a level teaspoonful. Aunt Olivia and I went to
church. The text was thou shalt not steal 1 cups of sour milk--" Rebecca
Mary got no farther than that. She was a little appalled at the result
thus far, and hastily turned a page and began again in a blank space
where no intrusive pudding could break through and corrupt. Thereafter
she wrote above and below the recipes and pasted no more thin veils over
them. It seemed safer.

Aunt Olivia, apparently oblivious to what was going on, yet saw and did
not disapprove. It was to be expected that the child should come into
her inheritance sometime, early or late. If early--well.

"It's the Plummer in her. All the Plummers have kept diaries," Aunt
Olivia mused, knitting stolidly on while the child stooped painfully
to her self-imposed task. The quaint resemblance to herself at her own
diary-writing did not escape her, and she smiled a little in the Aunt
Olivia way that scarcely stirred her lips. Aunt Olivia smiled oftener
now when she looked at the child. She was "failing" a little, Plummerly.
Between the two of them, little Plummer and big, stretched of late a tie
woven of sheets and a gorgeous quilt of a thousand bits. It was not very
visible to the naked eye, but they were both rather shyly conscious that
it was there. They would never be quite so far apart again.

Rebecca Mary took her diary out to the haunts of Thomas Jefferson and
read aloud selections to him, with an odd, conscious little air, as
though she were graduating. The great white fellow was a sympathetic
auditor, if silence and extreme gravity count. Only once did he ever
make comments, and Rebecca Mary could never quite make up her mind
whether he laughed then or applauded. When a great white rooster
elongates his neck, crooks it ridiculously, flaps his wings and crows,
it's hard telling exactly what feeling prompts him. But Rebecca reasoned
from past experience and her faith in him--he had never laughed at her
before. It was applause. The especial entry which evoked it was the one
that first mentioned an allowance.

"'THURSDAY.--I think I'm going to--'" read Rebecca Mary slowly; and it
was significant that on this Thursday there was no weather. "'I havent
desided--I don't KNOW, but I think I'm going to ask Aunt Olivia to pay
me 5 cents a weak. Rhoda says you call it an alowance, and I supose she
knows. She is the minnister's daughter. She has 10 cents a weak unless
shes bad and then she pays the minnister an