ry down. The third sigh was the longest one. Oh, this letting
down of children who would grow up!

"I won't do it!" Aunt Olivia rebelled, fiercely, but she took up her
scissors again at Duty's nudge.

"You don't want people laughing at her, do you?" Duty said, sensibly.
"Well, then, rip out that hem and face up that skirt and stop sighing.
What can't be cured must be endur--"

"I'm ripping it out," Aunt Olivia interrupted, crisply. But Duty was not
to be silenced.

"You ought to have done it before," dictatorially. "You've known all
along that Rebecca Mary was growing up."

Aunt Olivia, like the proverbial worm, turned.

"I didn't know till Rebecca Mary told me," she retorted; then the
rebellion died out of her thin face and tenderness came and took its
place. Aunt Olivia was thinking of the time when Rebecca Mary told her.
She gazed past Duty, past the skirt across her knees, out through the
porch vines, and saw Rebecca Mary coming to tell her. She saw the shawl
the child was bringing, felt it laid on her shoulders, and something
else laid on her hair, soft and smooth like a little, lean, brown cheek.
The memory was so pleasant that Aunt Olivia closed her eyes to make it
stay. When she opened them some one was coming along the path, but it
was not Rebecca Mary.

"Good afternoon!" some one said. Aunt Olivia stiffened into a Plummer
again with hurried embarrassment. She did not recognize the voice nor
the pleasant young face that followed it through the vines.

"It's Rebecca Mary's aunt, isn't it?" The stranger smiled. "I should
know it by the family resemblance."

"We're both Plummers," Aunt Olivia answered, gravely. "Won't you come up
on the porch and take a seat?"

"No, I'll sit down here on the steps--I'd rather. I think I'll sit
on the lowest step for I've come on a very humble errand! I'm Rebecca
Mary's teacher."

"Oh!" It was all Aunt Olivia could manage, for a sudden horror had
come upon her. She had a distinct remembrance of being at the Tony
Trumbullses when the school teacher came to call.

"It's--it's rather hard to say it." The young person on the lowest step
laughed nervously. "I'd a good deal rather not. But I think so much of
Rebecca Mary--"

The horror grew in Aunt Olivia's soul. It was something terribly like
that the Tony Trumbullses' teacher had said. And like this:

"It hurts--there! But I made up my mind it was my duty to come up here
and say it, and so I've come. I'm sorry to have