m Riverboro, bag
and baggage, the banquet lamp being their most conspicuous possession.
It was delightful to be rid of Seesaw's hateful presence; but otherwise
the loss of several playmates at one fell swoop made rather a gap in
Riverboro's "younger set," and Rebecca was obliged to make friends with
the Robinson baby, he being the only long-clothes child in the village
that winter. The faithful Seesaw had called at the side door of the
brick house on the evening before his departure, and when Rebecca
answered his knock, stammered solemnly, "Can I k-keep comp'ny with you
when you g-g-row up?" "Certainly NOT," replied Rebecca, closing the
door somewhat too speedily upon her precocious swain.

Mr. Simpson had come home in time to move his wife and children back to
the town that had given them birth, a town by no means waiting with
open arms to receive them. The Simpsons' moving was presided over by
the village authorities and somewhat anxiously watched by the entire
neighborhood, but in spite of all precautions a pulpit chair, several
kerosene lamps, and a small stove disappeared from the church and were
successfully swapped in the course of Mr. Simpson's driving tour from
the old home to the new. It gave Rebecca and Emma Jane some hours of
sorrow to learn that a certain village in the wake of Abner Simpson's
line of progress had acquired, through the medium of an ambitious young
minister, a magnificent lamp for its new church parlors. No money
changed hands in the operation; for the minister succeeded in getting
the lamp in return for an old bicycle. The only pleasant feature of the
whole affair was that Mr. Simpson, wholly unable to console his
offspring for the loss of the beloved object, mounted the bicycle and
rode away on it, not to be seen or heard of again for many a long day.

The year was notable also as being the one in which Rebecca shot up
like a young tree. She had seemingly never grown an inch since she was
ten years old, but once started she attended to growing precisely as
she did other things,--with such energy, that Miss Jane did nothing for
months but lengthen skirts, sleeves, and waists. In spite of all the
arts known to a thrifty New England woman, the limit of letting down
and piecing down was reached at last, and the dresses were sent to
Sunnybrook Farm to be made over for Jenny.

There was another milestone, a sad one, marking a little grave under a
willow tree at Sunnybrook Farm. Mira, the baby