Aunt Maria was a little pacified by Harry’s rejoinder the night before.  She begun to wonder if she had been, by any chance, mistaken.

“Maybe I was wrong,” she said, privately, to Maria.  But Maria shook her head.

“She called me a sweet little thing, and kissed me,” said she.

“Didn’t she ever before?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Well, she may have taken a notion to.  Maybe I was mistaken.  The way your father spoke last night sort of made me think so.”

Aunt Maria made up her mind that if Harry was out late the next Sunday, and the next Wednesday, that would be a test of the situation.  The first time had been Wednesday, and Wednesday and Sunday, in all provincial localities, are the acknowledged courting nights.  Of course it sometimes happens that an ardent lover goes every night; but Harry Edgham, being an older man and a widower, would probably not go to that extent.

He soon did, however.  Very soon Maria and her aunt went to bed every night before Harry came home, and Miss Ida Slome became more loving towards Maria.

Wollaston Lee, boy as he was, child as he was, really suffered.  He lost flesh, and his mother told Aunt Maria that she was really worried about him.  “He doesn’t eat enough to keep a bird alive,” said she.

It never entered into her heart to imagine that Wollaston was in love with the teacher, a woman almost if not quite old enough to be his mother, and was suffering because of her love for Harry Edgham.

One afternoon, when Harry’s courtship of Ida Slome had been going on for about six weeks, and all Edgham was well informed concerning it, Maria, instead of going straight home from school, took a cross-road through some woods.  She dreaded to reach home that night.  It was Wednesday, and her father would be sure to go to see Miss Slome.  Maria felt an indefinable depression, as if she, little, helpless girl, were being carried so far into the wheels of life that it was too much for her.  Her father, of late, had been kinder than ever to her; Maria had begun to wonder if she ought not to be glad if he were happy, and if she ought not to try to love Miss Slome.  But this afternoon depression overcame her.  She walked slowly between the fields, which were white and gold with queen’s-lace and golden-rod.  Her slender shoulders were bent a little.  She walked almost like an old woman.  She heard a quick step behind her, and Wollaston Lee came up beside her.  She looked at him with some sentiment, even in the midst of her depression.  The thought flashed across her mind, what is she should marry Wollaston at the same time her father married Miss Slome?  That would be a happy and romantic solution of the affair.  She colored sweetly, and smiled, but the boy scowled at her.

“Say?” he said.

Maria trembled a little.  She was surprised.

“What?” she asked.

“Your father is the meanest man in this town, he is the meanest in New Jersey, he is the meanest man in the whole United States, he is the meanest man in the whole world.”