suit, and she's got the baby in a little carriage on runners. Just
look at the white fur-tails hanging over the back. Ain't that a
handsome suit?"

Mrs. White gazed out eagerly. "It must have cost a pile," said she.
"I don't see how he does it."

"She sees you at the window," said Lillian.

Both she and her mother smiled and waved at Maria. Maria bowed, and
smiled with a sweet irradiation of her rosy face.

"She's a little beauty, anyhow," said Lillian.

"Dear child," said Mrs. White, and she snivelled again.

"Ma, either your cold or the stuff you are takin' is making you
dreadful nervous," said Lillian. "You cry at nothin' at all. How
straight she is! No stoop about her."

Maria was, in fact, carrying herself with an extreme straightness
both of body and soul. She was conscious to the full of her own
beauty in her new suit, and of the loveliness of her little sister in
her white fur nest of a sledge. She was inordinately proud. She had
asked Ida if she might take the child for a little airing before the
early Sunday dinner, and Ida had consented easily.

Ida also wished for an opportunity to talk with Harry about her
cherished scheme, and preferred doing so when Maria was not in the
house. For manifest reasons, too, Sunday was the best day on which to