and more wroth. Finally she decided to start in
+search of Maria and the baby. She gave her white skirts an angry
+switch and started. It was not very long after she had turned her
+second corner before she saw Maria and the baby ahead of her.
+Josephine then ran. She was a stout girl, and she plunged ahead
+heavily until she came up with Maria. The first thing Maria knew,
+Josephine had grabbed the handle of the carriage--two red girl hands
+appeared beside her own small, gloved ones.
+
+"Here, gimme this baby to once," gabbled Josephine in the thick
+speech of her kind.
+
+Maria looked at her. "The time isn't up, and you know it isn't,
+Josephine," said she. "I just passed by a clock in Melvin & Adams's
+jewelry store, and it isn't time for me to be on the corner."
+
+"Gimme the baby," demanded Josephine. She attempted to pull the
+carriage away from Maria, but Maria, although her strength was
+inferior, had spirit enough to cope with any poor white. Her little
+fingers clutched like iron. "I shall not give her up until four
+o'clock," said she. "Go back to the corner."
+
+Josephine's only answer was a tug which dislodged Maria's fingers and
+hurt her. But Maria came of the stock which believed in trusting the
+Lord and keeping the powder dry. She was not yet conquered. The right
+was clearly on her side. She and Josephine had planned to meet at the
+corner at four o'clock, and it was not quite half-past three, and she
+had given Josephine half a pound of chocolates. She did not stop to
+reflect a moment. Maria's impulses were quick, and lack of decision
+in emergencies was not a failing of hers. She made one dart to the
+rear of Josephine. Josephine wore her hair in a braided loop, tied
+with a bow of black ribbon. Maria seized upon this loop of brown
+braids, and hung. She was enough shorter than Josephine to render it
+effectual. Josephine's head was bent backward and she was helpless,
+unless she let go of the baby-carriage. Josephine, however, had good
+lungs, and she screamed, as she was pulled backward, still holding to
+the little carriage, which was also somewhat tilted by the whole
+performance.
+
+"Lemme be, you horrid little thing!" she screamed, "or I'll tell your
+ma."
+
+"She isn't my mother," said Maria in return. "Let go of my baby."
+
+"She is your ma. Your father married her, and she's your ma, and you
+can't help yourself. Lemme go, or I'll tell on you."
+
+"Tell, if you want to," said Maria, firmly, actually swinging with
+her whole weight from Josephine's loop of braids. "Let go my baby."
+
+Josephine screamed again, with her head bent backward, and the
+baby-carriage tilted perilously. Then a woman, who had been watching
+from a window near by, rushed upon the scene. She was Gladys Mann's
+mother. Just as she appeared the baby began to cry, and that
+accelerated her speed. The windows of her house became filled with
+staring childish faces. The woman, who was very small and lean but
+wiry, a bundle of muscles and nerve, ran up to the baby-carriage, and
+pulled it back to its proper status, and began at once quieting the
+frightened baby and scolding the girls.
+
+"Hush, hush," cooed she to the baby. "Did it think it was goin' to
+get hurted?" Then to the girls: "Ain't you ashamed of yourselves, two
+great girls fightin' right in the street, and most tippin' the baby
+over. S'posin' you had killed him?"
+
+Then Josephine burst forth in a great wail of wrath and pain. The
+bringing down of the carriage had increased her agony, for Maria
+still clung to her hair.
+
+"Oh, oh, oh!" howled Josephine, her head straining back. "She's most
+killin' me."
+
+"An' I'll warrant you deserve it," said the woman. Then she added to
+Maria--she was entirely impartial in her scolding--"Let go of her,
+ain't you shamed." Then to the baby, "Did he think he was goin' to
+get hurted?"
+
+"He's a girl!" cried Maria in a frenzy of indignation. "He is not a
+boy, he is a girl." She still clung desperately to Josephine's hair,
+who in her turn clung to the baby-carriage.
+
+Then Gladys came out of the house, in a miserable, thin, dirty gown,
+and she was Maria's ally.
+
+"Let that baby go!" she cried to Josephine. She tugged fiercely at
+Josephine's white skirt.
+
+"Gladys Mann, you go right straight into the house. What be you
+buttin' in for!" screamed her mother. "You let that girl's hair
+alone. Josephine, what you been up to. You might have killed this
+baby."
+
+The baby screamed louder. It wriggled around in its little, white fur
+nest, and stretched out imploring pink paws from which the mittens
+had fallen off. Its little lace hood was awry, the pink rosette was
+cocked over one ear. Maria herself began to cry. Then Gladys waxed
+fairly fierce. She paid no attention whatever to her mother.
+
+"You jest go round an' ketch on to the kid's wagin," said she, "an'
+I'll take care of her." With that her strong little hands made a
+vicious clutch at Josephine's braids.
+
+Maria sprang for the baby-carriage. She straightened the lace hood,
+she tucked in the fur robe, and put on the mittens. The baby's
+screams subsided into a grieved whimper. "Did great wicked girls come
+and plague sister's own little precious?" said Maria. But now she had
+to reckon with Gladys's mother, who had recovered her equilibrium,
+lost for a second by her daughter's manoeuvre. She seized in her turn
+the handle of the baby-carriage, and gave Maria a strong push aside.
+Then she looked at all three combatants, like a poor-white Solomon.
+
+"Who were sent out with him in the first place, that's what I want to
+know?" she said.
+
+"I were," replied Josephine in a sobbing shout. Her head was aching
+as if she had been scalped.
+
+"Shet up!" said Gladys's mother inconsistently.
+
+"Did your ma send her out with him?" she queried of her.
+
+"He is not a boy," replied Maria shiftily.
+
+"Yes, she did," said Josephine, still rubbing her head.
+
+Gladys, through a wholesome fear of her mother, had released her hold
+on her braids, and stood a little behind.
+
+Mrs. Mann's scanty rough hair blew in the winter wind as she took
+hold of the carriage. Maria again tucked in the white fur robe to
+conceal her discomfiture. She was becoming aware that she was being
+proved in the wrong.
+
+"Shet up!" said Mrs. Mann in response to Josephine's answer. There
+was not the slightest sense nor meaning in the remark, but it was, so
+to speak, her household note, learned through the exigency of being
+in the constant society of so many noisy children. She told
+everybody, on general principles, to "shet up," even when she wished
+for information which necessitated the reverse.
+
+Mrs. Mann was thin and meagre, and wholly untidy. The wind lashed her
+dirty cotton skirt around her, disclosing a dirtier petticoat and
+men's shoes. The skin of her worn, blond face had a look as if the
+soil of life had fairly been rubbed into it. All the lines of this
+face were lax, displaying utter lassitude and no energy. She,
+however, had her evanescent streaks of life, as now. Once in a while
+a bubble of ancestral blood seemed to come to the surface, although
+it soon burst. She had come, generations back, of a good family. She
+was the run out weed of it, but still, at times, the old colors of
+the blossom were evident. She turned to Maria.
+
+"If," said she, "your ma sent her out with this young one, I don't
+see why you went to pullin' her hair fur?"
+
+"I gave her a whole half-pound of chocolates," returned Maria, in a
+fine glow of indignation, "if she would let me push the baby till
+four o'clock, and it isn't four o'clock yet."
+
+"It ain't more than half-past three," said Gladys.
+
+"Shet up!" said her mother. She stood looking rather helplessly at
+the three little girls and the situation. Her suddenly wakened mental
+faculties were running down like those of a watch which has been
+shaken to make it go for a few seconds. The situation was too much
+for her, and, according to her wont, she let it drop. Just then a
+whiff of strong sweetness came from the house, and her blank face
+lighted up.
+
+"We are makin' 'lasses candy," said she. "You young ones all come in
+and hev' some, and I'll take the baby. He can get warm, and a little
+of thet candy won't do him no harm, nuther." Mrs. Mann used the
+masculine pronoun from force of habit; all her children with the
+exception of Gladys were boys.
+
+Maria hesitated. She had a certain scorn for the Manns. She eyed Mrs.
+Mann's dirty attire and face. But she was in fact cold, and the smell
+of the candy was entrancing. "She said never to take the baby in
+anywhere," said she, doubtfully.
+
+Josephine having tired of chocolate, realized suddenly an enormous
+hunger for molasses candy. She sniffed like a hunting hound. "She
+didn't say not to go into Mrs. Mann's," said she.
+
+"She said anywhere; I heard her tell you," said Maria.
+
+"Mrs. Mann's ain't anywhere," said Josephine, who had a will of her
+own. She rushed around and caught up the baby. "She's most froze,"
+said she. "She'll get the croup if she don't get warmed up."
+
+With that, Josephine carrying the baby, Maria, Gladys, and Mrs. Mann
+all entered the little, squalid Mann house, as hot as a conservatory
+and reeking with the smell of boiled molasses.
+
+When Josephine and Maria and the baby started out again, Maria turned
+to Josephine.
+
+"Now," said she, "if you don't let me push her as far as the corner
+of our street, I'll tell how you took her into Mrs. Mann's. You know
+what She'll say."
+
+Josephine, whose face was smeared with molasses candy, and who was
+even then sucking some, relinquished her hold on the carriage.
+"You'll be awful mean if you do tell," said she.
+
+"I will tell if you don't do what you say you'll do another time,"
+said she.
+
+When they reached home, Ida had not returned, but she came in radiant
+some few minutes later. She had read a paper on a famous man, for the
+pleasure and profit of the Edgham Woman's Club, and she had received
+much applause and felt correspondingly elated. Josephine had taken
+the baby up-stairs to a little room which had recently been fitted up
+for a nursery, and, not following her usual custom, Ida went in there
+after removing her outer wraps. She stood in her blue cloth dress
+looking at the child with her usual air of radiant aloofness, seeming
+to shed her own glory, like a star, upon the baby, rather than
+receive its little light into the loving recesses of her own soul.
+Josephine and also Maria were in a state of consternation. They had
+discovered a large, sticky splash of molasses candy on the baby's
+white embroidered cloak. They had washed the baby's sticky little
+face, but they did not know what was to be done about the cloak,
+which lay over a chair. Josephine essayed, with a dexterous gesture,
+to so fold the cloak over that the stain would be for the time
+concealed. But Ida Edgham had not been a school-teacher for nothing.
+She saw the gesture, and immediately took up the cloak herself.
+
+"Why, what is this on her cloak?" said she.
+
+There was a miserable silence.
+
+"It looks like molasses candy. It is molasses candy," said Ida.
+"Josephine, did you give this child molasses candy?" Ida's voice was
+entirely even, but there was something terrible about it.
+
+Maria saw Josephine turn white. "She wouldn't have given her the
+candy if it hadn't been for me," said she.
+
+Ida stood looking from one to the other. Josephine's face was white
+and scared, Maria's impenetrable.
+
+"If you ever give this child candy again, either of you," said Ida,
+"you will never take her out again." Then she went out, still smiling.
+
+Josephine looked at Maria with enormous gratitude.
+
+"Say," said she, "you're a dandy."
+
+"You're a cheat!" returned Maria, with scorn.
+
+"I'm awful sorry I didn't wait on the corner till four o'clock,
+honest."
+
+"You'd better be."
+
+"Say, but you be a dandy," repeated Josephine.
+
+
+
+Chapter XII
+
+
+Maria began to be conscious of other and more vital seasons than
+those of the old earth on which she lived--the seasons of the human
+soul. Along with her own unconscious and involuntary budding towards
+bloom, the warm rush of the blood in her own veins, she realized the
+budding progress of the baby. When little Evelyn was put into short
+frocks, and her little, dancing feet were shod with leather instead
+of wool, Maria felt a sort of delicious wonder, similar to that with
+which she watched a lilac-bush in the yard when its blossoms deepened
+in the spring.
+
+The day when Evelyn was put into short frocks, Maria glanced across
+the school-room at Wollaston Lee, and her innocent passion, half
+romance, half imagination, which had been for a time in abeyance,
+again thrilled her. All her pulses throbbed. She tried to work out a
+simple problem in her algebra, but mightier unknown quantities were
+working towards solution in every beat of her heart. Wollaston shot a
+sidelong glance at her, and she felt it, although she did not see it.
+Gladys Mann leaned over her shoulder.
+
+"Say," she whispered, "Wollaston Lee is jest starin' at you!"
+
+Maria gave a little, impatient shrug of her shoulders, although a
+blush shot over her whole face, and Gladys saw distinctly the back of
+her neck turn a roseate color.
+
+"He's awful stuck on you, I guess," Gladys said.
+
+Maria shrugged her shoulders again, but she thought of Wollaston and
+then of the baby in her short frock and she felt that her heart was
+bursting with joy, as a bud with blossom.
+
+Ida, meantime, was curiously impassive towards her child's
+attainments. There was something pathetic about this impassiveness.
+Ida was missing a great deal, and more because she did not even know
+what she missed. However, she began to be conscious of a settled
+aversion towards Maria. Her manner towards her was unchanged, but she
+became distinctly irritated at seeing her about. When anything
+annoyed Ida, she immediately entertained no doubt whatever that it
+was not in accordance with the designs of an overruling Providence.
+It seemed manifest to her that if anything annoyed her, it should be
+removed. However, in this case, the way of removal did not seem clear
+for a long time. Harry was undoubtedly fond of Maria. That did not
+trouble Ida in the least, although she recognized the fact. She was
+not a woman who was capable of jealousy, because her own love and
+admiration for herself made her impregnable. She loved herself so
+much more than Harry could possibly love her that his feeling for
+Maria did not ruffle her in the least. It was due to no jealousy that
+she wished Maria removed, at least for a part of the time. It was
+only that she was always conscious of a dissent, silent and helpless,
+still persistent, towards her attitude as regarded herself. She knew
+that Maria did not think her as beautiful and perfect as she thought
+herself, and the constant presence of this small element of negation
+irritated her. Then, too, while she was not in the least jealous of
+her child, she had a curious conviction that Maria cared more for her
+than she herself cared, and that in itself was a covert reproach.
+When little Evelyn ran to meet her sister when she returned from
+school, Ida felt distinctly disturbed. She had no doubt of her
+ultimate success in her purpose of ridding herself of at least the
+constant presence of Maria, and in the mean time she continued to
+perform her duty by the girl, to that outward extent that everybody
+in Edgham pronounced her a model step-mother. "Maria Edgham never
+looked half so well in her own mother's time," they said.
+
+Lillian White spoke of it to her mother one Sunday. She had been to
+church, but her mother had remained at home on account of a cold.
+
+"I tell you she looked dandy," said Lillian. Lillian was still as
+softly and negatively pretty as ever. She was really charming because
+she was not angular, because her skin was not thick and coarse,
+because she did not look anaemic, but perfectly well fed and
+nourished and happy.
+
+"Who?" asked her mother.
+
+"Maria Edgham. She was togged out to beat the band. Everything looked
+sort of fadged up that she had before her own mother died. I tell you
+she never had anything like the rig she wore to-day."
+
+"What was it?" asked her mother interestedly, wiping her rasped nose
+with a moist ball of handkerchief.
+
+"Oh, it was the handsomest brown suit I ever laid my eyes on, with
+hand-embroidery, and fur, and a big picture hat trimmed with fur and
+chrysanthemums. She's an awful pretty little girl anyhow."
+
+"She always was pretty," said Mrs. White, dabbing her nose again.
+
+"If Ida don't look out, her step-daughter will beat her in looks,"
+said Lillian.
+
+"I never thought myself that Ida was anything to brag of, anyway,"
+said Mrs. White. She still had a sense of wondering injury that Harry
+Edgham had preferred Ida to her Lillian.
+
+Lillian was now engaged to be married, but her mother did not feel
+quite satisfied with the man. He was employed in a retail clothing
+establishment in New York, and had only a small salary. "Foster
+Simpkins" (that was the young man's name) "ain't really what you
+ought to have," she often said to Lillian.
+
+But Lillian took it easily. She liked the young man very much as she
+would have liked a sugar-plum, and she thought it high time for her
+to be married, although she was scarcely turned twenty. "Oh, well,
+ma," she said. "Men don't grow on every bush, and Foster is real
+good-lookin', and maybe his salary will be raised."
+
+"You ain't lookin' very high," said her mother.
+
+"No use in strainin' your neck for things out of your own sky," said
+Lillian, who had at times a shrewd sort of humor, inherited from her
+father.
+
+"Harry Edgham would have been a better match for you," her mother
+said.
+
+"Lord, I'd a good sight rather have Foster than another woman's
+leavin's," replied Lillian. "Then there was Maria, too. It would have
+been an awful job to dress her, and look out for her."
+
+"That's so," said her mother, "and then the two sets of children,
+too."
+
+Lillian colored and giggled. "Oh, land, don't talk about children,
+ma!" said she. "I'm contented as it is. But you ought to have seen
+that young one to-day."
+
+"What did Ida wear?" asked Mrs. White.
+
+"She wore her black velvet suit, that she had this winter, and the
+way she strutted up the aisle was a caution."
+
+"I don't see how Harry Edgham lives the way he does," said Mrs.
+White. "Black velvet costs a lot. Do you s'pose it is silk velvet?"
+
+"You bet."
+
+"I don't see how he does it!"
+
+"He looks sort of worn-out to me. He's grown awful old, I noticed it
+to-day."
+
+"Well, all Ida cares for is herself. _She_ don't see he's grown old,
+you can be sure of that," said Mrs. White, with an odd sort of
+bitterness. Actually the woman was so filled with maternal instincts
+that the bare dream of Harry as her Lillian's husband had given her a
+sort of motherly solicitude for him, which she had not lost. "It's a
+shame," said she.
+
+"Oh, well, it's none of my funeral," said Lillian, easily. She took a
+chocolate out of a box which her lover had sent her, and began
+nibbling it like a squirrel.
+
+"Poor man," said Mrs. White. Tears of emotion actually filled her
+eyes and mingled with the rheum of her cold. She took out her moist
+ball of handkerchief again and dabbed both her eyes and nose.
+
+Lillian looked at her half amusedly, half affectionately. "Mother,
+you do beat the Dutch," said she.
+
+Mrs. White actually snivelled. "I can't help remembering the time
+when his poor first wife died," said she, "and how he and little
+Maria came here to take their meals, poor souls. Harry Edgham was
+just the one to be worked by a woman, poor fellow."
+
+Lillian sucked her chocolate with a full sense of its sweetness. "Ma,
+you can't keep track of all creation, nor cry over it," said she.
+"You've got to leave it to the Lord. Have you taken your pink pellet?"
+
+"Poor little Maria, too," said Mrs. White.
+
+"Good gracious, ma, don't you take to worryin' over her," said
+Lillian. "Here's your pink pellet. A young one dressed up the way she
+was to-day!"
+
+"Dress ain't everything, and nothin' is goin' to make me believe that
+Ida Slome is a good mother to her, nor to her own child neither. It
+ain't in her."
+
+Lillian, approaching her mother at the window with the pink pellet
+and a glass of water, uttered an exclamation. "For the land's sake,
+there she is now!" she said. "Look, ma, there is Maria in her new
+suit, and she's got the baby in a little carriage on runners. Just
+look at the white fur-tails hanging over the back. Ain't that a
+handsome suit?"
+
+Mrs. White gazed out eagerly. "It must have cost a pile," said she.
+"I don't see how he does it."
+
+"She sees you at the window," said Lillian.
+
+Both she and her mother smiled and waved at Maria. Maria bowed, and
+smiled with a sweet irradiation of her rosy face.
+
+"She's a little beauty, anyhow," said Lillian.
+
+"Dear child," said Mrs. White, and she snivelled again.
+
+"Ma, either your cold or the stuff you are takin' is making you
+dreadful nervous," said Lillian. "You cry at nothin' at all. How
+straight she is! No stoop about her."
+
+Maria was, in fact, carrying herself with an extreme straightness
+both of body and soul. She was conscious to the full of her own
+beauty in her new suit, and of the loveliness of her little sister in
+her white fur nest of a sledge. She was inordinately proud. She had
+asked Ida if she might take the child for a little airing before the
+early Sunday dinner, and Ida had consented easily.
+
+Ida also wished for an opportunity to talk with Harry about her
+cherished scheme, and preferred doing so when Maria was not in the
+house. For manifest reasons, too, Sunday was the best day on which to
+approach her husband on a subject which she realized was a somewhat
+delicate one. She was not so sure of his subservience when Maria was
+concerned, as in everything else, and Sunday was the day when his
+nerves were less strained, when he had risen late. Ida did not insist
+upon his going to church, as his first wife had done. In fact, if the
+truth was told, Harry wore his last winter's overcoat this year, and
+she was a little doubtful about its appearance in conjunction with
+her new velvet costume. He sat in the parlor when Ida entered after
+Maria had gone out with Evelyn. Harry looked at her admiringly.
+
+"How stunning you do look in that velvet dress!" he said.
+
+Ida laughed consciously. "I rather like it myself," said she. "It's a
+great deal handsomer than Mrs. George Henderson's, and I know she had
+hers made at a Fifth Avenue tailor's, and it must have cost twice as
+much."
+
+Ida had filled Harry with the utmost faith in her financial
+management. While he was spending more than he had ever done, and
+working harder, he was innocently unconscious of it. He felt a sense
+of gratitude and wonder that Ida was such a good manager and
+accomplished such great results with such a small expenditure. He was
+unwittingly disloyal to his first wife. He remembered the rigid
+economy under her sway, and owned to himself, although with
+remorseful tenderness, that she had not been such a financier as this
+woman. "You ought to go on Wall Street," he often told Ida. He gazed
+after her now with a species of awe that he had such a splendid,
+masterful creature for his wife, as she moved with the slow majesty
+habitual to her out of the room, the black plumes on her hat softly
+floating, the rich draperies of her gown trailing in sumptuous folds
+of darkness.
+
+When she came down again, in a rose-colored silk tea-gown trimmed
+with creamy lace, she was still more entrancing. She brought with her
+into the room an atmosphere of delicate perfume. Harry had stopped
+smoking entirely nowadays. Ida had persuaded him that it was bad for
+him. She had said nothing about the expense, as his first wife had
+been accustomed to do. Therefore there was no tobacco smoke to dull
+his sensibilities to this delicate perfume. It was as if a living
+rose had entered the room. Ida sank gracefully into a chair opposite
+him. She was wondering how she could easily lead up to the subject in
+her mind. There was much diplomacy, on a very small and selfish
+scale, about Ida. She realized the expediency of starting from
+apparently a long distance, to establish her sequences in order to
+maintain the appearance of unpremeditativeness.
+
+"Isn't it a little too warm here, dear?" said she, presently, in the
+voice which alone she could not control. Whenever she had an entirely
+self-centred object in mind, an object which might possibly meet with
+opposition, as now, her voice rang harsh and lost its singing quality.
+
+Harry did not seem to notice it. He started up immediately. The
+portieres between the room and the vestibule were drawn. He had, in
+fact, felt somewhat chilly. It was a cold day, and he had a touch of
+the grip. "I will open the portieres, dear," he said. "I dare say you
+are right."
+
+"I noticed it when I first came in," said Ida. "I meant to draw the
+portieres apart myself, but going out through the library I forgot
+it. Thank you, dear. How is your cold?"
+
+"It is nothing, dear," replied Harry. "There is only a little
+soreness in my throat."
+
+He resumed his seat, and noticed the fragrance of roasted chicken
+coming through the parted portieres from the kitchen. Harry was very
+fond of roasted chicken. He inhaled that and the delicate perfume of
+Ida's garments and hair. He regarded her glowing beauty with
+affection which had no taint of sensuality. Harry had more of a
+poetic liking for sweet odors and beauty than a sensual one.
+
+Harry Edgham in these days had a more poetic and spiritual look than
+formerly. He had not lost his strange youthfulness of expression; it
+was as if a child had the appearance of having been longer on the
+earth. His hair had thinned, and receded from his temples, and the
+bold, almost babyish fulness of his temples was more evident. His
+face was thinner, too, and he had not much color. His mouth was drawn
+down at the corner, and he frowned slightly, as a child might, in
+helpless but non-aggressive dissent. His worn appearance was very
+noticeable, in spite of his present happy mood, of which his wife
+shrewdly took advantage.
+
+Ida Edgham did not care for books, although she never admitted that
+fact, but she could read with her cold feminine astuteness the moods
+and souls of men, with unerring quickness. Those last were to her
+advantage or disadvantage, and in anything of that nature she was
+gifted by nature. Ida Edgham might have been, as her husband might
+have been, a poet, an adventuress, who could have made the success of
+her age had she not been hindered, as well as aided, by her
+self-love. She had the shrewdness which prognosticates as well as
+discerns, and saw the inevitableness of the ultimatum of all
+irregularities in a world which, however irregular it is in practice,
+still holds regularity as its model of conduct and progression. Ida
+Edgham would, in the desperate state of the earth before the flood,
+have made herself famous. As it was, her irregular talents had a
+limited field; however, she did all she could. It always seemed to
+her that, as far as the right and wrong of things went, her own
+happiness was eminently right, and that it was distinctly wrong for
+her, or any one else, to oppose any obstacle to it. She allowed the
+pleasant influences of the passing moment to have their full effect
+upon her husband, and she continued her leading up to the subject by
+those easy and apparently unrelated sequences which none but a
+diplomat could have managed.
+
+"Thank you, dear," she said, when Harry resumed his seat. "The air is
+cold but very clear and pleasant out to-day," she continued.
+
+"It looks so," said Harry.
+
+"Still, if I were you, I think I would not go out; it might make your
+cold worse," said Ida.
+
+"No, I think it would be full as well for me to stay in to-day,"
+replied Harry happily. He hemmed a little as he spoke, realizing the
+tickle in his throat with rather a pleasant sense of importance than
+annoyance. He stretched himself luxuriously in his chair, and gazed
+about the warm, perfumed, luxurious apartment.
+
+"You have to go out to-morrow, anyway," said Ida, and she increased
+his sense of present comfort by that remark.
+
+"That is so," said Harry, with a slight sigh.
+
+Lately it had seemed harder than ever before for him to start early
+in the black winter mornings and hurry for his train. Then, too, he
+had what he had never had before, a sense of boredom, of ennui, so
+intense that it was almost a pain. The deadly monotony of it wearied
+him. For the first time in his life his harness of duty chafed his
+spirit. He was so tired of seeing the same train, the same commuters,
+taking the same path across the station to the ferry-boat, being
+jostled by the same throng, going to the same office, performing the
+same, or practically the same, duties, that his very soul was
+irritated. He had reached a point where he not only needed but
+demanded a change, but the change was as impossible, without
+destruction, as for a planet to leave its orbit.
+
+Ida saw the deepening of the frown on his forehead and the
+lengthening of the lines around his mouth.
+
+"Poor old man!" said she. "I wish I had a fortune to give you, so you
+wouldn't have to go."
+
+The words were fairly cooing, but the tone was still harsh. However,
+Harry brightened. He regarded this lovely, blooming creature and
+inhaled again the odor of dinner, and reflected with a sense of
+gratitude upon his mercies. Harry had a grateful heart, and was
+always ready to blame himself.
+
+"Oh, I should be lost, go all to pieces, if I quit work," he said,
+laughing. "If I were left a fortune, I should land in an insane
+asylum very likely, or take to drink. No, dear, you can't teach such
+an old bird new tricks; he's been in one tree too long, summer and
+winter."
+
+"Well, after all, you have not got to go out to-day," remarked Ida,
+skilfully, and Harry again stretched himself with a sense of present
+comfort.
+
+"That is so, dear," he said.
+
+"I have something you like for supper, too," said Ida, "and I think
+George Adams and Louisa may drop in and we can have some music."
+
+Harry brightened still more. He liked George Adams, and the wife had
+more than a talent for music, of which Harry was passionately fond.
+She played wonderfully on Ida's well-tuned grand piano.
+
+"I thought you might like it," said Ida, "and I spoke to Louisa as I
+was coming out of church."
+
+"You were very kind, sweetheart," Harry said, and again a flood of
+gratitude seemed to sweeten life for the man.
+
+Ida took another step in her sequence.
+
+"I think Maria had better stay up, if they do come," said she. "She
+enjoys music so much. She can keep on her new gown. Maria is so
+careful of her gowns that I never feel any anxiety about her soiling
+them."
+
+"She is just like--" began Harry, then he stopped. He had been about
+to state that Maria was just like her mother in that respect, but he
+had remembered suddenly that he was speaking to his second wife.
+
+However, Ida finished his remark for him with perfect good-nature.
+She had not the slightest jealousy of Harry's first wife, only a sort
+of contempt, that she had gotten so little where she herself had
+gotten so much.
+
+"Maria's own mother was very particular, wasn't she, dear?" she said.
+
+"Very," replied Harry.
+
+"Maria takes it from her, without any doubt," Ida said, smoothly.
+"She looked so sweet in that new gown to-day, that I would like to
+have the Adamses see her without her coat to-night; and Maria looks
+even prettier without her hat, too, her hair grows so prettily on her
+temples. Maria grows lovelier every day, it seems to me. I don't know
+how many I saw looking at her in church this morning."
+
+"Yes, she is going to be pretty, I guess," said Harry, and again his
+very soul seemed warm and light with pleasure and gratitude.
+
+"She _is_ pretty," said Ida, conclusively. "She is at the awkward
+age, too. But there is no awkwardness about Maria. She is like a
+little fairy."
+
+Harry beamed upon her. "She is as proud as punch when she gets a
+chance to take the little one out, and they made a pretty picture
+going down the street," said he, "but I hope she won't catch cold. Is
+that new suit warm?"
+
+"Oh yes! it is interlined. I looked out for that."
+
+"You look out for my child as if she were your own, bless you, dear,"
+Harry said, affectionately.
+
+Then Ida thought that the time for her carefully-led-up-to coup had
+arrived. "I try to," said she, meekly.
+
+"You _do_."
+
+Ida began to speak, then she hesitated, with timid eyes on her
+husband's face.
+
+"What is it, dear?" asked he.
+
+"Well, I have been thinking a good deal lately about Maria and her
+associates in school here."
+
+"Why, what is the matter with them?" Harry asked, uneasily.
+
+"Oh, I don't know that there is anything very serious the matter with
+them, but Maria is at an age when she is very impressible, and there
+are many who are not exactly desirable. There is Gladys Mann, for
+instance. I saw Maria walking down the street with her the other day.
+Now, Harry, you know that Gladys Mann is not exactly the kind of girl
+whom Maria's own mother would have chosen for an intimate friend for
+her."
+
+"You are right," Harry said, frowning.
+
+"Well, I have been thinking over the number of pupils of both sexes
+in the school who can be called degenerates, either in mind or
+morals, and I must say I was alarmed."
+
+"Well, what is to be done?" asked Harry, moodily. "Maria must go to
+school, of course."
+
+"Yes, of course, Maria must have a good education, as good as if her
+own mother had lived."
+
+"Well, what is to be done, then?"
+
+Then Ida came straight to the point. "The only way I can see is to
+remove her from doubtful associates."
+
+"Remove her?" repeated Harry, blankly.
+
+"Yes; send her away to school. Wellbridge Hall, in Emerson, where I
+went myself, would be a very good school. It is not expensive."
+
+Harry stared. "But, Ida, she is too young."
+
+"Not at all."
+
+"You were older when you went there."
+
+"A little older."
+
+"How far is Emerson from here?"
+
+"Only a night's journey from New York. You go to sleep in your berth,
+and in the morning you are there. You could always see her off. It is
+very easy."
+
+"Send Maria away! Ida, it is out of the question. Aside from anything
+else, there is the expense. I am living up to my income as it is."
+
+"Oh," said Ida--she gave her head a noble toss, and spoke
+impressively--"I am prepared to go without myself to make it possible
+for you to meet her bills. You know I spoke the other day of a new
+lace dress. Well, that would cost at least a hundred; I will go
+without that. And I wanted some new portieres for my room; I will go
+without them. That means, say, fifty more. And you know the
+dining-room rug looks very shabby. I was thinking we must have an
+Eastern rug, which would cost at least one hundred and fifty; I
+thought it would pay in the end. Well, I am prepared to give that up
+and have a domestic, which only costs twenty-five; that is a hundred
+and twenty-five more saved. And I had planned to have my seal-skin
+coat made over after Christmas, and you know you cannot have
+seal-skin touched under a hundred; there is a hundred more. There are
+three hundred and seventy-five saved, which will pay for Maria's
+tuition for a year, and enough over for travelling expenses." Nothing
+could have exceeded the expression of lofty virtue of Ida Edgham when
+she concluded her speech. As for her own selfish considerations,
+those, as always, she thought of only as her duty. Ida established
+always a clear case of conscience in all her dealings for her own
+interests.
+
+But Harry continued to frown. The childish droop of his handsome
+mouth became more pronounced. "I don't like the idea," he said, quite
+sturdily for him.
+
+"Suppose we leave it to Maria," said Ida.
+
+"I really think," said Harry, in almost a fretful tone, "that you
+exaggerate. I hardly think there is anything so very objectionable
+about her associates here. I will admit that many of the children
+come from what we call the poor whites, but after all their main vice
+is shiftlessness, and Maria is not very likely to become contaminated
+with that."
+
+"Why, Harry, my dear, that is the very least of their vices."
+
+"What else?"
+
+"Why, you know that they are notoriously light-fingered."
+
+"My dear Ida, you don't mean to say that you think Maria--"
+
+"Why, of course not, Harry, but aside from that, their morals."
+
+Harry rose from his chair and walked across the room nervously.
+
+"My dear Ida," he said, "you are exaggerating now. Maria is simply
+not that kind of a girl; and, besides, I don't know that she does see
+so much of those people, anyway."
+
+"Gladys Mann--"
+
+"Well, I never heard any harm of that poor little runt. On the other
+side, Ida, I should think Maria's influence over her for good was to
+be taken into consideration."
+
+"I hope you don't mean Maria to be a home missionary?" said Ida.
+
+"She might go to school for a worse purpose," replied Harry, simply.
+"Maria has a very strong character from her mother, if not from her
+father. I actually think the chances are that the Mann girl will have
+a better chance of getting good from Maria than Maria evil from her."
+
+"Well, dear, suppose we leave it to Maria herself," said Ida. "Nobody
+is going to force the dear child away against her will, of course."
+
+"Very well," said Harry. His face still retained a slightly sulky,
+disturbed expression.
+
+Ida, after a furtive glance at him, took up a sheet of the Sunday
+paper, and began swaying back and forth gracefully in her
+rocking-chair, as she read it.
+
+"How foolish all this sentiment about that murderer in the Tombs is,"
+said she presently. "They are actually going to give him a
+Christmas-tree."
+
+"He is only a boy," said Harry absently.
+
+"I know that--but the idea!"
+
+Just then Maria passed the window, dragging little Evelyn in her
+white sledge. Ida rose with a motion of unusual quickness for her,
+but Harry stopped her as she was about to leave the room.
+
+"Don't go out, Ida," he said, with a peremptoriness which sat
+strangely upon him.
+
+Ida stared at him. "Why, why not?" she asked. "I wanted to take
+Evelyn out. You know Josephine is not here."
+
+"She is getting out all right with Maria's help; sit down, Ida," said
+Harry, still with that tone of command which was so foreign to him.
+
+Ida hesitated a second, then she sat down. She realized the grace and
+policy of yielding in a minor point, when she had a large one in
+view. Then, too, she was in reality rather vulnerable to a sudden
+attack, for a moment, although she was always as a rule sure of
+ultimate victory. She was at a loss, moreover, to comprehend Harry's
+manner, which was easily enough understood. He wished to be the first
+to ascertain Maria's sentiments with regard to going away to school.
+Without admitting it even to himself, he distrusted his wife's
+methods and entire frankness.
+
+Presently Maria entered, leading little Evelyn, who was unusually
+sturdy on her legs for her age. She walked quite steadily, with an
+occasional little hop and skip of exuberant childhood.
+
+She could talk a little, in disconnected sentences, with fascinating
+mistakes in the sounds of letters, but she preferred a gurgle of
+laughter when she was pleased, and a wail of woe when things went
+wrong. She was still in the limbos of primitivism. She was young with
+the babyhood of the world. To-day she danced up to her father with
+her little thrill of laughter, at once as meaningless and as full of
+meaning as the trill of a canary. She pursed up her little lips for a
+kiss, she flung frantic arms of adoration around his neck. She clung
+to him, when he lifted her, with all her little embracing limbs; she
+pressed her lovely, cool, rosy cheek against his, and laughed again.
+
+"Now go and kiss mamma," said Harry.
+
+But the baby resisted with a little, petulant murmur when he tried to
+set her down. She still clung to him. Harry whispered in her ear.
+
+"Go and kiss mamma, darling."
+
+But Evelyn shook her head emphatically against his face. Maria,
+almost as radiant in her youth as the child, stood behind her. She
+glanced uneasily at Ida. She held the white fur robes and wraps which
+she had brought in from the sledge.
+
+"Take those things out and let Emma put them away, dear," Ida said to
+her. She smiled, but her voice still retained its involuntary
+harshness.
+
+Maria obeyed with an uneasy glance at little Evelyn. She knew that
+her step-mother was angry because the baby would not kiss her. When
+she was out in the dining-room, giving the fluffy white things to the
+maid, she heard a shriek, half of grief, half of angry dissent, from
+the baby. She immediately ran back into the parlor. Ida was removing
+the child's outer garments, smiling as ever, and with seeming
+gentleness, but Maria had a conviction that her touch on the tender
+flesh of the child was as the touch of steel. Little Evelyn struggled
+to get to her sister when she saw her, but Ida held her firmly.
+
+"Stand still, darling," she said. It was inconceivable how she could
+say darling without the loving inflection which alone gave the word
+its full meaning.
+
+"Stand still and let mamma take off baby's things," said Harry, and
+there was no lack of affectionate cadences in his voice. He privately
+thought that he himself could have taken off the child's wraps better
+than his wife, but he recognized her rights in the matter. Harry
+remembering his first wife, with her child, was in a state of
+constant bewilderment at the sight of his second with hers. He had
+always had the masculine opinion that women, in certain primeval
+respects, were cut on one pattern, and his opinion was being rudely
+shaken.
+
+"Call Emma, please," said Ida to Maria, and Maria obeyed.
+
+When the maid came in, Ida directed her to take the child up-stairs
+and put on another frock.
+
+Maria was about to follow, but Harry stopped her. "Maria," said he.
+
+Maria stopped, and eyed her father with surprise.
+
+"Maria," said Harry, bluntly, "your mother and I have been talking
+about your going away to school."
+
+Maria turned slightly pale and continued to stare at him, but she
+said nothing.
+
+"She thinks, and I don't know but she is right," said Harry, with
+painful loyalty, "that your associates here are not just the proper
+ones for you, and that it would be much better for you to go to
+boarding-school."
+
+"How much would it cost?" asked Maria, in a dazed voice. The question
+sounded like her own mother.
+
+"Father can manage that; you need not trouble yourself about that,"
+replied Harry, hurriedly.
+
+"Where?" said Maria, then.
+
+"To a nice school where your mother was educated."
+
+"My mother?"
+
+"Ida--to Wellbridge Hall."
+
+"How often should I come home and see you and Evelyn? Every week?"
+
+"I am afraid not, dear," said Harry, uneasily.
+
+"How long are the terms?" asked Maria.
+
+"Only about twelve weeks," said Ida.
+
+Maria stood staring from one to the other. Her face had turned deadly
+pale, and had, moreover, taken on an expression of despair and
+isolation. Somehow, although the little girl was only a few feet from
+the others, she had a look as if she were leagues off, as if she were
+outside something vital, which removed her, in fact, to immeasurable
+distances. And, in fact, Maria had a feeling which never afterwards
+wholly left her, of being outside the love of life in which she had
+hitherto dwelt with confidence.
+
+"Maybe you would like it, dear," Harry said, feebly.
+
+"I will go," Maria said, in a choking voice. Then she turned without
+another word and went out of the room, up-stairs to her own little
+chamber. When there she sat down beside the window. She did not
+think. She did not seem to feel her hands and feet. It was as if she
+had fallen from a height. The realization that her father and his new
+wife wanted to send her away, that she was not wanted in her home,
+stunned her.
+
+But in a moment the door was flung open and her father entered. He
+knelt down beside Maria and pulled her head to his shoulder and
+kissed her, and she felt with a sort of dull wonder his face damp
+against her own.
+
+"Father's little girl!" said Harry. "Father's own little girl!
+Father's blessing! Did she think he wanted to send her away? I rather
+guess he didn't. How would father get along without his own precious
+baby, when he came home at night. She shan't go one step. She needn't
+fret a bit about it."
+
+Maria turned and regarded him with a frozen look still on her face.
+"It was She that wanted me to go?" she said, interrogatively.
+
+"She thought maybe it would be best for you, darling," said Harry.
+"She means to do right by you, Maria; you must try to think so."
+
+Maria said nothing.
+
+"But father isn't going to let you go," said Harry. "He can't do
+without his little girl."
+
+Then Maria's strange calm broke up. She clung, weeping, to her
+father, as if he were her only stay. Harry continued to soothe her.
+
+"Father's blessing!" he whispered in her ear. "She was the best
+little girl that ever was. She is just like her own dear mother."
+
+"I wish mother was back," Maria whispered, her whisper stifled
+against his ear.
+
+"Oh, my God, so do I!" Harry said, with a half sob. For the minute
+the true significance of his position overwhelmed him. He felt a
+regret, a remembrance, that was a passion. He realized, with no
+disguise, what it all meant: that he a man with the weakness of a
+child in the hands of a masterly woman, had formerly been in the
+leading-strings of love for himself, for his own best good, whereas
+he was now in the grasp of the self-love of another who cared for him
+only as he promoted her own interests. In a moment, however, he
+recovered himself. After all, he had a sense of loyalty and duty
+which amounted to positive strength. He put Maria gently from him
+with another kiss.
+
+"Well, this won't bring your mother back, dear," he said, "and God
+took her away, you know, and what He does is for the best; and She
+means to do her duty by you, you know, dear. She thought it would be
+better for you, but father can't spare you, that's all there is about
+it."
+
+
+
+Chapter XIII
+
+
+It was an utter impossibility for Ida Edgham to be entirely balked of
+any purpose which she might form. There was something at once
+impressive and terrible about the strength of this beautiful, smiling
+creature's will, about its silence, its impassibility before
+obstacles, its persistency. It was as inevitable and unswervable as
+an avalanche or a cyclone. People might shriek out against it and
+struggle, but on it came, a mighty force, overwhelming petty things
+as well as great ones. It really seemed a pity, taking into
+consideration Ida's tremendous strength of character, that she had
+not some great national purpose upon which to exert herself, instead
+of such trivial domestic ones.
+
+Ida realized that she could not send Maria to the school which she
+had proposed. Her strength had that subtlety which acknowledges its
+limitations and its closed doors, and can look about for other means
+and ways. Therefore, when Harry came down-stairs that Sunday
+afternoon, his face working with emotion but his eyes filled with a
+steady light, and said, with no preface, "It's no use talking, Ida,
+that child does not want to go, and she shall never be driven from
+under my roof, while I live," Ida only smiled, and replied, "Very
+well, dear, I only meant it for her good."
+
+"She is not going," Harry said doggedly.
+
+Harry resumed his seat with a gesture of defiance which was absurd,
+from its utter lack of any response from his wife. It was like
+tilting with a windmill.
+
+Ida continued to sway gently back and forth, and smile.
+
+"I think if the Adamses do come in to-night we will have a little
+salad, there will be enough left from the chicken, and some cake and
+tea," she observed presently. "We won't have the table set, because
+both the maids have asked to go out, but Maria can put on my India
+muslin apron and pass the things. I will have the salad made before
+they go, and I will make the tea. We can have it on the table in
+here." Ida indicated, by a graceful motion of her shoulder, a pretty
+little tea-table loaded with Dresden china.
+
+"All right," replied Harry, with a baffled tone. He felt baffled
+without knowing exactly why.
+
+Ida took up another sheet of the Herald, a fashion page was
+uppermost. She read something and smiled. "It says that gowns made
+like Maria's new one are the most fetching ones of the season," she
+said. "I am so glad I have the skirt plaited."
+
+Harry made a gesture of assent. He felt, without in the least knowing
+why, like a man who had been completely worsted in a hand-to-hand
+combat. He felt humiliated and unhappy. His first wife, even with her
+high temper and her ready tongue, had never caused him such a sense
+of abjectness. He had often felt angry with her, but never with
+himself. She had never really attacked his self-respect as this woman
+did. He did not dare look up from his newspaper for a while, for he
+realized that he should experience agony at seeing the beautiful,
+radiant face of his second wife opposite him instead of the worn,
+stern, but altogether loving and single-hearted face of his first. He
+was glad when Maria came down-stairs, and looked up and greeted her
+with a smile of reassuring confidence. Maria's pretty little face was
+still tear-stained, although she had bathed it with cold water. She
+also took up a sheet of the Sunday paper.
+
+"Did you see Alice Lundy's new hat in church to-day, dear?" Ida
+presently asked her, and her manner was exactly as if nothing had
+occurred to disturb anybody.
+
+Maria looked at her with a sort of wonder, which made her honest face
+almost idiotic.
+
+"No, ma'am," said she.
+
+Maria had been taught to say "yes, ma'am" and "no, ma'am" by her own
+mother, whose ideas of etiquette were old-fashioned, and dated from
+the precepts of her own childhood.
+
+"It is a little better not to say ma'am," said Ida, sweetly. "I think
+that expression is not used so much as formerly."
+
+Maria looked at her with a quick defiance, which gave her an almost
+startling resemblance to her own mother.
+
+"Yes, ma'am," said she.
+
+Harry's mouth twitched behind his paper. Ida said no more. She
+continued to smile, but she was not reading the paper which she held.
+She was making new plans to gain her own ends. She was seeking new
+doors of liberty for her own ways, in lieu of those which she saw
+were closed to her, and by the time dinner was served she was quite
+sure that she had succeeded.
+
+The next autumn, Maria began attending the Elliot Academy, in
+Wardway. The Elliot Academy was an endowed school of a very high
+standing, and Wardway was a large town, almost a city, about fifteen
+miles from Edgham. When this plan was broached by Ida, Maria did not
+make any opposition; she was secretly delighted. Wollaston Lee was
+going to the Elliot Academy that autumn, and there was another Edgham
+girl and her brother, besides Maria, who were going.
+
+"Now, darling, you need not go to the Elliot Academy any more than to
+the other school she proposed, if you don't want to," Harry told
+Maria, privately, one Saturday afternoon in September, shortly before
+the term began.
+
+Ida had gone to her club, and Harry had come home early from the
+city, and he and Maria were alone in the parlor. Evelyn was having
+her nap up-stairs. A high wind was roaring about the house. A
+cherry-tree beside the house was fast losing its leaves in a yellow
+rain. In front of the window, a hydrangea bush, tipped with
+magnificent green-and-rosy plumes, swayed in all its limbs like a
+living thing. Somewhere up-stairs a blind banged.
+
+"I think I would like to go," Maria replied, hurriedly. Then she
+jumped up. "That blind will wake Evelyn," she said, and ran out of
+the room.
+
+She had colored unaccountably when her father spoke. When she
+returned, she had a demure, secretive expression on her face which
+made Harry stare at her in bewilderment. All his life Harry Edgham
+had been helpless and bewildered before womenkind, and now his little
+daughter was beginning to perplex him. She sat down and took up a
+piece of fancy-work, and her father continued to glance at her
+furtively over his paper. Presently he spoke of the academy again.
+
+"You need not go if you do not want to," he repeated.
+
+Then again Maria's delicate little face and neck became suffused with
+pink. Her reply was not as loud nor more intelligible than the murmur
+of the trees outside in the wind.
+
+"What did you say, darling?" asked Harry. "Father did not understand."
+
+"I would like to go there," Maria replied, in her sweet, decisive
+little pipe. A fresh wave of color swept over her face and neck, and
+she selected with great care a thread from a skein of linen floss.
+
+"Well, she thought you might like that," Harry said, with an air of
+relief.
+
+"Maud Page is going, too," said Maria.
+
+"Is she? That will be nice. You won't have to go back and forth
+alone," said Harry.
+
+Maria said nothing; she continued her work.
+
+Her father turned his paper and looked at the stock-list. Once he had
+owned a hundred shares of one of the Industrials. He had long since
+sold out, not at a loss, but the stock had risen since. He always
+noted it with an odd feeling of proprietorship, in spite of not
+owning any. He saw with pride that it had advanced half a point.
+
+Maria worked silently; and as she worked she dreamed, and the dream
+was visible on her face, had any one been astute enough to understand
+it. She was working a lace collar to wear with a certain blue blouse,
+and upon that flimsy keystone was erecting an air-castle. She was
+going to the Elliot Academy, wearing the blue blouse and the lace
+collar, and looking so lovely that Wollaston Lee worshipped her. She
+invented little love-scenes, love-words, and caresses. She blushed,
+and dimples appeared at the corners of her mouth, the blue light of
+her eyes under her downcast lids was like the light of living gems.
+She viewed with complacency her little, soft white hands plying the
+needle. Maria had hands like a little princess. She cast a glance at
+the toe of her tiny shoe. She remembered how somebody had told her to
+keep her shoulders straight, and she threw them back with a charming
+motion, as if they had been wings. She was entirely oblivious of her
+father's covert glances. She was solitary, isolated in the crystal of
+her own thoughts. Presently, Evelyn woke and cried, and Maria roused
+herself with a start and ran up-stairs. Soon the two came into the
+room, Evelyn dancing with the uncertain motion of a winged seed on a
+spring wind. She was charming. One round cheek was more deeply
+flushed than the other, and creased with the pillow. Her yellow hair,
+fine and soft and full of electric life, tossed like a little crest.
+She ran with both fat little hands spread palms outward, and pounced
+violently upon her father. Harry rolled her about on his knee, and
+played with her as if she had been a kitten. Maria stood by laughing.
+The child was fairly screaming with mirth.
+
+A graceful figure passed the window, its garments tightly wrapped by
+the wind, flying out like a flag behind. Harry set the little girl
+down at once.
+
+"Here is mamma coming," said he. "Go to sister and she will show you
+the pictures in the book papa brought home the other day."
+
+Evelyn obeyed. She was a docile little thing, and she had a fear of
+her mother without knowing why. She was sitting beside Maria, looking
+demurely at the pictures which her sister pointed out to her, when
+Ida entered.
+
+"See the horsey running away," said Maria. Then she added in a
+whisper, "Go and kiss mamma, baby."
+
+The child hesitated, then she rose, and ran to her mother, who
+stooped her radiant face over her and kissed her coolly.
+
+"Have you been a good little girl?" asked she. Ida was looking
+particularly self-satisfied to day, and more disposed consequently to
+question others as to their behavior.
+
+"Yeth," replied Evelyn, without the slightest hesitation. A happy
+belief in her own merits was an inheritance from her mother. As yet
+it was more charming than otherwise, for the baby had unquestionable
+merits in which to believe. Harry and Maria laughed.
+
+"Mamma is very glad," said Ida. She did not laugh; she saw no humor
+in it. She turned to Harry. "I think I will go in on the early train
+with you to-morrow, dear," she said. "I want to see about Maria's
+new dress." Then she turned to Maria. "I have been in to see Miss
+Keeler," said she, "and she says she can make it for you next week,
+so you can have it when you begin school. I thought of brown with a
+touch of blue and burnt-orange. How would you like that?"
+
+"I think that would be perfectly lovely," said Maria with enthusiasm.
+She cast a grateful look at her step-mother, almost a look of
+affection. She was always very grateful to Ida for her new clothes,
+and just now clothes had a more vital interest for her than ever. She
+took another stitch in her collar, with Evelyn leaning against her
+and kicking out first one chubby leg, then the other, and she
+immediately erected new air-castles, in which she figured in her
+brown suit with the touches of burnt-orange and blue.
+
+A week later, when she started on the train for Wardway in her new
+attire, she felt entirely satisfied with herself and life in general.
+She was conscious of looking charming in her new suit of brown, with
+the touches of blue and burnt-orange, and her new hat, also brown
+with blue and burnt-orange glimpses in the trimmings. Wollaston Lee
+got on the same car and sat behind her. Maud Page, the other Edgham
+girl who was going to the academy, had a cousin in Wardway, and had
+gone there the night before. There were only Maria, Wollaston, and
+Edwin Shaw, who sat by himself in a corner, facing the other
+passengers with a slightly shamed, sulky expression. He was very
+tall, and had blacked his shoes well, and the black light from them
+seemed to him obtrusive, the more so because his feet were very
+large. He looked out of the window as the train left the station, and
+saw a very pretty little child with a fluff of yellow hair, carrying
+a big doll, climbing laboriously on a train on the other track, with
+the tender assistance of a brakeman. She was in the wake of a very
+stout woman, who stumbled on her skirts going up the steps. Edwin
+Shaw thought that the child looked like Maria's little sister, but
+that she could not be, because the stout woman was a stranger to him.
+Then he thought no more about it. He gazed covertly at Maria, with
+the black sparkles of his shoes continuing to disturb him. He admired
+Maria. Presently he saw Wollaston Lee lean over the back of her seat
+and say something to her, and saw her half turn and dimple, and
+noticed how the lovely rose flushed the curve of her cheek, and he
+scowled at his shiny shoes.
+
+As for Maria, when she felt the boy's warm breath on her neck, her
+heart beat fast. She realized herself on the portals of an air-castle.
+
+"Well, glad you are going to leave this old town?" said Wollaston.
+
+"I am not going to leave it, really," replied Maria.
+
+"Oh, of course not, but you are going to leave the old school,
+anyhow. I had got mighty tired of it, hadn't you?"
+
+"Yes, I had, rather."
+
+"It's behind the times," said the boy; and, as he spoke he himself
+looked quite up to the times. He had handsome, clearly cut features
+and black eyes, which seemed at the same time to demand and question.
+He had something of a supercilious air, although the expression of
+youthful innocence and honesty was still evident on his face. He wore
+a new suit as well as Maria, only his was gray instead of brown, and
+he wore a red carnation in his button-hole. Maria inhaled the clovy
+fragrance of it. At the next station more passengers got into the
+train, and Wollaston seized upon that excuse to ask to share Maria's
+seat. They talked incessantly--an utterly foolish gabble like that of
+young birds. An old gentleman across the aisle cast an impatient
+glance at them from time to time. Finally he arose stiffly and went
+into the smoker. Their youth and braggadocio of innocence and
+ignorance, and the remembrance of his own, irritated him. He did not
+in the least regret his youth, but the recollection of the first
+stages of his life, now that he was so near the end, was like looking
+backward over a long road, which had led to absurdly different goals
+from what he had imagined. It all seemed inconceivable, silly and
+futile to him, what he had done, and what they were doing. He cast a
+furious glance at them as he passed out, but neither noticed it.
+Wollaston said something, and Maria laughed an inane little giggle
+which was still musical, and trilled through the car. Maria's cheeks
+were burning, and she seldom looked at the boy at her side, but
+oftener at the young autumn landscape through which they were
+passing. The trees had scarcely begun to turn, but here and there one
+flamed out like a gold or red torch among the green, and all the
+way-sides were blue and gold with asters and golden-rod. It was a
+very warm morning for the season. When they stopped at one of the
+stations, a yellow butterfly flew in through an open window and
+flitted airily about the car. Maria removed her coat, with the
+solicitous aid of her companion. She cast a conscious glance at the
+orange and blue on her sleeves.
+
+"Say, that dress is a stunner!" whispered Wollaston.
+
+Maria laughed happily. "Glad you like it," said she.
+
+Before they reached Wardway, Wollaston's red carnation was fastened
+at one side of her embroidered vest, making a discord of color which,
+for Maria, was a harmony of young love and romance.
+
+"That is the academy," said Wollaston, as the train rolled into
+Wardway. He pointed to a great brick structure at the right--a main
+building flanked by enormous wings. "Are you frightened?" he asked.
+
+"I guess not," replied Maria, but she was.
+
+"You needn't be a bit," said the boy. "I know some of the boys that
+go there, and I went to see the principal with father. He's real
+pleasant. I know the Latin teacher, Miss Durgin, too. My Uncle Frank
+married her cousin, and she has been to my house. You'll be in her
+class." Wollaston spoke with a protective warmth for which Maria was
+very grateful.
+
+She had a very successful although somewhat confused day. She was
+asked this and that and led hither and yon, and so surrounded by
+strange faces and sights that she felt fairly dizzy. She felt more
+herself at luncheon, when she sat beside Maud Page in the
+dining-hall, with Wollaston opposite. There was a restaurant attached
+to the academy, for the benefit of the out-of-town pupils.
+
+When Maria went down to the station to take her train for home, Maud
+Page was there, and Wollaston. There was a long time to wait. They
+went out in a field opposite and picked great bunches of golden-rod,
+and the girls pinned them on their coats. Edwin Shaw was lingering
+about the station when they returned, but he was too shy to speak to
+them. When the train at last came in, Maria, with a duplicity which
+shamed her in thinking of it afterwards, managed to get away from
+Maud, and enter the car at the same time with Wollaston, who seated
+himself beside her as a matter of course. It was still quite light,
+but it had grown cold. Everything had a cold look--the clear cowslip
+sky, with its reefs of violet clouds; even the trees tossed crisply,
+as if stiffened with cold.
+
+"Hope we won't have a frost," said Wollaston, as they got off at
+Edgham.
+
+"I hope not," said Maria; and then Gladys Mann ran up to her, crying
+out:
+
+"Say, Maria, Maria, did you know your little sister was lost?"
+
+Maria turned deadly white. Wollaston caught hold of her little arm in
+its brown sleeve.
+
+"When was she lost?" he asked, fiercely, of Gladys. "Don't you know
+any better than to rush right at anybody with such a thing as that?
+Don't you be frightened, Maria. I'll find her."
+
+A little knot of passengers from the train gathered around them.
+Gladys was pale herself, and had a strong sense of the sadness of the
+occasion, still she had a feeling of importance. Edwin Shaw came
+lumbering up timidly, and Maud Page pressed quickly to Maria's side
+with a swirl of her wide skirts.
+
+"Gladys Mann, what on earth are you talking about?" said she,
+sharply. "Who's lost?"
+
+"Maria's little sister."
+
+"Hm! I don't believe a word of it."
+
+"She is, so there! Nobody has seen a sign of her since morning, and
+Maria's pa's most crazy. He's been sending telegrams all round.
+Maria's step-mother, she telegraphed for him to come home, and he
+come at noon, and he sent telegrams all round, and then he went
+himself an hour ago."
+
+"Went where?"
+
+"Back to New York. Guess he's gone huntin' himself. Guess he thought
+he could hunt better than policemen. Maria's step-mother don't act
+scared, but I guess she is, awful. My mummer says that folks that
+bear up the best are the ones that feel things most. My mummer went
+over to see if she could do anything and see how she took it."
+
+"When was she lost?" gasped Maria. She was shaking from head to foot.
+
+"Your step-mother went down to the store, and when she got back the
+baby was gone. Josephine said she hadn't seen her after you had
+started for Wardway. She took her doll with her."
+
+"Where?" gasped Maria.
+
+"Nobody knows where," said Gladys, severely, although the tears were
+streaming down her own grimy cheeks. "She wouldn't be lost, would
+she, if folks knew where she was? Nothin' ain't never lost when you
+know where it is unless you drop it down a well, and you 'ain't got
+no well, have you, Maria Edgham?"
+
+"No," said Maria. She was conscious of an absurd thankfulness and
+relief that she had no well.
+
+"And there ain't no pond round here big enough to drown a baby
+kitten, except that little mud-puddle up at Fisher's, and they've
+dragged every inch of that. I see 'em."
+
+All this time Edwin Shaw had been teetering on uncertain toes on the
+borders of the crowd. He remembered the child with the doll whom he
+had seen climbing into the New York train in the morning, and he was
+eager to tell of it, to make himself of importance, but he was
+afraid. After all, the child might not have been Evelyn. There were
+so many little, yellow-haired things with dolls to be seen about, and
+then there was the stout woman to be accounted for. Edwin never
+doubted that the child had been with the stout woman whom he had seen
+stumbling over her voluminous skirts up the car steps. At last he
+stepped forward and spoke, with a moist blush overspreading his face,
+toeing in and teetering with embarrassment.
+
+"Say," he began.
+
+The attention of the whole company was at once riveted upon him. He
+wriggled; the blood looked as if it would burst through his face.
+Great drops of perspiration stood upon his forehead. He stammered
+when he spoke. He caught a glimpse of Maria's blue-and-orange
+trimmings, and looked down, and again the black light of his shoes,
+which all the dust of the day had not seemed to dim, flashed in his
+eyes. He came of a rather illiterate family with aspirations, and
+when he was nervous he had a habit of relapsing into the dialect in
+common use in his own home, regardless of his educational
+attainments. He did so now.
+
+"I think she has went to New York," he said.
+
+"Who?" demanded Wollaston, eagerly. His head was up like a hunting
+hound; he kept close hold of Maria's little arm.
+
+"Her."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Her little sister-in-law." Edwin pointed to Maria.
+
+Gladys Mann went peremptorily up to Edwin Shaw, seized his
+coat-collar, and shook him. "For goodness sake! when did she went?"
+she demanded. "When did you see her? If you know anythin', tell it,
+an' not stand thar like a fool!"
+
+"I saw a little girl jest about her size, a-carryin' of a doll, that
+clim on the New York train jest as we went out this mornin'," replied
+Edwin with a gasp, as if the information were wrung from him by
+torture. "And she was with a awful fat woman. Leastways--"
+
+"A fat woman!" cried Wollaston Lee. "Who was the fat woman?"
+
+"I hadn't never saw her afore. She was awful fat, and was a steppin'
+on her dress."
+
+Wollaston was keen-witted, and he immediately grasped at the truth of
+the matter.
+
+"You idiot!" he said. "What makes you think she was with the stout
+woman--just because she was climbing into the train after her?"
+
+"Little girls don't never go to New York alone with dolls,"
+vouchsafed Edwin, more idiotically than ever. "Leastways--"
+
+"If you don't stop saying leastways, I'll punch your head," said
+Wollaston. "Are you sure the child was Maria's little sister?"
+
+"Looked like her," said Edwin, shrinking back a little. "Leastways--"
+
+"What was she dressed in?" asked Maria, eagerly.
+
+"I didn't see as she had nothin' on."
+
+"You great gump!" said Gladys, shaking him energetically. "Of course
+she had something on."
+
+"She had a big doll."
+
+"What did she have on? You answer me this minute!" said Gladys.
+
+"She might have had on a blue dress," admitted Edwin, with a frantic
+grasp at his memory, "but she didn't have nothin' on her, nohow.
+Leastways--"
+
+"Oh!" sobbed Maria, "she did wear her little blue dress this morning.
+She did! Was her hair light?"
+
+"Yes, it were," said Edwin, quite positively. "Leastways--"
+
+"It was Evelyn," sobbed Maria. "Oh, poor little Evelyn, all alone in
+New York! She never went but once with Her and me, and she wouldn't
+know where to go. Oh, oh!"
+
+"Where did she go when she went with your step-ma and you?" demanded
+Gladys, who seemed to have suddenly developed unusual acumen. Her
+face was streaming with tears but her voice was keen.
+
+"She went to Her cousin's, who lives in an apartment in West
+Forty-ninth Street," said Maria.
+
+"She'd try to go there again," said Gladys. "Did she know the woman's
+name?"
+
+"Yes, she did."
+
+"You bet she did. She was an awful bright kid," said Gladys. "Now, I
+tell you what, Maria, I shouldn't a mite wonder if your step-ma had
+had a telegram from her cousin by this time, that she was to her
+house. You'd better jest run home an' see."
+
+"She was only her third cousin," said Maria, "and She hardly ever
+heard from her. It was only the other day I heard Her say that she
+didn't know but she had left New York. I don't think Her cousin liked
+her very well."
+
+"What was the cousin's name?"
+
+"She called her Alice, but her name was Mrs. George B. Edison."
+
+"That's jest where the kid has went," said Gladys. "You go right
+home, M'ria. We'll go with you, and I'll bet a cooky you'll find that
+your step-ma has had a telegram."
+
+Maria hesitated a moment; then she started, Wollaston Lee still
+keeping close hold of her arm. Gladys was on the other side.
+
+
+
+Chapter XIV
+
+
+When Maria reached home, she pushed open the front door, which was
+unlocked, and rushed violently in. Wollaston and Gladys followed her,
+after a slight hesitation, but remained standing in the vestibule.
+When Maria had come in sight of the house, she had perceived the
+regular motion of a rocking female head past the parlor light, and
+she knew that it was Ida. Ida nearly always occupied a rocking-chair,
+and was fond of the gentle, swaying motion.
+
+"There she is, rocking just as if the baby wasn't lost," Maria
+thought, with the bitterest revulsion and sarcasm. When she opened
+the door she immediately smelled tea, the odor of broiling beefsteak
+and fried potatoes. "Eating just as if the baby wasn't lost," she
+thought. She rushed into the parlor, and there was Ida swaying back
+and forth in her rocking-chair, and there were three ladies with her.
+One was Mrs. Jonas White; one was a very smartly dressed woman, Mrs.
+Adams, perhaps the most intimate friend whom Ida had in Edgham; one
+was the wife of the minister whose church the Edghams attended, Mrs.
+Applegate, or, as she was called, Mrs. Dr. Applegate--her husband had
+a degree. Her sister had just died and she was dressed in the deepest
+mourning; sitting in the shade in a corner, she produced a curious
+effect of a vacuum of grief. Mrs. Adams, who was quite young and very
+pretty, stout and blond, was talking eagerly; Mrs. Jonas White was
+sniffing quietly; Mrs. Applegate, who was ponderously religious,
+asked once in a while, in a subdued manner, if Mrs. Edgham did not
+think it would be advisable to unite in prayer.
+
+Ida made no reply. She continued to rock, and she had a curious set
+expression. Her lips were resolutely compressed, as if to restrain
+that radiant smile of hers, which had become habitual with her. She
+looked straight ahead, keeping her eyes fastened upon a Tiffany vase
+which stood on a little shelf, a glow of pink and gold against a
+skilful background of crimson velvet. It was as if she were having
+her photograph taken and had been requested by the photographer to
+keep her eyes fixed upon that vase.
+
+"The detective system of New York is so lax," said Mrs. Adams. "I do
+wish there was more system among them and among the police. One would
+feel--" She heaved a deep sigh.
+
+Mrs. Jonas White sobbed audibly.
+
+"Do you not think, dear friends, that it would be a good plan to
+offer up our voices at the Throne of Grace for the dear child's
+return?" asked Mrs. Applegate in a solemn voice, albeit somewhat
+diffidently. She was a corpulent woman, and was richly dressed, in
+spite of her deep mourning. A jet brooch rimmed with pearls, gleamed
+out of the shadow where she sat.
+
+Ida continued to rock.
+
+"But," said Mrs. Adams, "a great many children are lost every year
+and found. Sometimes the system does really work in a manner to
+astonish any one. I should not be surprised at any minute to see Mr.
+Edgham or a policeman walking in with her. But--well--there is so
+much to be done. The other night, when Mr. Adams and I went in to
+hear Mrs. Fiske, we drove eight blocks after the performance without
+seeing one policeman."
+
+"I suppose, though, if you had been really attacked, a dozen would
+have sprung out from somewhere," said Mrs. White, in a tearful voice.
+Mrs. White could not have heard Satan himself assailed without a word
+in his defence, such was the maternal pity of her heart.
+
+"That was what Mr. Adams said," retorted Mrs. Adams, with some
+asperity, "and I told him that I would rather the dozen policemen
+were in evidence before I was shot and robbed than after. I had on
+all my rings, and my diamond sunburst."
+
+"Do you not think, dear friend, that it would be a good plan to offer
+up our voices at the Throne of Grace for the safe restoration of the
+dear child?" asked Mrs. Applegate again. Her voice was sonorous, very
+much like her husband's. She felt that, so far as in her lay, she was
+taking his place. He was out of town.
+
+It was then that Maria rushed into the room. She ran straight up to
+her step-mother. The other women started. Ida continued to rock, and
+look at the Tiffany vase. It seemed as if she dared not take her eyes
+from it for fear of losing her expression. Then Maria spoke, and her
+voice did not sound like her own at all. It was accusatory, menacing.
+
+"Where is my little sister?" she cried. "Where is she?"
+
+Mrs. Jonas White rose, approached Maria, and put her arms around her
+caressingly. "You poor, dear child," she sobbed, "I guess you do feel
+it. You did set a heap by that blessed little thing, didn't you?"
+
+"She is in the hands of the Lord," said Mrs. Applegate.
+
+"If the police of New York were worth anything, she would be in the
+police station by this time," said Mrs. Adams, with a fierce toss of
+her pretty blond head.
+
+"We know not where His islands lift their fronded palms in air; we
+only know we cannot drift beyond His love and care," said Mrs.
+Applegate, with a solemn aside. Tears were in her own eyes, but she
+resolutely checked her impulse to weep. She felt that it would show a
+lack of faith. She was entirely in earnest.
+
+"Mebbe she _is_ in the police-station," sobbed Mrs. White, continuing
+to embrace Maria. But Maria gave her a forcible push away, and again
+addressed herself to her step-mother.
+
+"Where is she?" she demanded.
+
+"Oh, you poor, dear child! Your ma don't know where she is, and she
+is so awful upset, she sets there jest like marble," said Mrs. White.
+
+"She isn't upset at all. You don't know her as well as I do," said
+Maria, mercilessly. "She thinks she ought to act upset, so she sits
+this way. She isn't upset."
+
+"Oh, Maria!" gasped Mrs. White.
+
+"The child is out of her head," said Mrs. Adams, and yet she looked
+at Maria with covert approval. She was Ida's intimate friend, but in
+her heart of hearts she doubted her grief. She had once lost by death
+a little girl of her own. She kept thinking of her little Alice, and
+how she should feel in a similar case. It did not seem to her that
+she should rock, and look at a Tiffany vase. She inveighed against
+the detectives and police with a reserve meaning of indignation
+against Ida. It seemed to her that any woman whose child was lost
+should be up and generally making a tumult, if she were doing nothing
+else.
+
+The Maria, standing before the beautiful woman swaying gently, with
+her eyes fixed upon the pink and gold of the vase, spoke out for the
+first time what was in her heart of hearts with regard to her.
+
+"You are a wicked woman," said she; "that is what you are. I don't
+know as you can help being wicked. I guess you were made wicked; but
+you _are_ a wicked woman. Your mouth smiles, but your heart never
+does. You act now as if you were sorry," said she, "but you are not
+sorry, the way my mother would have been sorry if she had lost me,
+the way she would have been sorry if Evelyn had been her little girl
+instead of yours. You are a wicked woman. I have always known it, but
+I have never told you so before. Now I am going to tell you. Your own
+child is lost, you let her be lost. You didn't look out for her. Yes,
+your own child is lost, and you sit there and rock!"
+
+Ida for a moment made no reply. The other women, and Gladys and
+Wollaston in the vestibule, listened with horror.
+
+"You have had beefsteak and fried potatoes cooked, too," continued
+Maria, sniffing, "and you have eaten them. You have been eating
+beefsteak and fried potatoes when your own child was lost and you did
+not know where she was!" It might have been ridiculous, this last
+accusation in the thin, sweet, childish voice, but it was not. It was
+even more terrible than anything else.
+
+Ida turned at last. "I hate you," she said slowly. "I have always
+hated you. You have hated me ever since I came into this house," she
+said, "though I have done more than your own mother ever did for you."
+
+"You have not!" cried Maria. "You have got nice clothes for me, but
+my own mother loved me. What are nice clothes to love? You have not
+even loved Evelyn. You have only got her nice clothes. You have never
+loved her. Poor papa and I were the only ones that loved her. You
+never even loved poor papa. You saw to it that he had things to eat,
+but you never loved him. You are not made right. All the love in your
+heart is for your own self. You are turned the wrong way. I don't
+know as you can help it, but you are a dreadful woman. You are
+wicked. You never loved the baby, and now you have let her be lost.
+She is my own little sister, and papa's child, a great deal more than
+she is anything to you. Where is she?" Maria's voice rang wild. Her
+face was blazing. She had an abnormal expression in her blue eyes
+fixed upon her step-mother.
+
+Ida, after her one outburst, gazed upon her with a sort of fear as
+well as repulsion. She again turned to the Tiffany vase.
+
+Mrs. White, sobbing aloud like a child, again put her arms around
+Maria.
+
+"Come, come," she said soothingly, "you poor child, I know how you
+feel, but you mustn't talk so, you mustn't, dear! You have no right
+to judge. You don't know how your mother feels."
+
+"I know how She doesn't feel!" Maria burst out, "and She isn't my
+mother. My mother loves me more way off in heaven than that woman
+loves Her own child on earth. She doesn't feel. She just rocks, and
+thinks how She looks. I hate Her! Let me go!" With that Maria was out
+of the room, and ran violently up-stairs.
+
+When she had gone, the three visiting women looked at one another,
+and the same covert expression of gratified malice, at some one
+having spoken out what was in their inmost hearts, was upon all three
+faces. Ida was impassive, with her smiling lips contracted. Mrs.
+Applegate again murmured something about uniting in prayer.
+
+Maria came hurrying down-stairs. She had in her hand her purse, which
+contained ten dollars, which her father had given her on her
+birthday, also a book of New York tickets which had been a present
+from Ida, and which Ida herself had borrowed several times since
+giving them to Maria. Maria herself seldom went to New York, and Ida
+had a fashion of giving presents which might react to her own
+benefit. Maria, as she passed the parlor door, glanced in and saw her
+step-mother rocking and staring at the vase. Then she was out of the
+front-door, racing down the street with Wollaston Lee and Gladys
+hardly able to keep up with her. Wollaston reached her finally, and
+again caught her arm. The pressure of the hard, warm boy hand was
+grateful to the little, hysterical thing, who was trembling from head
+to foot, with a strange rigidity of tremors. Gladys also clutched her
+other sleeve.
+
+"Say, M'ria Edgham, where be you goin'?" she demanded.
