nd they've hardly be'n out
o'wear, summer or winter, more'n a month to a time! I declare they do
beat all for service! It don't seem as if your mother could a' chose
em,--Aurelia was always such a poor buyer! The black spills are bout
as good as new, but the orange ones are gittin' a little mite faded and
shabby. I wonder if I couldn't dip all of em in shoe blackin'? It seems
real queer to put a porcupine into hat trimmin', though I declare I
don't know jest what the animiles are like, it's be'n so long sence
I looked at the pictures of em in a geography. I always thought their
quills stood out straight and angry, but these kind o' curls round some
at the ends, and that makes em stand the wind better. How do you like
em on the brown felt?" she asked, inclining her head in a discriminating
attitude and poising them awkwardly on the hat with her work-stained
hand.

How did she like them on the brown felt indeed?

Miss Sawyer had not been looking at Rebecca, but the child's eyes were
flashing, her bosom heaving, and her cheeks glowing with sudden rage
and despair. All at once something happened. She forgot that she was
speaking to an older person; forgot that she was dependent; forgot
everything but her disappointment at losing the solferino breast,
remembering nothing but the enchanting, dazzling beauty of Emma Jane
Perkins's winter outfit; and suddenly, quite without warning, she burst
into a torrent of protest.

"I will NOT wear those hateful porcupine quills again this winter! I
will not! It's wicked, WICKED to expect me to! Oh! How I wish there
never had been any porcupines in the world, or that all of them had died
before silly, hateful people ever thought of trimming hat with them!
They curl round and tickle my ear! They blow against my cheek and sting
it like needles! They do look outlandish, you said so yourself a minute
ago. Nobody ever had any but only just me! The only porcupine was made
into the only quills for me and nobody else! I wish instead of sticking
OUT of the nasty beasts, that they stuck INTO them, same as they do into
my cheek! I suffer, suffer, suffer, wearing them and hating them, and
they will last forever and forever, and when I'm dead and can't help
myself, somebody'll rip them out of my last year's hat and stick them
on my head, and I'll be buried in them! Well, when I am buried THEY
will be, that's one good thing! Oh, if I ever have a child I'll let her
choose her own feathers and not make