The State o' Maine, deserted and somewhat unnerved, sat down
before the glass and attacked her hair doggedly and with set
lips, working over it until Miss Jane called her to breakfast;
then, with a boldness born of despair, she entered the dining-
room, where her aunts were already seated at table. There was a
moment of silence after the grotesque figure was fully taken in;
then came a moan from Jane and a groan from Miranda.
"What have you done to yourself?" asked Miranda sternly.
"Made an effort to be beautiful and failed!" jauntily replied
Rebecca, but she was too miserable to keep up the fiction. "Oh,
Aunt Miranda, don't scold, I'm so unhappy! Alice and I rolled up
my hair to curl it for the raising. She said it was so straight I
looked like an Indian!"
"Mebbe you did," vigorously agreed Miranda, "but 't any rate you
looked like a Christian Injun, 'n' now you look like a heathen
Injun; that's all the difference I can see. What can we do with
her, Jane, between this and nine o'clock?"
"We'll all go out to the pump just as soon as we're through
breakfast," answered Jane soothingly. "We can accomplish
considerable with water and force."
Rebecca nibbled her corn-cake, her tearful eyes cast on her plate
and her chin quivering.
"Don't you cry and red your eyes up," chided Miranda quite
kindly; "the minute you've eaten enough run up and get your brush
and meet us at the back door."
"I would n't care myself how bad I looked," said Rebecca, "but I
can't bear to be so homely that I shame the State of Maine!"
Oh, what an hour followed this plaint! Did any aspirant for
literary or dramatic honors ever pass to fame through such an
antechamber of horrors? Did poet of the day ever have his head so