The next morning Maria, on her way to school in the rain, passing under the unconquerable golden glow of the maples, cast a surreptitious glance at the old Ramsey house as she passed.  It had been wonderfully changed for the better.  Even the garden at the side next her aunt’s house was no longer a weedy enclosure, but displayed an array of hardy flowers which the frost had not yet affected.  Marigolds tossed their golden and russet balls through the misty wind of the rain, princess-feathers waved bravely, and chrysanthemums showed in gorgeous clumps of rose and yellow and white.  As she passed, a tidy maid emerged from the front door and began sweeping out the rain which had lodged in the old hollows of the stone stoop, worn by the steps of generations.  The rain flew before her plying broom in a white foam.  The maid wore a cap and a wide, white apron.  Maria reflected that the Ramseys had indeed come into palmier days, since they kept a maid so attired.  She thought of George Ramsey with his patched trousers, and again the old feeling of repulsion and wonder at herself that she could have had romantic dreams about him came over her.  Maria felt unutterably old that morning, and yet she had a little, childish dread of her new duties.  She was in reality afraid of the school-children, although she did not show it.  She got through the day very creditably, although that night she was tired as she had never been in her life, and, curiously enough, her sense of smell seemed to be the most affected.  Many of her pupils came from poor families, the families of operatives in the paper-mills, and their garments were shabby and unclean.  Soaked with rain, they gave out pungent odors.  Maria’s sense of smell was very highly developed.  It seemed to her that her very soul was permeated, her very thoughts and imagination, with the odor of damp, unclean clothing, of draggled gowns and wraps and hats and wet leather.  She could not eat her supper; she could not eat the luncheon which her aunt had put up for her, since the school being a mile away, it was too far to walk home for the noonday dinner in the rain.

“You ’ain’t eat hardly a mite of luncheon,” Aunt Maria said when she opened the box.

“I did not feel very hungry,” Maria replied, apologetically.

“If you don’t eat, you’ll never hold out school-teaching in the world,” said Aunt Maria.

She repeated it when Maria scarcely tasted her supper, although it was a nice one—­cold ham, and scrambled eggs, scrambled with cream, and delicious slabs of layer-cake.  “You’ll never hold out in the world if you don’t eat,” said she.

“To tell the truth,” replied Maria, “I can smell those poor children’s wet clothes so that it has taken away all my appetite.”

“Land! you’ll have to get over that,” said Aunt Maria.

“It seems to me that everything smells and tastes of wet, dirty clothes and shoes,” said Maria.

“You’ll have to learn not to be so particular,” said Aunt Maria, and she spoke with the same affectionate severity that Maria remembered in her mother.  “Put it out of your mind,” she added.