When she had gone, the three visiting women looked at one another, and the same covert expression of gratified malice, at some one having spoken out what was in their inmost hearts, was upon all three faces.  Ida was impassive, with her smiling lips contracted.  Mrs. Applegate again murmured something about uniting in prayer.

Maria came hurrying down-stairs.  She had in her hand her purse, which contained ten dollars, which her father had given her on her birthday, also a book of New York tickets which had been a present from Ida, and which Ida herself had borrowed several times since giving them to Maria.  Maria herself seldom went to New York, and Ida had a fashion of giving presents which might react to her own benefit.  Maria, as she passed the parlor door, glanced in and saw her step-mother rocking and staring at the vase.  Then she was out of the front-door, racing down the street with Wollaston Lee and Gladys hardly able to keep up with her.  Wollaston reached her finally, and again caught her arm.  The pressure of the hard, warm boy hand was grateful to the little, hysterical thing, who was trembling from head to foot, with a strange rigidity of tremors.  Gladys also clutched her other sleeve.

“Say, M’ria Edgham, where be you goin’?” she demanded.

“I’m going to find my little sister,” gasped out Maria.  She gave a dry sob as she spoke.

“My!” said Gladys.

“Now, Maria, hadn’t you better go back home?” ventured Wollaston.

“No,” said Maria, and she ran on towards the station.

“Come home with me to my mother,” said Wollaston, pleadingly, but a little timidly.  A girl in such a nervous strait as this was a new experience for him.

“She can go home with me,” said Gladys.  “My mother’s a heap better than Ida Slome.  Say, M’ria, all them things you said was true, but land! how did you darse?”

Maria made no reply.  She kept on.

“Say, M’ria, you don’t mean you’re goin’ to New York?” said Gladys.

“Yes, I am.  I am going to find my little sister.”

“My!” said Gladys.

“Now, Maria, don’t you think you had better go home with me, and see mother?” Wollaston said again.

But Maria seemed deaf.  In fact, she heard nothing but the sound of the approaching New York train.  She ran like a wild thing, her little, slim legs skimming the ground like a bird’s, almost as if assisted by wings.

When the train reached the station, Maria climbed in, Wollaston and Gladys after her.  Neither Wollaston nor Gladys had the slightest premeditation in the matter; they were fairly swept along by the emotion of their companion.

When the train had fairly started, Gladys, who had seated herself beside Maria, while Wollaston was in the seat behind them, heaved a deep sigh of bewilderment and terror.  “My!” said she.