mean to say you
didn't wear your knit jacket under your coat, such a bitter day as
this?" said she.

"I have been warm enough."

Aunt Maria sniffed. "I wonder when you will ever be old enough to
take care of yourself?" said she. "You need to be watched every
minute like a baby."

"I was warm enough, Aunt Maria," Maria repeated, patiently.

"Well, sit down here by the stove and get heated through while I see
to supper," said Aunt Maria, crossly. "I've got a hot beef-stew with
dumplings for supper, and I guess I'll make some chocolate instead of
tea. That always seems to me to warm up anybody better."

"Don't you want me to help?" said Maria.

"No; everything is all done except to make the chocolate. I've had
the stew on hours. A stew isn't good for a thing unless you have it
on long enough to get the goodness out of the bone."

Aunt Maria opened the door leading to the dining-room. In winter it
served the two as both kitchen and dining-room, having a compromising
sort of stove on which one could cook, and which still did not look
entirely plebeian and fitted only for the kitchen. Maria saw through
the open door the neatly laid table, with its red cloth and Aunt
Maria's thin silver spoons and china. Aunt Maria had a weakness in
one respect. She liked to use china, and did not keep that which had
descended to her from her mother stored away, to be taken out only
for company, as her sister-in-law thought she properly should do. The
china was a fine Lowestoft pattern, and it was Aunt Maria's pride
that not a piece was missing.

"As long as I take care of my china myself, and am not dependent on
some great, clumsy girl, I guess I can afford to use it," she said.

As Maria eyed the delicate little cups a savory odor of stew floated
through the room. She realized that she was not hungry, that the odor
of food nauseated her with a sort of physical sympathy with the
nausea of her soul, with life itself. Then she straightened herself,
and shut her mouth hard. The look of her New England ancestresses who
had borne life and death without flinching was on her face.

"I will be hungry," Maria said to herself. "Why should I lose my
appetite because a man who does not care for me is going to marry
another girl, and when I am married, too, and have no right even to
think of him for one minute even if he had been in earnest, if he had
thought of me? Why should I lose my appetite? Why should I go without
my supper? I will eat.