Emma Jane had said, rather indiscreetly, that at the village milliner's at Milliken's Mills there was a perfectly elegant pink breast to be had, a breast that began in a perfectly elegant solferino and terminated in a perfectly elegant magenta; two colors much in vogue at that time. If the old brown hat was to be her portion yet another winter, would Aunt Miranda conceal its deficiencies from a carping world beneath the shaded solferino breast? _Would_ she, that was the question? Filled with these perplexing thoughts, Rebecca entered the brick house, hung up her hood in the entry, and went into the dining-room. Miss Jane was not there, but Aunt Miranda sat by the window with her lap full of sewing things, and a chair piled with pasteboard boxes by her side. In one hand was the ancient, battered, brown felt turban, and in the other were the orange and black porcupine quills from Rebecca's last summer's hat; from the hat of the summer before that, and the summer before that, and so on back to prehistoric ages of which her childish memory kept no specific record, though she was sure that Temperance and Riverboro society did. Truly a sight to chill the blood of any eager young dreamer who had been looking at gayer plumage! Miss Sawyer glanced up for a second with a satisfied expression and then bent her eyes again upon her work. “If I was going to buy a hat trimming,” she said, “I couldn't select anything better or more economical than these quills! Your mother had them when she was married, and you wore them the day you come to the brick house from the farm; and I said to myself then that they looked kind of outlandish, but I've grown to like 'em now I've got used to 'em. You've been here for goin' on two years and they've hardly be'n out o'wear, summer or winter, more'n a month to a time! I declare they do beat all for service! It don't seem as if your mother could 'a' chose 'em,--Aurelia was always such a poor buyer! The black spills are 'bout as good as new, but the orange ones are gittin' a little mite faded and shabby. I wonder if I couldn't dip all of 'em in shoe blackin'? It seems real queer to put a porcupine into hat trimmin', though I declare I don't know jest what the animiles are like, it's be'n so long sence I looked at the pictures of 'em in a geography. I always thought their quills stood out straight and angry, but these kind o' curls round some at the ends, and that makes 'em stand the wind better. How do you like 'em on the brown felt?” she asked, inclining her head in a discriminating attitude and poising them awkwardly on the hat with her work-stained hand. How did she like them on the brown felt indeed?