ew 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 a