little golden-cropped head (she wore her hair short) in cool puffs, and she saw great, plumy masses of shadow, themselves like the substance of which dreams were made.  The trees grew thickly down the slope, which the church crowned, and at the bottom of the slope rushed the river, which she heard like a refrain through the intermittent soughing of the trees.  A whippoorwill was singing somewhere out there, and the katydids shrieked so high that they almost surmounted dreams.  She could smell wild grapes and pine and other mingled odors of unknown herbs, and the earth itself.  There had been a hard shower that afternoon, and the earth still seemed to cry out with pleasure because of it.  Maria had worn her old shoes to church, lest she spoil her best ones; but she wore her pretty pink gingham gown, and her hat with a wreath of rosebuds, and she felt to the utmost the attractiveness of her appearance.  She, however, felt somewhat conscience-stricken on account of the pink gingham gown.  It was a new one, and her mother had been obliged to have it made by a dress-maker, and had paid three dollars for that, beside the trimmings, which were lace and ribbon.  Maria wore the gown without her mother’s knowledge.  She had in fact stolen down the backstairs on that account, and gone out the south door in order that her mother should not see her.  Maria’s mother was ill lately, and had not been able to go to church, nor even to perform her usual tasks.  She had always made Maria’s gowns herself until this pink gingham.

Maria’s mother was originally from New England, and her conscience was abnormally active.  Her father was of New Jersey, and his conscience, while no one would venture to say that it was defective, did not in the least interfere with his enjoyment of life.

“Oh, well, Abby,” her father would reply, easily, when her mother expressed her distress that she was unable to work as she had done, “we shall manage somehow.  Don’t worry, Abby.”  Worry in another irritated him even more than in himself.

“Well, Maria can’t help much while she is in school.  She is a delicate little thing, and sometimes I am worried about her.”

“Oh, Maria can’t be expected to do much while she is in school,” her father said, easily.  “We’ll manage somehow, only for Heaven’s sake don’t worry.”

Then Maria’s father had taken his hat and gone down street.  He always went down street of an evening.  Maria, who had been sitting on the porch, had heard every word of the conversation which had been carried on in the sitting-room that very evening.  It did not alarm her at all because her mother considered her delicate.  Instead, she had a vague sense of distinction on account of it.  It was as if she realized being a flower rather than a vegetable.  She thought of it that night as she sat in meeting.  She glanced across at a girl who went to the same school—­a large, heavily built child with a coarseness of grain showing in every feature—­and