[Modcplusplus-devel] now that Woll

[Matko R. <ka...@wa...>]

Lord loveth, He chasteneth,"

and then she heard, in a quick response, a soft sob from the seat behind her. She
knew who sobbed: Mrs. Jasper Cone, who had lost her baby the week before. The odor of crape came in Maria's face, making a species

of discordance with the fragrance of the summer night, which came in at the open

window. Maria felt irritated by it, and she wondered why Mrs. Cone felt so badly

about the loss of her baby. It had always seemed to Maria a most unattractive child, large-headed, flabby, and mottled, with ever an open mouth of resistance, and a loud wail of opposition to
existence in general. Maria felt sure that she could never have loved such a baby. Even the unfrequent smiles of that baby had not been winning; they had seemed reminiscent of the commonest and
coarsest things of life, rather than of heavenly innocence. Maria gazed at the young man on the platform, who presently bent his

head devoutly, and after saying, "Let us pray," gave utterance to an unintelligible flood of supplication intermingled with information to the Lord of the state of things on the earth,
and the needs of his people. Maria
wondered why, when God knew everything, Leon Barber told him about it, and she also hoped that God heard better than most of the congregation did. But she looked with a timid wonder of admiration at the young man himself. He was so much older than she, that her romantic fancies, which even at such an early age had seized upon her, never included
him. She as yet dreamed only of other

dreamers like herself, Wollaston Lee, for instance, who went to the same school, and was only a year older. Maria had made
sure that he was there, by
a glance, directly after she had entered, then she never glanced at him again, but she wove him into her dreams along with the sweetness

of the midsummer night, and the morally tuneful atmosphere of the place. She was utterly innocent, her farthest dreams were white, but she dreamed.
She gazed out of the window through which came the wind on her