REBECCA MARY

By Annie Hamilton Donnell

Contents

I. THE HUNDRED AND ONETH

II. THE THOUSAND QUILT

III. THE BIBLE DREAM

IV. THE COOK-BOOK DIARY

V. THE BEREAVEMENT

VI. THE FEEL DOLL

VII. THE PLUMMER KIND

VIII. ARTICLE SEVEN

IX. UN-PLUMMERED

The Hundred and Oneth

Rebecca Mary took another stitch. Then another. "Ninety-sevvun, ninety-eight, " she counted aloud, her little pointed face gravelyintent. She waited the briefest possible space before she tookninety-nine. It was getting very close to the Time now. "At the hundredan' oneth, " Rebecca Mary whispered. "It's almost it. " Her breath camequicker under her tight little dress. Between her thin, light eyebrows acrease deepened anxiously. 

"Ninety--n-i-n-e, " she counted, "one hun-der-ed"--it was so very closenow! The next stitch would be the hundred and oneth. Rebecca Mary's facesuddenly grew quite white. 

"I'll wait a m-minute, " she decided; "I'm just a little scared. Whenyou've been lookin' head to the hundred and oneth so LONG and you getthe very next door to it, it scares you a little. I'll wait until--oh, until Thomas Jefferson crows, before I sew the hundred and oneth. "

Thomas Jefferson was prospecting under the currant bushes. Rebecca Marycould see him distinctly, even with her nearsighted little eyes, forThomas Jefferson was snow-white. Once in a while he stalked dignifiedlyout of the bushes and crowed. He might do it again any minute now. 

The great sheet billowed and floated round Rebecca Mary, scarcely whiterthan her face. She held her needle poised, waiting the signal of ThomasJefferson. At any minute. . . . He was coming out now! A fleck ofsnow-white was pricking the green of the currant leaves. 

"He's out. Any minute he'll begin to cr--" He was already beginning! Thewarning signals were out--chest expanding, neck elongating, and greatwhite wing aflap. 

"I'm just a little scared, " breathed the child in the foam of the sheet. Then Thomas Jefferson crowed. 

"Hundred and one!" Rebecca Mary cried out, clearly, courage born withinher at the crucial instant. The Time--the Time--had come. She had takenher last stitch. 

"It's over, " she panted. "It always was a-coming, and it's come. I knewit would. When it's come, you don't feel quite so scared. I'm glad it'sover. "

She folded up the great sheet carefully, making all the edges meet withpainful precision. It took time. She had left the needle sticking in theunfinished seam--in the hundred-and-oneth stitch--and close beside itwas a tiny dot of red to "keep the place. "

"Rebecca! Rebecca Mary!" Aunt Olivia always called like that. If therehad been still another name--Rebecca Mary Something Else--she would havecalled: "Rebecca! Rebecca Mary! Rebecca Mary Something Else!"

"Yes'm; I'm here. "

"Where's 'here'?" sharply. 

"HERE--the grape-arbor, I mean. "

"Have you got your sheet?"

"I--yes'm. "

"Is your stent 'most done?"

Rebecca Mary rose slowly to her reluctant little feet, and with theheavy sheet across her arm went to meet the sharp voice. At last theTime had come. 

"Well?" Aunt Olivia was waiting for her answer. Rebecca Mary groaned. Aunt Olivia would not think it was "well. "

"Well, Rebecca Mary Plummer, you came to fetch my answer, did you? Yougot your stent 'most done?" Aunt Olivia's hands were extended for thefolded sheet. 

"I've got it DONE, Aunt 'Livia, " answered little Rebecca Mary, steadily. Her slender figure, in its quaint, scant dress, looked braced as if tomeet a shock. But Rebecca Mary was terribly afraid. 

"Every mite o' that seam? Then I guess you can't have done it very well;that's what I guess! If it ain't done well, you'll have to take it--"

"Wait--please, won't you wait, Aunt 'Livia? I've got to say something. I mean, I've got all the over-'n'-overing I'm ever going to do done. THAT'S what's done. The hundred-and-oneth stitch was my stent, and it'sdone. I'm not ever going to take the hundred and twoth. I've decided. "

Understanding filtered drop by drop into Aunt Olivia's bewildered brain. She gasped at the final drop. 

"Not ever going to take another stitch?" she repeated, with a calmnessthat was awfuler than storm. 

"No'm. "

"You've decided?"

"Yes'm. "

"May I ask when this--this state of mind began?"

Rebecca Mary girded herself afresh. She had such need of recruitingstrength. 

"It's been coming on, " she said. "I've felt it. I knew all the time itwas a-coming--and then it came. "

It seemed to be all there. Why must she say any more? But still AuntOlivia waited, and Rebecca Mary read grim displeasure in capitals acrossthe gray field of her face. The little figure stiffened more and more. 

"I've over-'n'-overed 'leven sheets, " the steady little voice went on, because Aunt Olivia was waiting, and it must, "and you said I did 'empretty well. I tried to. I was going to do the other one well, till yousaid there was going to be another dozen. I couldn't BEAR another dozen, Aunt Olivia, so I decided to stop. When Thomas Jefferson crowed I sewedthe hundred-and-oneth stitch. That's all there's ever a-going to be. "

Rebecca Mary stepped back a step or two, as if finishing a speech andretiring from her audience. There was even the effect of a bow in thesudden collapse of the stiff little body. It was Aunt Olivia's turn nowto respond--and Aunt Olivia responded:

"You've had your say; now I'll have mine. Listen to me, Rebecca MaryPlummer! Here's this sheet, and here's this needle in it. When you getgood and ready you can go on sewing. You won't have anything to eat tillyou do. I've got through. "

The grim figure swept right-about face and tramped into the house asthough to the battle-roll of drums. Rebecca Mary stayed behind, face toface with her fate. 

"She's a Plummer, so it'll be SO, " Rebecca Mary thought, with the dulllittle thud of a weight falling into her heart. Rebecca Mary was aPlummer too, but she did not think of that, unless the un-swervingdetermination in her stout little heart was the unconscious recognitionof it. 

"I wonder"--her gaze wandered out towards the currant-bushes and cameto rest absently on Thomas Jefferson's big, white bulk--"I wonder if ithurts very much. " She meant, to starve. A long vista of food-less daysopened before her, and in their contemplation the weight in her heartgrew very heavy indeed. 

"We were GOING to have layer-cake for supper. I'm VERY fond oflayer-cake, " Rebecca Mary sighed, "I suppose, though, after a fewweeks"--she shuddered--"I shall be glad to have ANYTHING--just commonthings, like crackers and skim-milk. Perhaps I shall want to eata--horse. I've heard of folks--You get very unparticular when you'restarving. "

It was five o'clock. They WERE going to have supper at half past. Shecould hear the tea things clinking in the house. She stole up to awindow. There was Aunt Olivia setting the layer-cake on the table. Itlooked plump and rich, and it was sugared on top. 

"There's strawberry jam in between it, " mused Rebecca Mary, regretfully. "I wish it was apple jelly. I could bear it better if it was applejelly. " But it was jam. And there was honey, too, to eat with AuntOlivia's little fluffy biscuits. How very fond Rebecca Mary was ofhoney!

Aunt Olivia stood in the kitchen doorway and rang the supper bell inlong, steady clangs just as usual. But no one responded just as usual, and by the token she knew Rebecca Mary had not taken the other stitchthat lay between her and supper. 

"She's a Plummer, " sighed Aunt Olivia, inwardly, unrealizing her ownPlummership, as little Rebecca Mary had unrealized hers. Each recognizedonly the other's. The pity that both must be Plummers!

Rebecca Mary stayed out of doors until bedtime. She made but oneconfidant. 

"I've done it, Thomas Jefferson, " she said, sadly. "You ought to besorry for me, because if you hadn't crowed I shouldn't have sewed thehundred and oneth. But you're not really to BLAME, " she added, hastily, mindful of Thomas Jefferson's feelings. "I should have done it sometimeif you hadn't crowed. I knew it was coming. I suppose now I shall haveto starve. You'd think it was pretty hard to starve, I guess, ThomasJefferson. "

Thomas Jefferson made certain gloomy responses in his throat to theeffect that he was always starving; that any contributions on thespot in the way of corn kernels, wheat grains, angleworms--anylittle delicacies of the kind--would be welcome. And Rebecca Mary, understanding, led the way to the corn bin. In the dark hours thatfollowed, the intimacy between the great white rooster and the littlewhite girl took on tenderer tones. 

At breakfast next morning--at dinner time--at supper--Rebecca Maryabsented herself from the house. Aunt Olivia set on the meals regularlyand waited with tightening heartstrings. It did not seem to occur to herto eat her own portions. She tasted no morsel of all the dainties shegot together wistfully. At nightfall the second day she began to feelreal alarm. She put on her bonnet and went to the minister's. He wasrather a new minister, and the Plummers had always required a good dealof time to make acquaintance. But in the present stress of her need AuntOlivia did not stop to think of that. 

"You must come over and--and do something, " she said, at the conclusionof her strange little story. "It seems to me it's time for the ministerto step in. "

"What can I do, Miss Plummer?" the embarrassed young man ejaculated, with a feeling of helplessness. 

"Talk to her, " groaned Aunt Olivia, in her agony. "Tell her what herduty is. Rebecca Mary might listen to the minister. All she's got to dois to take just one stitch to show her submission. It won't take but aninstant. I've got supper all out on the kitchen table--I don't care ifit's ten o'clock at night!"

"It isn't a case for the minister. It's a case for the Society for thePrevention of Cruelty to Children!" fumed the minister's kind littlewife inwardly. And she stole away in the twilight to deal with littleRebecca Mary herself. She came back to the minister by and by, red-eyedand fierce. 

"You needn't go over; I've been. It won't do any good, Robert. Thatpoor, stiff-willed, set little thing is starving by inches!"

"I think her aunt is, too!"

"Well, perhaps--I can't help it, Robert, perhaps the--aunt--ought--to. "

"My dear!--Felicia!"

"I told you I couldn't help it. She is so hungry, Robert! If you hadseen her--What do you think she was doing when I got there?"

"Crying?"

"Crying! She was laughing. _I_ cried. She sat there under somegrapevines watching a great white rooster eat his supper. His name, Ithink, is Thomas Jefferson. "

"Yes, Thomas Jefferson, " agreed the minister, with the assurance ofacquaintance. For Thomas Jefferson was one of his parishioners. 

"Well, she was laughing at him in the shakiest, hungriest little voiceyou ever heard. 'Is it good?' she says. 'It LOOKS good. ' He was eatingraw corn. 'If I could, I'd eat supper with you when you're VERY hungry, you don't mind eating things raw. ' Then she saw me. "

"Well?"

"Well, I coaxed her, Robert. It didn't do any good. Tomorrow somebodymust go there and interfere. "

"She must be a remarkably strange child, " the minister mused. He wasthinking of the holding-out powers of the three children he had ahalf-ownership in. 

"I don't think Rebecca Mary IS a child, Robert. She must be fifty yearsold, at the least. She and her aunt are about the same age. Perhaps ifher mother had lived, or she hadn't made so many sheets, or learned toknit and darn and cook--" The minister's kind little wife finished outher sentence with a sigh. She took up a little garment in dire straitsto be mended. It suggested things to the minister. 

"Can Rhoda darn?"

"RHODA!"

"Or make sheets and bread and things?"

"Robert, don't you feel well? Where is the pain?" But the laugh in thepleasant blue eyes died out suddenly. Little Rebecca Mary lay too heavyon the minister's wife's heart for mirth. 

Aunt Olivia went into Rebecca Mary's room in the middle of the night. She had been in three times before. 

"She looks thinner than she did last time, " Aunt Olivia murmured, distressedly. "Tomorrow night--how long do children live without eating?It's four meals now--four meals is a great many for a little thin thingto go without!" Aunt Olivia had been without four meals too; she wouldhave been able to judge how it felt--if she had remembered that part. She stood in her scant, long nightgown, gazing down at the littlesleeper. The veil was down and her heart was in her eyes. 

Rebecca Mary threw out her arm and sighed. "It LOOKS good, ThomasJefferson, " she murmured. "When you're VERY hungry you can eat thingsraw. " Suddenly the child sat up in bed, wide-eyed and wild. She did notseem to see Aunt Olivia at all. 

"Once I ate a pie!" she cried. "It wasn't a whole one, but I should eata whole one now--I think I should eat the PLATE now. " She swayed backand forth weakly, awake and not awake. 

"Once I ate a layer-cake. There was jam in it. I wouldn't care if itwas apple jelly in it now--I'd LIKE apple jelly in it now. Once I atea pudding and a doughnut a-n-d--a--a--I think it was a horse. I'd eata horse now. Hush! Don't tell Aunt Olivia, but I'm going toeat--to--e-at--Thom-as--Jeffer--" She swayed back on the pillows again. Aunt Olivia shook her in an agony of fear--she was so white--she lay sostill. 

"Rebecca! Rebecca Mary! Rebecca Mary PLUMMER!" Aunt Olivia shrilled inher ear. "You get right out o' bed this minute and come downstairs andeat your supper! It's high time you had something in your stomach--Idon't care if it's twelve o'clock. You get right out o' bed REBECCAMARY!"

Aunt Olivia had the limp little figure in her arms, shaking it gentlyagain and again. Rebecca's startled eyes flew open. In that instant wasborn inspiration in the brain of Aunt Olivia. She thought of an appealto make. 

"Do you want ME to starve, too? Right here before your face and eyes? Ihaven't eat a mouthful since you did, and I shan't till you DO. "

Rebecca Mary slid to the floor with a soft thud of little brown, barefeet. Slow comprehension dawned in her eyes. "Are your---- did you sayYOU was starving, too?"

"Yes"--grimly. 

"Does it hurt you--too?"

"Yes"--unsteadily. 

"VERY much?"

"YES. "

"Why don't you eat something?"

"Because you don't. I'm waiting for you to. "

"Shan't you ever?"

"Not if you don't. "

Rebecca Mary caught her breath in a sob. "Shall I be--to blame?" She wasmoving towards the door now. With an irresistible impulse Aunt Oliviagathered her in her arms, and covered her lean little face with kisses. 

"You poor little thing! You poor little thing! You poor little thing!"over and over. 

Rebecca Mary gazed up into the softened face and read something there. It took her breath away. She could not believe it without further proof. 

"You don't--I don't suppose you LOVE me?" panted Rebecca Mary. But AuntOlivia was gone out of the room in a swirl of white nightgown. 

"Everything's on the table, " she called back from the stairs. "I'm goingto light a fire. You come right down. I think it's high time--" hervoice trailing out thinly. 

"She does, " murmured Rebecca Mary, radiant of face. 

At half past twelve o'clock they both ate supper, both in their scant, white nightgowns, both very hungry indeed. But before she sat down inher old place at the table, Rebecca Mary went round to Aunt Olivia'splace and whispered something rather shyly in her ear. She had been byherself in a corner of the room for a moment. 

"I've sewed the hundred and twoth, " Rebecca Mary whispered. 

The Thousand Quilt

"Good afternoon, " Rebecca Mary said, politely. 

The minister's wife was cutting little trousers out of big ones--theminister's big ones. It was the old puzzle of how to steer clear of thethin places. 

"Boys grow so!" sighed, tenderly, the minister's wife, over her work. She had not heard the voice from the doorway. 

"Good afternoon"--again. 

It was a quaint little figure in tight red calico standing there. It might easily have stepped down from some old picture on the wall. Rebecca Mary had a bundle in her arms. It was so large that it obscuredbreast and face, and only a pair of grave blue eyes, presided over bythin, light brows, seemed visible to the minister's wife. The trouserspuzzle merged into this one. Now who could--

"Oh! Oh, it's Miss Plummer's little girl Rebecca, " she said, cordially. 

"Rebecca Mary her NIECE, " came, a little muffled, from behind the greatbundle. 

"Rebecca Mary's niece---- Oh, you mean Miss Plummer's niece, and yourwhole name is that! But I suppose she calls you Rebecca or Becky, forshort? Walk in, Rebecca. "

But Rebecca Mary was struggling with the paralyzing vision of AuntOlivia calling her Becky. She had passed by the lesser wonder of beingcalled Rebecca without the Mary. 

"Oh no'm, indeed; Aunt 'Livia never shortens me, " gently gasped thechild. And the minister's wife, measuring from the bundle down, smiledto herself. There did not seem much room for shortening. 

"But walk in, dear--you're going to walk in? I hope you have come tomake me a little call?"

Rebecca Mary struggled out of her paralysis. Here was occasion for newembarrassment. For Rebecca Mary was honest. 

"N-o'm I mean, not a LITTLE call. I've come to spend the afternoon, " shesaid, slowly, "and I've brought my work. "

The bundle--the great bundle--was her work! She advanced into the roomand began carefully to unroll it. It was the turn of the minister's wifeto be paralyzed. She pushed forward a chair, and the child sat down init. 

"It's my Thousand Quilt that I'm making for Aunt 'Livia, " explainedRebecca Mary. "It's 'most done. There's a thousand pieces in it, and I'mon the nine hundred and ninety-oneth. I thought proberly you'd have somework, so I brought mine. "

"Yes, I see--" The minister's wife stood looking down at the tightlittle red figure among the gorgeous waves of the Thousand Quilt. Theyeddied and surged around it in dizzy reds and purples and greens. Shewas conscious of being a little seasick, and for relief she turned backto the puzzle of the little trousers. It had been in her mind at firstto express sorrow at Rhoda's being unfortunately away--and the boys. Nowshe was glad she hadn't, for it was quite plain enough that the visitorhad not come to spend the afternoon with the minister's children, butwith the minister's wife. 

"It isn't she that's young--it's I, " thought the minister's wife, withkind, laughing eyes. "She's old enough to be my mother. " "How old areyou, dear?" she added, aloud. 

"Me? I guess you mean Aunt 'Livia, don't you? It's Aunt 'Livia'sbirthday I'm making it for, it's going to be a present. Once she gave mea present on my birthday. "

Once!--the minister's wife remembered Rhoda's birthdays and the boys'. Taken altogether, such a host of little birthdays! But this little old, old visitor seemed to have had but one. 

"My birthday is two days quicker than Aunt 'Livia's is, " volunteeredthe visitor, sociably. "We're 'most twins, you see. Aunt 'Liviawas fifty-six that time she gave me the present. She's agoing to befifty-nine when I give her this quilt--it's taken me ever since to makeit. "

The minister's wife looked up from her cutting. So Rebecca Mary was onlyfifty-nine!

