nightgown rolled
tightly and pinned together. She had found Rebecca Mary in her little
waist and petticoat cuddling it in bed.

"It's a dollie. Please 'sh, Aunt Olivia, or you'll wake her up!" the
child had whispered, in an agony. "Oh, you're not agoing to turn her
back to a nightgown? Don't unpin her, Aunt Olivia--it will kill her!
I'll name her after you if you'll let her stay."

"Get up and take your clothes off." Strange Aunt Olivia should remember
at this particular instant; should remember, too, that the pin had
been a little rusty and came out hard. Rebecca Mary had slid out of bed
obediently, but there had been a look on her little brown face as of one
bereaved. She had watched the pin come out, and the nightgown unroll, in
stricken silence. When it hung released and limp over Aunt Olivia's arm
she had given one little cry:

"She's dead!"

The minister's wife was talking hurriedly. Her voice seemed a good
way off; it had the effect of coming nearer and growing louder as Aunt
Olivia stepped back across the years.

"Of course you are to do as you think best about giving it to her," the
minister's wife said, unwillingly. This came of being a minister's wife!
"But I think--I have always thought--that little girls ought--I
mean Rhoda ought--to have dolls to cuddle. It seems part of
their--her--inheritance." This was hard work! If Miss Olivia would not
sit there looking like that--.

"As if I'd done something unkind!" thought the gentle little mother,
indignantly. She got up presently and went away. But Aunt Olivia, with
the doll hanging unhealthily over her arm, followed her to the door.
There was something the Plummer honesty insisted upon Aunt Olivia's
saying. She said it reluctantly:

"I think I ought to tell you that I've never believed in dolls. I've
always thought they were a waste of time and kept children from learning
to do useful things. I've brought Rebecca Mary up according to my best
light."

"Worst darkness!" thought the minister's wife, hotly.

"She's never had a doll. I never had one. I got along. I could make
butter when I was seven. So perhaps you'd better take the doll--"

"No, no! Please keep it, Miss Olivia, and if you should ever change your
mind--I mean perhaps sometime--good-bye. It's a beautiful day, isn't
it?"

Aunt Olivia took it up into the guest chamber and laid it in an empty
bureau drawer. She closed the drawer hastily. She did not feel as
duty-proof as she had once felt,