The baby had, in reality, grown to be a beauty among babies.  All the inflamed red and aged puckers and creases had disappeared; instead of that was the sweetest flush, like that of just-opened rosebuds.  Evelyn was a compact little baby, fat, but not overlapping and grossly fat.  It was such a matter of pride to Maria that the baby’s cheeks did not hang the least bit in the world, but had only lovely little curves and dimples.  She had become quite a connoisseur in babies.  When she saw a baby whose flabby cheeks hung down and touched its bib, she was disgusted.  She felt as if there was something morally wrong with such a baby as that.  Her baby was wrapped in the softest white things:  furs, and silk-lined embroidered cashmeres, and her little face just peeped out from the lace frill of a charming cap.  There was only one touch of color in all this whiteness, beside the tender rose of the baby’s face, and that was a little knot of pale pink baby-ribbon on the cap.  Maria often stopped to make sure that the cap was on straight, and she also stopped very often to tuck in the white fur rug, and she also stopped often to thrust her own lovely little girl-face into the sweet confusion of baby and lace and embroidery and fur, with soft kisses and little, caressing murmurs of love.  She made up little love phrases, which she would have been inexpressibly ashamed to have had overheard.  “Little honey love” was one of them—­“Sister’s own little honey love.”  Once, when walking on Elm Street under the leafless arches of the elms, where she thought she was quite alone, although it was a very bright, warm afternoon, and quite dry—­it was not a snowy winter—­she spoke more loudly than she intended, and looked up to see another, bigger girl, the daughter of the Edgham lawyer, whose name was Annie Stone.  Annie Stone was large of her age—­so large, in fact, that she had a nickname of “Fatty” in school.  It had possibly soured her, or her over-plumpness may have been due to some physical ailment which rendered her irritable.  At all events, Annie Stone had not that sweetness and placidity of temperament popularly supposed to be coincident with stoutness.  She had a bitter and sarcastic tongue for a young girl.  Maria inwardly shuddered when she saw Annie Stone’s fat, malicious face surveying her from under her fur-trimmed hat.  Annie Stone was always very well dressed, but even that did not seem to improve her mental attitude.  Her large, high-colored face was also distinctly pretty, but she did not seemed to be cognizant of that to the result of any satisfaction.

“Sister’s little honey love!” she repeated after Maria, with fairly a snarl of satire.

Maria had spirit, although she was for the moment dismayed.

“Well, she is—­so there,” said she.

“You wait till you have a few more little honey loves,” said Annie Stone, “and see how you feel.”