"It's quite a long quilt, " sighed Rebecca Mary. But pride woke in hereyes as she gazed out on the splendors of the green and purple sea. "A Thousand Quilt has so many stitches in it, but when you sew'em allyourself--when you sew every single stitch--" The pride in RebeccaMary's grave blue eyes grew and grew. 

"Robert, " the minister's wife said that night to the minister, "it's anawful quilt, but you ought to have seen her eyes! It's taken her threeyears to make it--maybe you wouldn't be proud yourself!"

"Maybe YOU wouldn't, if Rhoda had made it. "

"RHODA! Robert, she sewed one square of patchwork once and it madeher sick. I had to put her to bed. Speaking of 'once' reminds me--onceRebecca Mary had a birthday present, Robert. " She waited a littleanxiously for him to understand. The minister always understood, butsometimes he made her wait. 

"Felicia, are you trying to make me cry?" he said, and she wassatisfied. She went across to him, as she always did when she wantedto cry herself. The floor was strewn with the tiniest boy's engine andcars, and she remembered, as she zigzagged among them, that they hadbeen one of his very last birthday presents. 

"It was--Robert, what do you think the present was? I'll give you threeguesses, but I advise you to guess a rooster. "

"Thomas Jefferson, " murmured the minister, as one who was acquainted. 

"Yes, that is his name. How did you remember? She is very fond ofhim--he is her intimatest friend, she says. So she is under greatobligations to her aunt. It's a large quilt, but it's none too large to'cover' Thomas Jefferson. I'm going to help her buy a lining and cottonbatting. "

"Cracked corn will make a good lining, but cotton bat--"

"Robert, this is not a comedy! If you'd seen Rebecca Mary, and thequilt, you'd call it a tragedy. You couldn't surprise me any if you toldme she'd quilted it herself!"

Down the road from Aunt Olivia's farm, across its southern boundaryfence, romped and shouted all day long the Tony Trumbullses. No one, except possibly their mother, was quite certain how many of them therewere; it was a dizzy process to take their census. They were neverstill, in little brown bare limbs nor shrill voices. From sunup tosundown the Tony Trumbullses raced and laughed. Certainly they werehappy. 

The minister's wife had not dared to tell her Caller of the afternoonthat the minister's children were down there shouting and racing withthe little Tony Trumbullses. Dear, no!--not after Rebecca Mary in thecourse of conversation had said that Aunt Olivia did not countenance theTony Trumbullses. Rebecca Mary did not say "countenance, " but it meantthat. 

"Her aunt won't let her play with them, Robert. And she'd like to--youneedn't tell me Rebecca Mary wouldn't like to! I saw it in her poorlittle solemn eyes. Besides, she said she asked her aunt once tolet her. Robert, aunts are cruel; I never knew it before. They've nobusiness bringing up little Rebecca Marys!"

"My dear! Felicia!" But in the minister's eyes was agreement. 

Aunt Olivia took afternoon naps with punctilious regularity--Aunt Oliviaherself was punctilious regularity. At half past one, day upon day, she hung out the dish towel, hung up her kitchen apron, and walked withunswerving course into her bedroom. There, disposed upon the dainty bedin rigid lines of unrest, she rested. The naps were often long ones. 

A little after the afternoon that Rebecca Mary spent at the minister'sthe birthday quilt was finished. The thousandth tiny piece was neatlyover-'n'-overed to its gorgeous expanse. But Rebecca Mary was notcontent. She longed to make it complete. She wanted to surprise Aunt'Livia with it, as Aunt 'Livia on that momentous birthday of her own hadsurprised her with the little fluff-ball of yellow down that had growninto Thomas Jefferson. That had been such a beautiful surprise, butthis--Aunt 'Livia had seen the quilt so many, many times! She had taughtRebecca Mary's stiff little fingers to set the first stitches in it; shehad made her rip out this purple square and that pink-checked one, andthis one and that one and that. Oh, Aunt 'Livia was ACQUAINTED with thequilt! It would not be much of a surprise. 

But Rebecca Mary set her little pointed chin between her little brownpalms and pondered, and out of the pondering grew a plan so ambitiousand so daring that Rebecca Mary gasped in the throes of it. But sheheld her ground and entertained it intrepidly. She even grew on friendlyterms with it in the end. Here was a way to surprise Aunt 'Livia;Rebecca Mary would do it! That it would entail an almost endless amountof work did not daunt her: Rebecca Mary was a Plummer, and Plummers werenot to be daunted. The long vista of patient hours of trying labor thatthe plan opened up before her set her blood tingling like a warrior's onthe eve of battle. What were long, patient hours to a Plummer? RebeccaMary girded up her loins and went to meet them. 

Thereafter at Aunt Olivia's nap times Rebecca Mary disappeared. Dayupon day, week upon week, she stole quietly away when the door of AuntOlivia's bedroom shut. The first time she went oddly loaded down withwhat would have appeared--if there had been any one for it to "appear"to be a bundle of long sticks. She made two trips into the unknown thatfirst day. The second time the bundle looked much like that one overwhich her grave blue eyes had peered at the minister's wife when shewent to spend the afternoon with her. 

It was spring when the mysterious disappearances began. It was summerbefore Aunt Olivia woke up--not from her nap, but from her inattention. Quite suddenly she came upon the realization that Rebecca Mary wasnot about the house; nor about the grounds, for she instituted promptsearch. She went to all the child's odd little haunts--the grapery, the orchard, the corn-house, even to her own beloved back yard, full ofsweet-scented hiding-nooks dear to a child, but sacred ground to AuntOlivia. Rebecca Mary sometimes did her "stents" there as a specialprivilege; she might be there now, unprivileged. Aunt Olivia's back yardwas almost as full of flowery delights to Rebecca Mary as it was to AuntOlivia. 

The child was not there--not anywhere. Aunt Olivia sought for ThomasJefferson to inquire of him, but Thomas Jefferson was missing too. Shewent the rounds again. Where could the child be?

It was a hot, stinging day in late June when Aunt Olivia's suspicionsawoke. They had been long in rousing, but, once alert, they developedrapidly into certainties. Her pale eyes glistened, her thin nostrilsdilated--Aunt Olivia's whole lean, sharp, unemotional person put onsuspicion. The child had gone to see the Tony Trumbullses. 

"My land!" ejaculated Aunt Olivia, "after all my forbidding! And she aPlummer!" She sat down suddenly as though a little faint. She had neverknown a Plummer to disobey before; it was a new experience. It took timeto get used to it, and she sat still a long time, rigid and grim, on theedge of the chair. Then as suddenly as she had sat down she got up. Itcould not be--she refused to entertain the suspicion longer. RebeccaMary had NOT gone there to that forbidden place; she was in the gardensomewhere. Aunt Olivia, a little stiff as if from a chill, went oncemore in search of the child. 

"Rebecca! Rebecca Mary!" she called, at regular intervals. Then sharply, "Rebecca Mary Plummer!" Her voice had thin cadences of suspicion lurkingin it against its will. 

But there seemed really no doubt. One by one incriminatingcircumstances occurred to Aunt Olivia. Rebecca Mary had longed to go somuch; the Tony Trumbullses, one at a time or in a tumultuous body, hadurged her so often; she herself had more than once caught the childgazing wistfully, in passing by, at the bewildering, deafening, frolicsof the little Tony Trumbullses. Once Rebecca Mary had asked to gobarefoot, as they went. Once she had let out the tight little braidsin her neck and rumpled her thin little hair. Once Aunt Olivia had comeupon her PLAYING. The remembrance of it now tightened the lines aroundAunt Olivia's lips. The child had been running wildly about the yard, shouting in a strange, excited, ridiculous way. When Aunt Olivia instern displeasure had demanded explanations, she had run on recklessly, calling back over her shoulder: "Don't stop me! I'm a Tony Trumbull!"

"My land!" breathed Aunt Olivia, taking back the suspicion to herbreast. "After all my forbidding she's gone down there. She's BEEN goingdown there dear knows how long. She's waited till I took my naps an'then went. A PLUMMER!"

There was really nowhere else she could have gone. She had never wantedto go anywhere else, except to the minister's, and Rebecca Mary waspunctilious and would not think of going THERE again till the minister'swife had returned her visit. 

But Aunt Olivia waited. As usual, she went to her room next day at naptime and closed the door behind her. But when a little figure slippeddown the road towards the forbidden place a moment later, she waswatching behind her blinds. She was groaning as if in pain. 

The little figure began to run staidly. Aunt Olivia groaned again. Thechild was in a hurry to get there--she couldn't wait to walk! There wasguilt in every motion of the little figure. 

"And she runs like a Plummer, " groaned Aunt Olivia. 

The next day, and the next, Aunt Olivia watched behind her blinds. Thefourth day she put on her afternoon dress and followed the hurryinglittle figure. Not at once--Aunt Olivia did not hurry. There was a sadreluctance in every movement. It seemed a terrible thing to be followingRebecca Mary--Rebecca Mary Plummer to a forbidden place. 

Afar off Aunt Olivia heard faintly the shoutings that always heralded anapproach to the Tony Trumbullses, and shuddered. The tumult kept growingclearer; she thought she detected a wild, excited little shout thatmight be Rebecca Mary's. Her thin lips set into a stern, straight line. 

A splash of red caught Aunt Olivia's eye as she drew nearer the joyouswhirl of little children. Rebecca Mary wore a little tight red dress. The coil seemed closing in about the child. 

Close to the southern boundary fence of Aunt Olivia's land stood anold empty barn. It had been a place for storing surplus hay, once, whenthere had been surplus hay. For many years now it had been empty. AsAunt Olivia approached it she noticed that its great sliding door wasopen. Strange, when for so long it had been shut!

"If that old barn door ain't open!" breathed Aunt Olivia, stopping inher astonishment. "I ain't seen it open before in these ten years. Now, what I want to know is, who opened it? Likely as not those screechinglittle wild Injuns. " She strode across the stubby grass-ground to thebarn and peered into its cool, dim depths. Then Aunt Olivia uttereda little, bewildered cry. Gradually the dimness took on light and thewhole startling picture within unfolded itself to her astonished eyes. 

Rebecca Mary was quilting. She was stooping earnestly over a gay expanseof purples and reds and greens. Her little tight red back was towardsAunt Olivia; it looked bent and strained. Rebecca Mary's eyes were veryclose to the gay expanse. 

Suddenly Rebecca Mary began to speak, and Aunt Olivia's widened eyesdiscovered a great, white rooster pecking about under the quilt. Hisbig, snowy bulk stood out distinct in the shadow of it. 

"I'm glad we're 'most through. Aren't you, Thomas Jefferson? It's been apretty LONG quilt. You get sort of tired when you quilt a LONG quilt. Itmakes your back creak when you unbend it; and when you quilt in a barn, of course you can't see without squinching, and it hurts your eyes tosquinch. "

Silence again, except for the industrious peck-peck of the great whiterooster. Aunt Olivia stood very still. 

"You've been a great help, Thomas Jefferson, " began again the voice ofRebecca Mary, after a little. "I'm very much obliged to you, as I'vesaid before. I don't know what I should have done without you. No, youneedn't answer. I couldn't hear a word you said. You can't hear withcotton in both o' your ears, " Rebecca Mary sighed. There was no cottonin Aunt Olivia's ears to shut out the soft little sound. "But of courseyou have to wear it in, on account o' your conscience. It's consciencecotton, Thomas Jefferson. I've explained before, but I don't know's youunderstood. It seems a little unpolite to wear it in my ears, with youhere keeping me comp'ny. I s'pose you think it's un--unsociable. ButAunt Olivia doesn't allow me to 'sociate with the Tony Trumbullses. Oh, Thomas Jefferson, I wish she'd allow me to 'sociate!"

Aunt Olivia found herself wishing she had conscience cotton in both o'her ears. 

"They're such nice, cheerful little children! It makes you want togo right over their fence and hollow too. " Rebecca Mary pronouncedit "hollow" with careful precision. Aunt Olivia would not approveof "holler. " "And when you can't, you like to listen. But I s'posedlistening to them hollow would be 'sociating. So I put the cotton in. "

The joyous "hollowing" broke in waves of glee on Aunt Olivia's eardrums. It seemed to be assaulting her heart. Oddly, now it did not soundunmannerly and dreadful. It sounded nice and cheerful. A Plummer, even, might be happy like that. 

"Cotton is a very strange ex--exper'ence, Thomas Jefferson, " ran on thelittle voice. "At first you 'most can't stand it, but you get over theworst of it bymeby. Besides, we're getting 'most through now. Ain't thatsplendid, Thomas Jefferson? And it's pretty lucky, too, because Aunt'Livia's birthday is getting very near. It--it almost scares me. Doesn'tit you? For I don't know how Aunt 'Livia looks when she's pleased--youthink she'll look pleased, don't you, Thomas Jefferson? It's such a longquilt, and when you've sewed every stitch yourself--"

If Rebecca Mary had turned round then she would have seen how AuntOlivia looked when she was pleased. But the little figure at thequilting-frame bent steadily to its task, only another soft sighstealing into Aunt Olivia's uncottoned ears. Thomas Jefferson peckedhis way towards the open door, and the lean figure there started backguiltily; Aunt Olivia did not want to be recognized. 

"You there under the quilt, Thomas Jefferson?" The little voice put ontenderness. "Because I'm a-going to tell you something. Once Aunt 'Liviagave ME a birthday present and it was YOU. Such a little mite of ayellow chicken! That's why I'm making the quilt for Aunt 'Livia. It wasthree years ago; I've loved you ever since, " added Rebecca Mary, simply. 

For an instant Aunt Olivia stopped being a Plummer. A sob crept intoher throat. "Rebecca! Rebecca Mary! Rebecca Mary Plummer!" she cried, involuntarily. Then she stepped back hastily, glad for the cotton inRebecca Mary's ears. For the surprise--she must not spoil the child'shard-earned surprise. And, besides, Aunt Olivia wanted to be surprised. 

It was a relief to get away. She could not look any longer at thepicture in the great cobwebby barn--the gorgeous quilt spread out toits full extent, the empty scaffolds above Rebecca Mary stooping to herwork, Thomas Jefferson pecking about the floor. Aunt Olivia was not old;through all the years ahead of her she would remember that picture. 

She went straight to the southern boundary fence and looked acrossat the jubilant little Tony Trumbullses. The one in a red dress likeRebecca Mary's she singled out with a pointing finger. "YOU come here, "she called. "I won't hurt you; no need to look scairt. Do you know who Iam? I'm Rebecca Mary's aunt. You know who Rebecca Mary is, don't you?"

"Gracious!" shrilled the little red Tony Trumbull, which Aunt Oliviatook for yes. 

"Well, then, you know where I live. You see here--I want you all, thewhole kit o' you, to come to my house tomorrow morning to see RebeccaMary. I'm going to say it over again. Tomorrow morning, to see RebeccaMary!" setting apart the syllables with the pointing finger. "You canplay in my back yard, " said Aunt Olivia, sublimely unconscious of slang. 

The Bible Dream

Rebecca Mary sat on the kitchen steps, shelling peas and trying notto listen. She had begun a hummy little tune to help out, but in theinterstices of rattling peas and the verses of the tune she coulddistinctly hear some of the things Aunt Olivia and the Caller weresaying. This was one of the things:

"She's offered a reward, but _I_ don't calculate there's much chanceshe'll ever see it again. "

A sigh followed. The voice was the Caller's, the sigh Aunt Olivia's. 

"It's queer where it ever went to!" Aunt Olivia's voice. 

"Yes, it's all o' QUEER, " the Caller's, with mysterious hints in it thatmade Rebecca Mary, out on the doorsteps, shudder suddenly and forgetwhere she was in the tune. Oh, oh, dear, did they s'pose--they couldn'ts'pose it had been STOLEN?

Rebecca Mary's little hard brown hand stopped halfway to the pea-basketand fell limply at her side on the doorstep. It made a little thud asit fell. Rebecca Mary's horrified gaze wandered out into the glare ofsunshine where wandered Thomas Jefferson, stepping daintily, huntingbugs. That was his day's work. Thomas Jefferson was a hard worker. 

The voices went on, but Rebecca Mary did not heed them now; she waslooking at Thomas Jefferson, but she did not see him. Not until--ithappened. On a sudden Thomas Jefferson, forgetful of dignity, made aswoop for something that glittered in the grass. Then Rebecca Mary sawhim--then started to her feet with an inarticulate little cry, whilein her honest brown eyes the horror grew. Oh, oh, dear, what was thatThomas Jefferson had swooped for? For a brief instant it had glitteredin the grass--Rebecca Mary knew in her soul that it had glittered. 

Thomas Jefferson stretched his sheeny neck, curved it ridiculously, andcrowed. It sounded like a crow of triumph; that was the way he crowedwhen the bug had been a delicious one. 

The Caller was coming out, Aunt Olivia with her. Rebecca Mary could hearthe crackle of their starched skirts; Aunt Olivia's crackled loudest. Rebecca Mary had always had a queer feeling that Aunt Olivia herself wasstarched. There had never been a time when she could not remember hercarrying her head very stiffly and straight and never bending her back. Nobody else in the world, Rebecca Mary reflected proudly, could pickup a pin without bending. SHE couldn't, herself, even after she hadprivately practiced a good deal. 

"Good afternoon, Rebecca Mary; you out here?" the Caller noddedpleasantly. Folks had such queer ways of saying things. How could yousay good afternoon to anybody if she WASN'T here?

"Didn't you hear Mrs. Dixey, Rebecca Mary? I guess you've forgot yourmanners, " came in Aunt Olivia's crisp tones. 

"Oh yes'm, I have. I mean I DID. Yes'm, thank you, I'm out here, "quavered Rebecca Mary. She was not afraid of the Caller and she hadnever been afraid of Aunt Olivia, but the horror that was settling roundher heart made her clear little voice unsteady. Her eyes were stillfollowing Thomas Jefferson on his mincing travels about the yard. Thesunshine was on his splendid white coat, but Rebecca Mary felt no pridein him. 

"Ain't that the han'somest rooster! You ought to show him at the fair, Ideclare! See how his feathers glisten in the sun!"

"Thomas Jefferson belongs to Rebecca Mary, " Aunt Olivia said, briefly. "She raised him. "

"My! Well, he's han'some enough. Ain't it amusing how a nice-feelingrooster like that will go stepping round as if he felt about too toppyto live! He'd ought to wear diamonds. "

"Oh, oh, dear, please don't!" breathed Rebecca Mary, softly, but neitherof the women heard her. 

