PEOPLE; but
only, once in a long while, with things; like those,--cover them up
quick before I begin again! I'm all right! Shower's over, sun's out!"

Miss Miranda looked at her searchingly and uncomprehendingly. Rebecca's
state of mind came perilously near to disease, she thought.

"Have you seen me buyin' any new bunnits, or your Aunt Jane?" she asked
cuttingly. "Is there any particular reason why you should dress better
than your elders? You might as well know that we're short of cash just
now, your Aunt Jane and me, and have no intention of riggin' you out
like a Milltown fact'ry girl."

"Oh-h!" cried Rebecca, the quick tears starting again to her eyes and
the color fading out of her cheeks, as she scrambled up from her knees
to a seat on the sofa beside her aunt. "Oh-h! How ashamed I am! Quick,
sew those quills on to the brown turban while I'm good! If I can't stand
them I'll make a neat little gingham bag and slip over them!"

And so the matter ended, not as it customarily did, with cold words on
Miss Miranda's part and bitter feelings on Rebecca's, but with a gleam
of mutual understanding.

Mrs. Cobb, who was a master hand at coloring, dipped the offending
quills in brown dye and left them to soak in it all night, not only
making them a nice warm color, but somewhat weakening their rocky
spines, so that they were not quite as rampantly hideous as before, in
Rebecca's opinion.

Then Mrs. Perkins went to her bandbox in the attic and gave Miss
Dearborn some pale blue velvet, with which she bound the brim of the
brown turban and made a wonderful rosette, out of which the porcupine's
defensive armor sprang, buoyantly and gallantly, like the plume of Henry
of Navarre.

Rebecca was resigned, if not greatly comforted, but she had grace enough
to conceal her feelings, now that she knew economy was at the root
of some of her aunt's decrees in matters of dress; and she managed to
forget the solferino breast, save in sleep, where a vision of it had a
way of appearing to her, dangling from the ceiling, and dazzling her
so with its rich color that she used to hope the milliner would sell it
that she might never be tempted with it when she passed the shop window.

One day, not long afterward, Miss Miranda borrowed Mr. Perkins's horse
and wagon and took Rebecca with her on a drive to Union, to see about
some sausage meat and head cheese. She intended to call on Mrs. Cobb,
order a load of pine wood from Mr. Strout on th