“Aunt Olivia has gone to the city and I haven't,” painfully traced Rebecca Mary. “She wanted the good time all to herself. I shall never forgive Aunt Olivia the Lord have mercy on her.” Then Rebecca Mary went back to bed. She dreamed that the cars ran off the track and they brought Aunt Olivia's pieces home to her. In the dreadful dream she forgave Aunt Olivia. It was very pleasant at the minister's and the minister's wife's. Rebecca Mary felt the warmth and pleasantness of it in every fibre of her body and soul. But she was not happy nor warm. She thought it was indignation against Aunt Olivia—she did not know she was homesick. She did not know why she went to the old home every day after school and wandered through Aunt Olivia's flower garden, and sat with little brown chin palm-deep on the doorsteps. Gradually the indignation melted out of existence and only the homesickness was left. It sat on her small, lean face like a little spectre. It troubled the minister's wife. “What can we do, Robert?” she asked. “What?” he echoed; for the minister, too, was troubled. “She wanders about like a little lost soul. When she plays with the children it's only the outside of her that plays.” “Only the outside,” he nodded. “Last night I went in, Robert, and—and tried the Rhoda way. I think she liked it, but it didn't comfort her. I am sure now that it is homesickness, Robert.” They were both sure, but the grim little spectre sat on, undaunted by all their kindnesses. “When thy father and thy mother forsake the,” wrote Rebecca Mary in the cookbook diary, “and thy Aunt Olivia for I know it means and thy Aunt Olivia then the Lord will take the up, but I dont feal as if anyboddy had taken me up. The ministers wife did once but of course she had to put me down again rite away. She is a beutiful person and I love her but she is differunt from thy father and thy mother and thy Aunt Olivia. Ide rather have Aunt Olivia take me up than to have the Lord.” It was when she shut the battered little book this time that Rebecca Mary remembered one or two things that had happened the morning Aunt Olivia went away. It was queer how she HADN'T remembered them before. She remembered that Aunt Olivia had taken her sharp little face between her own hands and looked down wistfully at it—wistfully, Rebecca Mary remembered now, though she did not call it by that name. She remembered Aunt Olivia had said, “You needn't hem anything unless it's for the minister's wife—never mind the towels I put in.” That was almost the last thing she had said. She had put her head out of the stage door to say it. Rebecca Mary had hemmed a towel each day. There were but two left, and she resolved to hem both of those tomorrow. A sudden little longing was born within her for more towels to hem for Aunt Olivia.