By the Light of the Soul | Page 5

she said, "so you've got home."
"I've brought you some peaches, Abby," said Harry Edgham. He laid the bag on the table, and looked anxiously at his wife. "How do you feel now?" said he.
"I feel well enough," said she. Her reply sounded ill-humored, but she did not intend it to be so. She was far from being ill-humored. She was thinking of her husband's kindness in bringing the peaches. But she looked at the paper bag on the table sharply. "If there is a soft peach in that bag," said she, "and there's likely to be, it will stain the table-cover, and I can never get it out."
Harry hastily removed the paper bag from the table, which was covered with a white linen spread trimmed with lace and embroidered.
"Don't you feel as if you could eat one to-night? You didn't eat much supper, and I thought maybe--"
"I don't believe I can to-night, but I shall like them to-morrow," replied Mrs. Edgham, in a voice soft with apology. Then she looked fairly for the first time at Maria, who had purposely remained behind her father, and her voice immediately hardened. "Maria, come here," said she.
Maria obeyed. She left the shelter of her father's broad back, and stood before her mother, in her pink gingham dress, a miserable little penitent, whose penitence was not of a high order. The sweetness of looking pretty was still in her soul, although Wollaston Lee had not gone home with her.
Maria's mother regarded her with a curious expression compounded of pride and almost fierce disapproval. Harry went precipitately out of the room with the paper bag of peaches. "You didn't wear that new pink gingham dress that I had to hire made, trimmed with all that lace and ribbon, to meeting to-night?" said Maria's mother.
Maria said nothing. It seemed to her that such an obvious fact scarcely needed words of assent.
"Damp as it is, too," said her mother.
Mrs. Edgham extended a lean, sallow hand and felt of the dainty fabric. "It is just as limp as a rag," said she, "about spoiled."
"I held it up," said Maria then, with feeble extenuation.
"Held it up!" repeated her mother, with scorn.
"I thought maybe you wouldn't care."
"Wouldn't care! That was the reason why you went out the other door then. I wondered why you did. Putting on that new pink gingham dress that I had to hire made, trimmed with all that lace and ribbon, and wearing it out in the evening, damp as it is to-night! I don't see what you were thinking of, Maria Edgham."
Maria looked down disconsolately at the lace-trimmed ruffles on her skirt, but even then she thought how pretty it was, and how pretty she must look herself standing so forlornly before her mother. She wondered how her mother could scold her when she was her own daughter, and looked so sweet. She still felt the damp coolness of the night on her cheeks, and realized a bloom on them like that of a wild rose.
But Mrs. Edgham continued. She had the high temper of the women of her race who had brought up great families to toil and fight for the Commonwealth, and she now brought it to bear upon petty things in lieu of great ones. Besides, her illness made her irritable. She found a certain relief from her constant pain in scolding this child of her heart, whom secretly she admired as she admired no other living thing. Even as she scolded, she regarded her in the pink dress with triumph. "I should think you would be ashamed of yourself, Maria Edgham," said she, in a high voice.
Harry Edgham, who had deposited the peaches in the ice-box, and had been about to enter the room, retreated. He went out the other door himself, and round upon the piazza, when presently the smoke of his cigar stole into the room. Then Mrs. Edgham included him in her wrath.
"You and your father are just alike," said she, bitterly. "You both of you will do just what you want to, whether or no. He will smoke, though he knows it makes me worse, besides costing more than he can afford, and you will put on your best dress, without asking leave, and wear it out in a damp night, and spoil it."
Maria continued to stand still, and her mother to regard her with that odd mixture of worshipful love and chiding. Suddenly Mrs. Edgham closed her mouth more tightly.
"Stand round 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.