Academy, in
Wardway. The Elliot Academy was an endowed school of a very high
standing, and Wardway was a large town, almost a city, about fifteen
miles from Edgham. When this plan was broached by Ida, Maria did not
make any opposition; she was secretly delighted. Wollaston Lee was
going to the Elliot Academy that autumn, and there was another Edgham
girl and her brother, besides Maria, who were going.

"Now, darling, you need not go to the Elliot Academy any more than to
the other school she proposed, if you don't want to," Harry told
Maria, privately, one Saturday afternoon in September, shortly before
the term began.

Ida had gone to her club, and Harry had come home early from the
city, and he and Maria were alone in the parlor. Evelyn was having
her nap up-stairs. A high wind was roaring about the house. A
cherry-tree beside the house was fast losing its leaves in a yellow
rain. In front of the window, a hydrangea bush, tipped with
magnificent green-and-rosy plumes, swayed in all its limbs like a
living thing. Somewhere up-stairs a blind banged.

"I think I would like to go," Maria replied, hurriedly. Then she
jumped up. "That blind will wake Evelyn," she said, and ran out of
the room.

She had colored unaccountably when her father spoke. When she
returned, she had a demure, secretive expression on her face which
made Harry stare at her in bewilderment. All his life Harry Edgham
had been helpless and bewildered before womenkind, and now his little
daughter was beginning to perplex him. She sat down and took up a
piece of fancy-work, and her father continued to glance at her
furtively over his paper. Presently he spoke of the academy again.

"You need not go if you do not want to," he repeated.

Then again Maria's delicate little face and neck became suffused with
pink. Her reply was not as loud nor more intelligible than the murmur
of the trees outside in the wind.

"What did you say, darling?" asked Harry. "Father did not understand."

"I would like to go there," Maria replied, in her sweet, decisive
little pipe. A fresh wave of color swept over her face and neck, and
she selected with great care a thread from a skein of linen floss.

"Well, she thought you might like that," Harry said, with an air of
relief.

"Maud Page is going, too," said Maria.

"Is she? That will be nice. You won't have to go back and forth
alone," said Harry.

Maria said nothing; she continued her work.

Her father turned h