ed one foot and leg luxuriously
over the dashboard. His brimmed hat of worn felt was well pulled over
his eyes, and he revolved a quid of tobacco in his left cheek.

There was one passenger in the coach,--a small dark-haired person in a
glossy buff calico dress. She was so slender and so stiffly starched
that she slid from space to space on the leather cushions, though she
braced herself against the middle seat with her feet and extended her
cotton-gloved hands on each side, in order to maintain some sort of
balance. Whenever the wheels sank farther than usual into a rut, or
jolted suddenly over a stone, she bounded involuntarily into the air,
came down again, pushed back her funny little straw hat, and picked up
or settled more firmly a small pink sun shade, which seemed to be her
chief responsibility,--unless we except a bead purse, into which she
looked whenever the condition of the roads would permit, finding great
apparent satisfaction in that its precious contents neither disappeared
nor grew less. Mr. Cobb guessed nothing of these harassing details of
travel, his business being to carry people to their destinations, not,
necessarily, to make them comfortable on the way. Indeed he had
forgotten the very existence of this one unnoteworthy little passenger.

When he was about to leave the post-office in Maplewood that morning, a
woman had alighted from a wagon, and coming up to him, inquired whether
this were the Riverboro stage, and if he were Mr. Cobb. Being answered
in the affirmative, she nodded to a child who was eagerly waiting for
the answer, and who ran towards her as if she feared to be a moment too
late. The child might have been ten or eleven years old perhaps, but
whatever the number of her summers, she had an air of being small for
her age. Her mother helped her into the stage coach, deposited a bundle
and a bouquet of lilacs beside her, superintended the "roping on"
behind of an old hair trunk, and finally paid the fare, counting out
the silver with great care.

"I want you should take her to my sisters' in Riverboro," she said. "Do
you know Mirandy and Jane Sawyer? They live in the brick house."

Lord bless your soul, he knew 'em as well as if he'd made 'em!

"Well, she's going there, and they're expecting her. Will you keep an
eye on her, please? If she can get out anywhere and get with folks, or
get anybody in to keep her company, she'll do it. Good-by, Rebecca; try
not to get into any mischief,