x was
still somewhat indifferent and oblivious, even for fifteen and a half!
No one could look at her and doubt that she had potentialities of
attraction latent within her somewhere, but that side of her nature was
happily biding its time. A human being is capable only of a certain
amount of activity at a given moment, and it will inevitably satisfy
first its most pressing needs, its most ardent desires, its chief
ambitions. Rebecca was full of small anxieties and fears, for matters
were not going well at the brick house and were anything but hopeful at
the home farm. She was overbusy and overtaxed, and her thoughts were
naturally drawn towards the difficult problems of daily living.

It had seemed to her during the autumn and winter of that year as if
her aunt Miranda had never been, save at the very first, so censorious
and so fault-finding. One Saturday Rebecca ran upstairs and, bursting
into a flood of tears, exclaimed, "Aunt Jane, it seems as if I never
could stand her continual scoldings. Nothing I can do suits aunt
Miranda; she's just said it will take me my whole life to get the
Randall out of me, and I'm not convinced that I want it all out, so
there we are!"

Aunt Jane, never demonstrative, cried with Rebecca as she attempted to
soothe her.

"You must be patient," she said, wiping first her own eyes and then
Rebecca's. "I haven't told you, for it isn't fair you should be
troubled when you're studying so hard, but your aunt Miranda isn't
well. One Monday morning about a month ago, she had a kind of faint
spell; it wasn't bad, but the doctor is afraid it was a shock, and if
so, it's the beginning of the end. Seems to me she's failing right
along, and that's what makes her so fretful and easy vexed. She has
other troubles too, that you don't know anything about, and if you're
not kind to your aunt Miranda now, child, you'll be dreadful sorry some
time."

All the temper faded from Rebecca's face, and she stopped crying to say
penitently, "Oh! the poor dear thing! I won't mind a bit what she says
now. She's just asked me for some milk toast and I was dreading to take
it to her, but this will make everything different. Don't worry yet,
aunt Jane, for perhaps it won't be as bad as you think."

So when she carried the toast to her aunt a little later, it was in the
best gilt-edged china bowl, with a fringed napkin on the tray and a
sprig of geranium lying across the salt cellar.

"Now, aunt Miranda," she said