went to
him, he seized upon her as if she were his one straw of salvation,
and began to sob himself, and Maria knew that her mother had died.

Chapter IV

Without any doubt, Maria's self-consciousness, which was at its
height at this time, helped her to endure the loss of her mother, and
all the sad appurtenances of mourning. She had a covert pleasure at
the sight of her fair little face, in her black hat, above her black
frock. She realized a certain importance because of her grief.

However, there were times when the grief itself came uppermost; there
were nights when she lay awake crying for her mother, when she was
nothing but a bereft child in a vacuum of love. Her father's
tenderness could not make up to her for the loss of her mother's.
Very soon after her mother's death, his mercurial temperament jarred
upon her. She could not understand how he could laugh and talk as if
nothing had happened. She herself was more like her mother in
temperament--that is, like the New-Englander who goes through life
with the grief of a loss grown to his heart. Nothing could exceed
Harry Edgham's tenderness to his motherless little girl. He was
always contriving something for her pleasure and comfort; but Maria,
when her father laughed, regarded him with covert wonder and reproach.

Her aunt Maria continued to live with them, and kept the house. Aunt
Maria was very capable. It is doubtful if there are many people on
earth who are not crowned, either to their own consciousness or that
of others, with at least some small semblance of glories. Aunt Maria
had the notable distinction of living on one hundred dollars a year.
She had her rent free, but upon that she did not enlarge. Her married
brother owned a small house, of the story-and-a-half type prevalent
in New England villages, and Maria had the north side. She lived,
aside from that, upon one hundred dollars a year. She was openly
proud of it; her poverty became, in a sense, her riches. "Well, all I
have is just one hundred a year," she was fond of saying, "and I
don't complain. I don't envy anybody. I have all I want." Her little
plans for thrift were fairly Machiavellian; they showed subtly. She
told everybody what she had for her meals. She boasted that she lived
better than her brother, who was earning good wages in a
shoe-factory. She dressed very well, really much better than her
sister-in-law. "Poor Eunice never had much management," Maria was
wont to say, smoot