+
+"I'm going to find my little sister," gasped out Maria. She gave a
+dry sob as she spoke.
+
+"My!" said Gladys.
+
+"Now, Maria, hadn't you better go back home?" ventured Wollaston.
+
+"No," said Maria, and she ran on towards the station.
+
+"Come home with me to my mother," said Wollaston, pleadingly, but a
+little timidly. A girl in such a nervous strait as this was a new
+experience for him.
+
+"She can go home with me," said Gladys. "My mother's a heap better
+than Ida Slome. Say, M'ria, all them things you said was true, but
+land! how did you darse?"
+
+Maria made no reply. She kept on.
+
+"Say, M'ria, you don't mean you're goin' to New York?" said Gladys.
+
+"Yes, I am. I am going to find my little sister."
+
+"My!" said Gladys.
+
+"Now, Maria, don't you think you had better go home with me, and see
+mother?" Wollaston said again.
+
+But Maria seemed deaf. In fact, she heard nothing but the sound of
+the approaching New York train. She ran like a wild thing, her
+little, slim legs skimming the ground like a bird's, almost as if
+assisted by wings.
+
+When the train reached the station, Maria climbed in, Wollaston and
+Gladys after her. Neither Wollaston nor Gladys had the slightest
+premeditation in the matter; they were fairly swept along by the
+emotion of their companion.
+
+When the train had fairly started, Gladys, who had seated herself
+beside Maria, while Wollaston was in the seat behind them, heaved a
+deep sigh of bewilderment and terror. "My!" said she.
+
+Wollaston also looked pale and bewildered. He was only a boy, and had
+never been thrown much upon his own responsibility. All that had been
+uppermost in his mind was the consideration that Maria could not be
+stopped, and she must not go alone to New York. But he did not know
+what to think of it all. He felt chaotic. The first thing which
+seemed to precipitate his mentality into anything like clearness was
+the entrance of the conductor. Then he thought instinctively about
+money. Although still a boy, money as a prime factor was already
+firmly established in his mind. He reflected with dismay that he had
+only his Wardway tickets, and about three dollars beside. It was now
+dark. The vaguest visions of what they were to do in New York were in
+his head. The fare to New York was a little over a dollar; he had
+only enough to take them all in, then what next? He took out his
+pocket-book, but Gladys looked around quickly.
+
+"She's got a whole book of tickets," she said.
+
+However, Wollaston, who was proud, started to pay the conductor, but
+he had reached Maria first, and she had said "Three," peremptorily.
+Then she handed the book to Wollaston, with the grim little ghost of
+a smile. "You please keep this," said she. "I haven't got any pocket."
+
+Wollaston was so bewildered that the possession of pockets seemed
+instantly to restore his self-respect. He felt decidedly more at his
+ease when he had Maria's ticket-book in his innermost pocket. Then
+she gave him her purse also.
+
+"I wish you would please take this," said she. "There are ten dollars
+in it, and I haven't any pocket." Wollaston took that.
+
+"All right," he said. He buttoned his gray vest securely over Maria's
+pretty little red purse. Then he leaned over the seat, and began to
+speak, but he absolutely did not know what to say. He made an idiotic
+remark about the darkness. "Queer how quick it grows dark, when it
+begins," said he.
+
+Maria ignored it, but Gladys said: "Yes, it is awful queer."
+
+Gladys's eyes looked wild. The pupils were dilated. She had been to
+New York but once before in her life, and now to be going in the
+evening to find Maria's little sister was almost too much for her
+intelligence, which had its limitations.
+
+However, after a while, Wollaston Lee spoke again. He was in reality
+a keen-witted boy, only this was an emergency into which he had been
+surprised, and which he had not foreseen, and Maria's own abnormal
+mood had in a measure infected him. Presently he spoke to the point.
+
+"What on earth are you going to do when you get to New York, anyhow?"
+said he to Maria.
+
+"Find her," replied Maria, laconically.
+
+"But New York is a mighty big city. How do you mean to go to work?
+Now I--"
+
+Maria cut him short. "I am going right up to Her cousin's, on West
+Forty-ninth Street, and find out if Evelyn is there," said she.
+
+"But what would make the child want to go there, anyhow?"
+
+"It was the only place she had ever been in New York," said Maria.
+
+"But I don't see what particular reason she would have for going
+there, though," said Wollaston. "How would she remember the street
+and number?"
+
+"She was an awful bright kid," said Gladys, with a momentary lapse of
+reason, "and kids is queer. I know, 'cause we've got so many of 'em
+to our house. Sometimes they'll remember things you don't ever think
+they would. My little sister Maud remembers how my mother drowned
+five kittens oncet, when she was in long clothes. We knowed she did,
+'cause when the cat had kittens next time we caught her trying to
+drown 'em herself. Kids is awful queer. Maud can't remember how to
+spell her own name, either, and she's most six now. She spells it
+M-a-u-d, when it had ought to be M-a-u-g-h-d. I shouldn't be one mite
+surprised if M'ria's little sister remembered the street and number."
+
+"Anyway, she knew her whole name, because I've heard her say it,"
+said Maria. "Her cousin's name is Mrs. George B. Edison. Evelyn used
+to say it, and we used to laugh."
+
+"Oh, well, if she knew the name like that she might have found the
+place all right," said Wollaston. "But what puzzles me is why she
+wanted to go there, anyway?"
+
+"I don't know," said Maria.
+
+"I don't know," said Wollaston, "but it seems to me the best thing to
+do would be to go directly to a police-office and have the chief of
+police notified, and set them at work; but then I suppose your father
+has done that already."
+
+Maria turned upon him with indignation. "Go to a police-station to
+find my little sister!" said she. "What would I go there for?"
+
+"Yes, what do you suppose that kid has did?" asked Gladys.
+
+"What would I go there for?" demanded Maria, flashing the light of
+her excited, strained little face upon the boy.
+
+Maria no longer looked pretty. She no longer looked even young. Lines
+of age were evident around her mouth, her forehead was wrinkled. The
+boy fairly started at the sight of her. She seemed like a stranger to
+him. Her innermost character, which he had heretofore only guessed at
+by superficial signs, was written plainly on her face. The boy felt
+himself immeasurably small and young, manly and bold of his age as he
+really was. When a young girl stretches to the full height of her
+instincts, she dwarfs any boy of her own age. Maria's feeling for her
+little sister was fairly maternal. She was in spirit a mother
+searching for her lost young, rather than a girl searching for her
+little sister. Her whole soul expanded. She fairly looked larger, as
+well as older. When they got off the train at Jersey City, she led
+the little procession straight for the Twenty-third Street ferry. She
+marched ahead like a woman of twice her years.
+
+"You had better hold up your dress, M'ria," said Gladys, coming up
+with her, and looking at her with wonder. "My, how you do race!"
+
+Maria reached round one hand and caught a fold of her skirt. Her new
+dress was in fact rather long for her. Ida had remarked that morning
+that she would have Miss Keeler shorten it on Saturday. Ida had no
+wish to have a grown-up step-daughter quite yet, whom people might
+take for her own.
+
+The three reached the ferry-boat just as she was about to leave her
+slip. They sat down in a row midway of the upper deck. The heat
+inside was intense. Gladys loosened her shabby little sacque. Maria
+sat impassible.
+
+"Ain't you most baked in here?" asked Gladys.
+
+"No," replied Maria.
+
+Both Gladys and Wollaston looked cowed. They kept glancing at each
+other and at Maria. Maria sat next Gladys, Wollaston on Gladys's
+other side. Gladys nudged Wollaston, and whispered to him.
+
+"We've jest got to stick close to her," she whispered, in an alarmed
+cadence. The boy nodded.
+
+Then they both glanced again at Maria, who seemed quite oblivious of
+their attention. When they reached the other side, Wollaston, with an
+effort, asserted himself.
+
+"We had better take a cross-town car to the Sixth Avenue Elevated,"
+he said, pressing close to Maria's side and seizing her arm again.
+
+Maria shook her head. "No," she said. "Where Mrs. Edison lives is not
+so near the Elevated. It will be better to take a cross-town car and
+transfer at Seventh Avenue."
+
+"All right," said Wollaston. He led the way in the run down the
+stairs, and aided his companions onto the cross-town car. He paid
+their fares, and got the transfers, and stopped the other car. He was
+beginning to feel himself again, at least temporarily.
+
+"Well, I think the police-station is the best place to look, but have
+your own way. It won't take long to see if she is there now," said
+Wollaston. He was hanging on a strap in front of Maria. The car was
+crowded with people going to up-town theatres. Some of the ladies, in
+showy evening wraps, giving glimpses of delicate waists, looked
+curiously at the three. There was something extraordinary about their
+appearance calculated to attract attention, although it was difficult
+to say just why. After they had left the car, a lady with a white
+lace blouse showing between the folds of a red cloak, said to her
+escort: "I wonder who they were?"
+
+"I don't know," said the man, who had been watching them. "I thought
+there was something unusual."
+
+"I thought so, too. That well-dressed young woman, and that handsome
+boy, and that shabby little girl." By the "young woman" she meant
+Maria.
+
+"Yes, a queer combination," said the man.
+
+"It wasn't altogether that, but they looked so desperately in
+earnest."
+
+Meantime, while the lights of the car disappeared up the avenue,
+Maria, Wollaston, and Gladys Mann searched for the house in which had
+lived Ida Edgham's cousin.
+
+At last they found it, mounted the steps, and rang the bell. It was
+an apartment-house. After a little the door opened of itself.
+
+"My!" said Gladys, but she followed Wollaston and Maria inside.
+
+Wollaston began searching the names above the rows of bells on the
+wall of the vestibule.
+
+"What did you say the name was?" he asked of Maria.
+
+"Edison. Mrs. George B. Edison."
+
+"There is no such name here."
+
+"There must be."
+
+"There isn't."
+
+"Let me see," said Maria. She searched the names. "Well, I don't
+care," said she. "It was on the third floor, and I am going up and
+ask, anyway."
+
+"Now, Maria, do you think--" began Wollaston.
+
+But Maria began climbing the stairs. There was no elevator.
+
+"My!" said Gladys, but she followed Maria.
+
+Wollaston pushed by them both. "See here, you don't know what you are
+getting into," said he, sternly. "You let _me_ go first."
+
+When they reached the third floor, Maria pointed to a door. "That is
+the door," she whispered, breathlessly.
+
+Wollaston knocked. Immediately the door was flung open by a very
+pretty young woman in a rose-colored evening gown. Her white
+shoulders gleamed through the transparent chiffon, and a comb set
+with rhinestones sparkled in the fluff of her blond hair. When she
+saw the three she gave a shrill scream, and immediately a very small
+man, much smaller than she, but with a fierce cock of a black pointed
+beard, and a tremendous wiriness of gesture, appeared.
+
+"Oh, Tom!" gasped the young woman. "Oh!"
+
+"What on earth is the matter, Stella?" asked the man. Then he looked
+fiercely at the three. "Who are these people?" he asked.
+
+"I don't know. I opened the door. I thought it was Adeline and
+Raymond, and then I saw these strange people. I don't know how they
+got in."
+
+"We came in the door," said Gladys, with some asperity, "and we are
+lookin' for M'ria's little sister. Be you her ma-in-law's cousin?"
+
+"I don't know who these people are," the young woman said, faintly,
+to the man. "I think they must be burglars."
+
+"Burglars, nothin'!" said Gladys, who had suddenly assumed the
+leadership of the party. Opposition and suspicion stimulated her. She
+loved a fight. "Be you her ma-in-law's cousin, and have you got her
+little sister?"
+
+Wollaston looked inquiringly at Maria, who was very pale.
+
+"It isn't Her cousin," she gasped. "I don't know who she is. I never
+saw her."
+
+Then Wollaston spoke, hat in hand, and speaking up like a man.
+"Pardon us, sir," he said, "we did not intend to intrude, but--"
+
+"Get out of this," said the man, with a sudden dart towards the door.
+
+His wife screamed again, and put her hand over a little diamond
+brooch at her throat. "I just know they are sneak-thieves," she
+gasped. "Do send them away, Tom!"
+
+Wollaston tried to speak again. "We merely wished to ascertain," said
+he, "if a lady by the name of Mrs. George A.--"
+
+"B." interrupted Gladys.
+
+"B. Edison lived here. This young lady's little sister is lost, and
+Mrs. Edison is a relative, and we thought--"
+
+The man made another dart. "Don't care what you thought," he shouted.
+"Keep your thoughts to yourself! Get out of here!"
+
+"Do you know where Mrs. George B. Edison lives now?" asked Wollaston,
+courteously, but his black eyes flashed at the man.
+
+"No, I don't."
+
+"No, we don't," said the young woman in pink. "Do make them go, Tom."
+
+"We are perfectly willing to go," said Wollaston. "We have no desire
+to remain any longer where people are not willing to answer civil
+questions."
+
+Maria all this time had said nothing. She was perfectly overcome with
+the conviction that Ida's cousin was not there, and consequently not
+Evelyn. Moreover, she was frightened at the little man's fierce
+manner. She clung to Wollaston's arm as they retreated, but Gladys
+turned around and deliberately stuck her tongue out at the man and
+the young woman in rose. The man slammed the door.
+
+The three met on the stoop of the house two people in gay attire.
+
+"Go up and see your friends that don't know how to treat folks
+decent," said Gladys. The woman looked wonderingly at her from under
+the shade of a picture hat. Her escort opened the door. "Ten chances
+to one they had the kid hid somewhere," said Gladys, so loudly that
+both turned and looked at her.
+
+"Hush up," said Wollaston.
+
+"Well, what be you goin' to do now?" asked Gladys.
+
+"I am going to a drug-store, and see if I can find out where Maria's
+relatives have moved to," replied Wollaston. He walked quite alertly
+now. Maria's discomfiture had reassured him.
+
+They walked along a few blocks until they saw the lights of a
+drug-store on the corner. Then Wollaston led them in and marched up
+to the directory chained to the counter.
+
+"What's that?" Gladys asked. "A Bible?"
+
+"No, it's a directory," Maria replied, in a dull voice.
+
+"What do they keep it chained for? Books don't run away."
+
+"I suppose they are afraid folks will steal it."
+
+"My!" said Gladys, eying the big volume. "I don't see what on earth
+they'd do with it when they got it stole," she remarked, in a low,
+reflective voice.
+
+Maria leaned against the counter and waited.
+
+Finally, Wollaston turned to her with an apologetic air. "I can't
+find any George B. here," he said. "You are sure it was B?"
+
+"Yes," replied Maria.
+
+"Well, there's no use," said Wollaston. "There is no George B. Edison
+in this book, anyhow."
+
+He came forward, and stood looking at Maria. Maria gazed absently at
+the crowds passing on the street. Gladys watched them both.
+
+"Well," said Gladys, presently, "you ain't goin' to stand here all
+night, be you? What be you goin' to do next? Go to the police-station?"
+
+"I don't see that there is any use," replied Wollaston. "Maria's
+father must have been there by this time. This is a wild-goose chase
+anyhow." Wollaston's tone was quite vicious. He scowled
+superciliously at the salesman who stepped forward and asked if he
+wanted anything. "No, we don't, thank you," he said.
+
+"What be you goin' to do?" asked Gladys, again. She looked at the
+soda-fountain.
+
+"I don't see anything to do but to go home," said Wollaston. "There
+is no sense in our chasing around New York any longer, that I can
+see."
+
+"You can't go home to-night, anyhow," Gladys said, quite calmly.
+"They've took off that last train, and there ain't more'n ten minutes
+to git down to the station."
+
+Wollaston turned pale, and looked at her with horror. "What makes you
+think they've taken off that last train?" he demanded.
+
+"Ain't my pa brakeman when he's sober, and he's been real sober for
+quite a spell now."
+
+Wollaston seized Maria by the arm. "Come, quick!" he said, and
+leaving the drug-store he broke into a run for the Elevated, with
+Gladys following.
+
+"There ain't no use in your runnin'," said she. "You know yourself
+you can't git down to Cortlandt Street, and walk to the ferry in ten
+minutes. I never went but oncet, but I know it can't be did."
+
+Wollaston slackened his pace. "That is so," he said. Then he looked
+at Maria in a kind of angry despair. He felt, in spite of his
+romantic predilection for her, that he wished she were a boy, so he
+could say something forcible. He realized his utter helplessness with
+these two girls in a city where he knew no one, and he again thought
+of the three dollars in his pocket-book. He did not suppose that
+Maria had more than fifty cents in hers. Then, too, he was worldly
+wise enough to realize the difficulty of the situation, the possible
+danger even. It was ten o'clock at night, and here he was with two
+young girls to look out for.
+
+Then Gladys, who had also worldly wisdom, although of a crude and
+vulgar sort, spoke. "Folks are goin' to talk like the old Harry if we
+stay in here all night," said she, "and besides, there's no knowin'
+what is a safe place to go into."
+
+"That is so," said Wollaston, gloomily, "and I--have not much money
+with me."
+
+"I've got money enough," Maria said, suddenly. "There are ten dollars
+in my pocket-book I gave you to keep."
+
+"My!" said Gladys.
+
+Wollaston brightened for a moment, then his face clouded again.
+"Well, I don't know as that makes it much better," said he. "I don't
+quite see how to manage. They are so particular in hotels now, that I
+don't know as I can get you into a decent one. As for myself, I don't
+care. I can look out for myself, but I don't know what to do with
+you, Maria."
+
+Gladys made a little run and stepped in front of them. "There ain't
+but one thing you can do, so Maria won't git talked about all the
+rest of her life, and I kin tell you what it is," said she.
+
+"What is it?" asked Wollaston, in a burst of anger. "I call it a
+pretty pickle we are in, for my part. Ten chances to one, Mr. Edgham
+has got the baby back home safe and sound by this time, anyway, and
+here we are, here is Maria!"
+
+"There ain't but one thing you can do," said Gladys. Her tone was
+forcible. She was full of the vulgar shrewdness of a degenerate race,
+for the old acumen of that race had sharpened her wits.
+
+"What! in Heaven's name?" cried Wollaston.
+
+The three had been slowly walking along, and had stopped near a
+church, which was lighted. As they were talking the lights went out.
+A thin stream of people ceased issuing from the open doors. A man in
+a clerical dress approached them, walking quite rapidly. He was
+evidently bound, from the trend of his steps, to a near-by house,
+which was his residence.
+
+"Git married," said Gladys, abruptly. Then, before the others
+realized what she was doing, she darted in front of the approaching
+clergyman. "They want to git married," said she.
+
+The clergyman stopped and stared at her, then at the couple beyond,
+who were quite speechless with astonishment. He was inconceivably
+young for his profession. He was small, and had a round, rollicking
+face, which he was constantly endeavoring to draw down into lines of
+asceticism.
+
+"Who wants to get married?" asked the clergyman.
+
+"Them two," replied Gladys, succinctly. She pointed magisterially at
+Wollaston and Maria.
+
+Wollaston was tall and manly looking for his age, Maria's dress
+touched the ground. The clergyman had not, at the moment, a doubt as
+to their suitable age. He was not a brilliant young man, naturally.
+He had been pushed through college and into his profession by wealthy
+relatives, and, moreover, with his stupidity, he had a certain spirit
+of recklessness and sense of humor which gave life a spice for him.
+
+"Want to get married, eh?" he said.
+
+Then Wollaston spoke. "No, we do not want to get married," he said,
+positively. Then he said to Gladys, "I wish you would mind your own
+business."
+
+But he had to cope with the revival of a wonderful feminine wit of a
+fine old race in Gladys. "I should think you would be plum ashamed of
+yourself," she said, severely, "after you have got that poor girl in
+here; and if she stays and you ain't married, she'll git talked
+about."
+
+The clergyman approached Wollaston and Maria. Maria had begun to cry.
+She was trembling from head to foot with fear and confusion.
+Wollaston looked sulky and angry.
+
+"Is that true--did you induce this girl to come to New York to be
+married?" he inquired, and his own boyish voice took on severe tones.
+He was very strong in moral reform.
+
+"No, I did not," replied Wollaston.
+
+"He did," said Gladys. "She'll get talked about if she ain't, too,
+and the last train has went, and we've got to stay in New York all
+night."
+
+"Where do you come from?" inquired the young clergyman, and his tone
+was more severe still.
+
+"From Edgham, New Jersey," replied Gladys.
+
+"Who are you?" inquired the clergyman.
+
+"I ain't no account," replied Gladys. "All our folks git talked
+about, but she's different."
+
+"I suppose you are her maid," said the clergyman, noting with quick
+eye the difference in the costumes of the two girls.
+
+"Call it anything you wanter," said Gladys, indifferently. "I ain't
+goin' to have her talked about, nohow."
+
+"Come, Maria," said Wollaston, but Maria did not respond even to his
+strong, nervous pull on her arm. She sobbed convulsively.
+
+"No, that girl does not go one step, young man," said the clergyman.
+He advanced closely, and laid a hand on Maria's other arm. Although
+small in body and mind, he evidently had muscle. "Come right in the
+house," said he, and Maria felt his hand on her arm like steel. She
+yielded, and began following him, Wollaston in vain trying to hold
+her back.
+
+Gladys went behind Wollaston and pushed vigorously. "You git right in
+there, the way he says, Wollaston Lee," said she. "You had ought to
+be ashamed of yourself."
+
+Before the boy well knew what he was doing he found himself in a
+small reception-room lined with soberly bound books. All that was
+clear in his mind was that he could not hinder Maria from entering,
+and that she must not go into the house alone with Gladys and this
+strange man.
+
+A man had been standing in the doorway of the house, waiting the
+entrance of the clergyman. He was evidently a servant, and his master
+beckoned him.
+
+"Call Mrs. Jerrolds, Williams," he said.
+
+"What is your name?" he asked Maria, who was sobbing more wildly than
+ever.
+
+"Her name is Maria Edgham," replied Gladys, "and his is Wollaston
+Lee. They both live in Edgham."
+
+"How old are you?" the clergyman asked of Wollaston; but Gladys cut
+in again.
+
+"He's nineteen, and she's goin' on," she replied, shamelessly.
+
+"We are neither of us," began Wollaston, whose mind was in a whirl of
+anger of confusion.
+
+But the clergyman interrupted him. "I am ashamed of you, young man,"
+he said, "luring an innocent young girl to New York and then trying
+to lie out of your responsibility."
+
+"I am not," began Wollaston again; but then the man who had stood in
+the door entered with a portly woman in a black silk tea-gown. She
+looked as if she had been dozing, or else was naturally slow-witted.
+Her eyes, under heavy lids, were dull; her mouth had a sleepy,
+although good-natured pout, like a child's, between her fat cheeks.
+
+"I am sorry to trouble you, Mrs. Jerrolds," said the clergyman, "but
+I need you and Williams for witnesses." Then he proceeded.
+
+Neither Wollaston nor Maria were ever very clear in their minds how
+it was done. Both had thought marriage was a more complicated
+proceeding. Neither was entirely sure of having said anything.
+Indeed, Wollaston was afterwards quite positive that Gladys Mann
+answered nearly all the clergyman's questions; but at all events, the
+first thing he heard distinctly was the clergyman's pronouncing him
+and Maria man and wife. Then the clergyman, who was zealous to the
+point of fanaticism, and who honestly considered himself to have done
+an exceedingly commendable thing, invited them to have some
+wedding-cake, which he kept ready for such emergencies, and some
+coffee, but Wollaston replied with a growl of indignation and
+despair. This time Maria followed his almost brutally spoken command
+to follow him, and the three went out of the house.
+
+"See that you treat your wife properly, young man," the clergyman
+called out after him, in a voice half jocular, half condemnatory, "or
+there will be trouble."
+
+Wollaston growled an oath, the first which he had ever uttered, under
+his breath, and strode on. He had released his hold on Maria's arm.
+Ahead of them, a block distant, was an Elevated station, and Maria,
+who seemed to suddenly recover her faculties, broke into a run for it.
+
+"Where be you goin'?" called out Gladys.
+
+"I am going down to the Jersey City station, quick," replied Maria,
+in a desperate voice.
+
+"I thought you'd go to a hotel. There ain't no harm, now you're
+married, you know," said Gladys, "and then we could have some supper.
+I'm awful hungry. I ain't eat a thing sence noon."
+
+"I am going right down to the station," repeated Maria.
+
+"The last train has went. What's the use?"
+
+"I don't care. I'm going down there."
+
+"What be you goin' to do when you git there?"
+
+"I am going to sit there, and wait till morning."
+
+"My!" said Gladys.
+
+However, she went on up the Elevated stairs with Maria and Wollaston.
+Wollaston threw down the fares and got the tickets, and strode on
+ahead. His mouth was set. He was very pale. He probably realized to a
+greater extent than any of them what had taken place. It was
+inconceivable to him that it had taken place, that he himself had
+been such a fool. He felt like one who has met with some utterly
+unexplainable and unaccountable accident. He felt as he had done once
+when, younger, he had stuck his own knife, with which he was
+whittling, into his eye, to the possible loss of it. It seemed to him
+as if something had taken place without his volition. He was like a
+puppet in a show. He looked at Maria, and realized that he hated her.
+He wondered how he could ever have thought her pretty. He looked at
+Gladys Mann, and felt murderous. He had a high temper. As the train
+approached, he whispered in her ear,
+
+"Damn you, Gladys Mann, it's a pretty pickle you have got us into."
+
+Gladys was used to being sworn at. She was not in the least
+intimidated.
+
+"Do you s'pose I was goin' to have M'ria talked about?" she said.
+"You can cuss all you want to."
+
+They got into the train. Wollaston sat by himself, Gladys and Maria
+together. Maria was no longer weeping, but she looked terrified
+beyond measure, and desperate. A horrible imagination of evil was
+over her. She never glanced at Wollaston. She thought that she wished
+there would be an accident on the train and he might be killed. She
+hated him more than he hated her.
+
+They were just in time for a boat at Cortlandt Street. When they
+reached the Jersey City side Wollaston went straight to the
+information bureau, and then returned to Gladys and Maria, seated on
+a bench in the waiting-room.
+
+"Well, there _is_ a train," he said, curtly.
+
+"'Ain't it been took off?" asked Gladys.
+
+"No, but we've got to wait an hour and a half." Then he bent down and
+whispered in Gladys's ear, "I wish to God you'd been dead before you
+got us into this, Gladys Mann!"
+
+"My father said it had been took off," said Gladys. "You sure there
+is one?"
+
+"Of course I'm sure!"
+
+"My!" said Gladys.
+
+Wollaston went to a distant seat and sat by himself. The two girls
+waited miserably. Gladys had suffered a relapse. Her degeneracy of
+wit had again overwhelmed her. She looked at Maria from time to time,
+then she glanced around at Wollaston, and her expression was almost
+idiotic. The people who were on the seat with them moved away. Maria
+turned suddenly to Gladys.
+
+"Gladys Mann," said she, "if you ever tell of this--"
+
+"Then you ain't goin' to--" said Gladys.
+
+"Going to what?"
+
+"Live with him?"
+
+"Live with him! I hate him enough to wish he was dead. I'll never
+live with him; and if you tell, Gladys Mann, I'll tell you what I'll
+do."
+
+"What?" asked Gladys, in a horrified whisper.
+
+"I'll go and drown myself in Fisher's Pond, that's what I'll do."
+
+"I never will tell, honest, M'ria," said Gladys.
+
+"You'd better not."
+
+"Hope to die, if I do."
+
+"You _will_ die if you do," said Maria, "for I'll leave a note saying
+you pushed me into the pond, and it will be true, too. Oh, Gladys
+Mann! it's awful what you've done!"
+
+"I didn't mean no harm," said Gladys.
+
+"And there's a train, too."
+
+"Father said there wasn't."
+
+"Your father!"
+
+"I know it. There ain't never tellin' when father lies," said Gladys.
+"I guess father don't know what lies is, most of the time. I s'pose
+he's always had a little, if he 'ain't had a good deal. But I'll
+never tell, Maria, not as long as I live."
+
+"If you do, I'll drown myself," said Maria.
+
+Then the two sat quietly until the train was called out, when they
+went through the gate, Maria showing her tickets for herself and
+Gladys. Wollaston had purchased his own and returned Maria's. He kept
+behind the two girls as if he did not belong to their party at all.
+On the train he rode in the smoking-car.
+
+The car was quite full at first, but the passengers got off at the
+way-stations. When they drew near Edgham there were only a few left.
+Wollaston had not paid the slightest attention to the passengers. He
+could not have told what sort of a man occupied the seat with him,
+nor even when he got off. He was vaguely conscious of the reeking
+smoke of the car, but that was all. When the conductor came through
+he handed out his ticket mechanically, without looking at him. He
+stared out of the window at the swift-passing, shadowy trees, at the
+green-and-red signal-lights, and the bright glare from the lights of
+the stations through which they passed. Once they passed by a large
+factory on fire, surrounded by a shouting mob of men, and engines.
+Even that did not arrest his attention, although it caused quite a
+commotion in the car. He sat huddled up in a heap, staring out with
+blank eyes, all his consciousness fixed upon his own affairs. He felt
+as if he had made an awful leap from boyhood to manhood in a minute.
+He was full of indignation, of horror, of shame. He was conscious of
+wishing that there were no girls in the world. After they had passed
+the last station before reaching Edgham he looked wearily away from
+the window, and recognized, stupidly, Maria's father in a seat in the
+forward part of the car. Harry was sitting as dejectedly hunched upon
+himself as was the boy. Wollaston recognized the fact that he could
+not have found little Evelyn, and realized wickedly and furiously
+that he did not care, that a much more dreadful complication had come
+into his own life. He turned again to the window.
+
+Maria, in the car behind the smoker, sat beside Gladys, and looked
+out of the window very much as Wollaston was doing. She also was
+conscious of an exceeding horror and terror, and a vague shame. It
+was, to Maria, as if she had fallen through the fairy cobweb of
+romance and struck upon the hard ground of reality with such force
+that her very soul was bleeding. Wollaston, in the smoker, wished no
+more devoutly that there were no girls in the world, than Maria
+wished there were no boys. Her emotions had been, as it were, thrust
+back down her own throat, and she was choked and sickened with them.
+She would not look at nor speak to Gladys. Once, when Gladys
+addressed a remark to her, Maria thrust out an indignant shoulder
+towards her.
+
+"You needn't act so awful mad," whispered Gladys. "I ain't goin' to
+tell, and I was doin' it on your account. My mother will give it to
+me when I git home."
+
+"What are you going to tell her?" asked Maria, with sudden interest.
+
+"I'm goin' to tell her I've been out walkin' with Ben Jadkins. She's
+told me not to, and she'll lick me for all she's wuth," said Gladys,
+angrily. "But I don't care. It's lucky father 'ain't been through
+this train. It's real lucky to have your father git drunk sometimes.
+I'll git licked, but I don't care."
+
+Maria, sitting there, paid no more attention. The shock of her own
+plight had almost driven from her mind the thought of Evelyn, but
+when a woman got on the train leading a child about her age, the old
+pain concerning her came back. She began to weep again quietly.
+
+"I don't see what you are cryin' for," said Gladys, in an accusing
+voice. "You might have been an old maid."
+
+"I don't believe she is found," Maria moaned, in a low voice.
+
+"Oh, the kid! You bet your life she'll turn up. Your pa 'll find her
+all right. I didn't know as you were cryin' about that."
+
+When they reached Edgham, Maria and Gladys got off the train,
+Wollaston Lee also got off, and Harry Edgham, and from a rear car a
+stout woman, yanking, rather than leading, by the hand, a little girl
+with a fluff of yellow hair. The child was staggering with sleep. The
+stout woman carried on her other arm a large wax-doll whose face
+smiled inanely over her shoulder.
+
+Suddenly there was a rush and cry, and Maria had the little girl in
+her arms. She was kneeling beside her on the dusty platform,
+regardless of her new suit.
+
+"Sister! Sister!" screamed the child.
+
+"Sister's own little darling!" said Maria, then she began to sob
+wildly.
+
+"It's her little sister. Where did you get her?" Gladys asked,
+severely, of the stout woman, who stood holding the large doll and
+glowering, while Harry Edgham came hurrying up. Then there was
+another scream from the baby, and she was in her father's arms. There
+were few at the station at that hour, but a small crowd gathered
+around. On the outskirts was Wollaston Lee, looking on with his
+sulky, desperate face.
+
+The stout woman grasped Harry vehemently by the arm. "Look at here,"
+said she. "I want to know, an' I ain't got no time to fool around,
+for I want to take the next train back. Is that your young one? Speak
+up quick."
+
+Harry, hugging the child to his breast, looked at the stout woman.
+
+"Yes," he replied, "she is mine, and I have been looking for her all
+day. Where--Did you?"
+
+"No, I didn't," said the stout woman, emphatically. "_She_ did. I
+don't never meddle with other folks' children. I 'ain't never been
+married, and I 'ain't never wanted to be. And I 'ain't never cared
+nothin' about children; always thought they was more bother than they
+were worth. And when I changed cars here this mornin', on my way from
+Lawsons, where I've been to visit my married sister, this young one
+tagged me onto the train, and nothin' I could say made anybody
+believe she wa'n't mine. I told 'em I wa'n't married, but it didn't
+make no difference. I call it insultin'. There I was goin' up to
+Tarrytown to-day to see my aunt 'Liza. She's real feeble, and they
+sent for me, and there I was with this young one. I had a cousin in
+New York, and I took her to her house, and she didn't know any better
+what to do than I did. She was always dreadful helpless. We waited
+till her husband got home. He runs a tug down the harbor, and he said
+take her to the police-station, and mebbe I'd find out somebody had
+been tryin' to find her. So my cousin's husband and me went to the
+station, and he was so tuckered out and mad at the whole performance
+that I could hear him growlin' cuss words under his breath the whole
+way. We took her and this great doll down to the station, and we
+found out there who she was most likely, and who she belonged to. And
+my cousin's husband said I'd got to take her out here. He looked it
+up and found out I could git back to New York to-night. He said he
+wouldn't come nohow." Suddenly a light flashed on the woman. "Say,"
+she said, "you don't mean to say you've been on the train yourself
+all the way out from New York?"
+
+"Yes, I came out on the train," admitted Harry, meekly. "I am sorry--"
+
+"Well, you'd better be," said the woman. "Here I've traipsed out here
+for nothin' this time of night. I call you all a set of numskulls. I
+don't call the young one very bright, either. Couldn't tell where she
+lived, nor what her father's name was. Jest said it was papa, and her
+name was peshious, or some such tomfoolery. I advise you to tag her
+if she is in the habit of runnin' away. Here I ought to have been up
+in Tarrytown, and I've been foolin' round in New York all day with
+your young one and this big doll." With that the stout woman thrust
+the doll at Maria. "Here, take this thing," said she. "I've had
+enough of it! There ain't any sense in lettin' a child of her size
+lug around a doll as big as that, anyhow. When does my train come?
+Hev I got to cross to the other side? My cousin's husband said it
+would be about twenty minutes I'd have to wait."
+
+"I'll take you round to the other side, and I cannot be grateful
+enough for your care," began Harry, but the woman stopped him again.
+
+"I suppose you'll be willin' to pay my fare back to New York; that's
+all I want," said she. "I don't want no thanks. I 'ain't no use for
+children, but I ain't a heathen."
+
+"I'll be glad to give you a great deal more than your fare to New
+York," Harry said, in a broken voice. Evelyn was already fast asleep
+on his shoulder. He led the way down the stairs towards the other
+track.
+
+"I don't want nothin' else, except five cents for my car-fare. I can
+get a transfer, and it won't be more'n that," said the woman,
+following. "I've got enough to git along with, and I ain't a heathen."
+
+Harry, with Evelyn asleep in his arms, and Maria and Gladys, waited
+with the stout woman until the train came. The station was closed,
+and the woman sat down on a bench outside and immediately fell asleep
+herself.
+
+When the train came, Harry thrust a bank-note into the woman's hand,
+having roused her with considerable difficulty, and she stumbled on
+to the train over her skirts just as she had done in the morning.
+
+Harry knew the conductor. "Look out for that woman," he called out to
+him. "She found my little girl that was lost."
+
+The conductor nodded affably as the train rolled out.
+
+Wollaston Lee had gone home when the others descended the stairs and
+crossed to the other track. When Harry, with Evelyn in his arms, her
+limp little legs dangling, and Maria and Gladys, were on their way
+home, the question, which he in his confusion had not thought to put
+before, came.
+
+"Why, Maria, where did you come from?" he asked.
+
+"From New York," replied Maria, meekly.
+
+"Her and me went up to her ma-in-law's cousin's, on Forty-ninth
+Street, to find the kid," Gladys cut in, glibly, "but the cousin had
+moved."
+
+Harry stared at them. "Why, how happened you to do such a thing?" he
+asked.
+
+"I couldn't wait home and not do anything," Maria sobbed, nervously.
+
+"Her ma-in-law's cousin had moved," said Gladys.
+
+"How did you find your way?"
+
+"I had been there before," sobbed Maria. She felt for her father's
+hand, and grasped it with a meaning of trust and fear which he did
+not understand.
+
+"Well, you must never do such a thing again, no matter what happens,"
+he said, and held the poor little girl's hand firmly. "Thank God
+father's got you both back safe and sound."
+
+Gladys made an abrupt departure on a corner.
+
+"Good-night, M'ria!" she sung out, and was gone, a slim, flying
+figure in the gloom.
+
+"Are you afraid to go alone?" Harry called after her, in some
+uncertainty.
+
+"Land, no!" came cheerily back.
+
+"How happened she to be with you?" asked Harry.
+
+"She was down at the station when I came home from Wardway," replied
+Maria, faintly. Her strength was almost gone. She could hardly
+stagger up the steps of the house with her father, he bearing his
+recovered child, she bearing her secret.
+
+
+
+Chapter XV
+
+
+Ida was still to be seen rocking when Harry, with Evelyn and Maria,
+came in sight of the house. The visiting ladies had gone. Josephine,
+with her face swollen and tear-stained, was standing watching at a
+window in the dark dining-room. When she saw the three approaching
+she screamed:
+
+"Oh, Mis' Edgham, they've found her! They're comin'! They've got
+her!" and rushed to open the door.
+
+Ida rose, and came gracefully to meet them with a sinuous movement
+and a long sweep of her rose-colored draperies. Her radiant smile lit
+up her face again. She looked entirely herself when Harry greeted her.
+
+"Well, Ida, our darling is found," he said, in a broken voice.
+
+Ida reached out her arms, from which hung graceful pendants of lace
+and ribbons, but the sleepy child clung to her father and whimpered
+crossly.
+
+"She is all tired out, poor little darling! Papa's poor little
+darling!" said Harry, carrying her into the parlor.
+
+"Josephine, tell Annie to heat some milk at once," Ida said, sharply.
+
+Annie, whose anxious face had been visible peeping through the dark
+entrance of the dining-room, hastened into the kitchen.
+
+"Josephine, go right up-stairs and get Miss Evelyn's bed ready,"
+ordered Ida. Then she followed Harry into the parlor and began
+questioning him, standing over him, and now and then touching the
+yellow head of the child, who always shrank crossly at her touch.
+
+Harry told his story. "I had the whole police force of New York on
+the outlook, although I did not really think myself she was in the
+city, and there papa's precious darling was all the time right on the
+train with him and he never knew it. And here was poor little Maria,"
+added Harry, looking at Maria, who had sunk into a corner of a
+divan--"here was poor little Maria, Ida, and she had gone hunting her
+little sister on her own account. She thought she might be at your
+cousin Alice's. If I had known that both my babies were wandering
+around New York I should have been crazy. When I got off the train,
+there was Maria and that little Mann girl. She was down at the
+station when she got home from Wardway, Maria says, and those two
+children went right off to New York."
+
+"Did they?" said Ida, in a listless voice. She had resumed her seat
+in her rocking-chair.
+
+"Edwin Shaw said he thought he saw Evelyn getting on the New York
+train this morning," said Maria, faintly.
+
+"She is all used up," Harry said. "You had better drink some hot milk
+yourself, Maria. Only think of that child and that Mann girl going
+off to New York on their own accounts, Ida!"
+
+"Yes," said Ida.
+
+"Wollaston Lee went, too," Maria said, suddenly. A quick impulse for
+concealment in that best of hiding-places, utter frankness and
+openness, came over her. "He got off the train here. You know he
+began school, too, at Wardway this morning, and he and Gladys both
+went."
+
+"Well, I'm thankful you had him along," said Harry. "The Lord only
+knows what you two girls would have done alone in a city like New
+York. You must never do such a thing again, whatever happens, Maria.
+You might as well run right into a den of wild beasts. Only think of
+that child going to New York, and coming out on the last train, with
+that Mann girl; and Wollaston is only a boy, though he's bright and
+smart. And your cousin has moved, Ida."
+
+"I thought she had," said Ida.
+
+"And to think of what those children might have got into," said
+Harry, "in a city like New York, which is broken out all over with
+plague spots instead of having them in one place! Only think of it,
+Ida!"
+
+Harry's voice was almost sobbing. It seemed as if he fairly appealed
+to his wife for sympathy, with his consciousness of the dangers
+through which his child had passed. But Ida only said, "Yes."
+
+"And the baby might have fallen into the worst hands," said Harry.
+"But, thank God, a good woman, although she was coarse enough, got
+hold of her."
+
+"Yes, we can't be thankful enough," Ida said, smoothly, and then
+Josephine came in with a tray and a silver cup of hot milk for Evelyn.
+
+"Is that all the milk Annie heated?" asked Harry.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Well, tell Annie to go to the sideboard and get that bottle of
+port-wine and pour out a glass for Miss Maria; and, Josephine, you
+had better bring her something to eat with it. You haven't had any
+supper, have you, child?"
+
+Maria shook her head. "I don't want any, thank you, papa," said she.
+
+"Is there any cold meat, Josephine, do you know?"
+
+Josephine said there was some cold roast beef.
+
+"Well, bring Miss Maria a plate, with a slice of bread-and-butter,
+and some beef."
+
+"Have you had any supper yourself, dear?" Ida asked.
+
+"I declare I don't know, dear," replied Harry, who looked unutterably
+worn and tired. "No, I think not. I don't know when I could have got
+it. No, I know I have not."
+
+"Josephine," said Ida, "tell Annie to broil a piece of beefsteak for
+Mr. Edgham, and make a cup of tea."
+
+"Thank you, dear," poor Harry said, gratefully. Then he said to
+Maria, "Will you wait and have some hot beefsteak and tea with papa,
+darling?"
+
+Maria shook her head.
+
+"I think she had better eat the cold beef and bread, and drink the
+wine, and go at once to bed, if she is to start on that early train
+to-morrow," Ida said.
+
+"Maybe you are right, dear," Harry said. "Hurry with the roast beef
+and bread and wine for Miss Maria, Josephine, and Annie can see to my
+supper afterwards."
+
+All this time Harry was coaxing the baby to imbibe spoonfuls of the
+hot milk. It was hard work, for Evelyn was not very hungry. She had
+been given a good deal of cake and pie from a bakery all day.
+
+However, at last she was roused sufficiently to finish her little
+meal, and Maria drank her glass of wine and ate a little of the bread
+and meat, although it seemed to her that it would choke her. She was
+conscious of her father's loving, anxious eyes upon her as she ate,
+and she made every effort.
+
+Little Evelyn had recently had her own little room fitted up. It was
+next to Maria's; indeed, there was a connecting door between the two
+rooms. Evelyn's room was a marvel. It was tiny, but complete. Ida had
+the walls hung with paper with a satin gloss, on which were strewn
+garlands of rose-buds. There was a white matting and a white fur rug.
+The small furniture was white, with rose-bud decorations. There was a
+canopy of rose silk over the tiny bed, and a silk counterpane of a
+rose-bud pattern.
+
+After Evelyn had finished her hot milk, her father carried her
+up-stairs into this little nest, and Josephine undressed her and put
+her to bed. The child's head drooped as helplessly as a baby's all
+the time, she was so overcome with sleep. When she was in bed, Ida
+came in and kissed her. She was so fast asleep that she did not know.
+She and Harry stood for a moment contemplating the little thing, with
+her yellow hair spread over the white pillow and her round rose of a
+face sunken therein. Harry put his arm around his wife's waist.
+
+"We ought to be very thankful, dear," he said, and he almost sobbed.
+
+"Yes," said Ida. To do her justice, she regarded the little
+rosy-and-white thing sunk in slumber with a certain tenderness. She
+was even thankful. She had been exceedingly disturbed the whole day.
+She was very glad to have this happy termination, and to be able to
+go to rest in peace. She bent again over the child, and touched her
+lips lightly to the little face, and when she looked up her own was
+softened. "Yes," she whispered, with more of womanly feeling than
+Harry had ever seen in her--"yes, you are right, we have a great deal
+to be thankful for."
+
+Maria, in the next room, heard quite distinctly what Ida said. It
+would once have aroused in her a contemptuous sense of her
+step-mother's hypocrisy, but now she felt too humbled herself to
+blame another, even to realize any fault in another. She felt as if
+she had undergone a tremendous cataclysm of spirit, which had cast
+her forever from her judgment-seat as far as others were concerned.
+Was she not deceiving as never Ida had deceived? What would Ida say?
+What would her father say if he knew that she was--? She could not
+say the word even to herself. When she was in bed and her light out,
+she was overcome by a nervous stress which almost maddened her. Faces
+seemed to glower at her out of the blackness of the night, faces
+which she knew were somehow projected out of her own consciousness,
+but which were none the less terrific. She even heard her name
+shouted, and strange, isolated words, and fragments of sentences. She
+lay in a deadly fear. Now was the time when, if her own mother had
+been alive, she would have screamed aloud for some aid. But now she
+could call to no one. She would have spoken to her father. She would
+not have told him--she was gripped too fast by her sense of the need
+of secrecy--but she would have obtained the comfort and aid of his
+presence and soothing words; but there was Ida. She remembered how
+she had talked to Ida, and her father was with her. A dull wonder
+even seized her as to whether Ida would tell her father, and she
+should be allowed to remain at home after saying such dreadful
+things. There was no one upon whom she could call. All at once she
+thought of the maid Annie, whose room was directly over hers. Annie
+was kindly. She would slip up-stairs to her, and make some excuse for
+doing so--ask her if she did not smell smoke, or something. It seemed
+to her that if she did not hear another human voice, come in contact
+with something human, she should lose all control of herself.
+
+Maria, little, slender, trembling girl, with all the hysterical
+fancies of her sex crowding upon her, all the sufferings of her sex
+waiting for her in the future, and with no mother to soften them,
+slipped out of bed, stole across her room, and opened the door with
+infinite caution. Then she went up the stairs which led to the third
+story. Both maids had rooms on the third story. Josephine went home
+at night, and Hannah, the cook, had gone home with her after the
+return of the wanderers, and was to remain. She was related to
+Josephine's mother. She knocked timidly at Annie's door. She waited,
+and knocked again. She was trembling from head to foot in a nervous
+chill. She got no response to her knock. Then she called, "Annie,"
+very softly. She waited and called again. At last, in desperation,
+she opened the door, which was not locked. She entered, and the room
+was empty. Suddenly she remembered that Annie, kind-hearted as she
+was, and a good servant, had not a character above suspicion. She
+remembered that she had heard Gladys intimate that she had a
+sweetheart, and was not altogether what she should be. She gazed
+around the empty, forlorn little room, with one side sloping with the
+slope of the roof, and an utter desolation overcame her, along with a
+horror of Annie. She felt that if Annie were there she would be no
+refuge.
+
+Maria turned, and slipped as silently as a shadow down the stairs
+back to her room. She looked at her bed, and it seemed to her that
+she could not lie down again in it. Then suddenly she thought of
+something else. She thought of little Evelyn asleep in the next room.
+She opened the connecting door softly and stole across to the baby's
+little bed. It was too small, or she would have crept in beside her.
+Maria hesitated a moment, then she slid her arms gently under the
+little, soft, warm body, and gathered the child up in her arms. She
+was quite heavy. At another time Maria, who had slender arms, could
+scarcely have carried her. Now she bore her with entire ease into her
+own room and laid her in her own bed. Then she got in beside her and
+folded her little sister in her arms. Directly a sense of safety and
+peace came over her when she felt the little snuggling thing, who had
+wakened just enough to murmur something unintelligible in her baby
+tongue, and cling close to her with all her little, rosy limbs, and
+thrust her head into the hollow of Maria's shoulder. Then she gave a
+deep sigh and was soundly asleep again. Maria lay awake a little
+while, enjoying that sense of peace and security which the presence
+of this little human thing she loved gave her. Then she fell asleep
+herself.
+
+She waked early. The thought of the early train was in her mind, and
+Maria was always one who could wake at the sub-recollection of a
+need. Evelyn was still asleep, curled up like a flower. Maria raised
+her and carried her back to her own room and put her in her bed
+without waking her. Then she dressed herself in her school costume
+and went down-stairs. She had smelled coffee while she was dressing,
+and knew that Hannah had returned. Her father was in the dining-room
+when she entered. He usually took an earlier train, but this morning
+he had felt utterly unable to rise. Maria noticed, with a sudden
+qualm of fear, how ill and old and worn-out he looked, but Harry
+himself spoke first with concern for her.
+
+"Papa's poor little girl!" he said, kissing her. "She looks tired
+out. Did you sleep, darling?"
+
+"Yes, after a while. Are you sick, papa?"
+
+"No, dear. Why?"
+
+"Because you did not go on the other train."
+
+"No, dear, I am all right, just a little tired," replied Harry. Then
+he added, looking solicitously at Maria, "Are you sure you feel able
+to go to school to-day?--because you need not, you know."
+
+"I am all right," said Maria.
+
+She and her father had seated themselves at the table. Harry looked
+at his watch.
+
+"We shall neither of us go if we don't get our breakfast before
+long," he said.
+
+Then Hannah came in, with a lowering look, bringing the coffee-pot
+and the chops and rolls.
+
+"Where is Annie?" asked Harry.
+
+"I don't know," replied Hannah, with a toss of her head and a
+compression of her lips. She was a large, solid woman, with a cast in
+her eyes. She had never been married.
+
+"You don't know?" said Harry, helping Maria to a chop and a roll,
+while Hannah poured the coffee.
+
+"No," said Hannah again, and this time her face was fairly malicious.
+"I don't know how long I can stand such doin's, and that's the
+truth," she said.
+
+Hannah had come originally from New England, and had principles, in
+which she took pride, perhaps the more because they had never in one
+sense been assailed. Annie was a Hungarian, and considered by Hannah
+to have no principles. She was also pretty, in a rough, half-finished
+sort of fashion, and had no cast in her eyes. Hannah privately
+considered that as against her.
+
+Harry began sipping his coffee, which Hannah had set down with such
+impetus that she spilled a good deal in the saucer, and he looked
+uneasily at her.
+
+"What do you mean, Hannah?" he asked.
+
+"I mean that I am not used to being throwed in with girls who stays
+out all night, and nobody knows where they be, and that's the truth,"
+said Hannah, with emphasis.
+
+"Do you mean to say that Annie--"
+
+"Yes, I do. She wa'n't in, and they do say she's married, and--"
+
+"Hush, Hannah, we'll talk about this another time," Harry said, with
+a glance at Maria.
+
+Just then a step was heard in the kitchen.
+
+"There she is now, the trollop," said Hannah, but she whispered the
+last word under her breath, and she also gave a glance at Maria, as
+one might at any innocent ignorance which must be shielded even from
+knowledge itself.
+
+Annie came in directly. Her pretty, light hair was nicely arranged;
+she was smiling, but she looked doubtful.
+
+Hannah went with a flounce into the kitchen. Annie had removed her
+hat and coat and tied on a white apron in a second, and she began
+waiting exactly as if she had come down the back stairs after a night
+spent in her own room. Indeed, she did not dream that either Harry or
+Maria knew that she had not, and she felt quite sure of Hannah's
+ignorance, since Hannah herself had been away all night.
+
+Maria from time to time glanced at Annie, and, although she had
+always liked her, a feeling of repulsion came over her. She shrank a
+little when Annie passed the muffins to her. Harry gave one keen,
+scrutinizing glance at the girl's face, but he said nothing. After
+breakfast he went up-stairs to bid Ida, who had a way of rising late,
+good-bye, and he whispered to her, "Annie was out all last night."
+
+"Oh, well," replied Ida, sleepily, with a little impatience, "it does
+not happen very often. What are we going to do about it?"
+
+"Hannah is kicking," said Harry, "and--"
+
+"I can't help it if she is," said Ida. "Annie does her work well, and
+it is so difficult to get a maid nowadays; and I cannot set up as a
+moral censor, I really cannot, Harry."
+
+"I hate the example, that is all," said Harry. "There Hannah said,
+right before Maria, that Annie had been out."
+
+"It won't hurt Maria any," Ida replied, with a slight frown. "Maria
+wouldn't know what she meant. She is not only innocent, but ignorant.
+I can't turn off Annie, unless I see another maid as good in
+prospect. Good-bye, dear."
+
+Harry and Maria walked to the station together. Their trains reached
+Edgham about the same time, although going in opposite directions. It
+was a frosty morning. There had been a slight frost the night before.
+A light powder of glistening white lay over everything. The roofs
+were beginning to smoke as it melted. Maria inhaled the clear air,
+and her courage revived a little--still, not much. Nobody knew how
+she dreaded the day, the meeting Wollaston. She could not yet bring
+herself to call him her husband. It seemed at once horrifying and
+absurd. The frosty air brought a slight color to the girl's cheeks,
+but she still looked wretched. Harry, who himself looked more than
+usually worn and old, kept glancing at her, as they hastened along.
+
+"See here, darling," he said, "hadn't you better not go to school
+to-day? I will write a note of explanation myself to the principal,
+at the office, and mail it in New York. Hadn't you better turn around
+and go home and rest to-day?"
+
+"Oh no," replied Maria. "I would much rather go, papa."
+
+"You look as if you could hardly stand up, much less go to school."
+
+"I am all right," said Maria; but as she spoke she realized that her
+knees fairly bent under her, and her heart beat loudly in her ears,
+for they had come in sight of the station.
+
+"You are sure?" Harry said, anxiously.
+
+"Yes, I am all right. I want to go to school."
+
+"Well, look out that you eat a good luncheon," said Harry, as he
+kissed her good-bye.
+
+Maria had to go to the other side to take her Wardway train. She left
+her father and went under the bridge and mounted the stairs. When she
+gained the platform, the first person whom she saw, with a grasp of
+vision which seemed to reach her very heart, although she apparently
+did not see him at all, was Wollaston Lee. He also saw her, and his
+boyish face paled. There were quite a number waiting for the train,
+which was late. Maud Page was among them. Maria at once went close to
+her. Maud asked about her little sister. She had heard that she was
+found, although it was almost inconceivable how the news had spread
+at such an early hour.
+
+"I am real glad she's found," said Maud. Then she stared curiously at
+Maria. "Say, was it so?" she asked.
+
+"Was what true?" asked Maria, trembling.
+
+"Was it true that you and Wollaston Lee and Gladys Mann all went to
+New York looking for your sister, and came out on the last train?"
+
+"Yes, it is true," replied Maria, quite steadily.
+
+"What ever made you?"
+
+"I thought she might have gone to a cousin of Hers who used to live
+on Forty-ninth Street, but we found the cousin had moved when we got
+there."
+
+"Gracious!" said Maud. "And you didn't come out till that last train?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I should think you would be tired to death, and you don't look any
+too chipper." Maud turned and stared at Wollaston, who was standing
+aloof. "I declare, he looks as if he had been up a week of Sundays,
+too," said she. Then she called out to him, in her high-pitched
+treble, which sounded odd coming from her soft circumference of
+throat. Maud's voice ought, by good rights, to have been a rich,
+husky drone, instead of bearing a resemblance to a parrot's. "Say,
+Wollaston Lee," she called out, and the boy approached perforce,
+lifting his hat--"say," said Maud, "I hear you and Maria eloped last
+night." Then she giggled.
+
+The boy cast a glance of mistrust and doubt at Maria. His face turned
+crimson.
+
+"You are telling awful whoppers, Maud Page," Maria responded,
+promptly, and his face cleared. "We just went in to find Evelyn."
+
+"Oh!" said Maud, teasingly.
+
+"You are mean to talk so," said Maria.
+
+Maud laughed provokingly.
+
+"What made Wollaston go for, then?" she asked.
+
+"Do you suppose anybody would let a girl go alone to New York on a
+night train?" said Maria, with desperate spirit. "He went because he
+was polite, so there."
+
+Wollaston said nothing. He tried to look haughty, but succeeded in
+looking sheepish.
+
+"Gladys Mann went, too," said Maria.
+
+"I don't see what makes you go with a girl like that anywhere?" said
+Maud.
+
+"She's as good as anybody," said Maria.
+
+"Maybe she is," returned Maud. Then she glanced at Wollaston, who was
+looking away, and whispered in Maria's ear: "They talk like fury
+about her, and her mother, too."
+
+"I don't care," Maria said, stoutly. "She was down at the station and
+told me how Evelyn was lost, and then she went in with me."
+
+Maud laughed her aggravating laugh again.
+
+"Well, maybe it was just as well she did," she said, "or else they
+would have said you and Wollaston had eloped, sure."
+
+Maria began to speak, but her voice was drowned by the rumble of the
+New York train on the other track. The Wardway train was late.
+Usually the two trains met at the station.
+
+However, the New York train had only just pulled out of sight before
+the Wardway train came in. As Maria climbed on the train she felt a
+paper thrust forcibly into her hand, which closed over it
+instinctively. She sat with Maud, and had no opportunity to look at
+it all the way to Wardway. She slipped it slyly into her Algebra.
+
+Maud's eyes were sharp. "What's that you are putting in your
+Algebra?" she asked.
+
+"A marker," replied Maria. She felt that Maud's curiosity was such
+that it justified a white lie.
+
+She had no chance to read the paper which Wollaston had slipped into
+her hand until she was fairly in school. Then she read it under cover
+of a book. It was very short, and quite manly, although manifestly
+written under great perturbation of spirit.
+
+Wollaston wrote: "Shall I tell your folks to-night?"
+
+Wollaston was not in Maria's classes. He was older, and had entered
+in advance. She had not a chance to reply until noon. Going into the
+restaurant, she in her turn slipped a paper forcibly into his hand.
+
+"Good land! look out!" said Maud Page. "Why, Maria Edgham, you butted
+right into Wollaston Lee and nearly knocked him over."
+
+What Maria had written was also short, but desperate. She wrote:
+
+"If you ever tell your folks or my folks, or anybody, I will drown
+myself in Fisher's Pond."
+
+A look of relief spread over the boy's face. Maria glanced at him
+where he sat at a distant table with some boys, and he gave an almost
+imperceptible nod of reassurance at her. Maria understood that he had
+not told, and would not, unless she bade him.
+
+On the train going home that night he found a chance to speak to her.
+He occupied the seat behind her, and waited until a woman who sat
+with Maria got off the train at a station, and also a man who had
+occupied the seat with him. Then he leaned over and said,
+ostentatiously, so he could be heard half the length of the car, "It
+is a beautiful day, isn't it?"
+
+Maria did not turn around at all, but her face was deadly white as
+she replied, "Yes, lovely."
+
+Then the boy whispered, and the whisper seemed to reach her inmost
+soul. "Look here, I want to do what is right, and--honorable, you
+know, but hang me if I know what is. It is an awful pickle."
+
+Maria nodded, still with her face straight ahead.
+
+"I don't know how it happened, for my part," the boy whispered.
+
+Maria nodded again.
+
+"I didn't say anything to my folks, because I didn't know how you
+would feel about it. I thought I ought to ask you first. But I am not
+afraid to tell, you needn't think that, and I mean to be honorable.
+If you say so, I will go right home with you and tell your folks, and
+then I will tell mine, and we will see what we can do."
+
+Maria made no answer. She was in agony. It seemed to her that the
+whisper was deafening her.
+
+"I will leave school, and go to work right away," said the boy, and
+his voice was a little louder, and full of pathetic manliness; "and I
+guess in a year's time I could get so I could earn enough to support
+you. I mean to do what is right. All is I want to do what you want me
+to do. I didn't know how you felt about it."
+
+Then Maria turned slightly. He leaned closer.
+
+"I told you how I felt," she whispered back.
+
+"You mean what you wrote?"
+
+"Yes, what I wrote."
+
+"You don't want me to tell at all?"
+
+"Never, as long as you live."
+
+"How about her?"
+
+"Gladys?"
+
+"Yes, confound her!"
+
+"She won't tell. She won't dare to."
+
+Wollaston was silent for a moment, then he whispered again. "Well,"
+he said, "I want to do what you want me to and what is honorable. Of
+course, we are both young, and I haven't any money except what father
+gives me, but I am willing to quit school to-morrow and go to work.
+You needn't think I mean to back out and show the white feather. I am
+not that kind. We have got into this, and I am ready and willing to
+do all I can."
+
+"I meant what I wrote," whispered Maria again. "I never want you to
+tell, and--"
+
+"And what?"
+
+"I wish you would go and sit somewhere else, and not speak to me
+again. I hate the very sight of you."
+
+"All right," said the boy. There was a slight echo of rancor in his
+own voice, still it was patient, with the patience of a man with a
+woman and her unreason. All his temper of the night before had
+disappeared. He was quite honest in saying that he wished to do what
+was right and honorable. He was really much more of a man than he had
+been the day before. He was conscious of not loving Maria--his
+budding boy-love for her had been shocked out of life. He was even
+repelled by her, but he had a strong sense of his duty towards her,
+and he was full of pity for her. He saw how pale and nervous and
+frightened she was. He got up to change his seat, but before he went,
+he leaned over her and whispered again: "You need not be a mite
+afraid, Maria. All I want is what will please you and what is right.
+I will never tell, unless you ask me to. You need not worry. You had
+better put it all out of your mind."
+
+Maria nodded. She felt very dizzy. She was glad when Wollaston not
+only left his seat, but the car, going into the smoker. She heard the
+door slam after him with a sense of relief. She felt a great relief
+at his assurance that he would keep their secret. Wollaston Lee was a
+boy whose promises had weight. She looked out of the window and a
+little of her old-time peace seemed to descend upon her. She saw how
+lovely the landscape was in the waning light. She saw the new moon
+with a great star attendant, and reflected that it was over her right
+shoulder. After all, youth is hard to down, and hope finds a rich
+soil in it. Then, too, a temporization to one who is young means
+eternity. If Wollaston did not tell, and Gladys did not tell, and she
+did not tell, it might all come right somehow in the end.
+
+She looked at the crescent of the moon, and the great depth of light
+of the star, and her own affairs seemed to quiet her with their very
+littleness. What was little Maria Edgham and her ridiculous and
+tragic matrimonial tangle compared with the eternal light of those
+strange celestial things yonder? She would pass, and they would
+remain. She became comforted. She even reflected that she was hungry.
+She had not obeyed her father's injunction, and had eaten very little
+luncheon. She thought with pleasure of the good dinner which would be
+awaiting her. Then suddenly she remembered how she had talked to Her.
+How would she be treated? But she remembered that Ida could not have
+said anything against her to her father, or, if she had done so, it
+had made no difference to him. She considered Ida's character, and it
+seemed to her quite probable that she would make no further reference
+to the subject. Ida was averse even to pursuing enmities, because of
+the inconvenience which they might cause her. It was infinitely less
+trouble to allow birds which had pecked at her to fly away than to
+pursue them; then, too, she always remained unshaken in her belief in
+herself. Maria's tirade would not in the least have disturbed her
+self-love, and it is only a wound in self-love which can affect some
+people. Maria was inclined to think that Ida would receive her with
+the same coldly radiant smile as usual, and she was right. That
+night, when she entered the bright parlor, glowing with soft lights
+under art-shades, Ida, in her pretty house-gown--scarlet cashmere
+trimmed with medallions of cream lace--greeted her in the same
+fashion as she had always done. Evelyn ran forward with those squeals
+of love which only a baby can accomplish. Maria, hugging her little
+sister, saw that Ida's countenance was quite unchanged.
+
+"So you have got home?" said she. "Is it very cold?"
+
+"Not very," replied Maria.
+
+"I have not been out, and I did not know," Ida said, in her usual
+fashion of making commonplaces appear like brilliances.
+
+"There may be a frost, I don't know," Maria said. She was actually
+confused before this impenetrability. Remembering the awful things
+she had said to Her, she was suddenly conscience-stricken as she saw
+Ida's calm radiance of demeanor. She began to wonder if she had not
+been mistaken, if Ida was not really much better than she herself.
+She knew that is she had had such things said to her she could not
+have appeared so forgiving. Such absolute self-love, and self-belief,
+was incomprehensible to her. She had accused Ida of more than she
+could herself actually comprehend. She began to think Ida had a
+forgiving heart, and that she herself had been the wicked one, not
+She. She responded to everything which Ida said with a conciliatory
+air. Presently Harry came in. He was late. He looked very worn and
+tired. Ida sent Josephine up-stairs to get his smoking-jacket and
+slippers, and Maria thought She was very kind to her father. Evelyn
+climbed into his arms, but he greeted even her rather wearily. Ida
+noticed it.
+
+"Come away, darling," she said. "Papa is tired, and you are a heavy
+little lump of honey," Ida smiled, entrancingly.
+
+Harry looked at her with loving admiration, then at Maria.
+
+"I tell you what it is, I feel pretty thankful to-night, when I think
+of last night--when I realize I have you all home," said he.
+
+Ida smiled more radiantly. "Yes, we ought to be very thankful," she
+said.
+
+Maria made up her mind that she would apologize to her if she had a
+chance. She did not wish to speak before her father, not because she
+did not wish him to know, but because she did not wish to annoy him,
+he looked so tired. She had a chance after dinner, when Josephine was
+putting Evelyn to bed, and Harry had been called to the door to speak
+to a man on business.
+
+"I am sorry I spoke as I did to you," she said, in a low voice, to
+Ida.
+
+They were both in the parlor. Maria had a school-book in her hand,
+and Ida was embroidering. The rosy shade of the lamp intensified the
+glow on her beautiful face. She looked smilingly at Maria.
+
+"Why, my dear," she said, "I don't know what you said. I have
+forgotten."
+
+
+
+Chapter XVI
+
+
+Now commenced an odd period of her existence for Maria Edgham. She
+escaped a transition stage which comes to nearly every girl by her
+experience in New York, the night when Evelyn was lost. There is
+usually for a girl, if not for a boy, a stage of existence when she
+flutters, as it were, over the rose of life, neither lighting upon it
+nor leaving it, when she is not yet herself, when she does not
+comprehend herself at all, except by glimpses of emotions, as one may
+see one facet of a diamond but never the complete stone. Maria had,
+in a few hours, become settled, crystallized, and she gave evidence
+of it indisputably in one way--she had lost her dreams. When a girl
+no longer dreams of her future she has found herself. Maria had
+always been accustomed to go to sleep lulled by her dreams of
+innocent romance. Now she no longer had them, it was as if a child
+missed a lullaby. She was a long time in getting to sleep at all, and
+she did not sleep well. She no longer stared over the page of a
+lesson-book into her own future, as into a crystal well wherein she
+saw herself glorified by new and strange happiness. She studied, and
+took higher places in her classes, but she did not look as young or
+as well. She grew taller and thinner, and she looked older. People
+said Maria Edgham was losing her beauty, that she would not be as
+pretty a woman as she had promised to make, after all. Maria no
+longer dwelt so long and pleasurably upon her reflection in the
+glass. She simply arranged her hair and neck-gear tidily and went her
+way. She did not care so much for her pretty clothes. A girl without
+her dreams is a girl without her glory of youth. She did not quite
+realize what was the matter, but she knew that she was no longer so
+fair to see, and that the combination of herself and a new gown was
+not what it had been. She felt as if she had reached the last page of
+her book of life, and the _ennui_ of middle age came over her. She
+had not reached the last page; she was, of course, mistaken; but she
+had reached a paragraph so tremendous that it seemed to her the
+climax, as if there could be nothing beyond it. She was married--that
+is, she had been pronounced a wife! There was, there could be,
+nothing further. She was both afraid of, and disliked, the boy who
+had married her. There was nothing ahead that she could see but a
+commonplace existence without romance and without love. She as yet
+did not dwell upon the possible complications which might arise from
+her marriage. It simply seemed to her that she should always live a
+spinster, although the marriage ceremony had been pronounced over
+her. She began to realize that in order to live in this way she must
+take definite steps. She knew that her father was not rich. The
+necessity for work and earning her own living in the future began to
+present itself. She made up her mind to fit herself for a teacher.
+
+"Papa, I am going to teach," she told her father one afternoon.
+
+Ida had gone out. It was two years after her marriage, and Maria
+looked quite a woman. She and her father were alone. Evelyn had gone
+to bed. Maria had tucked her in and kissed her good-night. Josephine
+was no longer a member of the family. In a number of ways expenses
+had been retrenched. Harry would not admit it, and Ida did not seem
+aware of it, but his health was slowly but surely failing. That very
+day he had consulted a specialist in New York, taking his turn in the
+long line of waiting applicants in the office. When he came out he
+had a curious expression on his face, which made more than one of the
+other patients, however engrossed in their own complaints, turn
+around and look after him. He looked paler than when he had entered
+the office, but not exactly cast down. He had rather a settled
+expression, as of one who had come in sight, not of a goal of
+triumph, but of the end of a long and wearisome journey. In these
+days Harry Edgham was so unutterably weary, he drove himself to his
+work with such lashes of spirit, that he was almost incapable of
+revolt against any sentence of fate. There comes a time to every one,
+to some when young, to some when old, that too great a burden of
+labor, or of days, renders the thought of the last bed of earth
+unterrifying. The spirit, overcome with weariness of matter,
+droops earthward with no rebellion. Harry, who had gotten his
+death-sentence, went out of the doctor's office and hailed his
+ferry-bound car, and realized very little difference in his attitude
+from what he had done before. He had still time before him, possibly
+quite a long time. He thought of leaving Ida and the little one and
+Maria, but he had a feeling as if he were beginning the traversing of
+a circle which would in the end bring him back, rather than of
+departure. It was as if he were about to circumnavigate life itself.
+Suddenly, however, his forehead contracted. Material matters began to
+irritate him. He thought of Maria, and how slight a provision he had
+made for her. His life was already insured for the benefit of Ida.
+Ida would have that and her widow's share. Little Evelyn would also
+have her share of his tiny estate, which consisted of nothing more
+than his house and lot in Edgham and a few hundreds in the bank, and
+poor Maria would have nothing except the paltry third remaining. When
+Maria, sitting alone with him in the parlor, announced her intention
+of fitting herself for a teacher, he viewed her with quick interest.
+It was the evening of the very day on which he had consulted the
+specialist.
+
+"Let me see, dear," he returned; "how many years more have you at the
+academy?"
+
+"I can graduate next year," Maria replied, with pride. This last year
+she had been taking enormous strides, which had placed her ahead of
+her class. "At least, I can if I work hard," she added.
+
+"I don't want you to work too hard," Harry said, anxiously.
+
+"I am perfectly well," said Maria. And she did in reality look
+entirely well, in spite of her thinness and expression of premature
+maturity. There was a wiriness about her every movement which argued,
+if not actual robustness, the elasticity of bending and not breaking
+before the stresses of life.
+
+"Let me see, you will be pretty young to teach, then," said Harry.
+
+"I think I can get a school," Maria said.
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Aunt Maria said she thought I could get that little school near her
+in Amity. The teacher is engaged, and she said she thought she would
+get married before so very long. She said she thought she must have
+almost enough money for her wedding outfit. That is what she has been
+working for."
+
+Harry smiled a little.
+
+"Aunt Maria said she was to marry a man with means, and she was
+working quite a while in order to buy a nice trousseau," said Maria.
+"Aunt Maria said she was a very high-spirited young lady. But she
+said she thought she had been engaged so long that she would probably
+not wait more than a year longer, and she could get the school for
+me. Uncle Henry is one of the committee, you know."
+
+"You are pretty young to begin teaching," Harry said, thoughtfully.
+
+"Aunt Maria said she thought I did not look as young as I really was,
+and there wouldn't be any difficulty about it," said Maria. "She said
+she thought I would have good government, and Uncle Henry thought so,
+too, and Aunt Eunice."
+
+Aunt Eunice was Maria's Uncle Henry's wife. Maria had paid a visit to
+Amity the summer before, renewing her acquaintance with her relatives.
+
+"Well, we will see," said Harry, after a pause. Then he added,
+somewhat pitifully: "Father wishes there was no need for his little
+girl to work. He wishes he had been able to put more by, but if--"
+
+Maria looked at her father with quick concern.
+
+"Father, what is the matter with you?" she asked. "I don't care about
+the working part. I want to work. I shall like to go to Amity, and
+board with Aunt Maria, and teach, except for leaving you and Evelyn,
+but--what is the matter with you, father?"
+
+"Nothing is the matter. Why?" asked Harry; and he tried to smile.
+
+"What made you speak so, father?"
+
+Maria had sprung to her feet, and was standing in front of her
+father, with pale face and dilated eyes. Her father looked at her and
+hesitated.
+
+"Tell me, father; I ought to know," said Maria.
+
+"There is nothing immediate, as far as I know," said Harry, "but--"
+
+"But what?"
+
+"Well, dear, nobody can live always, and of course you can't realize
+it, young as you are, and with no responsibilities; but father is
+older, and sometimes he can't help thinking. He wishes he had been
+able to save a little more, in case anything happened to him, and he
+can't help planning what you would do if--anything happened to him.
+You know, dear," Harry hesitated a little, then he continued--"you
+know, dear, that father had his life insured for--Ida, and I doubt
+if--I am older, you know, now, and those companies don't like to
+take chances. I doubt if I could, or I would have an additional
+insurance put on my life for you. Then Ida would have by law her
+share of this property, and Evelyn her share, and all you would have
+would be a very little, and--Well, father can't help thinking that
+perhaps it would be wise for you to make some plans so you can help
+yourself a little, but--it almost breaks father's heart to think
+that--his--little girl--" Poor Harry fairly broke down and sobbed.
