her father went up the village street; Harry
Edgham walked quite swiftly. "I guess we had better hurry along," he
observed, "your mother is all alone."

Maria tagged behind him. Her father had to stop at a grocery-store on
the corner of the street where they lived, to get a bag of peaches
which he had left there. "I got some peaches on my way," he
explained, "and I didn't want to carry them to church. I thought your
mother might like them. The doctor said she might eat fruit." With
that he darted into the store with the agility of a boy.

Maria stood on the dusty sidewalk in the glare of electric light, and
waited. Her pink gingham dress was quite short, but she held it up
daintily, like a young lady, pinching a fold between her little thumb
and forefinger. Mrs. Jasper Cone, with another woman, came up, and to
Maria's astonishment, Mrs. Cone stopped, clasped her in her arms and
kissed her. As she did so, she sobbed, and Maria felt her tears of
bereavement on her cheek with an odd mixture of pity and awe and
disgust. "If my Minnie had--lived, she might have grown up to be like
her," she gasped out to her friend. "I always thought she looked like
her." The friend made a sympathetic murmur of assent. Mrs. Cone
kissed Maria again, holding her little form to her crape-trimmed
bosom almost convulsively, then the two passed on. Maria heard her
say again that she always had thought the baby looked like her, and
she felt humiliated. She looked after the poor mother's streaming
black veil with resentment. Then Miss Ida Slome passed by, and
Wollaston Lee was clinging to her arm, pressing as closely to her
side as he dared. Miss Slome saw Maria, and spoke in her sweet, crisp
tone. "Good-evening, Maria," said she.

Maria stood gazing after them. Her father emerged from the store with
the bag of peaches dangling from his hand. He looked incongruous. Her
father had too much the air of a gentleman to carry a paper bag. "I
do hope your mother will like these peaches," he said.

Maria walked along with her father, and she thought with pain and
scorn how singular it was for a boy to want to go home with an old
woman like Miss Slome, when there were little girls like her.

Chapter II

Maria and her father entered the house, which was not far. It was a
quite new Queen Anne cottage of the better class, situated in a small
lot of land, and with other houses very near on either side. There
was a great clump of hydrangeas on the sm