wanting, the committee discussed the claims of talent, and it
transpired that to the awestricken Rebecca fell the chief plum in
the pudding. It was a tribute to her gifts that there was no
jealousy or envy among the other girls; they readily conceded her
special fitness for the role.
Her life had not been pressed down full to the brim of pleasures,
and she had a sort of distrust of joy in the bud. Not until she
saw it in full radiance of bloom did she dare embrace it. She had
never read any verse but Byron, Felicia Hemans, bits of "Paradise
Lost," and the selections in the school readers, but she would
have agreed heartily with the poet who said:--
"Not by appointment do we meet delight
And joy; they heed not our expectancy;
But round some corner in the streets of life
They on a sudden clasp us with a smile."

For many nights before the raising, when she went to her bed, she
said to herself after she had finished her prayers: "It can't be
true that I'm chosen for the State of Maine! It just can't be
true! Nobody could be good enough, but oh, I'll try to be as good
as I can! To be going to Wareham Seminary next week and to be the
State of Maine too! Oh! I must pray hard to God to keep me meek
and humble!"
The flag was to be raised on a Tuesday, and on the previous
Sunday it became known to the children that Clara Belle Simpson
was coming back from Acreville, coming to live with Mrs. Fogg and
take care of the baby. Clara Belle was one of Miss Dearborn's
original flock, and if she were left wholly out of the
festivities she would be the only girl of suitable age to be thus
slighted; it seemed clear to the juvenile mind, therefore, that