“Your father’s thinkin’ of gettin’ married again,” said Aunt Maria, “and you may as well make up your mind to it, poor child.”  The words were pitying, the tone not.

“Who?” gasped Maria.

“I don’t know any more than you do,” replied Aunt Maria, “but I know it’s somebody.”  Suddenly Aunt Maria arose.  It seemed to her that she must do something vindictive.  Here she had to return to her solitary life in her New England village, and her hundred dollars a year, which somehow did not seem as great a glory to her as it had formerly done.  She went to the parlor windows and closed them with jerks, then she blew out the lamp.  “Come,” said she, “it’s time to go to bed.  I’m tired, for my part.  I’ve worked like a dog all day.  Your father has got his key, an’ he can let himself in when he gets through his courtin’.”

Maria crept miserably—­she was still in a sort of daze—­up-stairs after Aunt Maria.

“Well, good-night,” said Aunt Maria.  “You might as well make up your mind to it.  I suppose it had to come, and maybe it’s all for the best.”  Aunt Maria’s voice sounded as if she were trying to reconcile the love of God with the existence of hell and eternal torment.  She closed her door with a slam.  There are, in some New England women, impulses of fierce childishness.

Maria, when she was in her room, had never felt so lonely in her life.  A kind of rage of loneliness possessed her.  She slipped out of her clothes and went to bed, and then she lay awake.  She heard her father when he returned.  The clock on a church which was near by struck twelve soon after.  Maria tried to imagine another woman in the house in her mother’s place; she thought of every eligible woman in Edgham whom her father might select to fill that place, but her little-girl ideas of eligibility were at fault.  She thought only of women of her mother’s age and staidness, who wore bonnets.  She could think of only two, one a widow, one a spinster.  She shuddered at the idea of either.  She felt that she would much rather have had her father marry Aunt Maria than either of those women.  She did not altogether love Aunt Maria, but at least she was used to her.  Suddenly it occurred to her that Aunt Maria was disappointed, that she felt badly.  The absurdity of it struck her strongly, but she felt a pity for her; she felt a common cause with her.  After her father had gone into his room, and the house had long been silent, she got up quietly, opened her door softly, and crept across the hall to the spare room, which Aunt Maria had occupied ever since she had been there.  She listened, and heard a soft sob.  Then she turned the knob of the door softly.

“Who is it?” Aunt Maria called out, sharply.

Maria was afraid that her father would hear.

“It’s only me, Aunt Maria,” she replied.  Then she also gave a little sob.

“What’s the matter?”

Maria groped her way across the room to her aunt’s bed.  “Oh, Aunt Maria, who is it?” she sobbed, softly.