said Adam, rising from
his chair.

As Rebecca rose, the tears still trembling on her lashes, he looked at
her suddenly as with new vision.

"Good-by!" he said, taking her slim brown hands in his, adding, as if
he saw her for the first time, "Why, little Rose-Red-Snow-White is
making way for a new girl! Burning the midnight oil and doing four
years' work in three is supposed to dull the eye and blanch the cheek,
yet Rebecca's eyes are bright and she has a rosy color! Her long braids
are looped one on the other so that they make a black letter U behind,
and they are tied with grand bows at the top! She is so tall that she
reaches almost to my shoulder. This will never do in the world! How
will Mr. Aladdin get on without his comforting little friend! He
doesn't like grown-up young ladies in long trains and wonderful fine
clothes; they frighten and bore him!"

"Oh, Mr. Aladdin!" cried Rebecca eagerly, taking his jest quite
seriously; "I am not fifteen yet, and it will be three years before I'm
a young lady; please don't give me up until you have to!"

"I won't; I promise you that," said Adam. "Rebecca," he continued,
after a moment's pause, "who is that young girl with a lot of pretty
red hair and very citified manners? She escorted me down the hill; do
you know whom I mean?"

"It must be Huldah Meserve; she is from Riverboro."

Adam put a finger under Rebecca's chin and looked into her eyes; eyes
as soft, as clear, as unconscious, and childlike as they had been when
she was ten. He remembered the other pair of challenging blue ones that
had darted coquettish glances through half-dropped lids, shot arrowy
beams from under archly lifted brows, and said gravely, "Don't form
yourself on her, Rebecca; clover blossoms that grow in the fields
beside Sunnybrook mustn't be tied in the same bouquet with gaudy
sunflowers; they are too sweet and fragrant and wholesome."

XXIII

THE HILL DIFFICULTY

The first happy year at Wareham, with its widened sky-line, its larger
vision, its greater opportunity, was over and gone. Rebecca had studied
during the summer vacation, and had passed, on her return in the
autumn, certain examinations which would enable her, if she carried out
the same programme the next season, to complete the course in three
instead of four years. She came off with no flying colors,--that would
have been impossible in consideration of her inadequate training; but
she did wonderfully well in some of the r