+
+Maria's arm was around his neck in a moment, and his poor gray head,
+which had always been, in a way, the head of an innocent boy, was on
+her young girl breast. She did not ask him any more questions. She
+knew. "Poor father!" she said. Her own voice broke, then she steadied
+it again with a resolute effort of her will. There was a good deal of
+her mother in Maria. The sight of another's weakness always aroused
+her own strength. "Father," she said, "now you just listen to me. I
+won't hear any more talk of anything happening to you. You have not
+eaten enough lately. I have noticed it. That is all that ails you.
+You have not had enough nourishment. I want you to go to-morrow to
+Dr. Wells and get some of that tonic that helped you so much before,
+and, father, I want you to stop worrying about me. I honestly want to
+teach. I want to be independent. I should, if you were worth a
+million. It does not worry me at all to think I am not going to have
+enough money to live on without working, not at all. I want you to
+remember that, and not fret any more about it."
+
+For answer, Harry sobbed against the girl's shoulder. "It seems as if
+I might have saved more," he said, pitifully, "but--I have had heavy
+expenses, and somehow I didn't seem to have the knack that some men
+have. I made one or two investments that didn't turn out well. I
+didn't say anything about them to--Ida."
+
+"I sha'n't say a word, father," Maria responded, quickly.
+
+"Well, I thought maybe--if they turned out all right, I might have
+something to leave you, but--they didn't. There's never any counting
+on those things, and I wasn't on the inside of the market. I thought
+they were all right. I meant it for the best."
+
+Maria stroked the gray head, as her mother might have done. "Of
+course you did, father," said she. "Now, don't you worry one bit more
+about it. You get that tonic. You don't look just right, and you need
+something to give you an appetite; and don't you ever have another
+thought as far as I am concerned. I have always wanted to teach, or
+do something to make myself independent."
+
+"You may marry somebody who will look out for you after father has
+gone," half whimpered Harry. His disease and his distress were making
+him fairly childish, now he realized a supporting love beside him.
+
+Maria quivered a little. "I shall never marry, father," she said.
+
+Harry laughed a little, even in the midst of his distress. "Well,
+dear, we won't worry about that now," he said; "only, if you ever do
+marry, I hope you will marry a good, honest man who can take care of
+you."
+
+"I never shall marry," Maria said again. There was an odd inflection
+in her voice which her father did not understand. Her cheeks burned
+hot against his, but it was not due to the modesty of young girlhood,
+which flees even that which it secretly desires. Maria was reflecting
+upon her horrible deception, how every day and every minute of her
+life she was deceiving her father, but she dared not tell him. She
+dared less now than ever, in the light of her sudden conviction
+concerning his ill-health. Maria had been accustomed so long to
+seeing her father look tired and old that the true significance of it
+had not struck her. She had not reflected that her father was not in
+reality an old man--but scarcely past middle age--and that there must
+be some disease to account for his appearance. Now she knew; but
+along with the knowledge came the conviction that he must not know
+that she had it, that it would only add to his distress. She kissed
+him, and took up the evening paper which had fallen from his knees to
+the floor.
+
+"Suppose I read to you, father?" she said.
+
+Harry looked gratefully at her. "But you have to learn your lesson."
+
+"Oh, I can finish that in school to-morrow. I don't feel like working
+any more to-night, and I do feel like reading the paper."
+
+"Won't it tire you, dear?"
+
+"Tire me? Now, father, what do you take me for?" Maria settled
+herself in a chair. Harry leaned back his head contentedly; he had
+always like to be read to, and lately reading to himself had hurt his
+eyes. "Now, what shall I read, father?" she said.
+
+Poor Harry, remembering his own futile investments, asked for the
+stock-list, and Maria read it very intelligently for a young girl who
+knew nothing about stocks.
+
+"Once I owned some of that stock," said Harry, proudly.
+
+"Did you, father?" Maria responded, admiringly.
+
+"Yes, and only look where it is now! If I could only have held on to
+it, I might have been quite a rich man."
+
+Harry spoke, oddly enough, with no regret. Such was the childishness
+of the man that a possession once his never seemed wholly lost to
+him. It seemed to him that he had reason to be proud of having made
+such a wise investment, even if he had never actually reaped any
+benefit from it.
+
+"I don't see how you knew what to invest in," Maria said, fostering
+his pride.
+
+"Oh, I had to study the stock-lists and ask brokers," Harry replied.
+He looked brighter. This little reinstatement in his self-esteem
+acted like a tonic. In some fashion Ida always kept him alive to his
+own deficiencies, and that was not good for a man who was naturally
+humble-minded. Harry sat up straighter. He looked at Maria with
+brighter eyes as she continued reading. "Now _that_ is a good
+investment," said he--"that bond. If I had the money to spare I would
+buy one of those bonds to-morrow morning."
+
+"Are bonds better than stocks, father?" asked Maria.
+
+"Yes," replied Harry, importantly. "Always remember that, if you have
+any money to invest. A man can afford to buy stocks, because he has
+better opportunities of judging of the trend of the market, but bonds
+are always safer for a woman."
+
+Maria regarded her father again with that innocent admiration for his
+wisdom, which seemed to act like a nerve stimulant. A subtle
+physician might possibly have reached the conclusion, had he been
+fully aware of all the circumstances, that Ida, with her radiant
+superiority, her voiceless but none the less positive self-assertion
+over her husband, was actually a means of spiritual depression which
+had reacted upon his physical nature. Nobody knows exactly to what
+extent any of us are responsible for the lives of others, and how far
+our mere existences may be derogatory to our fellow-beings. Harry was
+visibly brighter.
+
+"You don't look half as tired as you did, father," Maria said.
+
+"I don't feel so tired," replied Harry. "It has rested me to hear you
+read. Remember what I have told you, dear, about bonds--always bonds,
+and never stocks, for a woman."
+
+"Yes, father," said Maria. Then she added, "I am going to save all I
+can when I begin to earn."
+
+"Your aunt Maria will only ask you enough board to make it possible
+for her to pay the bills? You know she has only a hundred a year to
+live on. Of course your uncle Henry lets her have her rent free, or
+she couldn't do it, but she is a fine manager. She manages very much
+as your mother did." As he spoke, Harry looked around the luxurious
+apartment and reflected that, had his first wife lived, he himself
+could have saved, and there might have been no need for this little,
+delicate girl to earn her own living. He sighed, and the weary look
+settled over his face again.
+
+Maria rose. "Father," said she, "Annie has gone out, and so has
+Hannah, and I am going out in the kitchen and make a cup of that
+thick chocolate that you like, for you."
+
+"It is too much trouble, dear."
+
+"Nonsense!" said Maria. "I would like to do it, and it won't take a
+minute. There is a good fire in the range."
+
+While Maria was gone, Harry sat gazing out of the window. He had
+always now, when he looked out of a window, the sensation of a man
+who was passing in rapid motion all the old familiar objects, all the
+landmarks of his life, or rather--for one never rids one's self of
+that particular optical delusion--it was as if they were passing. The
+conviction of one's own transit is difficult to achieve. Harry gazed
+out of the window, and it was to him as if the familiar trees which
+bordered the sidewalk, the shrubs in the yard, the houses which were
+within view, were flitting past him in a mad whirl. He was glad when
+Maria entered with the chocolate, in his own particular cup, and a
+dainty plate of cheese sandwiches.
+
+"I thought perhaps you could eat a sandwich, father," she said. "I
+don't believe you had anything decent for lunch in New York."
+
+"I didn't have much," said Harry. He did not add, what was the truth,
+that lately he had been stinting himself on his luncheons in the
+effort to save a little more of his earnings. He ate nearly all the
+sandwiches, and drank two cups of chocolate, and really looked much
+better.
+
+"You need more nourishment, father," said Maria, with a wise,
+maternal air, which was also half accusatory, and which made Harry
+think so strongly of his first wife that he regarded Maria as he
+might have regarded her mother.
+
+"You grow more and more like your own mother, dear," he said.
+
+"Well, I am glad of that," replied Maria. "Mother was a good woman.
+If I can only be half as good as mother was."
+
+"Your mother _was_ a good woman," said Harry, reflectively; and as he
+spoke he seemed to feel the arms of strong, almost stern, feminity
+and faithfulness which had encompassed his childlike soul for so many
+years. He owned to himself that Maria's mother had been a much more
+suitable wife for him than this other woman. Then he had a little
+qualm of remorse, for Ida came in sight, richly dressed and elegant,
+as usual, with Evelyn dancing along beside her. Mrs. Adams was with
+her. Mrs. Adams was talking and Ida was smiling. It was more becoming
+to Ida to smile than to talk. She had discovered long since that she
+had not so very much to say, and that her smiles were better coin of
+her little realm; she therefore generally employed them in preference.
+
+Maria got up hastily and took the tray and the chocolate-cups. "I
+guess Mrs. Adams is coming in," said she.
+
+"You didn't make enough chocolate to give them?" Harry said,
+hesitatingly.
+
+"No," replied Maria, and her tone was a little curt even to her
+father. "And I used up the last bit of chocolate in the house, too."
+Then she scudded out of the room with her tray and passed the front
+door as the sound of Ida's latch-key was heard in the lock. Maria set
+her tray on the kitchen-table and hurried up the back stairs to her
+own room. She entered it and locked both doors, the one communicating
+with the hall and the one which connected it with Evelyn's room. She
+had no sooner done so than she heard the quick patter of little feet,
+and the door leading into Evelyn's room was tried, then violently
+shaken. "Let me in, sister; let me in," cried the sweet little flute
+of a voice on the other side. Evelyn could now talk plainly, but she
+still kept to her baby appellation for her sister.
+
+"No, darling, sister can't let you in now," replied Maria.
+
+"Why not? Let me in, sister."
+
+"Sister is going to study," said Maria, in a firm voice. "She can't
+have Evelyn. Run down-stairs, darling; run down to mamma."
+
+"Evelyn don't want mamma. Evelyn wants sister."
+
+"Papa is down there, too. Put on your clothes, like a nice girl, and
+show papa how smart you can be; then run down."
+
+"Evelyn can't button up her dress."
+
+"Put everything on but that, then run down, and mamma can do it for
+you."
+
+"Let me in, sister."
+
+"No, dear," Maria said again. "Evelyn can't come in now."
+
+There came a little whimper of grief and anger which cut Maria's
+heart, but she was firm. She could not have even Evelyn then. She had
+to be alone with the knowledge she had just gained of her father's
+state of health. She sat down in her little chair by the window; it
+was her own baby chair, which she had kept all these years, and in
+which she could still sit comfortably, she was so slender. Then she
+put her face in her hands and began to weep. She had never wept as
+she did then, not even when her mother died. She was so much younger
+when her mother died that her sensibilities had not acquired their
+full acumen; then, too, she had not had at that time the awful
+foretaste of a desolate future which tinctured with bitter her very
+soul. Somehow, although Maria had noticed for a long time that her
+father did not look as he had done, it had never occurred to her that
+that which had happened to her mother could happen to her father. She
+had been like one in a house which has been struck by lightning, and
+had been rendered thereby incredulous of a second stroke. It had not
+occurred to her that whereas she had lost her mother, she could also
+lose her father. It seemed like too heavy a hammer-stroke of
+Providence to believe in and keep her reason. She had thought that
+her father was losing his youth, that his hair turning gray had much
+to do with his altered looks. She had never thought of death. It
+seemed to her monstrous. A rage against Providence, like nothing
+which she had known before, was over her. Why should she lose
+everything? What had she done? She reviewed her past life, and she
+defended herself like Job, with her summary of self-righteousness.
+She had always done right, so far as she knew. Her sins had been so
+petty as hardly to deserve the name of sins. She remembered how she
+had once enjoyed seeing her face in her looking-glass, how she had
+liked pretty, new dresses, and she could not make that seem very
+culpable. She remembered how, although she had never loved her
+step-mother, she had observed, except on that one occasion when
+Evelyn was lost, the utmost respect and deference for her--how she
+had been, after the first, even willing to love her had she met with
+the slightest encouragement. She could not honestly blame herself for
+her carefully concealed attitude of disapproval towards Ida, for she
+said to herself, with a subtlety which was strange for a girl so
+young, that she had merited it, that she was a cold, hard,
+self-centred woman, not deserving love, and that she had in reality
+been injurious for her father. She was convinced that, had her own
+mother lived, with her half-censorious yet wholly loving care for
+him, he might still have preserved his youth and his handsome
+boyishness and health. She thought of the half-absurd, half-tragic
+secret which underlay her life, and she could not honestly think
+herself very much to blame for that. She always thought of that with
+bewilderment, as one might think of some dimly remembered vagary of
+delirium. Sometimes it seemed to her now that it could not be true.
+Maria realized that she was full of self-righteousness, but she was
+also honest. She saw no need for her to blame herself for faults
+which she had not committed. She thought of the doctrine which she
+had heard, that children were wholly evil from their birth, and it
+did not seem to her true. She could _say_ that she had been wholly
+evil from her birth, but she felt that she should, if she did say so,
+tell a lie to God and herself. She honestly could not see why, for
+any fault of hers, her father should die. Then suddenly her mind gave
+a leap from her own standing-point to that of her father. She
+suddenly reflected that it was not wholly her own grief for his loss
+which was to be considered, but her father's grief at quitting the
+world wherein he had dwelt so long, and his old loves of life. She
+reflected upon his possible fear of the Unknown into which he was to
+go. There was in Maria's love for her father, as there had been in
+her mother's, a strong element of the maternal. She thought of her
+father with infinite pity, as one might think of a little child about
+to go on a long, strange journey to an unknown place, all alone by
+himself. It seemed to her an awful thing for God to ask one like her
+father to die a lingering death, to realize it all fully, what he had
+to do, then to go off by himself, alone. She remembered what she had
+heard from the pulpit on Sundays, but somehow that Unknown seemed so
+frightfully wide and vast for a soul like her father's, which had
+always been so like the soul of a child, to find her mother in. Then
+she got some comfort from the memory of her mother, of her great
+strength. It seemed to her that her mother, wherever she was, would
+not let her father wander alone very long. That she would meet him
+with that love and chiding which is sometimes the very concert-pitch
+of love itself, its key-note, and lead him into those green pastures
+and beside those still waters of the Psalmist. Maria, at that moment,
+got more comfort from her memory of the masterliness of her mother,
+whom she had known, than from her conception of God, towards whom her
+soul reached out, it is true, but whom it no more comprehended than a
+flower comprehends the sun. The very love of God needs a human
+trellis whereby His creatures can reach Him, and Maria now climbed
+towards a trust in Him, by the reflection of her mother's love, and
+strength in spite of love.
+
+Then racking pity for herself and her own loss, and rage because of
+it, and a pity for her father which almost roused her to a fury of
+rebellion, again swept away every other consideration.
+
+"Poor father! poor father!" she sobbed, under her breath. "There he
+is going to die, and he hasn't got mother to take care of him! _She_
+won't do anything. She will try not to smile, that is all. And I
+can't do anything, the way mother could. Father don't want me to even
+act as if I knew it; but if mother were alive he would tell her, and
+she would help him." Then Maria thought of herself, poor, solitary,
+female thing travelling the world alone, for she never thought, at
+that time, of her marriage being anything which would ever be a
+marriage in reality, but as of something which cast her outside the
+pale of possibilities and made her more solitary still, and she wept
+silently, or as silently as she could; once in awhile a murmur of
+agony or a sob escaped her. She could not help it. She got up out of
+her little chair and flung herself on the floor, and fairly writhed
+with the pain of her awful grief and sense of loss. She became deaf
+to any sound; all her senses seemed to have failed her. She was alive
+only to that sense of grief which is the primeval sense of the
+world--the grief of existence itself and the necessity of death and
+loss.
+
+All at once she felt a little, soft touch, and another little,
+weeping, human thing, born like herself to all the awful chances of
+love and grief, flung itself down beside her.
+
+Maria had locked her doors, but she had forgotten her window, which
+opened on an upper balcony, and was easily accessible to any one
+climbing out of the hall window. Evelyn had been listening at her
+door and had heard her sobs. Knowing from experience that her sister
+meant what she said, she had climbed out of the hall window, scudded
+along the little balcony, and into Maria's window. She flung herself
+down on the floor, and wept so violently that Maria was alarmed.
+
+"Why, baby, darling, what is it? Tell sister," she said, hushing her
+own sobs.
+
+The child continued to sob. Her whole little frame was shaken
+convulsively.
+
+"Tell sister," whispered Maria.
+
+"I'm cryin' 'cause--'cause--" panted the child.
+
+"Because what, darling?"
+
+"Because you are crying, and--and--"
+
+"And what?"
+
+"'Cause I 'ain't got anything to cry for."
+
+"Why, you precious darling!" said Maria. She hugged the child close,
+and all at once a sense of peace and comfort came over her, even in
+the face of approaching disaster. She sensed the love and pity which
+holds the world, through this little human key-note of it which had
+struck in her ears.
+
+
+
+Chapter XVII
+
+
+Harry Edgham's disease proved to be one of those concerning which no
+physician can accurately calculate its duration or termination. It
+had, as diseases often have, its periods of such utter quiescence
+that it seemed as if it had entirely disappeared. It was not a year
+after Harry had received his indeterminate death sentence before he
+looked better than he had done for a long while. The color came back
+to his cheeks, his expression regained its youthful joyfulness.
+Everybody said that Harry Edgham was quite well again. He had
+observed a certain diet and taken remedies; then, in the summer, he
+took, for the first time for years, an entire vacation of three
+weeks, and that had its effect for the better.
+
+Maria began to be quite easy with regard to her father's health. It
+seemed to her that, since he looked so well, he must be well. Her
+last winter at the Lowe Academy was entirely free from that
+worriment. Then, too, Wollaston Lee had graduated and begun his
+college course, and she no longer had him constantly before her eyes,
+bringing to memory that bewildering, almost maddening experience of
+theirs that night in New York. She was almost happy, in an odd,
+middle-aged sort of fashion, during her last term at the academy
+before her graduation. She took great pride in her progress in her
+studies. She was to graduate first of her class. She did not even
+have to work very hard to accomplish it. Maria had a mind of
+marvellous quickness of grasp. Possibly her retentive powers were not
+entirely in proportion, but, at all events, she accomplished much
+with comparatively little labor.
+
+Harry was very proud of her. The evening before her graduation Ida
+had gone to New York to the theatre and Evelyn was in bed, and Maria
+dressed herself in her graduation gown, which was charming--Ida had
+never neglected her, in respect to dress, at least--and came down to
+show herself to her father. He would not be able to be present at the
+graduation on account of an unusual press of business. Maria came so
+lightly that she almost seemed to float into the room, with her fine
+white draperies trailing behind her and her knots of white ribbon
+fluttering, and stood before her father.
+
+"Father," said she, "I want you to see the way I'll look to-morrow.
+Isn't this dress pretty?"
+
+"Lovely," said Harry. "It is very becoming, too," he added.
+
+Indeed, Maria really looked pretty again in this charming costume.
+During the last few months her cheeks had filled out and she had
+gotten some lovely curves of girlhood. Her eyes shone with a peculiar
+brilliancy, her red lips trembled into a smile, her hair, in a fluff
+above her high forehead, caught the light.
+
+Maria laughed gayly. "Take care, father, or you will make me vain,"
+she said.
+
+"You have some reason to be," Harry said, honestly. "You are going to
+graduate first in your class, and--well, you are pretty, dear--at
+least you are to father, and, I guess, to other folks."
+
+Maria blushed. "Only to father, because he is partial," she said.
+Then she went up to him and rubbed her blooming cheek against his.
+"Do you know what makes me happier than anything else?" she
+said--"happier than graduating first, happier than my pretty dress,
+happier than anything?"
+
+"No. What, dear?"
+
+"Feeling that you are well again."
+
+There was an almost imperceptible pause before Harry replied. Then he
+said, in his pleasant voice, which had never grown old, "Yes, dear; I
+am better, dear, I think."
+
+"Think," Maria said, gayly. "Why, you are well, father. Don't you
+know you are well?"
+
+"Yes, I think I am better, dear."
+
+"Better? You are well. Nobody can look as young and handsome as you
+do and be ill, possibly. You are well, father. I know you can't quite
+get what that horrid old croaking doctor told you out of your mind,
+but doctors don't know everything. You are well, and that makes me
+happier than anything else in the world."
+
+Harry laughed a little faintly. "Well, I dare say you are right,
+dear," he said.
+
+"Right?--of course I am right," said Maria. Then she danced off to
+change her gown.
+
+After she had gone, Harry rose from the chair; he had been sitting
+beside the centre-table with the evening paper. He walked over to the
+window and looked out at the night. It was bright moonlight. The
+trees were in full leaf, and the shadows were of such loveliness that
+they fairly seemed celestial. Harry gazed out at the night scene, at
+the moon riding through the unbelievable and unfathomable blue of the
+sky, like a crystal ball, with a slight following of golden clouds;
+he gazed at the fairy shadows which transformed the familiar village
+street into something beyond earth, and he sighed. The conviction of
+his approaching dissolution had never been so strong as at that
+moment. He seemed fairly to see his own mortality--that gate of death
+which lay wide open for him. Yet, all at once, a sense of peace and
+trust almost ineffable came over him. Death seemed merely the
+going-out into the true open, the essence of the moonlight and the
+beauty. It seemed the tasting and absorbing the food for his own
+spiritual hunger, which had been upon him from birth, that which had
+always been just out of his reach. When Maria returned in her pink
+gingham school-gown, she found her father seated beside the table as
+he had been when she left. He looked up at her with a bright smile
+which somehow chilled her, although she tried to drive the conviction
+of the chill from her mind. She got a new book from the case, and
+proposed reading aloud to him.
+
+"Hadn't you better go to bed, dear?" said Harry. "You will have a
+hard day to-morrow."
+
+"No; I am going to sit up with you till She comes home," said Maria,
+"and we might as well amuse ourselves." She began to read, and Harry
+listened happily. But Maria, whenever she glanced over her book at
+her father's happy face, felt the same undefinable chill.
+
+However, when Ida came home and they had a little supper of sardines
+and crackers, she did not think any more of it. She went to bed with
+her head full of the morrow and her new gown and the glories awaiting
+her. She tried not to be vain, but was uncomfortably conscious that
+she was glad that she was first in her class, instead of some other
+girl or instead of a boy. Maria felt especially proud of ranking
+ahead of the boys.
+
+The next day was, as she had anticipated, one of happy triumph for
+her. She stood on the stage in her lovely dress and read her
+valedictory, which, although trite enough, was in reality rather
+better in style than most valedictories. She received a number of
+presents, a tiny gold watch from her father among them, and a ring
+with a turquoise stone from Ida, and quantities of flowers. The day
+after the graduation Maria had her photograph taken, with all her
+floral offerings around her, with a basket of roses on her arm and
+great bouquets in her lap and on a little photographic table beside
+her. The basket of roses was an anonymous offering. It came with no
+card. If Maria had dreamed that Wollaston Lee had sent it, she would
+never have sat for her photograph with it on her arm. But she did not
+think of Wollaston at all that day. He was completely out of her mind
+for the time, swallowed up in her sense of personal joy and triumph.
+Wollaston had not graduated first in his class in the academy the
+year before. A girl had headed that class also. Maria had felt a
+malicious joy at the fact, at the time, and it was entirely beyond
+her imagination now that Wollaston, who had seemed to dislike her,
+although she was forced to admit that he had been exceedingly
+honorable, had sent roses to her. She suspected that one of the
+teachers, a young man who had paid, in a covert and shamefaced way, a
+little attention to her, had sent the basket. She thought the roses
+lovely, and recognized the inadvisability of thanking this teacher,
+since he had not enclosed his card. She did not like him very
+well--indeed, she felt a certain repugnance to him--but roses were
+roses, and she was a young girl.
+
+"Who gave you the basket of roses, dear?" her father asked when she
+was displaying her trophies the day after her graduation.
+
+Maria blushed. "I don't know," said she; "there wasn't any card with
+them." As she spoke she seemed to see the face of the young history
+teacher, Mr. Latimer, with his sparse, sandy beard, and she felt how
+very distasteful he was to her, even if gilded, so to speak, by roses.
+
+"I think some enamoured boy in her class who was too shy to send his
+card with his floral offering was the one," Ida said to Harry when
+Maria had gone out. She laughed a softly sarcastic laugh.
+
+Harry looked at her uneasily.
+
+"Maria is too young to get such ideas into her head," he said.
+
+"My dear," said Ida, "you forget that such ideas do not get into
+girls' heads; they are born in them."
+
+"I presume one of the other girls sent them," said Harry, almost
+angrily.
+
+"Perhaps," replied Ida, and again she laughed her soft, sarcastic
+laugh, which grated terribly on Harry. It irritated him beyond
+measure that any boy should send roses to this little, delicate, fair
+girl of his. For all he had spoken of her marriage, the very idea of
+confiding her to any other man than himself made him furious.
+Especially the idea of some rough school-boy, who knew little else
+than to tumble about in a football game and was not his girl's mental
+equal, irritated him. He went over in his mind all the boys in her
+class. The next morning, going to New York, Edwin Shaw, who had lost
+much of his uncouthness and had divorced himself entirely from his
+family in the matter of English, was on the train, and he scowled at
+him with such inscrutable fierceness that the boy fairly trembled. He
+always bowed punctiliously to Maria's father, and this morning Maria
+was with her father. She was to have a day off: sit in her father's
+office and read a book until noon, then go to lunch with him at a
+French restaurant, then go to the matinee. She wore a festive silk
+waist, and looked altogether lovely, the boy thought.
+
+"Who is that great gawk of a fellow?" asked Harry of Maria.
+
+"Edwin Shaw. He was in my class," replied Maria, and she blushed, for
+no earthly reason except that her father expected her to do so. Young
+girls are sometimes very ready, even to deceit, to meet the emotional
+expectations of their elders. Harry then and there made up his mind
+that Edwin Shaw was the sender of the basket of roses.
+
+"He comes of a family below par, and he shows it," he said,
+viciously, to Maria. He scowled again at Edwin's neck, which was
+awkwardly long above his collar, but the boy did not see it. He sat
+on the opposite side of the car a seat in advance.
+
+Harry said again to Maria, when they had left the train, and Edwin,
+conscious of his back, which he was straightening, was striding in
+front of them, what a great gawk of a fellow he was, and how he came
+of a family below par. Maria assented indifferently. She did not
+dream of her father's state of mind, and, as for Edwin Shaw, he was
+no more to her than a set of car-steps, not so much, because the
+car-steps were of obvious use.
+
+That very night, when Maria and her father reached home after a
+riotous day in the city, there was a letter in the post-office from
+Aunt Maria, to the effect that there was no doubt that Maria could
+have the school in Amity in the fall. The teacher who had held the
+position was to be married in a few weeks. The salary was not
+much--Amity was a poor little country village--but Maria felt as if
+she had expectations of untold wealth. She was sorry at the prospect
+of leaving her father and Evelyn, but the idea of self-support and
+independence, and taking a little of the burden from her father,
+intoxicated her. Maria had the true spirit of the women of her race.
+She liked the feel of her own muscles and nerves of individuality and
+self-reliance. She felt a head taller after she had read her aunt's
+letter.
+
+"She says she will board me for four dollars a week," she said. "I
+shall have quite a lot of money clear."
+
+"Well, four dollars a week will recompense her, and help her, too,"
+said Harry, a little gloomily. To tell the truth, he did not in the
+least like the idea of Maria's going to Amity to teach. Nothing
+except the inner knowledge of his own failing health could have led
+him to consent to it. Ida was delighted at the news, but she
+concealed her delight as well as her annoyance under her smiling
+mask, and immediately began to make plans for Maria's wardrobe.
+
+"Whatever I have new I am going to pay you back, father, now I am
+going to earn money," Maria said, proudly.
+
+After she went up-stairs to bed that night, Evelyn, who was now a
+slim, beautiful little girl, rather tall for her age, and going to a
+private school in the village, came into her room, and Maria told
+Evelyn how much she was going to do with the money which she was to
+earn. Maria, at this time, was wholly mercenary. She had not the
+least ambition to benefit the young. She was, in fact, young herself,
+but her head was fairly turned with the most selfish of
+considerations. It was true that she planned to spend the money which
+she would earn largely upon others, but that was, in itself, a
+subtle, more rarefied form of selfishness.
+
+"I remember Aunt Maria's parlor carpet was worn almost threadbare,
+and I mean to buy her a new one with the very first money I earn,"
+Maria said to little Evelyn; and she thought, as she met Evelyn's
+beautiful, admiring eyes, how very kind and thoughtful she, Maria,
+would be with her wealth.
+
+"I suppose Aunt Maria is very poor," Evelyn remarked, in her charming
+little voice.
+
+"Oh, very. She lives on a hundred dollars a year."
+
+"Will you get enough to eat?" asked Evelyn, anxiously.
+
+"Oh yes. I shall pay her four dollars a week, and if she got along
+with only a hundred a year, only think what she can do with that. I
+know Aunt Eunice, Uncle Henry's wife, hasn't a good dress, either. I
+think I shall buy a brown satin for her."
+
+"How awful good you are, sister!" said little Evelyn, and Maria quite
+agreed with her. The conviction of her own goodness, and her
+forthcoming power to exercise it, filled her soul with a gentle,
+stimulating warmth after she was in bed. The moonlight shone brightly
+into her room. She gazed at the bright shaft of silver it made across
+all her familiar possessions, and, notwithstanding her young girl
+dreams were gone, she realized that, although she had lost all the
+usual celestial dreams and rafters of romance which go to make a
+young girl's air-castle, she had still left some material, even if of
+less importance.
+
+She spent, on the whole, a very happy summer. Her father looked
+entirely well; she was busy in preparations for her life in Amity;
+and, what relieved her the most, Wollaston Lee was not at home for
+more than five days during the entire vacation. He went camping-out
+with a party of college-boys. Maria was, therefore, not subjected to
+the nervous strain of seeing him. During the few days he was at home
+he had his chum with him, and Maria only saw him twice--once on the
+street, when she returned his bow distantly and heard with no
+pleasure the other boy ask who that pretty girl was, and once in
+church. She gave only the merest side-glance at him in church, and
+she was not sure that he looked at her at all, but she went home pale
+and nervous. A secret of any kind is a hard thing for a girl to bear
+about with her, and Maria's, which was both tragic and absurd, was
+severer than most. At times it seemed to her, when she looked in her
+glass, that all she saw was the secret; it seemed to her, when other
+people looked at her, that it was all they saw. It was one reason for
+her readiness to go to Amity. She would there be out of reach of
+people who could in any way have penetrated her secret. She would not
+run the risk of meeting Wollaston; of meeting his father and mother,
+and wondering if he had, after all, told; of meeting Gladys Mann, and
+wondering if she had told, and knowing that she knew.
+
+Maria, in these last months, saw very little of Gladys, who had
+sunken entirely into the lower stratum of society in which she
+belonged. Gladys had left school, where she had not learned much, and
+she went out cleaning and doing house-work, at seventy-five cents a
+day. Sometimes Maria met her going to and fro from a place of
+employment, and at such times there was fear in Maria's face and a
+pathetic admiration and reassurance in the other girl's. Gladys had
+grown hard and large as to her bones and muscles, but she did not
+look altogether well. She had a half-nourished, spiritually and
+bodily, expression, which did not belie the true state of affairs
+with her. She had neither enough meat nor enough ideality. She was
+suffering, and the more because she did not know. Gladys was of the
+opinion that she was, on the whole, enjoying life and having a pretty
+good time. She earned enough to buy herself some showy clothes, and
+she had a lover, a "steady," as she called him. It is true that she
+was at times a little harassed by jealousy concerning another girl
+who had a more fully blown beauty than she, and upon whom she
+sometimes suspected her lover was casting admiring eyes.
+
+It was at this time that Gladys, whose whole literature consisted of
+the more pictorial of the daily papers, wrote some badly spelled and
+very pathetic little letters, asking advice as to whether a girl of
+her age, who had been keeping steady company with a young man of her
+lover's age, whom she dearly loved, should make advances if he seemed
+to exhibit a preference for another girl, and she inquired pitifully
+of the editor, as of some deity, as to whether she thought her lover
+did really prefer the other girl to her. These letters, and the
+answers, were a source of immense comfort to Gladys. Sometimes, when
+she met Maria, they made her feel almost on terms of equality with
+her. She doubted if Maria, smart as she was, had ever really appeared
+in the papers. She wrote her letters under different names, and even
+sent them from neighboring towns, and walked long distances, when she
+felt that she wanted to save car-fare, to post them. Once Maria met
+her as she was walking along with an evening paper in her hand,
+reading the reply to one of her letters, and Maria wondered at the
+expression on Gladys's face. She at once pitied, feared, and detested
+Gladys. She doubted if she were a good girl; she herself, like a nun
+without even dreams, seemed living in another sphere, she felt so far
+removed. She was in reality removed, although Gladys, if the truth
+were told, was not so bad, and she got some good advice from the
+answers in response to her letters, which restrained her. Still, her
+view of everything was different. She was different. Black was not as
+black to her as to Maria; a spade was not so truly a spade. She
+recognized immorality as a fact, but it did not seem to her of so
+much importance. In one sense she was more innocent even than Maria,
+for she had never felt the true living clutch of vice on her soul,
+even in imagination; she could not. The devil to her was not of
+enough consequence to enable her to sin in the truest sense of the
+word. All her family were immoral, and a constant living in an
+atmosphere of immorality may, in one sense, make one incapable of
+spiritual sin. One needs to fully sense a sin in order to actually
+commit it. Gladys could hardly sense sin as Maria could. Still she
+had a sense of proud virtue after reading the paragraphs of good
+advice in reply to her letters to the paper, and she felt that it
+placed her nearer Maria's level. On the occasion when Maria met her
+reading the paper, she even spoke.
+
+"Hullo, M'ria!" said she.
+
+"Good-evening," Maria replied, politely and haughtily.
+
+But Gladys did not seem to notice the haughtiness. She pressed close
+to Maria.
+
+"Say!" said she.
+
+"What?" asked Maria.
+
+"Ain't you ever goin' to--?"
+
+"No, I am not," replied Maria, deadly pale, and trembling from head
+to foot.
+
+"Why don't you write to this paper and ask what you had better do?"
+said Gladys. "It's an awful good plan. You do git awful good advice."
+
+"I don't wish to," replied Maria, trying to pass, but Gladys stood in
+her way.
+
+"But say, M'ria, you be in an awful box," said she. "You can't never
+marry nobody else without you get locked up, you know."
+
+"I don't want to," Maria said, shortly.
+
+"Mebbe you will."
+
+"I never shall."
+
+"Well, if you do, you had better write to this paper, then you can
+find out just what to do. It won't tell you to do nothin' wrong, and
+it's awful sensible. Say, M'ria."
+
+"Well, what?"
+
+"I 'ain't never told a living soul, and I never shall, but I don't
+see what you are goin' to do if either you or him wants to git
+married to anybody else."
+
+"I am not worrying about getting married," said Maria. This time she
+pushed past Gladys. Her knees fairly knocked together.
+
+Gladys looked at her with sympathy and the old little-girl love and
+adoration. "Well, don't you worry about me tellin'," said she.
+
+
+
+Chapter XVIII
+
+
+Maria began her teaching on a September day. It was raining hard, but
+there was all about an odd, fictitious golden light from the spray of
+maple-leaves which overhung the village. Amity was a typical little
+New England village--that is, it had departed but little from its
+original type, although there was now a large plant of paper-mills,
+which had called in outsiders. The outsiders were established by
+themselves on a sort of Tom Tidler's ground called "Across the
+River." The river was little more than a brook, except in spring,
+when, after heavy snows, it sometimes verified its name of the Ramsey
+River. Ramsey was an old family name in Amity, as Edgham was in
+Edgham. Once, indeed, the little village had been called Ramsey Four
+Corners. Then the old Ramsey family waned and grew less in popular
+esteem, and one day the question of the appropriateness of naming the
+village after them came up. There was another old family, by the name
+of Saunders, between whom and the Ramseys had always been a dignified
+New England feud. The Saunders had held their own much better than
+the Ramseys. There was one branch especially, to which Judge Josiah
+Saunders belonged, which was still notable. Judge Josiah had served
+in the State legislature, he was a judge of the superior court, and
+he occupied the best house in Amity, a fine specimen of the old
+colonial mansion house, which had been in the Saunders family for
+generations. Judge Saunders had made additions to this old mansion,
+conservative, modern colonial additions, and it was really a noble
+building. It was shortly after he had made the additions to his
+house, and had served his first term as judge of the superior court,
+that the question of changing the name of the village from Ramsey
+Four Corners to Saunders had been broached. Meetings had been held,
+in which the name of our celebrated townsman, the Honorable Josiah
+Saunders, had been on every tongue. The Ramsey family obtained scant
+recognition for past merits, but a becoming silence had been
+maintained as to their present status. The only recognized survivors
+of the old house of Ramsey at that time were the widow, Amelia
+Ramsey, the wife of Anderson Ramsey, deceased, as she appeared in the
+minutes of the meetings, and her son George, a lad of sixteen, and
+the same who, in patched attire, had made love to Maria over the
+garden fence when she was a child. It was about that time that the
+meetings were taking place, and the name of the village had been
+changed to Amity. It had been held to be a happy, even a noble and
+generous thought, on the part of Josiah Saunders. "Would that in such
+wise, by a combination of poetical aspirations and practical deeds,
+all differences might be adjusted upon this globe," said the Amity
+Argus, in an account of the meeting. Thenceforth, Ramsey Four Corners
+became Amity, and the most genteel of the ladies had Amity engraved
+on their note-paper.
+
+Mrs. Amelia Ramsey and George, who had suffered somewhat in their
+feelings, in spite of the poetical adjustment of the difference, had
+no note-paper. They were poor, else Amity might never have been. They
+lived in a house which had been, in its day, as pretentious as the
+Saunders mansion. At the time of Maria's first visit to Amity it had
+been a weather-beaten old structure, which had not been painted for
+years, and had a curious effect as of a blur on the landscape, with
+its roof and walls of rain and sun stained shingles and clapboards,
+its leaning chimneys, and its Corinthian pillars widely out of the
+perpendicular, supporting crazily the roofs of the double veranda.
+When Maria went to Amity to begin teaching, the old house had
+undergone a transformation. She gazed at it with amazement out of the
+sitting-room window, which faced it, on the afternoon of her arrival.
+
+"Why, what has happened to the old Ramsey house?" she asked her aunt
+Maria.
+
+"Well, in the first place, a cousin died and left them some money,"
+replied Aunt Maria. "It was a matter of ten thousand dollars. Then
+Amelia and George went right to work and fixed up the house. It was
+none of my business, but it seemed dreadful silly to me. If I had
+been in their place, I'd have let that old ramshackle of a place go
+to pot and bought a nice little new house. There was one they could
+have got for fifteen hundred dollars, on this side of the river; but
+no, they went to work, and they must have laid out three thousand
+clear on that old thing."
+
+"It is beautiful!" said Maria, regarding it with admiration.
+
+"Well, I don't think it's very beautiful, but everybody to their
+liking," replied Aunt Maria, with a sniff of her high, transparent
+nostrils. "For my part, I'd rather have a little, clean new house
+before all the old ones, that folks have died in and worried in, in
+creation."
+
+But Maria continued to regard the renovated Ramsey house with
+admiration. It stood close to the street, as is the case with so many
+old houses in rural New England. It had a tiny brick strip of yard in
+front, on which was set, on either side of the stoop, a great
+century-plant in a pot. Above them rose a curving flight of steps to
+a broad veranda, supported with Corinthian pillars, which were now
+upright and glistening with white paint, as was the entire house.
+
+"They had it all fixed up, inside and out," said Aunt Maria. "There
+wasn't a room but was painted and papered, and a good many had to be
+plastered. They did not get much new furniture, though. I should have
+thought they'd wanted to. All they've got is awful old. But I heard
+George Ramsey say he wouldn't swap one of those old mahogany pieces
+for the best new thing to be bought. Well, everybody to their taste.
+If I had had my house all fixed up that way, I should have wanted new
+furniture to correspond."
+
+"What is George Ramsey doing?" asked Maria, with a little, conscious
+blush of which she was ashamed. Maria, all her life, would blush
+because people expected it of her. She knew as plainly as if she had
+spoken, that her aunt Maria was considering suddenly the advantages
+of a possible match between herself and George Ramsey. What Aunt
+Maria said immediately confirmed this opinion. She spoke with a sort
+of chary praise of George. Aunt Maria had in reality never liked the
+Ramseys; she considered that they felt above her, and for no good
+reason; still, she had an eye for the main chance. It flashed swiftly
+across her mind that her niece was pretty, and George might lose his
+heart to her and marry her, and then Mrs. Amelia Ramsey might have to
+treat her like an equal and no longer hold her old, aristocratic head
+so high.
+
+"Well," said she, "I suppose George Ramsey is pretty smart. They say
+he is. I guess he favors his grandfather. His father wasn't any too
+bright, if he was a Ramsey. George Ramsey, they say, worked his way
+through college, used to be bell-boy or waiter or something in a
+hotel summers, unbeknown to his mother. Amelia Ramsey would have had
+a conniption fit if she had known that her precious boy was working
+out. She used to talk as grand as you please about George's being
+away on his vacation. Maybe she did know, but if she did she never
+let on. I don't know as she let on even to herself. Amelia Ramsey is
+one of the kind who can shut their eyes even when they look at
+themselves. There never was a lookin'-glass made that could show
+Amelia Ramsey anything she didn't want to see. I never had any
+patience with her. I believe in being proud if you've got anything to
+be proud of, but I don't see any sense in it otherwise. Anyhow, I
+guess George is doing pretty well. A distant relation of his mother,
+an Allen, not a Ramsey, got a place in a bank for him, they say, and
+he gets good pay. I heard it was three thousand a year, but I don't
+believe it. He ain't much over twenty, and it ain't likely. I don't
+know jest how old he is. He's some older than you."
+
+"He's a good deal older than I," said Maria, remembering sundry
+confidences with the tall, lanky boy over the garden fence.
+
+"Well, I don't know but he is," said Aunt Maria, "but I don't believe
+he gets three thousand a year, anyhow."
+
+The next morning Maria, on her way to school in the rain, passing
+under the unconquerable golden glow of the maples, cast a
+surreptitious glance at the old Ramsey house as she passed. It had
+been wonderfully changed for the better. Even the garden at the side
+next her aunt's house was no longer a weedy enclosure, but displayed
+an array of hardy flowers which the frost had not yet affected.
+Marigolds tossed their golden and russet balls through the misty wind
+of the rain, princess-feathers waved bravely, and chrysanthemums
+showed in gorgeous clumps of rose and yellow and white. As she
+passed, a tidy maid emerged from the front door and began sweeping
+out the rain which had lodged in the old hollows of the stone stoop,
+worn by the steps of generations. The rain flew before her plying
+broom in a white foam. The maid wore a cap and a wide, white apron.
+Maria reflected that the Ramseys had indeed come into palmier days,
+since they kept a maid so attired. She thought of George Ramsey with
+his patched trousers, and again the old feeling of repulsion and
+wonder at herself that she could have had romantic dreams about him
+came over her. Maria felt unutterably old that morning, and yet she
+had a little, childish dread of her new duties. She was in reality
+afraid of the school-children, although she did not show it. She got
+through the day very creditably, although that night she was tired as
+she had never been in her life, and, curiously enough, her sense of
+smell seemed to be the most affected. Many of her pupils came from
+poor families, the families of operatives in the paper-mills, and
+their garments were shabby and unclean. Soaked with rain, they gave
+out pungent odors. Maria's sense of smell was very highly developed.
+It seemed to her that her very soul was permeated, her very thoughts
+and imagination, with the odor of damp, unclean clothing, of draggled
+gowns and wraps and hats and wet leather. She could not eat her
+supper; she could not eat the luncheon which her aunt had put up for
+her, since the school being a mile away, it was too far to walk home
+for the noonday dinner in the rain.
+
+"You 'ain't eat hardly a mite of luncheon," Aunt Maria said when she
+opened the box.
+
+"I did not feel very hungry," Maria replied, apologetically.
+
+"If you don't eat, you'll never hold out school-teaching in the
+world," said Aunt Maria.
+
+She repeated it when Maria scarcely tasted her supper, although it
+was a nice one--cold ham, and scrambled eggs, scrambled with cream,
+and delicious slabs of layer-cake. "You'll never hold out in the
+world if you don't eat," said she.
+
+"To tell the truth," replied Maria, "I can smell those poor
+children's wet clothes so that it has taken away all my appetite."
+
+"Land! you'll have to get over that," said Aunt Maria.
+
+"It seems to me that everything smells and tastes of wet, dirty
+clothes and shoes," said Maria.
+
+"You'll have to learn not to be so particular," said Aunt Maria, and
+she spoke with the same affectionate severity that Maria remembered
+in her mother. "Put it out of your mind," she added.
+
+"I can't," said Maria, and a qualm of nausea came over her. It was as
+if the damp, unclean garments and the wet shoes were pressed close
+under her nostrils. She looked pale.
+
+"Well, drink your tea, anyhow," said Aunt Maria, with a glance at her.
+
+After supper Aunt Maria, going into the other side of the house to
+borrow some yeast, said to her brother Henry that she did not believe
+that Maria would hold out to teach school. "She has come home sick on
+account of the smells the very first day," said she, "and she hasn't
+eat her supper, and she scarcely touched her luncheon."
+
+Henry Stillman laughed, a bitter, sardonic laugh which he had
+acquired of late years. "Oh, well, she will get used to it," he
+replied. "Don't you worry, Maria. She will get used to it. The smell
+of the poor is the smell of the world. Heaven itself must be full of
+it."
+
+His wife eyed him with a half-frightened air. "Why, don't talk so,
+Henry!" she said.
+
+Henry Stillman laughed, half sardonically, half tenderly. "It is so,
+my dear," he said, "but don't you worry about it."
+
+In these days Henry Stillman, although always maintaining his gentle
+manner towards children and women, had become, in the depths of his
+long-suffering heart, a rebel against fate. He had borne too long
+that burden which is the heaviest and most ignoble in the world, the
+burden of a sense of injury. He knew that he was fitted for better
+things than he had. He thought that it was not his own personal fault
+that he did not have them, and his very soul was curdling with a
+conviction of wrong, both at the hands of men and God. In these days
+he ceased going to church. He watched his wife and sister set out
+every Sunday, and he stayed at home. He got a certain satisfaction
+out of that. All who realize an injury have an amount of childishness
+in acts of retaliation. He, Henry Stillman, actually had a conviction
+that he was showing recrimination and wounding fate, which had so
+injured him, if only with a pin-prick, by staying away from church.
+After Maria came to live with them, she, too, went to church, but he
+did not view her with the same sardonic air that he did the older
+women, who had remained true to their faith in the face of disaster.
+He looked at Maria, in her pretty little best gowns and hats, setting
+forth, and a sweet tenderness for her love of God and belief
+sweetened his own agnosticism. He would not for the world have said a
+word to weaken the girl's faith nor to have kept her away from
+church. He would have urged her to go had she manifested the
+slightest inclination to remain at home. He was in a manner jealous
+of the girl's losing what he had himself lost. He tried to refrain
+from airing his morbid, bitter views of life to his wife, but once in
+a while he could not restrain himself as now. However, he laughed so
+naturally, and asked Maria, who presently came in, how many pupils
+had been present, and how she liked school-teaching, that his wife
+began to think that he had not been in earnest.
+
+"They are such poor, dirty little things," Maria said, "and their
+clothes were wet, and--and--" A look of nausea overspread her face.
+
+"You will get used to that," said her uncle, laughing pleasantly.
+"Eunice, haven't we got some cologne somewhere?"
+
+Eunice got a bottle of cologne, which was seldom used, being a
+luxury, from a closet in the sitting-room, and put some on Maria's
+handkerchief. "You won't think anything about it after a little,"
+said she, echoing her husband.
+
+"I suppose the scholars in Lowe Academy were a different class," said
+Aunt Maria, who had seated herself as primly as ever, with her hands
+crossed but not touching the lap of her black gown. The folds of the
+skirt were carefully arranged, and she did not move after having once
+seated herself, for fear of creasing it.
+
+"They were clean, at least," said Maria, with a little grimace of
+disgust. "It does seem as if people might be clean, if they are poor."
+
+"Some folks here are too poor to buy soap and wash-cloths and
+towels," her uncle said, still not bitterly. "You must take that into
+account, Maria. It takes a little extra money even to keep clean;
+people don't get that into their heads, generally speaking, but it is
+so."
+
+"Well, I haven't had much money," said Aunt Maria, "but I must say I
+have kept myself in soap and wash-rags and towels."
+
+"You might not have been able to if you had had half a dozen children
+and a drinking husband, or one who was out of work half the time,"
+her brother said.
+
+An elderly blush spread over his sister's face. "Well, the Lord knows
+I'd rather have the soap and towels and wash-rags than a drunken
+husband and half a dozen dirty children," she retorted, sharply.
+
+"Lucky for you and the children that you have," said Henry. Then he
+turned again to his niece, of whom he was very fond. "It won't rain
+every day, dear," he said, "and the smells won't be so bad. Don't
+worry."
+
+Maria smiled back at him bravely. "I shall get used to it," she said,
+sniffing at the cologne, which was cheap and pretty bad.
+
+Maria was in reality dismayed. Her experience with children--that is,
+her personal experience--had been confined to her sister Evelyn.
+She compared dainty little Evelyn with the rough, uncouth,
+half-degenerates which she had encountered that morning, sitting
+before her with gaping mouths of stupidity or grins of impish
+impudence, in their soiled, damp clothing, and her heart sank. There
+was nothing in common except youth between these children, the
+offspring of ignorance and often drunken sensuality, and Evelyn. At
+first it seemed to her that there was absolutely no redeeming quality
+in the whole. However, the next morning the sun shone through the
+yellow maple boughs, and was reflected from the golden carpet of
+leaves which the wind and rain of the day before had spread beneath.
+The children were dry; some of them had become ingratiating, even
+affectionate. She discovered that there were a number of pretty
+little girls and innocent, honest little boys, whose mothers had made
+pathetic attempts to send them clean and whole to school. She also
+discovered that some of them had reasonably quick intelligence,
+especially one girl, by name Jessy Ramsey. She was of a distant
+branch of the old Ramseys, and had a high, spiritual forehead, from
+which the light hair was smoothly combed in damp ridges, and a
+delicate face with serious, intent blue eyes, under brows strangely
+pent for a child. Maria straightway took a fancy to Jessy Ramsey.
+When, on her way home at night, the child timidly followed in her
+wake, she reached out and grasped her tiny hand with a warm pressure.
+
+"You learned your lessons very well, Jessy," she said, and the
+child's face, as she looked up at her, grew positively brilliant.
+
+When Maria got home she enthused about her.
+
+"There is one child in the school who is a wonder," said she.
+
+"Who?" asked Aunt Maria. She was in her heart an aristocrat. She
+considered the people of Amity--that is, the manufacturing people
+(she exempted her own brother as she might have exempted a prince of
+the blood drawn into an ignoble pursuit from dire necessity)--as
+distinctly below par. Maria's school was across the river. She
+regarded all the children below par. "I do wish you could have had a
+school this side of the river," she added, "but Miss Norcross has
+held the other ten years, and I don't believe she will ever get
+married, she is so mortal homely, and they like her. Who is the child
+you are talking about?"
+
+"Her name is Ramsey, Jessy Ramsey."
+
+Aunt Maria sniffed. "Oh!" said she. "She belongs to that Eugene
+Ramsey tribe."
+
+"Any relation to the Ramseys next door?" asked Maria.
+
+"About a tenth cousin, I guess," replied Aunt Maria. "There was a
+Eugene Ramsey did something awful years ago, before I was born, and
+he got into state-prison, and then when he came out he married as low
+as he could. They have never had anything to do with these Ramseys.
+They are just as low as they can be--always have been."
+
+"This little girl is pretty, and bright," said Maria.
+
+Aunt Maria sniffed again. "Well, you'll see how she'll turn out," she
+said. "Never yet anything good came of that Eugene Ramsey tribe. That
+child's father drinks like a fish, and he's been in prison, and her
+mother's no better than she should be, and she's got a sister that
+everybody talks about--has ever since she was so high."
+
+"This seems like a good little girl," said Maria.
+
+"Wait and see," said Aunt Maria.
+
+But for all that Maria felt herself drawn towards this poor little
+offspring of the degenerate branch of the Ramseys. There was
+something about the child's delicate, intellectual, fairly noble cast
+of countenance which at once aroused her affection and pity. It was
+in December, on a bitterly cold day, when Maria had been teaching in
+Amity some two months, when this affection and pity ripened into
+absolute fondness and protection. The children were out in the bare
+school-yard during the afternoon recess, when Maria, sitting huddled
+over the stove for warmth, heard such a clamor that she ran to the
+window. Out in the desolate yard, a parallelogram of frozen soil
+hedged in with a high board fence covered with grotesque, and even
+obscene, drawings of pupils who had from time to time reigned in
+district number six, was the little Ramsey girl, surrounded by a
+crowd of girls who were fairly yelping like little mongrel dogs. The
+boys' yard was on the other side of the fence, but in the fence was a
+knot-hole wherein was visible a keen boy-eye. One girl after another
+was engaged in pulling to the height of her knees Jessy Ramsey's
+poor, little, dirty frock, thereby disclosing her thin, naked legs,
+absolutely uncovered to the freezing blast. Maria rushed bareheaded
+out in the yard and thrust herself through the crowd of little girls.
+
+"Girls, what are you doing?" she asked, sternly.
+
+"Please, teacher, Jessy Ramsey, she 'ain't got nothin' at all on
+under her dress," piped one after another, in accusing tones; then
+they yelped again.
+
+Tears of pity and rage sprang to Maria's eyes. She caught hold of the
+thin little shoulder, which was, beyond doubt, covered by nothing
+except her frock, and turned furiously upon the other girls.
+
+"You ought to be ashamed of yourselves!" said she; "great girls like
+you making fun of this poor child!"
+
+"She had ought to be ashamed of herself goin' round so," retorted the
+biggest girl in school, Alice Sweet, looking boldly at Maria. "She
+ain't no better than her ma. My ma says so."
+
+"My ma says I mustn't go with her," said another girl.
+
+"Both of you go straight into the school-house," said Maria, at a
+white heat of anger as she impelled poor little Jessy Ramsey out of
+the yard.
+
+"I don't care," said Alice Sweet, with quite audible impudence.
+
+The black eye at the knot-hole in the fence which separated the
+girls' yard from the boys' was replaced by a blue one. Maria's
+attention was attracted towards it by an audible titter from the
+other side.
+
+"Every one of you boys march straight into the school-house," she
+called. Then she led Jessy into a little room which was dedicated to
+the teacher's outside wraps. The room was little more than a closet,
+and very cold. Maria put her arm around Jessy and felt with horror
+the little, naked body under the poor frock.
+
+"For Heaven's sake, child, why are you out with so little on such a
+day as this?" she cried out.
+
+Jessy began to cry. She had heretofore maintained a sullen silence of
+depression under taunts, but a kind word was too much for her.
+
+"I 'ain't got no underclothes, teacher; I 'ain't, honest," she
+sobbed. "I'd outgrowed all my last year's ones, and Mamie she's got
+'em; and my mother she 'ain't got no money to buy any more, and my
+father he's away on a drunk. I can't help it; I can't, honest,
+teacher."
+
+Maria gazed at the little thing in a sort of horror. "Do you mean to
+say that you have actually nothing to put on but your dress, Jessy
+Ramsey?" said she.
+
+"I can't help it, honest, teacher," sobbed Jessy Ramsey.
+
+Maria continued to gaze at her, then she led her into the school-room
+and rang the bell furiously. When the scholars were all in their
+places, she opened her lips to express her mind to them, but a
+second's reflection seemed to show her the futility of it. Instead,
+she called the geography class.
+
+After school that night, Maria, instead of going home, went straight
+to Jessy Ramsey's home, which was about half a mile from the
+school-house. She held Jessy, who wore a threadbare little cape over
+her frock, by the hand. Franky Ramsey and Mamie Ramsey, Jessy's
+younger brother and sister, tagged timidly behind her. Finally, Maria
+waited for them to come up with her, which they did with a cringing
+air.
+
+"I want to know," said Maria to Mamie, "if you are wearing all your
+sister's underclothes this winter?"
+
+Mamie whimpered a little as she replied. Mamie had a habitual whimper
+and a mean little face, with a wisp of flaxen hair tied with a dirty
+blue ribbon.
+
+"Yes, ma'am," she replied. "Jessy she growed so she couldn't git into
+'em, and mummer--"
+
+The boy, who was very thin, almost to emaciation, and looked
+consumptive, but who was impishly pert, cut in.
+
+"I had to wear Jessy's shirts," he said. "Mamie she couldn't wear
+them 'ere."
+
+"So you haven't any flannel shirts?" Maria asked of Mamie.
+
+"I'm wearin' mummer's," said Mamie. "Mummer's they shrunk so she
+couldn't wear 'em, and Jessy couldn't nuther."
+
+"What is your mother wearing?" asked Maria.
+
+"Mr. John Dorsey he bought her some new ones," replied Mamie, and a
+light of evil intelligence came into the mean little face.
+
+"Who is Mr. John Dorsey?" asked Maria.
+
+"Oh, he's to our house considerable," replied Mamie, still with that
+evil light, which grew almost confidential, upon her face.
+
+The boy chuckled a little and dug his toes into the frozen earth,
+then he whistled.
+
+The Ramsey house was the original old homestead of the family. It was
+unspeakably decrepit and fallen from a former high estate. The old
+house presented to Maria's fancy something in itself degraded and
+loathsome. It seemed to partake actually of the character of its
+inmates--to be stained and swollen and out of plumb with
+unmentionable sins of degeneration. It was a very poisonous fungus of
+a house, with blotches of paint here and there, with its front
+portico supported drunkenly on swaying pillars, with its roof
+hollowed about the chimney, with great stains here and there upon the
+walls, which seemed like stains of sin rather than of old rains.
+Maria marched straight to the house, leading Jessy, with Mamie and
+Franky at her heels. She knocked on the door; there was no bell, of
+course. But Franky pushed past her and opened the door, and sang out,
+in his raucous voice:
+
+"Hullo, mummer! Mummer!"
+
+Mamie echoed him in her equally raucous voice, full of dissonances.
+"Mummer! Mummer!"
+
+A woman, large and dirty, but rather showily clad, with a brave
+display of cheap jewelry, appeared in the doorway of a room on the
+right, from which also issued a warm, spirituous odor, mingled with
+onions and boiling meat. The woman, who had at one time been weakly
+pretty, and even now was not bad-looking, stared with a sort of
+vacant defiance at Maria.
+
+"It's teacher, mummer," volunteered Mamie.
+
+Franky chuckled again, and again whistled. Franky's chuckles and
+whistles were characteristic of him. He often disturbed the school in
+such fashion.
+
+Maria had a vision of a man in his shirt-sleeves, smoking beside a
+red-hot stove, on which boiled the meat and onions. She began at once
+upon her errand.
+
+"How do you do, Mrs. Ramsey?" said she.
+
+The woman mumbled something inarticulate and backed a little. The man
+in the room leaned forward and rolled bloodshot eyes at her. Maria
+began at once. She had much of her mother's spirit, which, when it
+was aroused, balked at nothing. She pointed at Jessy, then she
+extended her small index-finger severely at Mrs. Ramsey.
+
+"Mrs. Ramsey," said she, and she stood so straight that she looked
+much taller, her blue eyes flashed like steel at the slinking ones of
+the older woman, "I want to inquire why you sent this child to school
+such a day as this in such a condition?"
+
+Mrs. Ramsey again murmured something inarticulate and backed still
+farther. Maria followed her quite into the room. A look of insolent
+admiration became evident in the bloodshot eyes of the man beside the
+stove. Maria had no false modesty when she was righteously incensed.
+She would have said just the same before a room full of men.
+
+"That child," she said, and she again pointed at Jessy, shivering in
+her little, scanty frock--"that child came to school to-day without
+any clothing under her dress; one of the coldest days of the year,
+too. I don't see what you are thinking of, you, her own mother, to
+let a child go out in such a condition! You ought to be ashamed of
+yourself!"
+
+Then the woman crimsoned with wrath and she found speech, the patois
+of New England, instead of New Jersey, to which Maria was accustomed,
+and which she understood. This woman, instead of half speaking, ran
+all her words together in a coarse, nasal monotone.
+
+"Hadn't nothin' to put on her," she said. "She'd outgrowed all she
+had, hadn't nothin', mind your own business, go 'long home, where you
+b'long."
+
+Maria understood the last words, and she replied, fiercely, "I am not
+going home one step until you promise me you'll get decent underwear
+for this child to wear to school," said she, "and that you won't
+allow her to go out-of-doors in this condition again. If you do, I'll
+have you arrested."
+
+The woman's face grew redder. She made a threatening movement towards
+Maria, but the man beside the stove unexpectedly arose and slouched
+between them, grinning and feeling in his pocket, whence he withdrew
+two one-dollar notes.
+
+"Here," he said, in a growling voice, which was nevertheless intended
+to be ingratiating. "Go 'n' buy the young one somethin' to go to
+school in. Don't yer mind."
+
+Maria half extended her hand, then she drew it back. She looked at
+the man, who exhaled whiskey as a fungus an evil perfume. She glanced
+at Mrs. Ramsey.
+
+"Is this man your father?" she asked of Jessy.
+
+Immediately the boy burst into a peal of meaning laughter. The man
+himself chuckled, then looked grave, with an effort, as he stood
+extending the money.
+
+"Better take 'em an' buy the young one some clothes," he said.
+
+"Who is this man?" demanded Maria, severely, of the laughing boy.
+
+"It's Mr. John Dorsey," replied Franky.
+
+Then a light of the underneath evil fire of the world broke upon
+Maria's senses. She repelled the man haughtily.
+
+"I don't want your money," said she. "But"--she turned to the
+woman--"if you send that child to school again, clothed as she is
+to-day, I will have you arrested. I mean it." With that she was gone,
+with a proud motion. Laughter rang out after her, also a scolding
+voice and an oath. She did not turn her head. She marched straight on
+out of the yard, to the street, and home.
+
+She could not eat her supper. She had a sick, shocked feeling.
+
+"What is the matter?" her aunt Maria asked. "It's so cold you can't
+have been bothered with the smells to-day."
+
+"It's worse than smells," replied Maria. Then she told her story.
+
+Her aunt stared at her. "Good gracious! You didn't go to that awful
+house, a young girl like you?" she said, and her prim cheeks burned.
+"Why, that man's livin' right there with Mrs. Ramsey, and her husband
+winking at it! They are awful people!"
+
+"I would have gone anywhere to get that poor child clothed decently,"
+said Maria.
+
+"But you wouldn't take his money!"
+
+"I rather guess I wouldn't!"
+
+"Well, I don't blame you, but I don't see what is going to be done."
+
+"I don't," said Maria, helplessly. She reflected how she had disposed
+already of her small stipend, and would not have any more for some
+time, and how her own clothing no more than sufficed for her.
+
+"I can't give her a thing," said Aunt Maria. "I'm wearin' flannels
+myself that are so patched there isn't much left of the first of 'em,
+and it's just so with the rest of my clothes. I'm wearin' a petticoat
+made out of a comfortable my mother made before Henry was married. It
+was quilted fine, and had a small pattern, if it is copperplate, but
+I don't darse hold my dress up only just so. I wouldn't have anybody
+know it for the world. And I know Eunice ain't much better off. They
+had that big doctor's bill, and I know she's patched and darned so
+she'd be ashamed of her life if she fell down on the ice and broke a
+bone. I tell you what it is, those other Ramseys ought to do
+something. I don't care if they are such distant relations, they
+ought to do something."
+
+After supper Maria and her aunt went into the other side of the
+house, and Aunt Maria, who had been waxing fairly explosive, told the
+tale of poor little Jessy Ramsey going to school with no
+undergarments.
+
+"It's a shame!" said Eunice, who was herself nervous and easily
+aroused to indignation. She sat up straight and the hollows on her
+thin cheeks blazed, and her thin New England mouth tightened.
+
+"George Ramsey ought to do something if he is earning as much as they
+say he is," said Aunt Maria.
+
+"That is so," said Eunice. "It doesn't make any difference if they
+are so distantly related. It is the same name and the same blood."
+
+Henry Stillman laughed his sardonic laugh. "You can't expect the
+flowers to look out for the weeds," he said. "George Ramsey and his
+mother are in full blossom; they have fixed up their house and are
+holding up their heads. You can't expect them to look out for poor
+relations who have gone to the bad, and done worse--got too poor to
+buy clothes enough to keep warm."
+
+Maria suddenly sprang to her feet. "I know what I am going to do,"
+she announced, with decision, and made for the door.
+
+"What on earth are you going to do?" asked her aunt Maria.
+
+"I am going straight in there, and I am going to tell them how that
+poor little thing came to school to-day, and tell them they ought to
+be ashamed of themselves."
+
+Before the others fairly realized what she was doing, Maria was out
+of the house, running across the little stretch which intervened. Her
+aunt Maria called after her, but she paid no attention. She was at
+that moment ringing the Ramsey bell, with her pretty, uncovered hair
+tossing in the December wind.
+
+"She will catch her own death of cold," said Aunt Maria, "running out
+without anything on her head."
+
+"She will just get patronized for her pains," said Eunice, who had a
+secret grudge against the Ramseys for their prosperity and their
+renovated house, a grudge which she had not ever owned to her inmost
+self, but which nevertheless existed.
+
+"She doesn't stop to think one minute; she's just like her father
+about that," said Aunt Maria.
+
+Henry Stillman said nothing. He took up his paper, which he had been
+reading when Maria and his sister entered.
+
+Meantime, Maria was being ushered into the Ramsey house by a maid who
+wore a white cap. The first thing which she noticed as she entered
+the house was a strong fragrance of flowers. That redoubled her
+indignation.
+
+"These Ramseys can buy flowers in midwinter," she thought, "while
+their own flesh and blood go almost naked."
+
+She entered the room in which the flowers were, a great bunch of pink
+carnations in a tall, green vase. The room was charming. It was not
+only luxurious, but gave evidences of superior qualities in its
+owners. It was empty when Maria entered, but soon Mrs. Ramsey and her
+son came in. Maria recognized with a start her old acquaintance, or
+rather she did not recognize him. She would not have known him at all
+had she not seen him in his home. She had not seen him before, for he
+had been away ever since she had come to Amity. He had been West on
+business for his bank. Now he at once stepped forward and spoke to
+her.
+
+"You are my old friend, Miss Edgham, I think," he said. "Allow me to
+present my mother."
+
+Maria bowed perforce before the very gentle little lady in a soft
+lavender cashmere, with her neck swathed in laces, but she did not
+accept the offered seat, and she utterly disregarded the glance of
+astonishment which both mother and son gave at her uncovered
+shoulders and head. Maria's impetuosity had come to her from two
+sides. When it was in flood, so to speak, nothing could stop it.
+
+"No, thank you, I can't sit down," she said. "I came on an errand.
+You are related, I believe, to the other Ramseys. The children go to
+my school. There are Mamie and Franky and Jessy."
+
+"We are very distantly related, and, on the whole, proud of the
+distance rather than the relationship," said George Ramsey, with a
+laugh.
+
+Then Maria turned fiercely upon him. "You ought to be ashamed of
+yourself," said she.
+
+The young man stared at her.
+
+Maria persisted. "Yes, you ought," she said. "I don't care how
+distant the relationship is, the same blood is in your veins, and you
+bear the same name."
+
+"Why, what is the matter?" asked George Ramsey, still in a puzzled,
+amused voice.
+
+Maria spoke out. "That poor little Jessy Ramsey," said she, "and she
+is the prettiest and brightest scholar I have, too, came to school
+to-day without a single stitch of clothing under her dress. It is a
+wonder she didn't die. I don't know but she will die, and if she does
+it will be your fault."
+
+George Ramsey's face suddenly sobered; his mother's flushed. She
+looked at him, then at Maria, almost with fright. She felt really
+afraid of this forcible girl, who was so very angry and so very
+pretty in her anger. Maria had never looked prettier than she did
+then, with her cheeks burning and her blue eyes flashing with
+indignation and defiance.
+
+"That is terrible, such a day as this," said George Ramsey.
+
+"Yes; I had no idea they were quite so badly off," murmured his
+mother.
+
+"You ought to have had some idea," flashed out Maria.
+
+"We had not, Miss Edgham," said George, gently. "You must remember
+how very distant the relationship is. I believe it begins with the
+fourth generation from myself. And there are other reasons--"
+
+"There ought not to be other reasons," Maria said.
+
+Mrs. Ramsey looked with wonder and something like terror and aversion
+at this pretty, violent girl, who was espousing so vehemently, not to
+say rudely, the cause of the distant relatives of her husband's
+family. The son, however, continued to smile amusedly at Maria.
+
+"Won't you sit down, Miss Edgham?" he said.
+
+"Yes, won't you sit down?" his mother repeated, feebly.
+
+"No, thank you," said Maria. "I only came about this. I--I would do
+something for the poor little thing myself, but I haven't any money
+now, and Aunt Maria would, and Uncle Henry, and Aunt Eunice, but
+they--"
+
+All at once Maria, who was hardly more than a child herself, and who
+had been in reality frightfully wrought up over the piteous plight of
+the other child, lost control of herself. She began to cry. She put
+her handkerchief to her face and sobbed helplessly.
+
+"The poor little thing! oh, the poor little thing!" she panted, "with
+nobody in the world to do anything for her, and her own people so
+terribly wicked. I--can't bear it!"
+
+The first thing she knew, Maria was having a large, soft cloak folded
+around her, and somebody was leading her gently to the door. She
+heard a murmured good-night, to which she did not respond except by a
+sob, and was led, with her arm rather closely held, along the
+sidewalk to her own door. At the door George Ramsey took her hand,
+and she felt something pressed softly into it.
+
+"If you will please buy what the poor little thing needs to make her
+comfortable," he whispered.
+
+"Thank you," Maria replied, faintly. She began to be ashamed of her
+emotion.
+
+"You must not think that my mother and I were knowing to this,"
+George Ramsey said. "We are really such very distant relations that
+the name alone is the only bond between us; still, on general
+principles, if the name had been different, I would do what I could.
+Such suffering is terrible. You must not think us hard-hearted, Miss
+Edgham."
+
+Maria looked up at the young fellow's face, upon which an electric
+light shone fully, and it was a good face to see. She could not at
+all reconcile it with her memory of the rather silly little boy with
+the patched trousers, with whom she had discoursed over the garden
+fence. This face was entirely masterly, dark and clean-cut, with fine
+eyes, and a distinctly sweet expression about the mouth which he had
+inherited from his mother.
+
+"I suppose I was very foolish," Maria said, in a low voice. "I am
+afraid I was rude to your mother. I did not mean to be, but the poor
+little thing, and this bitter day, and I went home with her, and
+there was a dreadful man there who offered me money to buy things for
+her--"
+
+"I hope you did not take it," George Ramsey said, quickly.
+
+"No."
+
+"I am glad of that. They are a bad lot. I don't know about this
+little girl. She may be a survival of the fittest, but take them all
+together they are a bad lot, if they are my relatives. Good-night,
+Miss Edgham, and I beg you not to distress yourself about it all."
+
+"I am very sorry if I was rude," Maria said, and she spoke like a
+little girl.
+
+"You were not rude at all," George responded, quickly. "You were only
+all worked up over such suffering, and it did you credit. You were
+not rude at all." He shook hands again with Maria. Then he asked if
+he might call and see her sometime. Maria said yes, and fled into the
+house.
+
+She went into her aunt Maria's side of the house, and ran straight
+up-stairs to her own room. Presently she heard doors opening and
+shutting and knew that her aunt was curiously following her from the
+other side. She came to Maria's door, which was locked. Aunt Maria
+was not surprised at that, as Maria always locked her door at
+night--she herself did the same.
+
+"Have you gone to bed?" called Aunt Maria.
+
+"Yes," replied Maria, who had, indeed, hurriedly hustled herself into
+bed.
+
+"Gone to bed early as this?" said Aunt Maria.
+
+"I am dreadfully tired," replied Maria.
+
+"Did they give you anything? Why didn't you come into the other side
+and tell us about it?"
+
+"Mr. George Ramsey gave me ten dollars."
+
+"Gracious!" said Aunt Maria.
+
+Presently she spoke again. "What did they say?" she asked.
+
+"Not much of anything."
+
+"Gave you ten dollars?" said Aunt Maria. "Well, you can get enough to
+make her real comfortable with that. Didn't you get chilled through
+going over there without anything on?"
+
+"No," replied Maria, and as she spoke she realized, in the moonlit
+room, a mass of fur-lined cloak over a chair. She had forgotten to
+return it to George Ramsey. "I had Mrs. Ramsey's cloak coming home,"
+she called.
+
+"Well, I'm glad you did. It's awful early to go to bed. Don't you
+want something?"
+
+"No, thank you."
+
+"Don't you want me to heat a soapstone and fetch it up to you?"
+
+"No, thank you."
+
+"Well, good-night," said Aunt Maria, in a puzzled voice.
+
+"Good-night," said Maria. Then she heard her aunt go away.
+
+It was a long time before Maria went to sleep. She awoke about two
+o'clock in the morning and was conscious of having been awakened by a
+strange odor, a combined odor of camphor and lavender, which came
+from Mrs. Ramsey's cloak. It disturbed her, although she could not
+tell why. Then all at once she saw, as plainly as if he were really
+in the room, George Ramsey's face. At first a shiver of delight came
+over her; then she shuddered. A horror, as of one under conviction of
+sin, came over her. It was as if she repelled an evil angel from her
+door, for she remembered all at once what had happened to her, and
+that it was a sin for her even to dream of George Ramsey; and she had
+allowed him to come into her waking dreams. She got out of bed, took
+up the soft cloak, thrust it into her closet, and shut the door. Then
+she climbed shivering back into bed, and lay there in the moonlight,
+entangled in the mystery of life.
