ons that lay between her
shoulder blades and her belt, she dabbed her wet eyes carefully, so
that they should not rain salt water on the finery that had been worn
at such a price. She smoothed it out carefully, pinched up the white
ruffle at the neck, and laid it away in a drawer with an extra little
sob at the roughness of life. The withered pink rose fell on the floor.
Rebecca looked at it and thought to herself, "Just like my happy day!"
Nothing could show more clearly the kind of child she was than the fact
that she instantly perceived the symbolism of the rose, and laid it in
the drawer with the dress as if she were burying the whole episode with
all its sad memories. It was a child's poetic instinct with a dawning
hint of woman's sentiment in it.

She braided her hair in the two accustomed pig-tails, took off her best
shoes (which had happily escaped notice), with all the while a fixed
resolve growing in her mind, that of leaving the brick house and going
back to the farm. She would not be received there with open
arms,--there was no hope of that,--but she would help her mother about
the house and send Hannah to Riverboro in her place. "I hope she'll
like it!" she thought in a momentary burst of vindictiveness. She sat
by the window trying to make some sort of plan, watching the lightning
play over the hilltop and the streams of rain chasing each other down
the lightning rod. And this was the day that had dawned so joyfully! It
had been a red sunrise, and she had leaned on the window sill studying
her lesson and thinking what a lovely world it was. And what a golden
morning! The changing of the bare, ugly little schoolroom into a bower
of beauty; Miss Dearborn's pleasure at her success with the Simpson
twins' recitation; the privilege of decorating the blackboard; the
happy thought of drawing Columbia from the cigar box; the intoxicating
moment when the school clapped her! And what an afternoon! How it went
on from glory to glory, beginning with Emma Jane's telling her, Rebecca
Randall, that she was as "handsome as a picture."

She lived through the exercises again in memory, especially her
dialogue with Emma Jane and her inspiration of using the bough-covered
stove as a mossy bank where the country girl could sit and watch her
flocks. This gave Emma Jane a feeling of such ease that she never
recited better; and how generous it was of her to lend the garnet ring
to the city girl, fancying truly how it would flash