had a vague sense of distinction on account of it. It was as if she
realized being a flower rather than a vegetable. She thought of it
that night as she sat in meeting. She glanced across at a girl who
went to the same school--a large, heavily built child with a
coarseness of grain showing in every feature--and a sense of
superiority at once exalted and humiliated her. She said to herself
that she was much finer and prettier than Lottie Sears, but that she
ought to be thankful and not proud because she was. She felt vain,
but she was sorry because of her vanity. She knew how charming her
pink gingham gown was, but she knew that she ought to have asked her
mother if she might wear it. She knew that her mother would scold
her--she had a ready tongue--and she realized that she would deserve
it. She had put on the pink gingham on account of Wollaston Lee, who
was usually at prayer-meeting. That, of course, she could not tell
her mother. There are some things too sacred for little girls to tell
their mothers. She wondered if Wollaston would ask leave to walk home
with her. She had seen a boy step out of a waiting file at the vestry
door to a blushing girl, and had seen the girl, with a coy readiness,
slip her hand into the waiting crook of his arm, and walk off, and
she had wondered when such bliss would come to her. It never had. She
wondered if the pink gingham might bring it to pass to-night. The
pink gingham was as the mating plumage of a bird. All unconsciously
she glanced sideways over the fall of lace-trimmed pink ruffles at
her slender shoulders at Wollaston Lee. He was gazing straight at
Miss Slome, Miss Ida Slome, who was the school-teacher, and his young
face wore an expression of devotion. Maria's eyes followed his; she
did not dream of being jealous; Miss Slome seemed too incalculably
old to her for that. She was not so very old, in her early thirties,
but the early thirties to a young girl are venerable. Miss Ida Slome
was called a beauty. She, as well as Maria, wore a pink dress, at