. Harry put his arm around
his little daughter, but not as if he realized it, and she peeked
around and saw how closely he was embracing Miss Slome, whose cheeks
were a beautiful color, but whose set smile never relaxed. It seemed
to Maria that Miss Slome smiled exactly like a doll, as if the smile
were made on her face by something outside, not by anything within.
Maria thought her father was very silly. She felt scorn, shame, and
indignation at the same time. Maria was glad when it was time to go
home. When her father kissed Miss Slome, she blushed, and turned away
her head.

Going home, Harry almost danced along the street. He was as
light-hearted as a boy, and as thoughtlessly in love.

"Well, dear, what do you think of your new mother?" he asked, gayly,
as they passed under the maples, which were turning, and whose
foliage sprayed overhead with a radiance of gold in the electric
light.

Then Maria made that inevitable rejoinder which is made always, which
is at once trite and pathetic. "I can't call her mother," she said.

But Harry only laughed. He was too delighted and triumphant to
realize the pain of the child, although he loved her. "Oh, well,
dear, you needn't until you feel like it," he said.

"What am I going to call her, father?" asked Maria, seriously.

"Oh, anything. Call her Ida."

"She is too old for me to call her that," replied Maria.

"Old? Why, dear, Ida is only a girl."

"She is a good deal over thirty," said Maria. "I call that very old."

"You won't, when you get there yourself," replied Harry, with another
laugh. "Well, dear, suit yourself. Call her anything you like."

It ended by Maria never calling her anything except "you," and
referring to her as "she" and "her." The woman, in fact, became a
pronoun for the child, who in her honesty and loyalty could never put
another word in the place which had belonged to the noun, and feel
satisfied.

Maria was very docile, outwardly, in those days, but inside she was
in a tumult of rebellion. She went home with Miss Slome when she was
asked, but she was never gracious in response to the doll-like smile,
and the caressing words, which were to her as automatic as the smile.
Sometimes it seemed to Maria that if she could only have her own
mother scold her, instead of Miss Slome's talking so sweetly to her,
she would give the whole world.

For some unexplained cause, the sorrow which Maria had passed through
had seemed to stop her own emot