nd let her have the privilege of wheeling
it herself. Maria had a small sum every week for her pocket-money,
and a large part of it went to Josephine in the shape of chocolates,
of which she was inordinately fond; in fact, Josephine, who came of
the poor whites, like Gladys Mann, might have been said to be a
chocolate maniac. Maria used to arrange with Josephine to meet her on
a certain corner on Saturdays, and there the transfer was made:
Josephine became the possessor of half a pound of chocolates, and
Maria of the baby. Josephine had sworn almost a solemn oath to never
tell. She at once repaired to her mother's, sucking chocolates on the
way, and Maria blissfully wheeled the baby. She stood in very little
danger of meeting Her on these occasions, because the Edgham Woman's
Club met on Saturday afternoon. It often happened, however, that
Maria met some of the school-girls, and then nothing could have
exceeded her pride and triumph. Some of them had little brothers or
sisters, but none of them such a little sister as hers.

The baby had, in reality, grown to be a beauty among babies. All the
inflamed red and aged puckers and creases had disappeared; instead of
that was the sweetest flush, like that of just-opened rosebuds.
Evelyn was a compact little baby, fat, but not overlapping and
grossly fat. It was such a matter of pride to Maria that the baby's
cheeks did not hang the least bit in the world, but had only lovely
little curves and dimples. She had become quite a connoisseur in
babies. When she saw a baby whose flabby cheeks hung down and touched
its bib, she was disgusted. She felt as if there was something
morally wrong with such a baby as that. Her baby was wrapped in the
softest white things: furs, and silk-lined embroidered cashmeres, and
her little face just peeped out from the lace frill of a charming
cap. There was only one touch of color in all this whiteness, beside
the tender rose of the baby's face, and that was a little knot of
pale pink baby-ribbon on the cap. Maria often stopped to make sure
that the cap was on straight, and she also stopped very often to tuck
in the white fur rug, and she also stopped often to thrust her own
lovely little girl-face into the sweet confusion of baby and lace and
embroidery and fur, with soft kisses and little, caressing murmurs of
love. She made up little love phrases, which she would have been
inexpressibly ashamed to have had overheard. "Little honey love" was
one