A little after the afternoon that Rebecca Mary spent at the minister's the birthday quilt was finished. The thousandth tiny piece was neatly over-'n'-overed to its gorgeous expanse. But Rebecca Mary was not content. She longed to make it complete. She wanted to surprise Aunt 'Livia with it, as Aunt 'Livia on that momentous birthday of her own had surprised her with the little fluff-ball of yellow down that had grown into Thomas Jefferson. That had been such a beautiful surprise, but this—Aunt 'Livia had seen the quilt so many, many times! She had taught Rebecca Mary's stiff little fingers to set the first stitches in it; she had made her rip out this purple square and that pink-checked one, and this one and that one and that. Oh, Aunt 'Livia was ACQUAINTED with the quilt! It would not be much of a surprise. But Rebecca Mary set her little pointed chin between her little brown palms and pondered, and out of the pondering grew a plan so ambitious and so daring that Rebecca Mary gasped in the throes of it. But she held her ground and entertained it intrepidly. She even grew on friendly terms with it in the end. Here was a way to surprise Aunt 'Livia; Rebecca Mary would do it! That it would entail an almost endless amount of work did not daunt her: Rebecca Mary was a Plummer, and Plummers were not to be daunted. The long vista of patient hours of trying labor that the plan opened up before her set her blood tingling like a warrior's on the eve of battle. What were long, patient hours to a Plummer? Rebecca Mary girded up her loins and went to meet them. Thereafter at Aunt Olivia's nap times Rebecca Mary disappeared. Day upon day, week upon week, she stole quietly away when the door of Aunt Olivia's bedroom shut. The first time she went oddly loaded down with what would have appeared—if there had been any one for it to “appear” to be a bundle of long sticks. She made two trips into the unknown that first day. The second time the bundle looked much like that one over which her grave blue eyes had peered at the minister's wife when she went to spend the afternoon with her. It was spring when the mysterious disappearances began. It was summer before Aunt Olivia woke up—not from her nap, but from her inattention. Quite suddenly she came upon the realization that Rebecca Mary was not about the house; nor about the grounds, for she instituted prompt search. She went to all the child's odd little haunts—the grapery, the orchard, the corn-house, even to her own beloved back yard, full of sweet-scented hiding-nooks dear to a child, but sacred ground to Aunt Olivia. Rebecca Mary sometimes did her “stents” there as a special privilege; she might be there now, unprivileged. Aunt Olivia's back yard was almost as full of flowery delights to Rebecca Mary as it was to Aunt Olivia.