By the Light of the Soul | Page 4

have to go with her father, and Wollaston Lee would not dare accost
her, even if he were so disposed; then she took a genuine pleasure in
the window space of sweet night and the singing. Her passions were yet
so young that they did not disturb her long if interrupted. She was also
always conscious of the prettiness of her appearance, and she loved
herself for it with that love which brings previsions of unknown joys of
the future. Her charming little face, in her realization of it, was as the
untried sword of the young warrior which is to bring him all the glory
of earth for which his soul longs.
After the meeting was closed, and Harry Edgham, with his little
daughter lagging behind him with covert eyes upon Wollaston Lee,
went out of the vestry, a number inquired for his wife. "Oh, she is very
comfortable," he replied, with his cheerful optimism which solaced him
in all vicissitudes, except the single one of actually witnessing the
sorrow and distress of those who belonged to him.
"I heard," said one man, who was noted in the place for his
outspokenness, which would have been brutal had it not been for his
naivete--"I heard she wasn't going to get out again."

"Nonsense," replied Harry Edgham.
"Then she is?"
"Of course she is. She would have come to meeting to-night if it had
not been so damp."
"Well, I'm glad to hear it," said the man, with a curious congratulation
which gave the impression of disappointment.
Little Maria Edgham and her father went up the village street; Harry
Edgham walked quite swiftly. "I guess we had better hurry along," he
observed, "your mother is all alone."
Maria tagged behind him. Her father had to stop at a grocery-store on
the corner of the street where they lived, to get a bag of peaches which
he had left there. "I got some peaches on my way," he explained, "and I
didn't want to carry them to church. I thought your mother might like
them. The doctor said she might eat fruit." With that he darted into the
store with the agility of a boy.
Maria stood on the dusty sidewalk in the glare of electric light, and
waited. Her pink gingham dress was quite short, but she held it up
daintily, like a young lady, pinching a fold between her little thumb and
forefinger. Mrs. Jasper Cone, with another woman, came up, and to
Maria's astonishment, Mrs. Cone stopped, clasped her in her arms and
kissed her. As she did so, she sobbed, and Maria felt her tears of
bereavement on her cheek with an odd mixture of pity and awe and
disgust. "If my Minnie had--lived, she might have grown up to be like
her," she gasped out to her friend. "I always thought she looked like
her." The friend made a sympathetic murmur of assent. Mrs. Cone
kissed Maria again, holding her little form to her crape-trimmed bosom
almost convulsively, then the two passed on. Maria heard her say again
that she always had thought the baby looked like her, and she felt
humiliated. She looked after the poor mother's streaming black veil
with resentment. Then Miss Ida Slome passed by, and Wollaston Lee
was clinging to her arm, pressing as closely to her side as he dared.
Miss Slome saw Maria, and spoke in her sweet, crisp tone.

"Good-evening, Maria," said she.
Maria stood gazing after them. Her father emerged from the store with
the bag of peaches dangling from his hand. He looked incongruous. Her
father had too much the air of a gentleman to carry a paper bag. "I do
hope your mother will like these peaches," he said.
Maria walked along with her father, and she thought with pain and
scorn how singular it was for a boy to want to go home with an old
woman like Miss Slome, when there were little girls like her.
Chapter II
Maria and her father entered the house, which was not far. It was a
quite new Queen Anne cottage of the better class, situated in a small lot
of land, and with other houses very near on either side. There was a
great clump of hydrangeas on the small smooth lawn in front, and on
the piazza stood a small table, covered with a dainty white cloth
trimmed with lace, on which were laid, in ostentatious neatness, the
evening paper and a couple of magazines. There were chairs, and palms
in jardinieres stood on either side of the flight of wooden steps.
Maria's mother was, however, in the house, seated beside the
sitting-room table, on which stood a kerosene lamp with a singularly
ugly shade. She was darning stockings. She held the stocking in her left
hand,