' brown farmhouse from Mrs. Baxter's
sitting-room window. The little-traveled road with strips of tufted
green between the wheel tracks curled dustily up to the very doorstep,
and inside the screen door of pink mosquito netting was a wonderful
drawn-in rug, shaped like a half pie, with "Welcome" in saffron letters
on a green ground.

Rebecca liked Mrs. Cassius Came, who was a friend of her Aunt Miranda's
and one of the few persons who exchanged calls with that somewhat
unsociable lady. The Came farm was not a long walk from the brick house,
for Rebecca could go across the fields when haying-time was over, and
her delight at being sent on an errand in that direction could not be
measured, now that the new minister and his wife had grown to be such a
resource in her life. She liked to see Mrs. Came shake the Welcome rug,
flinging the cheery word out into the summer sunshine like a bright
greeting to the day. She liked to see her go to the screen door a dozen
times in a morning, open it a crack and chase an imaginary fly from the
sacred precincts within. She liked to see her come up the cellar steps
into the side garden, appearing mysteriously as from the bowels of the
earth, carrying a shining pan of milk in both hands, and disappearing
through the beds of hollyhocks and sunflowers to the pig-pen or the
hen-house.

Rebecca was not fond of Mr. Came, and neither was Mrs. Baxter, nor
Elisha, for that matter; in fact Mr. Came was rather a difficult person
to grow fond of, with his fiery red beard, his freckled skin, and his
gruff way of speaking; for there were no children in the brown house to
smooth the creases from his forehead or the roughness from his voice.

II

The new minister's wife was sitting under the shade of her great maple
early one morning, when she first saw the Little Prophet. A tiny figure
came down the grass-grown road leading a cow by a rope. If it had been a
small boy and a small cow, a middle-sized boy and an ordinary cow, or a
grown man and a big cow, she might not have noticed them; but it was the
combination of an infinitesimal boy and a huge cow that attracted her
attention. She could not guess the child's years, she only knew that he
was small for his age, whatever it was.

The cow was a dark red beast with a crumpled horn, a white star on her
forehead, and a large surprised sort of eye. She had, of course, two
eyes, and both were surprised, but the left one had an added hint of
amazement in