e first morning. She loved this part
of the day's programme. When the dew was not too heavy and the weather
was fair there was a short cut through the woods. She turned off the
main road, crept through uncle Josh Woodman's bars, waved away Mrs.
Carter's cows, trod the short grass of the pasture, with its well-worn
path running through gardens of buttercups and white-weed, and groves
of ivory leaves and sweet fern. She descended a little hill, jumped
from stone to stone across a woodland brook, startling the drowsy
frogs, who were always winking and blinking in the morning sun. Then
came the "woodsy bit," with her feet pressing the slippery carpet of
brown pine needles; the "woodsy bit" so full of dewy morning,
surprises,--fungous growths of brilliant orange and crimson springing
up around the stumps of dead trees, beautiful things born in a single
night; and now and then the miracle of a little clump of waxen Indian
pipes, seen just quickly enough to be saved from her careless tread.
Then she climbed a stile, went through a grassy meadow, slid under
another pair of bars, and came out into the road again having gained
nearly half a mile.

How delicious it all was! Rebecca clasped her Quackenbos's Grammar and
Greenleaf's Arithmetic with a joyful sense of knowing her lessons. Her
dinner pail swung from her right hand, and she had a blissful
consciousness of the two soda biscuits spread with butter and syrup,
the baked cup-custard, the doughnut, and the square of hard
gingerbread. Sometimes she said whatever "piece" she was going to speak
on the next Friday afternoon.

"A soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers,
There was lack of woman's nursing, there was dearth of
woman's tears."

How she loved the swing and the sentiment of it! How her young voice
quivered whenever she came to the refrain:--

"But we'll meet no more at Bingen, dear Bingen on the Rhine."

It always sounded beautiful in her ears, as she sent her tearful little
treble into the clear morning air. Another early favorite (for we must
remember that Rebecca's only knowledge of the great world of poetry
consisted of the selections in vogue in school readers) was:--

"Woodman, spare that tree!
Touch not a single bough!
In youth it sheltered me,
And I'll protect it now."

When Emma Jane Perkins walked through the "short cut" with her, the two
children used to render this with appropriate dramatic action. Emma
Jane always c