hat, flung it on the bureau
with the porcupine quills on the under side, and stripping down the
dimity spread, precipitated herself into the middle of the bed and
pulled the counterpane over her head.

In a moment the door opened quietly. Knocking was a refinement quite
unknown in Riverboro, and if it had been heard of would never have been
wasted on a child.

Miss Miranda entered, and as her eye wandered about the vacant room, it
fell upon a white and tempestuous ocean of counterpane, an ocean
breaking into strange movements of wave and crest and billow.

"REBECCA!"

The tone in which the word was voiced gave it all the effect of having
been shouted from the housetops.

A dark ruffled head and two frightened eyes appeared above the dimity
spread.

"What are you layin' on your good bed in the daytime for, messin' up
the feathers, and dirtyin' the pillers with your dusty boots?"

Rebecca rose guiltily. There seemed no excuse to make. Her offense was
beyond explanation or apology.

"I'm sorry, aunt Mirandy--something came over me; I don't know what."

"Well, if it comes over you very soon again we'll have to find out what
't is. Spread your bed up smooth this minute, for 'Bijah Flagg 's
bringin' your trunk upstairs, and I wouldn't let him see such a
cluttered-up room for anything; he'd tell it all over town."

When Mr. Cobb had put up his horses that night he carried a kitchen
chair to the side of his wife, who was sitting on the back porch.

"I brought a little Randall girl down on the stage from Maplewood
to-day, mother. She's kin to the Sawyer girls an' is goin' to live with
'em," he said, as he sat down and began to whittle. "She's that
Aurelia's child, the one that ran away with Susan Randall's son just
before we come here to live."

"How old a child?"

"'Bout ten, or somewhere along there, an' small for her age; but land!
she might be a hundred to hear her talk! She kep' me jumpin' tryin' to
answer her! Of all the queer children I ever come across she's the
queerest. She ain't no beauty--her face is all eyes; but if she ever
grows up to them eyes an' fills out a little she'll make folks stare.
Land, mother! I wish 't you could 'a' heard her talk."

"I don't see what she had to talk about, a child like that, to a
stranger," replied Mrs. Cobb.

"Stranger or no stranger, 't wouldn't make no difference to her. She'd
talk to a pump or a grind-stun; she'd talk to herself ruther 'n keep
still."

"Wh