II

REBECCA'S RELATIONS

They had been called the Sawyer girls when
Miranda at eighteen, Jane at twelve, and
Aurelia at eight participated in the various
activities of village life; and when Riverboro fell
into a habit of thought or speech, it saw no reason
for falling out of it, at any rate in the same century.
So although Miranda and Jane were between fifty
and sixty at the time this story opens, Riverboro
still called them the Sawyer girls. They were
spinsters; but Aurelia, the youngest, had made what
she called a romantic marriage and what her sisters
termed a mighty poor speculation. "There's worse
things than bein' old maids," they said; whether
they thought so is quite another matter.

The element of romance in Aurelia's marriage
existed chiefly in the fact that Mr. L. D. M. Randall
had a soul above farming or trading and was a votary
of the Muses. He taught the weekly singing-school
(then a feature of village life) in half a dozen
neighboring towns, he played the violin and "called off"
at dances, or evoked rich harmonies from church
melodeons on Sundays. He taught certain uncouth
lads, when they were of an age to enter society, the
intricacies of contra dances, or the steps of the
schottische and mazurka, and he was a marked