solferino and terminated in a perfectly elegant magenta; two
colors much in vogue at that time. If the old brown hat was to be
her portion yet another winter, would Aunt Miranda conceal its
deficiencies from a carping world beneath the shaded solferino
breast? WOULD she, that was the question?

Filled with these perplexing thoughts, Rebecca entered the brick
house, hung up her hood in the entry, and went into the
dining-room.

Miss Jane was not there, but Aunt Miranda sat by the window with
her lap full of sewing things, and a chair piled with pasteboard
boxes by her side. In one hand was the ancient, battered, brown
felt turban, and in the other were the orange and black porcupine
quills from Rebecca's last summer's hat; from the hat of the
summer before that, and the summer before that, and so on back to
prehistoric ages of which her childish memory kept no specific
record, though she was sure that Temperance and Riverboro society
did. Truly a sight to chill the blood of any eager young dreamer
who had been looking at gayer plumage!

Miss Sawyer glanced up for a second with a satisfied expression
and then bent her eyes again upon her work.

"If I was going to buy a hat trimming," she said, "I couldn't
select anything better or more economical than these quills! Your
mother had them when she was married, and you wore them the day
you come to the brick house from the farm; and I said to myself
then that they looked kind of outlandish, but I've grown to like
em now I've got used to em. You've been here for goin' on two