shininess that their mother was ashamed of
their appearance. Rebecca's own black locks were commonly pushed
smoothly off her forehead, but on this occasion she formed what I must
perforce call by its only name, a spit-curl, directly in the centre of
her brow, an ornament which she was allowed to wear a very short time,
only in fact till Hannah was able to call her mother's attention to it,
when she was sent into the next room to remove it and to come back
looking like a Christian. This command she interpreted somewhat too
literally perhaps, because she contrived in a space of two minutes an
extremely pious style of hairdressing, fully as effective if not as
startling as the first. These antics were solely the result of nervous
irritation, a mood born of Miss Miranda Sawyer's stiff, grim, and
martial attitude. The remembrance of Rebecca was so vivid that their
sister Aurelia's letter was something of a shock to the quiet, elderly
spinsters of the brick house; for it said that Hannah could not
possibly be spared for a few years yet, but that Rebecca would come as
soon as she could be made ready; that the offer was most thankfully
appreciated, and that the regular schooling and church privileges, as
well as the influence of the Sawyer home, would doubtless be "the
making of Rebecca."

III

A DIFFERENCE IN HEARTS

"I don' know as I cal'lated to be the makin' of any child," Miranda had
said as she folded Aurelia's letter and laid it in the light-stand
drawer. "I s'posed, of course, Aurelia would send us the one we asked
for, but it's just like her to palm off that wild young one on somebody
else."

"You remember we said that Rebecca or even Jenny might come, in case
Hannah couldn't," interposed Jane.

"I know we did, but we hadn't any notion it would turn out that way,"
grumbled Miranda.

"She was a mite of a thing when we saw her three years ago," ventured
Jane; "she's had time to improve."

"And time to grow worse!"

"Won't it be kind of a privilege to put her on the right track?" asked
Jane timidly.

"I don' know about the privilege part; it'll be considerable of a
chore, I guess. If her mother hain't got her on the right track by now,
she won't take to it herself all of a sudden."

This depressed and depressing frame of mind had lasted until the
eventful day dawned on which Rebecca was to arrive.

"If she makes as much work after she comes as she has before, we might
as well give up hope of ever gett