you want to marry Miss Slome, why don't you, instead of my father?” inquired Maria, bluntly, going straight to the point.
“I haven't got any money,” replied Wollaston, crossly; “all a woman thinks of is money. How'd I buy her dresses?”
“I don't believe but your father would be willing for you to live at home with her, and buy her dresses, till you got so you could earn yourself.”
“She wouldn't have me,” said the boy, and he fairly dug his flushed face into the mass of wild-flowers.
“You are a good deal younger than father,” said Maria.
“Your father he can give her a diamond ring, and I haven't got more'n forty cents, and I don't believe that would buy much of anything,” said Wollaston, in muffled tones of grief and rage.
Maria felt a shock at the idea of a diamond ring. Her mother had never owned one.
“Oh, I don't believe father will ever give her a diamond ring in the world,” said she.
“She's wearing one, anyhow—I saw it,” said Wollaston. “Where did she get it if he didn't give it to her, I'd like to know?”
Maria felt cold.
“I don't believe it,” she said again. “Teacher is all alone in the school-house, correcting exercises. Why don't you get right up, and go back and ask her? I'll go with you, if you want me to.”
Wollaston raised himself indeterminately upon one elbow.
“Come along,” urged Maria.
Wollaston got up slowly. His face was a burning red.
“You are a good deal younger and better looking than father,” urged Maria, traitorously.
The boy was only a year older than Maria. He was much larger and taller, but although she looked a child, at that moment he looked younger. Both of his brown hands hung at his sides, clinched like a baby's. He had a sulky expression.
“Come along,” urged the girl.
He stood kicking the ground hesitatingly for a moment, then he followed the girl across the field. They went down the road until they came to the school-house. Miss Slome was still there; her graceful profile could be seen at a window.
Both children marched in upon Miss Slome, who was in a recitation-room, bending over a desk. She looked up, and her face lightened at sight of Maria.
“Oh, it's you, dear?” said she.
Maria then saw, for the first time, the white sparkle of a diamond on the third finger of her left hand. She felt that she hated her.
“He wants to speak to you,” she said, indicating Wollaston with a turn of her hand.
Miss Slome looked inquiringly at Wollaston, who stood before her like a culprit, blushing and shuffling, and yet with a sort of doggedness.
“Well, what is it, Wollaston?” she asked, patronizingly.
“I came back to ask you if—you would have me?” said Wollaston, and his voice was hardly audible.
Miss Ida Slome looked at him in amazement; she was utterly dazed.
“Have you?” she repeated. “I think I do not quite understand you. What do you mean by ‘have you,’ Wollaston?”
“Marry me,” burst forth the boy.
There was a silence. Maria looked at Miss Slome, and, to her utter indignation, the teacher's lips were twitching, and it took a good deal to make Miss Slome laugh, too; she had not much sense of humor.
In a second Wollaston stole a furtive glance at Miss Slome, which was an absurd parody on a glance of a man under similar circumstances, and Miss Slome, who had had experience in such matters, laughed outright.
The boy turned white. The woman did not realize it, but it was really a cruel thing which she was doing. She laughed heartily.
“Why, my dear boy,” she said. “You are too young and I am too old. You had better wait and marry Maria, when you are both grown up.”
Wollaston turned his back upon her, and marched out of the room. Maria lingered, in the vain hope that she might bring the teacher to a reconsideration of the matter.
“He's a good deal younger than father, and he's better looking,” said she.
Miss Slome blushed then.
“Oh, you sweet little thing, then you know—” she began.
Maria interrupted her. She became still more traitorous to her father.
“Father has a real bad temper, when things go wrong,” said she. “Mother always said so.”
Miss Slome only laughed harder.
“You funny little darling,” she said.
“And Wollaston has a real good disposition, his mother told my aunt Maria so,” she persisted.
The room fairly rang with Miss Slome's laughter, although she tried to subdue it. Maria persisted.
“And father isn't a mite handy about the house,” said she. “And Mrs. Lee told Aunt Maria that Wollaston could wipe dishes and sweep as well as a girl.”
Miss Slome laughed.
“And I've got a bad temper, too, when I'm crossed; mother always said so,” said Maria. Her lip quivered.
Miss Slome left her desk, came over to Maria, and, in spite of her shrinking away, caught her in her arms.
“You are a little darling,” said she, “and I am not a bit afraid of your temper.” She hesitated a moment, looking at the child's averted face, and coloring. “My dear, has your father told you?” she whispered; then, “I didn't know he had.”
“No, ma'am, he hasn't,” said Maria. She fairly pulled herself loose from Miss Slome and ran out of the room. Her eyes were almost blinded with tears; she could scarcely see Wollaston Lee on the road, ahead of her, also running. He seemed to waver as he ran. Maria called out faintly. He evidently heard, for he slackened his pace a little; then he ran faster than ever. Maria called again. This time the boy stopped until the girl came up. He picked a piece of grass, as he waited, and began chewing it.
“How do you know that isn't poison?” said Maria, breathlessly.
“Don't care if it is; hope it is,” said the boy.
“It's wicked to talk so.”
“Let it be wicked then.”
“I don't see how I am to blame for any of it,” Maria said, in a bewildered sort of way. It was the cry of the woman, the primitive cry of the primitive scape-goat of Creation. Already Maria began to feel the necessity of fitting her little shoulders to the blame of life, which she had inherited from her Mother Eve, but she was as yet bewildered by the necessity.
“Ain't it your father that's going to marry her?” inquired Wollaston, fiercely.
“I don't want him to marry her any more than you do,” said Maria. “I don't want her for a mother.”
“I told you how it would come out, if I asked her,” cried the boy, still heaping the blame upon the girl.
“I would enough sight rather marry you than my father, if I were the teacher,” said Maria, and her blue eyes looked into Wollaston's with the boldness of absolute guilelessness.
“Hush!” responded Wollaston, with a gesture of disdain. “Who'd want you? You're nothing but a girl, anyway.”
With that scant courtesy Wollaston Lee resumed his race homeward, and Maria went her own way.
It was that very night, after Harry Edgham had returned