Trumbull rooster has been here. I could eat him--that's how I feel
about the Tony Trumbull rooster.

"I never could have eatten Tomas Jefferson but once and then it would
have broken my heart but I was starveing. Aunt Olivia took him back."

Thomas Jefferson's grave was kept green. Rebecca Mary took her stents
down into the orchard and sat beside it, sadly stitching. She kept it
heaped with wild flowers and poppies from her own rows. Aunt Olivia's
flowers she never touched. The bitterness of Aunt Olivia's not being
sorry--perhaps being glad--rankled in her sore little soul. It would
have helped--oh yes, it would have helped.

Aunt Olivia worried on. It seemed to her that all Rebecca Mary's
meals in one meal would not have kept a kitten alive--and that reminded
her. She would try a kitten. The minister's wife had said a rooster
or a cat. A white kitten, she decided, though she could scarcely have
told why.

The kitten was better, but it was not a cure. Rebecca Mary took the
little creature to her breast and told it her grief for Thomas
Jefferson and cried her Thomas Jefferson tears into its soft, white
fur. In that way, at any rate, it was a success.

"Maybe I shall love you some day," she whispered, "but I can't yet,
while Thomas Jefferson is fresh. He's all I have room for. He was my
intimate friend--when your intimate friend is dead you can't love
anybody else right away." But she apologized to the little cat gently
--she felt that an apology was due it.