It was that very night that Aunt Maria had the telegram.  She paid the boy, then she opened it with trembling fingers.  Her brother Henry and Maria were with her on the porch.  It was a warm night, and Aunt Maria wore an ancient muslin.  The south wind fluttered the ruffles on that and the yellow telegram as she read.  She was silent a moment, with mouth compressed.

“Well,” said her brother Henry, inquiringly.

Aunt Maria’s face flushed and paled.  She turned to Maria.

“Well,” she said, “you’ve got a little sister.”

“Good!” said Uncle Henry.  “Ever so much more company for you than a little brother would have been, Maria.”

Maria was silent.  She trembled and felt cold, although the night was so warm.

“Weighs seven pounds,” said Aunt Maria, in a hard voice.

Maria returned home a week from that day.  She travelled alone from Boston, and her father met her in New York.  He looked strange to her.  He was jubilant, and yet the marks of anxiety were deep.  He seemed very glad to see Maria, and talked to her about her little sister in an odd, hesitating way.

“Her name is Evelyn,” said Harry.

Maria said nothing.  She and her father were crossing the city to the ferry in a cab.

“Don’t you think that is a pretty name, dear?” asked Harry, with a queer, apologetic wistfulness.

“No, father, I think it is a very silly name,” replied Maria.

“Why, your mother and I thought it a very pretty name, dear.”

“I always thought it was the silliest name in the world,” said Maria, firmly.  However, she sat close to her father, and realized that it was something to have him to herself without Her, while crossing the city.  “I don’t know as I think Evelyn is such a very silly name, father,” she said, presently, just before they reached the ferry.

Harry bent down and kissed her.  “Father’s own little girl,” he said.

Maria felt that she had been magnanimous, for she had in reality never liked Evelyn, and would not have named a doll that.

“You will be a great deal happier with a little sister.  It will turn out for the best,” said Harry, as the cab stopped.  Harry always put a colon of optimism to all his happenings of life.

The next morning, when Ida was arrayed in a silk negligee, and the baby was washed and dressed, Maria was bidden to enter the room which had been her mother’s.  The first thing which she noticed was a faint perfume of violet-scented toilet-powder.  Then she saw Ida leaning back gracefully in a reclining-chair, with her hair carefully dressed.  The nurse held the baby:  a squirming little bundle of soft, embroidered flannel.  The nurse was French, and she awed Maria, for she spoke no English, and nobody except Ida could understand her.  She was elderly, small, and of a damaged blond type.  Maria approached Ida and kissed her.  Ida looked at her, smiling.