"I came back to ask you if--you would have me?" said Wollaston, and his voice was hardly audible.

Miss Ida Slome looked at him in amazement; she was utterly dazed.

"Have you?" she repeated. "I think I do not quite understand you.

What do you mean by 'have you,' Wollaston?"

"Marry me," burst forth the boy.

There was a silence. Maria looked at Miss Slome, and, to her utter indignation, the teacher's lips were twitching, and it took a good deal to make Miss Slome laugh, too; she had not much sense of humor.

In a second Wollaston stole a furtive glance at Miss Slome, which was an absurd parody on a glance of a man under similar circ.u.mstances, and Miss Slome, who had had experience in such matters, laughed outright.

The boy turned white. The woman did not realize it, but it was really a cruel thing which she was doing. She laughed heartily.

"Why, my dear boy," she said. "You are too young and I am too old.

You had better wait and marry Maria, when you are both grown up."

Wollaston turned his back upon her, and marched out of the room.

Maria lingered, in the vain hope that she might bring the teacher to a reconsideration of the matter.

"He's a good deal younger than father, and he's better looking," said she.

Miss Slome blushed then.

"Oh, you sweet little thing, then you know--" she began.

Maria interrupted her. She became still more traitorous to her father.

"Father has a real bad temper, when things go wrong," said she.

"Mother always said so."

Miss Slome only laughed harder.

"You funny little darling," she said.

"And Wollaston has a real good disposition, his mother told my aunt Maria so," she persisted.

The room fairly rang with Miss Slome's laughter, although she tried to subdue it. Maria persisted.

"And father isn't a mite handy about the house," said she. "And Mrs.

Lee told Aunt Maria that Wollaston could wipe dishes and sweep as well as a girl."

Miss Slome laughed.

"And I've got a bad temper, too, when I'm crossed; mother always said so," said Maria. Her lip quivered.

Miss Slome left her desk, came over to Maria, and, in spite of her shrinking away, caught her in her arms.

"You are a little darling," said she, "and I am not a bit afraid of your temper." She hesitated a moment, looking at the child's averted face, and coloring. "My dear, has your father told you?" she whispered; then, "I didn't know he had."

"No, ma'am, he hasn't," said Maria. She fairly pulled herself loose from Miss Slome and ran out of the room. Her eyes were almost blinded with tears; she could scarcely see Wollaston Lee on the road, ahead of her, also running. He seemed to waver as he ran. Maria called out faintly. He evidently heard, for he slackened his pace a little; then he ran faster than ever. Maria called again. This time the boy stopped until the girl came up. He picked a piece of gra.s.s, as he waited, and began chewing it.

"How do you know that isn't poison?" said Maria, breathlessly.

"Don't care if it is; hope it is," said the boy.

"It's wicked to talk so."

"Let it be wicked then."

"I don't see how I am to blame for any of it," Maria said, in a bewildered sort of way. It was the cry of the woman, the primitive cry of the primitive scape-goat of Creation. Already Maria began to feel the necessity of fitting her little shoulders to the blame of life, which she had inherited from her Mother Eve, but she was as yet bewildered by the necessity.

"Ain't it your father that's going to marry her?" inquired Wollaston, fiercely.

"I don't want him to marry her any more than you do," said Maria. "I don't want her for a mother."

"I told you how it would come out, if I asked her," cried the boy, still heaping the blame upon the girl.

"I would enough sight rather marry you than my father, if I were the teacher," said Maria, and her blue eyes looked into Wollaston's with the boldness of absolute guilelessness.

"Hush!" responded Wollaston, with a gesture of disdain. "Who'd want you? You're nothing but a girl, anyway."

With that scant courtesy Wollaston Lee resumed his race homeward, and Maria went her own way.

It was that very night, after Harry Edgham had returned from his call upon Ida Slome, that he told Maria. Maria, as usual, had gone to bed, but she was not asleep. Maria heard his hand on her door-k.n.o.b, and his voice calling out, softly: "Are you asleep, dear?"

"No," responded Maria.

Then her father entered and approached the child staring at him from her white nest. The room was full of moonlight, and Maria's face looked like a nucleus of innocence upon which it centred. Harry leaned over his little daughter and kissed her.

"Father has got something to tell you, precious," he said.

Maria hitched away a little from him, and made no reply.

"Ida, Miss Slome, tells me that she thinks you know, and so I made up my mind I had better tell you, and not wait any longer, although I shall not take any decisive step before--before November. What would you say if father should bring home a new mother for his little girl, dear?"

"I should say I would rather have Aunt Maria," replied Maria, decisively. She choked back a sob.

"I've got nothing to say against Aunt Maria," said Harry. "She's been very kind to come here, and she's done all she could, but--well, I think in some ways, some one else--Father thinks you will be much happier with another mother, dear."

"No, I sha'n't."

Harry hesitated. The child's voice sounded so like her dead mother's that he felt a sudden guilt, and almost terror.

"But if father were happier--you want father to be happy, don't you, dear?" he asked, after a little.

Then Maria began to sob in good earnest. She threw her arms around her father's neck. "Yes, father, I do want you to be happy," she whispered, brokenly.

"If father's little girl were large enough to keep his house for him, and were through school, father would never think of taking such a step," said Harry Edgham, and he honestly believed what he said. For the moment his old love of life seemed to clutch him fast, and Ida Slome's radiant visage seemed to pale.