+
+
+
+Chapter XIX
+
+
+The very next day, which was Saturday, and consequently a holiday,
+Maria went on the trolley to Westbridge, which was a provincial city
+about six miles from Amity. She proposed buying some clothing for
+Jessy Ramsey with the ten dollars which George Ramsey had given her.
+Her aunt Eunice accompanied her.
+
+"George Ramsey goes over to Westbridge on the trolley," said Eunice,
+as they jolted along--the cars were very well equipped, but the road
+was rough--"and I shouldn't wonder if he was on our car coming back."
+
+Maria colored quickly and looked out of the window. The cars were
+constructed like those on steam railroads, with seats facing towards
+the front, and Maria's aunt had insisted upon her sitting next to the
+window because the view was in a measure new to her. She had not been
+over the road many times since she had come to Amity. She stared out
+at the trimly kept country road, lined with cheap Queen Anne houses
+and the older type of New England cottages and square frame houses,
+and it all looked strange to her after the red soil and the lapse
+towards Southern ease and shiftlessness of New Jersey. But nothing
+that she looked upon was as strange as the change in her own heart.
+Maria, from being of an emotional nature, had many times considered
+herself as being in love, young as she was, but this was different.
+When her aunt Eunice spoke of George Ramsey she felt a rigid shiver
+from head to foot. It seemed to her that she could not see him nor
+speak to him, that she could not return to Amity on the same car. She
+made no reply at first to her aunt's remark, but finally she said, in
+a faint voice, that she supposed Mr. Ramsey came home after bank
+hours at three o'clock.
+
+"He comes home a good deal later than that, as a general thing," said
+Eunice. "Oftener than not I see him get off the car at six o'clock. I
+guess he stays and works after bank hours. George Ramsey is a worker,
+if there ever was one. He's a real likely young man."
+
+Maria felt Eunice's eyes upon her, and realized that she was
+thinking, as her aunt Maria had done, that George Ramsey would be a
+good match for her. A sort of desperation seized upon her.
+
+"I don't know what you mean by likely," Maria said, impertinently, in
+her shame and defiance.
+
+"Don't know what I mean by likely?"
+
+"No, I don't. People in New Jersey don't say likely."
+
+"Why, I mean he is a good young man, and likely to turn out well,"
+responded Eunice, rather helplessly. She was a very gentle woman, and
+had all her life been more or less intimidated by her husband's and
+sister-in-laws' more strenuous natures; and, if the truth were told,
+she stood in a little awe of this blooming young niece, with her
+self-possession and clothes of the New York fashion.
+
+"I don't see why he is more _likely_, as you call it, than any other
+young man," Maria returned, pitilessly. "I should call him a very
+ordinary young man."
+
+"He isn't called so generally," Eunice said, feebly.
+
+They were about half an hour reaching Westbridge. Eunice by that time
+had plucked up a little spirit. She reflected that Maria knew almost
+nothing about the shopping district, and she herself had shopped
+there all her life since she had been of shopping age. Eunice had a
+great respect for the Westbridge stores, and considered them
+distinctly superior to those of Boston. She was horrified when Maria
+observed, shortly before they got off the car, that she supposed they
+could have done much better in Boston.
+
+"I guess you will find that Adams & Wood's is as good a store as any
+you could go to in New York," said Eunice. "Then there is the Boston
+Store, too, and Collins & Green's. All of them are very good, and
+they have a good assortment. Hardly anybody in Amity goes anywhere
+else shopping, they think the Westbridge stores so much better."
+
+"Of course it is cheaper to come here," said Maria, as they got off
+the car in front of Adams & Wood's.
+
+"That isn't the reason," said Eunice, eagerly. "Why, Mrs. Judge
+Saunders buys 'most everything here; says she can do enough sight
+better than she can anywhere else."
+
+"If the dress Mrs. Saunders had on at the church supper was a sample,
+she dresses like a perfect guy," said Maria, as they entered the
+store, with its two pretentious show-windows filled with waxen ladies
+dressed in the height of the fashion, standing in the midst of
+symmetrically arranged handkerchiefs and rugs.
+
+Maria knew that she was even cruelly pert to her aunt, but she felt
+like stinging--like crowding some of the stings out of her own heart.
+She asked herself was ever any girl so horribly placed as she was,
+married, and not married; and now she had seen some one else whom she
+must shun and try to hate, although she wished to love him. Maria
+felt instinctively, remembering the old scenes over the garden fence,
+and remembering how she herself had looked that very day as she
+started out, with her puffy blue velvet turban rising above the soft
+roll of her fair hair and her face blooming through a film of brown
+lace, and also remembering George Ramsey's tone as he asked if he
+might call, that if she were free that things might happen with her
+as with other girls; that she and George Ramsey might love each
+other, and become engaged; that she might save her school money for a
+trousseau, and by-and-by be married to a man of whom she should be
+very proud. The patches on George Ramsey's trousers became very dim
+to her. She admired him from the depths of her heart.
+
+"I guess we had better look at flannels first," Eunice said. "It
+won't do to get all wool, aside from the expense, for with that
+Ramsey woman's washing it wouldn't last any time."
+
+She and her aunt made most of their purchases in Adams & Wood's. They
+succeeded in obtaining quite a comfortable little outfit for Jessy
+Ramsey, and at last boarded a car laden with packages. Eunice had a
+fish-net bag filled to overflowing, but Maria, who, coming from the
+vicinity of New York, looked down on bags, carried her parcels in her
+arms.
+
+Directly they were seated in the car Eunice gave Maria a violent
+nudge with her sharp elbow. "He's on this car," she whispered in her
+ear, with a long hiss which seemed to penetrate the girl's brain.
+
+Maria made an impatient movement.
+
+"Don't you think you ought to just step over and thank him?"
+whispered Eunice. "I'll hold your bundles. He's on the other side, a
+seat farther back. He raised his hat to me."
+
+"Hush! I can't here."
+
+"Well, all right, but I thought it would look sort of polite," said
+Eunice. Then she subsided. Once in a while she glanced back at George
+Ramsey, then uneasily at her niece, but she said nothing more.
+
+The car was crowded. Workmen smelling of leather clung to the straps.
+One, in the aisle next Maria, who sat on the outside this time,
+leaned fairly against her. He was a good-looking young fellow, but he
+had a heavy jaw. He held an unlighted pipe in his mouth, and carried
+a two-story tin dinner-pail. Maria kept shrinking closer to her aunt,
+but the young man pressed against her all the more heavily. His eyes
+were fixed with seeming unconsciousness ahead, but a furtive smile
+lurked around his mouth.
+
+George Ramsey was watching. All at once he arose and quietly and
+unobtrusively came forward, insinuated himself with a gentle force
+between Maria and the workman, and spoke to her. The workman muttered
+something under his breath, but moved aside. He gave an ugly glance
+at George, who did not seem to see him at all. Presently he sat down
+in George's vacated seat beside another man, who said something to
+him with a coarse chuckle. The man growled in response, and continued
+to scowl furtively at George, who stood talking to Maria. He said
+something about the fineness of the day, and Maria responded rather
+gratefully. She was conscious of an inward tumult which alarmed her,
+and made her defiant both at the young man and herself, but she could
+not help responding to the sense of protection which she got from his
+presence. She had not been accustomed to anything like the rudeness
+of the young workman. In New Jersey caste was more clearly defined.
+Here it was not defined at all. An employe in a shoe-factory had not
+the slightest conception that he was not the social equal of a
+school-teacher, and indeed in many cases he was. There were by no
+means all like this one, whose mere masculine estate filled him with
+entire self-confidence where women were concerned. In a sense his
+ignorance was pathetic. He had honestly thought that the pretty,
+strange girl must like his close contact, and he felt aggrieved that
+this other young man, who did not smell of leather and carried no
+dinner-pail, had ousted him. He viewed Maria's delicate profile with
+a sort of angry tenderness.
+
+"Say, she's a beaut, ain't she?" whispered the man beside him, with a
+malicious grin, and again got a surly growl in response.
+
+Maria finally, much to her aunt's delight, said to George that they
+had been shopping, and thanked him for the articles which his money
+had enabled them to buy.
+
+"The poor little thing can go to school now," said Maria. There was
+gratitude in her voice, and yet, oddly enough, still a tinge of
+reproach.
+
+"If mother and I had dreamed of the true state of affairs we would
+have done something before," George Ramsey said, with an accent of
+apology; and yet he could not see for the life of him why he should
+be apologetic for the poverty of these degenerate relatives of his.
+He could not see why he was called upon to be his brother's keeper in
+this case, but there was something about Maria's serious, accusing
+gaze of blue eyes, and her earnest voice, that made him realize that
+he could prostrate himself before her for uncommitted sins. Somehow,
+Maria made him feel responsible for all that he might have done wrong
+as well as his actual wrong-doing, although he laughed at himself for
+his mental attitude. Suddenly a thought struck him. "When are you
+going to take all these things (how you ever managed to get so much
+for ten dollars I don't understand) to the child?" he asked, eagerly.
+
+Maria replied, unguardedly, that she intended to take them after
+supper that night. "Then she will have them all ready for Monday,"
+she said.
+
+"Then let me go with you and carry the parcels," George Ramsey said,
+eagerly.
+
+Maria stiffened. "Thank you," she said, "but Uncle Henry is going
+with me, and there is no need."
+
+Maria felt her aunt Eunice give a sudden start and make an
+inarticulate murmur of remonstrance, then she checked herself. Maria
+knew that her uncle walked a mile from his factory to save car-fare;
+she knew also that she was telling what was practically an untruth,
+since she had made no agreement with her uncle to accompany her.
+
+"I should be happy to go with you," said George Ramsey, in a boyish,
+abashed voice.
+
+Maria said nothing more. She looked past her aunt out of the window.
+The full moon was rising, and all at once all the girl's sweet light
+of youthful romance appeared again above her mental horizon. She felt
+that it would be almost heaven to walk with George Ramsey in that
+delicious moonlight, in the clear, frosty air, and take little Jessy
+Ramsey her gifts. Maria was of an almost abnormal emotional nature,
+although there was little that was material about the emotion. She
+dreamed of that walk as she might have dreamed of a walk with a fairy
+prince through fairy-land, and her dream was as innocent, but it
+unnerved her. She said again, in a tremulous voice, that she was very
+much obliged, and murmured something again about her uncle Henry; and
+George Ramsey replied, with a certain sober dignity, that he should
+have been very happy.
+
+Soon after that the car stopped to let off some passengers, and
+George moved to a vacant seat in front. He did not turn around again.
+Maria looked at his square shoulders and again gazed past her aunt at
+the full orb of the moon rising with crystalline splendor in the pale
+amber of the east. There was a clear gold sunset which sent its
+reflection over the whole sky.
+
+Presently, Eunice spoke in her little, deprecating voice, which had a
+slight squeak.
+
+"Did you speak to your uncle Henry about going with you this
+evening?" she asked.
+
+"No, I didn't," admitted Maria, reddening, "but I knew he would be
+willing."
+
+"I suppose he will be," said Eunice. "But he does get home awful
+tuckered out Saturday nights, and he always takes his bath Saturday
+nights, too."
+
+Eunice looked out of the window with a slight frown. She adored her
+husband, and the thought of that long walk for him on his weary
+Saturday evening, and the possible foregoing of his bath, troubled
+her.
+
+"I don't believe George Ramsey liked it," she whispered, after a
+little.
+
+"I can't help it if he didn't," replied Maria. "I can't go with him,
+Aunt Eunice."
+
+As they jolted along, Maria made up her mind that she would not ask
+her uncle to go with her at all; that she would slip out unknown to
+Aunt Maria and ask the girl who lived in the house on the other side,
+Lily Merrill, to go with her. She thought that two girls need not be
+afraid, and she could start early.
+
+As she parted from her aunt Eunice at the door of the house, after
+they had left the car (Eunice's door was on the side where the
+Ramseys lived, and Maria's on the Merrill side), she told her of her
+resolution.
+
+"Don't say anything to Uncle Henry about going with me," said she.
+
+"Why, what are you going to do?"
+
+"I'll get Lily Merrill. I know she won't mind."
+
+Maria and Lily Merrill had been together frequently since Maria had
+come to Amity, and Eunice accounted them as intimate. She looked
+hesitatingly a second at her niece, then she said, with an evident
+air of relief:
+
+"Well, I don't know but you can. It's bright moonlight, and it's late
+in the season for tramps. I don't see why you two girls can't go
+together, if you start early."
+
+"We'll start right after supper," said Maria.
+
+"I would," said Eunice, still with an air of relief.
+
+Maria took her aunt's fish-net bag, as well as her own parcels, and
+carried them around to her aunt Maria's side of the house, and
+deposited them on the door-step. There was a light in the kitchen,
+and she could see her aunt Maria's shadow moving behind the curtain,
+preparing supper. Then she ran across the yard, over the frozen
+furrows of a last year's garden, and knocked at the side-door of the
+Merrill house.
+
+Lily herself opened the door, and gave a little, loving cry of
+surprise. "Why, is it you, dear?" she said.
+
+"Yes. I want to know if you can go over the river with me to-night on
+an errand?"
+
+"Over the river? Where?"
+
+"Oh, only to Jessy Ramsey's. Aunt Eunice and I have been to
+Westbridge and bought these things for her, and I want to carry them
+to her to-night. I thought maybe you would go with me."
+
+Lily hesitated. "It's a pretty lonesome walk," said she, "and there
+are an awful set of people on the other side of the river."
+
+"Oh, nonsense!" cried Maria. "You aren't afraid--we two together--and
+it's bright moonlight, as bright as day."
+
+"Yes, I know it is," replied Lily, gazing out at the silver light
+which flooded everything, but she still hesitated. A light in the
+house behind gave her a background of light. She was a beautiful
+girl, prettier than Maria, taller, and with a timid, pliant grace.
+Her brown hair tossed softly over her big, brown eyes, which were
+surmounted by strongly curved eyebrows, her nose was small, and her
+mouth, and she had a fascinating little way of holding her lips
+slightly parted, as if ready for a loving word or a kiss. Everybody
+said that Lily Merrill had a beautiful disposition, albeit some
+claimed that she lacked force. Maria dominated her, although she did
+not herself know it. Lily continued to hesitate with her beautiful,
+startled brown eyes on Maria's face.
+
+"Aren't you afraid?" she said.
+
+"Afraid? No. What should I be afraid of? Why, it's bright moonlight!
+I would just as soon go at night as in the daytime when the moon is
+bright."
+
+"That is an awful man who lives at the Ramseys'!"
+
+"Nonsense! I guess if he tried to bother us, Mrs. Ramsey would take
+care of him," said Maria. "Come along, Lily. I would ask Uncle Henry,
+but it is the night when he takes his bath, and he comes home tired."
+
+"Well, I'll go if mother will let me," said Lily.
+
+Then Lily called to her mother, who came to the sitting-room door in
+response.
+
+"Mother," said Lily, "Maria wants me to go over to the Ramseys',
+those on the other side of the river, after supper, and carry these
+things to Jessy."
+
+"Aren't you afraid?" asked Lily's mother, as Lily herself had done.
+She was a faded but still pretty woman who had looked like her
+daughter in her youth. She was a widow with some property, enough for
+her Lily and herself to live on in comfort.
+
+"Why, it's bright moonlight, Mrs. Merrill," said Maria, "and the
+Ramseys live just the other side of the river."
+
+"Well, if Lily isn't afraid, I don't care," said Mrs. Merrill. She
+had an ulterior motive for her consent, of which neither of the two
+girls suspected her. She was smartly dressed, and her hair was
+carefully crimped, and she had, as always in the evening, hopes that
+a certain widower, the resident physician of Amity, Dr. Ellridge,
+might call. He had noticed her several times at church suppers, and
+once had walked home with her from an evening meeting. Lily never
+dreamed that her mother had aspirations towards a second husband. Her
+father had been dead ten years; the possibility of any one in his
+place had never occurred to her; then, too, she looked upon her
+mother as entirely too old for thoughts of that kind. But Mrs.
+Merrill had her own views, which she kept concealed behind her
+pretty, placid exterior. She always welcomed the opportunity of being
+left alone of an evening, because she realized the very serious
+drawback that the persistent presence of a pretty, well-grown
+daughter might be if a wooer would wish to woo. She knew perfectly
+well that if Dr. Ellridge called, Lily would wonder why he called,
+and would sit all the evening in the same room with her fancy-work,
+entirely unsuspicious. Lily might even think he came to see her. Mrs.
+Merrill had a measure of slyness and secrecy which her daughter did
+not inherit. Lily was not brilliant, but she was as entirely sweet
+and open as the flower for which she was named. She was emotional,
+too, with an innocent emotionlessness, and very affectionate. Mrs.
+Merrill made almost no objection to Lily's going with Maria, but
+merely told her to wrap up warmly when she went out. Lily looked
+charming, with a great fur boa around her long, slender throat, and
+red velvet roses nestling under the brim of her black hat against the
+soft puff of her brown hair. She bent over her mother and kissed her.
+
+"I hope you won't be very lonesome, mother dear," she said.
+
+Mrs. Merrill blushed a little. To-night she had confident hopes of
+the doctor's calling; she had even resolved upon a coup. "Oh no, I
+shall not be lonesome," she replied. "Norah isn't going out, you
+know."
+
+"We shall not be gone long, anyway," Lily said, as she went out. She
+had not even noticed her mother's blush. She was not very acute. She
+ran across the yard, the dry grass of which shone like a carpet of
+crisp silver in the moonlight, and knocked on Maria's door. Maria
+answered her knock. She was all ready, and she had her aunt Eunice's
+fish-net bag and her armful of parcels.
+
+"Here, let me take some of them, dear," said Lily, in her cooing
+voice, and she gathered up some of the parcels under her long, supple
+arm.
+
+Maria's aunt Maria followed her to the door. "Now, mind you don't go
+into that house," said she. "Just leave the things and run right
+home; and if you see anybody who looks suspicious, go right up to a
+house and knock. I don't feel any too safe about you two girls going,
+anyway."
+
+Aunt Maria spoke in a harsh, croaking voice; she had a cold. Maria
+seized her by the shoulders and pushed her back, laughingly.
+
+"You go straight in the house," said she. "And don't you worry. Lily
+and I both have hat-pins, and we can both run, and there's nothing to
+be afraid of, anyway."
+
+"Well, I don't half like the idea," croaked Aunt Maria, retreating.
+
+Lily and Maria went on their way. Lily looked affectionately at her
+companion, whose pretty face gained a singular purity of beauty from
+the moonlight.
+
+"How good you are, dear," she said.
+
+"Nonsense!" replied Maria. Somehow all at once the consciousness of
+her secret, which was always with her, like some hidden wound, stung
+her anew. She thought suddenly how Lily would not think her good at
+all if she knew what an enormous secret she was hiding from her, of
+what duplicity she was guilty.
+
+"Yes, you are good," said Lily, "to take all this trouble to get that
+poor little thing clothes."
+
+"Oh, as for that," said Maria, "Mr. George Ramsey is the one to be
+thanked. It was his money that bought the things, you know."
+
+"He is good, too," said Lily, and her voice was like a song with
+cadences of tenderness.
+
+Maria started and glanced at her, then looked away again. A qualm of
+jealousy, of which she was ashamed, seized her. She gave her head a
+toss, and repeated, with a sort of defiance, "Yes, he is good enough,
+I suppose."
+
+"I think you are real sweet," said Lily, "and I do think George
+Ramsey is splendid."
+
+"I don't see anything very remarkable about him," said Maria.
+
+"Don't you think he is handsome?"
+
+"I don't know. I don't suppose I ever think much about a man being
+handsome. I don't like handsome men, anyway. I don't like men,
+anyway, when it comes to that."
+
+"George Ramsey is very nice," said Lily, and there was an accent in
+her speech which made the other girl glance at her. Lily's face was
+turned aside, although she was clinging close to Maria's arm, for she
+was in reality afraid of being out in the night with another girl.
+
+They walked along in silence after that. When they came to the
+covered bridge which crossed the river, Lily forced Maria into a run
+until they reached the other side.
+
+"It is awful in here," she said, in a fearful whisper.
+
+Maria laughed. She herself did not feel the least fear, although she
+was more imaginative than the other girl. At that time a kind of rage
+against life itself possessed her which made her insensible to
+ordinary fear. She felt that she had been hardly used, and she was,
+in a measure, at bay. She knew that she could fight anything until
+she died, and beyond that there was nothing certainly to fear. She
+had become abnormal because of her strained situation as regarded
+society. However, she ran because Lily wished her to do so, and they
+soon emerged from the dusty tunnel of the bridge, with its strong
+odor of horses, and glimpses between the sides of the silver current
+of the river, into the moon-flooded road.
+
+After the bridge came the school-house, then, a half-mile beyond
+that, the Ramsey house. The front windows were blazing with light,
+and the sound of a loud, drunken voice came from within.
+
+Lily shrank and clung closely to Maria.
+
+"Oh, Maria, I am awfully afraid to go to the door," she whispered.
+"Just hear that. Eugene Ramsey must be home drunk, and--and perhaps
+the other man, too. I am afraid. Don't let's go there."
+
+Maria looked about her. "You see that board fence, then?" she said to
+Lily, and as she spoke she pointed to a high board fence on the other
+side of the street, which was completely in shadow.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, if you are afraid, just go and stand straight against the
+fence. You will be in shadow, and if you don't move nobody can
+possibly see you. Then I will go to the door and leave the things."
+
+"Oh, Maria, aren't you afraid?"
+
+"No, I am not a bit afraid."
+
+"You won't go in, honest?"
+
+"No, I won't go in. Run right over there."
+
+Lily released her hold of Maria's arm and made a fluttering break for
+the fence, against which she shrank and became actually invisible as
+a shadow. Maria marched up to the Ramsey door and knocked loudly.
+Mrs. Ramsey came to the door, and Maria thrust the parcels into her
+hands and began pulling them rapidly out of the fish-net bag. Mrs.
+Ramsey cast a glance behind her at the lighted room, through which
+was visible the same man whom Maria had seen before, and also
+another, and swung the door rapidly together, so that she stood in
+the dark entry, only partly lighted by the moonlight.
+
+"I have brought some things for Jessy to wear to school, Mrs.
+Ramsey," said Maria.
+
+"Thank you," Mrs. Ramsey mumbled, doubtfully, with still another
+glance at the closed door, through which shone lines and chinks of
+light.
+
+"There are enough for her to be warmly clothed, and you will see to
+it that she has them on, won't you?" said Maria. Her voice was quite
+sweet and ingratiating, and not at all patronizing.
+
+Suddenly the woman made a clutch at her arm. "You are a good young
+one, doin' so much for my young one," she whispered. "Now you'd
+better git up and git. They've been drinkin'. Git!"
+
+"You will see that Jessy has the things to wear Monday, won't you?"
+said Maria.
+
+"Sure." Suddenly the woman wiped her eyes and gave a maudlin sob.
+"You're a good young one," she whimpered. "Now, git."
+
+Maria ran across the road as the door closed after her. She did not
+know that Mrs. Ramsey had given the parcels which she had brought a
+toss into another room, and when she entered the room in which the
+men were carousing and was asked who had come to the door, had
+replied, "The butcher for his bill," to be greeted with roars of
+laughter. She did, indeed, hear the roars of laughter. Lily slunk
+along swiftly beside the fence by her side. Maria caught her by the
+arm. Curiously enough, while she was not afraid for herself, she did
+feel a little fear now for her companion. The two girls hurried until
+they reached the bridge, and ran the whole length. On the other side,
+coming into the lighted main street of Amity, they felt quite safe.
+
+"Did you see any of those dreadful men?" gasped Lily.
+
+"I just caught a glimpse of them, then Mrs. Ramsey shut the door,"
+said Maria.
+
+"They were drunk, weren't they?"
+
+"I shouldn't wonder."
+
+"I do think it was an awful place to go to," said Lily, with a little
+sigh of relief that she was out of it.
+
+The girls went along the street until they reached the Ramsey house,
+next the one where Maria lived. Suddenly a man's figure appeared from
+the gate. It was almost as if he had been watching.
+
+"Good-evening," he said, and the girls saw that he was George Ramsey.
+
+"Good-evening, Mr. Ramsey," responded Maria. She felt Lily's arm
+tremble in hers. George walked along with them. "I have been to carry
+the presents which I bought with your money," said Maria.
+
+"Good heavens! You don't mean that you two girls have been all alone
+up there?" said George.
+
+"Why, yes," said Maria. "Why not?"
+
+"Weren't you afraid?"
+
+"Maria isn't afraid of anything," Lily's sweet, little, tremulous
+voice piped on the other side.
+
+George was walking next Maria. There was a slight and very gentle
+accusation in the voice.
+
+"It wasn't safe," said George, soberly, "and I should have been glad
+to go with you."
+
+Maria laughed. "Well, here we are, safe and sound," she said. "I
+didn't see anything to be much afraid of."
+
+"All the same, they are an awful set there," said George. They had
+reached Maria's door, and he added, "Suppose you walk along with me,
+Miss Edgham, and I will see Lily home." George had been to school
+with Lily, and had always called her by her first name.
+
+Maria again felt that little tremor of Lily's arm in hers, and did
+not understand it. "All right," she said.
+
+The three walked to Lily's door, and had said good-night, when Lily,
+who was, after all, the daughter of her mother, although her little
+artifices were few and innocent, had an inspiration. She discovered
+that she had lost her handkerchief.
+
+"I think I took it out when we reached your gate, Mr. Ramsey," she
+said, timidly, for she felt guilty.
+
+It was quite true that the handkerchief was not in her muff, in which
+she had carried it, but there was a pocket in her coat which she did
+not investigate.
+
+They turned back, looking along the frozen ground.
+
+"Never mind," Lily said, cheerfully, when they had reached the Ramsey
+gate and returned to the Edgham's, and the handkerchief was not
+forthcoming, "it was an old one, anyway. Good-night."
+
+She knew quite well that George Edgham would do what he did--walk
+home with her the few steps between her house and Maria's, and that
+Maria would not hesitate to say good-night and enter her own door.
+
+"I guess I had better go right in," said Maria. "Aunt Maria has a
+cold, and she may worry and be staying up."
+
+Lily was entirely happy at walking those few steps with George
+Ramsey. He had pulled her little hand through his arm in a school-boy
+sort of fashion. He left her at the door with a friendly good-night,
+but she had got what she wanted. He had not gone those few steps
+alone with Maria. Lily loved Maria, but she did not want George
+Ramsey to love her.
+
+When Lily entered the house, to her great astonishment she found Dr.
+Ellridge there. He was seated beside her mother, who was lying on the
+sofa.
+
+"Why, mother, what is it--are you sick?" Lily cried, anxiously, while
+the doctor looked with admiration at her face, glowing with the cold.
+
+"I had one of my attacks after supper, and sent Norah for Dr.
+Ellridge. I thought I had better," Mrs. Merrill explained, feebly.
+She sighed and looked at the doctor, who understood perfectly, but
+did not betray himself. He was, in fact, rather flattered.
+
+"Yes, your mother has been feeling quite badly, but she will be all
+right now," he said to Lily.
+
+"I am sorry you did not feel well, mother," Lily said, sweetly. Then
+she got her fancy-work from her little silk bag on the table and
+seated herself, after removing her wraps.
+
+Her mother sighed. The doctor's mouth assumed a little, humorous
+pucker.
+
+Lily looked at her mother with affectionate interest. She was quite
+accustomed to slight attacks of indigestion which her mother often
+had, and was not much alarmed, still she felt a little anxious. "You
+are sure you are better, mother?" she said.
+
+"Oh yes, she is much better," the doctor answered for her. "There is
+nothing for you to be alarmed about."
+
+"I am so glad," said Lily.
+
+She took another stitch in her fancy-work, and her beautiful face
+took on an almost seraphic expression; she was thinking of George
+Ramsey. She hardly noticed when the doctor took his leave, and she
+did not in the least understand her mother's sigh when the door
+closed. For her the gates of love were wide open, but she had no
+conception that for her mother they were not shut until she should go
+to heaven to join her father.
+
+
+
+Chapter XX
+
+
+The next evening Maria, as usual, went to church with her two aunts.
+Henry Stillman remained at home reading the Sunday paper. He took a
+certain delight in so doing, although he knew, in the depths of his
+soul, that his delight was absurd. He knew perfectly well that it did
+not make a feather's weight of difference in the universal scheme of
+things that he, Henry Stillman, should remain at home and read the
+columns of scandal and politics in that paper, instead of going to
+church, and yet he liked to think that his small individuality and
+its revolt because of its injuries at the hands of fate had its
+weight, and was at least a small sting of revenge.
+
+He watched his wife adjust her bonnet before the looking-glass in the
+sitting-room, and arrange carefully the bow beneath her withered
+chin, and a great pity for her, because she was no longer as she had
+been, but was so heavily marked by time, and a great jealousy that
+she should not lose the greatest of all things, which he himself had
+lost, came over him. As she--a little, prim, mild woman, in her
+old-fashioned winter cape and her bonnet, with its stiff tuft of
+velvet pansies--passed him, he caught her thin, black-gloved hand and
+drew her close to him.
+
+"I'm glad you are going to church, Eunice," he said.
+
+Eunice colored, and regarded him with a kind of abashed wonder.
+
+"Why don't you come, too, Henry?" she said, timidly.
+
+"No, I've quit," replied Henry. "I've quit begging where I don't get
+any alms; but as for you, if you get anything that satisfies your
+soul, for God's sake hold on to it, Eunice, and don't let it go."
+Then he pulled her bonneted head down and kissed her thin lips, with
+a kind of tenderness which was surprising. "You've been a good wife,
+Eunice," he said.
+
+Eunice laid her hand on his shoulder and looked at him a second. She
+was almost frightened. Outward evidences of affection had not been
+frequent between them of late years, or indeed ever. They were
+New-Englanders to the marrow of their bones. Anything like an
+outburst of feeling or sentiment, unless in case of death or
+disaster, seemed abnormal. Henry realized his wife's feeling, and he
+smiled up at her.
+
+"We are getting to be old folks," he said, "and we've had more bitter
+than sweet in life, and we have neither of us ever said much as to
+how we felt to each other, but--I never loved you as much as I love
+you now, Eunice, and I've taken it into my head to say it."
+
+Eunice's lips quivered a little and her eyes reddened. "There ain't a
+woman in Amity who has had so good a husband as I have all these
+years, if you don't go to meeting," she replied. Then she added,
+after a second's pause: "I didn't know as you did feel just as you
+used to, Henry. I didn't know as any man did. I know I've lost my
+looks, and--"
+
+"I can seem to see your looks, brighter than ever they were, in your
+heart," said Henry. He colored himself a little at his own sentiment.
+Then he pulled her face down to his again and gave her a second kiss.
+"Now run along to your meeting," he said. "Have you got enough on?
+The wind sounds cold."
+
+"Yes," replied Eunice. "This cape's real thick. I put a new lining in
+it this winter, you know, and, besides, I've got my crocheted jacket
+under it. I'm as warm as toast."
+
+Eunice, after she had gone out in the keen night air with her
+sister-in-law and her niece, reflected with more uneasiness than
+pleasure upon her husband's unwonted behavior.
+
+"Does it seem to you that Henry looks well lately?" she asked the
+elder Maria, as they hurried along.
+
+"Yes; why not?" returned Maria.
+
+"I don't know. It seems to me he's been losing flesh."
+
+"Nonsense!" said Maria. "I never saw him looking better than he does
+now. I was thinking only this morning that he was making a better,
+healthier old man than he was as a young man. But I do wish he would
+go to meeting. I don't think his mind is right about some things.
+Suppose folks do have troubles. They ought to be led to the Lord by
+them, instead of pulling back. Henry hasn't had anything more to
+worry him, nor half as much, as most men. He don't take things right.
+He ought to go to meeting."
+
+"I guess he's just as good as a good many who do go to meeting,"
+returned Eunice, with unwonted spirit.
+
+"I don't feel competent to judge as to that," replied Maria, with a
+tone of aggravating superiority. Then she added, "'By their works ye
+shall know them.'"
+
+"I would give full as much for Henry's chances as for some who go to
+meeting every Sunday of their lives," said Eunice, with still more
+spirit. "And as for trials, they weigh heavier on some than on
+others."
+
+Then young Maria, who had been listening uneasily, broke in. She felt
+herself a strong partisan of her Aunt Eunice, for she adored her
+uncle, but she merely said that she thought Uncle Henry did look a
+little thin, and she supposed he was tired Sunday, and it was the
+only day he had to rest; then she abruptly changed the whole subject
+by wondering if the Ramseys across the river would let Jessy go to
+church if she trimmed a hat for her with some red velvet and a
+feather which she had in her possession.
+
+"No, they wouldn't!" replied her aunt Maria, sharply, at once
+diverted. "I can tell you just exactly what they would do, if you
+were to trim up a hat with that red velvet and that feather and give
+it to that young one. Her good-for-nothing mother would have it on
+her own head in no time, and go flaunting out in it with that man
+that boards there."
+
+Nothing could excel the acrimonious accent with which Aunt Maria
+weighed down the "man who boards there," and the acrimony was
+heightened by the hoarseness of her voice. Her cold was still far
+from well, but Aunt Maria stayed at home from church for nothing
+short of pneumonia.
+
+The church was about half a mile distant. The meeting was held in a
+little chapel built out like an architectural excrescence at the side
+of the great, oblong, wooden structure, with its piercing steeple.
+The chapel windows blazed with light. People were flocking in. As
+they entered, a young lady began to play on an out-of-tune piano,
+which Judge Josiah Saunders had presented to the church. She played a
+Moody-and-Sankey hymn as a sort of prologue, although nobody sang it.
+It was a curious custom which prevailed in the Amity church. A
+Moody-and-Sankey hymn was always played in evening meetings instead
+of the morning voluntary on the great organ.
+
+Maria and her two aunts moved forward and seated themselves. Maria
+looked absently at the smooth expanse of hair which showed below the
+hat of the girl who was playing. The air was played very slowly,
+otherwise the little audience might have danced a jig to it. Maria
+thought of the meetings which she used to attend in Edgham, and how
+she used to listen to the plaint of the whippoorwill on the
+river-bank while the little organ gave out its rich, husky drone.
+This, somehow, did not seem so religious to her. She remembered how
+she had used to be conscious of Wollaston Lee's presence, and how she
+had hoped he would walk home with her, and she reflected with what
+shame and vague terror she now held him constantly in mind. Then she
+thought of George Ramsey, and directly, without seeing him, she
+became aware that he was seated on her right and was furtively
+glancing at her. A wild despair seized her at the thought that he
+might offer to accompany her home, and how she must not allow it, and
+how she wanted him to do so. She kept her head steadfastly averted.
+The meeting dragged on. Men rose and spoke and prayed, at intervals
+the out-of-tune piano was invoked. A woman behind Maria sang
+contralto with a curious effect, as if her head were in a tin-pail.
+There were odd, dull, metallic echoes about it which filled the whole
+chapel. The woman's daughter had some cheap perfume on her
+handkerchief, and she was incessantly removing it from her muff. A
+man at the left coughed a good deal. Maria saw in front of her Lily
+Merrill's graceful brown head, in a charming hat with red roses under
+the brim, and a long, soft, brown feather. Lily's mother was not with
+her. Dr. Ellridge did not attend evening meetings, and Mrs. Merrill
+always remained at home in the hope that he might call.
+
+After church was over, Maria stuck closely to her aunts. She even
+pushed herself between them, but they did not abet her. Both Eunice
+and Aunt Maria had seen George Ramsey, and they had their own views.
+Maria could not tell how it happened, but at the door of the chapel
+she found herself separated from both her aunts, and George Ramsey
+was asking if he might accompany her home. Maria obeyed her
+instincts, although the next moment she could have killed herself for
+it. She smiled, and bowed, and tucked her little hand into the crook
+of the young man's offered arm. She did not see her aunts exchanging
+glances of satisfaction.
+
+"It will be a real good chance for her," said Eunice.
+
+"Hush, or somebody will hear you," said Maria, in a sharp, pleased
+tone, as she and her sister-in-law walked together down the moonlit
+street.
+
+Maria did not see Lily Merrill's start and look of piteous despair as
+she took George's arm. Lily was just behind her. Maria, in fact, saw
+nothing. She might have been walking in a vacuum of emotion.
+
+"It is a beautiful evening," said George Ramsey, and his voice
+trembled a little.
+
+"Yes, beautiful," replied Maria.
+
+Afterwards, thinking over their conversation, she could not remember
+that they had talked about anything else except the beauty of the
+evening, but had dwelt incessantly upon it, like the theme of a song.
+
+The aunts lagged behind purposely, and Maria went in Eunice's door.
+She thought that her niece would ask George to come in and she would
+not be in the way. Henry looked inquiringly at the two women, who had
+an air of mystery, and Maria responded at once to his unspoken
+question.
+
+"George Ramsey is seeing her home," she said, "and the front-door key
+is under the mat, and I thought Maria could ask him in, and I would
+go home through the cellar, and not be in the way. Three is a
+company." Maria said the last platitude with a silly simper.
+
+"I never saw anything like you women," said Henry, with a look of
+incredulous amusement. "I suppose you both of you have been making
+her wedding-dress, and setting her up house-keeping, instead of
+listening to the meeting."
+
+"I heard every word," returned Maria, with dignity, "and it was a
+very edifying meeting. It would have done some other folks good if
+they had gone, and as for Maria, she can't teach school all her days,
+and here is her father with a second wife."
+
+"Well, you women do beat the Dutch," said her brother, with a
+tenderly indulgent air, as if he were addressing children.
+
+Aunt Maria lingered in her brother's side of the house, talking about
+various topics. She hesitated even about her stealthy going through
+the cellar, lest she should disturb Maria and her possible lover. Now
+and then she listened. She stood close to the wall. Finally she said,
+with a puzzled look to Eunice, who was smoothing out her
+bonnet-strings, "It's queer, but I can't hear them talking."
+
+"Maybe he didn't come in," said Eunice.
+
+"If they are in the parlor, you couldn't hear them," said Henry,
+still with his half-quizzical, half-pitying air.
+
+"She would have taken him in the parlor--I should think she would
+have known enough to," said Eunice; "and you can't always hear
+talking in the parlor in this room."
+
+Maria made a move towards her brother's parlor, on the other side of
+the tiny hall.
+
+"I guess you are right," said she, "and I know she would have taken
+him in there. I started a fire in there on purpose before I went to
+meeting. It was borne in upon me that somebody might come home with
+her."
+
+Maria tiptoed into the parlor, with Eunice, still smoothing her
+bonnet-strings, at her heels. Both women stood close to the wall,
+papered with white-and-gold paper, and listened.
+
+"I can't hear a single thing," said Maria.
+
+"I can't either," said Eunice. "I don't believe he did come in."
+
+"It's dreadful queer, if he didn't," said Maria, "after the way he
+eyed her in meeting."
+
+"Suppose you go home through the cellar, and see," said Eunice.
+
+"I guess I will," said Maria. "I'll knock low on the wall when I get
+home, if he isn't there."
+
+The cellar stairs connected with the kitchen on either side of the
+Stillman house. Both women flew out into the kitchen, and Maria
+disappeared down the cellar stairs, with a little lamp which Eunice
+lit for her. Then Eunice waited. Presently there came a muffled knock
+on the wall.
+
+"No, he didn't come in," Eunice said to her husband, as she
+re-entered the sitting-room.
+
+Suddenly Eunice pressed her ear close to the sitting-room wall. Two
+treble voices were audible on the other side, but not a word of their
+conversation. "Maria and she are talking," said Eunice.
+
+What Aunt Maria was saying was this, in a tone of sharp wonder:
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"Who?" responded Maria.
+
+"Why, you know as well as I do--George Ramsey." Aunt Maria looked
+sharply at her niece. "I hope you asked him in, Maria Edgham?" said
+she.
+
+"No, I didn't," said Maria.
+
+"Why didn't you?"
+
+"I was tired, and I wanted to go to bed."
+
+"Wanted to go to bed? Why, it's only a little after nine o'clock!"
+
+"Well, I can't help it, I'm tired." Maria spoke with a weariness
+which was unmistakable. She looked away from her aunt with a sort of
+blank despair.
+
+Aunt Maria continued to regard her. "You do act the queerest of any
+girl I ever saw," said she. "There was a nice fire in the parlor, and
+I thought you could offer him some refreshments. There is some of
+that nice cake, and some oranges, and I would have made some cocoa."
+
+"I didn't feel as if I could sit up," Maria said again, in her weary,
+hopeless voice. She went out into the kitchen, got a little lamp, and
+returned. "Good-night," she said to her aunt.
+
+"Good-night," replied Aunt Maria. "You are a queer girl. I don't see
+what you think."
+
+Maria went up-stairs, undressed, and went to bed. After she was in
+bed she could see the reflection of her aunt's sitting-room lamp on
+the ground outside, in a slanting shaft of light. Then it went out,
+and Maria knew that her aunt was also in bed in her little room out
+of the sitting-room. Maria could not go to sleep. She heard the clock
+strike ten, then eleven. Shortly after eleven she heard a queer
+sound, as of small stones or gravel thrown on her window. Maria was a
+brave girl. Her first sensation was one of anger.
+
+"What is any one doing such a thing as that for?" she asked herself.
+She rose, threw a shawl over her shoulders, and went straight to the
+window next the Merrill house, whence the sound had come. She opened
+it cautiously and peered out. Down on the ground below stood a long,
+triangle-shaped figure, like a night-moth.
+
+"Who is it?" Maria called, in a soft voice. She was afraid, for some
+reason which she could not define, of awakening her aunt. She was
+more afraid of that than anything else.
+
+A little moan answered her; the figure moved as if in distress.
+
+"Who is it? What do you want?" Maria asked again.
+
+A weak voice answered her then, "It's I."
+
+"Who's I? Lily?"
+
+"Yes. Oh, do let me in, Maria." Lily's voice ended in a little,
+hysterical sob.
+
+"Hush," said Maria, "or Aunt Maria will hear you. Wait a minute."
+Maria unlocked her door with the greatest caution, opened it, and
+crept down-stairs. Then she unlocked and opened the front door.
+Luckily Aunt Maria's room was some feet in the rear. "Come quick,"
+Maria whispered, and Lily came running up to her. Then Maria closed
+and locked the front door, while Lily stood trembling and waiting.
+Then she led her up-stairs in the dark. Lily's slender fingers closed
+upon her with a grasp of ice. When they were once in Maria's room,
+with the door closed and locked, Maria took hold of Lily violently by
+the shoulders. She felt at once rage and pity for her.
+
+"What on earth is the matter, Lily Merrill, that you come over here
+this time of night?" she asked. Then she added, in a tone of horror,
+"Lily Merrill, you haven't a thing on but a skirt and your night-gown
+under your shawl. Have you got anything on your feet?"
+
+"Slippers," answered Lily, meekly. Then she clung to Maria and began
+to sob hysterically.
+
+"Come, Lily Merrill, you just stop this and get into bed," said
+Maria. She unwound Lily's shawl, pulled off her skirt, and fairly
+forced her into bed. Then she got in beside her. "What on earth is
+the matter?" she asked again.
+
+Lily's arm came stealing around her and Lily's cold, wet cheek
+touched her face. "Oh, Maria!" she sobbed, under her breath.
+
+"Well, what is it all about?"
+
+"Oh, Maria, are--are you--"
+
+"Am I what?"
+
+"Are you going with him?"
+
+"With whom?"
+
+"With George--with George Ramsey?" A long, trembling sob shook Lily.
+
+"I am going with nobody," answered Maria, in a hard voice.
+
+"But he came home with you. I saw him; I did, Maria." Lily sobbed
+again.
+
+"Well, what of it?" asked Maria, impatiently. "I didn't care anything
+about his going home with me."
+
+"Didn't he come in?"
+
+"No, he didn't."
+
+"Didn't you--ask him?"
+
+"No, I didn't."
+
+"Maria."
+
+"Well, what?"
+
+"Maria, aren't you going to marry him if he asks you?"
+
+"No," said Maria, "I am never going to marry him, if that is what you
+want to know. I am never going to marry George Ramsey."
+
+Lily sobbed.
+
+"I should think you would be ashamed of yourself. I should think any
+girl would, acting so," said Maria. Her voice was a mere whisper, but
+it was cruel. She felt that she hated Lily. Then she realized how icy
+cold the girl was and how she trembled from head to feet in a nervous
+chill. "You'll catch your death," she said.
+
+"Oh, I don't care if I do!" Lily said, in her hysterical voice, which
+had now a certain tone of comfort.
+
+Maria considered again how much she despised and hated her, and again
+Lily shook with a long tremor. Maria got up and tiptoed over to her
+closet, where she kept a little bottle of wine which the doctor had
+ordered when she first came to Amity. It was not half emptied. A
+wineglass stood on the mantel-shelf, and Maria filled it with the
+wine by the light of the moon. Then she returned to Lily.
+
+"Here," she said, still in the same cruel voice. "Sit up and drink
+this."
+
+"What is it?" moaned Lily.
+
+"Never mind what it is. Sit up and drink it."
+
+Lily sat up and obediently drank the wine, every drop.
+
+"Now lie down and keep still, and go to sleep, and behave yourself,"
+said Maria.
+
+Lily tried to say something, but Maria would not listen to her.
+
+"Don't you speak another word," said she. "Keep still, or Aunt Maria
+will be up. Lie still and go to sleep."
+
+It was not long before, warmed by the wine and comforted by Maria's
+assertion that she was never going to marry George Ramsey, that Lily
+fell asleep. Maria lay awake hearing her long, even breaths, and she
+felt how she hated her, how she hated herself, how she hated life.
+There was no sleep for her. Just before dawn she woke Lily, bundled
+her up in some extra clothing, and went with her across the yard,
+home.
+
+"Now go up to your own room just as still as you can," said she, and
+her voice sounded terrible even in her own ears. She waited until she
+heard the key softly turn in the door of the Merrill house. Then she
+sped home and up to her own room. Then she lay down in bed again and
+waited for broad daylight.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXI
+
+
+When Maria dressed herself the next morning, she had an odd, shamed
+expression as she looked at herself in her glass while braiding her
+hair. It actually seemed to her as if she herself, and not Lily
+Merrill, had so betrayed herself and given way to an unsought love.
+She felt as if she saw Lily instead of herself, and she was at once
+humiliated and angered. She had to pass Lily's house on her way to
+school, and she did not once look up, although she had a conviction
+that Lily was watching her from one of the sitting-room windows. It
+was a wild winter day, with frequent gusts of wind swaying the trees
+to the breaking of the softer branches, and flurries of snow. It was
+hard work to keep the school-house warm. Maria, in the midst of her
+perturbation, had a comforted feeling at seeing Jessy Ramsey in her
+warm clothing. She passed her arm around the little girl at recess;
+it was so cold that only a few of the boys went outside.
+
+"Have you got them on, dear?" she whispered.
+
+"Yes'm," said Jessy. Then, to Maria's consternation, she caught her
+hand and kissed it, and began sobbing. "They're awful warm," sobbed
+Jessy Ramsey, looking at Maria with her little, convulsed face.
+
+"Hush, child," said Maria. "There's nothing to cry about. Mind you
+keep them nice. Have you got a bureau-drawer you can put them
+in?--those you haven't on? Don't cry. That's silly."
+
+"I 'ain't got no bureau," sobbed Jessy. "But--"
+
+"Haven't any," corrected Maria.
+
+"Haven't any bureau-drawer," said the child. "But I got a box what
+somethin'--"
+
+"That something," said Maria.
+
+"That something came from the store in, an' I've got 'em--"
+
+"Them."
+
+"Them all packed away. They're awful warm."
+
+"Don't cry, dear," said Maria.
+
+The other children did not seem to be noticing them. Suddenly Maria,
+who still had her arm around the thin shoulders of the little girl,
+stooped and kissed her rather grimy but soft little cheek. As she did
+so, she experienced the same feeling which she used to have when
+caressing her little sister Evelyn. It was a sort of rapture of
+tenderness and protection. It was the maternal instinct glorified and
+rendered spiritual by maidenhood, and its timid desires. Jessy
+Ramsey's eyes looked up into Maria's like blue violets, and Maria
+noticed with a sudden throb that they were like George Ramsey's.
+Jessy, coming as she did from a degenerate, unbeautiful branch of the
+family-tree, had yet some of the true Ramsey features, and, among
+others, she had the true Ramsey eyes. They were large and very dark
+blue, and they were set in deep, pathetic hollows. As she looked up
+at Maria, it was exactly as if George were looking at her with
+pleading and timid love. Maria took her arm sudden away from the
+child.
+
+"Be you mad?" asked Jessy, humbly.
+
+"No, I am not," replied Maria. "But you should not say 'be you mad';
+you should say are you angry."
+
+"Yes'm," said Jessy Ramsey.
+
+Jessy withdrew, still with timid eyes of devotion fixed upon her
+teacher, and Maria seated herself behind her desk, took out some
+paper, and began to write an exercise for the children to copy upon
+the black-board. She was trembling from head to foot. She felt
+exactly as if George Ramsey had been looking at her with eyes of
+love, and she remembered that she was married, and it seemed to her
+that she was horribly guilty.
+
+Maria never once looked again at Jessy Ramsey, at least not fully in
+the eyes, during the day. The child's mouth began to assume a piteous
+expression. After school that afternoon she lingered, as usual, to
+walk the little way before their roads separated, so to speak, in her
+beloved teacher's train. But Maria spoke quite sharply to her.
+
+"You had better run right home, Jessy," she said. "It is snowing, and
+you will get cold. I have a few things to see to before I go. Run
+right home."
+
+Poor little Jessy Ramsey, who was as honestly in love with her
+teacher as she would ever be with any one in her life, turned
+obediently and went away. Maria's heart smote her.
+
+"Jessy," she called after her, and the child turned back half
+frightened, half radiant. Maria put her arm around her and kissed
+her. "Wash your face before you come to school to-morrow, dear," she
+said. "Now, good-bye."
+
+"Yes'm," said Jessy, and she skipped away quite happy. She thought
+teacher had rebuffed her because her face was not washed, and that
+did not trouble her in the least. Lack of cleanliness or lack of
+morals, when brought home to them, could hardly sting any scion of
+that branch of the Ramseys. Lack of affection could, however, and
+Jessy was quite happy in thinking that teacher loved her, and was
+only vexed because her face was dirty. Jessy had not gone a dozen
+paces from the school-house before she stopped, scooped up some snow
+in a little, grimy hand, and rubbed her cheeks violently. Then she
+wiped them on her new petticoat. Her cheeks tingled frightfully, but
+she felt that she was obeying a mandate of love.
+
+Maria did not see her. She in reality lingered a little over some
+exercises in the school-house before she started on her way home. It
+was snowing quite steadily, and the wind still blew. The snow made
+the wind seem as evident as the wings of a bird. Maria hurried along.
+When she reached the bridge across the Ramsey River she saw a girl
+standing as if waiting for her. The girl was all powdered with snow
+and she had on a thick veil, but Maria immediately knew that she was
+Lily Merrill. Lily came up to her as she reached her with almost an
+abject motion. She had her veiled face lowered before the storm, and
+she carried herself as if her spirit also was lowered before some
+wind of fate. She pressed timidly close to Maria when she reached her.
+
+"I've been waiting for you, Maria," she said.
+
+"Have you?" returned Maria, coldly.
+
+"Yes, I wanted to see you, and I didn't know as I could, unless I met
+you. I didn't know whether you would have a fire in your room
+to-night, and I thought your aunt would be in the sitting-room, and I
+thought you wouldn't be apt to come over to my house, it storms so."
+
+"No, I shouldn't," Maria said, shortly.
+
+Then Lily burst out in a piteous low wail, a human wail piercing the
+wail of the storm. The two girls were quite alone on the bridge.
+
+"Oh, Maria," said Lily, "I did want you to know how dreadfully
+ashamed I was of what I did last night."
+
+"I should think you would be," Maria said, pitilessly. She walked on
+ahead, with her mouth in a straight line, and did not look at the
+other girl.
+
+Lily came closer to her and passed one of her arms through Maria's
+and pressed against her softly. "I wanted to tell you, too," she
+said, "that I made an excuse about--that handkerchief the other
+night. I thought it was in my coat-pocket all the time. I did it just
+so he would go home with me last."
+
+Maria looked at her. "I never saw such a girl as you are, Lily
+Merrill," she said, contemptuously, but in spite of herself there was
+a soft accent in her voice. It was not in Maria's nature to be hard
+upon a repentant sinner.
+
+Lily leaned her face against Maria's snow-powdered shoulder. "I was
+dreadfully ashamed of it," said she, "and I thought I must tell you,
+Maria. You don't think so very badly of me, do you? I know I was
+awful." The longing for affection and approbation in Lily's voice
+gave it almost a singing quality. She was so fond of love and
+approval that the withdrawal of it smote her like a frost of the
+spirit.
+
+"I think it was terribly bold of you, if you want to know just what I
+think," Maria said; "and I think you were very deceitful. Before I
+would do such a thing to get a young man to go home with me, I
+would--" Maria paused. Suddenly she remembered that she had her
+secret, and she felt humbled before this other girl whom she was
+judging. She became conscious to such an extent of the beam in her
+own eye that she was too blinded to see the mote in that of poor
+Lily, who, indeed, was not to blame, being simply helpless before her
+own temperament and her own emotions.
+
+"I know I did do a dreadful thing," moaned Lily.
+
+Then Maria pressed the clinging arm under her own.
+
+"Well," said she, as she might have spoken to a child, "if I were you
+I would not think any more about it, Lily, I would put it out of my
+mind. Only, I would not, if I were you, and really wanted a young man
+to care for me, let him think I was running after him."
+
+As she said the last, Maria paled. She glanced at Lily's beautiful
+face under the veil, and realized that it might be very easy for any
+young man to care for such a girl, who had, in reality, a sweet
+nature, besides beauty, if she only adopted the proper course to win
+him, and that it was obviously her (Maria's) duty to teach her to win
+him.
+
+"I know it. I won't again," Lily said, humbly.
+
+The two girls walked on; they had crossed the bridge. Suddenly Lily
+plucked up a little spirit.
+
+"Say, Maria," said she.
+
+"What is it, dear?"
+
+"I just happened to think. Mother was asked to tea to Mrs. Ralph
+Wright's to-night, but she isn't going. Is your aunt going?"
+
+"Yes, I believe she is," said Maria.
+
+"She won't be home before eight o'clock, will she?"
+
+"No, I don't suppose she will. They are to have tea at six, I
+believe."
+
+"Then I am coming over after mother and I have tea. I have something
+I want to tell you."
+
+"All right, dear," replied Maria, hesitatingly.
+
+When Maria got home she found her aunt Maria all dressed, except for
+her collar-fastening. She was waiting for Maria to attend to that.
+Her thin gray-blond hair was beautifully crimped, and she wore her
+best black silk dress. She was standing by the sitting-room window
+when Maria entered.
+
+"I am glad you have come, Maria," said she. "I have been standing
+quite awhile. You are late."
+
+"Yes, I am rather late," replied Maria. "But why on earth didn't you
+sit down?"
+
+"Do you suppose I am going to sit down more than I can help in this
+dress?" said her aunt. "There is nothing hurts a silk dress more than
+sitting down in it. Now if you will hook my collar, Maria. I can do
+it, but I don't like to strain the seams by reaching round, and I
+didn't want to trail this dress down the cellar stairs to get Eunice
+to fasten it up." Aunt Maria bewailed the weather in a deprecating
+fashion while Maria was fastening the collar at the back of her
+skinny neck. "I never want to find fault with the weather," said she,
+"because, of course, the weather is regulated by Something higher
+than we are, and it must be for our best good, but I do hate to wear
+this dress out in such a storm, and I don't dare wear my cashmere.
+Mrs. Ralph Wright is so particular she would be sure to think I
+didn't pay her proper respect."
+
+"You can wear my water-proof," said Maria. "I didn't wear it to-day,
+you know. I didn't think the snow would do this dress any harm. The
+water-proof will cover you all up."
+
+"Well, I suppose I can, and can pin my skirt up," said Aunt Maria, in
+a resigned tone. "I don't want to find fault with the weather, but I
+do hate to pin up a black silk skirt."
+
+"You can turn it right up around your waist, and fasten the braid to
+your belt, and then it won't hurt it," said Maria, consolingly.
+
+"Well, I suppose I can. Your supper is all ready, Maria. There's
+bread and butter, and chocolate cake, and some oysters. I thought you
+wouldn't mind making yourself a little stew. I couldn't make it
+before you came, because it wouldn't be fit to eat. You know how. Be
+sure the milk is hot before you put the oysters in. There is a good
+fire."
+
+"Oh yes, I know how. Don't you worry about me," said Maria, turning
+up her aunt's creaseless black silk skirt gingerly. It was rather
+incomprehensible to her that anybody should care so much whether a
+black silk skirt was creased or not, when the terrible undertone of
+emotions which underline the world, and are its creative motive, were
+in existence, but Maria was learning gradually to be patient with the
+small worries of others which seemed large to them, and upon which
+she herself could not place much stress. She stood at the window,
+when her aunt at last emerged from the house, and picked her way
+through the light snow, and her mouth twitched a little at the
+absurd, shapeless figure. Her Aunt Eunice had joined her, and she was
+not so shapeless. She held up her dress quite fashionably on one
+side, with a rather generous display of slender legs. Aunt Maria did
+not consider that her sister-in-law was quite careful enough of her
+clothes. "Henry won't always be earning," she often said to Maria.
+To-day she had eyed with disapproval Eunice's best black silk
+trailing from under her cape, when she entered the sitting-room. She
+had come through the cellar.
+
+"Are you going that way, in such a storm, in your best black silk?"
+she inquired.
+
+"I haven't any water-proof," replied Eunice, "and I don't see what
+else I can do."
+
+"You might wear my old shawl spread out."
+
+"I wouldn't go through the street cutting such a figure," said
+Eunice, with one of her occasional bursts of spirit. She was
+delighted to go. Nobody knew how this meek, elderly woman loved a
+little excitement. There were red spots on her thin cheeks, and she
+looked almost as if she had used rouge. Her eyes snapped.
+
+"I should think you would turn your skirt up, anyway," said Aunt
+Maria. "You've got your black petticoat on, haven't you?"
+
+"Yes," replied Eunice. "But if you think I am going right through the
+Main Street in my petticoat, you are mistaken. Snow won't hurt the
+silk any. It's a dry snow, and it will shake right off."
+
+So Eunice, at the side of Aunt Maria, went with her dress kilted
+high, and looked as preternaturally slim as her sister-in-law looked
+stout. Maria, watching them, thought how funny they were. She herself
+was elemental, and they, in their desires and interests, were like
+motes floating on the face of the waters. Maria, while she had always
+like pretty clothes, had come to a pass wherein she relegated them to
+their proper place. She recognized many things as externals which she
+had heretofore considered as essentials. She had developed
+wonderfully in a few months. As she turned away from the window she
+caught a glimpse of Lily Merrill's lovely face in a window of the
+opposite house, above a mass of potted geraniums. Lily nodded, and
+smiled, and Maria nodded back again. Her heart sank at the idea of
+Lily's coming that evening, a sickening jealous dread of the
+confidence which she was to make to her was over her, and yet she
+said to herself that she had no right to have this dread. She
+prepared her supper and ate it, and had hardly cleared away the table
+and washed the dishes before Lily came flying across the yard before
+the storm-wind. Maria hurried to the door to let her in.
+
+"Your aunt went, didn't she?" said Lily, entering, and shaking the
+flakes of snow from her skirts.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I don't see why mother wouldn't go. Mother never goes out anywhere,
+and she isn't nearly as old as your aunts."
+
+Lily and Maria seated themselves in the sitting-room before the
+stove. Lily looked at Maria, and a faint red overspread her cheeks.
+She began to speak, then she hesitated, and evidently said something
+which she had not intended.
+
+"How pretty that is!" she said, pointing to a great oleander-tree in
+flower, which was Aunt Maria's pride.
+
+"Yes, I think it is pretty."
+
+"Lovely. The very prettiest one I ever saw." Lily hesitated again,
+but at last she began to speak, with the red on her cheeks brighter
+and her eyes turned away from Maria. "I wanted to tell you something,
+Maria," said she.
+
+"Well?" said Maria. Her own face was quite pale and motionless. She
+was doing some fancy-work, embroidering a centre-piece, and she
+continued to take careful stitches.
+
+"I know you thought I was awful, doing the way I did last night,"
+said Lily, in her sweet murmur. She drooped her head, and the flush
+on her oval cheeks was like the flush on a wild rose. Lily wore a
+green house-dress, which set her off as the leaves and stem set off a
+flower. It was of some soft material which clung about her and
+displayed her tender curves. She wore at her throat an old cameo
+brooch which had belonged to her grandmother, and which had upon its
+onyx background an ivory head as graceful as her own. Maria, beside
+Lily, although she herself was very pretty, looked ordinary in her
+flannel blouse and black skirt, which was her school costume.
+
+Maria continued taking careful stitches in the petals of a daisy
+which she was embroidering. "I think we have talked enough about it,"
+she said.
+
+"But I want to tell you something."
+
+"Why don't you tell it, then?"
+
+"I know you thought I did something awful, running across the yard
+and coming here in the night the way I did, and showing you that
+I--I, well, that I minded George Ramsey's coming home with you;
+but--look here, Maria, I--had a little reason."
+
+Maria paled perceptibly, but she kept on steadily with her work.
+
+Lily flushed more deeply. "George Ramsey has been home with me from
+evening meeting quite a number of times," she said.
+
+"Has he?" said Maria.
+
+"Yes. Of course we were walking the same way. He may not really have
+meant to see me home." There was a sort of innate honesty in Lily
+which always led her to retrieve the lapses from the strict truth
+when in her favor. "Maybe he didn't really mean to see me home, and
+sometimes he didn't offer me his arm," she added, with a childlike
+wistfulness, as if she desired Maria to reassure her.
+
+"I dare say he meant to see you home," said Maria, rather shortly.
+
+"I am not quite sure," said Lily. "But he did walk home with me quite
+a number of times, first and last, and you know we used to go to the
+same school, and a number of times then, when we were a good deal
+younger, he really did see me home, and--he kissed me good-night
+then. Of course he hasn't done that lately, because we were older."
+
+"I should think not, unless you were engaged," said Maria.
+
+"Of course not, but he has said several things to me. Maybe he didn't
+mean anything, but they sounded--I thought I would like to tell you,
+Maria. I have never told anybody, not even mother. Once he said my
+name just suited me, and once he asked me if I thought married people
+were happier, and once he said he thought it was a doubtful
+experiment for a man to marry and try to live either with his wife's
+mother or his own. You know, if he married me, it would have to be
+one way or the other. Do you think he meant anything, Maria?"
+
+"I don't know," said Maria. "I didn't hear him."
+
+"Well, I thought he spoke as if he meant it, but, of course, a girl
+can never be sure. I suppose men do say so many things they don't
+mean. Don't you?"
+
+"Yes, I suppose they do."
+
+"Do you think he did, Maria?" asked Lily, piteously.
+
+"My dear child, I told you I didn't hear him, and I don't see how I
+can tell," repeated Maria, with a little impatience. It did seem hard
+to her that she should be so forced into a confidence of this kind,
+but an odd feeling of protective tenderness for Lily was stealing
+over her. She reached a certain height of nobility which she had
+never reached before, through this feeling.
+
+"I know men so often say things when they mean nothing at all," Lily
+said again. "Perhaps he didn't mean anything. I know he has gone home
+with Agnes Sears several times, and he has talked to her a good deal
+when we have been at parties. Do you think she is pretty, Maria?"
+
+"Yes, I think she is quite pretty," replied Maria.
+
+"Do you think--she is better-looking than--I am?" asked Lily, feebly.
+
+"No, of course I don't," said Maria. "You are a perfect beauty."
+
+"Oh, Maria, do you think so?"
+
+"Of course I do! You know it yourself as well as I do."
+
+"No, honest, I am never quite sure, Maria. Sometimes it does seem to
+me when I am dressed up that I am really better-looking than some
+girls, but I am never quite sure that it isn't because it is I who am
+looking at myself. A girl wants to think she is pretty, you know,
+Maria, especially if she wants anybody to like her, and I can't ever
+tell."
+
+"Well, you can rest easy about that," said Maria. "You are a perfect
+beauty. There isn't a girl in Amity to compare with you. You needn't
+have any doubt at all."
+
+An expression of quite innocent and naive vanity overspread Lily's
+charming face. She cast a glance at herself in a glass which hung on
+the opposite wall, and smiled as a child might have done at her own
+reflection. "Do you think this green dress is becoming to me?" said
+she.
+
+"Very."
+
+"But, Maria, do you suppose George Ramsey thinks I am so pretty?"
+
+"I should think he must, if he has eyes in his head," replied Maria.
+
+"But you are pretty yourself, Maria," said Lily, with the most open
+jealousy and anxiety, "and you are smarter than I am, and he is so
+smart. I do think he cares a great deal more for you than for me. I
+think he must, Maria."
+
+"Nonsense!" said Maria. "Just because a young man walks home with me
+once you think he is in love with me." Maria tried to speak lightly
+and scornfully, but in spite of herself there was an accent of
+gratification in her tone. In spite of herself she forgot for the
+moment.
+
+"I think he does, all the same," said Lily, dejectedly.
+
+"Nonsense! He doesn't; and if he did, he would have to take it out in
+caring."
+
+"Then you were in earnest about what you said last night?" said Lily,
+eagerly. "You really mean you wouldn't have George Ramsey if he asked
+you?"
+
+"Not if he asked every day in the year for a hundred years."
+
+"I guess you must have seen somebody else whom you liked," said Lily,
+and Maria colored furiously. Then Lily laughed. "Oh, you have!" she
+cried, with sudden glee. "You are blushing like anything. Do tell me,
+Maria."
+
+"I have nothing to tell."
+
+"Maria Edgham, you don't dare tell me you are not in love with
+anybody?"
+
+"I should not answer a question of that kind to any other girl,
+anyway," Maria replied, angrily.
+
+"You are. I know it," said Lily. "Don't be angry, dear. I am real
+glad."
+
+"I didn't say I was in love, and there is nothing for you to be glad
+about," returned Maria, fairly scarlet with shame and rage. She
+tangled the silk with which she was working, and broke it short off.
+Maria was as yet not wholly controlled by herself.
+
+"Why, you'll spoil that daisy," Lily said, wonderingly. She herself
+was incapable of any such retaliation upon inanimate objects. She
+would have carefully untangled her silk, no matter how deeply she
+suffered.
+
+"I don't care if I do!" cried Maria.
+
+"Why, Maria!"
+
+"Well, I don't care. I am fairly sick of so much talk and thinking
+about love and getting married, as if there were nothing else."
+
+"Maybe you are different, Maria," admitted Lily, in a humiliated
+fashion.
+
+"I don't want to hear any more about it," Maria said, taking a fresh
+thread from her skein of white silk.
+
+"But do you mean what you said?"
+
+"Yes, I do, once for all. That settles it."
+
+Lily looked at her wistfully. She did not find Maria as sympathetic
+as she wished. Then she glanced at her beautiful visage in the glass,
+and remembered what the other girl had said about her beauty, and
+again she smiled her childlike smile of gratified vanity and
+pleasure. Then suddenly the door-bell rang.
+
+Lily gave a great start, and turned white as she looked at Maria.
+"It's George Ramsey," she whispered.
+
+"Nonsense! How do you know?" asked Maria, laying her work on the
+table beside the lamp, and rising.
+
+"I don't know. I do know."
+
+"Nonsense!" Still Maria stood looking irresolutely at Lily.
+
+"I know," said Lily, and she trembled perceptibly.
+
+"I don't see how you can tell," said Maria. She made a step towards
+the door.
+
+Lily sprang up. "I am going home," said she.
+
+"Going home? Why?"
+
+"He has come to see you, and I won't stay. I won't. I know you
+despised me for what I did the other night, and I won't do such a
+thing as to stay when he has come to see another girl. I am not quite
+as bad as that." Lily started towards her cloak, which lay over a
+chair.
+
+Maria seized her by the shoulders with a nervous grip of her little
+hands. "Lily Merrill," said she, "if you stir, if you dare to stir to
+go home, I will not go to the door at all!"
+
+Lily gasped and looked at her.
+
+"I won't!" said Maria.
+
+The bell rang a second time.
+
+"You have got to go to the door," said Maria, with a sudden impulse.
+
+Lily quivered under her hands.
+
+"Why? Oh, Maria!"
+
+"Yes, you have. You go to the door, and I will run up-stairs the back
+way to my room. I don't feel well to-night, anyway. I have an awful
+headache. You go to the door, and if it is--George Ramsey, you tell
+him I have gone to bed with a headache, and you have come over to
+stay with me because Aunt Maria has gone away. Then you can ask him
+in."
+
+A flush of incredulous joy came over Lily's face.
+
+"You don't mean it, Maria?" she whispered, faintly.
+
+"Yes, I do. Hurry, or he'll go away."
+
+"Have you got a headache, honest?"
+
+"Yes, I have. Hurry, quick! If it is anybody else do as you like
+about asking him in. Hurry!"
+
+With that Maria was gone, scudding up the back stairs which led out
+of the adjoining room. She gained her chamber as noiselessly as a
+shadow. The room was very dark except for a faint gleam on one wall
+from a neighbor's lamp. Maria stood still, listening, in the middle
+of the floor. She heard the front door opened, then she heard voices.
+She heard steps. The steps entered the sitting-room. Then she heard
+the voices in a steady flow. One of them was undoubtedly a man's. The
+bass resonances were unmistakable. A peal of girlish laughter rang
+out. Maria noiselessly groped her way to her bed, threw herself upon
+it, face down, and lay there shaking with silent sobs.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXII
+
+
+Maria did not hear Lily laugh again, although the conversation
+continued. In reality, Lily was in a state of extreme shyness, and
+was, moreover, filled with a sense of wrong-doing. There had been
+something about Maria's denial which had not convinced her. In her
+heart of hearts, the heart of hearts of a foolish but loving girl,
+who never meant anybody any harm, and, on the contrary, wished
+everybody well, although naturally herself first, she was quite sure
+that Maria also loved George Ramsey. She drooped before him with this
+consciousness when she opened the door, and the young man naturally
+started with a little surprise at the sight of her.
+
+"Maria has gone to bed with a headache," she faltered, before George
+had time to inquire for her. Then she added, in response to the young
+man's look of astonishment, the little speech which Maria had
+prepared for her. "Her aunt has gone out, and so I came over to stay
+with her." Lily was a born actress. It was not her fault that a
+little accent of tender pity for Maria in her lonely estate, with her
+aunt away, and a headache, crept into her voice. She at the moment
+almost believed what she said. It became quite real to her.
+
+"I am sorry Miss Edgham has a headache," said George, after a barely
+perceptible second of hesitation, "but, as long as she has, I may as
+well come in and make you a little call, Lily."
+
+Lily quivered perceptibly. She tried to show becoming pride, but
+failed. "I should be very happy to have you," she said, "but--"
+
+"Well, it _is_ asking you to play second fiddle, and no mistake,"
+laughed George Ramsey, "for I did think I would make Miss Edgham a
+little call. But, after all, the second fiddle is an indispensable
+thing, and you and I are old friends, Lily."
+
+He could not help the admiration in his eyes as he looked at Lily.
+She carried a little lamp, and the soft light was thrown upon her
+lovely face, and her brown hair gleamed gold in it. No man could have
+helped admiring her. Lily had never been a very brilliant scholar,
+but she could read admiration for herself. She regained her
+self-possession.
+
+"I don't mind playing second fiddle," said she. "I should be glad if
+I could play any fiddle. Come in, Mr. Ramsey."
+
+"How very formal we have grown!" laughed George, as he took off his
+coat and hat in the icy little hall. "Why, don't you remember we went
+to school together? What is the use?"
+
+"George, then," said Lily. Her voice seemed to caress the name.
+
+The young man colored. He was of a stanch sort, but he was a man, and
+the adulation of such a beautiful girl as this touched him. He took
+the lamp out of her hand.
+
+"Come in, then," he said; "but it is rather funny for me to be
+calling on you here, isn't it?"
+
+"Funnier than it would be for you to call on me at my own house,"
+said Lily, demurely, with a faint accent of reproach.
+
+"Well, I must admit I am not very neighborly," George replied, with
+an apologetic air. "But, you see, I am really busy a good many
+evenings with accounts, and I don't go out very much."
+
+Lily reflected that he had come to call on Maria, in spite of being
+busy, but she said nothing. She placed Maria's vacant chair for him
+beside the sitting-room stove.
+
+"It is a hard storm," she said.
+
+"Very. It is a queer night for Miss Edgham's aunt to go out, it seems
+to me."
+
+"Mrs. Ralph Wright has a tea-party," said Lily. "Maria's aunt Eunice
+has gone, too. My mother was invited, but mother never goes out in
+the evening."
+
+After these commonplace remarks, Lily seated herself opposite George
+Ramsey, and there was a little silence. Again the expression of
+admiration came into the young man's face, and the girl read it with
+delight. Sitting gracefully, her slender body outlined by the soft
+green of her dress, her radiant face showing above the ivory cameo
+brooch at her throat, she was charming. George Ramsey owned to
+himself that Lily was certainly a great beauty, but all the same he
+thought regretfully of the other girl, who was not such a beauty, but
+who had somehow appealed to him as no other girl had ever done. Then,
+too, Maria was in a measure new. He had known Lily all his life; the
+element of wonder and surprise was lacking in his consciousness of
+her beauty, and she also lacked something else which Maria had. Lily
+meant no more to him--that is, her beauty meant no more to him--than
+a symmetrical cherry-tree in the south yard, which was a marvel of
+scented beauty, humming with bees every spring. He had seen that tree
+ever since he could remember. He always looked upon it with pleasure
+when it was in blossom, yet it was not to him what a new tree,
+standing forth unexpectedly with its complement of flowers and bees,
+would have been. It was very unfortunate for Lily that George had
+known her all his life. In order really to attract him it would be
+necessary for him to discover something entirely new in her.
