Miranda wouldn't let me have the Simpson baby when I wanted to
borrow her just for one rainy Sunday."

"My mother won't keep him, so it's no use to ask her; she says
most every day she's glad we're grown up, and she thanks the Lord
there wasn't but two of us."

"And Mrs. Peter Meserve is too nervous," Rebecca went on, taking
the village houses in turn; "and Mrs. Robinson is too neat."

"People don't seem to like any but their own babies," observed
Emma Jane.

"Well, I can't understand it," Rebecca answered. "A baby's a
baby, I should think, whose ever it is! Miss Dearborn is coming
back Monday; I wonder if she'd like it? She has nothing to do out
of school, and we could borrow it all the time!"

"I don't think it would seem very genteel for a young lady like
Miss Dearborn, who 'boards round,' to take a baby from place to
place," objected Emma Jane.

"Perhaps not," agreed Rebecca despondently, "but I think if we
haven't got any--any--PRIVATE babies in Riverboro we ought to
have one for the town, and all have a share in it. We've got a
town hall and a town lamp post and a town watering trough. Things
are so uneven! One house like mine at Sunnybrook, brimful of
children, and the very next one empty! The only way to fix them
right would be to let all the babies that ever are belong to all
the grown-up people that ever are,--just divide them up, you