their lesson:

"You can walk to school with Rhoda, you'll enjoy that. You've never had
folks to walk with. And you can stay with her, only you mustn't forget
your stents. I've put in some towels to hem. Maybe the minister's wife
has got something; if so, hem hers first. You'll be like one o' the
family, and they're nice folks, but I want you to keep right on being a
Plummer."

Years afterwards Rebecca Mary remembered the dizzy dance of the bottles
in the caster--they seemed to join hands and sway and swing about their
silver circlet and how Aunt Olivia's buttons marched and countermarched
up and down Aunt Olivia's alpaca dress. She did not look above the
buttons--she did not dare to. If she was to keep right on being a
Plummer, she must not cry.

"That's all," she heard through the daze and dizziness, "except that
I can't tell when I'll be back. It--ain't decided. Likely I shan't be
able--there won't be much chance to write, and you needn't expect me to.
No need to write me either. That's all, I guess."

The stage that came for Aunt Olivia dropped the little carpetbag and
Rebecca Mary at the minister's. In the brief interval between the start
and the dropping, Rebecca Mary sat, stiff and numb, on the edge of the
high seat and gazed out unfamiliarly at the familiar landmarks they
lurched past. At any other time the knowledge that she was going to the
minister's to stay--to live--would have filled her with staid joy. At
any other time--but THIS time only a dull ache filled her little dreary
world. Everything seemed to ache--the munching cows in the Trumbull
pasture, the cats on the doorsteps, the dog loping along beside the
stage, the stage driver's stooping old back. Aunt Olivia was going to
the city--Rebecca Mary wasn't going to the city. There was no room in
the world for anything but that and the ache.

Rebecca Mary's indignation was not born till night. Then, lying in the
dainty bed under Rhoda's pink quilt, her mood changed. Until then she
had only been disappointed. But then she sat up suddenly and said bitter
things about Aunt Olivia.

"She's gone to have a good time all to herself--and she might have taken
me. She didn't, she didn't, and she might've. She wanted all the good
time herself! She didn't want me to have any!"

"Rebecca Mary!--did you speak, dear?" It was the gentle voice of the
minister's wife outside the door. Rebecca Mary's red little hands
unwrung and dropped on the pink quilt.

"No'm, I