up," he told his mother. He was of that
age when a boy tells his mother a good deal, and he was an only child.

"She's a real pretty little girl, and her aunt says she is a good
girl," replied his mother, who regarded the whole as the antics of
infancy.

The Lees lived near the Edghams, on the same street, and Mrs. Lee and
Aunt Maria had exchanged several calls. They were, in fact, almost
intimate. The Lees were at the supper-table when Wollaston made his
deprecatory remark concerning Maria, and he had been led to do so by
the law of sequence. Mrs. Lee had made a remark about Aunt Maria to
her husband. "I believe she thinks Harry Edgham will marry her," she
said.

"That's just like you women, always trumping up something of that
kind," replied her husband. His words were rather brusque, but he
regarded, while speaking them, his wife with adoration. She was a
very pretty woman, and looked much younger than her age.

"You needn't tell me," said Mrs. Lee. "She's just left off bonnets
and got a new hat trimmed with black daisies; rather light mourning,
I call it, when her sister has not been dead a year."

"You spiteful little thing!" said her husband, still with his adoring
eyes on his wife.

"Well, it's so, anyway."

"Well, she would make Harry a good wife, I guess," said her husband,
easily; "and she would think more of the girl."

It was then that Wollaston got in his remark about poor Maria, who
had herself noticed with wonder that her aunt had bought a new hat
that spring instead of a bonnet.

"Why, Aunt Maria, I thought you always wore a bonnet!" said she,
innocently, when the hat came home from the milliner's.

"Nobody except old women are wearing bonnets now," replied her aunt,
shortly. "I saw Mrs. Rufus Jones, who is a good deal older than I, at
church Sunday with a hat trimmed with roses. The milliner told me
nobody of my age wore a bonnet."

"Did she know how old you really are, Aunt Maria?" inquired Maria
with the utmost innocence.

Harry Edgham gave a little chuckle, then came to his sister-in-law's
rescue. He had a thankful heart for even small benefits, and Aunt
Maria had done a good deal for him and his, and it had never occurred
to him that the doing might not be entirely disinterested. Besides,
Aunt Maria had always seemed to him, as well as to his daughter, very
old indeed. It might have been that the bonnets had had something to
do with it. Aunt Maria had never affected fashions beyond a