“Oh,” sighed Rebecca Mary, “to think they belong to me—to think they're hitched on!” She gazed down at them with scorn and was ashamed of them. She tried to conceal their length with her brief skirts; but when she straightened up, there they were again, as long as ever. She sat down suddenly on the shed floor and drew them up underneath her. That was temporarily a relief. “If I sit here world without end nobody'll see 'em,” grimly smiled Rebecca Mary. It was her legs Rebecca Mary measured against the woodshed wall. It was her legs she was ashamed of. No wonder the minister's wife had said to the minister going home from meeting, with Rebecca Mary behind them unawares,—no wonder she had said, “Robert, HAVE you noticed Rebecca Mary's legs?” Rebecca Mary had not heard the reply of the minister, for of course she had gone away then. If she had stayed she would have heard him say, with exaggerated prudery, “Felicia! My dear! Were you alluding to Rebecca Mary's limbs?” for the minister wickedly remembered inadvertent occasions when he himself had called legs legs. “LEGS,” the minister's wife repeated, calmly—“Rebecca Mary's are too long for limbs. Robert, that child will grow up one of these days!” “They all do,” sighed the minister. “It's human nature, dear. You'll be telling me next that there's something the matter with Rhoda's—legs.” The minister's wife gazed thoughtfully ahead at a little trio fast approaching the vanishing point. Her eyes grew a little wistful. “There is now, perhaps, but I haven't noticed—I won't look!” she murmured. “And, anyway, Robert, Rhoda will give us a little time to get used to it in. But Rebecca Mary isn't the Rhoda kind—I don't believe Rebecca Mary will give us even three days of grace!” “I always supposed Rebecca Mary was born that way—grown up,” the minister remarked, tucking a gloved hand comfortably close under his arm. “I wouldn't let it worry me, dear.” “Oh, I don't—not worry, really,” she said, smiling—“only her legs startled me a little today. If she were mine, I should let her dresses down.” “If she were Rhod—” “She isn't, she's Rebecca Mary. Probably if I were Miss Olivia I would let Rhoda's down!” And she knew she would. Rebecca Mary on the woodshed floor sat and thought “deep-down” thoughts. Her eyes were fixed dreamily on a big knothole before her, and the thoughts seemed to come out of it and stand before her, demanding imperiously to be thought. One after another—a relentless procession. “Think me,” the first one had commanded. “I'm the Thought of Growing Up. I saw you measuring your legs, and I concluded it was time for me to introduce myself. I had to come some time, didn't I?” “Oh yes,” breathed Rebecca Mary, sadly. “I don't suppose I could expect you to stay in there always; but—but I'm not very glad to see you. You needn't have come so SUDDEN,” she added, with gentle resentment.