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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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