h children's faces smiling at the windows and youthful
footsteps sounding through the halls; and the brass knocker on the
red-painted front door might have remembered Rebecca's prayer of a year
before, when she leaned against its sun-warmed brightness and whispered:
"God bless Aunt Miranda; God bless the brick house that was; God bless
the brick house that's going to be!"

All the doors and blinds were open to the sun and air as they had never
been in Miss Miranda Sawyer's time. The hollyhock bed that had been her
chief pride was never neglected, and Rebecca liked to hear the neighbors
say that there was no such row of beautiful plants and no such variety
of beautiful colors in Riverboro as those that climbed up and peeped in
at the kitchen windows where old Miss Miranda used to sit.

Now that the place was her very own Rebecca felt a passion of pride in
its smoothly mown fields, its carefully thinned-out woods, its blooming
garden spots, and its well-weeded vegetable patch; felt, too whenever
she looked at any part of it, a passion of gratitude to the stern old
aunt who had looked upon her as the future head of the family, as well
as a passion of desire to be worthy of that trust.

It had been a very difficult year for a girl fresh from school: the
death of her aunt, the nursing of Miss Jane, prematurely enfeebled by
the shock, the removal of her own invalid mother and the rest of the
little family from Sunnybrook Farm. But all had gone smoothly; and when
once the Randall fortunes had taken an upward turn nothing seemed able
to stop their intrepid ascent.

Aurelia Randall renewed her youth in the companionship of her sister
Jane and the comforts by which her children were surrounded; the
mortgage was no longer a daily terror, for Sunnybrook had been sold to
the new railroad; Hannah, now Mrs. Will Melville, was happily situated;
John, at last, was studying medicine; Mark, the boisterous and unlucky
brother, had broken no bones for several months; while Jenny and Fanny
were doing well at the district school under Miss Libby Moses, Miss
Dearborn's successor.

"I don't feel very safe," thought Rebecca, remembering all these
unaccustomed mercies as she sat on the front doorsteps, with her tatting
shuttle flying in and out of the fine cotton like a hummingbird. "It's
just like one of those too beautiful July days that winds up with a
thundershower before night! Still, when you remember that the Randalls
never had anythi