e despised Randall stock. Everything that was
interesting in Rebecca, and every evidence of power, capability, or
talent afterwards displayed by her, Miranda ascribed to the brick house
training, and this gave her a feeling of honest pride, the pride of a
master workman who has built success out of the most unpromising
material; but never, to the very end, even when the waning of her
bodily strength relaxed her iron grip and weakened her power of
repression, never once did she show that pride or make a single
demonstration of affection.

Poor misplaced, belittled Lorenzo de Medici Randall, thought ridiculous
and good-for-naught by his associates, because he resembled them in
nothing! If Riverboro could have been suddenly emptied into a larger
community, with different and more flexible opinions, he was, perhaps,
the only personage in the entire population who would have attracted
the smallest attention. It was fortunate for his daughter that she had
been dowered with a little practical ability from her mother's family,
but if Lorenzo had never done anything else in the world, he might have
glorified himself that he had prevented Rebecca from being all Sawyer.
Failure as he was, complete and entire, he had generously handed down
to her all that was best in himself, and prudently retained all that
was unworthy. Few fathers are capable of such delicate discrimination.

The brick house did not speedily become a sort of wayside inn, a place
of innocent revelry and joyous welcome; but the missionary company was
an entering wedge, and Miranda allowed one spare bed to be made up "in
case anything should happen," while the crystal glasses were kept on
the second from the top, instead of the top shelf, in the china closet.
Rebecca had had to stand on a chair to reach them; now she could do it
by stretching; and this is symbolic of the way in which she
unconsciously scaled the walls of Miss Miranda's dogmatism and
prejudice.

Miranda went so far as to say that she wouldn't mind if the Burches
came every once in a while, but she was afraid he'd spread abroad the
fact of his visit, and missionaries' families would be underfoot the
whole continual time. As a case in point, she gracefully cited the fact
that if a tramp got a good meal at anybody's back door, 't was said
that he'd leave some kind of a sign so that all other tramps would know
where they were likely to receive the same treatment.

It is to be feared that there is som