and that people might repeat it and laugh.  He was relieved when it was all over and he and Ida were in the cab, driving to the station.  When they were rolling rapidly through a lonely part of the road, he put his arm around his new wife, and kissed her.  She received his kiss, and looked at him with her set smile and the set sparkle in her beautiful eyes.  Again the feeling of almost terror which he had experienced the night when Maria had torn the paper off in her mother’s room, came over him.  However, he made an effort and threw it off.

“Poor little Maria looked charming, thanks to you, dearest,” he said, tenderly.

“Yes, I thought she did.  That gray suit was just the thing for her, wasn’t it?  I never saw her look so pretty before,” returned Ida, and her tone was full of self-praise for her goodness to Maria.

“Well, she will be a great deal happier,” said Harry.  “It was a lonesome life for a child to lead.”

Harry Edgham had not an atom of tact.  Any woman might have judged from his remarks that she had been married on account of Maria; but Ida only responded with her never-changing smile.

“Yes,” said she, “I think myself that she will be much happier, dear.”  Privately she rather did resent her husband’s speech, but she never lost sight of the fact that a smile is more becoming than a frown.

Maria remained boarding at Mrs. Jonas White’s until her father and his new wife returned.  She did not have a very happy time.  In the first place, the rather effusive pity with which she was treated by the female portion of the White family, irritated her.  She began to consider that, now her father had married, his wife was a member of her family, and not to be decried.  Maria had a great deal of pride when those belonging to her were concerned.  One day she retorted pertly when some covert remark, not altogether to her new mother’s laudation, had been made by Lillian.

“I think she is perfectly lovely,” said she, with a toss of her head.

Lillian and her mother looked at each other.  Then Lillian, who was not her match for pertness, spoke.

“Have you made up your mind what to call her?” she asked.  “Mummer, or mother?”

“I shall call her whatever I please,” replied Maria; “it is nobody’s business.”  Then she arose and went out of the room, with an absurd little strut.

“Lord a-massy!” observed Mrs. Jonas White, after she had gone.

“I guess Ida Slome will have her hands full with that young one,” observed Lillian.

“I guess she will, too,” assented her mother.  “She was real sassy.  Well, her mother had a temper of her own; guess she’s got some of it.”