e people made like me?" she thought--"so it kills 'em to
say anything anyways tenderish. Seems to be too much for their vocal
organs--they'd rather do a week's washing!"

Other thoughts came to Aunt Olivia as she lay on her bed, doing her
whimsical penance for violating the sanctity of the little old cookbook.
She was not comfortable. It was a hard bed--nothing was soft of Aunt
Olivia's. She moved about on it uneasily.

"When they're dead, we're willing enough to say tenderish things to
'em," her musings ran. "We wish we HAD then. I suppose if Rebecca Mary
was--"

She got no farther for the sudden horror that was upon her--that sent
her to her feet and to the door. But there she stopped in the blessed
relief that drifted in to her on a child's laugh. Somewhere out there
Rebecca Mary was laughing in her subdued, sweet way. A cracked, shrill
crow followed--Thomas Jefferson was laughing too.

Rebecca Mary was not dead. There was time to say a "tenderish" thing to
her before she lay--before that. Aunt Olivia shut her eyes resolutely to
the vision that had intruded upon her musings. It was Rebecca Mary who
was laughing somewhere out there that she wanted to see.

The next day was Sunday, and in the quiet of the long afternoon Rebecca
Mary read aloud again to Thomas Jefferson. It was from the little
cookbook diary. Thomas Jefferson was pecking about the long grass of the
orchard.

"Oh, listen!" cried Rebecca Mary, her eyes unwontedly shining. "Listen
to this, Thomas Jefferson!

"'SATURDAY.--Wind northwest by Mrs. Tupper's Weather vain. Something
happened yesterday. Aunt Olivia didn't say it, but she most did.
She came right out of her bedroom and I saw it in her face!
"Dear"--"darling,"--they were both there, and she was looking at me!
Nobody EVER looked "dear" "darling" at me before. I suppose my mother
would have. If I hadent had another mother I think I should like to have
had Aunt Olivia.

"'You feel that way more after you get akquainted. When I get VERY
akquainted prehaps I shall tell Aunt Olivia. Its quear, I think, how it
isent as easy to say some things as it is to think them. You can wright
them easier too. I am glad Ime keeping a diary because I can wright
about yesterday and what happenned. I shall read it to my grand
children--to be continude.

"'SUNDAY'--that's today, Thomas Jefferson,--'SUNDAY.--This is yesterday
continude, because there was too mutch for one day. Something else
beutiful happenned.