eal glad'?"

Miss Dearborn looked puzzled as she answered, "Of course, Rebecca,
hollyhocks could not be sorry, or glad, or afraid, really."

"We can't tell, I s'pose," replied the child; "but _I_ think they are,
anyway. Now what shall I say?"

"The subjunctive mood, past perfect tense of the verb 'to know.'"

"If I had known "If we had known
If thou hadst known If you had known
If he had known If they had known.

"Oh, it is the saddest tense," sighed Rebecca with a little break in
her voice; "nothing but IFS, IFS, IFS! And it makes you feel that if
they only HAD known, things might have been better!"

Miss Dearborn had not thought of it before, but on reflection she
believed the subjunctive mood was a "sad" one and "if" rather a sorry
"part of speech."

"Give me some more examples of the subjunctive, Rebecca, and that will
do for this afternoon," she said.

"If I had not loved mackerel I should not have been thirsty;" said
Rebecca with an April smile, as she closed her grammar. "If thou hadst
loved me truly thou wouldst not have stood me up in the corner. If
Samuel had not loved wickedness he would not have followed me to the
water pail."

"And if Rebecca had loved the rules of the school she would have
controlled her thirst," finished Miss Dearborn with a kiss, and the two
parted friends.

VI

SUNSHINE IN A SHADY PLACE

The little schoolhouse on the hill had its moments of triumph as well
as its scenes of tribulation, but it was fortunate that Rebecca had her
books and her new acquaintances to keep her interested and occupied, or
life would have gone heavily with her that first summer in Riverboro.
She tried to like her aunt Miranda (the idea of loving her had been
given up at the moment of meeting), but failed ignominiously in the
attempt. She was a very faulty and passionately human child, with no
aspirations towards being an angel of the house, but she had a sense of
duty and a desire to be good,--respectably, decently good. Whenever she
fell below this self-imposed standard she was miserable. She did not
like to be under her aunt's roof, eating bread, wearing clothes, and
studying books provided by her, and dislike her so heartily all the
time. She felt instinctively that this was wrong and mean, and whenever
the feeling of remorse was strong within her she made a desperate
effort to please her grim and difficult relative. But how could she
succeed when she wa