as she furled her
parasol and approached the awe-stricken shepherdess! She had thought
aunt Miranda might be pleased that the niece invited down from the farm
had succeeded so well at school; but no, there was no hope of pleasing
her in that or in any other way. She would go to Maplewood on the stage
next day with Mr. Cobb and get home somehow from cousin Ann's. On
second thoughts her aunts might not allow it. Very well, she would slip
away now and see if she could stay all night with the Cobbs and be off
next morning before breakfast.

Rebecca never stopped long to think, more 's the pity, so she put on
her oldest dress and hat and jacket, then wrapped her nightdress, comb,
and toothbrush in a bundle and dropped it softly out of the window. Her
room was in the L and her window at no very dangerous distance from the
ground, though had it been, nothing could have stopped her at that
moment. Somebody who had gone on the roof to clean out the gutters had
left a cleat nailed to the side of the house about halfway between the
window and the top of the back porch. Rebecca heard the sound of the
sewing machine in the dining-room and the chopping of meat in the
kitchen; so knowing the whereabouts of both her aunts, she scrambled
out of the window, caught hold of the lightning rod, slid down to the
helpful cleat, jumped to the porch, used the woodbine trellis for a
ladder, and was flying up the road in the storm before she had time to
arrange any details of her future movements.

Jeremiah Cobb sat at his lonely supper at the table by the kitchen
window. "Mother," as he with his old-fashioned habits was in the habit
of calling his wife, was nursing a sick neighbor. Mrs. Cobb was mother
only to a little headstone in the churchyard, where reposed "Sarah Ann,
beloved daughter of Jeremiah and Sarah Cobb, aged seventeen months;"
but the name of mother was better than nothing, and served at any rate
as a reminder of her woman's crown of blessedness.

The rain still fell, and the heavens were dark, though it was scarcely
five o'clock. Looking up from his "dish of tea," the old man saw at the
open door a very figure of woe. Rebecca's face was so swollen with
tears and so sharp with misery that for a moment he scarcely recognized
her. Then when he heard her voice asking, "Please may I come in, Mr.
Cobb?" he cried, "Well I vow! It's my little lady passenger! Come to
call on old uncle Jerry and pass the time o' day, hev ye? Why, you're