nd 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 s