She sat down and took up a piece of fancy-work, and her father continued to glance at her furtively over his paper.

Presently he spoke of the academy again.
"You need not go if you do not want to," he repeated.
Then again Maria's delicate little face and neck became suffused with pink.

Her reply was not as loud nor more intelligible than the murmur of the trees outside in the wind.
"What did you say, darling ?" asked Harry.

"Father did not understand." "I would like to go there," Maria replied, in her sweet, decisive little pipe.

A fresh wave of color swept over her face and neck, and she selected with great care a thread from a skein of linen floss.
"Well, she thought you might like that," Harry said, with an air of relief.
"Maud Page is going, too," said Maria.
"Is she?
That will be nice.