your Aunt
Miranda if she should hear about it!"

The little school-teacher put a sheltering arm round Rebecca as Mr.
Brown picked up the flag and dusted and folded it.

"I'm willing she should hear about it," Rebecca answered. "I didn't do
anything to be ashamed of! I saw the flag in the back of Mr. Simpson's
wagon and I just followed it. There weren't any men or any Dorcas
ladies to take care of it so it fell to me! You would n't have had me
let it out of my sight, would you, and we going to raise it to-morrow
morning?"

"Rebecca's perfectly right, Mrs. Meserve!" said Miss Dearborn proudly.
"And it's lucky there was somebody quick-witted enough to 'ride and
consort' with Mr. Simpson! I don't know what the village will think,
but seems to me the town clerk might write down in his book, 'This day
the State of Maine saved the flag!'"

V.

THE STATE O' MAINE GIRL

THE foregoing episode, if narrated in a romance, would undoubtedly have
been called "The Saving of the Colors," but at the nightly chats in
Watson's store it was alluded to as the way little Becky Randall got
the flag away from Slippery Simpson. Dramatic as it was, it passed into
the crowd of half-forgotten things in Rebecca's mind, its brief
importance submerged in the glories of the next day.

There was a painful prelude to these glories. Alice Robinson came to
spend the night with Rebecca, and when the bedroom door closed upon the
two girls, Alice announced her intention of "doing up" Rebecca's front
hair in leads and rags, and braiding the back in six tight, wetted
braids.

Rebecca demurred. Alice persisted.

"Your hair is so long and thick and dark and straight," she said, "that
you'll look like an Injun!"

"I am the State of Maine; it all belonged to the Indians once," Rebecca
remarked gloomily, for she was curiously shy about discussing her
personal appearance.

"And your wreath of little pine-cones won't set decent without crimps,"
continued Alice.

Rebecca glanced in the cracked looking-glass and met what she
considered an accusing lack of beauty, a sight that always either
saddened or enraged her according to circumstances; then she sat down
resignedly and began to help Alice in the philanthropic work of making
the State of Maine fit to be seen at the raising.

Neither of the girls was an expert hairdresser, and at the end of an
hour, when the sixth braid was tied, and Rebecca had given one last
shuddering look in the mirror, bot