entirely even, but there was something terrible about it.

Maria saw Josephine turn white. "She wouldn't have given her the
candy if it hadn't been for me," said she.

Ida stood looking from one to the other. Josephine's face was white
and scared, Maria's impenetrable.

"If you ever give this child candy again, either of you," said Ida,
"you will never take her out again." Then she went out, still smiling.

Josephine looked at Maria with enormous gratitude.

"Say," said she, "you're a dandy."

"You're a cheat!" returned Maria, with scorn.

"I'm awful sorry I didn't wait on the corner till four o'clock,
honest."

"You'd better be."

"Say, but you be a dandy," repeated Josephine.

Chapter XII

Maria began to be conscious of other and more vital seasons than
those of the old earth on which she lived--the seasons of the human
soul. Along with her own unconscious and involuntary budding towards
bloom, the warm rush of the blood in her own veins, she realized the
budding progress of the baby. When little Evelyn was put into short
frocks, and her little, dancing feet were shod with leather instead
of wool, Maria felt a sort of delicious wonder, similar to that with
which she watched a lilac-bush in the yard when its blossoms deepened
in the spring.

The day when Evelyn was put into short frocks, Maria glanced across
the school-room at Wollaston Lee, and her innocent passion, half
romance, half imagination, which had been for a time in abeyance,
again thrilled her. All her pulses throbbed. She tried to work out a
simple problem in her algebra, but mightier unknown quantities were
working towards solution in every beat of her heart. Wollaston shot a
sidelong glance at her, and she felt it, although she did not see it.
Gladys Mann leaned over her shoulder.

"Say," she whispered, "Wollaston Lee is jest starin' at you!"

Maria gave a little, impatient shrug of her shoulders, although a
blush shot over her whole face, and Gladys saw distinctly the back of
her neck turn a roseate color.

"He's awful stuck on you, I guess," Gladys said.

Maria shrugged her shoulders again, but she thought of Wollaston and
then of the baby in her short frock and she felt that her heart was
bursting with joy, as a bud with blossom.

Ida, meantime, was curiously impassive towards her child's
attainments. There was something pathetic about this impassiveness.
Ida was missing a great deal, and more because she did not even know