rs. Maria's sense of smell was very highly developed.
It seemed to her that her very soul was permeated, her very thoughts
and imagination, with the odor of damp, unclean clothing, of draggled
gowns and wraps and hats and wet leather. She could not eat her
supper; she could not eat the luncheon which her aunt had put up for
her, since the school being a mile away, it was too far to walk home
for the noonday dinner in the rain.

"You 'ain't eat hardly a mite of luncheon," Aunt Maria said when she
opened the box.

"I did not feel very hungry," Maria replied, apologetically.

"If you don't eat, you'll never hold out school-teaching in the
world," said Aunt Maria.

She repeated it when Maria scarcely tasted her supper, although it
was a nice one--cold ham, and scrambled eggs, scrambled with cream,
and delicious slabs of layer-cake. "You'll never hold out in the
world if you don't eat," said she.

"To tell the truth," replied Maria, "I can smell those poor
children's wet clothes so that it has taken away all my appetite."

"Land! you'll have to get over that," said Aunt Maria.

"It seems to me that everything smells and tastes of wet, dirty
clothes and shoes," said Maria.

"You'll have to learn not to be so particular," said Aunt Maria, and
she spoke with the same affectionate severity that Maria remembered
in her mother. "Put it out of your mind," she added.

"I can't," said Maria, and a qualm of nausea came over her. It was as
if the damp, unclean garments and the wet shoes were pressed close
under her nostrils. She looked pale.

"Well, drink your tea, anyhow," said Aunt Maria, with a glance at her.

After supper Aunt Maria, going into the other side of the house to
borrow some yeast, said to her brother Henry that she did not believe
that Maria would hold out to teach school. "She has come home sick on
account of the smells the very first day," said she, "and she hasn't
eat her supper, and she scarcely touched her luncheon."

Henry Stillman laughed, a bitter, sardonic laugh which he had
acquired of late years. "Oh, well, she will get used to it," he
replied. "Don't you worry, Maria. She will get used to it. The smell
of the poor is the smell of the world. Heaven itself must be full of
it."

His wife eyed him with a half-frightened air. "Why, don't talk so,
Henry!" she said.

Henry Stillman laughed, half sardonically, half tenderly. "It is so,
my dear," he said, "but don't you worry about it."

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