Rebecca Mary had written 1 hr. at first opposite skipping, but it had rather appalled her to think of skipping for so long a period of time, and, with a sense of being already out of breath, she had hurriedly erased the 1 and substituted 1/2. Underneath she had written, (“Do not tip over anything”). All the items had cautionary parentheses underneath them, for Rebecca Mary did not wish the celebration to injure “anything.” Not this last day, when all the days of all the years before it, that had gone to make up her little girlhood, nothing had been torn or muddied or tipped over. Rebecca Mary had never climbed trees, had never made mud pies, never had tea parties, nor skipped. It was with rather a hesitating step that she went forward to meet them all. She was even a little awed. But she went. No item on her programme was omitted. From her rocker on the porch Aunt Olivia watched proceedings with quiet patience. It was a good vantage point—she could see nearly all of the celebration. The tree Rebecca Mary climbed was on the edge of the old orchard next to Aunt Olivia, and there was a providential little rift through the shrubbery and vines that intervened. This part of the programme she could see almost too clearly, for it must be confessed that this part startled Aunt Olivia out of her calm. It—it was so unexpected. She stopped rocking and leaned forward in her chair to peer more sharply. What was the child—“She's climbing a tree!” breathed Aunt Olivia in undisguised astonishment. Even as she breathed it, there came to her faintly the snapping of twigs and flutter of leaves. Then all was quite still, but she could discern with her pair of trusty Plummer eyes two long legs gently dangling. If Aunt Olivia had known, Rebecca Mary, too, was startled. It—it was so strange an experience. She was not in the least afraid—it was a mental start rather than a physical one. When she had reached the limb set down in her programme she sat on it in a little daze of bewildered delight. She liked it! “Why, why, it's nice!” Rebecca Mary breathed. Her turn had come for undisguised astonishment. The leaves all about her nodded to her and stroked her cheeks and hair and hands. They whispered things into her ears. They were such friendly little leaves!