To Harriet and Carolyn Alden



Chapter I


Maria Edgham, who was a very young girl, sat in the church vestry
beside a window during the weekly prayer-meeting.

As was the custom, a young man had charge of the meeting, and he
stood, with a sort of embarrassed dignity, on the little platform
behind the desk. He was reading a selection from the Bible. Maria
heard him drone out in a scarcely audible voice: "Whom the Lord
loveth, He chasteneth," and then she heard, in a quick response, a
soft sob from the seat behind her. She knew who sobbed: Mrs. Jasper
Cone, who had lost her baby the week before. The odor of crape came
in Maria's face, making a species of discordance with the fragrance
of the summer night, which came in at the open window. Maria felt
irritated by it, and she wondered why Mrs. Cone felt so badly about
the loss of her baby. It had always seemed to Maria a most
unattractive child, large-headed, flabby, and mottled, with ever an
open mouth of resistance, and a loud wail of opposition to existence
in general. Maria felt sure that she could never have loved such a
baby. Even the unfrequent smiles of that baby had not been winning;
they had seemed reminiscent of the commonest and coarsest things of
life, rather than of heavenly innocence. Maria gazed at the young man
on the platform, who presently bent his head devoutly, and after
saying, "Let us pray," gave utterance to an unintelligible flood of
supplication intermingled with information to the Lord of the state