+
+"It was very good of you to come in and stay with Miss Edgham while
+her aunt was gone," said George.
+
+He felt terribly at a loss for conversation. He had, without knowing
+it, a sense of something underneath the externals which put a
+constraint upon him.
+
+Lily had one of the truth-telling impulses which redeemed her from
+the artifices of her mother.
+
+"Oh," said she, "I wanted to come. I proposed coming myself. It is
+dull evenings at home, and I did not know that Maria would go to bed
+or that you would come in."
+
+"Well, mother has gone to that tea-party, too," said George, "and I
+looked over here and saw the light, and I thought I would just run in
+a minute."
+
+For some unexplained reason tears were standing in Lily's eyes and
+her mouth quivered a little. George could not see, for the life of
+him, why she should be on the verge of tears. He felt a little
+impatient, but at the same time she became more interesting to him.
+He had never seen Lily weeping since the time when she was a child at
+school, and used to conceal her weeping little face in a ring of her
+right arm, as was the fashion among the little girls.
+
+"This light must shine right in your sitting-room windows," said
+Lily, in a faint voice. She was considering how pitiful it was that
+George had not had the impulse to call upon her, Lily, when she was
+so lovely and loving in her green gown; and how even this little
+happiness was not really her own, but another girl's. She had not the
+least realization of how Maria was suffering, lying in her room
+directly overhead.
+
+Maria suffered as she had never suffered before. George Ramsey was
+her first love; the others had been merely childish playthings. She
+was strangling love, and that is a desperate deed, and the strangler
+suffers more than love. Maria, with the memory of that marriage which
+was, indeed, no marriage, but the absurd travesty of one, upon her,
+was in almost a suicidal frame of mind. She knew perfectly well that
+if it had not been for that marriage secret which she held always in
+mind, that George Ramsey would continue to call, that they would
+become engaged, that her life might be like other women's. And now he
+was down there with Lily--Lily, in her green gown. She knew just how
+Lily would look at him, with her beautiful, soft eyes. She hated her,
+and yet she hated herself more than she hated her. She told herself
+that she had no good reason for hating another girl for doing what
+she herself had done--for falling in love with George Ramsey. She
+knew that she should never have made a confidant of another girl, as
+Lily had made of her. She realized a righteous contempt because of
+her weakness, and yet she felt that Lily was the normal girl, that
+nine out of ten would do exactly what she had done. And she also had
+a sort of pity for her. She could not quite believe that a young man
+like George Ramsey could like Lily, who, however beautiful she was,
+was undeniably silly. But then she reflected how young men were
+popularly supposed not to mind a girl's being silly if she was
+beautiful. Then she ceased to pity Lily, and hated her again. She
+became quite convinced that George Ramsey would marry her.
+
+She had locked her door, and lay on her bed fully dressed. She made
+up her mind that when Aunt Maria came she would pretend to be asleep.
+She felt that she could not face Aunt Maria's wondering questions.
+Then she reflected that Aunt Maria would be home soon, and a
+malicious joy seized her that Lily would not have George Ramsey long
+to herself. Indeed, it was scarcely half-past eight before Maria
+heard the side-door open. Then she heard, quite distinctly, Aunt
+Maria's voice, although she could not distinguish the words. Maria
+laughed a little, smothered, hysterical laugh at the absurdity of the
+situation.
+
+It was, in fact, ludicrous. Aunt Maria entered the sitting-room, a
+grotesque figure in her black skirt bundled up under Maria's
+waterproof, which was powdered with snow. She wore her old black
+bonnet, and the wind had tipped that rakishly to one side. She stared
+at Lily and George Ramsey, who both rose with crimson faces.
+
+"Good-evening," Lily ventured, feebly.
+
+"Good-evening, Miss Stillman," George said, following the girl's
+lead. Then, as he was more assured, he added that it was a very
+stormy night.
+
+George had been sitting on one side of the stove, Lily on the other,
+in the chairs which Maria and Lily had occupied before the young
+man's arrival. They had both sprung up with a guilty motion when Aunt
+Maria entered. Aunt Maria stood surveying them. She did not return
+their good-evenings, nor George's advance with regard to the weather.
+Her whole face expressed severe astonishment. Her thin lips gaped
+slightly, her pale eyes narrowed. She continued to look at them, and
+they stood before her like culprits.
+
+"Where's Maria gone?" said Aunt Maria, finally, in a voice which
+seemed to have an edge to it.
+
+Then Lily spoke with soft and timid volubility. "Maria said her head
+ached so she thought she had better go to bed, Miss Stillman," she
+said.
+
+"I didn't hear anything about any headache before I went away. Must
+have come on mighty sudden," said Aunt Maria.
+
+"She said it ached very hard," repeated Lily. "And when the door-bell
+rang, when Mr. Ramsey came--"
+
+"It's mighty queer she should have had a headache when George Ramsey
+rang the door-bell," said Aunt Maria.
+
+"I guess it must have ached before," said Lily, faintly.
+
+"I should suppose it must have," Aunt Maria said, sarcastically. "I
+don't see any reason why Maria's head should begin to ache when the
+door-bell rang."
+
+"Of course," said Lily. "I suppose she just felt she couldn't talk,
+that was all."
+
+"It's mighty queer," said Aunt Maria. She stood quite immovable. She
+was so stern that even her rakishly tipped bonnet did not seem at all
+funny. She looked at Lily and George Ramsey, and did not make a
+movement to remove her wraps.
+
+Lily took a little, faltering step towards her. "You are all covered
+with snow, Miss Stillman," she said, in her sweet voice.
+
+"I don't mind a little snow," said Aunt Maria.
+
+"Won't you take this chair?" asked George Ramsey, pointing to the one
+which he had just vacated.
+
+"No, thank you," replied Aunt Maria. "I ain't going to sit down. I've
+got on my best black silk, and I don't ever sit down in it when I can
+help it. I'm going to take it off and go to bed."
+
+Then George Ramsey immediately made a movement towards his coat and
+hat, which lay on the lounge beside Lily's wraps. "Well," he said,
+with an attempt to laugh and be easy, "I must be going. I have to
+take an early car to-morrow."
+
+"I must go, too," said Lily.
+
+They both hustled on their outer garments. They said good-evening
+when they went out, but Aunt Maria did not reply. She immediately
+took off Maria's water-proof and her bonnet, and slipped off her best
+black silk gown. Then she took the little lamp which was lighted in
+the kitchen and went up-stairs to Maria's room. She had an old shawl
+over her shoulders, otherwise she was in her black quilted petticoat.
+She stepped softly, and entered the spare room opposite Maria's. It
+was icy cold in there. She set the lamp on the bureau and went out,
+closing the door softly. It was then quite dark in the little
+passageway between the spare room and Maria's. Aunt Maria stood
+looking sharply at Maria's door, especially at the threshold, which
+was separated from the floor quite a space by the shrinkage of the
+years. The panels, too, had their crevices, through which light might
+be seen. It was entirely dark. Aunt Maria opened the door of the
+spare room very softly and got the little lamp off the bureau, and
+tiptoed down-stairs. Then she sat down before the sitting-room stove
+and pulled up her quilted petticoat till her thin legs were exposed,
+to warm herself and not injure the petticoat. She looked unutterably
+stern and weary. Suddenly, as she sat there, tears began to roll over
+her ascetic cheeks.
+
+"Oh, Lord!" she sighed to herself; "to think that child has got to go
+through the world just the way I have, when she don't need to!"
+
+Aunt Maria rose and got a handkerchief out of her bureau-drawer in
+her little bedroom. She did not take the one in the pocket of her
+gown because that was her best one, and very fine. Then she sat down
+again, pulled up her petticoat again, put the handkerchief before her
+poor face, and wept for herself and her niece, because of a
+conviction which was over her that for both the joy of life was to
+come only from the windows of others.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIII
+
+
+Lily Merrill, going home across the yard through the storm, leaning
+on George Ramsey's arm, gave a little, involuntary sob. It was a sob
+half of the realization of slighted affection, half of shame. It gave
+the little element of strangeness which was lacking to fascinate the
+young man. He had a pitiful heart towards women, and at the sound of
+the little, stifled sob he pressed Lily's arm more closely under his
+own.
+
+"Don't, Lily," he said, softly.
+
+Lily sobbed again; she almost leaned her head towards George's
+shoulder. She made a little, irresistible, nestling motion, like a
+child.
+
+"I can't help it," she said, brokenly. "She did look at me so."
+
+"Don't mind her one bit, Lily," said George. He half laughed at the
+memory of Aunt Maria's face, even while the tender tone sounded in
+his voice. "Don't mind that poor old maid. Neither of us were to
+blame. I suppose it did look as if we had taken possession of her
+premises, and she was astonished, that was all. How funny she looked,
+poor thing, with her bonnet awry!"
+
+"I know she must think I have done something dreadful," sobbed Lily.
+
+"Nonsense!" George said again, and his pressure of her arm tightened.
+"I was just going when she came in, anyway. There is nothing at all
+to be ashamed of, only--" He hesitated.
+
+"What?" asked Lily.
+
+"Well, to tell you the truth, Lily," he said then, "it does look to
+me as if Miss Edgham's headache was only another way of telling me
+she did not wish to see me."
+
+"Oh, I guess not," said Lily.
+
+"For some reason or other she does not seem to like me," George said,
+with rather a troubled voice; but he directly laughed.
+
+"I don't see any reason why she shouldn't like you," Lily said.
+
+They had reached Lily's door, and the light from the sitting-room
+windows shone on her lovely face, past which the snow drifted like a
+white veil.
+
+"Well, I think she doesn't," George said, carelessly, "but you are
+mighty good to say you see no reason why she shouldn't. You and I
+have always been good friends, haven't we, Lily, ever since we went
+to school together?"
+
+"Yes," replied Lily, eagerly, although she did not like the word
+friends, which seemed to smite on the heart. She lifted her face to
+the young man's, and her lips pouted almost imperceptibly. It could
+not have been said that she was inviting a kiss, but no man could
+have avoided kissing her. George Ramsey kissed her as naturally as he
+breathed. There seemed to be nothing else to do. It was one of the
+inevitables of life. Then Lily opened the door and slid into the
+house with a tremulous good-night.
+
+George himself felt tremulous, and also astonished and vexed with
+himself. He had certainly not meant to kiss Lily Merrill. But it
+flashed across his mind that she would not think anything of it, that
+he had kissed her often when they were children, and it was the same
+thing now. As he went away he glanced back at the lighted windows,
+and a man's shadow was quite evident. He wondered who was calling on
+Lily's mother, and then wondered, with a slight shadow of jealousy,
+if it could be some one who had come to see Lily herself. He
+reflected, as he went homeward through the storm, that a girl as
+pretty as Lily ought to have some one worthy of her. He went over in
+his mind, as he puffed his cigar, all the young men in Amity, and it
+did not seem to him that any one of them was quite the man for her.
+
+When he reached home he found his mother already there, warming
+herself by the sitting-room register. She had gone to the tea-party
+in a carriage (George would not have her walk), but she was chilled.
+She was a delicate, pretty woman. She looked up, shivering, as George
+entered.
+
+"Where have you been, dear?" she asked.
+
+George laughed, and colored a little. "Well, mother, I went to see
+one young lady and saw another," he replied.
+
+Just then the maid came in with some hot chocolate, which Mrs. Ramsey
+always drank before she went to bed, and she asked no more questions
+until the girl had gone; then she resumed the conversation.
+
+"What do you mean, dear?" she inquired, looking over the rim of the
+china cup at her son, with a slight, anxious contraction of her
+forehead.
+
+"Well, I felt a little lonely after you went, mother, and I had
+nothing especial to do, and it occurred to me that I would go over
+and call on our neighbor."
+
+"On young Maria Edgham?"
+
+"Yes, mother."
+
+"Well, I suppose it was a polite thing for you to do," said his
+mother, mildly, "but I don't quite care for her has I do for some
+girls. She is so very vehement. I do like a young girl to be gentle."
+
+"Well, I didn't see her, mother, in either a gentle or vehement
+mood," said George. "As nearly as I can find out, she had a
+premonition who it was when I rang the door-bell, and said she had a
+headache, and ran up-stairs to bed."
+
+"Why, how do you know?" asked his mother, staring at him. "Her aunt
+was at the tea. Who told you?"
+
+"Lily Merrill was there," replied George, and again he was conscious
+of coloring. "She had come to stay with Maria because her aunt was
+going out. She answered my ring, and so I made a little call on her
+until Miss Stillman returned, and was so surprised to see her
+premises invaded and her niece missing that I think she inferred a
+conspiracy or a burglar. At all events, Lily and I were summarily
+dismissed. I have just seen Lily home."
+
+"Lily Merrill is pretty, and I think she is a nice, lady-like girl,"
+said Mrs. Ramsey, and she regarded her son more uneasily than before,
+"but I don't like her mother, George."
+
+"Why, what is the matter with Lily's mother?"
+
+"She isn't genuine. Adeline Merrill was never genuine. She has always
+had her selfish ends, and she has reached them by crooks and turns."
+
+"I think Lily is genuine enough," said George, carelessly, putting
+another lump of sugar in his cup of chocolate. "I have seen more
+brilliant girls, but she is a beauty, and I think she is genuine."
+
+"Well, perhaps she is," Mrs. Ramsey admitted. "I don't know her very
+well, but I do know her mother. I know something now."
+
+"What?"
+
+"I know you don't like gossip, but if ever a woman was--I know it is
+a vulgar expression--but if ever a woman was setting her cap for a
+man, she is setting hers for Dr. Ellridge. She never goes anywhere
+evenings, in the hope that he may call, and she sends for him when
+there is nothing whatever the matter with her, if he doesn't. I know,
+because Dr. Ellridge's wife's sister, Miss Emmons, who has kept house
+for him since his wife died, told me so. He goes home and tells her,
+and laughs, but I know she isn't quite sure that the doctor won't
+marry her."
+
+"Miss Emmons is jealous, perhaps," said George. "Perhaps Mrs. Merrill
+is really ill."
+
+"No, the doctor says she is not, and Miss Emmons is not jealous. She
+told me that as far as she was concerned, although she would lose her
+home, she should be glad to see the doctor married, if he chose a
+suitable woman; but I don't think she likes Mrs. Merrill. I don't see
+how anybody can like a woman who so openly proclaims her willingness
+to marry a man before he has done her the honor to ask her. It seems
+shameless to me."
+
+"Perhaps she doesn't," George said again. Then he added, "It would be
+rather hard for Lily if her mother did marry the doctor. He is a good
+man enough, but with his own three girls, the oldest older than Lily,
+she would have a hard time."
+
+George looked quite sober, reflecting upon the possible sad lot of
+poor Lily if her mother married the second time.
+
+"Adeline Merrill wouldn't stop for such a thing as the feelings of
+her own daughter, if she had her mind set on anything," said his
+mother, in her soft voice, which seemed to belie the bitterness of
+her words. She was not in reality bitter at all, not even towards
+Mrs. Merrill, but she had clearly defined rules of conduct for
+gentlewomen, and she mentioned it when these rules were transgressed.
+
+"Well, mother dear, I can't see that it is likely to make much
+difference to either you or me, anyway," said George, and his mother
+felt consoled. She told herself that it was not possible that George
+thought seriously of Lily, or he would not speak so.
+
+"Miss Stillman is very eccentric," she remarked, departing from the
+subject. "I offered to bring her home with me in the carriage. I knew
+you would not mind the extra money. She has such a cold that I really
+wondered that she came at all in such a storm; but, no, she seemed
+fairly indignant at the idea. I never saw any one so proud. I asked
+Mrs. Henry Stillman, but she did not like to have her sister-in-law
+to go alone, so she would not accept, either; but Miss Stillman
+walked herself, and made her sister walk, too, and I am positive it
+was because she was proud. Do you really mean you think young Maria
+did not want to see you, George?"
+
+"It looked like it," George replied, laughing.
+
+"Why?" asked his mother.
+
+"How do I know, mother dear? I don't think Miss Edgham altogether
+approves of me for some reason."
+
+"I should like to know what reason she has for not approving of you,"
+cried his mother, jealously. She looked admiringly at her son, who
+was handsome, with a sort of rugged beauty, and whose face displayed
+strength, and honesty not to be questioned. "I would like to know who
+Maria Edgham thinks she is. She is rather pretty, but she cannot
+compare with Lily Merrill as far as that goes, and she is teaching a
+little district school, and from what I have seen of her, her manners
+are subject to criticism. She is not half as lady-like as other girls
+in Amity. When I think of the way she flew in here and attacked us
+for not clothing those disreputable people across the river, just
+because they have the same name, I can't help being indignant. I
+never heard of a young girl's doing such a thing. And I think that if
+she ran off when the bell rang, because she thought it was you, it
+was certainly very rude. I think she virtually ascribed more meaning
+to your call than there was."
+
+"Lily said she had a headache," said George, but his own face assumed
+an annoyed expression. That version of Maria's flight had not
+occurred to him, and he was a very proud fellow. When he went
+up-stairs to his own room he continued wondering whether it was
+possible that Maria, remembering their childish love-affair, could
+have really dreamed that he had called that evening with serious
+intentions, and he grew more and more indignant at the idea. Then the
+memory of that soft, hardly returned kiss which he had given Lily
+came to him, and now he did not feel vexed with himself because of
+it. He was quite certain that Lily was too gentle and timid to think
+for a minute that he meant anything more than their old childish
+friendship. The memory of the kiss became very pleasant to him, and
+he seemed to feel Lily's lips upon his own like a living flower which
+thrilled the heart. The next morning, when he took the trolley-car in
+front of his house, Maria was just passing on her way to school. She
+was wading rather wearily, yet still sturdily, through the snow. It
+had cleared during the night, and there were several inches of
+drifted snow in places, although some portions of the road were as
+bare as if swept by a broom of the winds.
+
+Maria, tramping through the snow, which was deep just there, merely
+glanced at George Ramsey, and said good-morning. She had plenty of
+time, if she had chosen to do so, to express her regrets at not
+seeing him the evening before, for the car had not yet reached him.
+But she said nothing except good-morning, and George responded rather
+curtly, raising his hat, and stepping forward towards the car. He
+felt it to be unmistakable that Maria wished him to understand that
+she did not care for his particular acquaintance, and the sting which
+his mother had suggested the evening before, that she must consider
+that his attentions were significant, or she would not take so much
+trouble to repulse them, came over him again. He boarded the car,
+which was late, and moving sluggishly through the snow. It came to a
+full stop in front of the Merrill house, and George saw Lily's head
+behind a stand of ferns in one of the front windows. He raised his
+hat, and she bowed, and he could see her blush even at that distance.
+He thought again, comfortably, that Lily, remembering their childish
+caresses, could attach no importance to what had happened the night
+before, and yet a thrill of tenderness and pleasure shot through him,
+and he seemed to feel again the flower-like touch of her lips. It was
+a solace for any man, after receiving such an unmistakable rebuff as
+he had just received from Maria Edgham. He had no conception of the
+girl plodding through the snow to her daily task. He did not dream
+that she saw, instead of the snowy road before, a long stretch of
+dreary future, brought about by that very rebuff. But she was quite
+merciless with herself. She would not yield for a moment to regrets.
+She accepted that stretch of dreary future with a defiant
+acquiescence. She bowed pleasantly to the acquaintances whom she met.
+They were not many that morning, for the road was hardly passable in
+places, being overcurved here and there with blue, diamond-crested,
+snowlike cascades, and now presenting ridges like graves. Half-way to
+the school-house, Maria saw the village snow-plough, drawn by a
+struggling horse and guided by a red-faced man. She stood aside to
+let it pass. The man did not look at her. He frowned ahead at his
+task. He was quite an old man, and bent, but with the red of youth
+brought forth in his cheeks by the frosty air.
+
+"Everybody has to work in some way," Maria thought, "and very few get
+happiness for their labor."
+
+She reflected how soon that man would be lying stiff and stark under
+the wintry snows and the summer heats, and how nothing which might
+trouble him now would matter. She reflected that, although she
+herself was younger and had presumably longer to live, that the time
+would inevitably come when even such unhappiness as weighed her down
+this morning would not matter. She continued in the ineffectual track
+which the snow-plough had made, with a certain pleasure in the
+exertion. All Maria's heights of life, her mountain-summits which she
+would agonize to reach, were spiritual. Labor in itself could never
+daunt her. Always her spirit, the finer essence of her, would soar
+butterfly-like above her toiling members.
+
+It was a beautiful morning; the trees were heavily bent with snow,
+which gave out lustres like jewels. The air had a very purity of life
+in it. Maria inhaled the frosty, clear air, and regarded the trees as
+one might have done who was taking a stimulant. She kept her mind
+upon them, and would not think of George Ramsey. As she neared the
+school-house, the first child who ran to meet her, stumbling through
+the snow, was little Jessy Ramsey. Maria forced herself to meet
+smilingly the upward, loving look of those blue Ramsey eyes. She bent
+down and kissed Jessy, and the little thing danced at her side in a
+rapture.
+
+"They be awful warm, my close, teacher," said she.
+
+"My clothes are very warm, teacher," corrected Maria, gravely.
+
+"My clothes are very warm, teacher," said Jessy, obediently.
+
+Maria caught the child up in her arms (she was a tiny, half-fed
+little thing), and kissed her again. Somehow she got a measure of
+comfort from it. After all, love was love, in whatever guise it came,
+and this was an innocent love which she could admit with no question.
+
+"That's a good little girl, dear," she said, and set Jessy down.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIV
+
+
+Maria did not go home for the Christmas holidays. She was very
+anxious to do so, but she received a letter from Ida Edgham which
+made her resolve to remain where she was.
+
+"We should be so very glad to have you come home for the holidays,
+dear," wrote Ida, "but of course we know how long the journey is, and
+how little you are earning, and we are all well. Your father seems
+quite well, and so we shall send you some little remembrance, and try
+to console ourselves as best we can for your absence."
+
+Maria read the letter to her aunt Maria.
+
+"You won't go one step?" said Aunt Maria, interrogatively.
+
+"No," said Maria. She was quite white. Nobody knew how she had longed
+to see her father and little Evelyn, and she had planned to go, and
+take Aunt Maria with her, defraying the expenses out of her scanty
+earnings.
+
+"I wouldn't go if you were to offer me a thousand dollars," said Aunt
+Maria.
+
+"I would not, either," responded Maria. She opened the stove door and
+thrust the letter in, and watched it burn.
+
+"How your father ever came to marry that woman--" said Aunt Maria.
+
+"There's no use talking about that now," said Maria, arousing to
+defence of her father. "She was very pretty!"
+
+"Pretty enough," said Aunt Maria, "and I miss my guess if she didn't
+do most of the courting. Well, as you say, there is no use talking it
+over now. What's done is done."
+
+Aunt Maria watched Maria's pitiful young face with covert glances.
+Maria was finishing a blouse which she had expected to wear on her
+journey. She continued her work with resolution, but every line on
+her face took a downward curve.
+
+"You don't need to hurry so on that waist now," said Aunt Maria.
+
+"I want the waist, anyway," replied her niece. "I may as well get it
+done."
+
+"You will have to send the Christmas presents," said Aunt Maria. "I
+don't very well see how you can pack some of them."
+
+"I guess I can manage," said Maria.
+
+The next day her week of vacation began. She packed the gifts which
+she had bought for her father and Evelyn and Ida, and took them to
+the express office. The day after that she received the remembrances
+of which Ida spoke. They were very pretty. Aunt Maria thought them
+extravagant. Ida had sent her a tiny chatelaine watch, and her father
+a ring set with a little diamond. Maria knew perfectly well how her
+father's heart ached when he sent the ring. She never for one moment
+doubted him. She wrote him a most loving letter, and even a deceptive
+letter, because of her affection. She repeated what Ida had written,
+that it was a long journey, and expensive, and she did not think it
+best for her to go home, although she had longed to do so.
+
+Ida sent Aunt Maria a set of Shakespeare. When it was unpacked, Aunt
+Maria looked shrewdly at her niece.
+
+"How many sets of Shakespeare has she got?" she inquired. "Do you
+know, Maria?"
+
+Maria admitted that she thought she had two.
+
+"I miss my guess but she has another exactly just like this," said
+Aunt Maria. "Well, I don't mean to be ungrateful, and I know
+Shakespeare is called a great writer, and they who like him can read
+him. I would no more sit down and read all those books through,
+myself, than I would read Webster's Dictionary."
+
+Maria laughed.
+
+"You can take this set of books up in your room, if you want them,"
+said Aunt Maria. "For my part I consider it an insult for her to send
+Shakespeare to me. She must have known I had never had anything to do
+with Shakespeare. She might just as well have sent me a crown. Now,
+your father he has more sense. He sent me this five-dollar gold-piece
+so I could buy what I wanted with it. He knew that he didn't know
+what I wanted. Your father's a good man, Maria, but he was weak when
+he married her; I've got to say it."
+
+"I don't think father was weak at all!" Maria retorted, with spirit.
+
+"Of course, I expect you to stand up for your father, that is right.
+I wouldn't have you do anything else," Aunt Maria said approvingly.
+"But he was weak."
+
+"She could have married almost anybody," said Maria, gathering up the
+despised set of books. She was very glad of them to fill up the small
+bamboo bookcase in her own room, and, beside, she did not share her
+aunt's animosity to Shakespeare. She purchased some handkerchiefs for
+her aunt, with the covert view of recompensing her for the loss of
+Ida's present, and Aunt Maria was delighted with them.
+
+"If she had had the sense to send me half a dozen handkerchiefs like
+these," said she, "I should have thanked her. Anybody in their senses
+would rather have half a dozen nice handkerchiefs than a set of
+Shakespeare. That is, if they said just what they meant. I know some
+folks would be ashamed of not thinking much of Shakespeare. As for
+me, I say what I mean." Aunt Maria tossed her head as she spoke.
+
+She grew daily more like her brother Henry. The family traits in each
+became more accentuated. Each posed paradoxically as not being a
+poser. Aunt Maria spoke her mind so freely and arrogantly that she
+was not much of a favorite in Amity, although she commanded a certain
+measure of respect from her strenuous exertions at her own trumpet,
+which more than half-convinced people of the accuracy of her own
+opinion of herself. Sometimes Maria herself was irritated by her
+aunt, but she loved her dearly. She was always aware, too, of Aunt
+Maria's unspoken, but perfect approbation and admiration for herself,
+Maria, and of a certain sympathy for her, which the elder woman had
+the delicacy never to speak of. She had become aware that Maria,
+while she repulsed George Ramsey, was doing so for reasons which she
+could not divine, and that she suffered because of it.
+
+One afternoon, not long after Christmas, when Maria returned from
+school, almost the first words which her aunt said to her were, "I do
+hate to see a young man made a fool of."
+
+Maria turned pale, and looked at her aunt.
+
+"George Ramsey went past here sleigh-riding with Lily Merrill a
+little while ago," said Aunt Maria. "That girl's making a fool of
+him!"
+
+"Lily is a nice girl, Aunt Maria," Maria said, faintly.
+
+"Nice enough, but she can't come up to him. She never can. And when
+one can't come up, the other has to go down. I've seen it too many
+times not to know. There's sleigh-bells now. I guess it's them coming
+back. Yes, it is."
+
+Maria did not glance out of the window, and the sleigh, with its
+singing bells, flew past. She went wearily up to her own room, and
+removed her wraps before supper. Maria had a tiny coal-stove in her
+room now, and that was a great comfort to her. She could get away by
+herself, when she chose, and sometimes the necessity for so doing was
+strong upon her. She wished to think, without Aunt Maria's sharp eyes
+upon her, searching her thoughts. Emotion in Maria was reaching its
+high-water mark; the need for concealing, lest it be profaned by
+other eyes, was over her. Maria felt, although she was conscious of
+her aunt's covert sympathy for something that troubled her which she
+did not know about, and grateful for it, that she should die of shame
+if Aunt Maria did know. After supper that night she returned to her
+own room. She said she had some essays to correct.
+
+"Well, I guess I'll step into the other side a minute," said Aunt
+Maria. "Eunice went to the sewing-meeting this afternoon, and I want
+to know what they put in that barrel for that minister out West. I
+don't believe they had enough to half fill it. Of all the things they
+sent the last time, there wasn't anything fit to be seen."
+
+Maria seated herself in her own room, beside her tiny stove. She had
+a pink shade on her lamp, which stood on her little centre-table. The
+exercises were on the table, but she had not touched them when she
+heard doors opening and shutting below, then a step on the stairs.
+She knew at once it was Lily. Her room door opened, after a soft
+knock, and Lily glided gracefully in.
+
+"I knew you were up here, dear," she said. "I saw your light, and I
+saw your aunt's sitting-room lamp go out."
+
+"Aunt Maria has only gone in Uncle Henry's side. Sit down, Lily,"
+said Maria, rising and returning Lily's kiss, and placing a chair for
+her.
+
+"Does she always put her lamp out when she goes in there?" asked Lily
+with innocent wonder.
+
+"Yes," replied Maria, rather curtly. That was one of poor Aunt
+Maria's petty economies, and she was sensitive with regard to it. A
+certain starvation of character, which had resulted from the lack of
+material wealth, was evident in Aunt Maria, and her niece recognized
+the fact with exceeding pity, and a sense of wrong at the hands of
+Providence.
+
+"How very funny," said Lily.
+
+Maria said nothing. Lily had seated herself in the chair placed for
+her, and as usual had at once relapsed into a pose which would have
+done credit to an artist's model, a pose of which she was innocently
+conscious. She cast approving glances at the graceful folds of
+crimson cashmere which swept over her knees; she extended one little
+foot in its pointed shoe; she raised her arms with a gesture peculiar
+to her and placed them behind her head in such a fashion that she
+seemed to embrace herself. Lily in crimson cashmere, which lent its
+warm glow to her tender cheeks, and even seemed to impart a rosy
+reflection to the gloss of her hair, was ravishing. To-night, too,
+her face wore a new expression, one of triumphant tenderness, which
+caused her to look fairly luminous.
+
+"It has been a lovely day, hasn't it?" she said.
+
+"Very pleasant," said Maria.
+
+"Did you know I went sleigh-riding this afternoon?"
+
+"Did you?"
+
+"Yes; George took me out."
+
+"That was nice," said Maria.
+
+"We went to Wayland. The sleighing is lovely."
+
+"I thought it looked so," said Maria.
+
+"It is. Say, Maria!"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"He said things to me this afternoon that sounded as if he did mean
+them. He did, really."
+
+"Did he?"
+
+"Do you want me to tell you?" asked Lily, eying Maria happily and yet
+a little timidly.
+
+Maria straightened herself. "If you want to know what I really think,
+Lily," she said, "I think no girl should repeat anything a man says
+to her, if she does think he really means it. I think it is between
+the two. I think it should be held sacred. I think the girl cheapens
+it by repeating it, and I don't think it is fair to the man. I don't
+care to hear what Mr. Ramsey said, if you want the truth, Lily."
+
+Lily looked abashed. "I dare say you are right, Maria," she said,
+meekly. "I won't repeat anything he said if you don't think I ought,
+and don't want to hear it."
+
+"Is your new dress done?" asked Maria, abruptly.
+
+"It is going to be finished this week," said Lily. "Do you think I am
+horrid, proposing to tell you what he said, Maria?"
+
+"No, only I don't care to hear any more about it."
+
+"Well, I hope you don't think I am horrid."
+
+"I don't, dear," said Maria, with an odd sensation of tenderness for
+the other, weaker girl, whom she had handled in a measure roughly
+with her own stronger character. She looked admiringly at her as she
+spoke. "Nobody can ever really think you horrid," she said.
+
+"If they did, I should think I was horrid my own self," said Lily,
+with the ready acquiescence in the opinion of another which signified
+the deepest admiration, even to her own detriment, and was the
+redeeming note in her character.
+
+Maria laughed. "I declare, Lily," said she, "I hope you will never be
+accused of a crime, for I do believe even if you were innocent, you
+would side with the lawyer for the prosecution."
+
+"I don't know but I should," said Lily.
+
+Then she ventured to say something more about George Ramsey,
+encouraged by Maria's friendliness, but she met with such scanty
+sympathy that she refrained. She arose soon, and said she thought she
+must go home.
+
+"I am tired to-night, and I think I had better go to bed early," she
+said.
+
+"Don't hurry," Maria said, conventionally; but Lily kissed Maria and
+went.
+
+Maria knew that her manner had driven Lily away, but she did not feel
+as if she could endure hearing her confidences, and Lily's
+confidences had all the impetus of a mountain stream. Had she
+remained, they could not have been finally checked. Maria moved her
+window curtains slightly and watched Lily flitting across the yard.
+She saw her enter the door, and also saw, quite distinctly the shadow
+of a man upon the white curtain as he rose to greet her when she
+entered. She wondered whether the man was Dr. Ellridge, or George
+Ramsey. The shadow looked like that of the older man, she thought,
+and she was not mistaken.
+
+Lily, on entering the sitting-room, found Dr. Ellridge with her
+mother, and her mother's face was flushed, and she had a conscious
+simper. Lily said good-evening, and sat down as usual with her
+fancy-work, after she had removed her wraps, but soon her mother said
+to her that there was a good fire in her own room, and she thought
+that she had better go to bed early, as she must be tired, and Dr.
+Ellridge echoed her with rather a foolish expression.
+
+"I don't think you ought to sit up late working on embroidery, Lily,"
+he said. "You are looking tired to-night. You must let me prescribe
+for you a glass of hot milk and bed."
+
+Lily looked at both of them with wondering gentleness, then she rose.
+
+"There is a good fire in the kitchen," said her mother, "and Hannah
+will heat the milk for you. You had better do as Dr. Ellridge said.
+You are going out to-morrow night, too, you know."
+
+Lily said good-night, and went out with a smouldering disquiet in her
+heart. When she asked Hannah out in the kitchen to heat the milk for
+her, because Dr. Ellridge said she must drink it and then go to bed,
+the girl, who had been long with the family and considered that she
+in reality was the main-spring of the house, eyed her curiously.
+
+"Said you had better go to bed?" said she. "Why, it isn't nine
+o'clock!"
+
+"He said I looked tired, Hannah," said Lily faintly.
+
+Hannah, who was a large, high-shouldered Nova Scotia girl, with a
+large, flat face obscured with freckles, sniffed. Lily heard her say
+quite distinctly as she went into the pantry for the milk, that she
+called it a shame when there were so many grown-up daughters to think
+of, for her part.
+
+Lily knew what she meant. She sat quite pale and still while the milk
+was heating, and then drank it meekly, said good-night to Hannah and
+went up-stairs.
+
+She could not go to sleep, although she went at once to bed, and
+extinguished her lamp. She lay there and heard a clock down in the
+hall strike the hours. The clock had struck twelve, and she had not
+heard Dr. Ellridge go. The whole situation filled her with a sort of
+wonder of disgust. She could not imagine her mother and Dr. Ellridge
+sitting up until midnight as she might sit up with George Ramsey. She
+felt as if she were witnessing a ghastly inversion of things, as if
+Love, instead of being in his proper panoply of wings and roses, was
+invested with a medicine-case, an obsolete frock-coat, and elderly
+obesity. Dr. Ellridge was quite stout. She wondered how her mother
+could, and then she wondered how Dr. Ellridge could. Lily loved her
+mother, but she had relegated her to what she considered her proper
+place in the scheme of things, and now she was overstepping it. Lily
+called to mind vividly the lines on her mother's face, her matronly
+figure. It seemed to her that her mother had had her time of love
+with her father, and this was as abnormal as two springs in one year.
+Shortly after twelve, Lily heard a soft murmur of voices in the hall,
+then the front door close. Then her mother came up-stairs and entered
+her room.
+
+"Are you asleep, Lily?" she whispered, softly, and Lily recognized
+with shame the artificiality of the whisper.
+
+"No, mother, I am not asleep," she replied, quite loudly.
+
+Her mother came and sat down on the bed beside her. She patted Lily's
+cheeks, and felt for her hand. Lily's impulse was to snatch it away,
+but she was too gentle. She let it remain passively in her mother's
+nervous clasp.
+
+"Lily, my dear child, I have something to tell you," whispered Mrs.
+Merrill.
+
+Lily said nothing.
+
+"Lily, my precious child," said her mother, in her strained whisper.
+"I don't know whether you have suspected anything or not, but I am
+meditating a great change in my life. I have been very lonely since
+your dear father died, and I never had a nature to live alone and be
+happy. You might as well expect the vine to live without its tree. I
+have made up my mind that I shall be much happier, and Dr. Ellridge
+will. He needs the sympathy and love of a wife. His daughters do as
+well as they can, but a daughter is not like a wife."
+
+"Oh, mother!" said Lily. Then she gave a little sob. Her mother bent
+over and kissed her, and Lily smelled Dr. Ellridge's cigar, and she
+thought also medicine. She shrank away from her mother, and sobbed
+convulsively.
+
+"My dear child," said Mrs. Merrill, "you need not feel so badly.
+There will be no change in your life until you yourself marry. We
+shall live right along here. This house is larger and more convenient
+than the doctor's. He will rent his house, and we shall live here."
+
+"And all those Ellridge girls," sobbed Lily.
+
+"They are very nice girls, dear. Florence and Amelia will room
+together; they can have the southeast room. Mabel, I suppose, will
+have to go in the best chamber. Perhaps, by-and-by, Dr. Ellridge will
+finish off another room for her. I don't quite like the idea of
+having no spare room. But you will keep your own room, and you will
+be all the happier for having three nice sisters."
+
+"I never liked them," sobbed Lily. It really seemed to her that she
+was called upon to marry the Ellridge girls, and that was the main
+issue.
+
+"They are very nice girls," repeated Mrs. Merrill, and there was
+obstinacy in her artificially sweet tone. "Everybody says they are
+very nice girls. You certainly would not wish your mother to give up
+her chance of a happy life, because you have an unwarrantable
+prejudice against the poor doctor's daughters."
+
+"You have been married once," said Lily, feebly. It was as if she
+made a faint remonstrance because of her mother, who had already had
+her reasonable share of cake, taking a second slice. She had too
+sweet a disposition to say bitter things, but the bitterness of the
+things she might have said was in her heart.
+
+"I suppose you think because I am older it is foolish," said her
+mother, in an aggressive voice. "Wait till you yourself are older and
+you may know how I feel. You may find out that you cannot give up all
+the joys of life because you have been a few years longer in the
+world. You may not feel so very different from what you do now." Mrs.
+Merrill's voice rang true in this last. There was even a pathetic
+appeal to her daughter for sympathy. But Lily continued to sob
+weakly, and did not say any more.
+
+"Well, good-night, my dear child," Mrs. Merrill said finally. "You
+will feel very differently about all this later on. You will come to
+see, as I do, that it is for the best. You will be much happier."
+Mrs. Merrill kissed Lily again, and went out. She closed the door
+with a slight slam.
+
+Lily knew that her mother was angry with her. As for herself, she
+considered that she had never been so unhappy in her whole life. She
+thought of living with the Ellridge girls, who were really of a
+common cast, and always with Dr. Ellridge at the head of the table,
+dictating to her as he had done to-night, in his smooth, slightly
+satirical way, and her whole soul rose in revolt. She felt sure that
+Dr. Ellridge was not at all in love with her mother, as George Ramsey
+might be in love with herself. All the romance had been sucked out of
+them both years before. She called to mind again her mother's lined
+face, her too aggressive curves, her tightly frizzed hair, and she
+knew that she was right. She remembered hearing that Dr. Ellridge's
+daughters were none of them domestic, that he had hard work to keep a
+house-keeper, that his practice was declining. She remembered how
+shabby and mean his little house had looked when she had passed it in
+the sleigh with George Ramsey, that very day. She said to herself
+that Dr. Ellridge was only marrying her mother for the sake of the
+loaves and fishes, for a pretty, well-kept home for himself and his
+daughters. Lily had something of a business turn in spite of her
+feminity. She calculated how much rent Dr. Ellridge could get for his
+own house. That will dress the girls, she thought. She knew that her
+mother's income was considerable. Dr. Ellridge would be immeasurably
+better off as far as this world's goods went. There was no doubt of
+that. Lily felt such a measure of revolt and disgust that it was
+fairly like a spiritual nausea. Her own maiden innocence seemed
+assaulted, and besides that there was a sense of pitiful grief and
+wonder that her mother, besides whom she had nobody in the world,
+could so betray her. She was like the proverbial child with its poor
+little nose out of joint. She lay and wept like one. The next
+morning, when she went down to breakfast, her pretty face was pale
+and woe-begone. Her mother gave one defiant glance at her, then
+spooned out the cereal with vehemence. Hannah gave a quick, shrewd
+glance at her when she set the saucer containing the smoking mess
+before her.
+
+"Her mother has told her," she thought. She also thought that she
+herself would give notice were it not for poor Miss Lily.
+
+Lily's extreme gentleness, even when she was distressed, was
+calculated to inspire faithfulness in every one. Hannah gave more
+than one pitying, indignant glance at the girl's pretty, sad face.
+Lily did not dream of sulking to the extent of not eating her
+breakfast. She ate just as usual. She even made a remark about the
+weather to her mother, although in a little, weeping voice, as if the
+weather itself, although it was a brilliant morning, were a source of
+misery. Mrs. Merrill replied curtly. Lily took another spoonful of
+her cereal.
+
+She remained in her own room the greater part of the day. In the
+afternoon her mother, without saying anything to her, took the
+trolley for Westbridge. Lily thought with a shiver that she might be
+going over there to purchase some article for her trousseau. The
+thought of her mother with a trousseau caused her to laugh a little,
+hysterical laugh, as she sat alone in her chamber. That evening she
+and her mother went to a concert in the town hall. Lily knew that Dr.
+Ellridge would accompany her mother home. She wondered what she
+should do, what she should be expected to do--take the doctor's other
+arm, or walk behind. She had seen the doctor with two of his
+daughters seated, when she and her mother passed up the aisle. She
+knew that the two daughters would go home together, and the doctor
+would go with her mother. She thought of George Ramsey. Now and then
+as the concert proceeded she twisted her neck slightly and peered
+around, but she saw nothing of him. She concluded that he was not
+there. But when the concert was over, and she and her mother were
+passing out the door, and Dr. Ellridge was pressing close to her
+mother, under a fire of hostile glances from his daughters, Lily felt
+a touch on her own arm. She turned, and saw George Ramsey's handsome
+face with a quiver of unutterable bliss. She took his arm, and
+followed her mother and Dr. Ellridge. When they were out in the
+frosty air, under a low sky sparkling with multitudinous stars
+traversed by its mysterious nebulous highway of the gods, this poor
+little morsel of a mortal, engrossed with her poor little troubles,
+answered a remark of George's concerning the weather in a trembling
+voice. Then she began to weep unreservedly. George with a quick
+glance around, drew her around a corner which they had just reached
+into a street which afforded a circuitous route home, and which was
+quite deserted.
+
+"Why Lily, what in the world is the matter?" he said. There was
+absolutely nothing in his voice or his heart at the time except
+friendliness and honest concern for his old playmate's distress.
+
+"Mother is going to be married to Dr. Ellridge," whispered Lily, "and
+he and his three horrid daughters are all coming to live at our
+house."
+
+George whistled.
+
+Lily sobbed quite aloud.
+
+"Hush, poor little girl," said George. He glanced around; there was
+not a soul to be seen. Lily's head seemed to droop as naturally
+towards his shoulder as a flower towards the sun. A sudden impulse of
+tenderness, the tenderness of the strong for the weak, of man for
+woman, came over the young fellow. Before he well knew what he was
+doing, his arm had passed around Lily's waist, and the pretty head
+quite touched his shoulder. George gave one last bitter thought
+towards Maria, then he spoke.
+
+"Well," he said, "don't cry, Lily dear. If your mother is going to
+marry Dr. Ellridge, suppose you get married too. Suppose you marry
+me, and come and live at my house."
+
+
+
+Chapter XXV
+
+
+The next morning, before Maria had started for school, Lily Merrill
+came running across the yard, and knocked at the side door. She
+always knocked unless she was quite sure that Maria was alone. She
+was afraid of her aunt. Aunt Maria opened the door, and Lily shrank a
+little before her, in spite of the wonderful glowing radiance which
+lit her lovely face that morning.
+
+"Good-morning, Miss Stillman," said Lily, timidly.
+
+"Well?" said Aunt Maria. The word was equivalent to "What do you
+want?"
+
+"Has Maria gone?" asked Lily.
+
+"No, she is getting dressed."
+
+"Can I run up to her room and see her a minute? I have something
+particular I want to tell her."
+
+"I don't know whether she'd want anybody to come up while she's
+dressing or not," said Aunt Maria.
+
+"I don't believe she'd mind me," said Lily, pleadingly. "Would you
+mind calling up and asking her, please, Miss Stillman?"
+
+"Well," said Aunt Maria.
+
+She actually closed the door and left Lily standing in the bitter
+wind while she spoke to Maria. Lily heard her faintly calling.
+
+"Say, Maria, that Merrill girl is at the door, and wants to know if
+she can come a minute. She's got something she wants to tell you."
+
+Then Aunt Maria opened the door. "I suppose you can go up," she said,
+ungraciously. The radiance in Lily's face filled her with hostility,
+she did not know why.
+
+"Oh, thank you!" cried Lily; and ran into the house and up the stairs
+to Maria's room.
+
+Maria was standing before the glass brushing her hair, which was very
+long, and bright, and thick. Lily went straight to her and threw her
+arms around her and began to weep. Maria pushed her aside gently.
+
+"Why, what is the matter, Lily?" she asked. "Excuse me, but I must
+finish my hair; I have no more than time. What is the matter?"
+
+"Nothing is the matter," sobbed Lily, "only--Oh Maria I am so happy!
+I have not slept a wink all night I was so happy. Oh, you don't know
+how happy I am!"
+
+Maria's face turned deadly white. She swept the glowing lengths of
+her hair over it with a deft movement. "Why, what makes you so
+happy?" she asked, coolly.
+
+"Oh, Maria, he was in earnest, he was. I am engaged to George."
+
+Maria brushed her hair. "I am very glad," she said, in an unfaltering
+voice. She bent her head, bringing her hair entirely over her face,
+preparatory to making a great knot on the top of her head. "I hope
+you will be very happy."
+
+"Happy!" said Lily. "Oh, Maria, you don't know how happy I am!"
+
+"I am very glad," Maria repeated, brushing her hair smoothly from her
+neck. "He seems like a very fine young man. I think you have made a
+wise choice, Lily."
+
+Lily flung herself into a chair and looked at Maria. "Oh, Maria
+dear," she said, "I wish you were as happy as I. I hope you will be
+some time."
+
+Maria laughed, and there was not a trace of bitterness in her laugh.
+"Well, I shall not cry if I never am," she said. "What a little goose
+you are, Lily, to cry!" She swept the hair back from her face, and
+her color had returned. She looked squarely at Lily's reflection in
+the glass, and there was an odd, triumphant expression on her face.
+
+"I can't help it," sobbed Lily. "I always have cried when I was very
+happy, and I never was so happy as this; and last night, before
+he--before George asked me--I was so miserable I wanted to die. Only
+think, Maria, mother is going to marry Dr. Ellridge, and he and his
+three horrid girls are coming to live at our house. I don't know how
+I could have stood it if George hadn't asked me. Now I shall live
+with him in his house, of course, with his mother. I have always
+liked George's mother. I think she is sweet."
+
+"Yes, she is a very sweet woman, and I should think you could live
+very happily with her," said Maria, twisting her hair carefully.
+Maria had a beautiful neck showing above the lace of her underwaist.
+Lily looked at it. Her tears had ceased, and left not a trace on her
+smooth cheeks. The lace which Maria's upward-turned hair displayed
+had set her flexible mind into a new channel.
+
+"Say, Maria," she said, "it is to be a very short engagement. It will
+have to be, on account of mother. A double wedding would be too
+ridiculous, and I want to get away before all those Ellridges come
+into our house. Dr. Ellridge can't let his house before spring, and
+so I think in a month, if I can get ready." Lily blushed until her
+face was like the heart of a rose.
+
+"Well, you have a number of very pretty dresses now," said Maria. "I
+should think you could get ready."
+
+"I shall have to get a wedding-dress made, and a tea-gown, and one
+besides for receiving calls," said Lily. "Then I must have some
+underwear. Will you go shopping with me in Westbridge some Saturday,
+Maria?"
+
+"I should be very glad to do so, dear," replied Maria.
+
+"That is a very pretty lace on your waist," Lily said, meditatively.
+"I think I shall get ready-made things. It takes so much time to make
+them one's self, and besides I think they are just as pretty. Don't
+you?"
+
+"I think one can buy very pretty ready-made things," Maria said. She
+slipped on her blouse and fastened her collar.
+
+"I shall be so much obliged to you if you will go," said Lily. "I
+won't ask mother. To tell you the truth, Maria, I think it is
+dreadful that she is going to marry again--a widower with three
+grown-up daughters, too."
+
+"I don't see why," Maria said, dropping her black skirt over her head.
+
+"You don't see why?"
+
+"No, not if it makes her happy. People have a right to all the
+happiness they can get, at all ages. I used to think myself that
+older people were silly to want things like young people, but now I
+have changed my mind. Dr. Ellridge is a good man, and I dare say your
+mother will be happier, especially if you are going away."
+
+"Oh, if she had not been going to get married herself, I should
+rather have lived at home, after I was married," said Lily. She
+looked reflectively at Maria as she fastened her belt. "It's queer,"
+she said, "but I do believe my feeling so terribly about mother's
+marrying made George ask me sooner. Of course, he must have meant to
+ask me some time, or he would not have asked me at all."
+
+"Of course," said Maria, getting her hat from the closet-shelf.
+
+"But he walked home with me from the concert last night, and I
+couldn't help crying, I felt so dreadfully. Then he asked me what the
+matter was, and I told him, and then he asked me right away. I think
+maybe he had thought of waiting a little, but that hastened him. Oh,
+Maria, I am so happy!"
+
+Maria fastened on her hat carefully. "I am very glad, dear," she
+said. She turned from the glass, and Lily's face, smiling at her,
+seemed to give out light like a star. It might not have been the
+highest affection which the girl, who was one of clear and limpid
+shadows rather than depths, felt; it might have had its roots in
+selfish ends; but it fairly glorified her. Maria with a sudden
+impulse bent over her and kissed her. "I am very glad, dear," she
+said, "and now I must run, or I shall be late. My coat is
+down-stairs."
+
+"Don't say anything before your aunt Maria, will you?" said Lily,
+rising and following her.
+
+"No, of course, if you don't want me to."
+
+"Of course it will be all over town before night," said Lily, "but
+someway I would rather your aunt Maria did not hear it from me. She
+doesn't like me a bit." Lily said the last in a whisper.
+
+Both girls went down-stairs, and Maria took her coat from the rack in
+the hall.
+
+Aunt Maria opened the sitting-room door. She had a little satchel
+with Maria's lunch. "Here is your luncheon," said she, in a hard
+tone, "and you'd better hurry and not stop to talk, or you'll be
+late."
+
+"I am going right away, Aunt Maria," said Maria. She took the
+satchel, and kissed her aunt on her thin, sallow cheek.
+
+"Good-morning, Miss Stillman," said Lily, sweetly, as she followed
+Maria.
+
+Aunt Maria said nothing at all; she gave Lily a grim nod, while her
+lips were tightly compressed. She turned the key in the door with an
+audible snap.
+
+"Well, good-bye, dear," said Lily to Maria. "I hope you will be as
+happy as I am some day, and I know you will."
+
+Lily's face was entirely sweet and womanly as she turned it towards
+Maria for a kiss, which Maria gave her.
+
+"Good-bye, dear," she said, gently, and was off.
+
+Nobody knew how glad she was to be off. She had a stunned, shocked
+feeling; she realized that her knees trembled, but she held up her
+head straight and went on. She realized that worse than anything else
+would be the suspicion on the part of any one that Lily's engagement
+to George Ramsey troubled her. All the time, as she hurried along the
+familiar road, she realized that strange, shocked feeling, as of some
+tremendous detonation of spirit. She bowed mechanically to people
+whom she met. She did not fairly know who they were. She kept on her
+way only through inertia. She felt that if she stopped to think, she
+would scarcely know the road to the school-house. She wondered when
+she met a girl somewhat older than herself, just as she reached the
+bridge, if that girl, who was plain and poorly dressed, one of those
+who seem to make no aspirations to the sweets of life, if she had
+ever felt as she herself did. Such a curiosity possessed her
+concerning it that she wished she could ask the girl, although she
+did not know her. She dreaded lest Jessy Ramsey should run to meet
+her, and her dread was realized. However, Maria was not as distressed
+by it as she thought. She stooped and kissed Jessy quite easily.
+
+"Good-morning, dear," she said.
+
+A shock of any kind has the quality of mercy in that it benumbs as to
+pain. Maria's only realization was that something monstrous had
+happened, something like mutilation, but there was no sting of agony.
+She entered the school-house and went about her duties as usual. The
+children realized no difference in her, but all the time she realized
+the difference in herself. Something had gone from her, some
+essential part which she could never recover, not in itself, no
+matter what her future life might be. She was shorn of her first
+love, and that which has been never can be again.
+
+When Maria reached the bridge on her way home, there was Lily waiting
+for her, as she had half expected she would be.
+
+"Maria, dear," said Lily, with a pretty gesture of pleading, "I had
+to come and meet you, because I am so happy, and nobody else knows,
+except mother, and, somehow, her being pleased doesn't please me. I
+suppose I am wicked, but it makes me angry. I know it is awful to say
+such a thing of my own mother, but I can't help feeling that she
+thinks now she can have my room for Mabel Ellridge, and won't have to
+give up the spare chamber. I have nobody to talk to but you, Maria.
+George won't come over before evening, and I am scared to go in and
+see his mother. I am so afraid she won't like me. Do you think she
+will like me, Maria dear?"
+
+"I don't see why she should not," replied Maria. Lily had hold of her
+arm and was nestling close to her.
+
+"Don't you, honest?"
+
+"No, dear. I said so."
+
+"You don't mind my coming to meet you and talk it over, do you,
+Maria?"
+
+"Of course I don't! Why should I?" asked Maria, almost angrily.
+
+"I thought you wouldn't. Maria, do you think a blue tea-gown or a
+pink one would be prettier?"
+
+"I think pink is your color," said Maria.
+
+"Well, I rather like the idea of pink myself. Mother says I shall
+have enough money to get some nice things. I suppose it is very
+silly, but I always thought that one of the pleasantest things about
+getting married, must be having some pretty, new clothes. Do you
+think I am very silly, Maria?"
+
+"I dare say most girls feel so," said Maria, patiently.
+
+As she spoke she looked away from the other girl at the wintry
+landscape. There was to the eastward of Amity a low range of hills,
+hardly mountains. These were snow-covered, and beneath the light of
+the setting sun gave out wonderful hues and lights of rose and blue
+and pearl. It was to Maria as if she herself, being immeasurably
+taller than Lily and the other girls whom she typified, could see
+farther and higher, even to her own agony of mind. It is a great deal
+for a small nature to be pleased with the small things of life. A
+large nature may miss a good deal in not being pleased with them.
+Maria realized that she herself, in Lily's place, could have no grasp
+of mind petty enough for pink and blue tea-gowns, that she had
+outgrown that stage of her existence. She still liked pretty things,
+but they had now become dwarfed by her emotions, whereas, in the case
+of the other girl, the danger was that the emotions themselves should
+become dwarfed. Lily was typical, and there is after all a certain
+security as to peace and comfort in being one of a kind, and not
+isolated.
+
+Lily talked about her bridal wardrobe all the way until they reached
+the Ramsey house; then she glanced up at the windows and bowed,
+dimpling and blushing. "That's his mother," she said to Maria. "I
+wonder if George has told her."
+
+"I should think he must have," said Maria.
+
+"I am so glad you think she will like me. I wonder what room we shall
+have, and whether there will be new furniture. I don't know how the
+up-stairs rooms are furnished, do you?"
+
+"No, how should I? I was never up-stairs in the house in my life,"
+said Maria. Again she gazed away from Lily at the snow-covered hills.
+Her face wore an expression of forced patience. It really seemed to
+her as if she were stung by a swarm of platitudes like bees.
+
+Lily kissed her at her door. "I should ask if I couldn't come over
+this evening, and sit up in your room and talk it over," said she,
+"but I suppose he will be likely to come. He didn't say so, but I
+suppose he will."
+
+"I should judge so," said Maria.
+
+When she entered the sitting-room, her aunt, who was knitting with a
+sort of fierce energy, looked up. "Oh, it's you!" said she. Her face
+had an expression of hostility and tenderness at once.
+
+"Yes, Aunt Maria."
+
+Aunt Maria surveyed her scrutinizingly. "You don't mean to say you
+didn't wear your knit jacket under your coat, such a bitter day as
+this?" said she.
+
+"I have been warm enough."
+
+Aunt Maria sniffed. "I wonder when you will ever be old enough to
+take care of yourself?" said she. "You need to be watched every
+minute like a baby."
+
+"I was warm enough, Aunt Maria," Maria repeated, patiently.
+
+"Well, sit down here by the stove and get heated through while I see
+to supper," said Aunt Maria, crossly. "I've got a hot beef-stew with
+dumplings for supper, and I guess I'll make some chocolate instead of
+tea. That always seems to me to warm up anybody better."
+
+"Don't you want me to help?" said Maria.
+
+"No; everything is all done except to make the chocolate. I've had
+the stew on hours. A stew isn't good for a thing unless you have it
+on long enough to get the goodness out of the bone."
+
+Aunt Maria opened the door leading to the dining-room. In winter it
+served the two as both kitchen and dining-room, having a compromising
+sort of stove on which one could cook, and which still did not look
+entirely plebeian and fitted only for the kitchen. Maria saw through
+the open door the neatly laid table, with its red cloth and Aunt
+Maria's thin silver spoons and china. Aunt Maria had a weakness in
+one respect. She liked to use china, and did not keep that which had
+descended to her from her mother stored away, to be taken out only
+for company, as her sister-in-law thought she properly should do. The
+china was a fine Lowestoft pattern, and it was Aunt Maria's pride
+that not a piece was missing.
+
+"As long as I take care of my china myself, and am not dependent on
+some great, clumsy girl, I guess I can afford to use it," she said.
+
+As Maria eyed the delicate little cups a savory odor of stew floated
+through the room. She realized that she was not hungry, that the odor
+of food nauseated her with a sort of physical sympathy with the
+nausea of her soul, with life itself. Then she straightened herself,
+and shut her mouth hard. The look of her New England ancestresses who
+had borne life and death without flinching was on her face.
+
+"I will be hungry," Maria said to herself. "Why should I lose my
+appetite because a man who does not care for me is going to marry
+another girl, and when I am married, too, and have no right even to
+think of him for one minute even if he had been in earnest, if he had
+thought of me? Why should I lose my appetite? Why should I go without
+my supper? I will eat. More than that, I will enjoy eating, and
+neither George Ramsey nor Lily Merrill shall prevent it, neither they
+nor my own self."
+
+Maria sniffed the stew, and she compelled herself, by sheer force of
+will, to find the combined odor of boiling meat and vegetables
+inviting. She became hungry.
+
+"That stew smells so good," she called out to her aunt, and her voice
+rang with triumph.
+
+"I guess it _is_ a good stew," her aunt called back in reply. "I've
+had it on four hours, and I've made dumplings."
+
+"Lovely!" cried Maria. She said to herself defiantly and proudly,
+that there were little zests of life which she might have if she
+could not have the greatest joys, and those little zests she would
+not be cheated out of by any adverse fate. She said practically to
+herself, that if she could not have love she could have a stew, and
+it might be worse. She smiled to herself over her whimsical conceit,
+and her face lost its bitter, strained look which it had worn all
+day. She reflected that even if she could not marry George Ramsey,
+and had turned the cold shoulder to him, he had been undeniably
+fickle; that his fancy had been lightly turned aside by a pretty face
+which was not accompanied by great mental power. She had felt a
+contempt for George, and scorn for Lily, but now her face cleared,
+and her attitude of mind. She had gained a petty triumph over
+herself, and along with that came a clearer view of the situation.
+When Aunt Maria called her to supper, she jumped up, and ran into the
+dining-room, and seated herself at the table.
+
+"I am as hungry as a bear," said she.
+
+Aunt Maria behind her delicate china teacups gave a sniff of
+satisfaction, and her set face softened. "Well, I'm glad you are,"
+said she. "I guess the stew is good."
+
+"Of course it is," said Maria. She lifted the cover of the dish and
+began ladling out the stew with a small, thin, silver ladle which had
+come to Aunt Maria along with the china from her mother. She passed a
+plate over to her aunt, and filled her own, and began eating. "It is
+delicious," said she. The stew really pleased her palate, and she had
+the feeling of a conqueror who has gained one of the outposts in a
+battle. Aunt Maria passed her a thin china cup filled with frothing
+chocolate, and Maria praise that too. "Your chocolate is so much
+nicer than our cook used to make," said she, and Aunt Maria beamed.
+
+"I've got some lemon-cake, too," said she.
+
+"I call this a supper fit for a queen," said Maria.
+
+"I thought I would make the cake this afternoon. I thought maybe you
+would like it," said Aunt Maria, smiling. Her own pride was appeased.
+The feeling that Maria, her niece whom she adored, had been slighted,
+had rankled within her all day. Now she told herself that Maria did
+not care; that she might have been foolish in not caring and taking
+advantage of such a matrimonial chance, but that she did not care,
+and that she consequently was not slighted.
+
+"Well, I s'pose Lily told you the news this morning?" she said,
+presently. "I s'pose that was why she wanted to see you. I s'pose she
+was so tickled she couldn't wait to tell of it."
+
+"You mean her engagement to Mr. Ramsey?" said Maria, helping herself
+to more stew.
+
+"Yes. Eunice came in and told before you'd been gone half an hour.
+She'd been down to the store, and I guess Lily's mother had told it
+to somebody there. I s'pose Adeline Merrill is tickled to death to
+get Lily out of the way, now she's going to get married herself. She
+would have had to give up her spare chamber if she hadn't."
+
+"It seems to me a very nice arrangement," said Maria, taking a
+spoonful of stew. "It would have been hard for poor Lily, and now she
+will live with Mr. Ramsey and his mother, and Mrs. Ramsey seems to be
+a lovely woman."
+
+"Yes, she is," assented Aunt Maria. "She was built on a different
+plan from Adeline Merrill. She came of better stock. But I don't see
+what George Ramsey is thinking of, for my part."
+
+"Lily is very pretty and has a very good disposition," said Maria. "I
+think she will make him a good wife."
+
+Aunt Maria sniffed. "Now, Maria Edgham," said she, "what's the use.
+You know it's sour grapes he's getting. You know he wanted somebody
+else."
+
+"Whom?" asked Maria, innocently, sipping her chocolate.
+
+"You know he wanted you, Maria Edgham."
+
+"He got over it pretty quickly then," said Maria.
+
+"Maybe he hasn't got over it. Lily Merrill is just one of the kind of
+girls who lead a man on when they don't know they're being led. He is
+proud, too; he comes of a family that have always held their heads
+high. He wanted you."
+
+"Nonsense!"
+
+"You can't tell me. I know."
+
+"Aunt Maria," said Maria, with sudden earnestness, "if you ever tell
+such a thing as that out, I don't know what I shall do."
+
+"I ain't going to have folks think you're slighted," said Aunt Maria.
+She had made up her mind, in fact, to tell Eunice after supper.
+
+"Slighted!" said Maria, angrily. "There is no question of slight. Do
+you think I was in love with George Ramsey?"
+
+"No, I don't, for if you had been you would have had him instead of
+letting a little dolly-pinky, rosy-like Lily Merrill get him. I think
+he was a good match, and I don't know what possessed you, but I don't
+think you wanted him."
+
+"If you talk about it you will make people think so," said Maria,
+passionately; "and if they do I will go away from Amity and never
+come back as long as I live."
+
+Aunt Maria looked with sharp, gleaming eyes at her niece. "Maria
+Edgham, you've got something on your mind," said she.
+
+"I have not."
+
+"Yes, you have, and I want to know what it is."
+
+"My mind is my own," said Maria, indignantly, even cruelly. Then she
+rose from the table and ran up-stairs to her own room.
+
+"You have gone off without touching the lemon-cake," her aunt called
+after her, but Maria made no response.
+
+Lemon-cake was an outpost which she could not then take. She had
+reached her limit, for the time being. She sat down beside her window
+in the dark room, lighted only by the gleam from the Merrill house
+across the yard and an electric light on the street corner. There
+were curious lights and shadows over the walls; strange flickerings
+and wavings as of intangible creatures, unspoken thoughts. Maria
+rested her elbows on the window-sill, and rested her chin in her
+hands, and gazed out. Presently, with a quiver of despair, she saw
+the door of the Merrill house open and Lily come flitting across the
+yard. She thought, with a shudder, that she was coming to make a few
+more confidences before George Ramsey arrived. She heard a timid
+little knock on the side door, then her aunt's harsh and
+uncompromising, "No, Maria ain't at home," said she, lying with the
+utter unrestraint of one who believes in fire and brimstone, and yet
+lies. She even repeated it, and emphasized and particularized her
+lie, seemingly with a grim enjoyment of sin, now that she had taken
+hold of it.
+
+"Maria went out right after supper," said she. Then, evidently in
+response to Lily's low inquiry of where she had gone and when she
+would be home, she said: "She went to the post-office. She was
+expecting a letter from a gentleman in Edgham, I guess, and I
+shouldn't wonder if she stopped in at the Monroes' and played cards.
+They've been teasing her to. I shouldn't be surprised if she wasn't
+home till ten o'clock."
+
+Maria heard her aunt with wonder which savored of horror, but she
+heard the door close and saw Lily flit back across the yard with a
+feeling of immeasurable relief. Then she heard her aunt's voice at
+her door, opened a narrow crack.
+
+"Are you warm enough in here?" asked Aunt Maria.
+
+"Yes, plenty warm enough."
+
+"You'd better not light a lamp," said Aunt Maria, coolly; "I just
+told that Merrill girl that you had gone out."
+
+"But I hadn't," said Maria.
+
+"I knew it; but there are times when a lie ain't a lie, it's only the
+truth upside-down. I knew that you didn't want that doll-faced thing
+over here again. She had better stay at home and wait for her new
+beau. She was all prinked up fit to kill. I told her you had gone
+out, and I meant to, but you'd better not light your lamp for a
+little while. It won't matter after a little while. I suppose the
+beau will come, and she won't pay any attention to it. But if you
+light it right away she'll think you've got back and come tearing
+over here again."
+
+"All right," said Maria. "I'll sit here a little while, and then I'll
+light my lamp. I've got some work to do."
+
+"I'm going into the other side, after I've finished the dishes," said
+Aunt Maria.
+
+"You won't--"
+
+"No, I won't. Let George Ramsey chew his sour grapes if he wants to.
+I sha'n't say anything about it. Anybody with any sense can't help
+knowing a man of sense would have rather had you than Lily Merrill. I
+ain't afraid of anybody thinking you're slighted." There was
+indignant and acrid loyalty in Aunt Maria's tone. She closed the
+door, as was her wont, with a little slam and went down-stairs. Aunt
+Maria walked very heavily. Her steps jarred the house.
+
+Maria continued sitting at her window. Presently a new light, a rosy
+light of a lamp under a pink shade, flashed in her eyes. The parlor
+in the Merrill house was lighted. Maria saw Lily draw down the
+curtain, upon which directly appeared the shadows of growing plants
+behind it in a delicate grace of tracery. Presently Maria saw a horse
+and sleigh drive into the Merrill yard. She saw Mrs. Merrill open the
+side-door, and Dr. Ellridge enter. Then she watched longer, and
+presently a dark shadow of a man passed down the street, of which she
+could see a short stretch from her window, and she saw him go to the
+front door of the Merrill house. Maria knew that was George Ramsey.
+She laughed a little, hysterical laugh as she sat there in the dark.
+It was ridiculous, the two pairs of lovers in the two rooms! The
+second-hand, warmed-over, renovated love and the new. After Maria
+laughed she sobbed. Then she checked her sobs and sat quite still and
+fought, and presently a strange thing happened, which is not possible
+to all, but is possible to some. With an effort of the will which
+shocked her house of life, and her very soul, and left marks which
+she would bear to all eternity, she put this unlawful love for the
+lover of another out of her heart. She closed all her doors and
+windows of thought and sense upon him, and the love was gone, and in
+its place was an awful emptiness which yet filled her with triumph.
+
+"I do not love him at all now," she said, quite aloud; and it was
+true that she did not. She rose, pulled down her curtains, lighted
+her lamp, and went to work.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVI
+
+
+Maria, after that, went on her way as before. She saw, without the
+slightest qualm, incredible as it may seem, George Ramsey devoted to
+Lily. She even entered without any shrinking into Lily's plans for
+her trousseau, and repeatedly went shopping with her. She began
+embroidering a bureau-scarf and table-cover for Lily's room in the
+Ramsey house. It had been settled that the young couple were to have
+the large front chamber, and Mrs. Merrill's present to Lily was a set
+of furniture for it. Mrs. Ramsey's old-fashioned walnut set was
+stowed away. Maria even went with Mrs. Merrill to purchase the
+furniture. Mrs. Merrill had an idea, which could not be subdued, that
+Maria would have liked George Ramsey for herself, and she took a
+covert delight in pressing Maria into this service, and descanting
+upon the pleasant life in store for her daughter. Maria understood
+with a sort of scorn Mrs. Merrill's thought; but she said to herself
+that if it gave her pleasure, let her think so. She had a character
+which could leave people to their mean and malicious delights for
+very contempt.
+
+"Well, I guess Lily's envied by a good many girls in Amity," said
+Mrs. Merrill, almost undisguisedly, when she and Maria had settled
+upon a charming set of furniture.
+
+"I dare say," replied Maria. "Mr. Ramsey seems a very good young man."
+
+"He's the salt of the earth," said Mrs. Merrill. She gave a glance of
+thwarted malice at Maria's pretty face as they were seated side by
+side in the trolley-car on their way home that day. Her farthest
+imagination could discern no traces of chagrin, and Maria looked
+unusually well that day in a new suit. However, she consoled herself
+by thinking that Maria was undoubtedly like her aunt, who would die
+before she let on that she was hit, and that the girl, under her calm
+and smiling face, was stung with envy and slighted affection.
+
+Lily asked Maria to be her maid of honor. She planned to be married
+in church, but George Ramsey unexpectedly vetoed the church wedding.
+He wished a simple wedding at Lily's house. He even demurred at the
+bridal-gown and veil, but Lily had her way about that. Maria
+consented with no hesitation to be her maid of honor, although she
+refused to allow Mrs. Merrill to purchase her dress. She purchased
+some white cloth, and had it cut and fitted, and she herself made it,
+embroidering it with white silk, sitting up far into the night after
+school. But, after all, she was destined not to wear the dress to
+Lily's wedding and not to be her maid of honor.
+
+The wedding was to be the first week of Maria's spring vacation, and
+she unexpectedly received word from home that her father was not
+well, and that she had better go home as soon as her school was
+finished. Her father himself wrote. He wrote guardedly, evidently
+without Ida's knowledge. He said that, unless her heart was
+particularly set upon attending the wedding, he wished she would come
+home; that her vacation was short, at the best, that he had not seen
+her for a long time, and that he did not feel quite himself some
+days. Maria read between the lines, and so did her aunt Maria, to
+whom she read the letter.
+
+"Your father's sicker than he lets on," Aunt Maria said, bluntly.
+"You'd better go. You don't care anything particular about going to
+that Merrill girl's wedding. She can get Fanny Ellwell for her maid
+of honor. That dress Fanny wore at Eva Granger's wedding will do for
+her to wear. Your dress will come in handy next summer. You had
+better go home."
+
+Maria sat soberly looking at the letter. "I am afraid father is worse
+than he says," she said.
+
+"I know he is. Harry Edgham wasn't ever very strong, and I'll warrant
+his wife has made him go out when he didn't feel equal to it, and she
+has had stacks of company, and he must have had to strain every nerve
+to meet expenses, poor man! You'd better go, Maria."
+
+"Of course, I am going," replied Maria.
+
+That evening she went over and told Lily that she could not be her
+maid of honor, that her father was sick, and she would be obliged to
+go home as soon as school closed. George Ramsey was calling, and
+Lily's face had a lovely pink radiance. One could almost seem to see
+the kisses of love upon it. George acted a little perturbed at sight
+of Maria. He remained silent during Lily's torrent of regrets and
+remonstrances, but he followed Maria to the door and said to her how
+sorry he was that her father was ill.
+
+"I hope it is nothing serious," he said.
+
+"Thank you," said Maria. "I hope not, but I don't think my father is
+very strong, and I feel that I ought to go."
+
+"Of course," said George. "We shall be sorry to miss you, but, if
+your father is ill, you ought to go."
+
+"Do you think one day would make any difference?" said Lily,
+pleadingly, putting up her lovely face at Maria.
+
+"It would mean three days, you know, dear," Maria said.
+
+"Of course it would," said George; "and Miss Edgham is entirely
+right, Lily."
+
+"I don't want Fanny Ellwell one bit for maid of honor," Lily said,
+poutingly.
+
+Maria did not pay any attention. She was thinking anxiously of her
+father. She realized that he must be very ill or he would not have
+written her as he had done. It was not like Harry Edgham to deprive
+any one of any prospective pleasure, and he had no reason to think
+that being maid of honor at this wedding was anything but a pleasure
+to Maria. She felt that the illness must be something serious. Her
+school was to close in three days, and she was almost too impatient
+to wait.
