“I wish I could have a picture of you as you look to-night,” he said.

“Well, I am afraid that you will have to do without it,” Maria said shortly.  Still the boy remained insensible to rebuff.

“What are you carrying, Miss Edgham?” he asked, looking at her roses enveloped in tissue paper.

“Some roses which a friend sent me,” Maria replied.

Then the boy colored and paled a little.  He jumped at once to the conclusion that the friend was a man.  “I suppose you are going to wear them,” he said pitifully.

“Yes, I am,” replied Maria.

The boy in his turn sat as far away as possible in his corner of the seat, and gazed ahead with a gloomy air.

When they reached the academy grounds he quite deserted Maria, who walked to the chapel with one of the other teachers, who entered at the same time.  She was a young lady who lived in Westbridge.  Maria caught the pale glimmer of an evening gown under her long, red cloak trimmed with white fur, and reflected that possibly she also had adorned herself especially for Wollaston’s benefit, and again she felt that unworthy sense of pride and amusement.  The girl herself echoed her thoughts, for she said soon after Maria had greeted her: 

“I saw Mr. Lee and his mother starting.”

“Did you?” returned Maria.

“Don’t you think he is very handsome?” asked the girl in a sentimental tone which irritated.

“No,” said Maria sharply, although she lied.  “I don’t think he is handsome at all.  He looks intelligent and sensible, but as for handsome—­”

“Oh, don’t you think so?” cried the other.  Then she caught herself short, for Wollaston Lee, with his mother on his arm, came up.  They said good-evening, and all four passed in.

The platform of the chapel was occupied by a great Christmas-tree.  The chapel itself was trimmed with evergreens and holly.  The moment Maria entered, after she had removed her hat in a room which was utilized as a dressing-room, and pinned her roses on her shoulder, she became sensible of a peculiar intoxication as of some new happiness and festivity, of a cup of joy which she had hitherto not tasted.  The spicy odor of the evergreens, even the odor of oyster-stew from a room beyond where supper was to be served, that, and cake, and the sweetness of her own roses, raised her to a sense of elation which she had never before had.  She sat with the other teachers well towards the front.  Wollaston was with his mother on the right.  Maria saw with a feeling of relief the people with whom the Lees had formerly boarded presently enter and sit with them.  She thought that Wollaston would be free to walk to the trolley with her if he so wished.  She felt surer and surer that he did so wish.  Once she caught him looking at her, and when she answered his smile she felt her own lips stiff, and realized how her heart pounded against her side.  She experienced something like a great