the furniture.  Mrs. Merrill had an idea, which could not be subdued, that Maria would have liked George Ramsey for herself, and she took a covert delight in pressing Maria into this service, and descanting upon the pleasant life in store for her daughter.  Maria understood with a sort of scorn Mrs. Merrill’s thought; but she said to herself that if it gave her pleasure, let her think so.  She had a character which could leave people to their mean and malicious delights for very contempt.

“Well, I guess Lily’s envied by a good many girls in Amity,” said Mrs. Merrill, almost undisguisedly, when she and Maria had settled upon a charming set of furniture.

“I dare say,” replied Maria.  “Mr. Ramsey seems a very good young man.”

“He’s the salt of the earth,” said Mrs. Merrill.  She gave a glance of thwarted malice at Maria’s pretty face as they were seated side by side in the trolley-car on their way home that day.  Her farthest imagination could discern no traces of chagrin, and Maria looked unusually well that day in a new suit.  However, she consoled herself by thinking that Maria was undoubtedly like her aunt, who would die before she let on that she was hit, and that the girl, under her calm and smiling face, was stung with envy and slighted affection.

Lily asked Maria to be her maid of honor.  She planned to be married in church, but George Ramsey unexpectedly vetoed the church wedding.  He wished a simple wedding at Lily’s house.  He even demurred at the bridal-gown and veil, but Lily had her way about that.  Maria consented with no hesitation to be her maid of honor, although she refused to allow Mrs. Merrill to purchase her dress.  She purchased some white cloth, and had it cut and fitted, and she herself made it, embroidering it with white silk, sitting up far into the night after school.  But, after all, she was destined not to wear the dress to Lily’s wedding and not to be her maid of honor.

The wedding was to be the first week of Maria’s spring vacation, and she unexpectedly received word from home that her father was not well, and that she had better go home as soon as her school was finished.  Her father himself wrote.  He wrote guardedly, evidently without Ida’s knowledge.  He said that, unless her heart was particularly set upon attending the wedding, he wished she would come home; that her vacation was short, at the best, that he had not seen her for a long time, and that he did not feel quite himself some days.  Maria read between the lines, and so did her aunt Maria, to whom she read the letter.

“Your father’s sicker than he lets on,” Aunt Maria said, bluntly.  “You’d better go.  You don’t care anything particular about going to that Merrill girl’s wedding.  She can get Fanny Ellwell for her maid of honor.  That dress Fanny wore at Eva Granger’s wedding will do for her to wear.  Your dress will come in handy next summer.  You had better go home.”

Maria sat soberly looking at the letter.  “I am afraid father is worse than he says,” she said.