her,
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