Her married brother owned a small house, of the story-and-a-half type prevalent in New England villages, and Maria had the north side.  She lived, aside from that, upon one hundred dollars a year.  She was openly proud of it; her poverty became, in a sense, her riches.  “Well, all I have is just one hundred a year,” she was fond of saying, “and I don’t complain.  I don’t envy anybody.  I have all I want.”  Her little plans for thrift were fairly Machiavellian; they showed subtly.  She told everybody what she had for her meals.  She boasted that she lived better than her brother, who was earning good wages in a shoe-factory.  She dressed very well, really much better than her sister-in-law.  “Poor Eunice never had much management,” Maria was wont to say, smoothing down, as she spoke, the folds of her own gown.  She never wore out anything; she moved carefully and sat carefully; she did a good deal of fancy-work, but she was always very particular, even when engaged in the daintiest toil, to cover her gown with an apron, and she always held her thin-veined hands high.  She charged this upon her niece Maria when she had her new black clothes.  “Now, Maria,” said she, “there is one thing I want you to remember, here is nothin’—­” (Aunt Maria elided her final “g” like most New-Englanders, although she was not deficient in education, and even prided herself upon her reading.) “Black is the worst thing in the world to grow shiny.  Folks can talk all they want to about black bein’ durable.  It isn’t.  It grows shiny.  And if you will always remember one thing when you are at home, to wear an apron when you are doin’ anything, and when you are away, to hold your hands high, you will gain by it.  There is no need of anybody gettin’ the front breadths of their dresses all shiny by rubbin’ their hands on them.  When you are at school you must remember and hold your school-books so they won’t touch your dress.  Then there is another thing you must remember, not to move your arms any more than you can help, that makes the waist wear out under the arms.  There isn’t any need of your movin’ your arms much if any when you are in school, that I can see, and when you come home you can change your dress.  You might just as well wear out your colored dresses when you are home.  Nobody is goin’ to see you.  If anybody comes in that I think is goin’ to mind, you can just slip up-stairs, and put on your black dress.  It isn’t as if you had a little sister to take your things—­they ought to be worn out.”

It therefore happened that Maria was dressed the greater part of the time, in her own home, where she missed her mother most, in bright-colored array, and in funeral attire outside.  She told her father about it, but he had not a large income, and it had been severely taxed by his wife’s almost tragic illness and death.  Besides, if the truth were known, he disliked to see Maria in mourning, and the humor of the thing also appealed to him.

“You had better wear what your aunt says, dear.  You feel just the same in your heart, don’t you?” asked Harry Edgham, with that light laugh of his, which always so shocked his serious little daughter.