+
+"Ida Edgham ought to be ashamed of herself for not writing and
+letting you know that your father was sick before," said Aunt Maria.
+"She and Lily Merrill are about of a piece."
+
+"Maybe father didn't want her to," said Maria. "Father knew my school
+didn't close until next Thursday. If I thought he was very ill I
+would try to get a substitute and start off before."
+
+"But I know your father wouldn't have written for you to come unless
+he wasn't well and wanted to see you," said Aunt Maria. "I shouldn't
+be a mite surprised, too, if he suspected that Ida would write you
+not to come, and thought he'd get ahead of her."
+
+Aunt Maria was right. In the next mail came a letter from Ida, saying
+that she supposed Maria would not think she could come home for such
+a short vacation, especially a she had to stay a little longer in
+Amity for the wedding, and how sorry they all were, and how they
+should look forward to the long summer vacation.
+
+"She doesn't say a word about father's being ill," said Maria.
+
+"Of course she doesn't! She knew perfectly well that if she did you
+would go home whether or no; or maybe she hasn't got eyes for
+anything aside from herself to see that he is sick."
+
+Maria grew so uneasy about her father that she engaged a substitute
+and went home two days before her vacation actually commenced. She
+sent a telegram, saying that she was coming, and on what train she
+should arrive. Evelyn met her at the station in Edgham. She had
+grown, and was nearly as tall as Maria, although only a child. She
+was fairly dancing with pleasurable expectation on the platform, with
+the uncertain grace of a butterfly over a rose, when Maria caught
+sight of her. Evelyn was a remarkably beautiful little girl. She had
+her mother's color and dimples, with none of her hardness. Her
+forehead, for some odd reason, was high and serious, like Maria's
+own, and Maria's own mother's. Her dark hair was tied with a crisp
+white bow, and she was charmingly dressed in red from head to foot--a
+red frock, red coat, and red hat. Ida could at least plead, in
+extenuation of her faults of life, that she had done her very best to
+clothe those around her with beauty and grace. When Maria got off the
+car, Evelyn made one leap towards her, and her slender, red-clad arms
+went around her neck. She hugged and kissed her with a passionate
+fervor odd to see in a child. Her charming face was all convulsed
+with emotion.
+
+"Oh, sister!" she said. "Oh, sister!"
+
+Maria kissed her fondly. "Sister's darling," she said. Then she put
+her gently away. "Sister has to get out her trunk-check and see to
+getting a carriage," she said.
+
+"Mamma has gone to New York," said Evelyn, "and papa has not got home
+yet. He comes on the next train. He told me to come and meet you."
+
+Maria, after she had seen to her baggage and was seated in the livery
+carriage with Evelyn, asked how her father was. "Is father ill,
+dear?" she said.
+
+Evelyn looked at her with surprise. "Why, no, sister, I don't think
+so," she replied. "Mamma hasn't said anything about it, and I haven't
+heard papa say anything, either."
+
+"Does he go to New York every day?"
+
+"Yes, of course," said Evelyn. The little girl had kept looking at
+her sister with loving, adoring eyes. Now she suddenly cuddled up
+close to her and thrust her arm through Maria's. "Oh, sister!" she
+said, half sobbingly again.
+
+"There, don't cry, sister's own precious," Maria said, kissing the
+little, glowing face on her shoulder. She realized all at once how
+hard the separation had been from her sister. "Are you glad to have
+me home?" she asked.
+
+For answer Evelyn only clung the closer. There was a strange passion
+in the look of her big eyes as she glanced up at her sister. Maria
+was too young herself to realize it, but the child had a dangerous
+temperament. She had inherited none of her mother's hard
+phlegmaticism. She was glowing and tingling with emotion and life and
+feeling in every nerve and vein. As she clung to her sister she
+trembled all over her lithe little body with the violence of her
+affection for her and her delight at meeting her again. Evelyn had
+made a sort of heroine of her older sister. Her imagination had
+glorified her, and now the sight of her did not disappoint her in the
+least. Evelyn thought Maria, in her brown travelling-gown and big,
+brown-feathered hat, perfectly beautiful. She was proud of her with a
+pride which reached ecstasy; she loved her with a love which reached
+ecstasy.
+
+"So father goes to New York every day?" said Maria again.
+
+"Yes," said Evelyn. Then she repeated her ecstatic "Oh, sister!"
+
+To Maria herself the affection of the little girl was inexpressibly
+grateful. She said to herself that she had something, after all. She
+thought of Lily Merrill, and reflected how much more she loved Evelyn
+than she had loved George Ramsey, how much more precious a little,
+innocent, beautiful girl was than a man. She felt somewhat reassured
+about her father's health. It did not seem to her that he could be
+very ill if he went to New York every day.
+
+"Mamma has gone to the matinee," said Evelyn, nestling luxuriously,
+like a kitten, against Maria. "She said she would bring me some
+candy. Mamma wore her new blue velvet gown, and she looked lovely,
+but"--Evelyn hesitated a second, then she whispered with her lips
+close to Maria's ear--"I love you best."
+
+"Evelyn, darling, you must not say such things," said Maria,
+severely. "Of course, you love your own mother best."
+
+"No, I don't," persisted Evelyn. "Maybe it's wicked, but I don't. I
+love papa as well as I do you, but I don't love mamma so well. Mamma
+gets me pretty things to wear, and she smiles at me, but I don't love
+her so much. I can't help it."
+
+"That is a naughty little girl," said Maria.
+
+"I can't help it," said Evelyn. "Mamma can't love anybody as hard as
+I can. I can love anybody so hard it makes me shake all over, and I
+feel ill, but mamma can't. I love you so, Maria, that I don't feel
+well."
+
+"Nonsense!" said Maria, but she kissed Evelyn again.
+
+"I don't--honest," said Evelyn. Then she added, after a second's
+pause, "If I tell you something, won't you tell mamma--honest?"
+
+"I can't promise if I don't know what it is," said Maria, with her
+school-teacher manner.
+
+"It isn't any harm, but mamma wouldn't understand. She never felt so,
+and she wouldn't understand. You won't tell her, will you, sister?"
+
+"No, I guess not," said Maria.
+
+"Promise."
+
+"Well, I won't tell her."
+
+Evelyn looked up in her sister's face with her wonderful dark eyes, a
+rose flush spread over her face. "Well, I am in love," she whispered.
+
+Maria laughed, although she tried not to. "Well, with whom, dear?"
+she asked.
+
+"With a boy. Do you think it is wrong, sister?"
+
+"No, I don't think it is very wrong," replied Maria, trying to
+restrain her smile.
+
+"His first name is pretty, but his last isn't so very," Evelyn said,
+regretfully. "His first name is Ernest. Don't you think that is a
+pretty name?"
+
+"Very pretty."
+
+"But his last name is only Jenks," said Evelyn, with a mortified air.
+"That is horrid, isn't it?"
+
+"Nobody can help his name," said Maria, consolingly.
+
+"Of course he can't. Poor Ernest isn't to blame because his mother
+married a man named Jenks; but I wish she hadn't. If we ever get
+married, I don't want to be called Mrs. Jenks. Don't people ever
+change their names, sister?"
+
+"Sometimes, I believe."
+
+"Well, I shall not marry him unless he changes his name. But he is
+such a pretty boy. He looks across the school-room at me, and once,
+when I met him in the vestibule, and there was nobody else there, he
+asked me to kiss him, and I did."
+
+"I don't think you ought to kiss boys," said Maria.
+
+"I would rather kiss him than another girl," said Evelyn, looking up
+at her sister with the most limpid passion, that of a child who has
+not the faintest conception of what passion means.
+
+"Well, sister would rather you did not," said Maria.
+
+"I won't if you don't want me to," said Evelyn, meekly. "That was
+quite a long time ago. It is not very likely I shall meet him
+anywhere where we could kiss each other, anyway. Of course, I don't
+really love him as much as I do you and papa. I would rather he died
+than you or papa; but I am in love with him--you know what I mean,
+sister?"
+
+"I wouldn't think any more about it, dear," said Maria.
+
+"I like to think about him," said Evelyn, simply. "I like to sit
+whole hours and think about him, and make sort of stories about us,
+you know--how me meet somewhere, and he tells me how much he loves
+me, and how we kiss each other again. It makes me happy. I go to
+sleep so. Do you think it is wrong, sister?"
+
+Maria remembered her own childhood. "Perhaps it isn't wrong, exactly,
+dear," she said, "but I wouldn't, if I were you. I think it is better
+not."
+
+"Well, I will try not to," said Evelyn, with a sigh. "He told Amy
+Jones I was the prettiest girl in school. Of course we couldn't be
+married for a long time, and I wouldn't be Mrs. Jenks. But, now
+you've come home, maybe I sha'n't want to think so much about him."
+
+Maria found new maids when she reached home. Ida did not keep her
+domestics very long. However, nobody could say that was her fault in
+this age when man-servants and maid-servants buzz angrily, like bees,
+over household tasks and are constantly hungering for new fields.
+
+"We have had two cooks and two new second-girls since you went away,"
+Evelyn said, when they stood waiting for the front door to be opened,
+and the man with Maria's trunk stood behind them. "The last
+second-girl we had stole"--Evelyn said the last in a horrified
+whisper--"and the last cook couldn't cook. The cook we have now is
+named Agnes, and the second-girl is Irene. Agnes lets me go out in
+the kitchen and make candy, and she always makes a little cake for
+me; but I don't like Irene. She says things under her breath when she
+thinks nobody will hear, and she makes up my bed so it is all
+wrinkly. I shouldn't be surprised if she stole, too."
+
+Then the door opened and a white-capped maid, with a rather pretty
+face, evidently of the same class as Gladys Mann, appeared.
+
+"This is my sister, Miss Maria, Irene," said Evelyn.
+
+The maid nodded and said something inarticulate.
+
+Maria said "How do you do?" to her, and asked her to tell the man
+where to carry the trunk.
+
+When the trunk was in Maria's old room, and Maria had smoothed her
+hair and washed her face and hands, she and Evelyn sat down in the
+parlor and waited. The parlor looked to Maria, after poor Aunt
+Maria's sparse old furnishings, more luxurious than she had
+remembered it. In fact, it had been improved. There were some
+splendid palms in the bay-window, and some new articles of furniture.
+The windows, also, had been enlarged, and were hung with new curtains
+of filmy lace, with thin, red silk over them. The whole room seemed
+full of rosy light.
+
+"I wish you would ask Irene to fix the hearth fire," Evelyn had said
+to Maria when they entered the room, which did seem somewhat chilly.
+
+Maria asked the girl to do so, and when she had gone and the fire was
+blazing Evelyn said:
+
+"I didn't like to ask her, sister. She doesn't realize that I am not
+a baby, and she does not like it. So I never ask her to do anything
+except when mamma is here. Irene is afraid of mamma."
+
+Maria laughed and looked at the clock. "How long will it be before
+father comes, do you think, dear?" she asked.
+
+"Papa comes home lately at five o'clock. I guess he will be here very
+soon now; but mamma won't be home before half-past seven. She has
+gone with the Voorhees to the matinee. Do you know the Voorhees,
+sister?"
+
+"No, dear."
+
+"I guess they came to Edgham after you went away. They bought that
+big house on the hill near the church. They are very rich. There are
+Mr. Voorhees and Mrs. Voorhees and their little boy. He doesn't wear
+long stockings in the coldest weather; his legs are quite bare from a
+little above his shoes to his knees. I should think he would be cold,
+but mamma says it is very stylish. He is a pretty little boy, but I
+don't like him; he looks too much like Mr. Voorhees, and I don't like
+him. He always acts as if he were laughing at something inside, and
+you don't know what it is. Mrs. Voorhees is very handsome, not quite
+so handsome as mamma, but very handsome, and she wears beautiful
+clothes and jewels. They often ask mamma to go to the theatre with
+them, and they are here quite a good deal. They have dinner-parties
+and receptions, and mamma goes. We had a dinner-party here last week."
+
+"Doesn't father go to the theatre with them?" asked Maria.
+
+"No, he never goes. I don't know whether they ask him or not. If they
+do, he doesn't go. I guess he would rather stay at home. Then I don't
+believe papa would want to leave me alone until the late train, for
+often the cook and Irene go out in the evening."
+
+Maria looked anxiously at her little sister, who was sitting as close
+to her as she could get in the divan before the fire. "Does papa look
+well?" she asked.
+
+"Why, yes, I guess so. He looks just the way he always has. I haven't
+heard him say he wasn't well, nor mamma, and he hasn't had the
+doctor, and I haven't seen him take any medicine. I guess he's well."
+
+Maria looked at the clock, a fine French affair, which had been one
+of Ida's wedding gifts, standing swinging its pendulum on the shelf
+between a Tiffany vase and a bronze. "Father must be home soon now,
+if he comes on that five-clock train," she said.
+
+"Yes, I guess he will."
+
+In fact, it was a very few minutes before a carriage stopped in front
+of the house and Evelyn called out: "There he is! Papa has come!"
+
+Maria did not dare look out of the window. She arose with trembling
+knees and went out into the hall as the front door opened. She saw at
+the first glance that her father had changed--that he did not look
+well. And yet it was difficult to say why he did not look well. He
+had not lost flesh, at least not perceptibly; he was not very pale,
+but on his face was the expression of one who is looking his last at
+the things of this world. The expression was at once stern and sad
+and patient. When he saw Maria, however, the look disappeared for the
+time. His face, which had not yet lost its boyish outlines, fairly
+quivered between smiles and tears. He caught Maria in his arms.
+
+"Father's blessed child!" he whispered in her ear.
+
+"Oh, father," half sobbed Maria, "why didn't you send for me before?
+Why didn't you tell me?"
+
+"Hush, darling!" Harry said, with a glance at Evelyn, who stood
+looking on with a puzzled, troubled expression on her little face.
+Harry took off his overcoat, and they all went into the parlor. "That
+fire looks good," said Harry, drawing close to it.
+
+"I got Maria to ask Irene to make it," Evelyn said, in her childish
+voice.
+
+"That was a good little girl," said Harry. He sat down on the divan,
+with a daughter on each side of him. Maria nestled close to her
+father. With an effort she kept her quivering face straight. She
+dared not look in his face again. A knell seemed ringing in her ears
+from her own conviction, a voice of her inner consciousness, which
+kept reiterating, "Father is going to die, father is going to die."
+Maria knew little of illness, but she felt that she could not mistake
+that expression. But her father talked quite gayly, asking her about
+her school and Aunt Maria and Uncle Henry and his wife. Maria replied
+mechanically. Finally she mustered courage to say:
+
+"How are you feeling, father? Are you well?"
+
+"I am about the same as when you went away, dear," Harry replied, and
+that expression of stern, almost ineffable patience deepened on his
+face. He smiled directly, however, and asked Evelyn what train her
+mother had taken.
+
+"She won't be home until the seven-thirty train," said Harry, "and
+there is no use in our waiting dinner. You must be hungry, Maria.
+Evelyn, darling, speak to Irene. I hear her in the dining-room."
+
+Evelyn obeyed, and Harry gave his orders that dinner should be served
+as soon as possible. The girl smiled at him with a coquettish air.
+
+"Irene is pleasanter to papa than to anybody else," Evelyn observed,
+meditatively, when Irene had gone out. "I guess girls are apt to be
+pleasanter to gentlemen than to little girls."
+
+Harry laughed and kissed the child's high forehead. "Little girls are
+just as well off if they don't study out other people's peculiarities
+too much," he said.
+
+"They are very interesting," said Evelyn, with an odd look at him,
+yet an entirely innocent look.
+
+Maria was secretly glad that this first evening She was not there,
+that she could dine alone with her father and Evelyn. It was a drop
+of comfort, and yet the awful knell never ceased ringing in her
+ears--"Father is going to die, father is going to die." Maria made an
+effort to eat, because her father watched her anxiously.
+
+"You are not as stout as you were when you went away, precious," he
+said.
+
+"I am perfectly well," said Maria.
+
+"Well, I must say you do look well," said Harry, looking admiringly
+at her. He admired his little Evelyn, but no other face in the world
+upon which he was soon to close his eyes forever was quite so
+beautiful to him as Maria's. "You look very much as your own mother
+used to do," he said.
+
+"Was Maria's mamma prettier than my mamma?" asked Evelyn, calmly,
+without the least jealousy. She looked scrutinizingly at Maria, then
+at her father. "I think Maria is a good deal prettier than mamma, and
+I suppose, of course, her mamma must have been better-looking than
+mine," said she, answering her own question, to Harry's relief. But
+she straightway followed one embarrassing question with another. "Did
+you love Maria's mamma better than you do my mamma?" she asked.
+
+Maria came to her father's relief. "That is not a question for little
+girls to ask, dear," said she.
+
+"I don't see why," said Evelyn. "Little girls ought to know things. I
+supposed that was why I was a little girl, in order to learn to know
+everything. I should have been born grown up if it hadn't been for
+that."
+
+"But you must not ask such questions, precious," said Maria. "When
+you are grown up you will see why."
+
+Harry insisted upon Evelyn's going to bed directly after dinner,
+although she pleaded hard to be allowed to sit up until her mother
+returned. Harry wished for at least a few moments alone with Maria.
+So Evelyn went off up-stairs, after teary kisses and good-nights, and
+Maria was left alone with her father in the parlor.
+
+"You are not well, father?" Maria said, immediately after Evelyn had
+closed the door.
+
+"No, dear," replied Harry, simply.
+
+Maria retained her self-composure very much as her mother might have
+done. A quick sense of the necessity of aiding her father, of
+supporting him spiritually, came over her.
+
+"What doctor have you seen, father?" she asked.
+
+"The doctor here and three specialists in New York."
+
+"And they all agreed?"
+
+"Yes, dear."
+
+Maria looked interrogatively at her father. Her face was very white
+and shocked, but it did not quiver. Harry answered the look.
+
+"I may have to give up almost any day now," he said, with an odd
+sigh, half of misery, half of relief.
+
+"Does Ida know?" asked Maria.
+
+"No, dear, she does not suspect. I thought there was no need of
+distressing her. I wanted to tell you while I was able, because--"
+Harry hesitated, then he continued: "Father wanted to tell you how
+sorry he was not to make any better provision for you," he said,
+pitifully. "He didn't want you to think it was because he cared any
+the less for you. But--soon after I married Ida--well, I realized how
+helpless she would be, especially after Evelyn was born, and I had my
+life insured for her benefit. A few years after I tried to get a
+second policy for your benefit, but it was too late. Father hasn't
+been well for quite a long time."
+
+"I hope you don't think I care about any money," Maria cried, with
+sudden passion. "I can take care of myself. It is _you_ I think of."
+Maria began to weep, then restrained herself, but she looked
+accusingly and distressedly at her father.
+
+"I had to settle the house on her, too," said Harry, painfully. "But
+I felt sure at the time--she said so--that you would always have your
+home here."
+
+"That is all right, father," said Maria.
+
+"All father can do for his first little girl, the one he loves best
+of all," said Harry, "is to leave her a little sum he has saved and
+put in the savings-bank here in her name. It is not much, dear."
+
+"It is more than I want. I don't want anything. All I want is you!"
+cried Maria. She had an impulse to rush to her father, to cling about
+his neck and weep her very heart out, but she restrained herself. She
+saw how unutterably weary her father looked, and she realized that
+any violent emotion, even of love, might be too much for his
+strength. She knew, too, that her father understood her, that she
+cared none the less because she restrained herself. Maria would never
+know, luckily for her, how painfully and secretly poor Harry had
+saved the little sum which he had placed in the bank to her credit;
+how he had gone without luncheons, without clothes, without medicines
+even how he had possibly hastened the end by his anxiety for her
+welfare.
+
+Suddenly carriage-wheels were heard, and Harry straightened himself.
+"That is Ida," he said. Then he rose and opened the front door,
+letting a gust of frosty outside air enter the house, and presently
+Ida came in. She was radiant, the most brilliant color on her hard,
+dimpled cheeks. The blank dark light of her eyes, and her set smile,
+were just as Maria remembered them. She was magnificent in her blue
+velvet, with her sable furs and large, blue velvet hat, with a blue
+feather floating over the black waves of her hair. Maria said to
+herself that she was certainly a beauty, that she was more beautiful
+than ever. She greeted Maria with the most faultless manner; she gave
+her her cool red cheek to be kissed, and made the suitable inquiries
+as to her journey, her health, and the health of her relatives in
+Amity. When Harry said something about dinner, she replied that she
+had dined with the Voorhees in the Pennsylvania station, since they
+had missed the train and had some time on their hands. She removed
+her wraps and seated herself before the fire.
+
+When at last Maria went to her own room, she was both pleased and
+disturbed to find Evelyn in her bed. She had wished to be free to
+give way to her terrible grief. Evelyn, however, waked just enough to
+explain that she wanted to sleep with her, and threw one slender arm
+over her, and then sank again into the sound sleep of childhood.
+Maria lay sobbing quietly, and her sister did not awaken at all. It
+might have been midnight when the door of the room was softly opened
+and light flared across the ceiling. Maria turned, and Ida stood in
+the doorway. She had on a red wrapper, and she held a streaming
+candle. Her black hair floated around her beautiful face, which had
+not lost its color or its smile, although what she said might
+reasonably have caused it to do so.
+
+"Your father does not seem quite well," she said to Maria. "I have
+sent Irene and the cook for the doctor. If you don't mind, I wish you
+would get up and slip on a wrapper and come into my room." Ida spoke
+softly for fear of waking Evelyn, whom she had directly seen in
+Maria's bed when she opened the door.
+
+Maria sprang up, got a wrapper, put it on over her night-gown, thrust
+her feet into slippers, and followed Ida across the hall. Harry lay
+on the bed, seemingly unconscious.
+
+"I can't seem to rouse him," said Ida. She spoke quite placidly.
+
+Maria went close to her father and put her ear to his mouth. "He is
+breathing," she whispered, tremulously.
+
+Ida smiled. "Oh yes," she said. "I don't think it anything serious.
+It may be indigestion."
+
+Then Maria turned on her. "Indigestion!" she whispered. "Indigestion!
+He is dying. He has been dying a long time, and you haven't had sense
+enough to see it. You haven't loved him enough to see it. What made
+you marry my father if you didn't love him?"
+
+Ida looked at Maria, and her face seemed to freeze into a smiling
+mask.
+
+"He is dying!" Maria repeated, in a frenzy, yet still in a whisper.
+
+"Dying? What do you know about it?" Ida asked, with icy emphasis.
+
+"I know. He has seen three specialists besides the doctor here."
+
+"And he told you instead of me?"
+
+"He told me because he knew I loved him," said Maria. She was as
+white as death herself, and she trembled from head to foot with
+strange, stiff tremors. Her blue eyes fairly blazed at her
+step-mother.
+
+Suddenly the sick man began to breathe stertorously. Even Ida started
+at that. She glanced nervously towards the bed. Little Evelyn, in her
+night-gown, her black fleece of hair fluffing around her face like a
+nimbus of shadow, came and stood in the doorway.
+
+"What is the matter with papa?" she whispered, piteously.
+
+"He is asleep, that is all, and breathing hard," replied her mother.
+"Go back to bed."
+
+"Go back to bed, darling," said Maria.
+
+"What is the matter?" asked Evelyn. She burst into a low, frightened
+wail.
+
+"Go back to bed this instant, Evelyn," said her mother, and the child
+fled, whimpering.
+
+Maria stood close to her father. Ida seated herself in a chair beside
+the table on which the lamp stood. Neither of them spoke again. The
+dying man continued to breathe his deep, rattling breath, the breath
+of one who is near the goal of life and pants at the finish of the
+race. The cook, a large Irishwoman, put her face inside the door.
+
+"The doctor is comin' right away," said she. Then in the same breath
+she muttered, looking at poor Harry, "Oh, me God!" and fled,
+doubtless to pray for the poor man's soul.
+
+Then the doctor's carriage-wheels were heard, and he came up-stairs,
+ushered by Irene, who stood in the doorway, listening and looking
+with a sort of alien expression, as if she herself were immortal, and
+sneered and wondered at it all.
+
+Ida greeted the doctor in her usual manner. "Good-evening, doctor,"
+she said, smiling. "I am sorry to have disturbed you at this hour,
+but Mr. Edgham has an acute attack of indigestion and I could not
+rouse him, and I thought it hardly wise to wait until morning."
+
+The doctor, who was an old man, unshaven and grim-faced, nodded and
+went up to the bed. He did not open his medicine-case after he had
+looked at Harry.
+
+"I suppose you can give him something, doctor?" Ida said.
+
+"There is nothing that mortal man can do, madam," said the doctor,
+surlily. He disliked Ida Edgham, and yet he felt apologetic towards
+her that he could do nothing. He in reality felt testily apologetic
+towards all mankind that he could not avert death at last.
+
+Ida's brilliant color faded then; she ceased to smile. "I think I
+should have been told," she said, with a sort of hard indignation.
+
+The doctor said nothing. He stood holding Harry's hand, his fingers
+on the pulse.
+
+"You surely do not mean me to understand that my husband is dying?"
+said Ida.
+
+"He cannot last more than a few hours, madam," replied the doctor,
+with pitilessness, yet still with the humility of one who has failed
+in a task.
+
+"I think we had better have another doctor at once," said Ida.
+"Irene, go down street to the telegraph operator and tell him to send
+a message for Dr. Lameth."
+
+"He has been consulted, and also Dr. Green and Dr. Anderson, not four
+weeks ago, and we all agree," said the doctor, with a certain
+defiance.
+
+"Go, Irene," said Ida.
+
+Irene went out of the room, but neither she nor the cook left the
+house.
+
+"The madam said to send a telegram," Irene told the cook, "but the
+doctor said it was no use, and I ain't goin' to stir out a step again
+to-night. I'm afraid."
+
+The cook, who was weeping beside the kitchen table, hardly seemed to
+hear. She wept profusely and muttered surreptitiously prayers on her
+rosary for poor Harry's soul, which passed as day dawned.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVII
+
+
+Maria had always attended church, and would have said, had she been
+asked, that she believed in religion, that she believed in God; but
+she had from the first, when she had thought of such matters at all,
+a curious sort of scorn, which was half shame, at the familiar
+phrases used concerning it. When she had heard of such and such a one
+that "he was serious," that he had "experienced conviction," she had
+been filled with disgust. The spiritual nature of it all was to her
+mind treated materially, like an attack of the measles or mumps. She
+had seen people unite with the church of which her mother had been a
+member, and heard them subscribe to and swear their belief in
+articles of faith, which seemed to her monstrous. Religion had never
+impressed her with any beauty, or sense of love. Now, for the first
+time, after her father had died, she seemed all at once to sense the
+nearness of that which is beyond, and a love and longing for it,
+which is the most primitive and subtlest instinct of man, filled her
+very soul. Her love for her father projected her consciousness of him
+beyond this world. In the midst of her grief a strange peace was over
+her, and a realization of love which she had never had before. Maria,
+at this period, had she been a Catholic, might have become a
+religious devotee. She seemed to have visions of the God-man crowned
+with thorns, the rays of unutterable and eternal love, and sacred
+agony for love's sake. She said to herself that she loved God, that
+her father had gone to him. Moreover, she took a certain delight in
+thinking that her own mother, with her keen tongue and her heart of
+true gold, had him safe with her. She regarded Ida with a sort of
+covert triumph during those days after the funeral, when the sweet,
+sickly fragrance of the funeral flowers still permeated the house.
+Maria did not weep much after the first. She was not one to whom
+tears came easily after her childhood. She carried about with her
+what seemed like an aching weight and sense of loss, along with that
+strange new conviction of love and being born for ultimate happiness
+which had come to her at the time of her father's death.
+
+The spring was very early that year. The apple-trees were in blossom
+at an unusual time. There was a tiny orchard back of the Edgham
+house. Maria used to steal away down there, sit down on the grass,
+speckled with pink-and-white petals, and look up through the rosy
+radiance of bloom at the infinite blue light of the sky. It seemed to
+her for the first time she laid hold on life in the midst of death.
+She wondered if she could always feel as she did then. She had a
+premonition that this state, which bordered on ecstasy, would not
+endure.
+
+"Maria does not act natural, poor child," Ida said to Mrs. Voorhees.
+"She hardly sheds a tear. Sometimes I fear that her father's marrying
+again did wean her a little from him."
+
+"She may have deep feelings," suggested Mrs. Voorhees. Mrs. Voorhees
+was an exuberant blonde, with broad shallows of sentimentality
+overflowing her mind.
+
+"Perhaps she has," Ida assented, with a peculiar smile curling her
+lips. Ida looked handsomer than ever in her mourning attire. The
+black softened her beauty, instead of bringing it into bolder relief,
+as is sometimes the case. Ida mourned Harry in a curious fashion. She
+mourned the more pitifully because of the absence of any mourning at
+all, in its truest sense. Ida had borne in upon her the propriety of
+deep grief, and she, maintaining that attitude, cramped her very soul
+because of its unnaturalness. She consoled herself greatly because of
+what she esteemed her devotion to the man who was gone. She said to
+herself, with a preen of her funereal crest, that she had been such a
+wife to poor Harry as few men ever had possessed.
+
+"Well, I have the consolation of thinking that I have done my duty,"
+she said to Mrs. Voorhees.
+
+"Of course you have, dear, and that is worth everything," responded
+her friend.
+
+"I did all I could to make his home attractive," said Ida, "and he
+never had to wait for a meal. How pretty he thought those new
+hangings in the parlor were! Poor Harry had an aesthetic sense, and I
+did my best to gratify it. It is a consolation."
+
+"Of course," said Mrs. Voorhees.
+
+If Ida had known how Maria regarded those very red silk parlor
+hangings she would have been incredulous. Maria thought to herself
+how hard her poor father had worked, and how the other hangings,
+which had been new at the time of Ida's marriage, could not have been
+worn out. She wanted to tear down the filmy red things and stuff them
+into the kitchen stove. When she found out that her father had saved
+up nearly a thousand dollars for her, which was deposited to her
+credit in the Edgham savings-bank, her heart nearly broke because of
+that. She imagined her father going without things to save that
+little pittance for her, and she hated the money. She said to herself
+that she would never touch it. And yet she loved her father for
+saving it for her with a very anguish of love.
+
+Ida was manifestly surprised when Henry's will was read and she
+learned of Maria's poor little legacy, but she touched her cool red
+lips to Maria's cheek and told her how glad she was. "It will be a
+little nest-egg for you," she said, "and it will buy your trousseau.
+And, of course, you will always feel at perfect liberty to come here
+whenever you wish to do so. Your room will be kept just as it is."
+
+Maria thanked her, but she detected an odd ring of insincerity in
+Ida's voice. After she went to bed that night she speculated as to
+what it meant. Evelyn was not with her. Ida had insisted that she
+should occupy her own room.
+
+"You will keep each other awake," she said.
+
+Evelyn had grown noticeably thin and pale in a few days. The child
+had adored her father. Often, at the table, she would look at his
+vacant place, and push away her plate, and sob. Ida had become mildly
+severe with her on account of it.
+
+"My dear child," she said, "of course we all feel just as you do, but
+we control ourselves. It is the duty of those who live to control
+themselves."
+
+"I want my papa!" sobbed Evelyn convulsively.
+
+"You had better go away from the table, dear," said Ida calmly. "I
+will have a plate of dinner kept warm for you, and by-and-by when you
+feel like it, you can go down to the kitchen and Agnes will give it
+to you."
+
+In fact, poor little Evelyn, who was only a child and needed her
+food, did steal down to the kitchen about nine o'clock and got her
+plate of dinner. But she was more satisfied by Agnes bursting into
+tears and talking about her "blissed father that was gone, and how
+there was niver a man like him," and actually holding her in her
+great lap while she ate. It was a meal seasoned with tears, but also
+sweetened with honest sympathy. Evelyn, when she slipped up the back
+stairs to her own room after her supper, longed to go into her
+sister's room and sleep with her, but she did not dare. Her little
+bed was close to the wall, against which, on the other side, Maria's
+bed stood, and once Evelyn distinctly heard a sob. She sobbed too,
+but softly, lest her mother hear. Evelyn felt that she and Maria and
+Agnes were the only ones who really mourned for her father, although
+she viewed her mother in her mourning robes with a sort of awe, and a
+feeling that she must believe in a grief on her part far beyond hers
+and Maria's. Ida had obtained a very handsome mourning wardrobe for
+both herself and Evelyn, and had superintended Maria's. Maria paid
+for her clothes out of her small earnings, however. Ida had her
+dress-maker's bill made out separately, and gave it to her. Maria
+calculated that she would have just about enough to pay her fare back
+to Amity without touching that sacred blood-money in the
+savings-bank. It had been on that occasion that Ida had made the
+remark to her about her always considering that house as her home,
+and had done so with that odd expression which caused Maria to
+speculate. Maria decided that night, as she lay awake in bed, that
+Ida had something on her mind which she was keeping a secret for the
+present. The surmise was quite justified, but Maria had not the least
+suspicion of what it was until three days before her vacation was to
+end, when Ida received a letter with the Amity post-mark, directed in
+Aunt Maria's precise, cramped handwriting. She spoke about it to
+Maria, who had brought it herself from the office that evening after
+Evelyn had gone to bed.
+
+"I had a letter from your aunt Maria this morning," she said, with an
+assumed indifference.
+
+"Yes; I noticed the Amity post-mark and Aunt Maria's writing," said
+Maria.
+
+Ida looked at her step-daughter, and for the first time in her life
+she hesitated. "I have something to say to you, Maria," she said,
+finally, in a nervous voice, so different from her usual one that
+Maria looked at her in surprise. She waited for her to speak further.
+
+"The Voorhees are going abroad," she said, abruptly.
+
+"Are they?"
+
+"Yes, they sail in three weeks--three weeks from next Saturday."
+
+Maria still waited, and still her step-mother hesitated. At last,
+however, she spoke out boldly and defiantly.
+
+"Mrs. Voorhees's sister, Miss Angelica Wyatt, is going with them,"
+said she. "Mrs. Voorhees is not going to take Paul; she will leave
+him with her mother. She says travelling is altogether too hard on
+children."
+
+"Does she?"
+
+"Yes; and so there are three in the party. Miss Wyatt has her
+state-room to herself, and--they have asked me to go. The passage
+will not cost me anything. All the expense I shall have will be my
+board, and travelling fares abroad."
+
+Maria looked at her step-mother, who visibly shrank before her, then
+looked at her with defiant eyes.
+
+"Then you are going?" she said.
+
+"Yes. I have made up my mind that it is a chance which Providence has
+put in my way, and I should be foolish, even wicked, to throw it
+away, especially now. I am not well. Your dear father's death has
+shattered my nerves."
+
+Maria looked, with a sarcasm which she could not repress, at her
+step-mother's blooming face, and her rounded form.
+
+"I have consulted Mrs. Voorhees's physician, in New York," said Ida
+quickly, for she understood the look. "I consulted him when I went to
+the city with Mrs. Voorhees last Monday, and he says I am a nervous
+wreck, and he will not answer for the consequences unless I have a
+complete change of scene."
+
+"What about Evelyn?" asked Maria, in a dry voice.
+
+"I wrote to your aunt Maria about her. The letter I got this morning
+was in reply to mine. She writes very brusquely--she is even
+ill-mannered--but she says she is perfectly willing for Evelyn to go
+there and board. I will pay four dollars a week--that is a large
+price for a child--and I knew you would love to have her."
+
+"Yes, I should; I don't turn my back upon my own flesh and blood,"
+Maria said, abruptly. "I guess I shall be glad to have her, poor
+little thing! with her father dead and her mother forsaking her."
+
+"I think you must be very much like your aunt Maria," said Ida, in a
+cool, disagreeable voice. "I would fight against it, if I were you,
+Maria. It is not interesting, such a way as hers. It is especially
+not interesting to gentlemen. Gentlemen never like girls who speak so
+quickly and emphatically. They like girls to be gentle."
+
+"I don't care what gentlemen think," said Maria, "but I do care for
+my poor, forsaken little sister." Maria's voice broke with rage and
+distress.
+
+"You are exceedingly disagreeable, Maria," said Ida, with the radiant
+air of one who realizes her own perfect agreeableness.
+
+Maria's lip curled. She said nothing.
+
+"Evelyn's wardrobe is in perfect order for the summer," said Ida. "Of
+course she can wear her white frocks in warm weather, and she has her
+black silk frocks and coat. I have plenty of black sash ribbons for
+her to wear with her white frocks. You will see to it that she always
+wears a black sash with a white frock, I hope, Maria. I should not
+like people in Amity to think I was lacking in respect to your
+father's memory."
+
+"Yes, I will be sure that Evelyn wears a black sash with a white
+frock," replied Maria, in a bitter voice.
+
+She rose abruptly and left the room. Up in her own chamber she threw
+herself face downward upon her bed, and wept the tears of one who is
+oppressed and helpless at the sight of wrong and disloyalty to one
+beloved. Maria hardly thought of Evelyn in her own personality at
+all. She thought of her as her dead father's child, whose mother was
+going away and leaving her within less than three weeks after her
+father's death. She lost sight of her own happiness in having the
+child with her, in the bitter reflection over the disloyalty to her
+father.
+
+"She never cared at all for father," she muttered to herself--"never
+at all; and now she does not really care because he is gone. She is
+perfectly delighted to be free, and have money enough to go to
+Europe, although she tries to hide it."
+
+Maria felt as if she had caught sight of a stone of shame in the
+place where a wife's and mother's heart should have been. She felt
+sick with disgust, as if she had seen some monster. It never occurred
+to her that she was possibly unjust to Ida, who was, after all, as
+she was made, a being on a very simple and primitive plan, with an
+acute perception of her own welfare and the means whereby to achieve
+it. Ida was in reality as innocently self-seeking as a butterfly or a
+honey-bee. She had never really seen anybody in the world except
+herself. She had been born humanity blind, and it was possibly no
+more her fault than if she had been born with a hump.
+
+The next day Ida went to New York with Mrs. Voorhees to complete some
+preparations for her journey, and to meet Mrs. Voorhees's sister, who
+was expected to arrive from the South, where she had been spending
+the winter. That evening the Voorheeses came over and discussed their
+purchases, and Miss Wyatt, the sister, came with them. She was
+typically like Mrs. Voorhees, only younger, and with her figure in
+better restraint. She had so far successfully fought down an
+hereditary tendency to avoirdupois. She had brilliant yellow hair and
+a brilliant complexion, like her sister, and she was as well, even
+better, dressed. Ida had purchased that day a steamer-rug, a close
+little hat, and a long coat for the voyage, and the women talked over
+the purchases and their plans for travel with undisguised glee. Once,
+when Ida met Maria's sarcastic eyes, she colored a little and
+complained of a headache, which she had been suffering with all day.
+
+"Yes, there is no doubt that you are simply a nervous wreck, and you
+would break down entirely without the sea-voyage and the change of
+scene," said Mrs. Voorhees, in her smooth, emotionless voice and with
+a covert glance at Maria. Ida had confided to her the attitude which
+she knew Maria took with reference to her going away.
+
+"All I regret--all that mars my perfect delight in the prospect of
+the trip--is parting with my darling little Paul," Mrs. Voorhees
+said, with a sigh.
+
+"That is the way I feel with regard to Evelyn," said Ida.
+
+Maria, who was sewing, took another stitch. She did not seem to hear.
+
+The next day but one Maria and Evelyn started for Amity. Ida did not
+go to the station with them. She was not up when they started. The
+curtains in her room were down, and she lay in bed, drawing down the
+corners of her mouth with resolution when Maria and Evelyn entered to
+bid her good-bye. Maria said good-bye first, and bent her cheek to
+Ida's lips; then it was Evelyn's turn. The little girl looked at her
+mother with fixed, solemn eyes, but there were no tears in them.
+
+"Mamma is so sorry she cannot even go to the station with her darling
+little girl," said Ida, "but she is completely exhausted, and has not
+slept all night."
+
+Evelyn continued to look at her, and there came into her face an
+innocent, uncomplaining accusation.
+
+"Mamma cannot tell you how much she feels leaving her precious little
+daughter," whispered Ida, drawing the little figure, which resisted
+rigidly, towards her. "She would not do it if she were not afraid of
+losing her health completely." Evelyn remained in her attitude of
+constrained affection, bending over her mother. "Mamma will write you
+very often," continued Ida. "Think how nice it will be for you to get
+letters! And she will bring you some beautiful things when she comes
+back." Then Ida's voice broke, and she found her handkerchief under
+her pillow and put it to her eyes.
+
+Evelyn, released from her mother's arm, regarded her with that
+curiosity and unconscious accusation which was more pitiful than
+grief. The child was getting her first sense, not of loss, for one
+cannot lose that which one has never had, but of non-possession of
+something which was her birthright.
+
+When at last they were on the train, Evelyn surprised her sister by
+weeping violently. Maria tried to hush her, but she could not. Evelyn
+wept convulsively at intervals all the way to New York. When they
+were in the cab, crossing the city, Maria put her arm around her
+sister and tried to comfort her.
+
+"What is it, precious?" she whispered. "Do you feel so badly about
+leaving your mother?"
+
+"No," sobbed the little girl. "I feel so badly because I don't feel
+badly."
+
+Maria understood. She began talking to her of her future home in
+Amity, and the people whom she would see. All at once Maria reflected
+how Lily would be married to George Ramsey when she returned, that
+she should see George's wife going in and out the door that might
+have been the door of her own home, and she also had a keen pang of
+regret for the lack of regret. She no longer loved George Ramsey. It
+was nothing to her that he was married to Lily; but, nevertheless,
+her emotional nature, the best part of her, had undergone a
+mutilation. Love can be eradicated, but there remains a void and a
+scar, and sometimes through their whole lives such scars of some
+people burn.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVIII
+
+
+Evelyn was happier in Amity, with Maria and her aunt, than she had
+ever been. It took a little while for her to grow accustomed to the
+lack of luxury with which she had always been surrounded; then she
+did not mind it in the least. Everybody petted her, and she acquired
+a sense of importance which was not offensive, because she had also a
+sense of the importance of everybody else. She loved everybody. Love
+seemed the key-note of her whole nature. It was babyish love as yet,
+but there were dangerous possibilities which nobody foresaw, except
+Henry Stillman.
+
+"I don't know what will become of that child when she grows up if she
+can't have the man she falls in love with," he told Eunice one night,
+after Maria and Evelyn, who had been in for a few moments, had gone
+home.
+
+Eunice, who was not subtle, looked at him wonderingly, and her
+husband replied to her unspoken question.
+
+"That child's going to take everything hard," he said.
+
+"I don't see what makes you think so."
+
+"She is like a harp that's overstrung," said Henry.
+
+"How queer you talk!"
+
+"Well, she is; and if she is now, what is she going to be when she's
+older? Well, I hope the Lord will deal gently with her. He's given
+her too many feelings, and I hope He will see to it that they ain't
+tried too hard." Henry said this last with the half-bitter melancholy
+which was growing upon him.
+
+"I guess she will get along all right," said Eunice, comfortably.
+"She's a pretty little girl, and her mother has looked out for her
+clothes, if she did scoot off and leave her. I wonder how long she's
+going to stay in foreign parts?"
+
+Henry shook his head. "Do you want to know how long?" he said.
+
+"Yes. What do you mean, Henry?"
+
+"She's going to stay just as long as she has a good time there. If
+she has a good time there she'll stay if it's years."
+
+"You don't mean you think she would go off and leave that darling
+little girl a whole year?"
+
+"I said years," replied Henry.
+
+"Land! I don't believe it. You're dreadful hard on women, Henry."
+
+"Wait and see," said Henry.
+
+Time proved that Henry, with his bitter knowledge of the weakness of
+human nature, was right. Ida remained abroad. After a year's stay she
+wrote Maria, from London, that an eminent physician there said that
+he would not answer for her life if she returned to the scene wherein
+she had suffered so much. She expressed a great deal of misery at
+leaving her precious Evelyn so long, but she did not feel that it was
+right for her to throw her life away. In a postscript to this letter
+she informed Maria, as if it were an afterthought, that she had let
+the house in Edgham furnished. She said it injured a house to remain
+unoccupied so long, and she felt that she ought to keep the place up
+for her poor father's sake, he had thought so much of it. She added
+that the people who rented it had no children except a grown-up
+daughter, so that everything would be well cared for. When Maria read
+the letter to her aunt the elder woman sniffed.
+
+"H'm," said she. "I ain't surprised, not a mite."
+
+"It keeps us here quartered on you," said Maria.
+
+"So far as that goes, I am tickled to death she has rented the
+house," replied Aunt Maria. "I had made up my mind that you would
+feel as if you would want to go to Edgham for your summer vacation,
+anyway, and I thought I would go with you and keep house, though I
+can't say that I hankered after it. The older I grow the more I feel
+as if I was best off in my own home, but I would have gone. So far as
+I am concerned I am glad she has let the house, but I must say I
+ain't surprised. You mark my words, Maria Edgham, and you see if what
+I say won't come true."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Ida Slome will stay over there, if she has a good time. She's got
+money enough with poor Harry's life insurance, and now she will have
+her house rent. It don't cost her much to keep Evelyn here, and she's
+got enough. I don't mean she's got enough to traipse round with
+duchesses and earls and that sort, but she's got enough. Those folks
+she went with have settled down there, haven't they?"
+
+"Yes, I believe so," said Maria. "Mr. Voorhees was an Englishman, and
+I believe he is in some business in London."
+
+"Well, Ida Slome is going to stay there. I shouldn't be surprised if
+Evelyn was grown up before she saw her mother again."
+
+"I can't quite believe that," Maria said.
+
+"When you get to be as old as I am you will believe more," said her
+aunt Maria. "You will see that folks' selfishness hides the whole
+world besides. Ida Slome is that kind."
+
+"I think she is selfish myself," said Maria, "but I don't believe she
+can leave Evelyn as long as that."
+
+"Wait and see," said Aunt Maria, in much the same tone that her
+brother had used towards his wife.
+
+Maria Stillman was right. Evelyn remained in Amity. She outgrew
+Maria's school, and attended the Normal School in Westbridge. Maria
+herself outgrew her little Amity school, and obtained a position as
+teacher in one of the departments of the Normal School, and still Ida
+had not returned. She wrote often, and in nearly every letter spoke
+of the probability of her speedy return, and in the same breath of
+her precarious health. She could not, however, avoid telling of her
+social triumphs in London. Ida was evidently having an aftermath of
+youth in her splendid maturity. She was evidently flattered and
+petted, and was thoroughly enjoying herself. Aunt Maria said she
+guessed she would marry again.
+
+"She's too old," said Maria.
+
+"Wait till you're old yourself and you won't be so ready to judge,"
+said her aunt. "I ain't so sure she won't."
+
+Evelyn was a young lady, and was to graduate the next year, and still
+her mother had not returned. She was the sweetest young creature in
+the world at that time. She was such a beauty that people used to
+turn and stare after her. Evelyn never seemed to notice it, but she
+was quite conscious, in a happy, childlike fashion, of her beauty.
+She resembled her mother to a certain extent, but she had nothing of
+Ida's hardness. Where her mother froze, she flamed. Two-thirds of the
+boys in the Normal School were madly in love with her, but Evelyn, in
+spite of her temperament, was slow in development as to her emotions.
+She was very childish, although she was full of enthusiasms and
+nervous energy. Maria had long learned that when Evelyn told her she
+was in love, as she frequently did, it did not in the least mean that
+she was, in the ordinary acceptation of the term. Evelyn was very
+imaginative. She loved her dreams, and she often raised, as it were,
+a radiance of rainbows about some boy of her acquaintance, but the
+brightness vanished the instant the boy made advances. She had an
+almost fierce virginity of spirit in spite of her loving heart. She
+did not wish to touch her butterflies of life. She used to walk
+between her aunt and Maria when they were coming out of church, so
+that no boy would ask leave to go home with her. She clung to the
+girls in her class for protection when she went to any entertainment.
+Consequently her beautiful face, about which clustered her dark, fine
+hair like mist, aroused no envy. The other girls said that Evelyn
+Edgham was such a beauty and she did not know it. But Evelyn did know
+it perfectly, only at that time it filled her with a sort of timidity
+and shame. It was as if she held some splendid, heavy sword of
+victory which she had not the courage to wield. She loved her sister
+better than anybody else. She had no very intimate friend of her own
+sex with whom she fell in love, after the fashion of most young
+girls. That might have happened had it not been for her sister, whom
+Evelyn thought of always as excelling everybody else in beauty and
+goodness and general brilliancy. Maria, when nearing thirty, was, in
+fact, as handsome as she had ever been. Her self-control had kept
+lines from her face. She was naturally healthy, and she, as well as
+Evelyn, had by nature a disposition to make the most of herself and a
+liking for adornment. Aunt Maria often told Eunice that Maria was
+full as good-looking as Evelyn, if she was older, but that was not
+quite true. Maria had never had Evelyn's actual beauty, her
+perfection as of a perfect flower; still she was charming, and she
+had admirers, whom she always checked, although her aunt became more
+and more distressed that she did so. Always at the bottom of Maria's
+heart lay her secret. It was not a guilty secret. It was savored more
+of the absurd of tragedy than anything else. Sometimes Maria herself
+fairly laughed at the idea that she was married. All this time she
+wondered about Wollaston Lee. She thought, with a sick terror, of the
+possibility of his falling in love, and wishing to marry, and trying
+to secure a divorce, and the horrible publicity, and what people
+would say and do. She knew that a divorce would be necessary,
+although the marriage was not in reality a marriage at all. She had
+made herself sufficiently acquainted with the law to be sure that a
+divorce would be absolutely necessary in order for either herself or
+Wollaston Lee to marry again. For herself, she did not wish to marry,
+but she did wonder uneasily with regard to him. She was not in the
+least jealous; all her old, childish fancy for him had been killed by
+that strenuous marriage ceremony, but she dreaded the newspapers and
+the notoriety which would inevitably follow any attempt on either
+side to obtain a divorce. She dreamed about it often, and woke in
+terror, having still before her eyes the great, black letters on the
+first pages of city papers. She had never seen Wollaston Lee since
+she had lived in Amity. She had never even heard anything about him
+except once, when somebody had mentioned his name and spoken of
+seeing him at a reception, and that he was a professor in one of the
+minor colleges. She did not wish ever to repeat that experience. Her
+heart had seemed to stand still, and she had grown so white that a
+lady beside her asked her hurriedly if she were faint. Maria had
+thrown off the faintness by a sheer effort of will, and the color had
+returned to her face, and she had laughingly replied with a denial.
+Sometimes she thought uneasily of Gladys Mann. The clergyman who, in
+his excess of youthful zeal, had performed the ceremony was dead. She
+had seen his obituary notice in a New York paper with a horrible
+relief. He had died quite suddenly in one of the pneumonia winters.
+But Gladys Mann and her possession of the secret troubled her. Gladys
+Mann, as she remembered her, had been such a slight, almost abortive
+character. She asked herself if she could keep such a secret, if she
+would have sense enough to do so. Gladys had married, too, a man of
+her own sort, who worked fitfully, and spent most of his money in
+carousing with John Dorsey and her father. Gladys had had a baby a
+few months after her marriage, and she had had two more since. The
+last time Maria had been in Amity was soon after Gladys's first baby
+was born. Maria had met her one day carrying the little thing swathed
+in an old shawl, with a pitiful attempt of finery in a white lace
+bonnet cocked sidewise on its little head, which waggled over
+Gladys's thin shoulder. Gladys, when she saw Maria, had colored and
+nodded, and almost run past her without a word.
+
+It was just before the beginning of Evelyn's last year at school when
+Maria received a letter from Gladys's mother. It was a curious
+composition. Mrs. Mann had never possessed any receptivity for
+education. The very chirography gave evidence of a rude, almost
+uncivilized mind. Maria got it one night during the last of August.
+She had gone to the post-office for the last mail, and all the time
+there had been over her a premonition of something unwonted of much
+import to her. The very dusty flowers and weeds by the way-side
+seemed to cry out to her as she passed them. They seemed no longer
+mere flowers and weeds, but hieroglyphics concerning her future,
+which she could almost interpret.
+
+"I wonder what is going to happen?" she thought. "Something is going
+to happen." She was glad that Evelyn was not with her, as usual, but
+had gone for a drive with a young friend who had a pony-carriage. She
+felt that she could not have borne her sister's curious glances at
+the letter which she was sure would be in the post-office box. It was
+there when she entered the dirty little place. She saw one letter
+slanted across the dusty glass of the box. It was not a lock box, and
+she had to ask the postmaster for the letter.
+
+"Number twenty-four, please," she said.
+
+The postmaster was both bungling and curious. He was a long time
+finding the box, then in giving her the letter. Maria felt dizzy.
+When at last he handed it to her with an inquisitive glance, she
+almost ran out of the office. When she was out-doors she glanced at
+the post-mark and saw it was Edgham. When she came to a lonely place
+in the road, when she was walking between stone-walls overgrown with
+poison-ivy, and meadowsweet, and hardhack, and golden-rod, she opened
+the letter. Just as she opened it she heard the sweet call of a robin
+in the field on her left, and the low of a cow looking anxiously over
+her bars.
+
+The letter was written on soiled paper smelling strongly of tobacco,
+and it enclosed another smaller, sealed envelop. Maria read:
+
+  "Deer Miss,--I now tak my pen in hand to let you no that Gladys she
+is ded. She had a little boy bon, and he and she both died. Gladys
+she had been coffin for some time befoar, and jest befor she was took
+sick, she give me this letter, and sed for me to send it to you if
+ennything happened to her.
+
+  "Excuse hast and a bad pen.    Mrs. Mann."
+
+Maria trembled so that she could hardly stand. She looked hastily
+around; there was no one in sight. She sank down on a large stone
+which had fallen from the stone wall on the left. Then she opened the
+little, sealed letter. It was very short. It contained only one word,
+one word of the vulgar slang to which poor Gladys had become
+habituated through her miserable life, and yet this one word of slang
+had a meaning of faithfulness and honor which dignified it. Maria
+read, "Nit." and she knew that Gladys had died and had not told.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIX
+
+
+It is frequently a chain of sequences whose beginnings are lost in
+obscurity which lead to events. The principal of the Normal School in
+Westbridge, which Evelyn attended and in which Maria taught, had been
+a certain Professor Lane. If he had not gone to Boston one morning
+when the weather was unusually sultry for the season, and if an east
+wind had not come up, causing him, being thinly clad, to take cold,
+which cold meant the beginning of a rapid consumption which hurried
+him off to Colorado, and a year later to death; if these east winds
+had not made it impossible for Wollaston Lee's mother, now widowed,
+to live with him in the college town where he had been stationed, a
+great deal which happened might not have come to pass at all. It was
+"the wind which bloweth where it listeth, and no man knoweth whence
+it cometh and whither it goeth," which precipitated the small tragedy
+of a human life.
+
+The Saturday before the fall term commenced, Evelyn came home from
+Westbridge, where she had been for some shopping, and she had a piece
+of news. She did not wait to remove her hat, but stood before Maria
+and her aunt, who were sewing in the sitting-room, with the roses
+nestling against the soft flying tendrils of her black hair. It was
+still so warm that she wore her summer hat.
+
+"What do you think!" said she. "I have such a piece of news!"
+
+"What is it, dear?" asked Maria. Aunt Maria looked up curiously.
+
+"Why, Professor Lane has had to give up. He starts for Colorado
+Monday. He kept hoping he could stay here, but he went to a
+specialist, who told him he could not live six months in this
+climate, so he is starting right off. And we are to have a new
+principal."
+
+"Who is he?" asked Maria. She felt herself trembling, for no reason
+that she could define.
+
+"Addie Hemingway says he is a handsome young man. He has been a
+professor in some college, but his mother lives with him, and the
+climate didn't agree with her, and so he had resigned and was out of
+a position, and they have sent right away for him, and he is coming.
+In fact, Addie says she thinks he has come, and that he and his
+mother are at Mrs. Land's boarding-house; but they are going to keep
+house. Addie says she has heard he is a young man and very handsome."
+
+"What is his name?" asked Maria, faintly.
+
+Evelyn looked at her and laughed. "The funniest thing about it all
+is," said she, "that he comes originally from Edgham, and you must
+have known him, Maria. I don't remember him at all, but I guess you
+must. His name is Lee, and his first name--I can't remember his first
+name. Did you know a young man about your age in Edgham named Lee?"
+
+"Wollaston?" asked Maria. She hardly knew her own voice.
+
+"Yes; that is it--Wollaston. It is an odd name. How queer it will
+seem to have a handsome young man for principal instead of poor old
+Professor Lane. I am sorry, for my part; I liked Professor Lane. I
+went to the book-store in Westbridge and bought a book for him to
+read on the journey, and left it at the door. I sent in my
+remembrances, and told the girl how sorry I was that Professor Lane
+was not well."
+
+"That was a good girl," said Maria. "I am glad you did." She was as
+white as death, but she continued sewing steadily.
+
+Evelyn went to the looking-glass and removed her hat, and readjusted
+her flying hair around her glowing face. She did not notice her
+sister's pallor and expression of shock, almost of horror, but Aunt
+Maria did. Finally she spoke.
+
+"What on earth ails you, Maria Edgham?" she said, harshly. When Aunt
+Maria was anxious, she was always harsh, and seemed to regard the
+object of her solicitude as a culprit.
+
+Evelyn turned abruptly and saw her sister's face, then she ran to her
+and threw her arms around her neck and pulled her head against her
+shoulder. "What is it? What is it?" she cried, in her sobbing,
+emotional voice, which any stress aroused.
+
+Maria raised her head and pushed Evelyn gently away. "Nothing
+whatever is the matter, dear," she said, firmly, and took up her work
+again.
+
+"Folks don't turn as white as sheets if nothing is the matter," said
+Aunt Maria, still in her harsh, accusing voice. "I want to know what
+is the matter. Did your dinner hurt you? You ate that lemon-pie."
+
+"I feel perfectly well, Aunt Maria," replied Maria, making one of her
+tremendous efforts of will, which actually sent the color back to her
+face. She smiled as she spoke.
+
+"You do look better," said Aunt Maria doubtfully.
+
+"Yes, you do," said Evelyn.
+
+"Maybe it was the light," said Aunt Maria in a reassured tone.
+
+"There isn't much light to see to sew by, I know that," Maria said in
+an off-hand tone. "I believe I will take a little run down to the
+post-office for the night mail. Evelyn, you can help Aunt Maria get
+supper, can't you, dear?"
+
+"Of course I can," said Evelyn. "But are you sure you are well enough
+to go alone?"
+
+"Nonsense!" said Maria, rising and folding her work.
+
+"Do you think anything is the matter with sister?" Evelyn asked Aunt
+Maria after Maria had gone.
+
+"Don't ask me," replied Aunt Maria curtly.
+
+"Aunt Maria!"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Professor Lane isn't married. You don't suppose sister--"
+
+"What a little goose you are, Evelyn Edgham!" cried Aunt Maria,
+almost fiercely turning upon her. "Do you suppose if Maria Edgham had
+wanted any man she couldn't have got him?"
+
+"I suppose she could," said Evelyn meekly. "And I know Professor Lane
+is so much older, but he always seemed to like sister, and I didn't
+know but she felt badly because he was so ill."
+
+"Stuff!" said Aunt Maria. "Come, you had better set the table. I have
+got to make some biscuits for supper. They won't be any more than
+done by the time Maria gets back."
+
+"Did you think she looked so very pale?" asked Evelyn, following her
+aunt out of the room.
+
+"No, I didn't think she looked pale at all when I came to look at
+her," said Aunt Maria, sharply. "She looked just as she always does.
+It was the light."
+
+Aunt Maria unhesitatingly lied. She knew that her niece had been
+pale, and she believed that it was on account of Professor Lane. She
+thought to herself what fools girls were. There Maria had thrown away
+such a chance as George Ramsey, and was very likely breaking her
+heart in secret over this consumptive, old enough to be her father.
+
+Evelyn also believed, in her heart of hearts, that her sister was in
+love with Professor Lane, but she took a more sentimental view of the
+matter. She was of the firm opinion that love has no age, and then
+Professor Lane had never seemed exactly old to her, and he was a very
+handsome man. She thought of poor Maria with the tenderest pity and
+sympathy. It almost seemed to her that she herself was in love with
+Professor Lane, and that his going so far away to recover his health
+was a cruel blow to her. She thought of poor Maria walking to the
+post-office and brooding over her trouble, and her tender heart ached
+so hard that it might have been Maria's own.
+
+But Maria, walking to the post-office, realized not so much an ache
+in her heart as utter horror and terror. She asked herself how could
+she possibly continue teaching in that school if Wollaston Lee were
+principal; how could she endure the daily contact with him which
+would be inevitable. She wondered if he could possibly have known
+that she was teaching in that school when he accepted the position.
+Such a deadly fear was over her that her class-room and the great
+pile of school buildings seemed to her fancy as horrible as a cage of
+wild beasts. She felt such a loathing of the man who was legally,
+although not really, her husband, that the loathing itself filled her
+with shame and disgust at herself. She told herself that it was
+horrible, horrible, that she could not endure it, that it was
+impossible. She was in a fairly desperate mood. She had a sudden
+impulse to run away and leave everybody and everything, even Evelyn
+and her aunt, whom she loved so well. She felt pitiless towards
+everybody except herself. She took out her pocket-book and counted
+the money which it contained. There were fifteen dollars and some
+loose change. The railroad station was on a road parallel to the one
+on which she was walking. An express train flashed by as she stood
+there. Suddenly Maria became possessed of one of those impulses which
+come to everybody, but to which comparatively few yield in lifetimes.
+The girl gathered up her skirts and broke into a run for the railroad
+station. She knew that there was an accommodation train due soon
+after the express. She reached the dusty platform, in fact, just as
+the train came in. There were no other passengers from Amity except a
+woman whom she did not know, dragging a stout child by the arm. The
+child was enveloped in clothing to such an extent that it could
+scarcely walk. It stumbled over its voluminous white coat. Nobody
+could have told its sex. It cast a look of stupid discomfort at
+Maria, then its rasped little face opened for a wail. "Shet up!" said
+the mother, and she dragged more forcibly at the podgy little arm,
+and the child broke into a lop-sided run towards the cars.
+
+Maria had no time to get a ticket. She only had time for that one
+glance at the helpless, miserable child, before she climbed up the
+steep car-steps. She found an empty seat, and shrugged close to the
+window. She did not think very much of what she was doing. She
+thought more of the absurdly uncomfortable child, over-swathed in
+clothing, and over-disciplined with mother-love, she could not have
+told why. She wondered what it would be like to have an ugly,
+uninteresting, viciously expostulating little one dragging at her
+hand. The mother, although stout and mature-looking, was not much
+older than she. It seemed to her that the being fond of such a child,
+and being happy under such circumstances, would involve as much of a
+vital change in herself as death itself. And yet she wondered if such
+a change were possible with all women, herself included. She gazed
+absently at the pale landscape past which the train was flying. The
+conductor had to touch her arm before he could arouse her attention,
+when he asked for her ticket. Then she looked at him vacantly, and he
+had to repeat his "Ticket, please."
+
+Maria opened her pocket-book and said, mechanically, the name of the
+first station which came into her head, "Ridgewood." Ridgewood was a
+small city about fifteen miles distant. She had sometimes been there
+shopping. She gave the conductor a five-dollar bill, and he went
+away, murmuring something about the change. When he returned with the
+rebate-slip and the change, he had to touch her shoulder again to
+arrest her attention.
+
+"Change, miss," said the conductor, and "you can get ten cents back
+on this at the station."
+
+Maria took the change and the slip and put them in her pocket-book,
+and the conductor passed on with a quick, almost imperceptible
+backward glance at her. Maria sat very still. The child who had got
+on at Amity began to wail again, and its outcries filled the whole
+car. To Maria it seemed like the natural outburst of an atmosphere
+overcharged with woe, and the impotent rage and regret of the whole
+race, as a cloud is charged with electricity. She felt that she
+herself would like to burst into a wild wail, and struggle and
+wrestle against fate with futile members, as the child fought against
+its mother with its fat legs in shoes too large, and its bemittened
+hands. However, she began to get a certain comfort from the rapid
+motion. She continued to stare out of the window at the landscape,
+which fast disappeared under the gathering shadows. The car lamps
+were lit. Maria still looked, however, out of the window; the lights
+in the house windows, and red and green signal-lights, gave her a
+childish interest. She forgot entirely about herself. She turned her
+back upon herself and her complex situation of life with infinite
+relief. She did not wonder what she would do when she reached
+Ridgewood. She did not think any more of herself. It was as if she
+had come into a room of life without any looking-glasses, and she was
+no longer visible to her own consciousness. She did not look at the
+other passengers. All that was evident to her of the existence of any
+in the car besides herself was the unceasing wail of the child, and
+its mother's half-soothing, half-scolding voice. She did not see the
+passengers who boarded the train at the next station beyond Amity,
+and that Wollaston Lee was one of them. Indeed, she might not at
+once have recognized him, although the man retained in a marked
+degree the features of the boy. Wollaston had grown both tall and
+broad-shouldered, and had a mustache. He was a handsome fellow, well
+dressed, and with an easy carriage, and he had an expression of
+intelligent good-humor which made more than one woman in the car look
+at him. Although Maria did not see him, he saw her at once, and
+recognized her, and his handsome face paled. The ridiculous
+complexity of his position towards her had not tended to make him
+very happy. He had kept the secret as well as Maria; for him, as for
+her, a secret was a heavy burden, almost amounting to guilt. He
+continued to glance furtively at her from time to time. He thought
+that she was very pretty, and also that there was something amiss
+with her. He, as well as the girl, had entirely gotten over his
+boyish romance, but the impulse to honorable dealing and duty towards
+her had not in the least weakened.
+
+When the train stopped at Ridgewood he rose. Maria did not stir.
+Wollaston stopped, and saw the conductor touch Maria, and heard him
+say, "This is your station, lady."
+
+Maria rose mechanically and followed the conductor through the car.
+When she had descended the steps Wollaston, who had gotten off just
+in advance, stood aside and waited. He felt uneasy without just
+knowing why. It seemed to him that there was something strange about
+the girl's bearing. He thought so the more when she stood motionless
+on the platform and remained there a moment or more after the train
+had moved out; then she went towards a bench outside the station and
+sat down. Wollaston made up his mind that there was something
+strange, and that he must speak to her.
+
+He approached her, and he could hear his heart beat. He stood in
+front of her, and raised his hat. Maria did not look up. Her eyes
+seemed fixed on a fringe of wood across the track in which some
+katydids were calling, late as it was. That wood, with its persistent
+voices of unseen things, served to turn her thought from herself,
+just as the cry of the child had done.
+
+"Miss Edgham," said Wollaston, in a strained voice. It suddenly
+occurred to him that that was not the girl's name at all, that she
+was in reality Mrs. Lee, not Miss Edgham.
+
+Maria did not seem to see him until he had repeated her name again.
+Then she gave a sudden start and looked up. An electric light on the
+platform made his face quite plain. She knew him at once. She did not
+make a sound, but rose with a sudden stealthy motion like that of a
+wild, hunted thing who leaves its covert for farther flight. But
+Wollaston laid his hand on her shoulder and forced her gently back to
+her seat. There was no one besides themselves on the platform. They
+were quite alone.
+
+"Don't be afraid," he said. But Maria, looking up at him, fairly
+chattered with terror. Her lips were open, she made inarticulate
+noises like a frightened little monkey. Her eyes dilated. This seemed
+to her incredibly monstrous, that in fleeing she should have come to
+that from which she fled. All at once the species of mental coma in
+which she had been cleared away, and she saw herself and the horrible
+situation in which her flight had placed her. The man looked down at
+her with the utmost kindness, concern, and pity.
+
+"Don't be afraid," he said again; but Maria continued to look at him
+with that cowering, hunted look.
+
+"Where are you going?" asked Wollaston, and suddenly his voice became
+masterful. He realized that there was something strange, undoubtedly,
+about all this.
+
+"I don't know," Maria said, dully.
+
+"You don't know?"
+
+"No, I don't."
+
+Maria raised her head and looked down the track. "I am going on the
+train," said she, with another wild impulse.
+
+"What train?"
+
+"The next train."
+
+"The next train to where?"
+
+"The next train to Springfield," said Maria, mentioning the first
+city which came into her mind.
+
+"What are you going to Springfield for so late? Have you friends
+there?"
+
+"No," said Maria, in a hopeless voice.
+
+Wollaston sat down beside her. He took one of her little, cold hands,
+and held it in spite of a feeble struggle on her part to draw it
+away. "Now, see here, Maria," he said, "I know there is something
+wrong. What is it?"
+
+His tone was compelling. Maria looked straight ahead at the gloomy
+fringe of woods, and answered, in a lifeless voice, "I heard you were
+coming."
+
+"And that is the reason you were going away?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"See here, Maria," said Wollaston, eagerly, "upon my honor I did not
+know myself until this very afternoon that you were one of the
+teachers in the Westbridge Academy. If I had known I would have
+refused the position, although my mother was very anxious for me to
+accept it. I would refuse it now if it were not too late, but I
+promise you to resign very soon if you wish it."
+
+"I don't care," said Maria, still in the same lifeless tone. "I am
+going away."
+
+"Going where?"
+
+"To Springfield. I don't know. Anywhere."
+
+Wollaston leaned over her and spoke in a whisper. "Maria, do you want
+me to take steps to have it annulled?" he asked. "It could be very
+easily done. There was, after all, no marriage. It is simply a
+question of legality. No moral question is involved."
+
+A burning blush spread over Maria's face. She snatched her hand away
+from his. "Do you think I could bear it?" she whispered back,
+fiercely.
+
+"Bear what?" asked the young man, in a puzzled tone.
+
+"The publicity, the--newspapers. Nobody has known, not one of my
+relatives. Do you think I could bear it?"
+
+"I will keep the secret as long as you desire," said Wollaston. "I
+only wish to act honorably and for your happiness."
+
+"There is only one reason which could induce me to give my consent to
+the terrible publicity," said Maria.
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"If--you wished to marry anybody else."
+
+"I do not," said Wollaston, with a half-bitter laugh. "You can have
+your mind easy on that score. I have not thought of such a thing as
+possible for me."
+
+Maria cast a look of quick interest at him. Suddenly she saw his
+possible view of the matter, that it might be hard for him to forego
+the happiness which other young men had.
+
+"I would not shrink at all," she said, gently, "if at any time you
+saw anybody whom you wished to marry. You need not hesitate. I am not
+so selfish as that. I do not wish your life spoiled."
+
+Wollaston laughed pleasantly. "My life is not to be spoiled because
+of any such reason as that," he said, "and I have not seen anybody
+whom I wished to marry. You know I have mother to look out for, and
+she makes a pleasant home for me. You need not worry about me, but
+sometimes I have worried a little about you, poor child."
+
+"You need not, so far as that is concerned," cried Maria, almost
+angrily. A sense of shame and humiliation was over her. She did not
+love Wollaston Lee. She felt the same old terror and disgust at him,
+but it mortified her to have him think that she might wish to marry
+anybody else.
+
+"Well, I am glad of that," said Wollaston. "I suppose you like your
+work."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"After all, work is the main thing," said Wollaston.
+
+"Yes," assented Maria, eagerly.
+
+Wollaston returned suddenly to the original topic. "Were you actually
+running away because you heard I was coming?" he said.
+
+"Yes, I suppose I was," Maria replied, in a hopeless, defiant sort of
+fashion.
+
+"Do you actually know anybody in Springfield?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Have you much money with you?"
+
+"I had fifteen dollars and a few cents before I paid my fare here."
+
+"Good God!" cried Wollaston. Then he added, after a pause of dismay,
+almost of terror, during which he looked at the pale little figure
+beside him, "Do you realize what might have happened to you?"
+
+"I don't think I realized much of anything except to get away,"
+replied Maria.
+
+Wollaston took her hand again and held it firmly. "Now listen to me,
+Maria," he said. "On Monday I shall have to begin teaching in the
+Westbridge Academy. I don't see how I can do anything else. But now
+listen. I give you my word of honor, I will not show by word or deed
+that you are anything to me except a young lady who used to live in
+the same village with me. I shall have to admit that."
+
+"I am not anything else to you," Maria flashed out.
+
+"Of course not," Wollaston responded, quietly. "But I give you my
+word of honor that I will make no claim upon you, that I will resign
+my position when you say the word, that I will keep the wretched,
+absurd secret until you yourself tell me that you wish for--an
+annulment of the fictitious tie between us."
+
+Maria sat still.
+
+"You will not think of running away now, will you?" Wollaston said,
+and there was a caressing tone in his voice, as if he were addressing
+a child.
+
+Maria did not reply at once.
+
+"Tell me, Maria," said Wollaston. "You will not think of doing such a
+desperate thing, which might ruin your whole life, when I have
+promised you that there is no reason?"
+
+"No, I will not," Maria said.
+
+Wollaston rose and went nearer the electric light and looked at his
+watch. Then he came back. "Now, Maria, listen to me again," he said.
+"I have some business in Ridgewood. I would not attend to it to-night
+but I have made an appointment with a man and I don't see my way out
+of breaking it. It is about a house which I want to rent. Mother
+doesn't like the boarding-house at Westbridge, and in fact our
+furniture is on the road and I have no place to store it, and I am
+afraid there are other parties who want to rent this house, that I
+shall lose it if I do not keep the appointment. But I have only a
+little way to go, and it will not keep me long. I can be back easily
+inside of half an hour. The next train to Amity stops here in about
+thirty-seven minutes. Now I want you to go into the waiting-room, and
+sit there until I come back. Can I trust you?"
+
+"Yes," said Maria, with a curious docility. She rose.
+
+"You had better buy your ticket back to Amity, and when I come into
+the station, I think it is better that I should only bow to you,
+especially if others should happen to be there. Can I trust you to
+stay there and not get on board any train but the one which goes to
+Amity?"
+
+"Yes, you can," said Maria, with the same docility which was born of
+utter weariness and the subjection to a stronger will.
