ed in spite of herself, and though not perhaps wholly
deceived, she was comforted.

"I only hope you won't have to wait too long for your thrones and your
kingdoms, Rebecca," she said, "and that I shall have a sight of them
before I die; but life looks very hard and rough to me, what with your
aunt Miranda a cripple at the brick house, me another here at the farm,
you tied hand and foot, first with one and then with the other, to say
nothing of Jenny and Fanny and Mark! You've got something of your
father's happy disposition, or it would weigh on you as it does on me."

"Why, mother!" cried Rebecca, clasping her knees with her hands; "why,
mother, it's enough joy just to be here in the world on a day like
this; to have the chance of seeing, feeling, doing, becoming! When you
were seventeen, mother, wasn't it good just to be alive? You haven't
forgotten?"

"No," said Aurelia, "but I wasn't so much alive as you are, never in
the world."

"I often think," Rebecca continued, walking to the window and looking
out at the trees,--"I often think how dreadful it would be if I were
not here at all. If Hannah had come, and then, instead of me, John;
John and Jenny and Fanny and the others, but no Rebecca; never any
Rebecca! To be alive makes up for everything; there ought to be fears
in my heart, but there aren't; something stronger sweeps them out,
something like a wind. Oh, see! There is Will driving up the lane,
mother, and he ought to have a letter from the brick house."

XXX

GOOD-BY, SUNNYBROOK

Will Melville drove up to the window and, tossing a letter into
Rebecca's lap, went off to the barn on an errand.

"Sister 's no worse, then," sighed Aurelia gratefully, "or Jane would
have telegraphed. See what she says."

Rebecca opened the envelope and read in one flash of an eye the whole
brief page:--

Your aunt Miranda passed away an hour ago. Come at once, if
your mother is out of danger. I shall not have the funeral
till you are here. She died very suddenly and without any
pain. Oh, Rebecca! I long for you so!

Aunt Jane.

The force of habit was too strong, and even in the hour of death Jane
had remembered that a telegram was twenty-five cents, and that Aurelia
would have to pay half a dollar for its delivery.

Rebecca burst into a passion of tears as she cried, "Poor, poor aunt
Miranda! She is gone without taking a bit of comfort in life, and I
couldn't say good-by to her! Poor lonel