merely the latter feeling, rather natural in a girl who had little
attention.

"He wore no jewelry but a cameo scarf pin and a perfectly gorgeous
ring,--a queer kind of one that wound round and round his finger. Oh
dear, I must run! Where has the hour gone? There's the study bell!"

Rebecca had pricked up her ears at Huldah's speech. She remembered a
certain strange ring, and it belonged to the only person in the world
(save Miss Maxwell) who appealed to her imagination,--Mr. Aladdin. Her
feeling for him, and that of Emma Jane, was a mixture of romantic and
reverent admiration for the man himself and the liveliest gratitude for
his beautiful gifts. Since they first met him not a Christmas had gone
by without some remembrance for them both; remembrances chosen with the
rarest taste and forethought. Emma Jane had seen him only twice, but he
had called several times at the brick house, and Rebecca had learned to
know him better. It was she, too, who always wrote the notes of
acknowledgment and thanks, taking infinite pains to make Emma Jane's
quite different from her own. Sometimes he had written from Boston and
asked her the news of Riverboro, and she had sent him pages of quaint
and childlike gossip, interspersed, on two occasions, with poetry,
which he read and reread with infinite relish. If Huldah's stranger
should be Mr. Aladdin, would he come to see her, and could she and Emma
Jane show him their beautiful room with so many of his gifts in
evidence?

When the girls had established themselves in Wareham as real boarding
pupils, it seemed to them existence was as full of joy as it well could
hold. This first winter was, in fact, the most tranquilly happy of
Rebecca's school life,--a winter long to be looked back upon. She and
Emma Jane were room-mates, and had put their modest possessions
together to make their surroundings pretty and homelike. The room had,
to begin with, a cheerful red ingrain carpet and a set of maple
furniture. As to the rest, Rebecca had furnished the ideas and Emma
Jane the materials and labor, a method of dividing responsibilities
that seemed to suit the circumstances admirably. Mrs. Perkins's father
had been a storekeeper, and on his death had left the goods of which he
was possessed to his married daughter. The molasses, vinegar, and
kerosene had lasted the family for five years, and the Perkins attic
was still a treasure-house of ginghams, cottons, and "Yankee notions."
So at Rebecca's i