ick house is the
barn and I can not bite Aunt M. because I must be grateful and
edducation is going to be the making of me and help you pay off the
mortgage when we grow up.

Your loving
BECKY.

III.

WISDOM'S WAYS

THE day of Rebecca's arrival had been Friday, and on the Monday
following she began her education at the school which was in Riverboro
Centre, about a mile distant. Miss Sawyer borrowed a neighbor's horse
and wagon and drove her to the schoolhouse, interviewing the teacher,
Miss Dearborn, arranging for books, and generally starting the child on
the path that was to lead to boundless knowledge.

Rebecca walked to school after the first morning. She loved this part
of the day's programme. When the dew was not too heavy and the weather
was fair there was a short cut through the woods. She turned off the
main road, crept through Joshua Woodman's bars, waved away Mrs.
Carter's cows, trod the short grass of the pasture, with its well-worn
path running through gardens of buttercups and whiteweed, and groves of
boxberry leaves and sweet fern. She descended a little hill, jumped
from stone to stone across a woodland brook, startling the drowsy
frogs, who were always winking and blinking in the morning sun. Then
came the "woodsy bit," with her feet pressing the slippery carpet of
brown pine needles; the woodsy bit so full of dewy morning
surprises,--fungous growths of brilliant orange and crimson springing
up around the stumps of dead trees, beautiful things born in a single
night; and now and then the miracle of a little clump of waxen Indian
pipes, seen just quickly enough to be saved from her careless tread.
Then she climbed a stile, went through a grassy meadow, slid under
another pair of bars, and came out into the road again, having gained
nearly half a mile.

How delicious it all was! Rebecca clasped her Quackenbos's Grammar and
Greenleaf's Arithmetic with a joyful sense of knowing her lessons. Her
dinner pail swung from her right hand, and she had a blissful
consciousness of the two soda biscuits spread with butter and syrup,
the baked cup-custard, the doughnut, and the square of hard
gingerbread. Sometimes she said whatever "piece" she was going to speak
on the next Friday afternoon.

"A soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers, There was lack of
woman's nursing, there was dearth of woman's tears."

How she loved the swing and the sentiment of it! How her young voice
quivered whenever she