The quick tears rushed to Polly’s eyes; for Edgar’s stiff manner sat curiously on him, and she feared she had annoyed him by too much advice.  “Oh, Edgar,” she said, with a quivering lip, “I did n’t mean to pose or to preach!  You know how full of faults I am, and if I were a boy I should be worser I was only trying to help a little, eves if I am younger and a girl!  Don’t—­don’t think I was setting myself up as better than you; that’s so mean and conceited and small!  Edgar dear, I am so proud to think you told me your troubles; don’t turn away from me, or I shall think you are sorry you trusted me!” and Polly laid a persuasive, disarming hand on the lad’s shoulder.

Suddenly Edgar’s heart throbbed with a new feeling.  He saw as in a vision the purity, fidelity, and tender yearning of a true woman’s nature shining through a girl’s eyes.  In that moment he wished as never before to be manly and worthy.  He seemed all at once to understand his mother, his sister, all women better, and with a quick impulsive gesture which he would not have understood a month before, he bent his head over astonished Polly’s hand, kissed it reverently, then opened the door and went to his room without a word.

CHAPTER XI.

THE LADY IN BLACK.

“I ’ve had a little adventure,” said Polly to her mother one afternoon.  “I went out, for the sake of the ride, on the Sutler Street cable-cars with Milly Foster.  When we came to the end of the line, Milly walked down to Greary Street to take her car home.  I went with her to the corner, and as I was coming back I saw a lady in black alighting from an elegant carriage.  She had a coachman and a footman, both with weeds on their hats, and she seemed very sad and grave; but she had such a sweet, beautiful face that I was sorry for her the first moment I looked at her.  She walked along in front of me toward the cemetery, and there we met those boys that stand about the gate with bouquets.  She glanced at the flowers as if she would like to buy some, but you know how hideous they always are, every color of the rainbow crowded in tightly together, and she looked away, dissatisfied.  I don’t know why she had n’t brought some with her,—­she looked rich enough to buy a whole conservatory; perhaps she had n’t expected to drive there.  However, Milly Foster had given me a whole armful of beautiful flowers,—­you know she has a ‘white garden:’  there were white sweet peas, Lamarque roses, and three stalks of snowy Eucharist lilies.  I need n’t tell my own mother that I did n’t stop to think twice; I just stepped up to her and said, ’I should like to give you my flowers, please.  I don’t need them, and I am sure they are just sweet and lovely enough for the place you want to lay them.’

“The tears came into her eyes,—­she was just ready to cry at anything, you know,—­and she took them at once, and said, squeezing my hand very tightly, ’I will take them, dear.  The grave of my own, and my only, little girl lies far away from this,—­the snow is falling on it to-day,—­but whenever I cannot give the flowers to her, I always find the resting-places of other children, and lay them there.  I know it makes her happy, for she was born on Christmas Day, and she was full of the Christmas spirit, always thinking of other people, never of herself.’