Josephine, whose face was smeared with mola.s.ses candy, and who was even then sucking some, relinquished her hold on the carriage.

"You'll be awful mean if you do tell," said she.

"I will tell if you don't do what you say you'll do another time,"

said she.

When they reached home, Ida had not returned, but she came in radiant some few minutes later. She had read a paper on a famous man, for the pleasure and profit of the Edgham Woman's Club, and she had received much applause and felt correspondingly elated. Josephine had taken the baby up-stairs to a little room which had recently been fitted up for a nursery, and, not following her usual custom, Ida went in there after removing her outer wraps. She stood in her blue cloth dress looking at the child with her usual air of radiant aloofness, seeming to shed her own glory, like a star, upon the baby, rather than receive its little light into the loving recesses of her own soul.

Josephine and also Maria were in a state of consternation. They had discovered a large, sticky splash of mola.s.ses candy on the baby's white embroidered cloak. They had washed the baby's sticky little face, but they did not know what was to be done about the cloak, which lay over a chair. Josephine essayed, with a dexterous gesture, to so fold the cloak over that the stain would be for the time concealed. But Ida Edgham had not been a school-teacher for nothing.

She saw the gesture, and immediately took up the cloak herself.

"Why, what is this on her cloak?" said she.

There was a miserable silence.

"It looks like mola.s.ses candy. It is mola.s.ses candy," said Ida.

"Josephine, did you give this child mola.s.ses candy?" Ida's voice was 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 grat.i.tude.

"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 pa.s.sion, 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 quant.i.ties 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 impa.s.sive towards her child's attainments. There was something pathetic about this impa.s.siveness.

Ida was missing a great deal, and more because she did not even know what she missed. However, she began to be conscious of a settled aversion towards Maria. Her manner towards her was unchanged, but she became distinctly irritated at seeing her about. When anything annoyed Ida, she immediately entertained no doubt whatever that it was not in accordance with the designs of an overruling Providence.

It seemed manifest to her that if anything annoyed her, it should be removed. However, in this case, the way of removal did not seem clear for a long time. Harry was undoubtedly fond of Maria. That did not trouble Ida in the least, although she recognized the fact. She was not a woman who was capable of jealousy, because her own love and admiration for herself made her impregnable. She loved herself so much more than Harry could possibly love her that his feeling for Maria did not ruffle her in the least. It was due to no jealousy that she wished Maria removed, at least for a part of the time. It was only that she was always conscious of a dissent, silent and helpless, still persistent, towards her att.i.tude as regarded herself. She knew that Maria did not think her as beautiful and perfect as she thought herself, and the constant presence of this small element of negation irritated her. Then, too, while she was not in the least jealous of her child, she had a curious conviction that Maria cared more for her than she herself cared, and that in itself was a covert reproach.

When little Evelyn ran to meet her sister when she returned from school, Ida felt distinctly disturbed. She had no doubt of her ultimate success in her purpose of ridding herself of at least the constant presence of Maria, and in the mean time she continued to perform her duty by the girl, to that outward extent that everybody in Edgham p.r.o.nounced her a model step-mother. "Maria Edgham never looked half so well in her own mother's time," they said.

Lillian White spoke of it to her mother one Sunday. She had been to church, but her mother had remained at home on account of a cold.

"I tell you she looked dandy," said Lillian. Lillian was still as softly and negatively pretty as ever. She was really charming because she was not angular, because her skin was not thick and coa.r.s.e, because she did not look anaemic, but perfectly well fed and nourished and happy.

"Who?" asked her mother.

"Maria Edgham. She was togged out to beat the band. Everything looked sort of fadged up that she had before her own mother died. I tell you she never had anything like the rig she wore to-day."

"What was it?" asked her mother interestedly, wiping her rasped nose with a moist ball of handkerchief.

"Oh, it was the handsomest brown suit I ever laid my eyes on, with hand-embroidery, and fur, and a big picture hat trimmed with fur and chrysanthemums. She's an awful pretty little girl anyhow."

"She always was pretty," said Mrs. White, dabbing her nose again.

"If Ida don't look out, her step-daughter will beat her in looks,"

said Lillian.

"I never thought myself that Ida was anything to brag of, anyway,"

said Mrs. White. She still had a sense of wondering injury that Harry Edgham had preferred Ida to her Lillian.

Lillian was now engaged to be married, but her mother did not feel quite satisfied with the man. He was employed in a retail clothing establishment in New York, and had only a small salary. "Foster Simpkins" (that was the young man's name) "ain't really what you ought to have," she often said to Lillian.

But Lillian took it easily. She liked the young man very much as she would have liked a sugar-plum, and she thought it high time for her to be married, although she was scarcely turned twenty. "Oh, well, ma," she said. "Men don't grow on every bush, and Foster is real good-lookin', and maybe his salary will be raised."

"You ain't lookin' very high," said her mother.

"No use in strainin' your neck for things out of your own sky," said Lillian, who had at times a shrewd sort of humor, inherited from her father.

"Harry Edgham would have been a better match for you," her mother said.

"Lord, I'd a good sight rather have Foster than another woman's leavin's," replied Lillian. "Then there was Maria, too. It would have been an awful job to dress her, and look out for her."

"That's so," said her mother, "and then the two sets of children, too."

Lillian colored and giggled. "Oh, land, don't talk about children, ma!" said she. "I'm contented as it is. But you ought to have seen that young one to-day."

"What did Ida wear?" asked Mrs. White.

"She wore her black velvet suit, that she had this winter, and the way she strutted up the aisle was a caution."

"I don't see how Harry Edgham lives the way he does," said Mrs.

White. "Black velvet costs a lot. Do you s'pose it is silk velvet?"