"With a boy. Do you think it is wrong, sister?"

"No, I don't think it is very wrong," replied Maria, trying to restrain her smile.

"His first name is pretty, but his last isn't so very," Evelyn said, regretfully. "His first name is Ernest. Don't you think that is a pretty name?"

"Very pretty."

"But his last name is only Jenks," said Evelyn, with a mortified air.

"That is horrid, isn't it?"

"n.o.body can help his name," said Maria, consolingly.

"Of course he can't. Poor Ernest isn't to blame because his mother married a man named Jenks; but I wish she hadn't. If we ever get married, I don't want to be called Mrs. Jenks. Don't people ever change their names, sister?"

"Sometimes, I believe."

"Well, I shall not marry him unless he changes his name. But he is such a pretty boy. He looks across the school-room at me, and once, when I met him in the vestibule, and there was n.o.body else there, he asked me to kiss him, and I did."

"I don't think you ought to kiss boys," said Maria.

"I would rather kiss him than another girl," said Evelyn, looking up at her sister with the most limpid pa.s.sion, that of a child who has not the faintest conception of what pa.s.sion means.

"Well, sister would rather you did not," said Maria.

"I won't if you don't want me to," said Evelyn, meekly. "That was quite a long time ago. It is not very likely I shall meet him anywhere where we could kiss each other, anyway. Of course, I don't really love him as much as I do you and papa. I would rather he died than you or papa; but I am in love with him--you know what I mean, sister?"

"I wouldn't think any more about it, dear," said Maria.

"I like to think about him," said Evelyn, simply. "I like to sit whole hours and think about him, and make sort of stories about us, you know--how me meet somewhere, and he tells me how much he loves me, and how we kiss each other again. It makes me happy. I go to sleep so. Do you think it is wrong, sister?"

Maria remembered her own childhood. "Perhaps it isn't wrong, exactly, dear," she said, "but I wouldn't, if I were you. I think it is better not."

"Well, I will try not to," said Evelyn, with a sigh. "He told Amy Jones I was the prettiest girl in school. Of course we couldn't be married for a long time, and I wouldn't be Mrs. Jenks. But, now you've come home, maybe I sha'n't want to think so much about him."

Maria found new maids when she reached home. Ida did not keep her domestics very long. However, n.o.body could say that was her fault in this age when man-servants and maid-servants buzz angrily, like bees, over household tasks and are constantly hungering for new fields.

"We have had two cooks and two new second-girls since you went away,"

Evelyn said, when they stood waiting for the front door to be opened, and the man with Maria's trunk stood behind them. "The last second-girl we had stole"--Evelyn said the last in a horrified whisper--"and the last cook couldn't cook. The cook we have now is named Agnes, and the second-girl is Irene. Agnes lets me go out in the kitchen and make candy, and she always makes a little cake for me; but I don't like Irene. She says things under her breath when she thinks n.o.body will hear, and she makes up my bed so it is all wrinkly. I shouldn't be surprised if she stole, too."

Then the door opened and a white-capped maid, with a rather pretty face, evidently of the same cla.s.s as Gladys Mann, appeared.

"This is my sister, Miss Maria, Irene," said Evelyn.

The maid nodded and said something inarticulate.

Maria said "How do you do?" to her, and asked her to tell the man where to carry the trunk.

When the trunk was in Maria's old room, and Maria had smoothed her hair and washed her face and hands, she and Evelyn sat down in the parlor and waited. The parlor looked to Maria, after poor Aunt Maria's spa.r.s.e old furnishings, more luxurious than she had remembered it. In fact, it had been improved. There were some splendid palms in the bay-window, and some new articles of furniture.

The windows, also, had been enlarged, and were hung with new curtains of filmy lace, with thin, red silk over them. The whole room seemed full of rosy light.

"I wish you would ask Irene to fix the hearth fire," Evelyn had said to Maria when they entered the room, which did seem somewhat chilly.

