“Yes, you are good,” said Lily, “to take all this trouble to get that poor little thing clothes.”

“Oh, as for that,” said Maria, “Mr. George Ramsey is the one to be thanked.  It was his money that bought the things, you know.”

“He is good, too,” said Lily, and her voice was like a song with cadences of tenderness.

Maria started and glanced at her, then looked away again.  A qualm of jealousy, of which she was ashamed, seized her.  She gave her head a toss, and repeated, with a sort of defiance, “Yes, he is good enough, I suppose.”

“I think you are real sweet,” said Lily, “and I do think George Ramsey is splendid.”

“I don’t see anything very remarkable about him,” said Maria.

“Don’t you think he is handsome?”

“I don’t know.  I don’t suppose I ever think much about a man being handsome.  I don’t like handsome men, anyway.  I don’t like men, anyway, when it comes to that.”

“George Ramsey is very nice,” said Lily, and there was an accent in her speech which made the other girl glance at her.  Lily’s face was turned aside, although she was clinging close to Maria’s arm, for she was in reality afraid of being out in the night with another girl.

They walked along in silence after that.  When they came to the covered bridge which crossed the river, Lily forced Maria into a run until they reached the other side.

“It is awful in here,” she said, in a fearful whisper.

Maria laughed.  She herself did not feel the least fear, although she was more imaginative than the other girl.  At that time a kind of rage against life itself possessed her which made her insensible to ordinary fear.  She felt that she had been hardly used, and she was, in a measure, at bay.  She knew that she could fight anything until she died, and beyond that there was nothing certainly to fear.  She had become abnormal because of her strained situation as regarded society.  However, she ran because Lily wished her to do so, and they soon emerged from the dusty tunnel of the bridge, with its strong odor of horses, and glimpses between the sides of the silver current of the river, into the moon-flooded road.

After the bridge came the school-house, then, a half-mile beyond that, the Ramsey house.  The front windows were blazing with light, and the sound of a loud, drunken voice came from within.

Lily shrank and clung closely to Maria.

“Oh, Maria, I am awfully afraid to go to the door,” she whispered.  “Just hear that.  Eugene Ramsey must be home drunk, and—­and perhaps the other man, too.  I am afraid.  Don’t let’s go there.”

Maria looked about her.  “You see that board fence, then?” she said to Lily, and as she spoke she pointed to a high board fence on the other side of the street, which was completely in shadow.

“Yes.”

“Well, if you are afraid, just go and stand straight against the fence.  You will be in shadow, and if you don’t move nobody can possibly see you.  Then I will go to the door and leave the things.”