Maria looked at her with a sort of wonder, which made her honest face almost idiotic.
“No, ma'am,” said she.
Maria had been taught to say “yes, ma'am” and “no, ma'am” by her own mother, whose ideas of etiquette were old-fashioned, and dated from the precepts of her own childhood.
“It is a little better not to say ma'am,” said Ida, sweetly. “I think that expression is not used so much as formerly.”
Maria looked at her with a quick defiance, which gave her an almost startling resemblance to her own mother.
“Yes, ma'am,” said she.
Harry's mouth twitched behind his paper. Ida said no more. She continued to smile, but she was not reading the paper which she held. She was making new plans to gain her own ends. She was seeking new doors of liberty for her own ways, in lieu of those which she saw were closed to her, and by the time dinner was served she was quite sure that she had succeeded.
The next autumn, Maria began attending the Elliot Academy, in Wardway. The Elliot Academy was an endowed school of a very high standing, and Wardway was a large town, almost a city, about fifteen miles from Edgham. When this plan was broached by Ida, Maria did not make any opposition; she was secretly delighted. Wollaston Lee was going to the Elliot Academy that autumn, and there was another Edgham girl and her brother, besides Maria, who were going.
“Now, darling, you need not go to the Elliot Academy any more than to the other school she proposed, if you don't want to,” Harry told Maria, privately, one Saturday afternoon in September, shortly before the term began.
Ida had gone to her club, and Harry had come home early from the city, and he and Maria were alone in the parlor. Evelyn was having her nap up-stairs. A high wind was roaring about the house. A cherry-tree beside the house was fast losing its leaves in a yellow rain. In front of the window, a hydrangea bush, tipped with magnificent green-and-rosy plumes, swayed in all its limbs like a living thing. Somewhere up-stairs a blind banged.