, although she lied. "I don't think he is
handsome at all. He looks intelligent and sensible, but as for
handsome--"

"Oh, don't you think so?" cried the other. Then she caught herself
short, for Wollaston Lee, with his mother on his arm, came up. They
said good-evening, and all four passed in.

The platform of the chapel was occupied by a great Christmas-tree.
The chapel itself was trimmed with evergreens and holly. The moment
Maria entered, after she had removed her hat in a room which was
utilized as a dressing-room, and pinned her roses on her shoulder,
she became sensible of a peculiar intoxication as of some new
happiness and festivity, of a cup of joy which she had hitherto not
tasted. The spicy odor of the evergreens, even the odor of
oyster-stew from a room beyond where supper was to be served, that,
and cake, and the sweetness of her own roses, raised her to a sense
of elation which she had never before had. She sat with the other
teachers well towards the front. Wollaston was with his mother on the
right. Maria saw with a feeling of relief the people with whom the
Lees had formerly boarded presently enter and sit with them. She
thought that Wollaston would be free to walk to the trolley with her
if he so wished. She felt surer and surer that he did so wish. Once
she caught him looking at her, and when she answered his smile she
felt her own lips stiff, and realized how her heart pounded against
her side. She experienced something like a great pain which was still
a great joy. Suddenly everything seemed unreal to her. When the
presents were distributed, it was still so unreal that she did not
feel as pleased as she would have done with the number for poor
little Evelyn at home. She hardly knew what she received herself.
They were the usual useless and undesirable tokens from her class,
and others more desirable from the other lady teachers. Wollaston
Lee's name was often called. Again Maria experienced that unworthy
sensation of malicious glee that all this was lavished upon him when
he was in reality hers and beyond the reach of any of these smiling
girls with eyes of covert wistfulness upon the handsome young
principal.

After the festivities were over, Maria adjusted her hat in the
dressing-room and fastened her long, blue cloak. She wrapped her
roses again in the tissue-paper. They were very precious to her. The
teacher whom she had met on entering the academy was fastening her
cloak, and she gazed at