which his mother had suggested the evening before, that she must consider that his attentions were significant, or she would not take so much trouble to repulse them, came over him again.  He boarded the car, which was late, and moving sluggishly through the snow.  It came to a full stop in front of the Merrill house, and George saw Lily’s head behind a stand of ferns in one of the front windows.  He raised his hat, and she bowed, and he could see her blush even at that distance.  He thought again, comfortably, that Lily, remembering their childish caresses, could attach no importance to what had happened the night before, and yet a thrill of tenderness and pleasure shot through him, and he seemed to feel again the flower-like touch of her lips.  It was a solace for any man, after receiving such an unmistakable rebuff as he had just received from Maria Edgham.  He had no conception of the girl plodding through the snow to her daily task.  He did not dream that she saw, instead of the snowy road before, a long stretch of dreary future, brought about by that very rebuff.  But she was quite merciless with herself.  She would not yield for a moment to regrets.  She accepted that stretch of dreary future with a defiant acquiescence.  She bowed pleasantly to the acquaintances whom she met.  They were not many that morning, for the road was hardly passable in places, being overcurved here and there with blue, diamond-crested, snowlike cascades, and now presenting ridges like graves.  Half-way to the school-house, Maria saw the village snow-plough, drawn by a struggling horse and guided by a red-faced man.  She stood aside to let it pass.  The man did not look at her.  He frowned ahead at his task.  He was quite an old man, and bent, but with the red of youth brought forth in his cheeks by the frosty air.

“Everybody has to work in some way,” Maria thought, “and very few get happiness for their labor.”

She reflected how soon that man would be lying stiff and stark under the wintry snows and the summer heats, and how nothing which might trouble him now would matter.  She reflected that, although she herself was younger and had presumably longer to live, that the time would inevitably come when even such unhappiness as weighed her down this morning would not matter.  She continued in the ineffectual track which the snow-plough had made, with a certain pleasure in the exertion.  All Maria’s heights of life, her mountain-summits which she would agonize to reach, were spiritual.  Labor in itself could never daunt her.  Always her spirit, the finer essence of her, would soar butterfly-like above her toiling members.

It was a beautiful morning; the trees were heavily bent with snow, which gave out lustres like jewels.  The air had a very purity of life in it.  Maria inhaled the frosty, clear air, and regarded the trees as one might have done who was taking a stimulant.  She kept her mind upon them, and would not think of George Ramsey.  As she neared the school-house, the first child who ran to meet her, stumbling through the snow, was little Jessy Ramsey.  Maria forced herself to meet smilingly the upward, loving look of those blue Ramsey eyes.  She bent down and kissed Jessy, and the little thing danced at her side in a rapture.