"Well, well, I must be going. I've made a regular visit. But I tell Johnwhen I get away from home, it feels so good I STAY! 'I don't get awayany too often, ' I says, 'and I guess I've earnt the right. ' Well, I mustbe going if I'm ever going to! Good-bye, Miss Plummer--good-bye, RebeccaMary. All is, I hope Mis' Avery's boarder'll find her diamond, don'tyou? But I don't calculate she will. Well, good afternoon. She hadn'tought to have wore the ring, when she knew it was loose in the settinglike that. Some folks are just that careless! Well--"

But Rebecca Mary did not hear the rest of the Caller's leave-taking. Shehad slipped away to Thomas Jefferson out in the sun. 

"Oh, come here--come here with me!" she cried, intensely. "Come outbehind the barn where we can talk. I've got to say something to youthat's awful! I've GOT to, you've got to listen, Thomas Jefferson. "

It was still and terribly hot in the treeless glare behind the barn, butit was all in the day's work to Thomas Jefferson. Behind the barn was abeautiful place for bugs. 

"Listen! Oh, you poor dear, you've got to listen!" Rebecca Mary cried. "You've got to stop hunting for bugs--and don't you dare to crow! If youcrow, Thomas Jefferson, it will break my heart. I don't s'pose you knowwhat you've done--I don't know as you've done it--but there's somethingawful happened. Oh, Thomas Jefferson, it glittered--I saw it glitter!"Suddenly Rebecca Mary stooped and gathered Thomas Jefferson into herarms. She held him with a passionate clasp against her flat littlecalico breast. He was HERS. He was all the intimate friend she had everhad. He had been her little downy baby and slept in her hand. She hadfed him and watched him grow and been proud of him. He was her all. 

"Oh, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson, what was it that glittered inthe grass? Tell me and I'll believe you. Say it was a little piece o'glass and I'll put you down and go get you some corn, and we'll neverspeak of it again. But don't look at me like that--don't look at me likethat! You look--GUILTY!"

She rocked him in her arms. In her soul she knew what it was that hadglittered. But in Thomas Jefferson's soul--oh, they could not blameThomas Jefferson!

"You haven't got any soul, poor dear; poor dear, you haven't got anysoul, and you can't be guilty without a soul. They couldn't--hang--you. "Her voice sank to the merest whisper. She tightened her clasp on thegreat, soft body and smoothed the soft feathers with a tender, tremulouslittle hand. 

"The Lord didn't put anything in you but a stomach and a--a gizzard. Heleft your soul out and you're not to blame for that. I don't blameyou, Thomas Jefferson, and of course the Lord don't. But Mrs. Avery'sboarder--oh, oh, dear, I'm afraid Mrs. Avery's boarder will! You mustn'ttell--I mean I mustn't. Nobody must know what it was that glittered inthe grass. Do you want to be--searched?

"You know 'xactly where she sat over to this house yesterday morning, when she went by--and how she said you were too sweet for anything--andhow she flew her hand round with--with IT on it. You know as well as Ido. And it was loose, the di'mond-stone was loose. We didn't either ofus know that. We're not to blame if things are loose, and you're not toblame for not having any soul. But oh, oh, dear, how dreadfully it makesus both feel! You'd better give up crowing, Thomas Jefferson; I feeljust as if you'd let it out if you crew. "

At tea Rebecca Mary played with her spoon, while her berries swam, untasted, in their yellow sea of cream. Aunt Olivia remonstrated. 

"Why don't you eat your supper, child?" she asked, sharply. Rebecca Marywas always glad when she said child instead of Rebecca Mary, for thenthe sharpness did not cut. She was feeling now for the glasses up in herthin gray hair. Aunt Olivia could see everything through those glassesand it made Rebecca Mary tremble to think--oh, oh, dear, suppose sheshould see the secret hidden in Rebecca Mary's soul! It seemed as ifAunt Olivia trained the glasses directly upon the corner where thesecret glittered in the gra--was hidden in Rebecca Mary's troubledlittle soul. But this is what Aunt Olivia said:

"It's your stomach. What you need is a good dose of camomile tea totone you up. I didn't give you any this spring, for a wonder. Now you goright up to bed and I'll set some to steeping. Does it hurt you any?"

"Oh yes'm, " murmured Rebecca Mary, sadly, but she meant her soul andAunt Olivia meant her stomach. She mounted the steep stairs to herlittle eavesdropping room and slipped her small spare body out of herclothes into her scant little nightgown. It was rather a relief to go tobed. If she could have been sure that Thomas Jefferson--but, no, Thomas Jefferson was not in bed. As Rebecca Mary lay and waited for hercamomile tea she was certain she could hear him stepping about under thewindow. Once he came directly under and "crew, " and then Rebecca Maryhid her head in the pillow for he was letting it out. 

"Cock-a-doodle-do--ooo, did-you-see-me-swoo-oo-OOP-it-up?" crowed ThomasJefferson, under the window. Rebecca Mary with her eyes pillow-deepcould see him stretching his neck and letting it out. It seemed to hereverybody could hear him--Aunt Olivia downstairs, steeping camomile'blows, and Mrs. Avery's boarder across the fields. 

"Aunt Olivia, " whispered Rebecca Mary, while she sipped her bitter teaa little later, "how much--I suppose precious things cost a great deal, don't they?"

"My grief!" Aunt Olivia set down the bowl and felt of Rebecca Mary'stemples, then of her wrists. The child was out of her head. 

"Di'mond-stones like--like that boarder's--I suppose those cost a greatdeal? As much as--how much as, Aunt Olivia?"

"My grief, don't you worry about any di'mond-stones! YOU haven't lostany. What you'll lose will be your health, if you don't swallow down therest o' this tea and go right to sleep like a good girl! No, no, I'm notgoing to answer any questions. Drink this; swallow it down. "

Rebecca Mary swallowed it down, but she did not go right to sleep like agood girl. She lay on the hard little bed and thought of many things, orof one thing many times. Over and over, wearily, drearily, until the sinof Thomas Jefferson became her sin. She adopted it. 

When at last she dropped to sleep it was to dream a Bible dream. UsuallyRebecca Mary liked to dream Bible dreams, but not this one. This one wasdifferent. This one was of Abraham and Isaac. She thought she was rightthere and saw Abraham build the little altar and offer up--no, it wasn'tIsaac! It was Thomas Jefferson. And the Abraham in her dream was turninginto HER. The flowing white robes were dwindling to a little scant whitenightgown. She stood a little way off and saw herself offering up ThomasJefferson. It was a dreadful dream. 

The night was a perfectly black one, the kind that Rebecca Mary wasafraid of. It was the only thing in the world she had ever been afraidof--a black night. But after the dream she got up stealthily and slippedthrough the blackness, out to Thomas Jefferson. It was only out to thelittle lean-to shed, but it seemed a very long way to Rebecca Mary. The blackness pressed up against her, she put out her little, tremblinghands and pushed through it. 

"Thomas Jefferson! Thomas Jefferson!" she called softly. But he was asound sleeper, she remembered; she would have to find him and wake him. In the darkness she felt about on Thomas Jefferson's perch for ThomasJefferson. When the little groping hand came upon something very softand warm, the other hand went up to join it, and together they liftedThomas Jefferson down. He gave a protesting croak, and then, because hewas acquainted with the clasp of the two small hands, and night or dayliked it, he went back to his interrupted dreams and said not anotherword. Thomas Jefferson had never dreamed a Bible dream--never heard ofAbraham or Isaac, had no soul to be disquieted. 

With her burden against her breast Rebecca Mary pushed back through thedarkness, up to the black little room under the eaves. She felt aboutfor her little carpet-covered shoe box and gently crowded the greatwhite bulk into it. Then she crept back into bed and lay on the outeredge with her loving, light little hand on Thomas Jefferson's feathers. The trouble in her burdened soul poured itself out. 

"Oh, Thomas Jefferson, " she whispered down to the heap of soft feathers, "I'm going to smooth you this way all night for tomorrow you die!" Hervoice even in a whisper had a solemn, inspired note. "There's no otherway; you'll have to make up your mind to be willing. It's going to breakmy heart, and, oh, I'm afraid it will break yours! I'm afraid it willkill us both!"

Thomas Jefferson uttered a mournful little croaky sound that might havebeen "ET TU, BRUTE?" It pierced Rebecca Mary's breast. "There, hush, poor dear, poor dear, and rest. You'll need all your sleep, " she croonedsoftly and brokenly. "Tomorrow morning I'll give you some beautifulcorn, and then--and then I'm going to take you to Mrs. Avery's boarderand tell her the worst. I'm going to give you up, Thomas Jefferson; andI'm the best friend you've got in the world! But I've got to, I've gotto--I've got to! It's been revealed to me in a dream. There was a manonce in the Bible, named Abraham, and there was his dearly belovedlittle boy named Isaac. And now here's me named Rebecca Mary, anddearly beloved you named Thomas Jefferson. Oh, I don't suppose you canunderstand; I suppose you're asleep. You'll never know how it feels togive up your dearly belovedest, but oh, oh, dear, you'll know how itfeels to be given up! You'll be one o' the blessed martyrs, ThomasJefferson--doesn't that comfort you a little speck? Oh, why don't youwake up and be comforted?

"The Lord excused Abraham, after all. But this isn't the Lord, it's Mrs. Avery's boarder. I'm afraid she isn't the Lord's kind--I'm afraid not, Thomas Jefferson. I don't dare to let you hope; I've got to prepare youfor the worst. "

She caught up the big, white fellow with sudden, irresistible yearningand sat up with him and rocked him back and forth in her arms. She begana muffled, sad little tune like a wail. The words were terrible words. 

"I'll hold you in my arms. I'll rock you--rock you--rock you. Fortomorrow, oh, to-MOR-row you--must--die! Aber-a-ham offered Isaac, and_I_-MUST OFFER YOU. "

Over and over, then tenderly she lowered Thomas Jefferson to the shoebox again. 

When Aunt Olivia came up in the morning, vaguely alarmed because itwas so late and no Rebecca Mary stirring, she had news to tell. Someonegoing by had told her something. 

"Well, that woman's found her 'di'mond-stone, '--how are you feeling thismorning, child? It was in her pocket where she'd put her hand in andfelt round! So all that fuss for noth--"

Suddenly Aunt Olivia stopped, for without warning, out of a box at thebedside stalked a great white rooster and flew to the foot board and"crew":

 "Cock-a-doodle-do-ooo! It was glass that glittered in the grass, And all the time I knew-oo-ooo!"

"My grief?" Aunt Olivia gasped. 

The Cookbook Diary

Rebecca Mary decided to keep a diary. It was not an inspiration, thoughit was rather like one in its suddenness. Of course she had always knownthat Aunt Olivia kept a diary. When she was very small she had stretcheda-tiptoe and with little pointing forefinger counted rows and rows oflittle black books that Aunt Olivia had "kept. " Each little black bookhad its year-label pasted neatly on the back. Rebecca Mary breatheddeep breaths of awe, there were so many of them. There must be so muchweather in those little black books--so many pleasant days, rainy days, storms, and snows!

It was Rebecca Mary who remembered that it was Tuesday, and that it hadshowered a little Wednesday--shone Thursday--showered again on Friday. Rebecca Mary was the jog to Aunt Olivia's memory. It gave her now, atthe beginning of her own diary career, an experienced feeling, as if sheknew already how to keep a diary. It made it seem a much simpler matterto begin. 

And then, of course, the minister's littlest little boy--really it wasthe minister's littlest little boy who had started Rebecca Mary. He hadvolunteered a peep into his own diary, and made whispered explanationsand suggestions. He let Rebecca Mary read some of the entries: "MUNDY, plesent and good. TUSDY, rany and bad. WENSDY, sum plesent and notgood enuf to hirt. THIRSDY" but he had hastily withdrawn the book at"Thirsdy, " and a tidal-wave of warm red blood had flowed up over hislittle brown ears and in around all the little brown islands of hisfreckles. So Rebecca Mary had begun hastily to talk of other things. For the minister's littlest little boy had explained that the firstStatement in each entry referred to the weather and the second to thedeportment of the writer, and Rebecca Mary had remarked a sympatheticresemblance between the two statements. She had caught a fleetingglimpse of the weather part of "Thirsdy"--she could guess the rest. Better let the curtain fall on "Thirsdy. " On her way home Rebecca Marydecided to keep a diary herself. Her first day's record had been a gooddeal like the "Mundy" of the minister's littlest little boy, only therewere more a's in the weather. After that, little by little, she branchedout into a certain originality--the Rebecca Mary sort. If she hadnot been hampered by circumstances, it would have been easier to beoriginal. The most hampering circumstance was the cookbook itself, whichshe was driven to use in her new undertaking. There was room on theblank leaves and above and below the recipes for cake and puddingand pie. The book was one Aunt Olivia had given her long ago to drawimpossible pictures in. 

In the beginning Rebecca Mary tried pasting pieces of "empty" paperover the pies and puddings and cakes, but the empty paper was tootransparent. In rather startling places things were liable to showthrough. 

As: "SUNDAY. --It rained a level teaspoonful. Aunt Olivia and I went tochurch. The text was thou shalt not steal 1 cups of sour milk--" RebeccaMary got no farther than that. She was a little appalled at the resultthus far, and hastily turned a page and began again in a blank spacewhere no intrusive pudding could break through and corrupt. Thereaftershe wrote above and below the recipes and pasted no more thin veils overthem. It seemed safer. 

Aunt Olivia, apparently oblivious to what was going on, yet saw and didnot disapprove. It was to be expected that the child should come intoher inheritance sometime, early or late. If early--well. 

"It's the Plummer in her. All the Plummers have kept diaries, " AuntOlivia mused, knitting stolidly on while the child stooped painfullyto her self-imposed task. The quaint resemblance to herself at her owndiary-writing did not escape her, and she smiled a little in the AuntOlivia way that scarcely stirred her lips. Aunt Olivia smiled oftenernow when she looked at the child. She was "failing" a little, Plummerly. Between the two of them, little Plummer and big, stretched of late a tiewoven of sheets and a gorgeous quilt of a thousand bits. It was not veryvisible to the naked eye, but they were both rather shyly conscious thatit was there. They would never be quite so far apart again. 

Rebecca Mary took her diary out to the haunts of Thomas Jefferson andread aloud selections to him, with an odd, conscious little air, asthough she were graduating. The great white fellow was a sympatheticauditor, if silence and extreme gravity count. Only once did he evermake comments, and Rebecca Mary could never quite make up her mindwhether he laughed then or applauded. When a great white roosterelongates his neck, crooks it ridiculously, flaps his wings and crows, it's hard telling exactly what feeling prompts him. But Rebecca reasonedfrom past experience and her faith in him--he had never laughed at herbefore. It was applause. The especial entry which evoked it was the onethat first mentioned an allowance. 

"'THURSDAY. --I think I'm going to--'" read Rebecca Mary slowly; and itwas significant that on this Thursday there was no weather. "'I haventdesided--I don't KNOW, but I think I'm going to ask Aunt Olivia to payme 5 cents a weak. Rhoda says you call it an alowance, and I supose sheknows. She is the minnister's daughter. She has 10 cents a weak unlessshes bad and then she pays the minnister an alowance. He charges her 1cent a sin and he gives it to somebody who is indignant--I think Rhodasaid indignant. Then I should think he would give it back to Rhoda. Ishant only ask Aunt Olivia for 5 cents--I think she will be more likely. I havent desided but I THINK I shall ask her tomorrow after her knap. After knaps you are more rested and maybe things don't look just as theydo before knaps. 

"'FRIDAY. --I think Ide better wait untill tomorrow. Her knap was rathershort. Ive desided to say you needent alow but 4 if 5 is too mutch. Ifshe alows Im going to buy me some crimpers. Rhodas curls natchurally butshe says you can crimp it if it doesent. I have begun to look at myselfin the glass and it fritens me--I guess there ought to be a gh inthat--to see how homebly I am. I wonder if it doesent kind of scare AuntOlivia. Prehaps if I was pretty like Rhoda she would call me darling anddear instead of Rebecca Mary. I dont blame her mutch because I LOOK likeRebecca Mary. 

"'SATURDAY. --I think Sunday will be the best time to ask her, justafter she gets home from meeting and has rolled her bonnet strings up, espesialy if the minnister preaches on the Lord lovething a cheerfulgiver. I am hopeing he will. If I dont get the crimpers Ime going togive up looking in the glass. For I think Ime growing homeblyer rightalong. Theres something the matter with my nose. Rhodas doesent run uphill. I never thought about noses before. Aunt Olivias is a little queartoo but I like it became its Aunt Olivias nose. I wish I knew if AuntOlivia liked mine. I wish we were better akquainted. 

"'SUNDAY. --I wish the Lord had created mine curly because I dont dassto ask Aunt Olivia. I don't dass to, so there. It scares my throat. Isupose its because aunts arnt mothers--seems as if youd dass to ask yourMOTHER. I hate to be scart on acount of being a Plummer. Im afraid Imthe only Plummer that ever was--'"

The reading suddenly stopped here. This was Sunday, and the last entrywas fresh from Rebecca Mary's pencil. 

"Thomas Jefferson!" stormed Rebecca Mary, in a little gust of passion, "don't you ever TELL I was scared! As long as you live!--cross yourheart!--oh, I wish I hadn't read that part to you! You're a Plummer too, and you never were scared, and you can't understand--"

The diary was clutched to Rebecca Mary's little flat breast, and with aswirl of starched Sunday skirts the child was gone. She went straightto Aunt Olivia. Red spots of shame flamed in both sallow little cheeks;resolution sat astride her little uphill nose. She could not bear to go, but it was easier than being ashamed. The pointing fingers of all thePlummers pushed her on. Go she must, or be a coward. Long ago--it seemedlong to Rebecca Mary--she had stood up straight and stanch and refusedto make any more sheets. Was that little girl who had dared, THIS littlegirl who was afraid? Should that little girl be ashamed of this one?

"Aunt Olivia, " steadily, though Rebecca Mary's heart was poundinghard--"Aunt Olivia, are--are you well off?"

She had not meant to begin like that, but afterwards she was glad thatshe had. 

"My grief!" Aunt Olivia ejaculated in her surprise. What would the childask next? "Am I well off? If you mean rich, no, I ain't. "

"Oh! Then you're--why, I didn't think about your being poor! I shouldn'thave thought of asking--that makes a great difference. I never thoughtof THAT!"

