ly. "You couldn't
expect her to get over it all in a minute. He was a remarkable rooster."

"She misses him, herself," inwardly smiled the minister's little wife.
Whether by virtue of her relationship to the minister or by her own
virtue, she had learned to read human nature with a degree of accuracy.

"I looked at myself in the glass tonight," confessed Rebecca Mary's
diary, "but it was on acount of the rufles. I think Ime not quite so
homebly in rufles. I think Aunt Olivia was kind to rufle me. I should
like to ware this night gown in the day time. I wish folks did."

The pencil slipped out of Rebecca Mary's fingers and rolled on the
floor, to the undoing of the little, white cat, who had gone to bed in
his basket. Rebecca Mary caught him up as he darted after the pencil,
and hugged him in an odd little ecstasy. She felt oddly happy.

"You little, white cat!" she cried, muffledly, her face in his thick
coat, "you've waited and waited, but I think I'm going to love you
now--you needn't wait any more."

The Feel Doll

The minister uttered a suppressed note of warning as solid little steps
sounded in the hall. It was he who threw a hasty covering over the doll.
The minister's wife sewed on undisturbedly. She did worse than that.

"Come here, Rhoda," she called, "and tell me which you like better,
three tucks or five in this petticoat?"

"Five," promptly, upon inspection. Rhoda pulled away the concealing
cover and regarded the stolid doll with tilted head. "She's 'nough like
my Pharaoh's Daughter to be a blood relation," she remarked. "She's got
the Pharaoh complexion."

"Spoken like MY daughter!" laughed the minister. "But I thought new
dolls in this house were always surprises. And here's Mrs. Minister
making doll petticoats out in the open!"

"This is Rebecca Mary's--I'm dressing a doll for Rebecca Mary, Robert.
She's eleven years old and never had a doll! Rhoda's ten and has
had--How many dolls have you had, Rhoda?"

"Gracious! Why, Pharaoh's Daughter, an' Caiapha, an' Esther the
Beautiful Queen, an' the Children of Israel--five o' them--an' Mrs. Job,
an'--"

"Never mind the rest, dear. You hear, Robert? Do you think Rhoda would
be alive now if she'd never had a doll?"

The minister pondered the question. "Maybe not, maybe not," he decided;
"but possibly the dolls would have been."

"Don't make me smile, Robert. I'm trying to make you cry. If Rebecca
Mary were sixty instead of eleven I shoul