darling; run down to mamma."

"Evelyn don't want mamma. Evelyn wants sister."

"Papa is down there, too. Put on your clothes, like a nice girl, and
show papa how smart you can be; then run down."

"Evelyn can't button up her dress."

"Put everything on but that, then run down, and mamma can do it for
you."

"Let me in, sister."

"No, dear," Maria said again. "Evelyn can't come in now."

There came a little whimper of grief and anger which cut Maria's
heart, but she was firm. She could not have even Evelyn then. She had
to be alone with the knowledge she had just gained of her father's
state of health. She sat down in her little chair by the window; it
was her own baby chair, which she had kept all these years, and in
which she could still sit comfortably, she was so slender. Then she
put her face in her hands and began to weep. She had never wept as
she did then, not even when her mother died. She was so much younger
when her mother died that her sensibilities had not acquired their
full acumen; then, too, she had not had at that time the awful
foretaste of a desolate future which tinctured with bitter her very
soul. Somehow, although Maria had noticed for a long time that her
father did not look as he had done, it had never occurred to her that
that which had happened to her mother could happen to her father. She
had been like one in a house which has been struck by lightning, and
had been rendered thereby incredulous of a second stroke. It had not
occurred to her that whereas she had lost her mother, she could also
lose her father. It seemed like too heavy a hammer-stroke of
Providence to believe in and keep her reason. She had thought that
her father was losing his youth, that his hair turning gray had much
to do with his altered looks. She had never thought of death. It
seemed to her monstrous. A rage against Providence, like nothing
which she had known before, was over her. Why should she lose
everything? What had she done? She reviewed her past life, and she
defended herself like Job, with her summary of self-righteousness.
She had always done right, so far as she knew. Her sins had been so
petty as hardly to deserve the name of sins. She remembered how she
had once enjoyed seeing her face in her looking-glass, how she had
liked pretty, new dresses, and she could not make that seem very
culpable. She remembered how, although she had never loved her
step-mother, she had observed, except on that one occasio