She was off before Aunt Olivia had fully recovered her breath, andthe stumping of her heavy little shoes going upstairs was the onlydistinctly audible sound. In her own room Rebecca Mary stopped, panting. 

"Oh, I'm glad I didn't get as far as ASKING!" she breathed aloud. "Inever thought about her being poor--of course then I wouldn't ask!"

But she squared her shoulders and stood up, straight and unashamed. Forshe had vindicated herself. She had been ready to ask. She could lookthat other little girl of the sheets in the face. The Other Little Girlwas there, coming to meet her as she advanced to the little lookingglass above the table. But Rebecca Mary waved her back peremptorily. 

"Go right back!" she said. "I only came to tell you I wasn't acoward--that's all. Good-bye. For I'm not coming any more. You're sorryI'm homely, and I'm sorry you are, but it doesn't do any good for us tolook at each other and groan. It will make us unsatisfied. So I shallturn you back to the wall--good-bye. "

But for a very [long] instant they looked sadly into each other'slittle lean brown-yellow faces. It was a brief ceremony of farewell. "Good-bye, " smiled Rebecca Mary, bravely. And the lips of The OtherLittle Girl moved as though saying it too. The Other Little Girl smiled. And neither of them knew that just then she was beautiful. 

Aunt Olivia was trying to meet her own courage test. She had been tryinga good many days. Duty--stern, unswerving duty--bade her inspect RebeccaMary's little cookbook diary. Should she not know--ought she not to knowthe thoughts that were brewing in the child's mind? How else could shebring her up properly?

"Read it, " Duty said, "find out. Are you afraid?"

"I'm ashamed, " groaned Aunt Olivia. "Do you think Rebecca Mary wouldread my diary?"

"Is Rebecca Mary bringing you up?"

Aunt Olivia sometimes thought so. The puzzle that she had begun to tryto solve when Rebecca Mary's white, death-struck mother had laid herbaby in Aunt Olivia's unaccustomed arms was getting a little moredifficult every day. Some days Aunt Olivia wondered if she ought to giveit up. Oh, this bringing up--this bringing up of little children!

"If I must, " groaned Aunt Olivia, and got as far as taking the littlediary in her hands. But she got no farther. She laid it gently downagain. 

"I can't, " she said, firmly, but she could not look Duty in the face asshe said it. She had always listened to Duty before. 

"You know you ought to--"

"Yes, I know, but I can't! It seems a shameful thing to do. I'm sureI've tried often enough--you know I've tried--"

"I know--that was good practice. Now stop trying and read it!"

Aunt Olivia flamed up. "I tell you I won't! It's a shameful thing. IfI found Rebecca Mary reading one of my diaries, I should send her tobed--"

"Read hers and go to bed yourself. It's your duty to read it. When youbring up a child--"

"I never will again!"

Aunt Olivia read it, with the relentless grip of Duty holding her to thetask. But flame spots crept up through the sallow of her thin cheeks andmade what atonement they could. 

It did not take long, though some of the pages she read twice. Theweatherless week, when Rebecca Mary had put off her "asking" from day today, Aunt Olivia went back to the third time. When she closed the littlebook it was not a Plummer face she lifted it to and laid it against forthe space of a breath--a Plummer face would not have been wet. 

Then she Whirled upon Duty. "Well, I've done it--I hope you'resatisfied!"

"It had to be done, " calm Duty responded. "If you think it will make youfeel any better, you can send yourself to bed. "

"I'm going to, " sighed Aunt Olivia, slipping away to her room. A strangelittle yearning was upon her to hunt up Rebecca Mary and call herdarling and dear. But in her heart she knew she should not have thecourage to do it. Here was another Plummer coward!

"Why are some people made like me?" she thought--"so it kills 'em tosay anything anyways tenderish. Seems to be too much for their vocalorgans--they'd rather do a week's washing!"

Other thoughts came to Aunt Olivia as she lay on her bed, doing herwhimsical penance for violating the sanctity of the little old cookbook. She was not comfortable. It was a hard bed--nothing was soft of AuntOlivia's. She moved about on it uneasily. 

"When they're dead, we're willing enough to say tenderish things to'em, " her musings ran. "We wish we HAD then. I suppose if Rebecca Marywas--"

She got no farther for the sudden horror that was upon her--that senther to her feet and to the door. But there she stopped in the blessedrelief that drifted in to her on a child's laugh. Somewhere out thereRebecca Mary was laughing in her subdued, sweet way. A cracked, shrillcrow followed--Thomas Jefferson was laughing too. 

Rebecca Mary was not dead. There was time to say a "tenderish" thing toher before she lay--before that. Aunt Olivia shut her eyes resolutely tothe vision that had intruded upon her musings. It was Rebecca Mary whowas laughing somewhere out there that she wanted to see. 

The next day was Sunday, and in the quiet of the long afternoon RebeccaMary read aloud again to Thomas Jefferson. It was from the littlecookbook diary. Thomas Jefferson was pecking about the long grass of theorchard. 

"Oh, listen!" cried Rebecca Mary, her eyes unwontedly shining. "Listento this, Thomas Jefferson!

"'SATURDAY. --Wind northwest by Mrs. Tupper's Weather vain. Somethinghappened yesterday. Aunt Olivia didn't say it, but she most did. She came right out of her bedroom and I saw it in her face!"Dear"--"darling, "--they were both there, and she was looking at me!Nobody EVER looked "dear" "darling" at me before. I suppose my motherwould have. If I hadent had another mother I think I should like to havehad Aunt Olivia. 

"'You feel that way more after you get akquainted. When I get VERYakquainted prehaps I shall tell Aunt Olivia. Its quear, I think, how itisent as easy to say some things as it is to think them. You can wrightthem easier too. I am glad Ime keeping a diary because I can wrightabout yesterday and what happenned. I shall read it to my grandchildren--to be continude. 

"'SUNDAY'--that's today, Thomas Jefferson, --'SUNDAY. --This is yesterdaycontinude, because there was too mutch for one day. Something elsebeutiful happenned. My Aunt Olivia said to me as folows, I have desidedto pay you a weakly alowance of 10 cents a weak Rebecca Mary. And Inever asked her to. And she never said anything about charging me formy sins. I was going to ask her but I found out she was poor. That was amistake, she isent. She must be SOME well of I think for 10 cents seamsa great deal to have of your own every weak. But I shant buy crimpers. Ime going to buy a present for Aunt Olivia byamby. Ime very happy. Iwish I knew how to spell hooray. '"

Suddenly Rebecca Mary was on her feet, waving the cookbook jubilantly. 

"Hoo-ray! Hoo-ray! Thomas Jefferson!" she shouted, surprising the gentleSunday calm. She surprised Thomas Jefferson, too, but he was equal tothe occasion--Thomas Jefferson was a gentleman. 

"Hoo-ra-a-a-ay!" he crowed, splendidly, with a fine effect of clappinghis hands. 

This time there could be no doubt. This was applause. 

The Bereavement

Thomas Jefferson was losing his appetite. Even Aunt Olivia noticed it, but it did not worry her as it did Rebecca Mary. 

"He's always had as many appetites as a cat's got lives--he's got eightgood ones left, " she said, calmly. 

But Rebecca Mary was not calm. It seemed to her that Thomas Jeffersonwas getting thinner every day. 

"Oh, I can feel your bones!" she cried, in distress. "Your bones arecoming through, you poor, dear Thomas Jefferson! Won't you eat just onemore kernel of corn--just this one for Rebecca Mary? I'd do it for you. Shut your eyes and swallow it right down and you'll never know it. "

That day Thomas Jefferson listened to pleading, but not the nextday--nor the next. He went about dispiritedly, and the last few timesthat he crowed it made Rebecca Mary cry. Even Aunt Olivia shook herhead. 

"I could do it better than that myself, " she said, soberly. 

Rebecca Mary hunted bugs and angleworms and arranged them temptingly inrows, but the big, white rooster passed them by with a feeble peckor two. Bits of bread failed to tempt him, or even his favorite cookycrumbs. His eighth appetite departed--his seventh, sixth, fifth, fourth. 

"He lost his third one yesterday, " lamented Rebecca Mary, "and todayhe's lost his second. It's pretty bad when he hasn't only one left, AuntOlivia. "

"Pretty bad, " nodded Aunt Olivia. She was stirring up a warm mush. When Rebecca Mary had gone upstairs she took it to Thomas Jeffersonand commanded him to eat. He was beyond coaxing--perhaps he neededcommanding. 

Rebecca Mary thought Aunt Olivia did not care, and it added a new stingto her pain. There was that time that Aunt Olivia said she wished theLord hadn't ever created roosters--Thomas Jefferson had just scratchedup her pansy seeds. And the time when she wished Thomas Jefferson wasdead; did she wish that now? Was she--was she glad he was going to bedead?

For Rebecca Mary had given up hope. She was not reconciled, but she wassure. She spent all her spare time with the big, gaunt, pitiful fellow, trying to make his last days easier. She knew he liked to have her withhim. 

"You do, don't you, dear?" she said. She had never called him "dear"before. She realized sadly that this was her last chance. "You do liketo have me here, don't you? You'd rather? Don't try to crow--just nodyour head a little if you do. " And the big, white fellow's head hadnodded a little, she was sure. She put out her loving little brown handand caressed it. "I knew you did, dear. Oh, Thomas Jefferson, ThomasJefferson, don't die! PLEASE don't--think of the good times we'llhave if you won't! Think of the--the grasshoppers--the bugs, ThomasJefferson--the cookies! Won't you think?--won't you try to be a littlebit hungry?"

Rebecca Mary knew what it was to be hungry and not be able to eat, but to be able to eat and not be hungry--this was away and beyond herexperience. The sad puzzle of it she could not solve. 

One day the minister had a rather surprising summons to perform hispriestly functions. The summoner was Rebecca Mary. She appeared likea sombre little shadow in his sunny sermon room. The minister's wifeushered her in, and in the brief instant of opening the door andannouncing her name flashed him a warning glance. He had been acquaintedso long with her glances that he was able to interpret this one withconsiderable accuracy. "All right, " he glanced back. No, he would notsmile--yes, he would remember that it was Rebecca Mary. 

"Do what she asks you, " flashed the minister's wife's glance. 

"All right, " flashed the minister. Then the door closed. 

"Thomas Jefferson is dying, " Rebecca Mary began, hurriedly. "I came tosee if you'd come. "

In spite of himself the minister gasped. Then, as the situation dawnedclearly upon him, his mouth corners began--in spite of themselves--tocurve upward. But in time he remembered the minister's wife, and drewthem back to their centres of gravity. He waited a little. It was safer. 

"Aunt Olivia isn't at home and I'm glad. She doesn't care. Perhaps shewould laugh. Oh, I know, " appealed Rebecca Mary, piteously, "I knowhe's a rooster! It isn't because I don't know--but he's FOLKS to me! Youneedn't do anything but just smooth his feathers a little and say theLord bless you. I thought perhaps you'd come and do that. _I_ could, butI wanted you to, because you're a minister. I thought--I thought perhapsyou'd try and forget he's a rooster. "

"I will, " the minister said, gently. Now his lips were quite grave. Hetook Rebecca Mary's hand and went with her. 

"He's a good man, " murmured the minister's wife, watching them go. Shehad known he would go. 

"He was one of my parishioners, " the minister was saying for thecomforting of Rebecca Mary. Unconsciously he used the past tense, asone speaks of those close to death. It was well enough, for already big, gaunt, white Thomas Jefferson was in the past tense. 

Rebecca Mary chronicled the sad event in her diary:

"Tomas Jefferson passed away at ten minutes of three this afternoonblessed are them that die in the Lord. The minnister did not get here intime. I wish I had asked him to run for he is a very good minnister andwould have. He helped me berry him in the cold cold ground and we sang ahim. I dident ask him to pray because he was only a rooster, but hewas folks to me. I loved him. It is very lonesome. I dred wakening uptomorrow because he always crowed under my window. The Lord gaveth andthe Lord has taken away. "

This last Rebecca Mary erased once, but she wrote it again after amoment's thought. For, she reasoned, it was the Lord part of Aunt Oliviawhich had given Thomas Jefferson to her. In the primitive little creedof Rebecca Mary every one had a Lord part, but some people's was verysmall. Not Aunt Olivia's--she had never gauged Aunt Olivia's Lord part;it would not have been consistent with her ideas of loyalty. 

It was very lonely, as Rebecca Mary had known it would be. At besther life had never been overfull of companionships, and the suddentaking-off--it seemed sudden, as all deaths do--of Thomas Jefferson washard to bear. Strange how blank a space one great, white rooster canleave behind him!

The yard and the orchard seemed full of blank spaces, though in a wayThomas Jefferson's soul seemed to frequent his old beloved haunts. Rebecca Mary could not see it pecking daintily about, but she felt itwas there. 

"His soul isn't dead, " she persisted, gently. She clung to the comfortof that. And one morning she thought she heard again Thomas Jefferson'sold, cheery greeting to the sunrise. The sound she thought she heardwoke her instantly. Was it Thomas Jefferson's soul crowing?

"Aunt Olivia isent sorry, " chronicled the diary, sadly. "Prehaps shesglad. Once she wished the Lord had forgot to create roosters. But shewas ever kind to Tomas Jefferson, considdering the seeds he scrached up. That was his besittingest sin and I know he is sorry now. I wish AuntOlivia was sorry. "

Nothing was ever said between the two about Rebecca Mary's loss, butAunt Olivia recognized the keenness of it to the child. She worrieda little about it; it reminded her of that other time of worry whenRebecca Mary and she had nearly starved. Sheets and roosters--there wereso many worries in the world. 

That other time she went to the minister, this time to the minister'swife. One afternoon she went and carried her work. 

"You know about children, " she began, without loss of time. "Whathappens when they lose their appetite over a dead rooster?"

"Thomas Jefferson?" breathed the minister's wife, softly. 

"Yes--he's dead and buried, and she's mourning for him. I set threetarts on for dinner today, and I set three tarts AWAY after dinner. Rebecca Mary is fond of tarts. What should you do if it was Rhoda?"

"Oh---Rhoda--why, I think I should get her another rooster, or a cat orsomething, to get her mind off. But Rhoda isn't Rebecca Mary--"

Aunt Olivia folded up her work. She got up briskly. 

"They've got a white rooster down to the Trumbullses', " she said. "Iguess I better go right down now; Tony Trumbull is liable to be at homejust before supper. I'm very much obliged to you for your advice. "

"Did I advise her?" murmured the minister's wife, watching the resoluteswing of Aunt Olivia's skirts as she strode away. "I was going to tellher that what would cure my Rhoda might not cure Rebecca Mary. Well, Ihope it will work, " but she was sure it wouldn't. She had grown a littleacquainted with Rebecca Mary. 

It was the new, white rooster crowing, instead of the soul of ThomasJefferson. Rebecca Mary found out after she had dressed and gonedownstairs. Soon after that she appeared in the kitchen doorway with anarmful of snowy feathers. Aunt Olivia, over her muffin pans, eyed herwith secret delight. The cure was working sooner than she had dared toexpect. 

"This is the Tony Trumbullses' rooster; if I hurry I guess I can carryhim back before breakfast, " Rebecca Mary said from the doorway. "I'llrun, Aunt Olivia. "

"Carry him back!" Aunt Olivia's muffin spoon dropped into the bowl ofcreamy batter. One look at Rebecca Mary convinced her that the cure hadnot begun to work. Imperceptibly she stiffened. "He ain't anybody's butmine. I've bought him, " she explained, briefly. "You set him downand feed him with these crumbs--he ain't human if he don't likecloth-o'-gold cake. "

But the child in the doorway, after gently releasing the great fellow, drew away quietly. The second look at her face convinced Aunt Oliviathat the cure would never work. 

"You feed him, please, Aunt Olivia, " Rebecca Mary said; "I--couldn't. I'll stir the muffins up. "

Nothing further was ever said about keeping the Tony Trumbull rooster. He pecked about the place in unrestrained freedom until the morning workwas done, and then Aunt Olivia carried him home in her apron. 

"I concluded not to keep him--he'd likely be homesick, " she said, witha qualm of conscience; for the big, white fellow had certainly shown nosigns of homesickness. But she could not explain and reveal the secretplaces of Rebecca Mary's heart. Aunt Olivia, too, had her ideas ofloyalty. 

In the diary there occurred brief mention of the episode: "The TonyTrumbull rooster has been here. I could eat him--that's how I feel aboutthe Tony Trumbull rooster. 

"I never could have eatten Tomas Jefferson but once and then it wouldhave broken my heart but I was starveing. Aunt Olivia took him back. "

Thomas Jefferson's grave was kept green. Rebecca Mary took her stentsdown into the orchard and sat beside it, sadly stitching. She kept itheaped with wild flowers and poppies from her own rows. Aunt Olivia'sflowers she never touched. The bitterness of Aunt Olivia's not beingsorry--perhaps being glad--rankled in her sore little soul. It wouldhave helped--oh yes, it would have helped. 

Aunt Olivia worried on. It seemed to her that all Rebecca Mary's mealsin one meal would not have kept a kitten alive--and that reminded her. She would try a kitten. The minister's wife had said a rooster or a cat. A white kitten, she decided, though she could scarcely have told why. 

The kitten was better, but it was not a cure. Rebecca Mary took thelittle creature to her breast and told it her grief for Thomas Jeffersonand cried her Thomas Jefferson tears into its soft, white fur. In thatway, at any rate, it was a success. 

"Maybe I shall love you some day, " she whispered, "but I can't yet, while Thomas Jefferson is fresh. He's all I have room for. He wasmy intimate friend--when your intimate friend is dead you can'tlove anybody else right away. " But she apologized to the little catgently--she felt that an apology was due it. 

"You see how it is, little, white cat, " she said. "I shall have to askyou to wait. But if I ever have a second love, I promise it will beyou. You're a great DEAL comfortinger than that Tony Trumbull rooster! Icould love you this minute if I had never loved Thomas Jefferson. Do youfeel like waiting?"

The little, white cat waited. And Aunt Olivia waited. She made temptingdishes for Rebecca Mary's meals, and put a ruffle into her nightgownneck and sleeves--Rebecca Mary had always yearned for ruffles. 

"I don't believe she sees 'em. She don't know they're there, " groanedAunt Olivia, impotently. "She don't see anything but Thomas Jefferson, and I don't know as she ever will!"

