As she did so, she sobbed, and Maria felt her tears of bereavement on her cheek with an odd mixture of pity and awe and disgust.

"If my Minnie had--lived, she might have grown up to be like her," she gasped out to her friend.

"I always thought she looked like her." The friend made a sympathetic murmur of assent.

Mrs.Cone kissed Maria again, holding her little form to her crape-trimmed bosom almost convulsively, then the two passed on.

Maria heard her say again that she always had thought the baby looked like her, and she felt humiliated.