disclosed the tiny feet seeming
already to kick feebly at existence. The nurse said something in
French which Maria could not understand. Ida answered also in French.
Then the baby seemed to experience a convulsion; its whole face
seemed to open into one gape of expostulation at fate. Then its
feeble, futile wail filled the whole room.

"Isn't she a little darling?" asked Ida, of Maria.

"Yes'm," replied Maria.

There was a curious air of aloofness about Ida with regard to her
baby, and something which gave the impression of wistfulness. It is
possible that she was capable of wishing that she had not that
aloofness. It did not in the least seem to Maria as if it were Ida's
baby. She had a vague impression, derived she could not tell in what
manner, of a rosebud laid on a gatepost. Ida did not seem conscious
of her baby with the woodeny consciousness of an apple-tree of a
blossom. When she gazed at it, it was with the same set smile with
which she had always viewed all creation. That smile which came from
without, not within, but now it was fairly tragic.

"Her name is Evelyn. Don't you think it is a pretty name?" asked Ida.

"Yes'm," replied Maria. She edged towards the door. The nurse,
tossing the wailing baby, rose and got a bottle of milk. Maria went
out.

Maria went to school the next Monday, and all the girls asked her if
the baby was pretty.

"It looks like all the babies I ever saw," replied Maria guardedly.
She did not wish to descry the baby which was, after all, her sister,
but she privately thought it was a terrible sight.

Gladys Mann supported her. "Babies do all look alike," said she.
"We've had nine to our house, and I had ought to know."

At first Maria used to dread to go home from school, on account of
the baby. She had a feeling of repulsion because of it, but gradually
that feeling disappeared and an odd sort of fascination possessed her
instead. She thought a great deal about the baby. When she heard it
cry in the night, she thought that her father and Ida might have
sense enough to stop it. She thought that she could stop its crying
herself, by carrying it very gently around the room. Still she did
not love the baby. It only appealed, in a general way, to her
instincts. But one day, when the baby was some six weeks old, and Ida
had gone to New York, she came home from school, and she went up to
her own room, and she heard the baby crying in the room opposite. It
cried and cried, with t