Maria replied, unguardedly, that she intended to take them after supper that night. "Then she will have them all ready for Monday," she said. "Then let me go with you and carry the parcels," George Ramsey said, eagerly. Maria stiffened. "Thank you," she said, "but Uncle Henry is going with me, and there is no need." Maria felt her aunt Eunice give a sudden start and make an inarticulate murmur of remonstrance, then she checked herself. Maria knew that her uncle walked a mile from his factory to save car-fare; she knew also that she was telling what was practically an untruth, since she had made no agreement with her uncle to accompany her. "I should be happy to go with you," said George Ramsey, in a boyish, abashed voice. Maria said nothing more. She looked past her aunt out of the window. The full moon was rising, and all at once all the girl's sweet light of youthful romance appeared again above her mental horizon. She felt that it would be almost heaven to walk with George Ramsey in that delicious moonlight, in the clear, frosty air, and take little Jessy Ramsey her gifts. Maria was of an almost abnormal emotional nature, although there was little that was material about the emotion. She dreamed of that walk as she might have dreamed of a walk with a fairy prince through fairy-land, and her dream was as innocent, but it unnerved her. She said again, in a tremulous voice, that she was very much obliged, and murmured something again about her uncle Henry; and George Ramsey replied, with a certain sober dignity, that he should have been very happy. Soon after that the car stopped to let off some passengers, and George moved to a vacant seat in front. He did not turn around again. Maria looked at his square shoulders and again gazed past her aunt at the full orb of the moon rising with crystalline splendor in the pale amber of the east. There was a clear gold sunset which sent its reflection over the whole sky. Presently, Eunice spoke in her little, deprecating voice, which had a slight squeak. "Did you speak to your uncle Henry about going with you this evening?" she asked. "No, I didn't," admitted Maria, reddening, "but I knew he would be willing." "I suppose he will be," said Eunice. "But he does get home awful tuckered out Saturday nights, and he always takes his bath Saturday nights, too." Eunice looked out of the window with a slight frown. She adored her husband, and the thought of that long walk for him on his weary Saturday evening, and the possible foregoing of his bath, troubled her. "I don't believe George Ramsey liked it," she whispered, after a little. "I can't help it if he didn't," replied Maria. "I can't go with him, Aunt Eunice."