+
+She went into the waiting-room and bought her ticket, then sat down
+on a settee in the dusty, desolate place and waited. There were two
+women there besides herself, and they conversed very audibly about
+their family affairs. Maria listened absently to astonishing
+disclosures. The man in the ticket-office was busy at the telegraph,
+whose important tick made an accompaniment to the chatter of the
+women, both middle-aged, and both stout, and both with grievances
+which they aired with a certain delight. One had bought a damaged
+dress-pattern in Ridgewood, and had gone that afternoon to obtain
+satisfaction. "I set there in Yates & Upham's four mortal hours,"
+said she, in a triumphant tone, "and they kep' comin' and askin' me
+things, and sayin' would I do this and that, but I jest stuck to what
+I said I would do in the first place, and finally they give in."
+
+"What did you want?" asked the other woman.
+
+"Well, I wanted my money back that I had paid for the dress, and I
+wanted the dressmaker paid for cuttin' it--it was all cut an'
+fitted--and I wanted my fares back and forth paid, too."
+
+"You don't mean to say they did all that?" said the other woman, in a
+tone of admiration.
+
+"Yes, sir, they did. Finally Mr. Upham himself came and talked with
+me, and he said he would allow me what I asked. I tell you I marched
+out of that store, when I'd got my money back, feelin' pretty well
+set up."
+
+"I should think you would have," said the other woman, in an admiring
+tone. "You do beat the Dutch!"
+
+Then the women fell to talking about the niece of one of them who had
+been jilted by her lover. "He treated her as mean as pusley," one
+woman said. "There he'd been keepin' company with poor Aggie three
+mortal years, comin' regular every Wednesday and Sunday night, and
+settin' up with her, and keepin' off other fellers."
+
+"I think he treated her awful mean," assented the other woman. "I
+don't know what I would have said if it had been my Mamie."
+
+Maria detected a covert tone of delight in this woman's voice. She
+realized instinctively that the woman had been jealous that her
+companion's niece had been preferred to her daughter, and was
+secretly glad that she was jilted. "How does she take it?" she asked.
+
+"She just cries her eyes out, poor child," her friend answered. "She
+sets and cries all day, and I guess she don't sleep much. Her mother
+is thinkin' of sendin' her to visit her married sister Lizzie down in
+Hartford, and see if that won't divert her mind a little."
+
+"I should think that would be a very good idea," said the other
+woman. Maria, listening listlessly, whirled about herself in the
+current of her own affairs, thought what a cat that woman was, and
+how she did not in the least care if she was a cat.
+
+Wollaston Lee was not gone very long. He bowed and said good-evening
+to Maria, then seated himself at a little distance. The two women
+looked at him with sharp curiosity. "It would be the best thing for
+poor Aggie if she could get her mind set on another young man," said
+the woman whose niece had been jilted.
+
+"That is so," assented the other woman.
+
+"There's as good fish in the sea as has ever been caught, as I told
+her," said the first woman, with speculative eyes upon Wollaston Lee.
+
+It was not long before the train for Amity arrived. Wollaston, with
+an almost imperceptible gesture, looked at Maria, who immediately
+arose. Wollaston sat behind her on the train. Just before they
+reached Amity he came forward and spoke to her in a low voice. "I
+have to go on to Westbridge," he said. "Will there be a carriage at
+the station?"
+
+"There always is," Maria replied.
+
+"Don't think of walking up at this hour. It is too late. What--"
+Wollaston hesitated a second, then he continued, in a whisper, "What
+are you going to tell your aunt?" he said.
+
+"Nothing," replied Maria.
+
+"Can you?"
+
+"I must. I don't see any other way, unless I tell lies."
+
+Wollaston lifted his hat, with an audible remark about the beauty of
+the evening, and passed through into the next car, which was a
+smoker. The two women of the station were seated a little in the rear
+across the aisle from Maria. She heard one of them say to the other,
+"I wonder who that girl was he spoke to?" and the other's muttered
+answer that she didn't know.
+
+Contrary to her expectations, Maria did not find a carriage at the
+Amity station, and she walked home. It was late, and the village
+houses were dark. The electric lights still burned at wide intervals,
+lighting up golden boughs of maples until they looked like veritable
+branches of precious metal. Maria hurried along. She had a half-mile
+to walk. She did not feel afraid; a sense of confusion and relief was
+over her, with another dawning sense which she did not acknowledge to
+herself. An enormous load had been lifted from her mind; there was no
+doubt about that. A feeling of gratitude and confidence in the young
+man who had just left her warmed her through and through. When she
+reached her aunt's house she saw a light in the sitting-room windows,
+and immediately she turned into the path the door opened and her aunt
+stood there.
+
+"Maria Edgham, where have you been?" asked Aunt Maria.
+
+"I have been to walk," replied Maria.
+
+"Been to walk! Do you know what time it is? It is 'most midnight.
+I've been 'most crazy. I was just goin' in to get Henry up and have
+him hunt for you."
+
+"I am glad you didn't," said Maria, entering and removing her hat.
+She smiled at her aunt, who continued to gaze at her with the
+sharpest curiosity.
+
+"Where have you been to walk this time of night?" she demanded.
+
+Maria looked at her aunt, and said, quite gravely, "Aunt Maria, you
+trust me, don't you?"
+
+"Of course I do; but I want to know. I have a right to know."
+
+"Yes, you have," said Maria, "but I shall never tell you as long as I
+live where I have been to-night."
+
+"What?"
+
+"I shall never tell you were I have been, only you can rest assured
+that there is no harm--that there has been no harm."
+
+"You don't mean to ever tell?"
+
+"No." Maria took a lamp from the sitting-room table, lighted it, and
+went up-stairs.
+
+"You are just like your mother--just as set," Aunt Maria called after
+her, in subdued tones. "Here I've been watchin' till I was 'most
+crazy."
+
+"I am real sorry," Maria called back. "Good-night, Aunt Maria. Such a
+thing will never happen again."
+
+Directly Maria was in her own room she pulled down her window-shades.
+She did not see a man, who had followed at a long distance all the
+way from the station, moving rapidly up the street. It was Wollaston
+Lee. He had seen, from the window of the smoker, that there was no
+carriage waiting, had jumped off the train, entered the station, then
+stolen out and followed Maria until he saw her safely in her home.
+Then the last trolley had gone, and he walked the rest of the way to
+Westbridge.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXX
+
+
+The next morning, which was Sunday, Maria could not go to church. An
+utter weariness and lassitude, to which she was a stranger, was over
+her. Evelyn remained at home with her. Evelyn still had the idea
+firmly fixed in her mind that Maria was grieving over Professor Lane.
+It was also firmly fixed in Aunt Maria's mind. Aunt Maria, who had
+both suspicion and imagination, had conceived a reason for Maria's
+mysterious absence the night before. She knew that Professor Lane was
+to take a night train from Westbridge. She jumped at the conclusion
+that Maria had gone to Westbridge to see him off, and had missed the
+trolley connection. There were two trolley-lines between Amity and
+Westbridge, and that accounted for her walking to the house. Aunt
+Maria was mortified and angry. She would have been mortified to have
+her niece so disturbed over any man who had not proposed marriage to
+her, but when she reflected upon Professor Lane, his sunken chest,
+his skinny throat, and his sparse gray hair, although he was yet a
+handsome man for his years, she experienced a positive nausea. She
+was glad when Evelyn came down in the morning and said that Maria had
+called to her, and said she did not want any breakfast and did not
+feel able to go to church.
+
+"Do you think sister is going to be sick, Aunt Maria?" Evelyn said,
+anxiously. Then her sweet eyes met her aunt's, and both the young and
+the old maid blushed at the thought which they simultaneously had.
+
+"Sick? No," replied Aunt Maria, crossly.
+
+"I guess I will stay home with her, anyway," Evelyn said, timidly.
+
+"Well, you can do jest as you are a mind to," said Aunt Maria. "I'm
+goin' to meetin'. If folks want to act like fools, I ain't goin' to
+stay at home and coddle them."
+
+"Oh, Aunt Maria, I don't think sister acts like a fool," Evelyn said,
+in her sweet, distressed voice. "She looks real pale and acts all
+tired out."
+
+"I guess she'll survive it," said Aunt Maria, pouring the coffee.
+
+"Don't you think I had better make some toast and a cup of tea for
+her, if she does say she doesn't want any breakfast?"
+
+"Maria Edgham is old enough to know her own mind, and if she says she
+don't want any breakfast I'd let her go without till she was hungry,"
+said Aunt Maria. She adored Maria above any living thing, and just in
+proportion to the adoration she felt angry with her. It was a great
+relief to her not to see her.
+
+"Aren't you going up-stairs and see if you think sister is sick?"
+Evelyn asked, as Aunt Maria was tying her bonnet-strings.
+
+"No, I ain't," replied Aunt Maria. "It's all I can do to walk to
+church. I ain't goin' to climb the stairs for nothin'. I ain't
+worried a mite about her."
+
+After Aunt Maria was gone Evelyn made a slice of toast, placed it on
+a pretty plate, and made also some tea, which she poured into a very
+dainty cup. Then she carried the toast and tea on a little tray up to
+Maria's room.
+
+"Please sit up and drink this tea and eat this toast, sister," she
+said, pleadingly.
+
+"Thank you, dear," said Maria, "but I don't feel as if I could eat
+anything."
+
+"It's real nice," said Evelyn, looking with a childish wistfulness
+from her sister to the toast. Maria could not withstand the look. She
+raised herself in bed and let Evelyn place the tray on her knees.
+Then she forced herself to drink the tea and eat the toast. Evelyn
+all the time watched her with that sweet wistfulness of expression
+which was one of her chief charms. Evelyn, when she looked that way,
+was irresistible. There was so much anxious love in her tender face
+that it made it fairly angelic. Evelyn's dark hair was tumbling about
+her face like a child's, in a way which she often wore it when at
+home when there was no company. It was tied with a white ribbon bow.
+She wore a black skirt and a little red breakfast-jacket faced with
+white. As her sister gradually despatched the tea and toast, the look
+of wistfulness on her face changed to one of radiant delight. She
+clapped her hands.
+
+"There," she said, "I knew you would eat your breakfast if I brought
+it to you. Wasn't that toast nice?"
+
+"Delicious."
+
+"I made it my own self. Aunt Maria was cross. Don't you think it is
+odd that any one who loves anybody should ever be cross?"
+
+"It often happens," said Maria, laying back on her pillows.
+
+"Of course, Aunt Maria loves us both, but she loves you especially;
+but she is often cross with you. I don't understand it."
+
+"She doesn't love me any better than she does you, dear," said Maria.
+
+"Oh yes, she does; but I am not jealous. I am very glad I am not, for
+I could be terribly jealous."
+
+"Nonsense, precious!"
+
+"Yes, I could. Sometimes I imagine how jealous I could be, and it
+frightens me."
+
+"You must not imagine such things, dear."
+
+"I have always imagined things," said Evelyn. Her face took on a very
+serious, almost weird and tragic expression. Maria had as she had
+often had before, a glimpse of dangerous depths of emotion in her
+sister's character.
+
+"That is no reason why you should always imagine," she said, with a
+little, weary sigh.
+
+Directly the look of loving solicitude appeared on Evelyn's face. She
+went close to her sister, and laid her soft, glowing cheek against
+hers.
+
+"I am so sorry, dearest," she said. "Sorry for whatever troubles you."
+
+"What makes you think anything troubles me?"
+
+"You seem to me as if something troubled you."
+
+"Nothing does," said Maria. She pushed Evelyn gently away and sat up.
+"I was only tired out," she said, firmly. "The breakfast has made me
+feel better. I will get up now and write some letters."
+
+"Wouldn't you rather lie still and let me read to you?"
+
+"No, dear, thank you. I will get up now."
+
+Evelyn remained in the room while her sister brushed her hair and
+dressed. "I wonder what kind of a man the new principal will be?" she
+said, looking dreamily out of the window. She had, in fact, already
+had her dreams about him. As yet she had admitted men to her dreams
+only, but she had her dreams. She did not notice her sister's change
+of color. She continued to gaze absently out of the window at the
+autumn landscape. A golden maple branch swung past the window in a
+crisp breeze, now and then a leaf flew away like a yellow bird and
+became a part of the golden carpet on the ground. "Addie Hemingway
+says he is very handsome," she said, meditatively. "Do you remember
+him, sister--that is, do you remember how he looked when he was a
+boy?"
+
+"As I remember him he was a very good-looking boy," Maria said.
+
+"I wonder if he is engaged?" Evelyn said.
+
+Suddenly her soft cheeks flamed.
+
+"I don't see what that matters to you," Maria retorted, in a tone
+which she almost never used towards Evelyn--"to you or any of the
+other girls. Mr. Lee is coming to teach you, not to become engaged to
+his pupils."
+
+"Of course I know he is," Evelyn said, humbly. "I didn't mean to be
+silly, sister. I was only wondering."
+
+"The less a young girl wonders about a man the better," Maria said.
+
+"Well, I won't wonder, only it does seem rather natural to wonder.
+Didn't you use to wonder when you were a young girl, sister?"
+
+"It does not make it right if I did."
+
+"I don't think you could do anything wrong, sister," Evelyn returned,
+with one of her glances of love and admiration. Suddenly Maria
+wondered herself what a man would do if he were to receive one of
+those glances.
+
+Evelyn continued her little chatter. "Of course none of us girls ever
+wondered about Professor Lane, because he was so old," she said. Then
+she caught herself with an anxious glance at her sister. "But he was
+very handsome, too," she added, "and I don't know why we shouldn't
+have thought about him, and he wasn't so very old. I think Colorado
+will cure him."
+
+"I hope so," Maria said, absently. She had no more conception of what
+was in Evelyn's mind with regard to herself and Professor Lane than
+she had of the thought of an inhabitant of Mars. Ineffable distances
+of surmise and imagination separated the two in the same room.
+
+Evelyn continued: "Mr. Lee isn't married, anyway," she said. "Addie
+said so. His mother keeps house for him. Wasn't that a dreadful thing
+in the paper last night, sister?"
+
+"What?" asked Maria.
+
+"About that girl's getting another woman's husband to fall in love
+with her, and get a divorce, and then marrying him. I don't see how
+she could. I would rather die than marry a man who had been divorced.
+I would think of the other wife all the time. Don't you think it was
+dreadful, sister?"
+
+"Why do you read such things?" asked Maria, and there was a hard ring
+in her voice. It seemed to her that she was stretched on a very rack
+of innocence and ignorance.
+
+"It was all there was in the paper to read," replied Evelyn, "except
+advertisements. There were pictures of the girl, and the wife, and
+the man, and the two little children. Of course it was worse because
+there were children, but it was dreadful anyway. I would never speak
+to that girl again, not if she had been my dearest friend."
+
+"You had better read a library book, if there is nothing better than
+that to read in a paper," said Maria.
+
+"There wasn't, except a prize-fight, and I don't care anything about
+prize-fights, and I believe there were races, too, but I don't know
+anything about races."
+
+"I don't see that you know very much about marriage and divorce,"
+Maria said, adjusting her collar.
+
+"Are you angry with me, sister? Don't you want me to fasten your
+collar?"
+
+"No, I can fasten it myself, thank you, dear. No, I am not angry with
+you, only I do wish you wouldn't read such stuff. Put the paper away,
+and get a book instead."
+
+"I will if you want me to, sister," replied Evelyn.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXI
+
+
+The Monday when the fall term of the academy at Westbridge opened was
+a very beautiful day. The air was as soft as summer, but with a
+strange, pungent quality which the summer had lacked. There was a
+slightly smoky scent which exhilarated. It was a scent of death
+coming from bonfires of dead leaves and drying vegetation, and yet it
+seemed to presage life. When Maria and Evelyn went out to take the
+trolley for Westbridge, Maria wore a cluster of white chrysanthemums
+pinned to her blouse. The blouse itself was a very pretty one, worn
+with a black plaited skirt. It was a soft silk of an old-rose shade,
+and it was trimmed with creamy lace. Maria had left off her mourning.
+Evelyn looked with a little surprise at Maria's blouse.
+
+"Why, you've got on your pink blouse, sister," she said.
+
+Maria colored softly, for no ostensible reason. "Yes," she said.
+
+"You don't generally wear it to school."
+
+"I thought as long as it was the first day," Maria said, in a
+slightly faltering tone. She bent her head until her rose-wreathed
+hat almost concealed her face. The sisters stood in front of the
+house waiting for their car. Evelyn made a sudden little run back
+into the yard.
+
+"You hold the car!" she cried.
+
+"I don't know that they will wait; you must not stop," Maria called
+out. But the car had just stopped when Evelyn returned, and she had a
+little cluster of snowberries pinned in the front of her red gown.
+She looked bewitchingly over them at Maria when they were seated side
+by side in the car.
+
+"I guess I was going to wear flowers as well as some other folks,"
+she whispered with a soft, dark glance at her sister from under her
+long lashes. Maria smiled.
+
+"You don't need to wear flowers," she said.
+
+"Why not as well as you?"
+
+"Oh, you are a flower yourself," Maria said, looking fondly at her.
+
+Indeed, the young girl looked like nothing so much as a rose, with
+her tenderly curved pink cheeks, the sweet arch of her lips, and her
+glowing radiance of smiles. Maria looked at her critically, then bade
+her turn that she might fasten a hook on her collar which had become
+unfastened.
+
+"Now you are all right," she said.
+
+Evelyn smiled. "Don't you think these snowberries are pretty with
+this red dress?" she asked.
+
+"Lovely."
+
+"I wonder what the new principal will be like," Evelyn said,
+musingly, after riding awhile in silence.
+
+"I presume he will be very much like other young men. The main thing
+to consider is, if he is a good teacher," Maria said.
+
+"What makes you cross, sister?" Evelyn whispered plaintively.
+
+"I am not cross, only I don't want you to be silly."
+
+"I am not silly. All the girls are wondering, too. I am only like
+other girls. You can't expect me to be just like you, Maria. Of
+course you are older, and you don't wonder, and then, too, you knew
+him when he was a boy. Is he light or dark?"
+
+"Light," Maria replied, looking out of the window.
+
+"Sometimes light children grow dark as they grow older," said Evelyn.
+"I hope he hasn't. I like light men better than dark, don't you,
+Maria?"
+
+"I don't like one more than another," said Maria shortly.
+
+"Of course I know you don't in one way. Don't be so cross," Evelyn
+said in a hurt way. "But almost everybody has an opinion about light
+and dark men."
+
+Maria looked out of the window, and Evelyn said no more, but she felt
+a sorrowful surprise at her sister. Evelyn was so used to being
+petted and admired that the slightest rebuff, especially a rebuff
+from Maria, made her incredulous. It really seemed to her that Maria
+must be ill to speak so shortly to her. Then she remembered poor
+Professor Lane, and how in all probability Maria was thinking about
+him this morning, and that made her irritable, and how she, Evelyn,
+ought to be very patient. Evelyn was in reality very patient and very
+slow to take offence. So she snuggled gently up to her sister, until
+her slender, red-clad shoulder touched Maria's, and looked pleasantly
+around through the car, and again wondered privately about the new
+principal.
+
+They had a short walk after leaving the car to the academy. As they
+turned into the academy grounds, which were quite beautiful with
+trees and shrubs, a young man was mounting the broad flight of
+granite steps which led to the main entrance. Evelyn touched Maria
+agitatedly on the arm. "Oh, Maria," said she.
+
+"What?"
+
+"Is that--he?"
+
+"I think so. I saw only his back, but I should think so. I don't see
+what other young man could be going into the building. It was
+certainly not the janitor, nor Mr. Hughes" (Mr. Hughes was the
+music-teacher) replied Maria calmly, although she was pale.
+
+"Oh, if that was he, I think he is splendid," whispered Evelyn.
+
+Maria said nothing as the two proceeded along the fine gravel walk
+between hydrangeas, and inverted beech-trees, and symmetrically
+trimmed firs.
+
+"He is light," Evelyn said, meditatively. "I am glad of that." As she
+spoke she put her hand to her head and adjusted her hair, then her
+hat. She threw back her shoulders. She preened herself, innocently
+and unconsciously, like a little bird. Maria did not notice it. She
+had her own thoughts, and she was using all her power of self-control
+to conceal her agitation. It seemed to her as she entered the
+building as if her secret was written upon her face, as if everybody
+must read as they ran. But she removed her coat and hat, and took her
+place with the other assistants upon the platform in the chapel of
+the academy where the morning exercises were held. She spoke to the
+other teachers, and took her usual seat. Wollaston was not yet there.
+The pupils were flocking into the room, which was picturesque with a
+dome-shaped ceiling, and really fine frescoed panels on the walls.
+Directly opposite the platform was a large oriel-window of stained
+glass, the gift of the founder. Rays of gold and green and blue and
+crimson light filtered through, over the assembling school. Maria saw
+Evelyn with her face turned towards the platform eagerly watching.
+She was not looking at Maria, but was evidently expecting the advent
+of the new principal. It did not at that time occur to Maria to
+attribute any serious meaning to the girl's attitude. She merely felt
+a sort of impatience with her, concerning her attitude, when she
+herself knew what she knew.
+
+Suddenly a sort of suppressed stir was evident among those of the
+pupils who were seated. Maria felt a breeze from an open door, and
+knew that Wollaston had entered. He spoke first to her, calling her
+by name, and bidding her good-morning, then to the other teachers.
+The others were either residents of Westbridge, or boarded there, and
+he had evidently been introduced to them before. Then he took his
+seat, and waited quietly for the pupils to become seated. It lacked
+only a few minutes of the time for opening the school. It was not
+long before the seats were filled, and Maria heard Wollaston's voice
+reading a selection from the Bible. Then she bent her head, and heard
+him offering prayer. She felt a sort of incredulity now. It seemed
+to her inconceivable that the boy whom she had known could be
+actually conducting the opening exercises of a school with such
+imperturbability and self-possession. All at once a great pride of
+possession seized her. She glanced covertly at him between her
+fingers. The secret which had been her shame suddenly filled her with
+the possibility of pride. Wollaston Lee, standing there, seemed to
+her the very grandest man whom she had ever seen. He was undoubtedly
+handsome, and he had, moreover, power. When he had finished his
+prayer, and had begun his short address to the scholars, she glanced
+at him again, and saw what splendid shoulders he had, how proudly he
+held his head, and yet what a boyish ingenuousness went with it all.
+Maria did not look at Evelyn at all. Had she done so, she would have
+been startled. Evelyn was gazing at the new principal with the utmost
+unreserve, the unreserve of awakened passion which does not know
+itself because of innocence and ignorance. Evelyn, gazing at the
+young man, had never been so unconscious of herself, and at the same
+time she had never been so conscious. She felt a life to which she
+had been hitherto a stranger tingling through every vein and nerve of
+her young body, through every emotion of her young soul. She gazed
+with wide-open eyes like a child, the rose flush deepened on her
+cheeks, her parted lips became moist and deep crimson, pulses
+throbbed in her throat. She smiled involuntarily, a smile of purest
+delight and admiration. Love twofold had awakened within her
+emotional nature. Love of herself, as she might be seen in another's
+eyes, and love of another. And yet she did not know it was love, and
+she felt no shame, and no fright, nothing but rapture. She was in the
+broad light of the present, under the direct rays of a firmament of
+life and love. Another girl, Addie Hemingway, who was no older than
+Evelyn, but shrewd beyond her years, with a taint of coarseness,
+noticed her, and nudged the girl at her right. "Just look at Evelyn
+Edgham," she whispered.
+
+The other girl looked.
+
+"I suppose she thinks she'll catch him, she's so awful pretty,"
+whispered Addie maliciously.
+
+"I don't think she is so very pretty," whispered back the other girl,
+who was pretty herself and disposed to assert her own claims to
+attention.
+
+"She thinks she is," whispered back Addie. "Just see how bold she
+looks at him. I should think she would be ashamed of herself."
+
+"So should I," nodded the other girl.
+
+But Evelyn had no more conception of the propriety of shame than
+nature itself. She was pure nature. Presently Wollaston himself, who
+had been making his address to his pupils with a vague sense of an
+upturned expanse of fresh young faces of boys and girls, without any
+especial face arresting his attention, saw Evelyn with a start which
+nobody, man or woman, could have helped. She was so beautiful that
+she could no more be passed unnoticed than a star. Wollaston made an
+almost imperceptible pause in his discourse, then he continued,
+fixing his eyes upon the oriel-window opposite. He realized himself
+as surprised and stirred, but he was not a young man whom a girl's
+beauty can rouse at once to love. He had, moreover, a strong sense of
+honor and duty. He realized Maria was his legal wife. He was,
+although he had gotten over his boyish romance, which had been
+shocked out of him at the time of his absurd marriage, in an attitude
+of soul which was ready for love, and love for his wife. He had often
+said to himself that no other honorable course was possible for
+either Maria or himself: that it was decidedly best that they should
+fall in love with each other and make their marriage a reality. At
+the same time, something more than delicacy and shyness restrained
+him from making advances. He was convinced that Maria not only
+disliked but feared him. A great pity for her was in his heart, and
+also pride, which shrank from exposing itself to rebuffs. Yet he did
+not underestimate himself. He considered that he had as good a chance
+as any man of winning her affection and overcoming her present
+attitude towards him. He saw no reason why he should not. While he
+was not conceited, he knew perfectly well his advantages as to
+personal appearance. He also was conscious of the integrity of his
+purpose as far as she was concerned. He knew that, whenever she
+should be willing to accept him, he should make her a good husband,
+and he recognized his readiness and ability to love her should she
+seem ready to welcome his love. He, however, was very proud even
+while conscious of his advantages, and consequently easily wounded.
+He could not forget Maria's look of horror when she had recognized
+him the Saturday before. A certain resentment towards her because of
+it was over him in spite of himself. He said to himself that he had
+not deserved that look, that he had done all that mortal man could do
+to shield her from a childish tragedy, for which he had not been to
+blame in any greater degree than she. He said to himself that she
+might at least have had confidence in his honor and his generosity.
+However, pity for her and that readiness to do his duty--to love
+her--were uppermost. The quick glance which he had given Maria that
+morning had filled him with pleasure. Maria, in her dull-rose blouse,
+with her cluster of chrysanthemums, with her fair, emotional face
+held by sheer force of will in a mould of serenity, with her soft
+yellow coils of hair and her still childish figure, was charming.
+After that one glance at Evelyn, with her astonishing beauty, he
+thought no more about her. When his address was finished the usual
+routine of the school began.
+
+He did not see Maria again all day. She had her own class-room, and
+at noon she and Evelyn ate their luncheon together there. Evelyn did
+not say a word about the new principal. She was very quiet. She did
+not eat as usual.
+
+"Don't you feel well, dear?" asked Maria.
+
+"Yes, sister," replied Evelyn. Then suddenly her lips quivered and a
+tear rolled down the lovely curve of her cheek.
+
+"Why, Evelyn, precious, what is the matter?" asked Maria.
+
+"Nothing," muttered Evelyn. Then suddenly, to her sister's utter
+astonishment, the young girl sprang up and ran out of the room.
+
+Maria was sure that she heard a muffled sob. She thought for a second
+of following her, then she had some work to do before the afternoon
+session, and she also had a respect for others' desires for secrecy,
+possibly because of her long carrying about of her own secret. She
+sat at her table with her forehead frowning uneasily, and wrote, and
+did not move to follow Evelyn.
+
+Evelyn, when she rushed out of the class-room, took instinctively her
+way towards a little but dense grove in the rear of the academy. It
+was a charming little grove of firs and maples, and there were a
+number of benches under the trees for the convenience of the pupils.
+It was rather singular that there was nobody there. Usually during
+the noon-hour many ate their luncheons under the shadow of the trees.
+However, the wind had changed, and it was cool. Then, too, the
+reunions among the old pupils were probably going on to better
+advantage in the academy, and many had their luncheons at a near-by
+restaurant. However it happened, Evelyn, running with the tears in
+her eyes, her heart torn with strange, new emotion which as yet she
+could not determine the nature of, whether it was pain or joy, found
+the grove quite deserted. The cold sunlight came through the golden
+maple boughs and lay in patches on the undergrowth of drying
+golden-rod and asters. Under the firs and pines it was gloomy, and a
+premonition of winter was in the air. Evelyn sat down on a bench
+under a pine-tree, and began to weep quite unrestrainedly. She did
+not know why. She heard the song of the pine over her head, and it
+seemed to increase her apparently inconsequent grief. In reality she
+wept the tears of the world, the same which a new-born child sheds.
+Her sorrow was the mysterious sorrow of existence itself. She wept
+because of the world, and her life in it, and her going out of it,
+because of its sorrow, which is sweetened with joy, and its joy
+embittered with sorrow. But she did not know why she wept. Evelyn was
+cast on very primitive moulds, and she had been very unrestrained,
+first by the indifference of her mother, then by the love of her
+father and sister and aunt. It was enough for Evelyn that she wished
+to weep that she wept. No other reason seemed in the least necessary
+to her. In front of where she sat was a large patch of sunlight
+overspreading a low growth of fuzzy weeds, which shone like silver,
+and a bent thicket of dry asters which were still blue although
+withered.
+
+All at once Evelyn became aware that this patch of sunlight was
+darkened, and she looked up in a sweet confusion. Her big, dark eyes
+were not in the least reddened by her tears; they only glittered with
+them. Her lips, slightly swollen, only made her lovelier.
+
+Directly before her stood the new principal, and he was gazing down
+at her with a sort of consternation, pity, and embarrassment.
+Wollaston was in reality wishing himself anywhere else. A woman's
+tears aroused in him pity and irritation. He wished to pass on, but
+it seemed too impossible to do so and leave this lovely young
+creature in such distress without a word of inquiry. He therefore
+paused, and his slightly cold, blue eyes met Evelyn's brilliant,
+tearful ones with interrogation.
+
+"Is there anything I can do for you?" he asked. "Shall I call any
+one? Are you ill?"
+
+Evelyn felt hurt and disturbed by his look and tone. New tears welled
+up in her eyes. She shook her head with a slight pout. Wollaston
+passed on. Evelyn raised her head and gazed after him with an
+indescribable motion, the motion of a timid, wild thing of the woods,
+which pursues, but whose true instinct is to be pursued. Suddenly she
+rose, and ran after him, and was by his side.
+
+"I am ashamed you should have seen--" she said, brokenly. "I was
+crying for nothing."
+
+Wollaston looked down at her and smiled. She also was smiling through
+her tears. "Young ladies should not cry for nothing," he said, with a
+whimsical, school-master manner.
+
+"It seems to me that nothing is the most terrible thing in the whole
+world to cry for," replied Evelyn, with unconscious wisdom, but she
+still smiled. Again her eyes met the young man's, and her innocently
+admiring gaze was full upon his, and that happened which was
+inevitable, one of the chain of sequences of life itself. His own
+eyes responded ardently, and the girl's eyes fell before the man's.
+At the same time there was no ulterior significance in the man's
+look, which was merely in evidence of a passing emotion to which he
+was involuntarily subject. He had not the slightest thought of any
+love, which his look seemed to express for this little beauty of a
+girl, whose name he did not even know. But he slackened his pace, and
+Evelyn walked timidly beside him over the golden net-work of sunlight
+in the path. Evelyn spoke first.
+
+"You came from Edgham, Mr. Lee," she said.
+
+Wollaston looked at her. "Yes. Do you know anybody there?"
+
+Evelyn laughed. "I came from there myself," she said, "and so did my
+sister, Maria. Maria is one of the teachers, you know."
+
+Evelyn wondered why Mr. Lee's face changed, not so much color but
+expression.
+
+"Oh, you are Miss Edgham's sister?" he exclaimed.
+
+"Yes. I am her sister--her half-sister."
+
+"Let me see; you are in the senior class."
+
+"Yes," replied Evelyn. Then she added, "Did you remember my sister?"
+
+"Oh yes," replied Wollaston. "We used to go to school together."
+
+"She cannot have altered," said Evelyn. "She always looks just the
+same to me, anyway."
+
+"She does to me," said Lee, and there was in inflection in his voice
+which caused Evelyn to give a startled glance at him. But he
+continued, quite naturally, "Your sister looks just as I remember
+her, only, of course, a little taller and more dignified."
+
+"Maria is dignified," said Evelyn, "but of course she has taught
+school a long time, and a school-teacher has to be dignified."
+
+"Are you intending to teach school?" asked Lee, and even as he asked
+the question he felt amused. The idea of this flower-like thing
+teaching school, or teaching anything, was absurd. She was one of the
+pupils of life, not one of the expounders.
+
+"No, I think not," said Evelyn. Then she said, "I have never thought
+about it." Then an incomprehensible little blush flamed upon her
+cheeks. Evelyn was thinking that she should be married instead of
+doing anything else, but that the man did not consider. He was
+singularly unversed in feminine nature.
+
+A bell rang from the academy, and Evelyn turned about with
+reluctance. "There is the bell," said she. She was secretly proud
+although somewhat abashed at being seen walking back to the academy
+with the new principal. Addie Hemingway was looking out of a window,
+and she said to the other girl, the same whom she had addressed in
+the chapel:
+
+"See, Evelyn Edgham has got him in tow already."
+
+That night, when Maria and Evelyn arrived home, Aunt Maria asked
+Evelyn how she liked the new principal. "Oh, he's perfectly
+splendid," replied Evelyn. Then she blushed vividly. Aunt Maria
+noticed it and gave a swift glance at Maria, but Maria did not notice
+it at all. She was so wrapped in her own dreams that she was
+abstracted. After she went to bed that night she lay awake a long
+time dreaming, just as she had done when she had been a little girl.
+Her youth seemed to rush back upon her like a back-flood. She caught
+herself dreaming of love-scenes in that same little wood where
+Wollaston and Evelyn had walked that day. She never thought of Evelyn
+and the possibility of her thinking of Wollaston. But Evelyn, in her
+little, white, maiden bed, was awake and dreaming too. Outside the
+wind was blowing and the leaves dropping and the eternal stars
+shining overhead. It seemed as if so much maiden-dreaming in the
+house should make it sound with song, but it was silent and dark to
+the night. Only the reflection of the street-lamp made it evident at
+all to occasional passers. It is well that the consciousness of human
+beings is deaf to such emotions, or all individual dreams would cease
+because of the multiple din.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXII
+
+
+Evelyn, as the weeks went on, did not talk as much as she had been
+accustomed to do. She did not pour her confidences into her sister's
+ears. She never spoke of the new principal. She studied assiduously,
+and stood exceedingly well in all her classes. She had never taken so
+much pains with her pretty costumes. When her mother sent her a
+Christmas present of a Paris gown, she danced with delight. There was
+to be a Christmas-tree in the academy chapel, and she planned to wear
+it. Although it was a Paris gown it was simple enough, a pretty,
+girlish frock of soft white cloth, with touches of red. "I can wear
+holly in my hair, and it will be perfectly lovely," Evelyn said. But
+she came down with such a severe cold and sore throat at the very
+beginning of the holidays that going to Westbridge was out of the
+question. Evelyn lamented over the necessity of her staying at home
+like a child. She even cried.
+
+"I wouldn't be such a baby," said Aunt Maria. At times Aunt Maria
+could not quite forgive Evelyn for being Ida Slome's child,
+especially when she showed any weakness. She looked severely now at
+poor Evelyn, in her red house-wrapper, weeping in her damp little
+handkerchief. "I should think you were about ten," she said.
+
+Evelyn wiped her eyes and sniffed. Her throat was very sore, and her
+cold was also in her head. Her pretty lips were disfigured with
+fever-sores. Her eyes were inflamed.
+
+"You wouldn't want to go looking the way you do, anyhow," said Aunt
+Maria, pitilessly.
+
+After Aunt Maria went out of the room, Maria, who was putting some
+finishing-touches to the gown which she herself was to wear to the
+Christmas-tree, went over to her sister and knelt down beside her.
+"Poor darling," she said. "Don't you want me to stay at home with
+you?"
+
+Evelyn pushed her away gently, with a fresh outburst of tears. "No,"
+she said. "Don't come so close, Maria, or you will catch it.
+Everybody says it is contagious. No, I wouldn't have you stay at home
+for anything. I am not a pig, if I am disappointed. But Aunt Maria
+need not be so cross."
+
+"Aunt Maria does not mean to be cross, sweetheart," said Maria,
+stroking her sister's fluffy, dark head. "Are you sure that you do
+not want me to stay home with you, dear?"
+
+"Perfectly sure," replied Evelyn. "I want you to go so you can tell
+me about it."
+
+Evelyn had not the slightest idea of jealousy of Maria. While she
+admired her, it really never occurred to her, so naive she was in her
+admiration of herself, that anybody could think her more attractive
+than she was and fall in love with her, to her neglect. She had not
+the least conception of what this Christmas-tree meant to her older
+sister: the opportunity of seeing Wollaston Lee, of talking with him,
+of perhaps some attention on his part. Maria was to return to Amity
+on the last trolley from Westbridge. It was quite a walk from the
+academy. She dreamed of Wollaston's escorting her to the
+trolley-line. She dressed herself with unusual care when the day
+came. She had a long, trailing gown of a pale-blue cloth and a blue
+knot for her yellow hair. She also had quite a pretentious blue
+evening cloak. Christmas afternoon a long box full of pale-yellow
+roses arrived. There was a card enclosed which Maria caught up
+quickly and concealed without any one seeing her. Wollaston had sent
+her the roses. Her heart beat so hard and fast that it seemed the
+others must hear it. She bent over the roses. "How perfectly lovely!"
+she said.
+
+Aunt Maria took up the box and lifted the flowers out carefully.
+"There isn't any card," she said. "I wonder who sent them?" All at
+once a surmise seized her that Professor Lane, who was said to be
+regaining his health in Colorado, had sent an order to the Westbridge
+florist for these flowers. Simultaneously the thought came to Evelyn,
+but Eunice, who was in the room, looked bewildered. When Maria
+carried the roses out to put them in water, she turned to her
+sister-in-law. "Who on earth do you suppose sent them?" she whispered.
+
+Aunt Maria looked at her, and formed Professor Lane's name
+noiselessly with her lips, giving her at the same time a knowing nod.
+Eunice looked at Evelyn, who also nodded, although with a somewhat
+disturbed expression. She still did not feel quite reconciled to the
+idea of her sister's loving Professor Lane.
+
+"I didn't know," said Eunice.
+
+"Nobody knows; but we sort of surmise," said Aunt Maria.
+
+"Why, he's old enough to be her father," Eunice said.
+
+"What of that, if he only gets cured of his consumption?" said Aunt
+Maria. She herself felt disgusted, but she had a pleasure in
+concealing her disgust from her sister-in-law. "Lots of girls would
+jump at him," said she.
+
+"I wouldn't have when I was a girl," Eunice remarked, in a mildly
+reminiscent manner.
+
+"You don't know what you would have done if you hadn't got my
+brother," said Aunt Maria.
+
+"I would never have married anybody," Eunice replied, with a fervent,
+faithful look. As she spoke, she seemed to see Henry Stillman as he
+had been, when a young man and courting her, and she felt as if a
+king had passed her field of memory to the exclusion of all others.
+
+"Maybe you wouldn't have," said her sister-in-law, "but nowadays
+girls have to take what they can get. Men ain't so anxious to marry.
+When a man had to have all his shirts and dickeys made he was
+helpless, to say nothing of his pants, but nowadays he can get
+everything ready-made, and it doesn't make so much difference to him
+whether he gets married or not. He can have a good deal more for
+himself, if he's an old bachelor."
+
+"Maybe you are right," said Eunice, "but I know when I was a girl
+Maria's age I wouldn't have let an old man like Professor Lane, with
+the consumption, too, tie my shoes. Do you suppose he really sent her
+the roses?"
+
+"Who else could have sent them?"
+
+"They must have cost an awful sight of money," said Eunice, in an
+awed tone. Then she stopped, for Maria re-entered the room with the
+roses in a tall vase. She wore some of them pinned to the shoulder of
+her blue gown that evening. She knew who had sent them, and it seemed
+to her that she did not overestimate the significance of the sending.
+When she started for Westbridge that evening she was radiant. She had
+the roses carefully pinned in tissue-paper to protect them from the
+cold; her long, blue cloak swept about her in graceful folds, she
+wore a blue hat with a long, blue feather.
+
+"Why didn't you wear a head tie?" asked Aunt Maria. "Ain't you afraid
+you will spoil that hat if you take it off? The feather will get all
+mussy."
+
+"I shall put it in a safe place," replied Maria, smiling. She blushed
+as she spoke. She knew perfectly well herself why she wore that hat,
+because she thought Wollaston might escort her to the trolley, and
+she wished to appear at her best in his eyes. Maria no longer
+disguised from herself the fact that she loved this man who was her
+husband and not her husband. She knew that she was entirely ready to
+respond to his advances, should he make any, that she would be
+happier than she had ever been in her whole life if the secret which
+had been the horror of her life should be revealed. She wondered if
+it would not be better to have another wedding. That night she had
+not much doubt of Wollaston's love for her. When she entered the car,
+and saw besides herself several young girls prinked in their best,
+who were also going to the Christmas-tree, she felt a sort of amused
+pride, that all their prinking and preening was in vain. She assumed
+that all of them had dressed to attract Wollaston. She could not
+think of any other man whom any girl could wish to attract. She sat
+radiant with her long, blue feather sweeping the soft, yellow puff of
+her hair. She gave an affect of smiling at everybody, at all
+creation. She really felt for the first time that she could remember
+a sense of perfect acquiescence with the universal scheme of things,
+therefore she felt perfect content and happiness. She thought how
+wonderful it was that poor Gladys Mann, lying in her unmarked grave
+this Christmas-time, should have been the means, all unwittingly, of
+bringing such bliss to herself. She thought how wonderful that
+Evelyn's loss should have been the first link in such a sequence. She
+thought of Evelyn with a sort of gratitude, as if she had done
+something incalculable for her. She also thought of her as always
+with the utmost love and pride and tenderness. She reflected with
+pleasure on the gift which she herself had hung on the tree for
+Evelyn, and how pleased the child would be. It was a tiny gold brooch
+with a pearl in the centre. Evelyn was very fond of ornaments. Maria
+did not once imagine of the possibility that Evelyn could have any
+dreams herself with regard to Wollaston. She did not in reality think
+of Evelyn as old enough to have any dreams at all which need be
+considered seriously, and least of all about Wollaston Lee. She
+nodded to a young man, younger than herself, who was in Evelyn's
+class at the academy, who sat across the aisle, and he returned the
+nod eagerly. He was well grown, and handsome, and looked as old as
+Maria herself. Presently as the car began to fill up, he crossed the
+aisle, and asked if he might sit beside her. Maria made room at once.
+She smiled at the young fellow with her smile which belonged in
+reality to another man, and he took it for himself. Perhaps nothing
+on earth is so misappropriated as smiles and tears. The seat was
+quite narrow. It was necessary to sit rather close, in any event, but
+presently Maria felt the boy's broad shoulder press unmistakably
+against hers. She shrank away with an imperceptible motion. She did
+not feel so much angry as amused at the thought that this great boy
+should be making love to her, when all her heart was with some one
+else, when she could not even give him a pleasant look which belonged
+wholly to him. Maria leaned against the window, and gazed out at the
+flying shadows. "I am glad it is so pleasant," she said in a
+perfectly unconcerned voice.
+
+"Yes, so am I," the boy replied, but his voice shook with emotion.
+Maria thought again how ridiculous it was. Then suddenly she
+reflected that this might not be on her account but Evelyn's. She
+thought that the boy might be trying to ingratiate himself with her
+on her sister's account. She felt at once indignation and a sense of
+pity. She was sure that Evelyn had never thought of him. She glanced
+at the boy's handsome, manly face, which, although manly, wore still
+an expression of ingenuousness like a child's. She reflected that if
+Evelyn were to marry when she were older, that perhaps this was a
+good husband for her. The boy came of one of the best families in
+Amity. She turned towards him smiling.
+
+"Evelyn was very much disappointed that she could not come to-night,"
+she said.
+
+The boy brightened visibly at her tone.
+
+"She has a very severe cold," Maria added.
+
+"I am sorry," said the boy. Then he said in a low tone whose boldness
+and ardor were unmistakable, that it did not make any difference to
+him who was there as long as she was. Maria could scarcely believe
+her ears. She gave the boy a keen, incredulous glance, but he was not
+daunted. "I mean it," he said.
+
+"Nonsense," said Maria. She looked out of the window again. She told
+herself that it was annoying but too idiotic to concern herself with.
+She made up her mind that when they changed trolleys she would try to
+find a seat with some one else. But when they changed she found the
+boy again beside her. She was quite angry then, and made no effort to
+disguise it. She sat quite still, gazing out of the window, shrugged
+against it as closely as she was able to sit, and said nothing.
+However, her face resumed its happy smile when she thought again of
+Wollaston, and the boy thought the smile meant for him. He leaned
+over her tenderly.
+
+"I wish I could have a picture of you as you look to-night," he said.
+
+"Well, I am afraid that you will have to do without it," Maria said
+shortly. Still the boy remained insensible to rebuff.
+
+"What are you carrying, Miss Edgham?" he asked, looking at her roses
+enveloped in tissue paper.
+
+"Some roses which a friend sent me," Maria replied.
+
+Then the boy colored and paled a little. He jumped at once to the
+conclusion that the friend was a man. "I suppose you are going to
+wear them," he said pitifully.
+
+"Yes, I am," replied Maria.
+
+The boy in his turn sat as far away as possible in his corner of the
+seat, and gazed ahead with a gloomy air.
+
+When they reached the academy grounds he quite deserted Maria, who
+walked to the chapel with one of the other teachers, who entered at
+the same time. She was a young lady who lived in Westbridge. Maria
+caught the pale glimmer of an evening gown under her long, red cloak
+trimmed with white fur, and reflected that possibly she also had
+adorned herself especially for Wollaston's benefit, and again she
+felt that unworthy sense of pride and amusement. The girl herself
+echoed her thoughts, for she said soon after Maria had greeted her:
+
+"I saw Mr. Lee and his mother starting."
+
+"Did you?" returned Maria.
+
+"Don't you think he is very handsome?" asked the girl in a
+sentimental tone which irritated.
+
+"No," said Maria sharply, although she lied. "I don't think he is
+handsome at all. He looks intelligent and sensible, but as for
+handsome--"
+
+"Oh, don't you think so?" cried the other. Then she caught herself
+short, for Wollaston Lee, with his mother on his arm, came up. They
+said good-evening, and all four passed in.
+
+The platform of the chapel was occupied by a great Christmas-tree.
+The chapel itself was trimmed with evergreens and holly. The moment
+Maria entered, after she had removed her hat in a room which was
+utilized as a dressing-room, and pinned her roses on her shoulder,
+she became sensible of a peculiar intoxication as of some new
+happiness and festivity, of a cup of joy which she had hitherto not
+tasted. The spicy odor of the evergreens, even the odor of
+oyster-stew from a room beyond where supper was to be served, that,
+and cake, and the sweetness of her own roses, raised her to a sense
+of elation which she had never before had. She sat with the other
+teachers well towards the front. Wollaston was with his mother on the
+right. Maria saw with a feeling of relief the people with whom the
+Lees had formerly boarded presently enter and sit with them. She
+thought that Wollaston would be free to walk to the trolley with her
+if he so wished. She felt surer and surer that he did so wish. Once
+she caught him looking at her, and when she answered his smile she
+felt her own lips stiff, and realized how her heart pounded against
+her side. She experienced something like a great pain which was still
+a great joy. Suddenly everything seemed unreal to her. When the
+presents were distributed, it was still so unreal that she did not
+feel as pleased as she would have done with the number for poor
+little Evelyn at home. She hardly knew what she received herself.
+They were the usual useless and undesirable tokens from her class,
+and others more desirable from the other lady teachers. Wollaston
+Lee's name was often called. Again Maria experienced that unworthy
+sensation of malicious glee that all this was lavished upon him when
+he was in reality hers and beyond the reach of any of these smiling
+girls with eyes of covert wistfulness upon the handsome young
+principal.
+
+After the festivities were over, Maria adjusted her hat in the
+dressing-room and fastened her long, blue cloak. She wrapped her
+roses again in the tissue-paper. They were very precious to her. The
+teacher whom she had met on entering the academy was fastening her
+cloak, and she gazed at Maria with a sort of envious admiration.
+
+"You look like a princess, all in blue, Miss Edgham," said she. Her
+words were sweet, but her voice rang false.
+
+"Thank you," said Maria, and went out swiftly. She feared lest the
+other teacher attach herself to her, and the other teacher lived on
+the road towards the trolley. When Maria went out of the academy,
+that which she had almost feared to hope for happened. Wollaston
+stepped beside her, and she heard him ask if he might walk with her
+to the trolley.
+
+Maria took his arm.
+
+"Mother is with the Gleasons," said Wollaston. His voice trembled.
+
+Just then the boy who had sat with Maria on the car coming over
+walked with a defiant stride to her other side.
+
+"Good-evening, Mr. Lee," he said, lifting his hat. "Good-evening,
+Miss Edgham," as if that was the first time that evening he had seen
+her. Then he walked on with her and Wollaston, and nothing was to be
+done but accept the situation. The young fellow was fairly
+belligerent with jealous rage. He had lost his young head over his
+teacher, and was doing something for which he would scorn himself
+later on.
+
+Wollaston pressed Maria's hand closely under his arm, and she felt
+her very soul thrill, but they all talked of the tree and the
+festivities of the evening, with an apparent disregard of the
+terrible undercurrent of human emotions which had them all in its
+grasp. Wollaston carried Maria's presents and Evelyn's. When they
+reached the trolley-line, and he gave them to her, she managed to
+whisper a thank you for his beautiful roses, and he pressed her hand
+and said good-night. The boy asked with a mixture of humility and
+defiance if he could not carry her parcels (he himself had nothing
+but three neckties and a great silk muffler, which he did not value
+highly, as he was well stocked already, and he had thrust them into
+his pockets). "No, thank you," said Maria, "I prefer to carry them
+myself." She was curt, but she was so lit up with rapture that she
+could not help smiling at him as she spoke, and he again sat in the
+same car-seat. She hardly spoke a word all the way to Amity, but he
+walked to her door with her, alighting from the car at the same time
+she did, although he lived half a mile farther on.
+
+"You will have to walk a half mile," Maria observed, when he handed
+her off and let the car go on.
+
+"I like to walk," the boy said, fervently.
+
+Maria had her latch-key. She opened the door hurriedly and ran in.
+She was half afraid that this irrepressible young man might offer to
+kiss her. "Good-night," she said, and almost slammed the door in his
+face.
+
+Aunt Maria had left a light burning low on the hall table. Maria took
+it and went up-stairs. She gathered up the skirt of her gown into a
+bag to hold the presents, hers and Evelyn's.
+
+When she entered her own room and set the lamp on the dresser, she
+was aware of a little, nestling movement in the bed, and Evelyn's
+dark head and lovely face raised itself from the pillow.
+
+"I came in here," said Evelyn, "because I wanted to see you after you
+came home. Do you mind?"
+
+"No, darling, of course I don't mind," replied Maria.
+
+She displayed Evelyn's presents, and the girl examined them eagerly.
+Maria thought she seemed disappointed even with her own gift of the
+brooch which she had expected would so delight her.
+
+"Is that all?" Evelyn said.
+
+"All?" laughed Maria. "Why, you little, greedy thing, what do you
+expect?"
+
+To her astonishment Evelyn began suddenly to cry. She sobbed as if
+her heart would break, and would not tell her sister why she was so
+grieved. Finally, Maria having undressed and got into bed, her sister
+clung closely to her, still sobbing.
+
+"Evelyn, darling, what is it?" whispered Maria.
+
+"You'll laugh at me."
+
+"No, I won't, honest, precious."
+
+"Honest?"
+
+"Yes, honest, dear."
+
+"Were those all the presents I had?"
+
+"Yes, of course, I brought you all you had, dear."
+
+Evelyn murmured something inarticulate against Maria's breast.
+
+"What is it, dear, sister didn't hear?"
+
+"I hung a book on the tree for him," choked Evelyn, "and I thought
+maybe--I thought--"
+
+"Thought what?"
+
+"I thought maybe he would--"
+
+"Who would?"
+
+"I thought maybe Mr. Lee would give me something," sobbed Evelyn.
+
+Maria lay still.
+
+Evelyn nestled closer. "Oh," she whispered, "I love him so! I can't
+help it. I can't. I love him so, sister!"
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXIII
+
+
+There was a second's hush after Evelyn had said that. It seemed to
+Maria that her heart stood still. A sort of incredulity, as of the
+monstrous and the super-human seized her. She felt as one who had
+survived a railroad accident might feel looking down upon his own
+dismembered body in which life still quivered. She could not seem to
+actually sense what Evelyn had said, although the words still rang in
+her ears. Presently, Evelyn spoke again in her smothered, weeping
+voice. "Do you think I am so very dreadful, so--immodest, to care so
+much about a man who has never said he cared about me?"
+
+"He has never said anything?" asked Maria, and her voice sounded
+strange in her own ears.
+
+"No, never one word that I could make anything of, but he has looked
+at me, he has, honest, sister." Evelyn burst into fresh sobs.
+
+Then Maria roused herself. She patted the little, soft, dark head.
+
+"Why, Evelyn, precious," she said, "you are imagining all this. You
+can't care so much about a man whom you have seen so little. You have
+let your mind dwell on it, and you imagine it. You don't care. You
+can't, really. You wait, and by-and-by you will find out that you
+care a good deal more for somebody else."
+
+But then Evelyn raised herself and looked down at her sister in the
+dark, and there was a ring in her voice which Maria had never before
+heard. "Not care," she said--"not care! I will stand everything but
+that. Maria, don't you dare tell me I don't care!"
+
+"But you don't know him at all, dear."
+
+"I know him better than anybody else in the whole world," said
+Evelyn, still in the same strained voice. "The very minute I saw him
+I loved him, and then it seemed as if a great bright light made him
+plain to me. I do love him, Maria. Don't you ever dare say I don't.
+That is the only thing that makes me feel that I am not ashamed to
+live, the knowing that I do love him. I should be dreadful if I
+didn't love him--really love him, I mean, with the love that lasts.
+Do you suppose that if I only felt about him as some of the other
+girls do, that I would have told you? I _do_ love him!"
+
+"What makes you so sure?"
+
+"What makes me so sure? Why, everything. I know there is not another
+man in the whole world for me that can possibly equal him, and
+then--I feel as if my whole life were full of him. I can't seem to
+remember much before he came. When I look back, it is like looking
+into the dark, and I can't imagine the world being at all without
+him."
+
+"Would you be willing to be very poor, to go without pretty things if
+you--married him, to live in a house like the Ramsey's on the other
+side of the river, not to have enough to eat and drink and wear?"
+
+"I would have enough to eat and drink and wear. I would have as much
+as a queen if I had him," cried Evelyn. "What do you think I care
+about pretty things, or even food and life itself, when it comes to
+anything like this? Live in a house like the Ramsey's! I would live
+in a cave. I would live on the street, and I should never know it was
+not a palace. Maria, you do know that I love him, don't you?"
+
+"Yes, I know that you think you do."
+
+"No, say I do."
+
+"Yes, I know you do," Maria said.
+
+Then Evelyn lay down again, and wept quietly.
+
+"Yes, I love him," she moaned, "but he does not love me. You don't
+think he does, do you? I know you don't."
+
+Maria said nothing. She was sure that he did not.
+
+"No, he does not. I see you know it," Evelyn sobbed, "and all I cared
+about going to the Christmas-tree and wearing my new gown was on
+account of him, and I sent a beautiful book. I thought I could do
+that. All the girls in the senior class gave him something, and I
+have been saving up every cent, and he never gave me anything, not
+even a box of candy or flowers. Do you think he gave any of the other
+girls anything, Maria?"
+
+"I don't think so."
+
+"I can't help hoping he did not. And I don't believe it is so very
+wicked, because I know that none of the other girls can possibly love
+him as much as I do. But, Maria--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I do love him enough not to complain if he really loved some other
+girl, and she was good, and would make him happy. I would go down on
+my knees to her to love him. I would, Maria, honest." Evelyn was
+almost hysterical. Maria soothed her, and evaded as well as she was
+able her repeated little, piteous questions as to whether she thought
+Mr. Lee could ever care for her. "I know I am pretty," Evelyn said
+naively. "I really think I must be prettier than any other girl in
+school. I have heard so, and I really think so myself, but being
+pretty means so little when it comes to anything like this with a man
+like him. He might love Addie Hemingway instead of me, so far as
+looks were concerned, but I don't think Addie would make him very
+happy--do you, Maria?"
+
+"No, dear. I am quite sure he will never think of her. Now try and be
+quiet and go to sleep."
+
+"I cannot go to sleep," moaned Evelyn, but it was not very long
+before she was drawing long, even breaths. Her youth had asserted
+itself. Then, too, she had got certain comfort from this baring of
+her soul before the soothing love of her sister.
+
+As soon as Maria became sure that Evelyn was soundly asleep she
+gently unwound the slender, clinging arms and got out of bed, and
+stole noiselessly into Evelyn's own room, which adjoined hers. She
+did not get into bed, but took a silk comfortable off, and wrapped it
+around her, then sat down in a low chair beside the window. It seemed
+to her that if she could not have a little while to think by herself
+that she should go mad. The utterly inconceivable to her had
+happened, and the utterly inconceivable fairly dazzles the brain when
+it comes to pass. Maria felt as if she were outside all hitherto
+known tracks of life, almost as if she were in the fourth dimension.
+The possibility that her own sister might fall in love with the man
+whom she had married had never entered her mind before. She had
+checked Evelyn's wonder concerning him, but she had thought no more
+of it than of the usual foolish exuberance of a young girl. Now she
+believed that her sister really loved Wollaston. She recalled the
+fears which she had had with regard to her strenuous nature. She did
+not believe it to be a passing fancy of an ordinary young girl. She
+recalled word for word what Evelyn had said, and she believed. Maria
+sat awhile gazing out of the window at the starlit sky in a sort of
+blank of realization, of adjustment. She could not at first formulate
+any plan of action. She could only, as it were, state the problem.
+She gazed up at the northern constellations, at the mysterious polar
+star, and it seemed to steady her mind and give it power to deal with
+her petty problem of life by its far-away and everlasting guiding
+light. The window was partly open, and the same pungent odor of death
+and life in one which had endured all day came in her nostrils. She
+seemed to sense heaven and earth and herself as an atom, but an atom
+racked with infinite pain between the two.
+
+"There is the great polar star," she said to herself, "there are all
+the suns and stars, here is the earth, and here am I, Maria Edgham,
+who am on the earth, but must some day give up my mortal life and
+become a part of it, and part of the material universe and perhaps
+also of the spiritual. I am as nothing, and yet this pain in my
+heart, this love in my heart, makes me shine with my own fire as much
+as the star. I could not be unless the earth existed, but it is of
+such as myself that the earth is made up, and without such as myself
+it could not shine in its place in the heavens."
+
+Maria began to attach a certain importance to her individual
+existence even while she realized the pettiness of it, comparatively
+speaking. She was an infinitesimal part, but the whole could not be
+without that part. Suddenly the religious instruction which she had
+drank in with her mother's milk took possession of her, but she had a
+breadth of outlook which would have terrified her mother. Maria said
+to herself that she believed in God, but that His need of her was as
+much as her need of Him. She said to herself that without her tiny
+faith in Him, her tiny speck of love for Him, He would lack something
+of Himself. Then all at once, in a perfect flood of rapture,
+something which she had never before known came into her heart: the
+consciousness of the love of God for herself, of the need of God for
+herself, poor little Maria Edgham, whose ways of life had been so
+untoward and so absurd that she almost seemed to herself something to
+be laughed at rather than pitied, much less loved. But all at once
+the knowledge of the love of God was over her. She gazed up again at
+the great polar star overlooking with its eternal light the mysteries
+of the north, and for the first time in her whole life the primitive
+instinct of worship asserted itself within her. Maria rose, and fell
+on her knees, and continued to gaze up at the star which seemed to
+her like an eye of God Himself, and love seemed to pervade her whole
+being. She thought now almost lightly of Wollaston Lee. What was any
+earthly love to love like this, which took hold of the beginning and
+end of things, of the eternal? A resolution which this sense of love
+seemed to inspire came over her. It was a resolution almost
+grotesque, but it was sacred because her heart of hearts was in it,
+and she made it because of this love of God for her and her new sense
+of worship for something beyond the earth and all earthly affections
+which had taken possession of her. She rose, undressed herself, and
+went to bed. She did not say any prayer as usual. She seemed an
+incarnate prayer which made formulas unnecessary. Why was it
+essential to say anything when she was? At last she fell asleep, and
+did not wake until the dawn light was in the room. She did not wake
+as usual to a reunion with herself, but to a reunion with another
+self. She did not feel altogether happy. The resolution of the night
+before remained, but the ecstasy had vanished. She was not yet an
+angel, only a poor, human girl with the longings of her kind, which
+would not be entirely stifled as long as her human heart beat. But
+she did what she had planned. Maria had an unusually high forehead.
+It might have given evidence of intellect, of goodness, but it was
+not beautiful. She had always fluffed her blond hair over it,
+concealing it with pretty waves. This morning she brushed all her
+hair as tightly back as possible, and made a hard twist at an ugly
+angle at the back of her head. By doing this she did not actually
+destroy her beauty, for her regular features and delicate tints
+remained, but nobody looking at her would have called her even
+pretty. Her delicate features became pronounced and hardened, her
+nose seemed sharpened and elongated, her lips thinner. This display
+of her forehead hardened and made bold all her face and made her look
+years older than she was. Maria looked at herself in the glass with a
+sort of horror. She had always been fond of herself in the glass. She
+had loved that double of herself which had come and gone at her
+bidding, but now it was different. She was actually afraid of the
+stern, thin visage which confronted her, which was herself, yet not
+herself. When she was fully dressed it was worse still. She put on a
+gray gown which had never been becoming. It was not properly fitted.
+It was short-waisted, and gave her figure a short, chunky appearance.
+This chunky aspect, with her sharp face and strained back hair, made
+her seem fairly hideous to herself. But she remained firm. Her
+firmness, in reality, was one cause of the tightening and thinning of
+her lips. She hesitated when about to go down-stairs. She had not
+heard Evelyn go down. She wondered whether she had better wait until
+she went, or go into her room. She finally decided upon the latter
+course. Evelyn was standing in front of her dresser brushing her
+hair. When Maria entered she threw with a quick motion the whole
+curly, fluffy mass over her face, which glowed through it with an
+intensity of shame. Evelyn, when she awoke that morning, felt as if
+she had revealed some nakedness of her very soul. The girl was fairly
+ill. She could not believe that she had said what she remembered
+herself to have said.
+
+"Good-morning, dear," said Maria.
+
+Evelyn did not notice her changed appearance at all. She continued to
+brush away at the mist of hair over her face. "Oh, sister!" she
+murmured.
+
+"Never mind, precious, we won't say anything more about it," said
+Maria, and her voice had maternal inflections.
+
+"I ought not," stammered Evelyn, but Maria interrupted her.
+
+"I have forgotten all about it, dear," she said. "Now you had better
+hurry or you will be late."
+
+"When I woke up this morning and remembered, I felt as if I should
+die," Evelyn said, in a choked voice.
+
+"Nonsense," said Maria. "You won't die, and it will all come out
+right. Don't worry anything about it or think anything more about it.
+Why don't you wear your red dress to school to-day? It is pleasant."
+
+"Well, perhaps I had better," Evelyn said. She threw back her hair
+then, but still she did not look at Maria.
+
+She arranged her hair and removed her little dressing-sack before she
+looked at Maria, who had seated herself in a rocking-chair beside the
+window. Aunt Maria always insisted upon getting breakfast without any
+assistance. The odor of coffee and baking muffins stole into the
+room. Evelyn got her red dress from the closet and put it on, still
+avoiding Maria's eyes. But at last she turned towards her.
+
+"I am all ready to go down," she said, in a weak little voice; then
+she gave a great start, and stared at Maria.
+
+Maria bore the stare calmly, and rose.
+
+"All right, dear," she replied.
+
+But Evelyn continued standing before her, staring incredulously. It
+was almost as if she doubted Maria's identity.
+
+"Why, Maria Edgham!" she said, finally. "What is the matter?"
+
+"What do you mean, dear?"
+
+"What have you done to yourself to make you look so queer? Oh, I see
+what it is! It's your hair. Maria, dear, what have you strained it
+off your forehead in that way for? It makes you look--why--"
+
+Then Maria lied. "My hair has been growing farther and farther off my
+forehead lately," said she, "and I thought possibly the reason was
+because I covered it. I thought if I brushed my hair back it would be
+better for it. Then, too, my head has ached some, and it seemed to me
+the pain in my forehead would be better if I kept it cooler."
+
+"But, Maria," said Evelyn, "you don't look so pretty. You don't,
+dear, honest. I hate to say so, but you don't."
+
+"Well I am afraid the pretty part of it will have to go," said Maria,
+going towards the door.
+
+"Oh, Maria, please pull your hair over your forehead just a little."
+
+"No, dear, I have it all fixed for the day, and it must stay as it
+is."
+
+Evelyn followed Maria down-stairs. She had a puzzled expression.
+Maria's hair was diverting her from her own troubles. She could not
+understand why any girl should deliberately make herself homely. She
+felt worried. It even occurred to wonder if anything could be the
+matter with Maria's mind.
+
+When the two girls went into the little dining-room, where breakfast
+was ready for them, Aunt Maria began to say something about the
+weather, then she cut herself short when she saw Maria.
+
+"Maria Edgham," said she, "what on earth--"
+
+Maria took her place at the table. "Those gems look delicious," she
+observed. But Aunt Maria was not to be diverted.
+
+"I don't want to hear anything about gems," said she. "They are good
+enough, I guess. I always could make gems, but what I want to know is
+if you have gone clean daft."
+
+"I don't think so," replied Maria, laughing.
+
+But Aunt Maria continued to stare at her with an expression of almost
+horror.
+
+"What under the sun have you got your hair done up that way for?"
+said she.
+
+Maria repeated what she had told Evelyn.
+
+"Stuff!" said Aunt Maria. "It will make the hair grow farther back
+straining it off your forehead that way, I can tell you that. You
+don't use common-sense, and as for your headache, I guess the hair
+didn't make it ache. It's the first I've heard of it. You look like a
+fright, I can tell you that."
+
+"Well, I can't help it," said Maria. "I shall have to behave well to
+make up."
+
+"Maria Edgham, you don't mean to say you are going to school looking
+as you do now!"
+
+Maria laughed, and buttered a gem.
+
+"You look old enough to be your own grandmother. You have spoiled
+your looks."
+
+"Looks don't amount to much," said Maria.
+
+"Maria Edgham, are you crazy?"
+
+"I hope not."
+
+"I told sister she didn't look so pretty," said Evelyn.
+
+"Look so pretty? She looks like a homely old maid. Your nose looks a
+yard long and your chin looks peaked and your mouth looks as if you
+were as ugly as sin. Your forehead is too high; it always was, and
+you ought to thank the Lord that he gave you pretty hair, and enough
+of it to cover up your forehead, and now you've gone and strained it
+back just as tight as you can and made a knot like a tough doughnut
+at the back of your head. You look like a crazy thing, I can tell you
+that."
+
+Maria said nothing. She ate her breakfast, while Aunt Maria and
+Evelyn could not eat much and were all the time furtively watching
+her.
+
+Aunt Maria took Evelyn aside before the sisters left for school, and
+asked her in a whisper if she thought anything was wrong with Maria,
+if she had noticed anything, but Evelyn said she had not. But she and
+Aunt Maria looked at each other with eyes of frightened surmise.
+
+When Maria had her hat on she looked, if anything, worse.
+
+"Good land!" said Aunt Maria, when she saw her. "Well, if you are set
+on making a spectacle of yourself, I suppose you are."
+
+After the girls had gone she went into the other side of the house
+and told Eunice. "There she has gone and made herself look like a
+perfect scarecrow," she said. "I wonder if there is any insanity in
+her father's family?"
+
+"Did she look so bad?" asked Eunice, with a stare of terror at her
+sister-in-law.
+
+"Look so bad! She looked as old and homely as you and I every bit."
+
+Maria made as much of a sensation on the trolley as she had done at
+home. The boy who had persecuted her the night before with his
+attentions bowed to Evelyn, and glanced at her evidently with no
+recognition. After a while he came to Evelyn and asked where her
+sister was that morning. Maria laughed, and he looked at her, then he
+fairly turned pale, and lifted his hat. He mumbled something and
+returned to his seat. Maria was conscious of his astonished and
+puzzled gaze at her all the way. When she reached the academy the
+other teachers--that is, the women--assailed her openly. One even
+attempted to loosen by force Maria's tightly strained locks.
+
+"Why, Miss Edgham, you fairly frighten me," she said, when Maria
+resisted.
+
+Maria realized the amazement of the pupils when they entered her
+class-room, the amazement of incredulity and almost disgust.
+Everybody seemed amazed and almost disgusted except Wollaston Lee. He
+did, indeed, give one slightly surprised glance at her, then he
+seemed to notice nothing different in her appearance. The man's sense
+of duty and honor was so strong that in reality his sense of
+externals was blunted. He had a sort of sublime short-sightedness to
+everything that was not of the spirit. He had been convinced the
+night previous that Maria was beginning to regard him with favor, and
+being convinced of that made him insensible to any mere outward
+change in her. She looked to him, on the whole, prettier than usual
+because he seemed to see in her love for himself.
+
+When the noon intermission came he walked into her class-room, and
+invited Maria and Evelyn to go with him to a near-by restaurant and
+lunch.
+
+"I would ask you to go home with me," he said, apologetically, to
+Maria, "but mother has a cold."
+
+Maria turned pale. She wondered if he had possibly told his mother.
+Then she remembered how he had promised her not to tell without her
+permission, and was reassured. Evelyn blushed and smiled and dimpled,
+and cast one of her sweet, dark glances at him, which he did not
+notice at all. His attention was fixed upon Maria, who hesitated,
+regarding him with her pale, pinched face. Evelyn took it for granted
+that Mr. Lee's invitation was only on her account, and that Maria was
+asked simply as a chaperon, and because, indeed, he could not very
+well avoid it. She jumped up and got her hat.
+
+"It will be perfectly lovely," she said, and faced them both, her
+charming face one glow of delight.
+
+But Maria did not rise. She looked at the basket of luncheon which
+she had begun to unpack, and replied, coldly, "Thank you, Mr. Lee,
+but we have our luncheon with us."
+
+Wollaston looked at her in a puzzled way.
+
+"But you could have something hot at the restaurant," he said. The
+words were not much, but in reality he meant, and Maria so understood
+him, "Why, what do you mean, after last night? You know how I feel
+about you. Why do you refuse?"
+
+Maria took another sandwich from her basket. "Thank you for asking
+us, Mr. Lee," she said, "but we have our luncheon."
+
+Her tone was fairly hostile. The hostility was not directed towards
+him, but towards the weakness in herself. But that he could not
+understand.
+
+"Very well," he said, in a hurt manner. "Of course I will not urge
+you, Miss Edgham." Then he walked out of the room, hollowing his back
+and holding his head very straight in a way he had had from a boy
+when he was offended.
+
+Evelyn pulled off her hat with a jerk. She looked at Maria with her
+eyes brilliant with tears. "I think you were mean, sister," she
+whispered, "awful mean; so there!"
+
+"I thought it was better not to go," Maria replied. Her tone was at
+once stern and pitiful. Evelyn noticed only her sternness. She began
+to weep softly.
+
+"There, he wanted me, too," she said, "and of course he had to ask
+you, and you knew--I think you might have, sister."
+
+"I thought it was better not," repeated Maria. "Now, dear, you had
+better eat your luncheon."
+
+"I don't want any luncheon."
+
+Maria began to eat a sandwich herself. There was an odd meekness and
+dejectedness in her manner. Presently she laid the half-eaten
+sandwich on the table and took out her handkerchief, and shook all
+over with helpless and silent sobs.
+
+Then Evelyn looked at her, her pouting expression relaxed gradually.
+She looked bewildered.
+
+"Why, what are you crying for?" she asked, in a low voice.
+
+Maria did not answer.
+
+Presently Evelyn rose and went over to her sister, and laid her cheek
+alongside hers and kissed her.
+
+"Don't, sister," she whispered. "I am sorry. I didn't mean to be
+cross. I suppose you were right not to go, only I did want to."
+Evelyn snivelled a little. "I know he was hurt, too," she said.
+
+Maria raised her head and wiped her eyes. "I did not think it was
+best," she said yet again. Then she looked at Evelyn and tried to
+smile. "Don't worry, precious," she said. "Everything will come out
+all right."
+
+Evelyn gazed wonderingly at her sister's tear-stained face. "I don't
+see what you cried for, and I don't see why you wouldn't go," she
+said. "The scholars will see you have been crying, and he will see,
+too. I don't see why you feel badly. I should think I was the one to
+feel badly."
+
+"Everything will come out all right," repeated Maria. "Don't worry,
+sister's own darling."
+
+"Everybody will see that you have been crying," said Evelyn, who was
+in the greatest bewilderment. "What did make you cry, Maria?"
+
+"Nothing, dear. Don't think any more about it," said Maria rising.
+She took a tumbler from the lunch-basket. "Go and fill this with
+water for me, that is a dear," she said. "Then I will bathe my eyes.
+Nobody would know that you have been crying."
+
+"That is because I am not so fair-skinned," said Evelyn; "but I don't
+see."
+
+She went out with the tumbler, shaking her head in a puzzled way.
+When she returned, Maria had the luncheon all spread out on the
+table, and looked quite cheerful in spite of her swollen eyes. The
+sisters ate together, and Evelyn was very sweet in spite of her
+disappointment. She was in reality very sweet and docile before all
+her negatives of life, and always would be. Her heart was always in
+leading-strings of love. She looked affectionately at Maria as they
+ate the luncheon.
