ere always; but--but I'm not very glad to see you. You
needn't have come so SUDDEN," she added, with gentle resentment.

The Thought of Growing Up crept into her mind and nestled down there. As
thoughts go, it was not an unkind one.

"You'll get used to me sometime and like me," it said, comfortingly. But
Rebecca Mary knew better. She drove it out.

Why must legs keep on growing and unwelcome Thoughts come out of
knotholes? Why could not little girls keep on sewing stents and learning
arithmetic and carrying beautiful doll-beings to bed? Why had the Lord
created little girls like this--this growing kind?

"If I had made the world," began Rebecca Mary--but stopped in a hurry.
The irreverence of presuming to make a better world than the Lord shamed
her.

"I suppose He knew best, but if He'd ever been a little girl--" This was
worse than the other. Rebecca Mary hastily dismissed the world and its
Maker from her musings for fear of further irreverences.

One Thought came out of the knothole, illustrated. It was leading a tall
woman-girl by the hand--no, it was pushing it as though the woman-girl
were loath to come.

"Come along," urged the new Thought, laughingly. "Here she is--this is
Rebecca Mary. Rebecca Mary, this is YOU! You needn't be afraid of each
other, you two. Take a good long look and get acquainted."

The woman-girl was tall and straight. She had Rebecca Mary's hair,
Rebecca Mary's eyes, mouth, little pointed chin. But not Rebecca Mary's
legs--unless the long skirts covered them. She was rather comely and
pleasant to look at. But Rebecca Mary tried not to look.

"She's got a lover---some day she'll be getting married," the new
Thought said more abruptly, startlingly, than grammatically. And then
with a little muffled cry Rebecca Mary put out her hands and pushed
the woman-girl away--back into the knothole whence she had come. The
Thought, too, for she had no room in her mind for thoughts like that.

"My aunt Olivia wouldn't allow me to think of you," she explained in
dismissing them. "And," with dignity she added, "neither would Rebecca
Mary."

It was to be as the minister's wife had prophesied--there were to be not
even the three days of grace allowed by law when Rebecca Mary grew up.
Sitting there with her legs, her poor little unappreciated legs, the
innocent cause of the whole trouble, curled out of sight, Rebecca Mary
planned that there should be but one day of grace. She would allow one
day m