d down sleepily in Rebecca's lap, leaning
her head back and sucking her thumb contentedly. Rebecca put her cheek
down until it touched her aunt's gray hair and softly patted her, as
she said, "I'm sorry, aunt Jane!"

The girl's eyes were soft and tender and the heart within her stretched
a little and grew; grew in sweetness and intuition and depth of
feeling. It had looked into another heart, felt it beat, and heard it
sigh; and that is how all hearts grow.

Episodes like these enlivened the quiet course of every-day existence,
made more quiet by the departure of Dick Carter, Living Perkins, and
Huldah Meserve for Wareham, and the small attendance at the winter
school, from which the younger children of the place stayed away during
the cold weather.

Life, however, could never be thoroughly dull or lacking in adventure
to a child of Rebecca's temperament. Her nature was full of
adaptability, fluidity, receptivity. She made friends everywhere she
went, and snatched up acquaintances in every corner.

It was she who ran to the shed door to take the dish to the "meat man"
or "fish man;" she who knew the family histories of the itinerant fruit
venders and tin peddlers; she who was asked to take supper or pass the
night with children in neighboring villages--children of whose parents
her aunts had never so much as heard. As to the nature of these
friendships, which seemed so many to the eye of the superficial
observer, they were of various kinds, and while the girl pursued them
with enthusiasm and ardor, they left her unsatisfied and heart-hungry;
they were never intimacies such as are so readily made by shallow
natures. She loved Emma Jane, but it was a friendship born of
propinquity and circumstance, not of true affinity. It was her
neighbor's amiability, constancy, and devotion that she loved, and
although she rated these qualities at their true value, she was always
searching beyond them for intellectual treasures; searching and never
finding, for although Emma Jane had the advantage in years she was
still immature. Huldah Meserve had an instinctive love of fun which
appealed to Rebecca; she also had a fascinating knowledge of the world,
from having visited her married sisters in Milltown and Portland; but
on the other hand there was a certain sharpness and lack of sympathy in
Huldah which repelled rather than attracted. With Dick Carter she could
at least talk intelligently about lessons. He was a very ambitious boy,