Maria asked the girl to do so, and when she had gone and the fire was blazing Evelyn said:

"I didn't like to ask her, sister. She doesn't realize that I am not a baby, and she does not like it. So I never ask her to do anything except when mamma is here. Irene is afraid of mamma."

Maria laughed and looked at the clock. "How long will it be before father comes, do you think, dear?" she asked.

"Papa comes home lately at five o'clock. I guess he will be here very soon now; but mamma won't be home before half-past seven. She has gone with the Voorhees to the matinee. Do you know the Voorhees, sister?"

"No, dear."

"I guess they came to Edgham after you went away. They bought that big house on the hill near the church. They are very rich. There are Mr. Voorhees and Mrs. Voorhees and their little boy. He doesn't wear long stockings in the coldest weather; his legs are quite bare from a little above his shoes to his knees. I should think he would be cold, but mamma says it is very stylish. He is a pretty little boy, but I don't like him; he looks too much like Mr. Voorhees, and I don't like him. He always acts as if he were laughing at something inside, and you don't know what it is. Mrs. Voorhees is very handsome, not quite so handsome as mamma, but very handsome, and she wears beautiful clothes and jewels. They often ask mamma to go to the theatre with them, and they are here quite a good deal. They have dinner-parties and receptions, and mamma goes. We had a dinner-party here last week."

"Doesn't father go to the theatre with them?" asked Maria.

"No, he never goes. I don't know whether they ask him or not. If they do, he doesn't go. I guess he would rather stay at home. Then I don't believe papa would want to leave me alone until the late train, for often the cook and Irene go out in the evening."

Maria looked anxiously at her little sister, who was sitting as close to her as she could get in the divan before the fire. "Does papa look well?" she asked.

"Why, yes, I guess so. He looks just the way he always has. I haven't heard him say he wasn't well, nor mamma, and he hasn't had the doctor, and I haven't seen him take any medicine. I guess he's well."

Maria looked at the clock, a fine French affair, which had been one of Ida's wedding gifts, standing swinging its pendulum on the shelf between a Tiffany vase and a bronze. "Father must be home soon now, if he comes on that five-clock train," she said.

"Yes, I guess he will."

In fact, it was a very few minutes before a carriage stopped in front of the house and Evelyn called out: "There he is! Papa has come!"

Maria did not dare look out of the window. She arose with trembling knees and went out into the hall as the front door opened. She saw at the first glance that her father had changed--that he did not look well. And yet it was difficult to say why he did not look well. He had not lost flesh, at least not perceptibly; he was not very pale, but on his face was the expression of one who is looking his last at the things of this world. The expression was at once stern and sad and patient. When he saw Maria, however, the look disappeared for the time. His face, which had not yet lost its boyish outlines, fairly quivered between smiles and tears. He caught Maria in his arms.

"Father's blessed child!" he whispered in her ear.

"Oh, father," half sobbed Maria, "why didn't you send for me before?

Why didn't you tell me?"

"Hush, darling!" Harry said, with a glance at Evelyn, who stood looking on with a puzzled, troubled expression on her little face.

Harry took off his overcoat, and they all went into the parlor. "That fire looks good," said Harry, drawing close to it.

"I got Maria to ask Irene to make it," Evelyn said, in her childish voice.

"That was a good little girl," said Harry. He sat down on the divan, with a daughter on each side of him. Maria nestled close to her father. With an effort she kept her quivering face straight. She dared not look in his face again. A knell seemed ringing in her ears from her own conviction, a voice of her inner consciousness, which kept reiterating, "Father is going to die, father is going to die."

Maria knew little of illness, but she felt that she could not mistake that expression. But her father talked quite gayly, asking her about her school and Aunt Maria and Uncle Henry and his wife. Maria replied mechanically. Finally she mustered courage to say:

"How are you feeling, father? Are you well?"

"I am about the same as when you went away, dear," Harry replied, and that expression of stern, almost ineffable patience deepened on his face. He smiled directly, however, and asked Evelyn what train her mother had taken.

"She won't be home until the seven-thirty train," said Harry, "and there is no use in our waiting dinner. You must be hungry, Maria.