But Rebecca Mary saw the ruffles and fluted them between her brownlittle fingers admiringly. She tried once or twice to go and thank AuntOlivia, and got as far as her bedroom door. But the bitterness in herheart stayed her hand from turning the knob. If Aunt Olivia had onlyknown that being sorry was the right thing to do! Strangely enough, though Rebecca Mary's view of the matter never occurred to Aunt Olivia, she came by and by to being sorry on her own account. Perhaps she hadbeen all along, underneath her disquietude for Rebecca Mary's sorrow. Perhaps when she thought how quiet it had grown mornings, and what agood chance there was now for a supplementary nap, she was being sorry. When she remembered that she need not buy wheat now and yellow corn, andthat the cookies would last longer--perhaps then she was sorry. Butshe did not know it. It seemed to come upon her with the nature of asurprise on one especial day. She had been working her un-"scrached, "untrampled flower-beds. 

"My grief!" she ejaculated, suddenly, as if just aware of it. "I declareI believe I miss him, too! I believe to my soul I'd like to hear himcrow--I wouldn't mind if he came strutting in here!" And "in here" wasAunt Olivia's beloved garden of flowers. Surely she was being sorry now!

It was the next day that Rebecca Mary's bitterness was sweetened--thatshe began to be cured. She and the little, white cat went down togetherto Thomas Jefferson's resting place. When they went home--and they wentsoon--Rebecca Mary got her diary and began to write in it with eagerhaste. Her sombre little face had lighted up with some inner gladness, like relief:

"Shes been there and put some lavvender on and pinks. I mean AuntOlivia. And shes the very fondest of her pinks and lavvender. So shemust have loved Tomas Jefferson. Shes sorry. Shes sorry. Shes sorry. AndIme so glad. "

Rebecca Mary caught up the little, white cat and cried her first tear ofjoy on its neck. Then she wrote again:

"Now there are two morners instead of one. Two morners seams so mutchlovinger than only one. I know he must feal better. I think he must havebeen hurt before and so was I. I wish I dass tell Aunt Olivia how glad Iam shes sorry. "

But she told only the little, white cat. The Plummer mantle of reticencehad fallen too heavily on her narrow little shoulders. What she longedto do she did not "dass. " But that evening in her little rufflednightgown she went to Aunt Olivia's room and thanked her for theruffles. 

"They're beautiful, " she murmured, in a small agony of shyness. "I thinkit was very kind of you to ruffle me--I've always wanted to be. Thankyou very much. " And then she had scurried away on her bare feet to thesafe retreat of her own room under the eaves. Aunt Olivia, left behind, was unconsciously relieved at not having to respond. She was glad thechild had discovered the ruffles and was pleased. It was a good sign. 

"I'll mix up some pancakes in the morning, " Aunt Olivia said, complacently. "Pancakes may help along. Rebecca Mary is fond of 'em. "

The pinks and the fragrant lavender appeared to have establisheda certain unspoken comradeship between the two "morners" of ThomasJefferson. Thereafter Rebecca Mary went about comforted, and Aunt Oliviarelieved. The little, white cat purred about the skirts of one and thestubbed-out toes of the other in cheerful content. 

"Well?" the minister's wife queried, in a moment of social intercourseafter church. She and Aunt Olivia walked down the aisle together. 

"She's getting over it--or beginning to, " nodded Aunt Olivia. "Thatother rooster didn't work, but I think the little cat is going to. Shehugs it. "

"Good! But she still mourns Thomas Jef--"

"Of course!" Aunt Olivia interposed, rather crisply. "You couldn'texpect her to get over it all in a minute. He was a remarkable rooster. "

"She misses him, herself, " inwardly smiled the minister's little wife. Whether by virtue of her relationship to the minister or by her ownvirtue, she had learned to read human nature with a degree of accuracy. 

"I looked at myself in the glass tonight, " confessed Rebecca Mary'sdiary, "but it was on acount of the rufles. I think Ime not quite sohomebly in rufles. I think Aunt Olivia was kind to rufle me. I shouldlike to ware this night gown in the day time. I wish folks did. "

The pencil slipped out of Rebecca Mary's fingers and rolled on thefloor, to the undoing of the little, white cat, who had gone to bed inhis basket. Rebecca Mary caught him up as he darted after the pencil, and hugged him in an odd little ecstasy. She felt oddly happy. 

"You little, white cat!" she cried, muffledly, her face in his thickcoat, "you've waited and waited, but I think I'm going to love younow--you needn't wait any more. "

The Feel Doll

The minister uttered a suppressed note of warning as solid little stepssounded in the hall. It was he who threw a hasty covering over the doll. The minister's wife sewed on undisturbedly. She did worse than that. 

"Come here, Rhoda, " she called, "and tell me which you like better, three tucks or five in this petticoat?"

"Five, " promptly, upon inspection. Rhoda pulled away the concealingcover and regarded the stolid doll with tilted head. "She's 'nough likemy Pharaoh's Daughter to be a blood relation, " she remarked. "She's gotthe Pharaoh complexion. "

"Spoken like MY daughter!" laughed the minister. "But I thought newdolls in this house were always surprises. And here's Mrs. Ministermaking doll petticoats out in the open!"

"This is Rebecca Mary's--I'm dressing a doll for Rebecca Mary, Robert. She's eleven years old and never had a doll! Rhoda's ten and hashad--How many dolls have you had, Rhoda?"

"Gracious! Why, Pharaoh's Daughter, an' Caiapha, an' Esther theBeautiful Queen, an' the Children of Israel--five o' them--an' Mrs. Job, an'--"

"Never mind the rest, dear. You hear, Robert? Do you think Rhoda wouldbe alive now if she'd never had a doll?"

The minister pondered the question. "Maybe not, maybe not, " he decided;"but possibly the dolls would have been. "

"Don't make me smile, Robert. I'm trying to make you cry. If RebeccaMary were sixty instead of eleven I should dress her a doll. "

"Then why not one for Miss Olivia?"

"I may dress her one, " undauntedly, "if I find out she never had one inher life. "

"She never did. " The minister's voice was positive. "And for thatreason, dear, aren't you afraid she would not approve of Rebecca Mary'shaving one? Isn't it rather a delicate mat--"

"Don't, Robert, don't discourage me. It's going to be such a beautifuldoll! And you needn't tell me that poor little eleven-year-oldwoman-child won't hold out her empty arms for it. Robert, you're aminister; would it be wrong to give it to her STRAIGHT?"

"Straight, dear?"

"Yes; without saying anything to her aunt Olivia. Tell me. Rhoda's gone. Say it as--as liberally as you can. "

The minister for answer swept doll, petticoat, and minister's wife intohis arms, and kissed them all impartially. 

"Think if it were Rhoda, " she pleaded. 

"And you were 'Aunt Olivia'? You ask me to think such hard things, dear!If I could stop being a minister long enough--"

"Stop?" she laughed; but she knew she meant keep on. With a sigh sheburrowed a little deeper in his neck. "Then I'll ask Aunt Olivia first, "she said. 

She went back to her tucking. Only once more did she mention RebeccaMary. The once was after she had come downstairs from tucking thechildren into bed. She stood in the doorway with the look in her facethat mothers have after doing things like that. The minister loved thatlook. 

"Robert, nights when I kiss the children--you knew when you married methat I was foolish--I kiss little lone Rebecca Mary, too. I began theday Thomas Jefferson died--I went to the Rebecca-Mary-est window andthrew her a kiss. I went tonight. Don't say a word; you knew when youmarried me. "

Aunt Olivia received the resplendent doll in silence. Plummer honestyand Plummer politeness were at variance. Plummer politeness said: "Thankher. For goodness' sake, aren't you going to thank the minister's wife?"But Plummer honesty, grim and yieldless, said, "You can't thank her, because you're not thankful. " So Aunt Olivia sat silent, with herresplendent doll across her knees. 

"For Rebecca Mary, " the minister's wife was saying, in rather a haltingway. "I dressed it for her. I thought perhaps she never--"

"She never, " said Aunt Olivia, briefly. Strange that at that particularinstant she should remember a trifling incident in the child's far-offchildhood. The incident had to do with a little, white nightgown rolledtightly and pinned together. She had found Rebecca Mary in her littlewaist and petticoat cuddling it in bed. 

"It's a dollie. Please 'sh, Aunt Olivia, or you'll wake her up!" thechild had whispered, in an agony. "Oh, you're not agoing to turn herback to a nightgown? Don't unpin her, Aunt Olivia--it will kill her!I'll name her after you if you'll let her stay. "

"Get up and take your clothes off. " Strange Aunt Olivia should rememberat this particular instant; should remember, too, that the pin hadbeen a little rusty and came out hard. Rebecca Mary had slid out of bedobediently, but there had been a look on her little brown face as of onebereaved. She had watched the pin come out, and the nightgown unroll, instricken silence. When it hung released and limp over Aunt Olivia's armshe had given one little cry:

"She's dead!"

The minister's wife was talking hurriedly. Her voice seemed a goodway off; it had the effect of coming nearer and growing louder as AuntOlivia stepped back across the years. 

"Of course you are to do as you think best about giving it to her, " theminister's wife said, unwillingly. This came of being a minister's wife!"But I think--I have always thought--that little girls ought--Imean Rhoda ought--to have dolls to cuddle. It seems part oftheir--her--inheritance. " This was hard work! If Miss Olivia would notsit there looking like that--. 

"As if I'd done something unkind!" thought the gentle little mother, indignantly. She got up presently and went away. But Aunt Olivia, withthe doll hanging unhealthily over her arm, followed her to the door. There was something the Plummer honesty insisted upon Aunt Olivia'ssaying. She said it reluctantly:

"I think I ought to tell you that I've never believed in dolls. I'vealways thought they were a waste of time and kept children from learningto do useful things. I've brought Rebecca Mary up according to my bestlight. "

"Worst darkness!" thought the minister's wife, hotly. 

"She's never had a doll. I never had one. I got along. I could makebutter when I was seven. So perhaps you'd better take the doll--"

"No, no! Please keep it, Miss Olivia, and if you should ever change yourmind--I mean perhaps sometime--good-bye. It's a beautiful day, isn'tit?"

Aunt Olivia took it up into the guest chamber and laid it in an emptybureau drawer. She closed the drawer hastily. She did not feel asduty-proof as she had once felt, before things had happened--softeningthings that had pulled at her heartstrings and weakened her. The quilton the guest chamber bed was one of the things; she would not look at itnow. And the sheets under the quilt--and the grave of Thomas Jeffersonthat she could see from the guest chamber window. Aunt Olivia wasterribly beset with the temptation to take the doll out to Rebecca Maryin the garden. 

"Are you going to do it?" demanded Duty, confronting her. "Are yougoing to give up all your convictions now? Rebecca Mary's in her twelfthyear-pretty late to begin to humor her. I thought you didn't believe inhumoring. "

"I unpinned the nightgown, " parried Aunt Olivia, on the defensive. "Inever let her make another one. "

"But you're weakening now. You want to let her have THIS doll. "

"It seems like part of--of her inheritance. "

"Lock that drawer!"

Aunt Olivia turned the key unhappily. It was not that her "convictions"had changed--it was her heart. 

She went up at odd times and looked at the doll the minister's wife haddressed. She had an unaccountable, uncomfortable feeling that it waslying there in its coffin--that Rebecca Mary would have said, "She'sdead. "

It was a handsome doll. Aunt Olivia was not acquainted with dolls, but she acknowledged that. She admired it unwillingly. She liked itsclothes--the minister's wife had not spared any pains. She had notstinted in tucks nor ruffles. 

Once Aunt Olivia took it out and turned it over in her hands withcritical intent, but there was nothing to criticise. It was a beautifuldoll. She held it with a curious, shy tenderness. But that time she didnot sit down with it. It was the next time. 

The rocker was so near the bureau, and Aunt Olivia was tired--and thedoll was already in her arms. She only sat down. For a minute she satquite straight and unrelaxed, then she settled back a little--a littlemore. The doll lay heavily against her, its flaxen head touching herbreast. After the manner of high-bred dolls, its eyes drooped sleepily. 

Aunt Olivia began to rock--a gentle sway back and forth. She was sixty, but this was the first time she had ever rocked a chi--a doll. So sherocked for a little, scarcely knowing it. When she found out, a wave ofsoft pink dyed her face and flowed upward redly to her hair. 

"Well!" Duty jibed, mocking her. 

"Don't say a word!" cried poor Aunt Olivia. "I'll put her right back. "

"What good will that do?"

"I'll lock her in. "

"You've locked her in before. "

"I'll--I'll hide the key. "

"Where you can find it! Think again. "

Aunt Olivia thrust the doll back into its coffin with unsteady hands. The red in her face had faded to a faint, abiding pink. She locked thedrawer and drew out the key. She strode to the window and flung it outwith a wide sweep of her arm. 

The minister's wife, ignorant of the results of her kind littleexperiment, resolved to question Rebecca Mary the next time she came onan errand. She would do it with extreme caution. 

"I'll just feel round, " she said. "I want to know if her aunt's given itto her. You think she must have, don't you, Robert? By this time? Why, it was six weeks ago I carried it over! It was such a nice, friendlylittle doll! By this time they would be such friends--if her aunt gaveit to her. Robert, you think--"

"I think it's going to rain, " the minister said. But he kissed her tomake it easier. 

Rebecca Mary came over to bring Aunt Olivia's rule for parson-cake thatthe minister's wife had asked for. 

"Come in, Rebecca Mary, " the minister's wife said, cordially. "Don't youwant to see the new dress Rhoda's doll is going to have? I suppose youcould make your doll's dress yourself?" It seemed a hard thing to say. Feeling round was not pleasant. 

"P'haps I could, but she doesn't wear dresses, " Rebecca Mary answered, gravely. 

"No?" This was puzzling. "Her clothes don't come off, I suppose?" Thenit could not be the nice, friendly doll. 

"No'm. Nor they don't go on, either. She isn't a feel doll. "

"A--what kind did you say, dear?" The minister's wife paused in her workinterestedly. Distinctly, Miss Olivia had not given her THE doll; butthis doll--"I don't think I quite understood, Rebecca Mary. "

"No'm; it's a little hard. She isn't a FEEL doll, I said. I never had afeel one. Mine hasn't any body, just a soul. But she's a great comfort. "

"Robert, " appealed the minister's wife, helplessly. This was a case forthe minister--a case of souls. 

"Tell us some more about her, Rebecca Mary, " the minister urged, gently. But there was helplessness, too, in his eyes. 

"Why, that's all!" returned Rebecca Mary, in surprise. "Of course Ican't dress her or undress her or take her out calling. But it's a greatcomfort to rock her soul to sleep. "

"Call Rhoda, " murmured the wife to the minister; but Rhoda was alreadythere. She volunteered prompt explanation. There was no hesitation inRhoda's face. 

"She means a make believe doll. Don't you, Rebecca Mary?"

"Yes, " Rebecca Mary assented; "that's her other name, I suppose, but Inever called her by it. "

"What did you call her?" demanded practical Rhoda. "What's her namemean?"

"Rhoda!"--hastily, from the minister's wife. This seemed like sacrilege. But Rhoda's clear, blue eyes were fixed upon Rebecca Mary; she had notheard her mother's warning little word. 

A shy color spread thinly over the lean little face of Rebecca Mary. Forthe space of a breath or two she hesitated. 

"Her name's--Felicia, " then, softly. 

"Robert"--the children had gone out together; the minister's wife's eyeswere unashamedly wet--"Robert, I wish you were a--a sheriff instead ofa minister. Because I think I would make a better sheriff's wife. Do youknow what I would make you do?"

The minister could guess. 

"I'd make you ARREST that woman, Robert!"

"Felicia!" But she saw willingness to be a sheriff come into his owneyes and stop there briefly. 

"Don't call me 'Felicia' while I feel as wicked as this! Oh, Robert, tothink she named her little soul-doll after me!"

"It's a beautiful name. "

Suddenly the wickedness was over. She laughed unsteadily. 

"It wouldn't be a good name for a sheriff's wife, would it?" she said. "So I'll stay by my own minister. "

One day close upon this time Aunt Olivia came abruptly upon Rebecca Maryin the grape arbor. She was sitting in her little rocking chair, swayingback and forth slowly. She did not see Aunt Olivia. What was she wascrooning half under her breath?

 "Oh, hush, oh, hush, my dollie; Don't worry any more, For Rebecca Mary 'n' the angels Are watching o'er, ---O'er 'n' o'er 'n' o'er. "

The same words over and over--growing perhaps a little softer andtenderer. Rebecca Mary's arm was crooked as though a little flaxen headlay in the bend of it. Rebecca Mary's brooding little face was gazingdownward intently at her empty arm. Quite suddenly it came upon AuntOlivia that she had seen the child rocking like this before--that shemust have seen her often. 

 "Rebecca Mary 'n' the angels Are watching o'er, "

sang on the crooning little voice in Aunt Olivia's ears. 

The doll in its coffin upstairs; down here Rebecca Mary rocking herempty arms. The two thoughts flashed into Aunt Olivia's mind and weldedinto one. All her vacillations and Duty's sharp reminders occurredto her clearly. She had thought that at last she was proof againsttemptation, but she had not thought of this. She was not prepared forRebecca Mary, here in her little rocking chair, rocking her littlesoul-doll to sleep. 

The angels were used to watching o'er, but Aunt Olivia could not bearit. She went away with a strange, unaccustomed ache in her throat. Theminister's wife would not have wanted her arrested then. 

Aunt Olivia tiptoed away as though Rebecca Mary had said, "'Sh!" She wasremembering, as she went, the brief, sweet moment when she had sat likethat and rocked, with the doll the minister's wife dressed, in her arms. It seemed to establish a new link of kinship between her and RebeccaMary. 

She ran plump into Duty. 

"Oh!" she gasped. She was a little stunned. Aunt Olivia's Duty wassolid. 

"I know where you've been. I tried get there in time. "

"You're too late, " Aunt Olivia said, firmly, "Don't stop me; there'ssomething I must do before it gets too dark. It's six o'clock now. "

"Wait!" commanded Duty. "Are you crazy? You don't mean--"

"Go back there and look at that child--and hear what she's singing! Staylong enough to take it all in--don't hurry. "

But Duty barred her way, grim and stern. 

Palely she put up both her hands and thrust it aside. She did not oncelook back at it. 

