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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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