The Junior Heralds or The Daughters of Zion,
had resulted in a unanimous vote for the latter, and Rebecca had been
elected president at an early stage of the meeting. She had modestly
suggested that Alice Robinson, as the granddaughter of a missionary to
China, would be much more eligible.

"No," said Alice, with entire good nature, "whoever is ELECTED
president, you WILL be, Rebecca--you're that kind--so you might as well
have the honor; I'd just as lieves be secretary, anyway."

"If you should want me to be treasurer, I could be, as well as not,"
said Persis Watson suggestively; "for you know my father keeps china
banks at his store--ones that will hold as much as two dollars if you
will let them. I think he'd give us one if I happen to be treasurer."

The three principal officers were thus elected at one fell swoop
and with an entire absence of that red tape which commonly renders
organization so tiresome, Candace Milliken suggesting that perhaps she'd
better be vice-president, as Emma Jane Perkins was always so bashful.

"We ought to have more members," she reminded the other girls, "but if
we had invited them the first day they'd have all wanted to be officers,
especially Minnie Smellie, so it's just as well not to ask them till
another time. Is Thirza Meserve too little to join?"

"I can't think why anybody named Meserve should have called a baby
Thirza," said Rebecca, somewhat out of order, though the meeting was
carried on with small recognition of parliamentary laws. "It always
makes me want to say:

Thirza Meserver
Heaven preserve her!
Thirza Meserver
Do we deserve her?

She's little, but she's sweet, and absolutely without guile. I think we
ought to have her."

"Is 'guile' the same as 'guilt?" inquired Emma Jane Perkins.

"Yes," the president answered; "exactly the same, except one is written
and the other spoken language." (Rebecca was rather good at imbibing
information, and a master hand at imparting it!) "Written language is
for poems and graduations and occasions like this--kind of like a best
Sunday-go-to-meeting dress that you wouldn't like to go blueberrying in
for fear of getting it spotted."

"I'd just as 'lieves get 'guile' spotted as not," affirmed the
unimaginative Emma Jane. "I think it's an awful foolish word; but now
we're all named and our officers elected, what do we do first? It's
easy enough for Mary and Martha Burch; they just play at missionarying
becau