Already it was dusky under the guest chamber window. She had to stoopand peer and feel in the long tangle of grass. She kept on patientlywith the Plummer kind of patience that never gave up. She was eager andsmiling, as though something pleasant were at the end of the peering andstooping and feeling. 

Aunt Olivia was hunting for a key. 

The Plummer Kind

The doll's name was Olivicia. 

Rebecca Mary had evolved the name from her inner consciousness and herintense gratitude to Aunt Olivia and the minister's wife. She had putAunt Olivia first with instinctive loyalty, though in the secret littlecloset of her soul she had longed to call the beautiful being Felicia, intact and sweet. She did not know the meaning of Felicia, but she knewthat the doll, as it lay in the loving cradle of her arms, gazing upwardwith changeless placidity and graciousness, looked as one should lookwhose name was Felicia. Greater compliment than this Rebecca Mary couldnot have paid the minister's wife. 

"Olivicia, " she had placed the being on the sill of the attic window, stood confronting, addressing it: "Olivicia, it's coming--it is verynear to! Sit there and listen and smile--oh yes, smile, SMILE. I don'twonder! I would too, only I'm too glad. When you're TOO glad you can'tsmile. I've been waiting for it to come. Olivicia, seems as if I'd beenwaiting a thousan' years. You're so young, you've only lived such littlewhile, of course I don't expect you understand the deep-downness insideo' me when I think--"

The address fluttered and came to a standstill here. Rebecca Mary wassuddenly minded that Olivicia was in the dark; must be enlightenedbefore she could smile understandingly. 

"Why, you poor dear!--why, you don't know what it is that's coming andthat's near to! It's the--city, Olivicia, " enlightened Rebecca Mary, gently, to insure against shock. "Aunt Olivia's going--to--the--city. "

In Rebecca Mary's dreamings it had always been THE city. It did not needlocal habitation and a name; enough that it had streets upon streets, houses upon houses upon houses, a dazzling swirl of men, women, andlittle children--noise, glitter, glory. In her dreamings the city wassomething so wondrous and grand that Heaven might have been its name. The streets upon streets were not paved with gold, of course--of courseshe knew they were not paved with gold! But in spite of herself she knewthat she would be disappointed if they did not shine. 

Aunt Olivia had said it that morning. At breakfast--quitematter-of-factly. Think of saying it matter-of-factly!

"I'm going to the city soon, Rebecca Mary, " she had said, between sipsof her tea. "Perhaps by Friday week, but I haven't set the day, really. There's a good deal to do. "

Rebecca Mary had been helping do it all day. Now it was nearly time forthe pageant of red and gold in the west that Rebecca Mary loved, and shehad come up here with the beautiful being to watch it through the tinypanes of the attic window, but more to ease the aching rapture in hersoul by speech. She must say it out loud. The city--the city--to thecity of streets and houses and men and wonders upon wonders!

Olivicia had come in the capacity of calm listener; for nothing excitedOlivicia. 

"I, " Aunt Olivia had said, but Aunt Olivia usually said "I. " There wasno discouragement in that to Rebecca Mary. It did not for a moment occurto her that "I" did not mean "we. "

The valise they had got down from its cobwebby niche was roomy; it wouldhold enough for two. Rebecca Mary knew that, because she had packed itso many times in her dreamings. She wished Aunt Olivia would let herpack it now. She knew just where she would put everything--herbest dress and Aunt Olivia's (for of course they would wear theirsecond-bests), their best hats and shoes and gloves. Their nightgownsshe would roll tightly and put in one end, for it doesn't hurtnightgowns to be rolled tightly. Of course she would not putanything heavy, like hair brushes and shoes and things, on top ofanything--unless it was the nightgowns, for it doesn't hurt--

"Oh, Olivicia--oh, Olivicia, how I hope she'll say, 'Rebecca Mary, youmay pack the valise'! I could do it with my eyes shut, I've done it somany, many times!"

But Aunt Olivia did not say it. One day and then another went by withouther saying it, and then one morning Rebecca Mary knew by the plump, well-fed aspect of the valise that it was packed. Aunt Olivia had packedit in the night. 

There was no one else in the room when Rebecca Mary made herdisappointing little discovery. She went over to the plump valise andprodded it gently with her finger. But it is so difficult to tell inthat way whether your own best dress, your own best hat, best shoes, best gloves, are in there. Rebecca Mary hurried upstairs and looked inher closet and in her "best" bureau drawer. 

They were not there! In her relief she caught up the beautiful being andstrained her hard, lifeless little body to her own warm breast. If shehad not been Rebecca Mary, she would have danced about the room. 

"Oh, I'm so relieved, Olivicia!" she laughed, softly. "If they're not uphere, THEY'RE DOWN THERE. They've got to be somewhere. They're in thatvalise--valise--vali-i-ise!"

Rebecca Mary had never been to a city, and within her remembrance AuntOlivia had never been. Curiosity was not a Plummer trait, hence RebeccaMary had never asked many questions about the remote period before herown advent into Aunt Olivia's life. The same Plummer restraint kept hernow from asking questions. There was nothing to do but wait, but thewaiting was illumined by her joyous anticipations. 

Oddly enough, Aunt Olivia seemed to have no anticipations--at leastjoyous ones. Her, thin, grave face may even have looked a little thinnerand graver, IF Rebecca Mary had thought to notice. 

The night the lean old valise took on plumpness, Aunt Olivia went ofteninto Mary's little room. Many of the times she came out very shortlywith the child's "best" things trailing from her arms, but once or twiceshe stayed rather long--long enough to stand beside a little white bedand look down on a flushed little face. A pair of wide-open eyes watchedher smilingly from the pillows, but they were not Rebecca Mary's eyes, and Olivicia was altogether trustworthy. 

An odd thing happened--but Olivicia never told. Why should she publishabroad that she had lain there and seen Aunt Olivia bend once--bendtwice--over Rebecca Mary and kiss her?

Softly, patiently, very wearily, Aunt Olivia went in and out. The thingsshe brought out in her arms she folded carefully and packed, but notin the lank old valise. She put them all with tender painstaking into aquaint little carpetbag. When the work was done she set the bag away outof sight, and went about packing her own things in the old valise. 

The day before, she had been to see the minister and the minister'swife. She called for them both, and sat down gravely and made herproposition. It was startling only because of the few words it tookto make it. Otherwise it was very pleasant, and the minister and theminister's wife received it with nods and smiles. 

"Of course, Miss Olivia--why, certainly!" smiled and nodded theminister. 

"Why, it will be delightful--and Rhoda will be so pleased!" nodded andsmiled the minister's wife. But after their caller had gone she facedthe minister with indignant eyes. 

"Why did you let her?" she demanded. "Why did you spoil it all by that?"

"Because she was Miss Olivia, " he answered, gently. 

"Yes--yes, I suppose so, " reluctantly; "but, anyway, you needn't havelet her do it in advance. Actually it made me blush, Robert!"

The minister rubbed his cheeks tentatively. "Made me, too, " he admitted, "but I respect Miss Olivia so much--"

The minister's wife tacked abruptly to her other source of indignation. 

"Why doesn't she TAKE Rebecca Mary? Robert, wait! You know it isn'tbecause--You know better!"

"It isn't because, dear--I know better, " he hurried, assuringly. Theminister was used to her little indignations and loved them for beinghers. They were harmless, too, and wont to have a good excuse for being. This one, now--the minister in his heart wondered that Miss Olivia didnot take Rebecca Mary. 

"It would be such a treat. Robert, you think what a treat it would be toRebecca Mary!"

"Still, dear--"

"I don't want to be still! I want Rebecca Mary to have that treat!" Butshe kissed him in token of being willing to drop it there--it was herusual token--and ran away to get a little room ready. There was not adevice known to the minister's wife that she did not use to make thatroom pleasant. 

"Shall I take your pincushion, Rhoda?" Rhoda had come up to help. 

"Yes, " eagerly, "and I'll write Welcome with the pins. "

"And the little fan to put on the wall--the pink one?"

"Yes, yes; let me spread it out, mamma!"

"That's grand. Now if we only had a pink quilt--"

"I 'only have' one!" laughed Rhoda, hurrying after it. 

The whole little room when they left, like the pins in the pincushion, spelled "WELCOME. "

Aunt Olivia got up earlier than usual one day and went about the housefor a survey. The valise and the little carpetbag she carried downstairsand out on to the front steps. Her face was whitened as if by a longnight's vigil. When she called Rebecca Mary it was with a voice strainedhoarse. The beautiful being Olivicia watched her with intent, unwinkinggaze. Could it be Olivicia understood?

"Hurry and dress, Rebecca Mary; there's a good deal to do, " Aunt Oliviasaid at the door. She did not go in. "Yes, in your second-best--don'tyou see I've put it out. You can wear that every day now, till--for awhile. " Something in the voice startled Rebecca Mary out of her subduedecstasy and sent her down to breakfast with a nameless fear tugging ather heart. 

"You're going to stay at the minister's--I've paid your board inadvance, " Aunt Olivia said, monotonously, as if it were her lesson. Shedid not look at Rebecca Mary. "I've put in your long-sleeve aprons soyou can help do up the dishes. There's plenty of handkerchiefs to last. You mustn't forget your rubbers when it's wet, or to make up your bedyourself. I don't want you to make the minister's wife any more troublethan you can help. "

The lesson went monotonously on, but Rebecca Mary scarcely heard. Shehad heard the first sentence--her sentence, poor child! "You're going tostay at the minister's--stay at the minister's--stay at the minister's. "It said itself over and over again in her ears. In her need for somebodyto lean on, her startled gaze sought the beautiful being across the roomin agonized appeal. 

But Olivicia was staring smilingly at Aunt Olivia. ET TU, OLIVICIA!

If Rebecca Mary had noticed, there was an appealing, wistful look inAunt Olivia's eyes too, in odd contrast to the firm lips that movedsteadily on with their lesson:

"You can walk to school with Rhoda, you'll enjoy that. You've never hadfolks to walk with. And you can stay with her, only you mustn't forgetyour stents. I've put in some towels to hem. Maybe the minister's wifehas got something; if so, hem hers first. You'll be like one o' thefamily, and they're nice folks, but I want you to keep right on being aPlummer. "

Years afterwards Rebecca Mary remembered the dizzy dance of the bottlesin the caster--they seemed to join hands and sway and swing about theirsilver circlet and how Aunt Olivia's buttons marched and countermarchedup and down Aunt Olivia's alpaca dress. She did not look above thebuttons--she did not dare to. If she was to keep right on being aPlummer, she must not cry. 

"That's all, " she heard through the daze and dizziness, "except thatI can't tell when I'll be back. It--ain't decided. Likely I shan't beable--there won't be much chance to write, and you needn't expect me to. No need to write me either. That's all, I guess. "

The stage that came for Aunt Olivia dropped the little carpetbag andRebecca Mary at the minister's. In the brief interval between the startand the dropping, Rebecca Mary sat, stiff and numb, on the edge of thehigh seat and gazed out unfamiliarly at the familiar landmarks theylurched past. At any other time the knowledge that she was going to theminister's to stay--to live--would have filled her with staid joy. Atany other time--but THIS time only a dull ache filled her little drearyworld. Everything seemed to ache--the munching cows in the Trumbullpasture, the cats on the doorsteps, the dog loping along beside thestage, the stage driver's stooping old back. Aunt Olivia was going tothe city--Rebecca Mary wasn't going to the city. There was no room inthe world for anything but that and the ache. 

Rebecca Mary's indignation was not born till night. Then, lying in thedainty bed under Rhoda's pink quilt, her mood changed. Until then shehad only been disappointed. But then she sat up suddenly and said bitterthings about Aunt Olivia. 

"She's gone to have a good time all to herself--and she might have takenme. She didn't, she didn't, and she might've. She wanted all the goodtime herself! She didn't want me to have any!"

"Rebecca Mary!--did you speak, dear?" It was the gentle voice of theminister's wife outside the door. Rebecca Mary's red little handsunwrung and dropped on the pink quilt. 

"No'm, I did--I mean yes'm, I didn't--I mean--"

"You don't feel sick? There isn't anything the matter, dear?"

"No'm--oh, yes'm, yes'm!" for there was something the matter. It wasAunt Olivia. But she must not say it--must not cry--must keep right onbeing a Plummer. 

"Robert, I didn't go in--I couldn't, " the minister's wife said, backin the cheery sitting room. "I suppose you think I'd have gone in andcomforted her, taken her right in my arms and comforted her the Rhodaway, but I didn't. "

"No?" The minister's voice was a little vague on account of the sermonon his knees. 

"I seemed to know--something told me right through that door--that she'drather I wouldn't. Robert, if the child is homesick, it's a differentkind of homesickness. "

"The Plummer kind, " he suggested. The minister was coming to. 

"Yes, the Plummer kind, I suppose, Plummers are such--such PLUMMERYpersons, Robert!"

Upstairs under the pink quilt the rigid little figure relaxed justenough to admit of getting out of bed and fumbling in the littlecarpetbag. With her diary in her hand--for Aunt Olivia had rememberedher diary--Rebecca Mary went to the window and sat down. She had tohold the cookbook up at a painful angle and peer at it sharply, for themoonlight that filtered into the little room through the vines was dimand soft. 

"Aunt Olivia has gone to the city and I haven't, " painfully tracedRebecca Mary. "She wanted the good time all to herself. I shall neverforgive Aunt Olivia the Lord have mercy on her. " Then Rebecca Marywent back to bed. She dreamed that the cars ran off the track and theybrought Aunt Olivia's pieces home to her. In the dreadful dream sheforgave Aunt Olivia. 

It was very pleasant at the minister's and the minister's wife's. Rebecca Mary felt the warmth and pleasantness of it in every fibre ofher body and soul. But she was not happy nor warm. She thought it wasindignation against Aunt Olivia--she did not know she was homesick. Shedid not know why she went to the old home every day after school andwandered through Aunt Olivia's flower garden, and sat with little brownchin palm-deep on the doorsteps. Gradually the indignation melted out ofexistence and only the homesickness was left. It sat on her small, leanface like a little spectre. It troubled the minister's wife. 

"What can we do, Robert?" she asked. 

"What?" he echoed; for the minister, too, was troubled. 

"She wanders about like a little lost soul. When she plays with thechildren it's only the outside of her that plays. "

"Only the outside, " he nodded. 

"Last night I went in, Robert, and--and tried the Rhoda way. I thinkshe liked it, but it didn't comfort her. I am sure now that it ishomesickness, Robert. " They were both sure, but the grim little spectresat on, undaunted by all their kindnesses. 

"When thy father and thy mother forsake the, " wrote Rebecca Mary in thecookbook diary, "and thy Aunt Olivia for I know it means and thy AuntOlivia then the Lord will take the up, but I dont feal as if anyboddyhad taken me up. The ministers wife did once but of course she had toput me down again rite away. She is a beutiful person and I love her butshe is differunt from thy father and thy mother and thy Aunt Olivia. Iderather have Aunt Olivia take me up than to have the Lord. "

It was when she shut the battered little book this time that RebeccaMary remembered one or two things that had happened the morning AuntOlivia went away. It was queer how she HADN'T remembered them before. 

She remembered that Aunt Olivia had taken her sharp little face betweenher own hands and looked down wistfully at it--wistfully, Rebecca Maryremembered now, though she did not call it by that name. She rememberedAunt Olivia had said, "You needn't hem anything unless it's for theminister's wife--never mind the towels I put in. " That was almost thelast thing she had said. She had put her head out of the stage door tosay it. Rebecca Mary had hemmed a towel each day. There were but twoleft, and she resolved to hem both of those tomorrow. A sudden littlelonging was born within her for more towels to hem for Aunt Olivia. 

It was nearly three weeks after Rebecca Mary's entrance into theminister's family when the letter came. It was directed to Rebecca Mary, and lay on her plate when she came home from school. 

"Oh, look, you've got a letter, Rebecca Mary!" heralded Rhoda, joyfully. Then her face fell, for maybe the letter would say Aunt Olivia wascoming home. 

"Is it from your aunt Olivia?" she asked, anxiously. 

"No, " Rebecca Mary said, in slow surprise. "The writing isn't, anyway, and the name is another one--"

"Oh! Oh! Maybe she's got mar--"

"Rhoda!" cautioned the minister. 

This is the letter Rebecca Mary read:

"Dear Rebecca Mary, --You see I know your name from your aunt. She talkedabout you all the time, but I am writing you of my own accord. She doesnot know it. I think you will like to know that at last we are feelingvery hopeful about your aunt. We have been very anxious since theoperation, she had so little strength to rally with. But now if shekeeps on as well as this you will have her home again in a little while. The doctors say three weeks. She is the patientest patient in the ward. Yours very truly, Sara Ellen Nesbitt, Nurse" Ward A, Emmons Hospital

That was the letter. Rebecca Mary's face grew a little whiter at everyline of it. At every line understanding grew clearer, till at the endshe knew it all. She gave a little cry, and ran out of the room. Loveand remorse and sympathy fought for first place in her laboring littlebreast. In the next few minutes she lived so long a time and thought somany thoughts! But above everything else towered joy that Aunt Oliviawas coming home. 

Rebecca Mary's eyes blazed with pride at being a Plummer. This kind ofcourage was the Plummer kind. The child's lank little figure seemed togrow taller and straighter. She held up her head splendidly and exulted. She felt like going up on the minister's housetop and proclaiming:"She's my aunt Olivia! She's mine! She's mine--I'm a Plummer, too! Allo' you listen, she's my aunt Olivia, and she's coming home!"

Suddenly the child flung out her arms towards the south where AuntOlivia was. And though she stood quite still, something within herseemed to spring away and go hurrying through the clear air. 

"I shouldn't suppose Aunt Olivia would ever forgive me, but she's AuntOlivia and she will, " wrote Rebecca Mary that night, her small, darkface full of a solemn peace--it seemed so long since she had been fullof peace before. She wrote on eagerly:

"When she gets home Ime going to hug her I can't help it if it wont bekeeping right on. "

Article Seven

Rebecca Mary measured them. Against the woodshed wall, with chalk--itwas not altogether an easy thing to do. The result startled her. Withrather unsteady little fingers she measured from chalk mark to flooragain, to make sure it was as bad as that. It was even a little worse. 

"Oh, " sighed Rebecca Mary, "to think they belong to me--to think they'rehitched on!" She gazed down at them with scorn and was ashamed of them. She tried to conceal their length with her brief skirts; but when shestraightened up, there they were again, as long as ever. She sat downsuddenly on the shed floor and drew them up underneath her. That wastemporarily a relief. "If I sit here world without end nobody'll see'em, " grimly smiled Rebecca Mary. 

