one for half-past nine, Maria looked at her aunt, wondering.

"Why, I wonder where father has gone so late?" she said.

Aunt Maria turned, and her voice, in reply, was both pained and
pitiless. "Well, you may as well know first as last," said she, "and
you'd better hear it from me than outside: your father has gone
courtin'."



Chapter V


Maria looked at her aunt with an expression of almost idiocy. For the
minute, the term Aunt Maria used, especially as applied to her
father, had no more meaning for her than a term in a foreign tongue.
She was very pale. "Courtin'," she stammered out vaguely, imitating
her aunt exactly, even to the dropping of the final "g."

Aunt Maria was, for the moment, too occupied with her own personal
grievances and disappointments to pay much attention to her little
niece. "Yes, courtin'," she said, harshly. "I've been suspectin' for
some time, an' now I know. A man, when he's left a widower, don't
smarten up the way he's done for nothin'; I know it." Aunt Maria
nodded her head aggressively, with a gesture almost of butting.

Maria continued to gaze at her, with that pale, almost idiotic
expression. It was a fact that she had thought of her father as being
as much married as ever, even although her mother was dead. Nothing