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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."
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.
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.
"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.
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.
"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.
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.
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?"
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.
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.
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