no hesitation in
Rhoda's face.

"She means a make believe doll. Don't you, Rebecca Mary?"

"Yes," Rebecca Mary assented; "that's her other name, I suppose, but I
never called her by it."

"What did you call her?" demanded practical Rhoda. "What's her name
mean?"

"Rhoda!"--hastily, from the minister's wife. This seemed like sacrilege.
But Rhoda's clear, blue eyes were fixed upon Rebecca Mary; she had not
heard her mother's warning little word.

A shy color spread thinly over the lean little face of Rebecca Mary. For
the space of a breath or two she hesitated.

"Her name's--Felicia," then, softly.

"Robert"--the children had gone out together; the minister's wife's eyes
were unashamedly wet--"Robert, I wish you were a--a sheriff instead of
a minister. Because I think I would make a better sheriff's wife. Do you
know what I would make you do?"

The minister could guess.

"I'd make you ARREST that woman, Robert!"

"Felicia!" But she saw willingness to be a sheriff come into his own
eyes and stop there briefly.

"Don't call me 'Felicia' while I feel as wicked as this! Oh, Robert, to
think she named her little soul-doll after me!"

"It's a beautiful name."

Suddenly the wickedness was over. She laughed unsteadily.

"It wouldn't be a good name for a sheriff's wife, would it?" she said.
"So I'll stay by my own minister."

One day close upon this time Aunt Olivia came abruptly upon Rebecca Mary
in the grape arbor. She was sitting in her little rocking chair, swaying
back and forth slowly. She did not see Aunt Olivia. What was she was
crooning half under her breath?

"Oh, hush, oh, hush, my dollie;
Don't worry any more,
For Rebecca Mary 'n' the angels
Are watching o'er,
---O'er 'n' o'er 'n' o'er."

The same words over and over--growing perhaps a little softer and
tenderer. Rebecca Mary's arm was crooked as though a little flaxen head
lay in the bend of it. Rebecca Mary's brooding little face was gazing
downward intently at her empty arm. Quite suddenly it came upon Aunt
Olivia that she had seen the child rocking like this before--that she
must have seen her often.

"Rebecca Mary 'n' the angels
Are watching o'er,"

sang on the crooning little voice in Aunt Olivia's ears.

The doll in its coffin upstairs; down here Rebecca Mary rocking her
empty arms. The two thoughts flashed into Aunt Olivia's mind and welded
into one. All her vacillations and Duty's sharp reminders occurred
to her cle