By the Light of the Soul | Page 6

here," said she, violently. "Let me unbutton your dress. I
don't see how you fastened it up yourself, anyway; you wouldn't have
thought you could, if it hadn't been for deceiving your mother. You
would have come down to me to do it, the way you always do. You
have got it buttoned wrong, anyway. You must have been a sight for
the folks who sat behind you. Well, it serves you right. Stand round
here."
"I am sorry," said Maria then. She wondered whether the wrong
fastening had showed much through the slats of the settee.
Her mother unfastened, with fingers that were at once gentle and
nervous, the pearl buttons on the back of the dress. "Take your arms
out," said she to Maria. Maria cast a glance at the window. "There's
nobody out there but your father," said Mrs. Edgham, harshly, "take
your arms out."
Maria took her arms out of the fluffy mass and stood revealed in her
little, scantily trimmed underwaist, a small, childish figure, with the
utmost delicacy of articulation as to shoulder-blades and neck. Maria
was thin to the extreme, but her bones were so small that she was
charming even in her thinness. Her little, beautifully modelled arms
were as charming as a fairy's.
"Now slip off your skirt," ordered her mother, and Maria complied and
stood in her little white petticoat, with another glance of the
exaggerated modesty of little girlhood at the window.
"Now," said her mother, "you go and hang this up in the kitchen where
it is warm, on that nail on the outside door, and maybe some of the
creases will come out. I've heard they would. I hope so, for I've got
about all I want to do without ironing this dress all over."
Maria gazed at her mother with sudden compunction and anxious love.
After all, she loved her mother down to the depths of her childish heart;
it was only that long custom had so inured her to the loving that she did

not always realize the warmth of her heart because of it. "Do you feel
sick to-night mother?" she whispered.
"No sicker than usual," replied her mother. Then she drew the delicate
little figure close to her, and kissed her with a sort of passion. "May the
Lord look out for you," she said, "if you should happen to outlive me! I
don't know what would become of you, Maria, you are so heedless,
wearing your best things every day, and everything."
Maria's face paled. "Mother, you aren't any worse?" said she, in a
terrified whisper.
"No, I am not a mite worse. Run along, child, and hang up your dress,
then go to bed; it's after nine o'clock."
It did not take much at that time to reassure Maria. She had inherited
something of the optimism of her father. She carried her pink dress into
the kitchen, with wary eyes upon the windows, and hung it up as her
mother had directed. On her return she paused a moment at the foot of
the stairs in the hall, between the dining-room and sitting-room. Then,
obeying an impulse, she ran into the sitting-room and threw her soft
little arms around her mother's neck. "I'm real sorry I wore that dress
without asking you, mother," she said. "I won't again, honest."
"Well, I hope you will remember," replied her mother. "If you wear the
best you have common you will never have anything." Her tone was
chiding, but the look on her face was infinitely caressing. She thought
privately that never was such a darling as Maria. She looked at the
softly flushed little face, with its topknot of gold, the delicate fairness
of the neck, and slender arms, and she had a rapture of something more
than possession. The beauty of the child irradiated her very soul, the
beauty and the goodness, for Maria never disobeyed but she was sorry
afterwards, and somehow glorified faults seem lovelier than cold
virtues. "Well, run up-stairs to bed," said she. "Be careful of your
lamp."
When Maria was in her own room she set the lamp on the dresser and
gazed upon her face reflected in the mirror. That was her nightly

custom, and might have been regarded as a sort of fetich worship of
self. Nothing, in fact, could have been lovelier than that face of childish
innocence and beauty, with the soft rays of the lamp illuminating it.
Her blue eyes seemed to fairly give forth light, the soft pink on her
cheeks deepened until it was like the heart of a rose. She opened her
exquisitely curved lips, and smiled at herself in a sort of ecstasy. She
turned her head this way and that in order to get different effects. She
pulled the