It was her legs Rebecca Mary measured against the woodshed wall. It washer legs she was ashamed of. No wonder the minister's wife had saidto the minister going home from meeting, with Rebecca Mary behind themunawares, --no wonder she had said, "Robert, HAVE you noticed RebeccaMary's legs?"

Rebecca Mary had not heard the reply of the minister, for of course shehad gone away then. If she had stayed she would have heard him say, withexaggerated prudery, "Felicia! My dear! Were you alluding to RebeccaMary's limbs?" for the minister wickedly remembered inadvertentoccasions when he himself had called legs legs. 

"LEGS, " the minister's wife repeated, calmly--"Rebecca Mary's are toolong for limbs. Robert, that child will grow up one of these days!"

"They all do, " sighed the minister. "It's human nature, dear. You'll betelling me next that there's something the matter with Rhoda's--legs. "

The minister's wife gazed thoughtfully ahead at a little trio fastapproaching the vanishing point. Her eyes grew a little wistful. 

"There is now, perhaps, but I haven't noticed--I won't look!" shemurmured. "And, anyway, Robert, Rhoda will give us a little time to getused to it in. But Rebecca Mary isn't the Rhoda kind--I don't believeRebecca Mary will give us even three days of grace!"

"I always supposed Rebecca Mary was born that way--grown up, " theminister remarked, tucking a gloved hand comfortably close under hisarm. "I wouldn't let it worry me, dear. "

"Oh, I don't--not worry, really, " she said, smiling--"only her legsstartled me a little today. If she were mine, I should let her dressesdown. "

"If she were Rhod--"

"She isn't, she's Rebecca Mary. Probably if I were Miss Olivia I wouldlet Rhoda's down!" And she knew she would. 

Rebecca Mary on the woodshed floor sat and thought "deep-down" thoughts. Her eyes were fixed dreamily on a big knothole before her, and thethoughts seemed to come out of it and stand before her, demandingimperiously to be thought. One after another--a relentless procession. 

"Think me, " the first one had commanded. "I'm the Thought of GrowingUp. I saw you measuring your legs, and I concluded it was time for me tointroduce myself. I had to come some time, didn't I?"

"Oh yes, " breathed Rebecca Mary, sadly. "I don't suppose I could expectyou to stay in there always; but--but I'm not very glad to see you. Youneedn't have come so SUDDEN, " she added, with gentle resentment. 

The Thought of Growing Up crept into her mind and nestled down there. Asthoughts go, it was not an unkind one. 

"You'll get used to me sometime and like me, " it said, comfortingly. ButRebecca Mary knew better. She drove it out. 

Why must legs keep on growing and unwelcome Thoughts come out ofknotholes? Why could not little girls keep on sewing stents and learningarithmetic and carrying beautiful doll-beings to bed? Why had the Lordcreated little girls like this--this growing kind?

"If I had made the world, " began Rebecca Mary--but stopped in a hurry. The irreverence of presuming to make a better world than the Lord shamedher. 

"I suppose He knew best, but if He'd ever been a little girl--" This wasworse than the other. Rebecca Mary hastily dismissed the world and itsMaker from her musings for fear of further irreverences. 

One Thought came out of the knothole, illustrated. It was leading a tallwoman-girl by the hand--no, it was pushing it as though the woman-girlwere loath to come. 

"Come along, " urged the new Thought, laughingly. "Here she is--this isRebecca Mary. Rebecca Mary, this is YOU! You needn't be afraid of eachother, you two. Take a good long look and get acquainted. "

The woman-girl was tall and straight. She had Rebecca Mary's hair, Rebecca Mary's eyes, mouth, little pointed chin. But not Rebecca Mary'slegs--unless the long skirts covered them. She was rather comely andpleasant to look at. But Rebecca Mary tried not to look. 

"She's got a lover---some day she'll be getting married, " the newThought said more abruptly, startlingly, than grammatically. And thenwith a little muffled cry Rebecca Mary put out her hands and pushedthe woman-girl away--back into the knothole whence she had come. TheThought, too, for she had no room in her mind for thoughts like that. 

"My aunt Olivia wouldn't allow me to think of you, " she explained indismissing them. "And, " with dignity she added, "neither would RebeccaMary. "

It was to be as the minister's wife had prophesied--there were to be noteven the three days of grace allowed by law when Rebecca Mary grew up. Sitting there with her legs, her poor little unappreciated legs, theinnocent cause of the whole trouble, curled out of sight, Rebecca Maryplanned that there should be but one day of grace. She would allow oneday more to be a little girl in, and then she would grow up. But thatone day--Rebecca Mary got up hastily and went to find Aunt Olivia. 

"Aunt Olivia, " she began, without preamble--Rebecca Mary neverpreambled--"Aunt Olivia, may I have a holiday tomorrow?"

Aunt Olivia was rocking in her easy chair on the porch. It had taken hersixty-two years to learn to sit in an easy chair and rock. Even now, andshe had been home from the hospital many months, she felt a littleas though the friendly birds that perched on the porch railing weretwittering tauntingly, "Plummer! Plummer! Plummer!--rocking in an easychair!"

"May I, Aunt Olivia?" It was an unusual occurrence for Rebecca Mary toask again so soon. But this was an unusual occurrence. Aunt Olivia'sthin face turned affectionately towards the child. 

"School doesn't begin again tomorrow, does it?" she said in surprise. Weren't all Rebecca Mary's days now holidays?

"Oh no---no'm. But I mean may I skip my stents? And--and may I soak thekettles and pans? Just tomorrow. "

"Just tomorrow, " repeated bewildered Aunt Olivia--"soak your--stents--"

"Because it's going to be a pretty busy day. It's going to be a--acelebration, " Rebecca Mary said, softly. There was a strangely exaltedlook on her face. Oddly enough she was not afraid that Aunt Olivia wouldsay no. 

Aunt Olivia said yes. She did not ask any questions about thecelebration, on account of the exalted look. She could wait. But thebewildered look stayed for a while on her thin face. Rebecca Mary wasa queer child, a queer child--but she was a dear child. Dearness atonedfor queerness in Aunt Olivia's creed. 

The celebration began early the next morning before Aunt Olivia was up. She lay in bed and heard it begin. Rebecca Mary out in the dewy gardenwas singing at the top of her voice. Aunt Olivia had never heard hersing like that before--not at the top. Her sweet, shrill voice soundedrather unacquainted with such free heights as that, and the woman in thebed wondered with a staid little smile if it did not make Rebecca Maryfeel as she felt when she sat in the easy chair rocking. 

Rebecca Mary sang hymns mostly, but interspersed in her programme werebits of Mother Goose set to original tunes--she had learned the MotherGoose of the minister's Littlest Little Boy--and original bits set tofamiliar tunes. It was a wild little orgy of song. 

"My grief!" Aunt Olivia ejaculated under her breath; but she did notmean her grief. Other people might think Rebecca Mary was crazy--notAunt Olivia. But yet she wondered a little and found it hard to wait. 

Rebecca Mary washed the breakfast cup and plates, but put the pans andkettles to soak, and hurried away to her play. There was so much playingto be done before the sun set on her opportunity. She had made a littleprogramme on a slip of paper, with approximate times allotted to eachitem. As:

 Tree climbing. . . 1 hr. (Do not tare anything) Mud pies. . . 1 hr. And 1/2. (Do not get anything muddy) Tea party. . . 2 hrs. (Do not break anything) Skipping. . . 1/2 hr. 

Rebecca Mary had written 1 hr. At first opposite skipping, but it hadrather appalled her to think of skipping for so long a period of time, and, with a sense of being already out of breath, she had hurriedlyerased the 1 and substituted 1/2. Underneath she had written, ("Do nottip over anything"). All the items had cautionary parenthesesunderneath them, for Rebecca Mary did not wish the celebration to injure"anything. " Not this last day, when all the days of all the years beforeit, that had gone to make up her little girlhood, nothing had been tornor muddied or tipped over. 

Rebecca Mary had never climbed trees, had never made mud pies, never hadtea parties, nor skipped. It was with rather a hesitating step that shewent forward to meet them all. She was even a little awed. But she went. No item on her programme was omitted. 

From her rocker on the porch Aunt Olivia watched proceedings with quietpatience. It was a good vantage point--she could see nearly all of thecelebration. The tree Rebecca Mary climbed was on the edge of the oldorchard next to Aunt Olivia, and there was a providential little riftthrough the shrubbery and vines that intervened. This part of theprogramme she could see almost too clearly, for it must be confessedthat this part startled Aunt Olivia out of her calm. It--it was sounexpected. She stopped rocking and leaned forward in her chair to peermore sharply. What was the child--"She's climbing a tree!" breathed AuntOlivia in undisguised astonishment. Even as she breathed it, there cameto her faintly the snapping of twigs and flutter of leaves. Then all wasquite still, but she could discern with her pair of trusty Plummer eyestwo long legs gently dangling. 

If Aunt Olivia had known, Rebecca Mary, too, was startled. It--it was sostrange an experience. She was not in the least afraid--it was a mentalstart rather than a physical one. When she had reached the limb set downin her programme she sat on it in a little daze of bewildered delight. She liked it!

"Why, why, it's nice!" Rebecca Mary breathed. Her turn had come forundisguised astonishment. The leaves all about her nodded to her andstroked her cheeks and hair and hands. They whispered things into herears. They were such friendly little leaves!

Nothing looked quite the same up there. It was a little as if she werein a new world, and she felt odd thrills of pride, as probably peoplewho had discovered countries and rivers and north poles felt. Througha rift in the leaves she could see with her good Plummer eyes a swayingspot of brown and white that was Aunt Olivia rocking. SuddenlyRebecca Mary experienced a pang of remorse that she had wasted so manyopportunities like this--that this was her only one. She wished she hadput 2 hrs. Instead of 1 hr. Over against "Tree climbing, " but it was toolate now. She had borrowed Aunt Olivia's open-faced gold watch to serveas timekeeper, and promptly at the expiration of the 1 hr. She slid downthrough the crackling twigs and friendly leaves to the old world below. She did not allow herself to look back, but she could not help the sigh. It was going to be harder to grow up than she had thought it would be. 

The mud pies she made with conscientious care as Rhoda, the minister'slittle girl, had said she used to make them. She made rows and rows ofthem and set them in the sun to bake. There were raisin stones in themall and crimped edges around them. It did not take nearly all the 1 hr. And 1/2, so she made another and still another batch. When the time wasup she did not sigh, but she had had rather a good time. How many mudpies she HADN'T made in all those years that were to end today!

Olivicia and the little white cat went to the tea party. Rebecca Marythought of inviting Aunt Olivia--she got as far as the porch steps, but no farther. She caught a glimpse of her own legs and shrank backsensitively. They seemed to have grown since she measured them againstthe woodshed wall. Rebecca Mary felt the contrast between her legs andthe tea party. Aunt Olivia never knew how near she had come to beinginvited to take part in the celebration, at Article III. On theprogramme. 

Rhoda had had tea parties unnumbered, like the sands of the sea. She haddescribed them fluently, so Rebecca Mary was not as one in the dark. Sheknew how to cut the bread and the cake into tiny dice, and the cookiesinto tiny rounds. She knew how to make the cambric tea and to arrangethe jelly and flowers. But Rhoda had forgotten to tell her how to make arose pie--how to select two large rose leaves for upper and under crust, and to fill in the pie between them with pink and white rose petals andsugar in alternate layers. Press until "done. " Why had Rhoda forgotten?It seemed a pity that there was no rose pie at Rebecca Mary's teaparty--and no time left to make one. 

"Will you take sugar in your tea, Olivicia?" Rebecca Mary asked, shyly. She sat on the ground with her legs drawn under her out of sight, butthere were little warm spots in her cheeks. She had not expected tobe--ashamed. If there had been a knothole anywhere, she thought toherself, the Thought of Growing Up would have come out of it andconfronted her and reminded her of her legs. 

"Will you help yourself to the bread? Won't you have another cookie?"She left nothing out, and gradually the strangeness wore away. It gotgradually to be a good time. "How many tea parties, " thought RebeccaMary, "there might have been!"

Rebecca Mary was skipping, when the minister's wife came to call on AuntOlivia. It was the minister's wife who discovered it. Aunt Oliviacaught the indrawing of her breath and saw her face. Then Aunt Oliviadiscovered it, and a delicate color overspread her thin cheeks and roseto her temples. Now what was the child--

"Rhoda is a great skipper, " the minister's wife said, hurriedly. But itwas the wrong thing--she knew it was the wrong thing. 

"Rebecca Mary is having a--celebration, " hurried Aunt Olivia; but shewished she had not, for it seemed like trying to excuse Rebecca Mary. She, too, had said the wrong thing. 

"How pleasant it is out here!" tried again the minister's wife. 

"Yes, it's cool, " Aunt Olivia agreed, gratefully. After that the thingsthey said were right things. The fantastic little figure down there inthe orchard, skipping wildly, determinedly, was in none of them. Bothof them felt it to be safer. But the minister's wife's gaze dwelt on theskipping figure and followed it through its amazing mazes, in spite ofthe minister's wife. 

"I couldn't have helped it, Robert, " she said. "Not if you'd been therepreaching 'Thou shalt not' to me! You would have looked too, while youwere preaching. You can't imagine, sitting there at that desk, what thetemptation was--Robert, you don't suppose Rebecca Mary has gone crazy?"

"Felicia! You frighten me!"

"No, _I_ don't suppose either. But it was certainly very strange. It wasalmost ALARMING, Robert. And she didn't know how at all. I wanted to godown and show her!"

"It seems to me"--the minister spoke impressively "that it is notRebecca Mary who has gone crazy--"

"Why, the idea! Haven't I made it plain?" laughed she. "I'll speak in AB C's then. Rebecca Mary was SKIPPING, Robert--skipping skipping. "

"Then it's Rebecca Mary, " the minister murmured. 

"That's what I'm afraid--didn't I say so? Or else it's her secondchildhood--"

"First, you mean. If THAT'S it, don't let's say a word, dear--don'tbreathe, Felicia, for fear we'll stop it. "

"Dear child!" the minister's wife said, tenderly. "I wish I'd gone downthere and shown her how. And I'd have told her--Robert, I'd have toldher how to climb a tree! Don't tell the parish. "

The day was to end at sunset, from sunrise to sunset, Rebecca Mary haddecreed. The last article on her crumpled little programme was, "SayingGood-by to Olivicia(Don't cry). " It was going to be the most difficultthing of all the articles. Olivicia had existed so short a timecomparatively--it might not have been as difficult if there had alwaysbeen an Olivicia. "Or it might have been harder, " Rebecca Mary said. Shewent towards that article with reluctant feet. But it had to come. 

The bureau drawer was all ready. Rebecca Mary had lined it withsomething white and soft and sweetened it with dried rose petals spicedin the century-old Plummer way. It bore rather grewsome resemblance toOlivicia's coffin, but it was not grewsome to Rebecca Mary. She laid thedoll in it with the tender little swinging motion mothers use in layingdown their tiny sleepers. 

"There, there the-re!" crooned Rebecca Mary, softly, brooding over thebeautiful being. "You'll rest there sweetly after your mother is grownup. And you'll try not to miss her, won't you? You'll understand, Olivicia?--oh, Olivicia!" But she did not cry. Her eyes were verybright. For several minutes she stood there stooped over painfully, gazing down into the cof--the bureau drawer, wherein lay peacefulOlivicia. She was saying good-bye in her heart--she never said it aloud. 

"Dear, " very softly indeed, "you are sure you understand? Everybody hasto grow up, dear. It--it hurts, but you have to. I mean I'VE got to. I wouldn't so soon if it wasn't for my legs. But they keep right ongrowing--they're awful, dear!--I can't stop 'em. Olivicia, lie rightthere and be thankful you're a doll! But I wish you could open your eyesand look at me just once more. "

Rebecca Mary shut the drawer gently. It was over--no, she would say onething more to the beautiful being in there. She bent to the keyhole. 

"Olivicia!" she called in a tender whisper, "I shall be right herenights. We shan't be far away from each other. "

But it would not be like lying in each other's arms--oh, not at all likethat. Rebecca Mary caught her breath; it was perilously like a sob. Thenshe girded up her loins and went away to meet her fate--the common fateof all. 

She was very tired. The day had been a strain upon her that wasbeginning now to tell. To put all one's childhood into one day--that isnot easy. 

Article VI. Was the last. In a way, it was a rest to Rebecca Mary, forit entailed merely a visit to the woodshed. She could sit quietly on thefloor opposite the knothole and wait for the Thoughts. If the Thought ofGrowing Up came out tonight, she would say: "Oh, well, you may stay--youneedn't go back. I'm not any glad to see you, but I'm ready. I suppose Ishall get used to you. "

What Thoughts came out of the knothole to Rebecca Mary she never toldto any one. It was nearly dark when she went away, planting her feetfirmly, holding her head straight--Rebecca Mary Plummer. She went tofind Aunt Olivia and tell her. On the way, she stopped to getAunt Olivia's shawl, for it was getting chilly out on the porch. Significantly the first thing Rebecca Mary did after she began to growup was to get the shawl and lay it over Aunt Olivia's spare shoulders. The second thing was to bend to the scant gray hair and lightly rub itwith her cheek. It was a Rebecca Mary kiss. 

Out in front of the rocking chair, still straight and firm, she toldAunt Olivia. 

"It's over--I think I put everything in, " she said. "I thought you oughtto know, so I came to tell you. I'm ready to grow up. "

After all, if Rebecca Mary had known, her "programme" had not endedwith Article VI. Here was another. Take the pencil in your steady littlefingers, Rebecca Mary, and write:

Article VII. --Growing up. (Do not break Aunt Olivia's heart. )

Un-Plummered

Aunt Olivia sighed. It was the third time since she had begun to letRebecca Mary down. The third sigh was the longest one. Oh, this lettingdown of children who would grow up!

"I won't do it!" Aunt Olivia rebelled, fiercely, but she took up herscissors again at Duty's nudge. 

"You don't want people laughing at her, do you?" Duty said, sensibly. "Well, then, rip out that hem and face up that skirt and stop sighing. What can't be cured must be endur--"

"I'm ripping it out, " Aunt Olivia interrupted, crisply. But Duty was notto be silenced. 

