hts, to have been a rich,
husky drone, instead of bearing a resemblance to a parrot's. "Say,
Wollaston Lee," she called out, and the boy approached perforce,
lifting his hat--"say," said Maud, "I hear you and Maria eloped last
night." Then she giggled.

The boy cast a glance of mistrust and doubt at Maria. His face turned
crimson.

"You are telling awful whoppers, Maud Page," Maria responded,
promptly, and his face cleared. "We just went in to find Evelyn."

"Oh!" said Maud, teasingly.

"You are mean to talk so," said Maria.

Maud laughed provokingly.

"What made Wollaston go for, then?" she asked.

"Do you suppose anybody would let a girl go alone to New York on a
night train?" said Maria, with desperate spirit. "He went because he
was polite, so there."

Wollaston said nothing. He tried to look haughty, but succeeded in
looking sheepish.

"Gladys Mann went, too," said Maria.

"I don't see what makes you go with a girl like that anywhere?" said
Maud.

"She's as good as anybody," said Maria.

"Maybe she is," returned Maud. Then she glanced at Wollaston, who was
looking away, and whispered in Maria's ear: "They talk like fury
about her, and her mother, too."

"I don't care," Maria said, stoutly. "She was down at the station and
told me how Evelyn was lost, and then she went in with me."

Maud laughed her aggravating laugh again.

"Well, maybe it was just as well she did," she said, "or else they
would have said you and Wollaston had eloped, sure."

Maria began to speak, but her voice was drowned by the rumble of the
New York train on the other track. The Wardway train was late.
Usually the two trains met at the station.

However, the New York train had only just pulled out of sight before
the Wardway train came in. As Maria climbed on the train she felt a
paper thrust forcibly into her hand, which closed over it
instinctively. She sat with Maud, and had no opportunity to look at
it all the way to Wardway. She slipped it slyly into her Algebra.

Maud's eyes were sharp. "What's that you are putting in your
Algebra?" she asked.

"A marker," replied Maria. She felt that Maud's curiosity was such
that it justified a white lie.

She had no chance to read the paper which Wollaston had slipped into
her hand until she was fairly in school. Then she read it under cover
of a book. It was very short, and quite manly, although manifestly
written under great perturbation of spirit.

Wollaston wrote: "Shal