all smooth lawn in front,
and on the piazza stood a small table, covered with a dainty white
cloth trimmed with lace, on which were laid, in ostentatious
neatness, the evening paper and a couple of magazines. There were
chairs, and palms in jardinieres stood on either side of the flight
of wooden steps.

Maria's mother was, however, in the house, seated beside the
sitting-room table, on which stood a kerosene lamp with a singularly
ugly shade. She was darning stockings. She held the stocking in her
left hand, and drew the thread through regularly. Her mouth was
tightly closed, which was indicative both of decision of character
and pain. Her countenance looked sallower than ever. She looked up at
her husband and little girl entering. "Well," she said, "so you've
got home."

"I've brought you some peaches, Abby," said Harry Edgham. He laid the
bag on the table, and looked anxiously at his wife. "How do you feel
now?" said he.

"I feel well enough," said she. Her reply sounded ill-humored, but
she did not intend it to be so. She was far from being ill-humored.
She was thinking of her husband's kindness in bringing the peaches.
But she looked at the paper bag on the table sharply. "If there is a
soft peach in that bag," said she, "and there's likely to be, it will
stain the table-cover, and I can never get it out."

Harry hastily removed the paper bag from the table, which was covered
with a white linen spread trimmed with lace and embroidered.

"Don't you feel as if you could eat one to-night? You didn't eat much
supper, and I thought maybe--"

"I don't believe I can to-night, but I shall like them to-morrow,"
replied Mrs. Edgham, in a voice soft with apology. Then she looked
fairly for the first time at Maria, who had purposely remained behind
her father, and her voice immediately hardened. "Maria, come here,"
said she.

Maria obeyed. She left the shelter of her father's broad back, and
stood before her mother, in her pink gingham dress, a miserable
little penitent, whose penitence was not of a high order. The
sweetness of looking pretty was still in her soul, although Wollaston
Lee had not gone home with her.

Maria's mother regarded her with a curious expression compounded of
pride and almost fierce disapproval. Harry went precipitately out of
the room with the paper bag of peaches. "You didn't wear that new
pink gingham dress that I had to hire made, trimmed with all that
lace and ribbon, to meeting to-nigh