"You see how it is, little, white cat," she said. "I shall have to ask
you to wait. But if I ever have a second love, I promise it will be
you. You're a great DEAL comfortinger than that Tony Trumbull rooster!
I could love you this minute if I had never loved Thomas Jefferson.
Do you feel like waiting?"

The little, white cat waited. And Aunt Olivia waited. She made
tempting dishes for Rebecca Mary's meals, and put a ruffle into her
nightgown neck and sleeves--Rebecca Mary had always yearned for
ruffles.

"I don't believe she sees 'em. She don't know they're there," groaned
Aunt Olivia, impotently. "She don't see anything but Thomas Jefferson,
and I don't know as she ever will!"

But Rebecca Mary saw the ruffles and fluted them between her brown
little fingers admiringly. She tried once or twice to go and thank
Aunt Olivia, and got as far as her bedroom door. But the bitterness in
her heart stayed her hand from turning the knob. If Aunt Olivia had
only known that being sorry was the right thing to do! Strangely
enough, though Rebecca Mary's view of the matter never occurred to Aunt
Olivia, she came by and by to being sorry on her own account. Perhaps
she had been all along, underneath her disquietude for Rebecca Mary's
sorrow. Perhaps when she thought how quiet it had grown mornings, and
what a good chance there was now for a supplementary nap, she was being
sorry. When she remembered that she need not buy wheat now and yellow
corn, and that the cookies would last longer--perhaps then she was
sorry. But she did not know it. It seemed to come upon her with the
nature of a surprise on one especial day. She had been working her
un-"scrached," untrampled flower-beds.