+
+"I am so sorry I was cross," she said. "I suppose you thought that it
+would look particular if we went out to lunch with Mr. Lee."
+
+"Yes, I think it might have," replied Maria.
+
+"Well, I suppose it would," said Evelyn with a sigh, "and I know all
+the other girls are simply dying for him, but he asked us, after
+all." Evelyn said the last with an indescribable air of sweet
+triumph. It was quite evident that she regarded the invitation as
+meant for herself alone, and that she took ineffable delight in it in
+spite of the fact that it had been refused. She kept glancing out of
+the window as she ate. Presently she looked at her sister and
+laughed. "There he is coming now," she said, "and he is all alone. He
+didn't take anybody else to luncheon."
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXIV
+
+
+Wollaston Lee, approaching the academy on his return from his
+solitary lunch, was quite conscious of being commanded by the windows
+of Maria's class-room. He was so conscious that his stately walk
+became almost a strut. He felt resentment at Maria. He could not help
+it. He had not been, in fact, so much in love with her, as in that
+attitude of receptivity which invites love. He felt that she ought to
+be in love, and he wooed not only the girl but love itself. Therefore
+resentment came more readily than if he had actually loved. He had
+been saying to himself, while he was eating his luncheon which
+mortified pride had rendered tasteless, that if it had not been for
+the fact of his absurd alliance with Maria she was the last girl in
+the world to whom he would have voluntarily turned, now that he was
+fully grown, and capable of estimating his own character and hers. He
+said to himself that she was pretty, attractive, and of undeniable
+strength of character, and yet that very strength of character would
+have repelled him. He was not a man who needed a wife of great
+strength of character, of consistent will. He himself had sufficient.
+His chances of happiness would have been greater with a wife in whom
+the affections and emotions were predominant; there would have been
+less danger of friction. Then, too, his wife would necessarily have
+to live with his mother, and his mother was very like himself. He
+said to himself that there would certainly be friction, and yet he
+also said that he could not abandon his attitude of readiness to
+reciprocate should Maria wish for his allegiance.
+
+Now, for the first time, Wollaston had Evelyn in his mind. Of course
+he had noticed her beauty, and admired her. The contrary would not
+have been possible, but now he was conscious of a distinct sensation
+of soothed pride, when he remembered how she had smiled and dimpled
+at his invitation, and jumped up to get her hat.
+
+"That pretty little thing wanted to come, anyhow. It is a shame," he
+thought. Then insensibly he fell to wondering how he should feel if
+it were Evelyn to whom he were bound instead of her sister. It did
+not seem possible to him that the younger sister, with her ready
+gratitude and her evident ardor of temperament, could smile upon him
+at night and frown the next morning as Maria had done. He considered,
+also, how Evelyn would get on better with his mother. Then he
+resolutely put the thought out of his mind.
+
+"It is not Evelyn, but Maria," he said to himself, and shut his mouth
+hard. He resumed his attitude of obedience to duty, but one who is
+driven by duty alone almost involuntarily balks in spirit.
+
+Wollaston was conscious of balking, although he would not retreat.
+When he saw Maria again after the exercises of the day were closed,
+and he encountered her as she was leaving the academy, she looked
+distinctly homely to him, and yet such was the honor of the man that
+he did not in the least realize that the homeliness was an exterior
+thing. It seemed to him that he saw her encompassed with the
+stiffness of her New England antecedents, as with an armor, and that
+he got a new and unlovely view of her character. On the contrary,
+Evelyn's charming, half-smiling, half-piteous face turned towards him
+seemed to afford glimpses of sweetest affections and womanly
+gentleness and devotion. Evelyn wished to say that she was sorry that
+they were obliged to refuse his invitation, but she did not dare.
+Instead, she gave him that little, half-smiling, half-piteous glance,
+to which he responded with a lighting up of his whole face and lift
+of his hat. Then Evelyn smiled entirely, and her backward glance at
+him was wonderfully alluring, yet maidenly, almost childish.
+Wollaston, on his way home, thought again how different it would be
+if Evelyn, instead of Maria, were his wife. Then he put it out of his
+head resolutely.
+
+The next morning Maria arranged her hair as usual. She had
+comprehended that something more than mere externals were needful to
+change the mind of a man like Wollaston, and she gave up the attempt,
+it must be acknowledged, with a little pleasure. Feminine vanity was
+inherent in Maria. Nobody knew what the making herself hideous the
+day before had cost her.
+
+"Oh, I am so glad you have done up your hair the old way," Evelyn
+cried, when she saw her, and Aunt Maria remarked that she was glad to
+see that she had not quite lost her common-sense.
+
+Maria began herself to think that she had not evinced much sense in
+her procedure of the day before. She had underestimated the character
+of the man whom she had married, and had made herself ridiculous for
+nothing. The boy who was infatuated with her, when he saw her on the
+trolley that morning, made a movement to go forward and speak to her,
+then he sat still with frequent puzzled glances at her. He was
+repelled if Wollaston was not. This changing of the face of a woman
+in a day's time filled him with suspicion. He looked hard at Maria's
+soft puff of hair, and reflected that it might be a wig; that anyway
+he was not so much in love as he had thought, with a girl who could
+look as Maria had done the day before.
+
+When Maria reached the academy, the teachers greeted her with
+enthusiasm. One who was given to exuberance fairly embraced her.
+
+"Now you are my own beautiful Miss Edgham again," said she.
+
+Wollaston, during the opening exercises, only glanced once at her,
+then he saw no difference. But he did look at Evelyn, and when she
+turned her lovely face away before his gaze and a soft blush rose
+over her round cheeks he felt his pulses quicken. But he did not
+speak a word to Maria or Evelyn all day.
+
+When Evelyn went home that night she was very sober. She would not
+eat her supper, and Maria was sure that she heard her sobbing in the
+night. The next morning the child looked pale and wan, and Aunt Maria
+asked harshly if she were sick. Evelyn replied no quickly. When she
+and Maria were outside waiting for the trolley, Evelyn said, half
+catching her breath with a sob even then:
+
+"Mr. Lee didn't speak a word to me all day yesterday. I know he did
+not like it because we didn't go to lunch with him."
+
+"Nonsense, dear," said Maria. Then she added, with an odd, secretive
+meaning in her voice: "Don't worry, precious."
+
+"I can't help it," said Evelyn.
+
+When the term was about half finished it became evident to Maria that
+she and Evelyn must call upon Mrs. Lee, Wollaston's mother. She had
+put it off as long as she could, although all the other teachers had
+called, and Aunt Maria had kept urging her to do so.
+
+"She is going to think it is awful funny if you don't call," she
+said, "when you used to live in the same place, too."
+
+In reality, Aunt Maria, now that George Ramsey had married, was
+thinking that Wollaston might be a good match for Maria, and she
+wished to prevent her marriage with Professor Lane should he return
+from Colorado cured.
+
+At last Maria felt that she was fairly obliged to go, and one
+Saturday afternoon she and Evelyn went to Westbridge for the purpose.
+Wollaston and his mother lived in an exceedingly pretty house. Mrs.
+Lee had artistic taste, and the rooms were unusual though simple.
+Maria looking about, felt a sort of homesick longing. She realized
+how perfectly a home like this would have suited her. As for Evelyn,
+she looked about with quick, bright glances, and she treated Mrs. Lee
+as if she were in love with her. She was all the time wondering if
+Wollaston would possibly come in, and in lieu of him, she played off
+her innocent graces with no reserve upon his mother. Wollaston did
+not come in. He had gone to the city, but when he came home his
+mother told him of the call.
+
+"Those Edgham girls who used to live in Edgham, the one who teaches
+in your school, and her sister, called this afternoon," said she.
+
+"Did they?" responded Wollaston. He turned a page of the evening
+paper. It was after dinner, and the mother and son were sitting in a
+tiny room off the parlor, from which it was separated by some eastern
+portieres. There was a fire on the hearth. The two windows, which
+were close together, were filled up with red and white geraniums.
+There was a red rug, and the walls were lined with books. Outside it
+had begun to snow, and the flakes drifted past the windows filled
+with red and white blossoms like a silvery veil of the storm.
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Lee. Then she added, with a keen although covert
+glance at her son: "I like the younger sister."
+
+"She is considered quite a beauty, I believe," said Wollaston.
+
+"Quite a beauty; she is a perfect beauty," said his mother with
+emphasis. "It seemed to me I never had seen such a perfectly
+beautiful, sweet girl. I declare, I actually wanted to take her in my
+arms. Anybody could live with that girl. As for her sister, I don't
+like her at all."
+
+Mrs. Lee was very like her son. She had the same square jaw and
+handsome face, which had little of the truly feminine in it. Her
+clear blue eyes surveyed every new person with whom she came in
+contact in her new dwelling place, with impartial and pitiless
+scrutiny. When she liked people she said so. When she did not she
+also said so, and, as far as she could, let them alone. When she
+spoke now, she looked as if Maria's face was actually before her. She
+did not frown, but her expression was one of complete hostility and
+unsparing judgment.
+
+"Why don't you like her?" asked her son, with his eyes upon his paper.
+
+"Why don't I like her? She is New England to the backbone, and one
+who is New England to the backbone is insufferable. She is stiff and
+set in her ways. She would go to the stake for a fad, or send her
+nearest and dearest there."
+
+"She is a very good teacher, and the pupils like her," said
+Wollaston. He kept his voice quite steady.
+
+"She may be a very good teacher," said his mother. "I dare say she
+is. I can't imagine anybody not learning a task which she set them,
+but I don't like her."
+
+"She is pretty--at least, she is called so," said Wollaston. Then he
+added, with an impulse of loyalty: "I think myself that she is very
+pretty."
+
+"I don't call her at all pretty," said his mother. "She has a nose
+which looks as if it could pierce fate, and she sets her mouth as
+though she was deciding the laws of the universe. It is all very well
+in a man, that kind of a face, but I can't call it pretty in a woman."
+
+Wollaston glanced at his mother, and an expression of covert
+amusement was on his face as he reflected that his mother herself
+answered her own description of poor Maria, and did not dream of it.
+In fact, the two, although one was partly of New England heritage,
+and the other of a wholly different, more southern State, they were
+typically alike. They could meet only to love or quarrel; there could
+never be neutrality between them. Wollaston said no more, but
+continued reading his paper. He did not in reality sense one word
+which he read. He acknowledged to himself that he was very unhappy.
+He was caught in a labyrinth from which he saw no way of escape into
+the open. He realized that love for Maria had become almost
+impossible--that is, spontaneous love--even if she should change her
+attitude towards him. He realized a lurking sense of guilt as to his
+sentiments towards Evelyn, and he realized also that his mother and
+Maria could never live together in peace. Once Mrs. Lee took a
+dislike, her very soul fastened upon it as with a grip of iron jaws.
+Doubtless if she knew that her son was in honor bound to Maria she
+would try to make the best of it, but the best of it would be bad
+enough. He wondered while he sat with the paper before his face what
+Maria's real attitude towards him was. He could not understand such
+apparent inconsistencies in a woman of his mother's type, and he had
+been almost sure that one night that Maria loved him.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXV
+
+
+Maria, after that call, faced her future course more fully than ever.
+She had disliked Mrs. Lee as much as Mrs. Lee had disliked her. Only
+the fact that she was Wollaston's mother made her endurable to her.
+
+"Isn't Mrs. Lee perfectly lovely?" said Evelyn, when she and Maria
+were on their way home.
+
+"Yes," Maria answered, but she did not think so. Mrs. Lee shone for
+her only with reflected glory.
+
+"I wonder where Mr. Lee was?" Evelyn murmured, timidly.
+
+"I don't know," Maria said with an absent air. "We did not go to call
+on him."
+
+"Of course we didn't," said Evelyn. "Don't be cross, sister."
+
+"I am not in the least cross," Maria answered with perfect truth.
+
+"I didn't know but you were, you spoke so," said Evelyn. She leaned
+wearily against her sister, and looked ahead with a hollow, wistful
+expression.
+
+Evelyn had grown thin and lost much of her color. Aunt Maria and
+Eunice talked about it when they were alone.
+
+"I wonder if there is any consumption in her mother's family?" Aunt
+Maria said.
+
+"I wonder," said Eunice. "I don't like the way she looks."
+
+"Well, don't say anything about it to Maria, for she will worry
+herself sick," said Aunt Maria. "She sets her eyes by Evelyn."
+
+"Don't you think she notices?"
+
+"No, she hasn't said a word about it."
+
+But Aunt Maria was wrong. Maria had noticed. That afternoon,
+returning from Westbridge, she looked anxiously down at her sister.
+
+"Don't you feel well, dear?" she asked.
+
+"Perfectly well," Evelyn replied languidly, "only I am a little
+tired."
+
+"Perhaps it is the spring weather," said Maria.
+
+Evelyn nodded. It was the beginning of the spring term, and spring
+came like a flood that year. The trees fairly seemed to burst forth
+in green-and-rosy flames, and the shrubs in the door-yards bloomed so
+boldly that they shocked rather than pleased.
+
+"I like the spring to come slowly, so one does not feel choked with
+it," Evelyn said after a little, as she gazed out of the window.
+"There are actually daisies in that field. They have come too soon."
+Evelyn spoke with an absurd petulance which was unusual with her.
+
+Maria laughed. "Well, dear, we can't help it," she said.
+
+"If this world is for people, and not the people for this world, it
+seems to me we ought to be able to help a little," said Evelyn with
+perfectly unconscious heresy. "There it rained too much last week,
+and this week it is too hot, and the apple blossoms have come too
+soon after the cherry blossoms. It is like eating all your candy in
+one big pill."
+
+Maria laughed again, but Evelyn sighed wearily. The car was very hot
+and close.
+
+"I shall be thankful when we get home," Evelyn said.
+
+"Yes, you will feel better when you get home and have some supper,"
+said Maria.
+
+"I don't want any supper," said Evelyn.
+
+"If you don't eat any supper you cannot study this evening."
+
+"I must study," said Evelyn with a feverish light in her eyes.
+
+"You can't unless you eat."
+
+"Well, I will drink some milk," said Evelyn. She was studying very
+hard. She was very ambitious, both naturally and because of her
+feeling for Wollaston Lee. It seemed to her that she should die if
+she did not stand well in her class. Evelyn had received so little
+notice from Wollaston that she had made up her mind that he did not
+care for her, and the conviction was breaking her heart, but she said
+to herself that she would graduate with honors that she might have
+that much, that she must.
+
+The graduating with honors would have been easy to the girl, for she
+had naturally a quick grasp of knowledge, but her failing health and
+her almost unconquerable languor made it hard for her to work as
+usual. However, she persisted. It became evident that she would stand
+first among the girls of her class, and only second to one boy, who
+had a large brain and little emotion, and was so rendered almost
+impregnable. Ida sent Evelyn a graduating costume from Paris, and the
+girl brightened a little after she had tried it on. She could not
+quite give up all hope of being loved when she saw herself in that
+fluffy white robe, and looked over her slender shoulder at her
+graceful train, and reflected how she would not only look pretty but
+acquit herself with credit. She said to herself that if she were a
+man she should love herself. There was about Evelyn an almost comical
+naivete and truthfulness.
+
+Ida also sent Maria a gown for the graduating exercises. Hers was a
+pale blue, very pretty, but not as pretty as Evelyn's. The night
+after the gowns came Maria was startled by a sudden rush into her
+room when she was almost asleep, and Evelyn nestling into her arms
+and sobbing out that she was sorry, she was sorry, but she could not
+help it.
+
+"Can't help what, darling?" said Maria.
+
+"Can't help being glad that my dress is so much prettier than yours,"
+wept Evelyn. "I am sorry, sister, but I can't help it, and I am so
+ashamed I had to come in and tell you."
+
+Maria laughed and kissed her. "Sister is very glad yours is the
+prettiest," she said.
+
+"Oh, I am so sorry I am so selfish," sobbed Evelyn. Then she added,
+in a tiny whisper, "I know now he won't ever think of me, but I can't
+help being glad I shall look nice for him to see, anyway."
+
+Evelyn was asleep long before her sister. Maria lay awake, with the
+little, frail body in her arms, realizing with horror how very frail
+and thin it was. Evelyn was of the sort whom emotion can kill. She
+was being consumed like a lamp which needed oil. Love was for the
+girl not only a need but a condition of life. Maria was realizing it.
+At the same time she said to herself that possibly after school was
+over and Evelyn could rest she might regain her strength. There
+seemed to be no organic trouble. The local physician had been
+consulted, and said that nothing whatever was the matter, yet had
+gone away with a grave face after prescribing a simple tonic. The
+fact was that life was flickering low, as it sometimes does, with no
+ostensible reason which science could grasp. Evelyn was beyond
+science. She was assailed in that citadel of spirit which overlooks
+science from the heights of eternity. No physician but fate itself
+could help her.
+
+All this time, while Maria was suffering as keenly as her sister, her
+suffering left no evidence. She had inherited from her mother a
+tremendous strength of will, which sustained her. She said to herself
+that she had her work to do, that her health must not fail. She said
+that probably Wollaston did not care for her, although she could not
+help thinking that she had the power to make him care, and that she
+would be lacking in all that meant her true and best self should she
+give way to her unhappiness and let it master her. She therefore
+mastered it. In those days to Maria, who had a ready imagination, her
+unhappiness seemed sometimes to assume a material shape like the
+fabulous dragon. She seemed to be fighting something with tooth and
+claw, a monstrous verity; but she fought, and she kept the upper
+hand. Maria did not lose flesh. She ate as usual, she retained her
+interest in her work, and all the time whenever a moment of solitude
+came she renewed the conflict. She thought as little as possible of
+Wollaston; she avoided even looking at him. He thought that he really
+was an object of aversion to her. He began to question the
+advisability of his retaining his position another year. He told
+himself that it was hardly fair to Maria to subject her to such
+annoyance, that it was much easier for him to obtain another position
+than it was for her. He wanted to ask her with regard to it, but in
+the days before commencement she so manifestly shrank from even
+looking at him that he hardly liked to approach her even with a
+question which concerned her own happiness.
+
+Wollaston in those days used sometimes to glance at Evelyn, and
+notice how very thin and delicate she looked, and an anxiety which
+was almost paternal was over him. He used almost to wish that she was
+not so proficient in her studies. One day, meeting her in the
+vestibule when no one was in sight, he could not resist the impulse
+which led him to pat her little, dark, curly head and say, in a voice
+broken with tenderness:
+
+"Don't study too hard, little one."
+
+Evelyn gave an upward glance at him and ran away. Wollaston stood
+still a moment, dazed. He was not naturally a conceited man. Then,
+too, he had always regarded himself as so outside the pale that he
+doubted the evidence of his own senses. If he had not been tied to
+Evelyn's sister he would have said to himself, in a rapture, that
+that look of the young girl's meant, could mean, only one thing: that
+all her innocent heart was centred upon himself. It would have
+savored no more of conceit that the seeing his face in a mirror. He
+would simply have thought it the truth. But now, since he was always
+forgetting that other women did not know the one woman's secret, and
+looked upon him as an unmarried man, and therefore a fit target for
+their innocent wiles, the preening of their dainty dove plumage, he
+said to himself that he must have been mistaken. That Evelyn had
+looked at him as she had done only because she was nervous and
+overwrought, and the least thing was sufficient to disturb her
+equilibrium.
+
+However, he was very careful not to address Evelyn particularly
+again, but that one little episode had been sufficient for the girl
+to build another air castle upon. That night when she went home she
+was radiant with happiness. Her color had returned, smiles lit her
+whole face. Ineffable depths of delight sparkled in her eyes. It
+seemed almost a sacrilege to look at the young girl, whose heart was
+so plainly evident in her face. Maria looked at her, and felt a chill
+in her own heart.
+
+"Something must have happened," she said to herself. She thought that
+Evelyn would tell her, but she did not; she ate her supper with more
+appetite than she had shown for many a week. Her gayety in the
+evening, when some neighbors came in, was so unrestrained and
+childlike that it was fairly infectious. They sat out on the front
+door-step. It had been a warm day, and the evening cool was welcome
+and laughter floated out into the street. It was laughter over
+nothing, but irresistible, induced because of the girl's exuberant
+mood. She felt that night as if there was no meaning in the world
+except happiness and fun. George Ramsey, going home about nine
+o'clock, heard the laughter, and shrugged his shoulders rather
+bitterly. Lily had made him such a good wife, according to the tenets
+of wifehood, that he had apparently no reason to complain. She was
+always perfectly amiable and affectionate, not violently
+affectionate, but with the sort of affection which does not ruffle
+laces nor disarrange hair, and that he had always considered the most
+desirable sort of affection in the long-run. She and his mother got
+on very well also--that is, apparently. Lily, it was true, always had
+her way, but she had it so gently and unobtrusively that one really
+doubted if she were not herself the conceder. She always looked the
+same, she dressed daintily, and arranged her fair hair beautifully.
+George did not own to himself that sameness irritated him when it was
+such charming sameness. However, he did sometimes realize, and
+sternly put it away from him, a little sting when he happened to meet
+Maria. He had a feeling as if he had gone from a waxwork show and met
+a real woman.
+
+To-night when he heard the peals of laughter from the front door of
+the Stillman house he felt the sting again, and an unwarrantable
+childish indignation as if he had been left out of something and
+slighted. He was conscious of wishing when he reached home that his
+wife would greet him with a frown and reproaches; in fact, with
+something new, instead of her sweet, gentle smile of admiration,
+looking up from her everlasting embroidering, from where she sat
+beside the sitting-room lamp. George felt furious with her for
+admiring him. He sat down moodily and took up the evening paper. His
+mother was not there. She had gone to her room early with a headache.
+
+Finally, Lily remarked that it was a beautiful night, and it was as
+exactly what might have been expected from her flower-like lips as
+the squeaking call for mamma of a talking doll. George almost grunted
+a response, and rattled his paper loudly. Lily looked at him with a
+little surprise, but with unfailing love and admiration. George had
+sometimes a feeling that if he were to beat her she would continue to
+admire him and think it lovely of him. Lily had, in fact, the soul of
+an Oriental woman in the midst of New England. She would have figured
+admirably in a harem. George, being Occidental to his heart's core,
+felt an exasperation the worse because it was needfully dumb, on
+account of this adoration. He thought less of himself because his
+wife thought he could do no wrong. The power of doing wrong is, after
+all, a power, and George had a feeling of having lost that power and
+of being in a negative way wronged. Finally he spoke crossly to Lily
+over his newspaper.
+
+"Why do you stick so to that everlasting fancy-work?" said he. "Why
+on earth don't you sometimes run out of an evening? You never go into
+the next house nowadays."
+
+Lily arose directly.
+
+"We will go over there now if you wish," said she. She laid down her
+work and smoothed her hair with her doll-like gesture, which never
+varied.
+
+George looked at her surlily and irresolutely.
+
+"No, I guess we had better not to-night," he said.
+
+"I had just as lief, dear."
+
+George rose, letting his paper slide to the floor.
+
+"Well," he said, "they are all out on the front door-step, and I
+think some of the neighbors are there, too. We might run over a
+moment. It is too hot to stay in the house, anyway."
+
+But when George and Lily came alongside the Stillman house the
+laughter was hushed, and there was a light in Aunt Maria's bedroom,
+and lights also in the chambers behind the drawn curtains.
+
+"We are too late," said George. "They have gone to bed."
+
+"I think they have," replied Lily, looking up at the lighted bedroom
+windows. Then she added, "I will go over there any evening you wish,
+dear," and looked at him with that unfailing devotion which
+unreasonably angered him.
+
+He answered her quite roughly, and was ashamed of himself afterwards.
+
+"It is a frightfully monotonous life we lead anyhow," said he, as if
+she, Lily, were responsible for it.
+
+"Suppose we go away a week somewhere next month," said Lily.
+
+"Well, I'll think of it," said he, striding along by her side. Even
+that suggestion, which was entirely reasonable, angered him, and he
+felt furious and ashamed of himself for being so angered.
+
+Lily was constantly making him ashamed of himself for not being a god
+and for feeling unreasonable anger when she did nothing to provoke
+it. Once in a while a man likes to have a reasonable cause for
+resentment in order to prove himself in the right.
+
+"Well, I am ready to go whenever you wish to do so, dear," said Lily.
+"My wardrobe is in order."
+
+"Well, we'll see," George grunted again, as he and Lily retraced
+their steps.
+
+They sat down again in the sitting-room, and Lily took up her
+embroidery, and he read a murder case in his paper.
+
+Meanwhile, Maria, after putting out her lamp, was lying awake in bed
+thinking that Evelyn would come in and make some confidence to her,
+but she did not come. Maria felt horribly uneasy. She could not
+understand her sister's sudden change of mood, and yet she did not
+for a moment doubt Wollaston. She said to herself that as far as she
+was concerned she would brave the publicity if Wollaston loved
+Evelyn, but she recalled as exactly as if she had committed them to
+heart what Evelyn had said with regard to divorce and the horror
+which she had expressed of a divorced man or woman remarrying. Then
+she further considered how much worse it would be if the divorced man
+married her own sister. That course seemed to her impossible. She
+imagined the horrible details, the surmises, the newspaper articles,
+and she said to herself that even if she herself were willing to face
+the ordeal it would be still more of an ordeal for Wollaston and
+Evelyn. She said to herself that it was impossible; then she also
+said to herself, with no bitterness, but with an acquiescence in the
+logic of it, that it would be much better for them all if she, Maria,
+should die.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXVI
+
+
+Evelyn's return of appetite and spirits endured only a few days. Then
+she seemed worse than she had been before. In fact, Wollaston,
+thinking that he had done wrong in yielding for only a second to his
+impulse of tender protection and admiration for the young girl, went
+too far in the opposite direction. In order to make amends to Maria,
+himself, and Evelyn, he was actually rude, almost brutal. He scarcely
+spoke to Evelyn. On one occasion he even reprimanded her severely in
+a class for a slight mistake. Evelyn turned pale, and gave him a
+glance like that of some pretty, little, harmless animal which has
+nothing except love and devotion in its heart, and whose very
+mistakes are those of love and over-anxiety to please. Wollaston was
+struck to the heart by the look, but he did not relax one muscle of
+his stern face.
+
+"I think Mr. Lee treated you mean, so there," Addie Hemingway said to
+Evelyn when they had left the room.
+
+Evelyn said nothing. Her face continued pale and shocked. It was
+inconceivable to her that anybody, least of all Mr. Lee, could have
+spoken so to her.
+
+"He's treating you like a child," Addie Hemingway continued. "Mr. Lee
+has no right to speak so to seniors." Addie's words were in
+themselves sympathetic, but there was an undertone of delight at the
+other girl's discomfiture in her voice which she could not eliminate.
+In reality she was saying to herself that Evelyn Edgham, in spite of
+her being so pretty, had had to meet a rebuff, and she exulted in it.
+
+Evelyn still said nothing. She left Addie abruptly and joined Maria
+in her class-room. It was the noon-hour. Maria glanced anxiously at
+her sister as she entered.
+
+"Why, darling, what is the matter?" she cried.
+
+"Nothing," replied Evelyn. An impulse of loyalty seized her. She
+would not repeat, not even to Maria, the unkind words which Mr. Lee
+had used towards her.
+
+"But you look so pale, dear," said Maria.
+
+"It was warm in there," said Evelyn, with a quiet, dejected air
+unusual to her.
+
+Maria could not get any admission that anything was wrong from her.
+Evelyn tried to eat her luncheon, making more of an effort than
+usual, but she could not. At last she laid her head down on her
+sister's table and wept with the utter abandon of a child, but she
+still would not tell what caused her tears.
+
+After that Evelyn lost flesh so rapidly that it became alarming.
+Maria and her aunt wondered if they ought to allow her to go through
+the strain of the graduation exercises, but neither dared say
+anything about it to her. Evelyn's whole mind seemed fastened upon
+her graduation and the acquitting of herself with credit. She studied
+assiduously. She often used to go into the spare chamber and gaze at
+her graduating dress, which was spread out on the bed there covered
+with a sheet.
+
+"She's so set on that graduation and wearing that dress," Aunt Maria
+said to Eunice Stillman, her sister-in-law, one day when she was
+alone with her in her parlor and heard Evelyn's light step overhead.
+"She goes in there almost every day and looks at it."
+
+Eunice sighed. "Well, I wish she looked better," said she.
+
+"So do I. It seems to me that she loses every day."
+
+"Did you ever think--" began Eunice. Then she stopped and hesitated.
+
+"Think what?"
+
+"If--anything happened to her, that that dress--"
+
+"Oh, for the land sake, stop, Eunice!" cried Aunt Maria, impatiently.
+"Ain't I had it on my mind the whole time. And that dress looks just
+as if it was laid out there."
+
+"Do you think Maria notices?"
+
+"Yes, she's just as worried as I am. But what can we do? Maybe if
+Evelyn gets through the graduation she will be better. I shall be
+thankful when it's over, for my part."
+
+"How that child's mother could have gone off and left her all this
+time I don't see," Eunice said. "If I were in her place and anything
+happened to her, I should never forgive myself."
+
+"Trust Ida Slome to forgive herself for most anything," Aunt Maria
+returned, bitterly. "But as far as that goes, I guess the child has
+had full as good care here as she would have had with her ma."
+
+"I guess so, too," said Eunice; "better--only I should never forgive
+myself."
+
+That was only a week before the graduation day, which was on a
+Wednesday. It was a clear June day, with a sky of blue, veiled here
+and there with wing-shaped clouds. It was quite warm. Evelyn dressed
+herself very early. She was ready long before it was time to take the
+car. Evelyn, in her white graduating dress, was fairly angelic.
+Although she had lost so much flesh, it had not affected her beauty,
+only made it more touching. Her articulations and bones were so
+fairy-like and delicate that even with her transparent sleeved and
+necked dress there were no unseemly protuberances. Her slenderness,
+moreover, was not so apparent in her fluffy gown. Above her necklace
+of pink corals her lovely face showed. It was full of a gentle and
+uncomplaining melancholy, yet that day there was a tinge of hope in
+it. The faintest and most appealing smile curved her lips. She looked
+at everybody with a sort of wistful challenge. It was as if she said:
+"After all, am I not pretty, and worthy of being loved? Am I not
+worthy of being loved, even if I am not, and I have all my books in
+my head, too?"
+
+Maria had given her a bouquet of red roses. When Evelyn in her turn
+came forward to read her essay, holding her red roses, with red roses
+of excitement burning on her delicate cheeks, there was a low murmur
+of admiration. Then it was that Maria, in her blue gown, seated among
+the other teachers, caught the look on Wollaston Lee's face. It was
+unmistakable. It was a look of the utmost love and longing and
+admiration, the soul of the man, for the minute, was plainly to be
+read. In a second, the look was gone, but Maria had seen. "He is in
+love with her," she told herself, "only he is so honorable that he
+chokes the love back." Maria turned very pale, but she listened with
+smiling lips to Evelyn's essay. It was very good, but not much beyond
+the usual rate of such productions. Evelyn had nothing creative about
+her, although she was even a brilliant scholar. But the charm of that
+little flutelike voice, coming from that slight, white-clad beauty,
+made even platitudes seem like something higher than wisdom.
+
+When Evelyn had finished there was a great round of applause and a
+shower of flowers. She returned again and again, and bowed, smiling
+delightedly. She was flushed with her triumph. She thought that even
+Mr. Lee must be pleased with her, if he did not love her, and be
+proud to have such a pupil.
+
+That evening there was to be a reception for the teachers, and the
+graduating-class, at Mr. Lee's house. Evelyn and Maria had planned to
+go to one of the other teacher's, who lived in Westbridge, have
+supper, and go from there to the reception. But when the exercises
+were over, and they had reached the teacher's home, Evelyn's strength
+gave way. She had a slight fainting fit. The teacher, an elderly
+woman who lived alone, gave her home-made wine and made her take off
+her dress, put on one of her own wrappers, and lie down and rest
+until the last minute, in the hope that she would be able to go to
+the reception. But it became evident that the girl was too exhausted.
+When Maria and the teacher were fastening her dress again, she
+fainted the second time. The teacher, who was a decisive woman, spoke.
+
+"There is no sense whatever in this child's leaving this house
+to-night," said she. "Maria, you go to the reception, and I will stay
+and take care of her."
+
+"No," said Maria. "If Evelyn is not able to go, I think we had better
+take the trolley at once for home." Maria was as decided as the other
+teacher. When the white-clad graduates and the teachers were
+gathering at Wollaston Lee's, she and Evelyn boarded the trolley for
+Amity. Evelyn still held fast to her bouquet of red roses, and Maria
+was laden with baskets and bouquets which had been strewn at her
+shrine. Evelyn leaned back in her seat, with her head resting against
+the window, and did not speak. All her animation of the morning had
+vanished. She looked ghastly. Maria kept glancing furtively at her.
+She herself looked nearly as pale as Evelyn. She realized that she
+was face to face with a great wall of problem. She was as unhappy as
+Evelyn, but she was stronger to bear unhappiness. She had philosophy,
+and logic, and her young sister was a creature of pure emotion, and
+at the same time she was so innocent and ignorant that she was
+completely helpless before it. Evelyn closed her eyes as she leaned
+against the window-frame, and a chill crept over her sister as she
+thought that she could not look much different if she were dead. Then
+came to Maria the conviction that this sister's life meant more than
+anything else in the world to her. That she could bear the loss of
+everything rather than that, and when she too would not be able to
+avoid the sense of responsibility for it. If she had not been so
+headlong and absurdly impetuous years ago, Evelyn might easily have
+been happy and lived.
+
+When they reached home, Aunt Maria, who had come on an earlier car,
+was already in her bedroom and the front-door was fastened and the
+sitting-room windows were dark. Maria knocked on the door, and
+presently she heard footsteps, then Aunt Maria's voice, asking, with
+an assumption of masculine harshness, who were there.
+
+"It is only I and Evelyn," replied Maria.
+
+Then the door was opened, and Aunt Maria, in her ruffled night-gown
+and cap, holding a streaming lamp, stood back hastily lest somebody
+see her. "Come in and shut the door quick, for goodness sake!" said
+she. "I am all undressed."
+
+Maria and Evelyn went in, and Maria closed and locked the door.
+
+"What have you come home for?" asked Aunt Maria. "Why didn't you go
+to the reception, and stay at Miss Thomas's, the way you said you
+were going to, I'd like to know?"
+
+"Evelyn didn't feel very well, and I thought we'd better come home,"
+replied Maria, with a little note of evasion in her voice.
+
+Aunt Maria turned and looked sharply at Evelyn, who was leaning
+against the wall. She was faint again, and she looked, in her white
+dress with her slender curves, like a bas-relief. "What on earth is
+the matter with her?" asked Aunt Maria in her angry voice, which was
+still full of the most loving concern. She caught hold of Evelyn's
+slight arm. "You are all tired out, just as I expected," she said. "I
+call the whole thing pure tomfoolery. If girls want to get educated,
+let them, but when it comes to making such a parade when they are all
+worn out with education there is no sense in it. Maria, you get her
+up-stairs to bed."
+
+Evelyn was too exhausted to make any resistance. She allowed Maria to
+assist her up-stairs and undress her. When her sister bent over her
+to kiss her good-night, she said, soothingly, "There now, darling; go
+to sleep. You will feel better now school is done and you will have a
+chance to rest."
+
+But Evelyn responded with the weakest and most hopeless little sob.
+
+"Don't cry, precious," said Maria.
+
+"Won't you tell if I tell you something?" said Evelyn, raising
+herself on one slender arm.
+
+"No, dear."
+
+"Well--he does--care a good deal about me. I know now. I--I met him
+out in the grove after the exercises were over, and--there was nobody
+there, and he--he caught hold of my arms, and, Maria, he looked at
+me, but--" Evelyn burst into a weak little wail.
+
+"What is it, dear?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know what it is, but for some reason he thinks he can't
+tell me. He did not say so, but he made me know, and--and oh, Maria,
+he is going away! He is not coming back to Westbridge at all. He is
+going to get another place!"
+
+"Nonsense!"
+
+"Yes, it is so. He said so. Oh, Maria! you will think I am dreadful,
+and I do love you and Aunt Maria and Uncle Henry and Aunt Eunice, but
+I can't help minding his going away where I can never see him, more
+than anything else in the world. I can't help loving him most. I do
+feel so very badly, sister, that I think I shall die."
+
+"Nonsense, darling."
+
+"Yes, I shall. And I am not ashamed now. I was ashamed because I
+thought so much about a man who did not care anything about me, but
+now I am not ashamed. I am just killed. A person is not to blame for
+being killed. I am not ashamed. I am killed. He is going away, and I
+shall never see him again. The sight of him was something; I shall
+not even have that. You don't know, sister. I don't love him for my
+own self, but for himself. Just the knowing he is near is something,
+and I shall not even have that." Evelyn was too weak to cry
+tumultuously, but she made little, futile moans, and clung to Maria's
+hand. Maria tried to soothe her, and finally the child, worn out,
+seemed to be either asleep or in the coma of exhaustion.
+
+Then Maria went into her own room. She undressed, and sat down beside
+the window with a wrapper over her night-gown. Now she had to solve
+her problem. She began as she might have done with a problem in
+higher algebra, this problem of the human heart and its emotions. She
+said to herself that there were three people. Evelyn, Wollaston and
+herself, three known quantities, and an unknown quantity of
+happiness, and perhaps life itself, which must be evolved from them.
+She eliminated herself and her own happiness not with any particular
+realization of self-sacrifice. She came of a race of women to whom
+self-sacrifice was more natural than self-gratification. She was
+unhappy, but there was no struggle for happiness to render the
+unhappiness keener. She thought first of Evelyn. She loved Wollaston.
+Maria reasoned, of course, that she was very young. This first love
+might not be her only one, but the girl's health might break under
+the strain, and she took into consideration, as she had often done,
+the fairly abnormal strength of Evelyn's emotional nature in a slight
+and frail young body. Evelyn was easily one who might die because of
+a thwarted love. Then Maria thought of Wollaston, and, loving him as
+she did, she acknowledged to herself coolly that he was the first to
+be considered, his happiness and well being. Even if Evelyn did break
+her heart, the man must have the first consideration. She tried to
+judge fairly as to whether she or Evelyn would on the whole be the
+best for him. She estimated herself, and she estimated Evelyn, and
+she estimated the man. Wollaston Lee was a man of a strong nature,
+she told herself. He was capable of self-restraint, of holding his
+head up from his own weaknesses forever. Maria reasoned that if he
+had been a weaker man she would have loved him just the same, and in
+that case Evelyn would have been the one to be sacrificed. She
+thought that a girl like Evelyn would not have been such a good wife
+for a weak man as she herself, who was stronger. But Wollaston did
+not need any extraneous strength. On the contrary, some one who was
+weaker than he might easily strengthen his strength. It seemed to her
+that Evelyn was distinctly better for the man than she. Then she
+remembered the look which she had seen on his face when Evelyn began
+her essay that day.
+
+"If he does not love her now it is because he is bound to me," she
+thought. "He would most certainly love her if it were not for me."
+
+Again it seemed to Maria distinctly better that she should die,
+better--that is, for Evelyn and the man. But she had the thought,
+with no morbid desire for suicide or any bitterness. It simply seemed
+to her as if her elimination would produce that desirable unknown
+quantity of happiness.
+
+Elimination and not suicide seemed to her the only course for her to
+pursue. She sat far into the night thinking it over. She had great
+imagination and great daring. Things were possible to her which would
+not have been possible to many--that is, she considered things as
+possibilities which would have seemed to many simply vagaries. She
+thought of them seriously, with a belief in their fulfilment. It was
+almost morning, the birds had just begun to sing in scattering
+flute-like notes, when she crept into bed.
+
+She hardly slept at all. She heard the gathering chorus of the birds,
+in a half doze, until seven o'clock. Then she got up and dressed
+herself. She peeped cautiously into Evelyn's room. The girl was
+sleeping, her long, dark lashes curled upon her wan cheeks. She
+looked ghastly, yet still lovely. Maria looked at her, and her mouth
+compressed. Then she turned away. She crept noiselessly down the
+stairs and into the kitchen where Aunt Maria was preparing breakfast.
+The stove smoked a little and the air was blue.
+
+"How is she?" asked Aunt Maria, in a hushed voice.
+
+"She is fast asleep."
+
+"Better let her sleep just as long as she will," said Aunt Maria.
+"These exhibitions are pure tomfoolery. She is just tuckered out."
+
+"Yes, I think she is," said Maria.
+
+Aunt Maria looked keenly at her, and her face paled and lengthened.
+
+"Maria Edgham, what on earth is the matter with _you?_" she said.
+"You look as bad as she does. Between both of you I am at my wit's
+end."
+
+"Nothing ails me," said Maria.
+
+"Nothing ails you? Look at yourself in the glass there."
+
+Maria stole a look at herself in a glass which hung over the
+kitchen-table, and she hardly knew her own face, it had gathered such
+a strange fixedness of secret purpose. That had altered it more than
+her pallor. Maria tried to smile and say again that nothing ailed
+her, but she could not. Suddenly a tremendous pity for her aunt came
+over her. She had not thought so much about that. But now she looked
+at things from her aunt's point of view, and she saw the pain to
+which the poor old woman must be put. She saw no way of avoiding the
+giving her the pain, but she suffered it herself. She went up to Aunt
+Maria and kissed her.
+
+Aunt Maria started back, and rubbed her face violently. "What did you
+do that for?" said she, in a frightened voice. Then she noticed
+Maria's dress, which was one which she seldom wore unless she was
+going out. "What have you got on your brown suit for this morning?"
+said she.
+
+"I thought I would go down to the store after breakfast and get some
+embroidery silk for that centre-piece," replied Maria.
+
+As she spoke she seemed to realize what a little thing a lie was, and
+how odd it was that she should realize it, who had been brought up to
+speak the truth.
+
+"Your gingham would have been enough sight better to have worn this
+hot morning," said Aunt Maria, still with that air of terror and
+suspicion.
+
+"Oh, this dress is light," replied Maria, going out.
+
+"Where are you going now?"
+
+"Into the parlor."
+
+Aunt Maria stood still, listening, until she heard the parlor door
+open. She was still filled with vague suspicion. She did not hear
+quite as acutely as formerly, and Maria had no difficulty about
+leaving the parlor unheard the second after she entered it, and
+getting her hat and coat and a small satchel which she had brought
+down-stairs with her from the hat-tree in the entry. Then she opened
+the front door noiselessly and stole out. She went rapidly down the
+street in the direction of the bridge, which she had been accustomed
+to cross when she taught school in Amity. She met Jessy Ramsey, now
+grown to be as tall as herself, and pretty with a half-starved,
+pathetic prettiness. Jessy was on her way to work. She went out by
+the day, doing washings. She stopped when she met Maria, and gave a
+little, shy look--her old little-girl look--at her. Maria also
+stopped. "Good-morning, Jessy," said she. Then she asked how she was,
+if her cough was better, and where she was going to work. Then,
+suddenly, to Jessy's utter amazement and rapture, she kissed her. "I
+never forget what a good little girl you were," said she, and was
+gone. Jessy stood for a moment staring after her. Then she wiped her
+eyes and proceed to her scene of labor.
+
+Maria went to the railroad station. She was just in time for a train.
+She got on the rear car and sat in the last seat. She looked about
+and did not see anybody whom she knew. She recalled how she had run
+away before, and how Wollaston had brought her back. She knew that it
+would not happen so again. She was on a through train which did not
+stop at the station where he had found her. When the train slowed up
+a little in passing that station, she saw the bench on the platform
+where she had sat, and a curious sensation came over her. She was
+like one who has made the leap and realizes that there is nothing
+more to dread, and who gets even a certain abnormal pleasure from the
+sensation. When the conductor came through the car she purchased her
+ticket for New York, and asked when the train was due in the city.
+When she learned that it was due at an hour so late that it would be
+impossible for her to go, as she had planned, to Edgham that night,
+she did not, even then, for the time being, feel in the least
+dismayed. She had plenty of money. Her last quarter's salary was in
+her little satchel. The train was made up of Pullmans only, and it
+was by a good chance that she had secured a seat. She gazed out of
+the large window at the flying landscape, and again that sense of
+pleasure in the midst of pain was over her. The motion itself was
+exhilarating. She seemed to be speeding past herself and her own
+anxieties, which suddenly appeared as petty and evanescent as the
+flying telegraph-poles along the track. "It has to be over some
+time," she reflected. "Nothing matters." She felt comforted by a
+realization of immensity and the continuance of motion. She
+comprehended her own atomic nature in the great scheme of things. She
+had never done so before. Her own interests had always loomed up
+before her like a beam in the eye of God. Now she saw that they were
+infinitesimal, and the knowledge soothed her. She leaned her head
+back and dozed a little. She was awakened by the porter thrusting a
+menu into her hands. She ordered something. It was not served
+promptly, and she had no appetite. There was some tea which tasted of
+soap.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXVII
+
+
+There were very few people in this car, for the reason that there had
+recently been a terrible rear-end collision on the road, and people
+had flocked into the forward cars. There were three young girls who
+filled the car with chatter, and irritated Maria unreasonably. They
+were very pretty and well dressed, and with no reserve. They were as
+inconsequently confidential about their own affairs as so many
+sparrows, but more intelligible. One by one the men left and went
+into the smoker, before this onslaught of harsh trebles shrieking
+above the roar of the train, obtruding their little, bird-like
+affairs, their miniature hoppings upon the stage of life, upon all in
+the car.
+
+Finally, there were none left in the car except Maria, these young
+girls, an old lady, who accosted the conductors whenever they entered
+and asked when the train was due in New York (a tremulous, vibratory
+old lady in antiquated frills and an agitatedly sidewise bonnet, and
+loose black silk gloves), and across the aisle a tiny, deformed
+woman, a dwarf, in fact, with her maid. This little woman was richly
+dressed, and she had a fine face. She was old enough to be Maria's
+mother. Her eyes were dark and keen, her forehead domelike, and her
+square, resigned chin was sunken in the laces at her throat. Her maid
+was older than she, and waited upon her with a faithful solicitude.
+The little woman had some tea, which the maid produced from a small
+silver caddy in a travelling-bag, and the porter, with an obsequious
+air, brought boiling water in two squat, plated tea-pots. It was the
+tea which served to introduce Maria. She had just pushed aside, with
+an air half of indifference, half of disgust, her own luke-warm
+concoction flavored with soap, when the maid, at her mistress's
+order, touched the bell. When the porter appeared, Maria heard the
+dwarf ask for another pot of boiling water, and presently the maid
+stood beside her with a cup of fragrant tea.
+
+"Miss Blair wishes me to ask if you will not drink this instead of
+the other, which she fears is not quite satisfactory," the maid said,
+in an odd, acquired tone and manner of ladyism, as if she were
+repeating a lesson, yet there seemed nothing artificial about it. She
+regarded Maria with a respectful air. Maria looked across at the
+dwarf woman, who was looking at her with kindly eyes which yet seemed
+aloof, and a half-sardonic, half-pleasant smile.
+
+Maria thanked her and took the tea, which was excellent, and
+refreshed her. The maid returned to her seat, facing her mistress.
+They had finished their luncheon. She leaned back in her chair with a
+blank expression of face. The dwarf looked out of the window, and
+that same half-pleasant, half-sardonic smile remained upon her face.
+It was as if she regarded all nature with amused acquiescence and
+sarcasm, at its inability to harm her, although it had made the
+endeavor.
+
+Maria glanced at her very rich black attire, and a great pearl cross
+which gleamed at her throat, and she wondered a little about her.
+Then she turned again to the flying landscape, and again that sense
+of unnatural peace came over her. She did not think of Evelyn and
+Wollaston, or her aunts and uncle, whom she was leaving, except with
+the merest glance of thought. It was as if she were already in
+another world.
+
+The train sped on, and the girls continued their chatter, and their
+high-shrieking trebles arose triumphant above all the clatter. It was
+American girlhood rampant on the shield of their native land. Still
+there was something about the foolish young faces and the inane
+chatter and laughter which was sweet and even appealing. They became
+attractive from their audaciousness and their ignorance that they
+were troublesome. Their confidence in the admiration of all who saw
+and heard almost compelled it. Their postures, their crossing their
+feet with lavish displays of lingerie and dainty feet and hose, was
+possibly the very boldness of innocence, although Maria now and then
+glanced at them and thought of Evelyn, and was thankful that she was
+not like them.
+
+The little dwarf also glanced now and then at them with her pleasant
+and sardonic smile and with an unruffled patience. She seemed either
+to look up from the depths of, or down from the heights of, her
+deformity upon them, and to hardly sense them at all. None of the men
+returned until a large city was reached, where some of them were to
+get off. Then they lounged into the car, were brushed, took their
+satchels, and when the train reached the station swung out, with the
+unfailing trebles still in their ears.
+
+Before the train reached New York, all the many appurtenances had
+vanished from the car. The chattering girls also had alighted at a
+station, with a renewed din like a flock of birds, and there were
+then left in the rear car only Maria, the dwarf woman, and her maid.
+
+It was not until the train was lighted, and she could no longer see
+anything from the window except signal-lights and lighted windows of
+towns through which they whirled, that Maria's unnatural mood
+disappeared. Suddenly she glanced around the lighted car, and terror
+seized her. She was no longer a very young girl; she had much
+strength of character, but she was unused to the world. For the first
+time she seemed to feel the cold waters of it touch her very heart.
+She thought of the great and terrible city into which she was to
+launch herself late at night. She considered that she knew absolutely
+nothing about the hotels. She even remembered, vaguely, having heard
+that no unattended woman was admitted to one, and then she had no
+baggage except her little satchel. She glanced at herself in the
+little glass beside her seat, and her pretty face all at once
+occurred to her as being a great danger rather than an advantage. Now
+she wished for her aunt Maria's face instead of her own. She imagined
+that Aunt Maria might have no difficulty even under the same adverse
+circumstances. She looked years younger than she was. She thought for
+a moment of going into the lavatory and rearranging her hair, with a
+view to making herself look plain and old, as she had done before,
+but she recalled the enormous change it had made in her appearance,
+and she was afraid to do that lest it should seem a suspicious
+circumstance to the conductors and her fellow-passengers. She glanced
+across the aisle at the dwarf woman, and their eyes met, and suddenly
+a curious sort of feeling of kinship came over the girl. Here was
+another woman outside the pale of ordinary life by physical
+conditions, as she herself was by spiritual ones. The dwarf's eyes
+looked fairly angelic and heavenly to her. She saw her speak in a
+whisper to her maid, and the woman immediately arose and came to her.
+
+"Miss Blair wishes me to ask if you will be so kind as to go and
+speak to her; she has something which she wishes to say to you," she
+said, in the same parrot-like fashion.
+
+Maria arose at once, and crossed the aisle and seated herself in the
+chair which the maid vacated. The maid took Maria's at a nod from her
+mistress.
+
+The little woman looked at Maria for a moment with her keen, kind
+eyes and her peculiar smile deepened. Then she spoke. "What is the
+matter?" she asked.
+
+Maria hesitated.
+
+The dwarf looked across at her maid. "She will not understand
+anything you say," she remarked. "She is well trained. She can hear
+without hearing--that is her great accomplishment."
+
+Still Maria said nothing.
+
+"You got on at Amity," said the dwarf. "Is that where you live?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What is your name?"
+
+Maria closed her mouth firmly.
+
+The dwarf laughed. "Oh, very well," said she. "If you do not choose
+to tell it, I can. Your name is Ackley--Elizabeth Ackley. I am glad
+to meet you, Miss Ackley."
+
+Maria paled a little, but she said nothing to disapprove this
+extraordinary statement.
+
+"My name is Blair--Miss Rosa Blair," said the dwarf. "I am a rose,
+but I happened to bloom outside the pale." She laughed gayly, but
+Maria's eyes upon her were pitiful. "You are also outside the pale in
+some way," said Miss Blair. "I always know such people when I meet
+them. There is an affinity between them and myself. The moment I saw
+you I said to myself: she also is outside the pale, she also has
+escaped from the garden of life. Well, never mind, child; it is not
+so very bad outside when one becomes accustomed to it. I am. Perhaps
+you have not had time; but you will have. What is the matter?"
+
+"I am running away," replied Maria then.
+
+"Running away! From what?"
+
+"It is better for me to be away," said Maria, evading the question.
+"It would be better if I were dead."
+
+"But you are not," said the dwarf, with a quick movement almost of
+alarm.
+
+"No," said Maria; "and I see no reason why I shall not live to be an
+old woman."
+
+"I don't either," said Miss Blair. "You look healthy. You say, better
+if you were dead--better for whom, yourself or others?"
+
+"Others."
+
+"Oh!" said Miss Blair. She remained quietly regardful of Maria for a
+little while, then she spoke again. "Where are you going when you
+reach New York?" she asked.
+
+"I was going out to Edgham, but I shall miss the last train, and I
+shall have to go to a hotel," replied Maria, and she looked at the
+dwarf with an expression of almost childish terror.
+
+"Don't you know that it may be difficult for a young girl alone? Have
+you any baggage?"
+
+Maria looked at her little satchel, which she had left beside her
+former chair.
+
+"Is that all?" asked Miss Blair.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You must certainly not think of trying to go to a hotel at this time
+of night," said the dwarf. "You must go home with me. I am entirely
+safe. Even your mother would trust you with me, if you have one."
+
+"I have not, nor father, either," replied Maria. "But I am not afraid
+to trust you for myself."
+
+A pleased expression transfigured Miss Blair's face. "You do not
+distrust me and you do not shrink from me?" she said.
+
+"No," replied Maria, looking at her with indescribable gratitude.
+
+"Then it is settled," said the dwarf. "You will come home with me. I
+expect my carriage when we arrive at the station. You will be
+entirely safe. You need not look as frightened as you did a few
+moments ago again. Come home with me to-night; then we will see what
+can be done."
+
+Miss Blair turned her face towards the window. Her big chair almost
+swallowed her tiny figure, the sardonic expression had entirely left
+her face, which appeared at once noble and loving. Maria gazed at her
+as she sat so, with an odd, inverted admiration. It seemed
+extraordinary to her she should actually admire any one like this
+deformed little creature, but admire her she did. It was as if she
+suddenly had become possessed of a sixth sense for an enormity of
+beauty beyond the usual standards.
+
+Miss Blair glanced at her and saw the look in her eyes, and a look of
+triumph came into her own. She bent forward towards Maria.
+
+"You are sheltering me as well as I am sheltering you," she said, in
+a low voice.
+
+Maria did not know what to say. Miss Blair leaned back again and
+closed her eyes, and a look of perfect peace and content was on her
+face.
+
+It was not long before the train rolled into the New York tunnel.
+Miss Blair's maid rose and took down her mistress's travelling cloak
+of black silk, which she brushed with a little, ivory brush taken
+from her travelling-bag.
+
+"This young lady is going home with us, Adelaide," said Miss Blair.
+
+"Yes, ma'am," replied the maid, without the slightest surprise.
+
+She took Maria's coat from the hook where it swung, and brushed it
+also, and assisted her to put it on before the porter entered the car.
+
+Maria felt again in a daze, but a great sense of security was over
+her. She had not the slightest doubt of this strange little creature
+who was befriending her. She felt like one who finds a ledge of
+safety on a precipice where he had feared a sheer descent. She was
+content to rest awhile on the safe footing, even if it were only
+transient.
+
+When they alighted from the train at the station a man in livery met
+them and assisted Miss Blair down the steps with obsequiousness.
+
+"How do you do, James?" said Miss Blair, then went on to ask the man
+what horses were in the carriage.
+
+"The bays, Miss Blair," replied the man, respectfully.
+
+"I am glad of that," said his mistress, as she went along the
+platform. "I was afraid Alexander might make a mistake and put in
+those new grays. I don't like to drive with them at night very well."
+Then she said to Maria: "I am very nervous about horses, Miss Ackley.
+You may wonder at it. You may think I have reached the worst and
+ought to fear nothing, but there are worsts beyond worsts."
+
+"Yes," Maria replied, vaguely. She kept close to Miss Blair. She
+realized what an agony of fear she should have felt in that murky
+station with the lights burning dimly through the smoke and the
+strange sights and outcries all around her.
+
+Miss Blair's carriage was waiting, and Maria saw,
+half-comprehendingly, that it was very luxurious indeed. She entered
+with Miss Blair and her maid, then after a little wait for baggage
+they drove away.
+
+When the carriage stopped, the footman assisted Maria out after Miss
+Blair, and she followed her conductress's tiny figure toiling rather
+painfully on the arm of her maid up the steps. She entered the house,
+and stood for a second fairly bewildered.
+
+Maria had seen many interiors of moderate luxury, but never anything
+like this. For a second her attention was distracted from everything
+except the wonderful bizarre splendor in which she found herself. It
+was not Western magnificence, but Oriental; hangings of the richest
+Eastern stuffs, rugs, and dark gleams of bronzes and dull lights of
+brass, and the sheen of silken embroideries.
+
+When Maria at last recovered herself and turned to Miss Blair, to her
+astonishment she no longer seemed as deformed as she had been on the
+train. She fitted into this dark, rich, Eastern splendor as a
+misformed bronze idol might have done. Miss Blair gave a little,
+shrewd laugh at Maria's gaze, then she spoke to another maid who had
+appeared when the door opened.
+
+"This is my friend Miss Ackley, Louise," she said. "Take her to the
+west room, and call down and have a supper tray sent to her." Then
+she said to Maria that she must be tired, and would prefer going at
+once to her room. "I am tired myself," said Miss Blair. "Such persons
+as I do not move about the face of the earth with impunity. There is
+a wear and tear of the soul and the body when the body is so small
+that it scarcely holds the soul. You will have your supper sent up,
+and your breakfast in the morning. At ten o'clock I will send
+Adelaide to bring you to my room." She bade Maria good-night, and the
+girl followed the maid, stepping into an elevator on one side of the
+vestibule. She had a vision of Miss Blair's tiny figure with Adelaide
+moving slowly upward on the other side.
+
+Maria reflected that she was glad that she had her toilet articles
+and her night-dress at least in her satchel. She felt the maid
+looking at her, although her manner was very much like Adelaide's.
+She wondered what she would have thought if she had not at least had
+her simple necessaries for the night when she followed her into a
+room which seemed to her fairly wonderful. It was a white room. The
+walls were hung with paper covered with sheafs of white lilies; white
+fur rugs--wolf-skins and skins of polar bears--were strewn over the
+polished white floor. All the toilet articles were ivory and the
+furniture white, with decorations of white lilies and silver. In one
+corner stood a bed of silver with white draperies. Beyond, Maria had
+a glimpse of a bath in white and silver, and a tiny dressing-room
+which looked like frost-work. When the maid left her for a moment
+Maria stood and gazed breathless. She realized a sort of delight in
+externals which she had never had before. The externals seemed to be
+farther-reaching. There was something about this white, virgin room
+which made it seem to her after her terror on the train like heaven.
+A sense of absolute safety possessed her. It was something to have
+that, although she was doing something so tremendous to her
+self-consciousness that she felt like a criminal, and the ache in her
+heart for those whom she had left never ceased. The maid brought in a
+tray covered with dainty dishes of white and silver and a little
+flask of white wine. Then, after Maria had refused further
+assistance, she left her. Maria ate her supper. She was in reality
+half famished. Then she went to bed. Nestling in her white bed,
+looking out of a lace-curtained window opposite through which came
+the glimpse of a long line of city lights, Maria felt more than ever
+as if she were in another world. She felt as if she were gazing at
+her past, at even her loves of life, through the wrong end of a
+telescope.
+
+The night was very warm but the room was deliciously cool. A breath
+of sweet coolness came from one of the walls. Maria, contrary to her
+wont, fell asleep almost immediately. She was exhausted, and an
+unusual peace seemed to soothe her very soul. She felt as if she had
+really died and gotten safe to Heaven. She said her prayers, then she
+was asleep. She awoke rather late the next morning, and took her
+bath, and then her breakfast was brought. When that was finished and
+she was dressed, it was ten o'clock, and the maid Adelaide came to
+take her to her hostess. Maria went down one elevator and up another,
+the one in which she had seen Miss Blair ascend the night before.
+Then she entered a strange room, in the midst of which sat Miss
+Blair. To Maria's utter amazement, she no longer seemed in the least
+deformed, she no longer seemed a dwarf. She was in perfect harmony
+with the room, which was low-ceiled, full of strange curves and low
+furniture with curved backs. It was all Eastern, as was the first
+floor of the house. Maria understood with a sort of intuition that
+this was necessary. The walls were covered with Eastern hangings,
+tables of lacquer stood about filled with squat bronzes and gemlike
+ivory carvings. The hangings were all embroidered in short curve
+effects. Maria realized that her hostess, in this room, made more of
+a harmony than she herself. She felt herself large, coarse, and
+common where she should have been tiny, bizarre, and, according to
+the usual standard, misformed. Miss Blair had planned for herself a
+room wherein everything was misformed, and in which she herself was
+in keeping. It had been partly the case on the first floor of the
+house. Here it was wholly. Maria sat down in one of the squat,
+curved-back chairs, and Miss Blair, who was opposite, looked at her,
+then laughed with the open delight of a child.
+
+"What a pity I cannot make the whole earth over to suit me," she
+said, "instead of only this one room! Now I look entirely perfect to
+you, do I not?"
+
+"Yes," Maria replied, looking at her with wonder.
+
+"It is my vanity room," said Miss Blair, and she laughed as if she
+were laughing at herself. Then she added, with a little pathos, "You
+yourself, if you had been in my place, would have wanted one little
+corner in which you could be perfect."
+
+"Yes, I should," said Maria. As she spoke she settled herself down
+lower in her chair.
+
+"Yes, you do look entirely too tall and straight in here," said Miss
+Blair, and laughed again, with genuine glee. "Beauty is only a matter
+of comparison, you know," said she. "If one is ugly and misshapen,
+all she has to do is to surround herself with things ugly and
+misshapen, and she gets the effect of perfect harmony, which is the
+highest beauty in the world. Here I am in harmony after I have been
+out of tune. It is a comfort. But, after all, being out of tune is
+not the worst thing in the world. It might be worse. I would not make
+the world over to suit me, but myself to suit the world, if I could.
+After all, the world is right and I am wrong, but in here I seem to
+be right. Now, child, tell me about yourself."
+
+Maria told her. She left nothing untold. She told her about her
+father and mother, her step-mother, and Evelyn, and her marriage, and
+how she had planned to go to Edgham, get the little sum which her
+father had deposited in the savings-bank for her, and then vanish.
+
+"How?" asked Miss Blair.
+
+Maria confessed that she did not know.
+
+"Of course your mere disappearance is not going to right things, you
+know," said Miss Blair. "That matrimonial tangle can only be
+straightened by your death, or the appearance of it. I do not suppose
+you meditate the stereotyped hat on the bank, and that sort of thing."
+
+"I don't know exactly what to do," said Maria.
+
+"You are quite right in avoiding a divorce," said Miss Blair,
+"especially when your own sister is concerned. People would never
+believe the whole truth, but only part of it. The young man would be
+ruined, too. The only way is to have your death-notice appear in the
+paper."
+
+"How?"
+
+"Everything is easy, if one has money," said Miss Blair, "and I have
+really a good deal." She looked thoughtfully at Maria. "Did you
+really care for that young man?" she asked.
+
+Maria paled. "I thought so," she said.
+
+"Then you did."
+
+"It does not make any difference if I did," said Maria, with a little
+indignation. She felt as if she were being probed to her
+heart-strings.
+
+"No, of course it does not," Miss Blair agreed directly. "If he and
+your sister have fallen in love, as you say, you have done obviously
+the only thing to do. We will have the notice in the papers. I don't
+know quite how I shall arrange it; but I have a fertile brain."
+
+Maria looked hesitatingly at her. "But it will not be telling the
+truth," she said.
+
+"But what did you plan to do, if you told the truth when you came
+away?" asked Miss Blair with a little impatience.
+
+"I did not really plan anything," replied Maria helplessly. "I only
+thought I would go."
+
+"You are inconsequential," said Miss Blair. "You cannot start upon a
+train of sequences in this world unless you go on to the bitter end.
+Besides, after all, why do you object to lying? I suppose you were
+brought up to tell the truth, and so was I, and I really think I
+venerate the truth more than anything else, but sometimes a lie is
+the highest truth. See here. You are willing to bear all the
+punishment, even fire and brimstone, and so on, if your sister and
+this man whom you love, are happy, aren't you?"
+
+"Of course," replied Maria.
+
+"Well, if you tell a lie which can hurt only yourself, and bless
+others, and are willing to bear the punishment for it, you are
+telling the truth like the angels. Don't you worry, my dear. But you
+must not go to Edgham for that money. I have enough for us both."
+
+"I have nearly all my last term's salary, except the sum I paid for
+my fare here," Maria said, proudly.
+
+"Well, dear, you shall spend it, and then you shall have some of
+mine."
+
+"I don't want any money, except what I earn," Maria said.
+
+"You may read to me, and earn it," Miss Blair said easily. "Don't
+fret about such a petty thing. Now, will you please touch that bell,
+dear. I must go and arrange about our passage."
+
+"Our passage?" repeated Maria dully.
+
+"Yes; to-day is Thursday. We can catch a Saturday steamer. We can buy
+anything which you need ready-made in the way of wearing-apparel, and
+get the rest on the other side."
+
+Maria gasped. She was very white, and her eyes were dilated. She
+stared at Miss Rosa Blair, who returned her stare with curious
+fixedness. Maria seemed to see depths within depths of meaning in her
+great dark eyes. A dimness swept over her own vision.
+
+"Touch the bell, please, dear," said Miss Blair.
+
+Maria obeyed. She touched the bell. She was swept off her feet. She
+had encountered a will stronger than any which she had ever known, a
+will which might have been strengthened by the tininess of the body
+in which its wings were bent, but always beating for flight. And she
+had encountered this will at a moment when her own was weakened and
+her mind dazed by the unprecedented circumstances in which she was
+placed.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXVIII
+
+
+Three days later, when they were on the outward-bound steamer, Miss
+Rosa Blair crossed the corridor between her state-room, which she
+occupied with her maid, to Maria's, and stood a moment looking down
+at the girl lying in her berth. Maria was in that state of liability
+to illness which keeps one in a berth, although she was not actually
+sea-sick.
+
+"My dear," said Miss Blair. "I think I may as well tell you now. In
+the night's paper before we left, I saw the death-notice of a certain
+Maria Edgham, of Edgham, New Jersey. There were some particulars
+which served to establish the fact of the death. You will not be
+interested in the particulars?"
+
+Maria turned her pale face towards the port-hole, against which
+dashed a green wave topped with foam. "No," said she.
+
+"I thought you would not," said Miss Blair. "Then there is something
+else."
+
+Maria waited quiescent.
+
+"Your name is on the ship's list of passengers as Miss Elizabeth
+Blair. You are my adopted daughter."
+
+Maria started.
+
+"Adelaide does not remember that you were called Miss Ackley," said
+Miss Blair. "She will never remember that you were anything except my
+adopted daughter. She is a model maid. As for the others, Louise is a
+model, too, and so is the coachman. The footman is discharged. When
+we return, nobody in my house will have ever known you except as
+Elizabeth Blair." Miss Blair went out of the state-room walking
+easily with the motion of the ship. She was a good sailor.
+
+The next afternoon Maria was able to sit out on deck. She leaned back
+in her steamer-chair, and wept silently. Miss Blair stood at a little
+distance near the rail, talking to an elderly gentleman whom she had
+met years ago. "She is my adopted daughter Elizabeth," said Miss
+Blair. "She has been a little ill, but she is much better. She is
+feeling sad over the death of a friend, poor child."
+
+It was a year before Maria and Miss Blair returned to the United
+States. Maria looked older, although she was fully as handsome as she
+had ever been. Her features had simply acquired an expression of
+decision and of finish, which they had not before had. She also
+looked more sophisticated. It had been on her mind that she might
+possibly meet her step-mother abroad, but she had not done so; and
+one day Miss Blair had shown her a London newspaper in which was the
+notice of Ida's marriage to a Scotchman. "We need not go to
+Scotland," said Miss Blair.
+
+The day after they landed was very warm. They had gone straight to
+Miss Blair's New York house; later they were to go to the sea-shore.
+The next morning Maria went into Miss Blair's vanity room, as she
+called it, and a strange look was on her face. "I have made up my
+mind," said she.
+
+"Well?" Miss Blair said, interrogatively.
+
+"I cannot let him commit bigamy. I cannot let my sister marry--my
+husband. I cannot break the laws in such a fashion, nor allow them to
+do so."
+
+"You break no moral law."
+
+"I am not so sure. I don't know where the dividing-line between the
+moral and the legal comes."
+
+"Then--?"
+
+"I am going to take the train to Amity this noon."
+
+Miss Blair turned slightly pale, but she regarded Maria
+unflinchingly. "Very well," said she. "I have always told you that I
+would not oppose you in any resolution which you might make in the
+matter."
+
+"It is not because I love him," said Maria. "I do love him; I think I
+always shall. But it is not because of that."
+
+"I know that. What do you propose doing after you have disclosed
+yourself?"
+
+"Tell the truth."
+
+"And then what?"
+
+"I shall talk the matter over with Wollaston and Evelyn, and I think
+they can be made to see that a quiet divorce will straighten it all
+out."
+
+"Not as far as the man's career is concerned, if he marries your
+sister, and not so far as your sister is concerned. People are prone
+to believe the worst, as the sparks fly upward."
+
+"Then they will," Maria said, obstinately. "I have made up my mind I
+dare not undertake the responsibility."
+
+"What will you do afterwards, come back to me?" Miss Blair said,
+wistfully. "You will come back, will you not, dear?"
+
+"If you wish," Maria said, with a quick, loving glance at her.
+
+"If I wish!" repeated Miss Blair. "Well, go if you must."
+
+Maria did not reach Amity until long after dark. Behind her on the
+train were two women who got on at the station before Amity. She did
+not know them, and they did not know her, but they presently began
+talking about her. "I saw Miss Maria Stillman at the Ordination in
+Westbridge, Wednesday," said one to the other. This woman had a
+curiously cool, long-reaching breath when she spoke. Maria felt it
+like a fan on the back of her neck.
+
+The other woman, who was fat, responded with a wheezy voice. "It was
+queer about that niece of hers, who taught school in Westbridge,
+running away and dying so dreadful sudden, wasn't it?" said she.
+
+"Dreadful queer. I guess her aunt and sister felt pretty bad about
+it, and I s'pose they do now; but it's a year ago, and they've left
+off their mourning."
+
+"Of course," said the other woman. "They would leave it off on
+account of--"
+
+Maria did not hear what followed, for a thundering freight-train
+passed them and drowned the words. After the train passed, the fat
+woman was saying, with her wheezy voice, "Mr. Lee's mother's death
+was dreadful sudden, wasn't it?"
+
+"Dreadful."
+
+"I wonder if he likes living in Amity as well as Westbridge?"
+
+"I shouldn't think he would, it isn't as convenient to the academy."
+
+"Well, maybe he will go back to Westbridge after a while," said the
+other woman, and again her breath fanned Maria's neck.
+
+She wondered what it meant. A surmise came to her, then she dismissed
+it. She was careful to keep her back turned to the women when the
+train pulled into Amity. She had no baggage except a suit-case. She
+got off the train, and disappeared in the familiar darkness. All at
+once it seemed to her as if she had returned from the unreal to the
+real, from fairy-land to the actual world. The year past seemed like
+a dream to her. She could not believe it. It was like that fact which
+is stranger than fiction, and therefore almost impossible even to
+write, much less to live. Miss Rosa Blair, and her travellings in
+Europe, and her house in New York, seemed to her like an Arabian
+Night's creation. She walked along the street towards her aunt's
+house, and realized her old self and her old perplexities. When she
+drew near the house she saw a light in the parlor windows and also in
+Aunt Maria's bedroom. Aunt Maria had evidently gone to her room for
+the night. Uncle Henry's side of the house was entirely dark.
+
+Maria stole softly into the yard, and paused in front of the parlor
+windows. The shades were not drawn. There sat Evelyn at work on some
+embroidery, while opposite to her sat Wollaston Lee, reading aloud.
+In Evelyn's lap, evidently hampering her with her work, was a
+beautiful yellow cat, which she paused now and then to stroke. Maria
+felt her heart almost stand still. There was something about it which
+renewed her vague surmise on the train. It was only a very few
+minutes before Wollaston laid down the paper which he had been
+reading, and said something to Evelyn, who began to fold her work
+with the sweet docility which Maria remembered. Wollaston rose and
+went over to Evelyn and kissed her as she stood up and let the yellow
+cat leap to the floor. Evelyn looked to Maria more beautiful than she
+had ever seen her. Maria stood farther back in the shadow. Then she
+heard the front door opened, and the cat was gently put out. Then she
+heard the key turn in the lock, and a bolt slide. Maria stood
+perfectly still. A light from a lamp which was being carried by some
+one, flitted like a will-o'-the-wisp over the yard, and the parlor
+windows became dark. Then a broad light shone out from the front
+chamber windows through the drawn white shade, and lay in a square on
+the grass of the yard. The cat which had been put out rubbed against
+Maria's feet. She caught up the little animal and kissed it. Then she
+put it down gently, and hurried back to the station. She thought of
+Rosa Blair, and an intense longing came over her. She seemed to
+suddenly sense the highest quality of love: that which realizes the
+need of another, rather than one's own. The poor little dwarf seemed
+the very child of her heart. She looked up at the stars shining
+through the plumy foliage of the trees, and thought how many of them
+might owe their glory to the radiance of unknown suns, and it seemed
+to her that her own soul lighted her path by its reflection of the
+love of God. She thought that it might be so with all souls which
+were faced towards God, and that which is above and beyond, and it
+was worth more than anything else in the whole world.
+
+She questioned no longer the right or wrong of what she had done, as
+she hurried on and reached the little Amity station in time for the
+last train.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of By the Light of the Soul, by 
+Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
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