u know--how me meet somewhere, and he tells me how much he loves
me, and how we kiss each other again. It makes me happy. I go to
sleep so. Do you think it is wrong, sister?"

Maria remembered her own childhood. "Perhaps it isn't wrong, exactly,
dear," she said, "but I wouldn't, if I were you. I think it is better
not."

"Well, I will try not to," said Evelyn, with a sigh. "He told Amy
Jones I was the prettiest girl in school. Of course we couldn't be
married for a long time, and I wouldn't be Mrs. Jenks. But, now
you've come home, maybe I sha'n't want to think so much about him."

Maria found new maids when she reached home. Ida did not keep her
domestics very long. However, nobody could say that was her fault in
this age when man-servants and maid-servants buzz angrily, like bees,
over household tasks and are constantly hungering for new fields.

"We have had two cooks and two new second-girls since you went away,"
Evelyn said, when they stood waiting for the front door to be opened,
and the man with Maria's trunk stood behind them. "The last
second-girl we had stole"--Evelyn said the last in a horrified
whisper--"and the last cook couldn't cook. The cook we have now is
named Agnes, and the second-girl is Irene. Agnes lets me go out in
the kitchen and make candy, and she always makes a little cake for
me; but I don't like Irene. She says things under her breath when she
thinks nobody will hear, and she makes up my bed so it is all
wrinkly. I shouldn't be surprised if she stole, too."

Then the door opened and a white-capped maid, with a rather pretty
face, evidently of the same class as Gladys Mann, appeared.

"This is my sister, Miss Maria, Irene," said Evelyn.

The maid nodded and said something inarticulate.

Maria said "How do you do?" to her, and asked her to tell the man
where to carry the trunk.

When the trunk was in Maria's old room, and Maria had smoothed her
hair and washed her face and hands, she and Evelyn sat down in the
parlor and waited. The parlor looked to Maria, after poor Aunt
Maria's sparse old furnishings, more luxurious than she had
remembered it. In fact, it had been improved. There were some
splendid palms in the bay-window, and some new articles of furniture.
The windows, also, had been enlarged, and were hung with new curtains
of filmy lace, with thin, red silk over them. The whole room seemed
full of rosy light.

"I wish you would ask Irene to fix the hearth fire," Evelyn had sa