way, haven't you, Maria?"

"Yes, my hat didn't set well on my head with my hair the way I was
wearing it," replied Aunt Maria with dignity; still she blushed. She
knew that her own hair did not entirely conceal the under structure,
and she knew, too, why she wore the pompadour.

Harry Edgham recognized the first fact with simple pity that his
sister-in-law's hair was so thin. He remembered hearing a hair-tonic
recommended by another man in the office, and he wondered privately
if Maria would feel hurt if he brought some for her. Of the other
fact he had not the least suspicion. He said: "Well, it's real
becoming to you, Maria. I guess I like it better than the other way.
I notice all the girls seem to wear their hair so nowadays."

Aunt Maria smiled at him gratefully. When her sister had married him,
she had wondered what on earth she saw in Harry Edgham; now he seemed
to her a very likeable man.

When Maria sat in school that morning, her aunt's pompadour diverted
her mind from her book; then she caught Gladys Mann's wondering eyes
upon her, and she studied again.

While Maria could scarcely be said to have an intimate friend at
school, a little girl is a monstrosity who has neither a friend nor a
disciple; she had her disciple, whose name was Gladys Mann. Gladys
was herself a little outside the pale. Most of her father's earnings
went for drink, and Gladys's mother was openly known to take in
washing to make both ends meet, and keep the girl at school at all;
moreover, she herself came of one of the poor white families which
flourish in New Jersey as well as at the South, although in less
numbers. Gladys's mother was rather a marvel, inasmuch as she was
willing to take in washing, and do it well too, but Gladys had no
higher rank for that. She was herself rather a pathetic little soul,
dingily pretty, using the patois of her kind, and always at the fag
end of her classes. Her education, so far, seemed to meet with no
practical results in the child herself. Her brain merely filtered
learning like a sieve; but she thought Maria Edgham was a wonder, and
it was really through her, and her alone, that she obtained any
education.

"What makes you always say 'have went'?" Maria would inquire, with a
half-kindly, half-supercilious glance at her satellite.

"What had I ought to say," Gladys would inquire, meekly--"have came?"

"Have gone," replied Maria, with supreme scorn.

"Then when my mother has came home shall