before things had happened--softening
things that had pulled at her heartstrings and weakened her. The quilt
on the guest chamber bed was one of the things; she would not look at it
now. And the sheets under the quilt--and the grave of Thomas Jefferson
that she could see from the guest chamber window. Aunt Olivia was
terribly beset with the temptation to take the doll out to Rebecca Mary
in the garden.

"Are you going to do it?" demanded Duty, confronting her. "Are you
going to give up all your convictions now? Rebecca Mary's in her twelfth
year-pretty late to begin to humor her. I thought you didn't believe in
humoring."

"I unpinned the nightgown," parried Aunt Olivia, on the defensive. "I
never let her make another one."

"But you're weakening now. You want to let her have THIS doll."

"It seems like part of--of her inheritance."

"Lock that drawer!"

Aunt Olivia turned the key unhappily. It was not that her "convictions"
had changed--it was her heart.

She went up at odd times and looked at the doll the minister's wife had
dressed. She had an unaccountable, uncomfortable feeling that it was
lying there in its coffin--that Rebecca Mary would have said, "She's
dead."

It was a handsome doll. Aunt Olivia was not acquainted with dolls,
but she acknowledged that. She admired it unwillingly. She liked its
clothes--the minister's wife had not spared any pains. She had not
stinted in tucks nor ruffles.

Once Aunt Olivia took it out and turned it over in her hands with
critical intent, but there was nothing to criticise. It was a beautiful
doll. She held it with a curious, shy tenderness. But that time she did
not sit down with it. It was the next time.

The rocker was so near the bureau, and Aunt Olivia was tired--and the
doll was already in her arms. She only sat down. For a minute she sat
quite straight and unrelaxed, then she settled back a little--a little
more. The doll lay heavily against her, its flaxen head touching her
breast. After the manner of high-bred dolls, its eyes drooped sleepily.

Aunt Olivia began to rock--a gentle sway back and forth. She was sixty,
but this was the first time she had ever rocked a chi--a doll. So she
rocked for a little, scarcely knowing it. When she found out, a wave of
soft pink dyed her face and flowed upward redly to her hair.

"Well!" Duty jibed, mocking her.

"Don't say a word!" cried poor Aunt Olivia. "I'll put her right back."

"What good will that do?"

"I