“Mamma is very glad,” said Ida.  She did not laugh; she saw no humor in it.  She turned to Harry.  “I think I will go in on the early train with you to-morrow, dear,” she said.  “I want to see about Maria’s new dress.”  Then she turned to Maria.  “I have been in to see Miss Keeler,” said she, “and she says she can make it for you next week, so you can have it when you begin school.  I thought of brown with a touch of blue and burnt-orange.  How would you like that?”

“I think that would be perfectly lovely,” said Maria with enthusiasm.  She cast a grateful look at her step-mother, almost a look of affection.  She was always very grateful to Ida for her new clothes, and just now clothes had a more vital interest for her than ever.  She took another stitch in her collar, with Evelyn leaning against her and kicking out first one chubby leg, then the other, and she immediately erected new air-castles, in which she figured in her brown suit with the touches of burnt-orange and blue.

A week later, when she started on the train for Wardway in her new attire, she felt entirely satisfied with herself and life in general.  She was conscious of looking charming in her new suit of brown, with the touches of blue and burnt-orange, and her new hat, also brown with blue and burnt-orange glimpses in the trimmings.  Wollaston Lee got on the same car and sat behind her.  Maud Page, the other Edgham girl who was going to the academy, had a cousin in Wardway, and had gone there the night before.  There were only Maria, Wollaston, and Edwin Shaw, who sat by himself in a corner, facing the other passengers with a slightly shamed, sulky expression.  He was very tall, and had blacked his shoes well, and the black light from them seemed to him obtrusive, the more so because his feet were very large.  He looked out of the window as the train left the station, and saw a very pretty little child with a fluff of yellow hair, carrying a big doll, climbing laboriously on a train on the other track, with the tender assistance of a brakeman.  She was in the wake of a very stout woman, who stumbled on her skirts going up the steps.  Edwin Shaw thought that the child looked like Maria’s little sister, but that she could not be, because the stout woman was a stranger to him.  Then he thought no more about it.  He gazed covertly at Maria, with the black sparkles of his shoes continuing to disturb him.  He admired Maria.  Presently he saw Wollaston Lee lean over the back of her seat and say something to her, and saw her half turn and dimple, and noticed how the lovely rose flushed the curve of her cheek, and he scowled at his shiny shoes.

As for Maria, when she felt the boy’s warm breath on her neck, her heart beat fast.  She realized herself on the portals of an air-castle.

“Well, glad you are going to leave this old town?” said Wollaston.

“I am not going to leave it, really,” replied Maria.

“Oh, of course not, but you are going to leave the old school, anyhow.  I had got mighty tired of it, hadn’t you?”