"You ought to have done it before, " dictatorially. "You've known allalong that Rebecca Mary was growing up. "

Aunt Olivia, like the proverbial worm, turned. 

"I didn't know till Rebecca Mary told me, " she retorted; then therebellion died out of her thin face and tenderness came and took itsplace. Aunt Olivia was thinking of the time when Rebecca Mary told her. She gazed past Duty, past the skirt across her knees, out through theporch vines, and saw Rebecca Mary coming to tell her. She saw the shawlthe child was bringing, felt it laid on her shoulders, and somethingelse laid on her hair, soft and smooth like a little, lean, brown cheek. The memory was so pleasant that Aunt Olivia closed her eyes to make itstay. When she opened them some one was coming along the path, but itwas not Rebecca Mary. 

"Good afternoon!" some one said. Aunt Olivia stiffened into a Plummeragain with hurried embarrassment. She did not recognize the voice northe pleasant young face that followed it through the vines. 

"It's Rebecca Mary's aunt, isn't it?" The stranger smiled. "I shouldknow it by the family resemblance. "

"We're both Plummers, " Aunt Olivia answered, gravely. "Won't you come upon the porch and take a seat?"

"No, I'll sit down here on the steps--I'd rather. I think I'll siton the lowest step for I've come on a very humble errand! I'm RebeccaMary's teacher. "

"Oh!" It was all Aunt Olivia could manage, for a sudden horror hadcome upon her. She had a distinct remembrance of being at the TonyTrumbullses when the school teacher came to call. 

"It's--it's rather hard to say it. " The young person on the lowest steplaughed nervously. "I'd a good deal rather not. But I think so much ofRebecca Mary--"

The horror grew in Aunt Olivia's soul. It was something terribly likethat the Tony Trumbullses' teacher had said. And like this:

"It hurts--there! But I made up my mind it was my duty to come up hereand say it, and so I've come. I'm sorry to have to say--"

"Don't!" ejaculated Aunt Olivia, trembling on her Plummer pedestal. Forshe was laboring with the impulse to refuse to listen to this intruder, to drive her away--to say: "I won't believe a word you say! You may aswell go home. "

"Hoity-toity!" breathed Duty in her ear. It saved her. 

"Well?" she said, gently. "Go on. "

"I'm sorry to say I can't teach Rebecca Mary any more, Miss Plummer. That's what I came to tell you--"

This was awful--awful! But hot rebellion rose in Aunt Olivia's heart. There was some mistake--it was some other Rebecca Mary this personmeant. She would never believe it was HERS--the Plummer one!

"Because I've taught her all I know. There! Do you wonder I chose thelowest step to sit on? But it's the truth, honest, " the little teacherlaughed girlishly, but there were shame spots on her cheeks--"RebeccaMary is the smartest scholar I've got, and I've taught her all I know. "In her voice there was confession to having taught Rebecca Mary a littlemore than that. The shame spots flickered in a halo of humble honesty. 

"She's been from Percentage through the arithmetic four times--RebeccaMary's splendid in arithmetic. And she knows the geography and grammarby heart. "

The look on Aunt Olivia's face! The transition from horror to pride wasoverwhelming, transfiguring. 

"Rebecca Mary's smart, " added the honest one on the doorstep. "_I_ thinkshe ought to have a chance. There! That's all I came for, so I'llbe going. Only, I don't suppose--you don't think you'll have to tellRebecca Mary, do you? About--about me, I mean?"

"No, I don't, " Aunt Olivia assured her, warmly. Her thin, lined hand metand held for a moment the small, plump one--long enough to say, "You'rea good girl--I like you, " in its own way. The little teacher went awayin some sort comforted for having taught Rebecca Mary all she knew. She even hummed a relieved little tune on her way home, because of thepleasant tingle in the hand that Rebecca Mary's aunt had squeezed. Afterall, no matter how much you dreaded doing it, it was better to tell thetruth. 

Aunt Olivia hummed no relieved little tune. The pride in her heartbattled with the Dread there and went down. Aunt Olivia did not call theDread by any other name. It was Duty who dared. 

Confronting Aunt Olivia: "I suppose you know what it means? I supposeyou know it means you've got to give Rebecca Mary a chance? When are yougoing to send her away to school?"

"Oh--don't!" pleaded Aunt Olivia. "You don't give me any time. There'sno need of hurry--"

"I'm still a Plummer, if you're not, " broke in Duty, with ironicsharpness. "The Plummers were never afraid to look their duty in theface. "

"I'm--I'm looking at you, " groaned Aunt Olivia, climbing painfully backon to her pedestal. "Go ahead and say it. I'm ready--only I guess you'veforgot how long I've had Rebecca Mary. When you've brought a child up--"

"I brought her up myself, " calmly. "I ought to know. She wouldn't havebeen Rebecca Mary, would she, if I hadn't been right on hand? Who wasit taught her to sew patchwork before she was four years old? And makesheets--and beds--and bread? Who was it kept her from being a littletomboy like the minister's girl? Who taught her to walk instead of run, and eat with her fork, and be a lady? Who was it--"

"Oh, you--you!" sighed Aunt Olivia, trembling for her balance. "You did'em all. I never could've alone. "

"Then"--Duty was justly complacent--"Then perhaps you'll be willing toleave Rebecca Mary's going away to school to me. She must go at once, assoon as you can get her read--"

Aunt Olivia tumbled off. She did not wait to pick herself up before sheturned upon this Duty that delighted in torturing her. 

"You better get her ready yourself! You better let her down and make hersome nightgowns and count her pocket-handkerchiefs! You think you can doanything--no, I'M talking now! I guess it's my turn. I guess I've waitedlong enough. Maybe you brought Rebecca Mary up, but I'm not going toleave it to you whether she'd ought to go away to school. She's myRebecca Mary, isn't she? Well? It's me that loves her, isn't it--notyou? If I can't love her and stay a Plummer, then I'll--love her. I'mgoing to leave it to the minister. "

The minister was a little embarrassed. The wistful look in Aunt Olivia'seyes said, "Say no" so plainly. And he knew he must say yes--theminister's Duty was imperative, too. 

"If she can't get any more good out of the school here--" he began. 

"She can't, " said Aunt Olivia's Duty for her. "The teacher says shecan't. Rebecca Mary's smart. " Then Duty, too, was proud of Rebecca Mary!

"I know she is, " said the minister, heartily. "My Rhoda--you ought tohear my Rhoda set her up. She thinks Rebecca Mary knows more than theteacher does. "

"Rhoda's smart, too, " breathed Duty in Aunt Olivia's ear. 

"So you see, dear Miss Olivia, the child would make good use of anyadvantage--"

"You mean I ought to send her away? Well, I'm ready to--I said I'd leaveit to you. Where shall I send her? If there was only--I don't supposethere's some place near to? Children go home Friday nights sometimes, don't they?"

"There is no school near enough for that, I'm afraid, " the ministersaid, gently. He could not bear the look in Miss Olivia's eyes. 

"It hurt, " he told his wife afterwards. "I wish she hadn't asked me, Felicia. "

"I know, dear, but it's the penalty of being a minister. Ministers'hearts ought to be coated with--with asbestos or something, so the looksin people's eyes wouldn't burn through. I'm glad she didn't ask ME!"

"It will nearly kill them both, " ran on the minister's thoughts, aloud. "You know how it was when Miss Olivia was at the hospital. "

"Robert!"--the minister's wife's tone was reproachful--"you're talkingin the future tense! You said 'will. ' Then you advised her to sendRebecca Mary away!"

"Guilty, " pleaded the minister. "What else could I do?"

"You could have offered to teach her yourself"--with prompt inspiration. "Oh, Robert, why didn't you?"

"Felicia!--my dear!"--for the minister was modest. 

"You know plenty for two Rebecca Marys, " she triumphed. "Didn't youappropriate all the honors at college, you selfish boy!"

"It's too late now, dear. " But the minister's eyes thanked her, and thebig clasp of his arms. A minister may be mortal. 

"Maybe it is and maybe it isn't, " spoke the minister's wife, in riddles. "We'll wait and see. "

"But, Felicia--but, dear, they're both them Plummers. "

"Maybe they are and maybe they aren't, " laughed she. 

That night Aunt Olivia told Rebecca Mary--after she went to bed, quitecalmly:

"Rebecca Mary, how would you like to go away to school? For I'm going tosend you, my dear. "

"'Away--to school--my dear!'" echoed Rebecca Mary, sitting upright inbed. Her slight figure stretched up rigid and preternaturally tall inthe dim light. 

"Yes; the minister advises it--I left it to him. He thinks you ought tohave advantages. " Aunt Olivia slipped down suddenly beside the littlerigid figure and touched it rather timidly. She felt a little in awe ofthe Rebecca Mary who knew more than her teacher did. 

"They all seem to think you're--smart, my dear, " Aunt Olivia said, andshe would scarcely have believed it could be so hard to say it. For thelife of her she could not keep the pride from pricking through her tone. The wild temptation to sell her Plummer birthright for a kiss assailedher. But she groped in the dimness for Duty's cool touch and found it. In the Plummer code of laws it was writ, "Thou shalt not kiss. "

"I'm going right to work to make you some new nightgowns, " Aunt Oliviaadded, hastily. "I think I shall make them plain, " for it was in thenature of a reinforcement to her courage to leave off the ruffles. 

Rebecca Mary's eyes shone like stars in the dark little room. The childthought she was glad to be going away to school. 

"Shall I study algebra and Latin?" she demanded. 

"I suppose so--that'll be what you go for. "

"And French--not FRENCH?"

"Likely. "

Rebecca Mary fell back on the pillows to grasp it. But she was presentlyup again. 

"And that thing that tells about the air and--and gassy things? And theone that tells about your bones?"

Aunt Olivia did not recognize chemistry, but she knew bones. She sighedgently. 

"Oh yes; I suppose you'll find out just how you're put together, andlikely it'll scare you so you won't ever dare to breathe deep again. Maybe learning like that is important--I suppose the minister knows. "

"The minister knows everything, " Rebecca Mary said, solemnly. "If youlet me go away to school, I'll try to learn to know as much as he does, Aunt Olivia. You don't--you don't think he'd mind, do you?"

In the dark Aunt Olivia smiled. The small person there on the pillowswas, after all, a child. Rebecca Mary had not grown up, after all!

"He won't mind, " promised Aunt Olivia for the minister. She wentaway presently and cut out Rebecca Mary's new nightgowns. She sat andstitched them, far into the night, and stitched her sad little bodingsin, one by one. Already desolation gripped Aunt Olivia's heart. 

Rebecca Mary's dreams that night were marvelous ones. She dreamed shesaw herself in a glass after she had learned all the things there wereto learn, and she looked like the minister! When she spoke, her voicesounded deep and sweet like the minister's voice. Somewhere a voice likethe minister's wife's seemed to be calling "Robert! Robert!"

"Yes?" answered Rebecca Mary, and woke up. 

There were many preparations to make. The days sped by busily, and toRebecca Mary full of joyous expectancy. Aunt Olivia made no moan. Sheworked steadily over the plain little outfit and thrust her Dreads awaywith resolute courage, to wait until Rebecca Mary was gone. Time enoughthen. 

"You're doing right--that ought to comfort you, " encouraged Duty, kindly. 

"Clear out!" was what Aunt Olivia cried out, sharply, in answer. "You'vedone enough--this is all your work! Don't stand there hugging yourself. YOU'RE not going to miss Rebecca Mary--"

"I shall miss her, " Duty murmured. "I was awake all night, too, dreadingit. You didn't know, but I was there. "

The last day, when it came, seemed a little--a good deal--like thatother day when Aunt Olivia went away, only it was the other way aboutthis time. Rebecca Mary was going away on this day. The things packedsnugly in the big valise were her things; it was she, Rebecca Mary, whowould unpack them in a wondrous, strange place. It was Rebecca Mary theminister's wife and Rhoda came to bid good-bye. 

Aunt Olivia went to the station in the stage with the child. She did notspeak much on the way, but sat firmly straight and smiled. Duty had toldher the last thing to smile. But Duty had not trusted her; unseen anduninvited, Duty had slipped into the jolting old vehicle between AuntOlivia and Rebecca Mary. 

"She isn't the Plummer she was once, " sighed Duty. 

But at the little station, in those few final moments, two Plummers, anold one and a young one, waited quietly together. Neither of them brokedown nor made ado. Duty retired in palpable chagrin. 

"Good-bye, my dear, " Aunt Olivia said, steadily, though her lips werewhite. 

"Good-bye, Aunt Olivia, " Rebecca Mary Plummer said, steadily. "I'm veryMUCH obliged to you for sending me. "

"You're--welcome. Don't forget to wear your rubbers. I put in someliniment in case you need it--don't get any in your eyes. "

Outside on the platform Aunt Olivia sought and found Rebecca Mary'swindow and stood beside it till the train started. Through the dustypane their faces looked oddly unfamiliar to each other, and the twopairs of eyes that gazed out and in had a startled wistfulness in themthat no Plummer eyes should have. If Duty had staid--

The train shook itself, gave a jerk or two, and plunged down the shiningrails. Aunt Olivia watched it out of sight, then turned patiently tomeet her loneliness. The Dreads came flocking back to her as if she hadbeckoned to them. For now was the time. 

The letters Rebecca Mary wrote were formally correct and brief. Therewas no homesickness in them. It was pleasant at the school, that bookabout bones was going to be very interesting. Aunt Olivia was not toworry about the rubbers, and Rebecca Mary would never forget to air herclothes when they came from the wash. Yes, she had aired the nightgownthat Aunt Olivia ironed the last thing. No, she hadn't needed anyliniment yet, but she wouldn't get any in her eyes. 

Aunt Olivia's letters were to the point and calm, as though Duty stoodpeering over her shoulder as she wrote. She was glad Rebecca Maryliked the bones, but she was a little surprised. She was glad about therubbers and the wash; she was glad there had been no need yet for theliniment. It was a good thing to rub on a sore throat. The minister'swife had been over with her work she said Rhoda missed Rebecca Mary. Yes, the little, white cat was well--no, she hadn't caught any mice. The calla lily had two buds, the Northern Spy tree was not going to bearvery well. 

"Robert, I've been to see Miss Olivia, " the minister's wife said at tea. 

"Yes?" The minister waited. He knew it was coming. 

"She was knitting stockings for Rebecca Mary. Robert, she sat there andsmiled till I had to come home to cry!"

"My dear!--do you want me to cry, too?"

"I'm a-going to, " sniffed Rhoda. "I feel it coming. "

"She is so lonely, Robert! It would break your heart to see her smile. How do I know she is? Oh no--no, she didn't say she was! But I saw hereyes and she let the little, white cat get up in her lap!"

"Proof enough, " the minister said, gently. 

Between the two of them--the child at school and Aunt Olivia athome--letters came and went for six weeks. Aunt Olivia wrote six, Rebecca Mary six. All the letters were terse and brief and unemotional. Weather, bones, little white cats, liniment--everything in them butloneliness or love. Rebecca Mary began all hers "Dear Aunt Olivia, " andended them all "Respectfully your niece, Rebecca Mary Plummer. "

"Dear Rebecca Mary, " began Aunt Olivia's. "Your aff. Aunt, OliviaPlummer, " they closed. Yet both their hearts were breaking. Some heartsbreak quicker than others; Plummer hearts hold out splendidly, but inthe end--

In the end Aunt Olivia went to see the minister and was closeted withhim for a little. The minister's wife could hear them talking--mostlythe minister--but she could not hear what they said. 

"It's come, " she nodded, sagely. "I was sure it would. That's what thelittle, white cat purred when she rubbed against my skirts, 'She can'tstand it much longer. She doesn't sleep nights nor eat days--she'sgiving out. ' Poor Miss Olivia!--but I can't understand Rebecca Mary. "

"It's the Plummer in her, " the little, white cat would have purred. "Youwait!"

Aunt Olivia turned back at the minister's study door. "Then you will?"she said, eagerly. "You're perfectly willing to? I don't want to feel--"

"You needn't feel, " the minister smiled. "I'm more than willing. I'mdelighted. But in the matter of--er--remuneration, I cannot let you--"

"You needn't let me, " smiled Miss Olivia; "I'll do it without. " She wasgently radiant. Her pitifully thin face, so transfigured, touched thebig heart of the minister. He went to his window and watched the slightfigure hurry away. He would scarcely have been surprised to see it turndown the road that led towards the railway station. 

"Oh, Robert!" It was the minister's wife at his elbow. "You dear boy, Iknow you've promised! You needn't tell me a thing--didn't I suggest itin the first place? Dear Miss Olivia--I'm so glad, Robert! So are youglad, you minister!" But they were neither of them thinking of little, stubbed-out shoes that would be easier to buy. 

Aunt Olivia turned down the station road the next morning, in theswaying old stage. Her eager gaze never left the plodding horses, as ifby looking at them she could make them go faster. 

"They're pretty slow, aren't they?" she said. 

"Slow--THEM? Well, I guess you weren't never a stage horse!" chuckledthe old man at the reins. 

"No, " admitted Aunt Olivia, "I never was, but I know I'd go fastertoday. "

At the Junction, halfway to Rebecca Mary, she descended alertly from thetrain and crossed the platform. She must wait here, they told her, anhour and twenty minutes. On the other side of the station a train wasjust slowing up, and she stood a moment to scan idly the thin streamof people that trickled from the cars. There were old women--did any ofthem, she wondered, feel as happy as she did? There were tall children, too. There was one--Aunt Olivia started a little and fumbled in her softhair, under the roses in her bonnet brim, for her glasses. There wasone tall child--she was coming this way--she was coming fast--she wasrunning! Her arms were out--

"Aunt Olivia! Aunt Olivia!" the Tall Child was crying out, joyously, "Oh, Aunt Olivia!"

"Rebecca Mary!--my dear, my dear!"

They were in each other's arms. The roses on Aunt Olivia's bonnet brimslipped to one side--the two of them, not Plummers any more, but acommon, glad old woman and a common, glad, tall child, were kissing eachother as though they would never stop. The stream of people reached themand flowed by on either side. Trains came and went, and still they stoodlike that. 

"Hoity-toity!" muttered Aunt Olivia's Duty, and slipped past with thestream. A Plummer to the end, what use to stay any longer there?

"I was coming home, " cried Rebecca Mary. "I couldn't bear it anotherminute!"

"I was coming after you--my dear, my DEAR, _I_ couldn't bear it anotherminute!"