mas Jefferson
and cried her Thomas Jefferson tears into its soft, white fur. In that
way, at any rate, it was a success.

"Maybe I shall love you some day," she whispered, "but I can't yet,
while Thomas Jefferson is fresh. He's all I have room for. He was
my intimate friend--when your intimate friend is dead you can't
love anybody else right away." But she apologized to the little cat
gently--she felt that an apology was due it.

"You see how it is, little, white cat," she said. "I shall have to ask
you to wait. But if I ever have a second love, I promise it will be
you. You're a great DEAL comfortinger than that Tony Trumbull rooster! I
could love you this minute if I had never loved Thomas Jefferson. Do you
feel like waiting?"

The little, white cat waited. And Aunt Olivia waited. She made tempting
dishes for Rebecca Mary's meals, and put a ruffle into her nightgown
neck and sleeves--Rebecca Mary had always yearned for ruffles.

"I don't believe she sees 'em. She don't know they're there," groaned
Aunt Olivia, impotently. "She don't see anything but Thomas Jefferson,
and I don't know as she ever will!"

But Rebecca Mary saw the ruffles and fluted them between her brown
little fingers admiringly. She tried once or twice to go and thank Aunt
Olivia, and got as far as her bedroom door. But the bitterness in her
heart stayed her hand from turning the knob. If Aunt Olivia had only
known that being sorry was the right thing to do! Strangely enough,
though Rebecca Mary's view of the matter never occurred to Aunt Olivia,
she came by and by to being sorry on her own account. Perhaps she had
been all along, underneath her disquietude for Rebecca Mary's sorrow.
Perhaps when she thought how quiet it had grown mornings, and what a
good chance there was now for a supplementary nap, she was being sorry.
When she remembered that she need not buy wheat now and yellow corn, and
that the cookies would last longer--perhaps then she was sorry. But
she did not know it. It seemed to come upon her with the nature of a
surprise on one especial day. She had been working her un-"scrached,"
untrampled flower-beds.

"My grief!" she ejaculated, suddenly, as if just aware of it. "I declare
I believe I miss him, too! I believe to my soul I'd like to hear him
crow--I wouldn't mind if he came strutting in here!" And "in here" was
Aunt Olivia's beloved garden of flowers. Surely she was being sorry now!

It was the next day that Rebecca Mary's b