"But she is younger than my mother was."

"What difference do you s'pose that makes to a man. He'll like her
all the better for that. You can thank your stars he didn't pitch on
a school-girl, instead of the teacher."

Maria lay stretched out stiff and motionless. She was trying to bring
her mind to bear upon the situation. She was trying to imagine Miss
Ida Slome, with her pink cheeks and her gay attire, in the house
instead of her mother. Her head began to reel. She no longer wept.
She became dimly conscious, after a while, of her aunt Maria's
shaking her violently and calling her by name, but she did not
respond, although she heard her plainly. Then she felt a great jounce
of the bed as her aunt sprang out. She continued to lie still and
rigid. She somehow knew, however, that her aunt was lighting the
lamp, then she felt, rather than saw, the flash of it across her
face. Her aunt Maria pulled on a wrapper over her night-gown, and
hurried to the door. "Harry, Harry Edgham!" she heard her call, and
still Maria could not move. Then she also felt, rather than saw, her
father enter the room with his bath-robe slipped over his pajamas,
and approach the bed.

"What on earth is the matter?" he said. He also laid hands on Maria,
and, at his touch, she became able to move.

"What on earth is the matter?" he asked again.

"She didn't seem able to speak or move, and I was scared," replied
Aunt Maria, with a reproachful accent on the "I"; but Harry Edgham