fern. She descended a little hill, jumped from stone to stone
across a woodland brook, startling the drowsy frogs, who were
always winking and blinking in the morning sun. Then came the
"woodsy bit," with her feet pressing the slippery carpet of brown
pine needles; the woodsy bit so full of dewy morning surprises,--
fungous growths of brilliant orange and crimson springing up
around the stumps of dead trees, beautiful things born in a
single night; and now and then the miracle of a little clump of
waxen Indian pipes, seen just quickly enough to be saved from her
careless tread. Then she climbed a stile, went through a grassy
meadow, slid under another pair of bars, and came out into the
road again, having gained nearly half a mile.
How delicious it all was! Rebecca clasped her Quackenbos's
Grammar and Greenleaf's Arithmetic with a joyful sense of knowing
her lessons. Her dinner pail swung from her right hand, and she
had a blissful consciousness of the two soda biscuits spread with
butter and syrup, the baked cup-custard, the doughnut, and the
square of hard gingerbread. Sometimes she said whatever "piece"
she was going to speak on the next Friday afternoon.
"A soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers,
There was lack of woman's nursing, there was dearth of woman's
tears."

How she loved the swing and the sentiment of it! How her young
voice quivered whenever she came to the refrain:--
"But we'll meet no more at Bingen, dear Bingen on the Rhine."
It always sounded beautiful in her ears, as she sent her tearful
little treble into the clear morning air.
Another early favorite (for we must remember that Rebecca's only
knowledge of the great world of poetry consisted of the