“Now go up to your own room just as still as you can,” said she, and her voice sounded terrible even in her own ears.  She waited until she heard the key softly turn in the door of the Merrill house.  Then she sped home and up to her own room.  Then she lay down in bed again and waited for broad daylight.

Chapter XXI

When Maria dressed herself the next morning, she had an odd, shamed expression as she looked at herself in her glass while braiding her hair.  It actually seemed to her as if she herself, and not Lily Merrill, had so betrayed herself and given way to an unsought love.  She felt as if she saw Lily instead of herself, and she was at once humiliated and angered.  She had to pass Lily’s house on her way to school, and she did not once look up, although she had a conviction that Lily was watching her from one of the sitting-room windows.  It was a wild winter day, with frequent gusts of wind swaying the trees to the breaking of the softer branches, and flurries of snow.  It was hard work to keep the school-house warm.  Maria, in the midst of her perturbation, had a comforted feeling at seeing Jessy Ramsey in her warm clothing.  She passed her arm around the little girl at recess; it was so cold that only a few of the boys went outside.

“Have you got them on, dear?” she whispered.

“Yes’m,” said Jessy.  Then, to Maria’s consternation, she caught her hand and kissed it, and began sobbing.  “They’re awful warm,” sobbed Jessy Ramsey, looking at Maria with her little, convulsed face.

“Hush, child,” said Maria.  “There’s nothing to cry about.  Mind you keep them nice.  Have you got a bureau-drawer you can put them in?—­those you haven’t on?  Don’t cry.  That’s silly.”

“I ’ain’t got no bureau,” sobbed Jessy.  “But—­”

“Haven’t any,” corrected Maria.

“Haven’t any bureau-drawer,” said the child.  “But I got a box what somethin’—­”

“That something,” said Maria.

“That something came from the store in, an’ I’ve got ’em—­”

“Them.”

“Them all packed away.  They’re awful warm.”

“Don’t cry, dear,” said Maria.

The other children did not seem to be noticing them.  Suddenly Maria, who still had her arm around the thin shoulders of the little girl, stooped and kissed her rather grimy but soft little cheek.  As she did so, she experienced the same feeling which she used to have when caressing her little sister Evelyn.  It was a sort of rapture of tenderness and protection.  It was the maternal instinct glorified and rendered spiritual by maidenhood, and its timid desires.  Jessy Ramsey’s eyes looked up into Maria’s like blue violets, and Maria noticed with a sudden throb that they were like George Ramsey’s.  Jessy, coming as she did from a degenerate, unbeautiful branch of the family-tree, had yet some of the true Ramsey features, and, among others, she had the true Ramsey eyes.  They were large and very dark blue, and they were set in deep, pathetic hollows.  As she looked up at Maria, it was exactly as if George were looking at her with pleading and timid love.  Maria took her arm sudden away from the child.