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?
Miss Sawyer had not been looking at Rebecca, but the child's eyes

were flashing, her bosom heaving, and her cheeks glowing with
sudden rage and despair. All at once something happened. She

forgot that she was speaking to an older person; forgot that she
was dependent; forgot everything but her disappointment at losing

the solferino breast, remembering nothing but the enchanting,
dazzling beauty of Emma Jane Perkins's winter outfit; and

suddenly, quite without warning, she burst into a torrent of
protest.

"I will NOT wear those hatefulporcupine quills again this
winter! I will not! It's wicked, WICKED to expect me to! Oh! How

I wish there never had been any porcupines in the world, or that
all of them had died before silly, hateful people ever thought of

trimming hat with them! They curl round and tickle my ear! They
blow against my cheek and sting it like needles! They do look

outlandish, you said so yourself a minute ago. Nobody ever had
any but only just me! The only porcupine was made into the only

quills for me and nobody else! I wish instead of sticking OUT of
the nasty beasts, that they stuck INTO them, same as they do into

my cheek! I suffer, suffer, suffer, wearing them and hating them,
and they will last forever and forever, and when I'm dead and

can't help myself, somebody'll rip them out of my last year's hat
and stick them on my head, and I'll be buried in them! Well, when

I am buried THEY will be, that's one good thing! Oh, if I ever
have a child I'll let her choose her own feathers and not make

her wear ugly things like pigs' bristles and porcupine quills!'
With this lengthy tirade Rebecca vanished like a meteor, through

the door and down the street, while Miranda Sawyer gasped for
breath, and prayed to Heaven to help her understand such human

whirlwinds as this Randall niece of hers.
This was at three o'clock, and at half-past three Rebecca was

kneeling on the rag carpet with her head in her aunt's apron,
sobbing her contrition.

"Oh! Aunt Miranda, do forgive me if you can. It's the only time
I've been bad for months! You know it is! You know you said last

week I hadn't been any trouble lately. Something broke inside of
me and came tumbling out of my mouth in ugly words! The porcupine

quills make me feel just as a bull does when he sees a red cloth;
nobody understands how I suffer with them!"

Miranda Sawyer had learned a few lessons in the last two years,
lessons which were making her (at least on her "good days") a

trifle kinder, and at any rate a juster woman than she used to
be. When she alighted on the wrong side of her four-poster in

the morning, or felt an extra touch of rheumatism, she was still
grim and unyielding; but sometimes a curious sort of melting

process seemed to go on within her, when her whole bony structure
softened, and her eyes grew less vitreous. At such moments

Rebecca used to feel as if a superincumbent iron pot had been
lifted off her head, allowing her to breathfreely and enjoy the

sunshine.
"Well," she said finally, after staring first at Rebecca and then

at the porcupine quills, as if to gain some insight into the
situation, "well, I never, sence I was born int' the world, heerd

such a speech as you've spoke, an' I guess there probably never
was one. You'd better tell the minister what you said and see

what he thinks of his prize Sunday-school scholar. But I'm too
old and tired to scold and fuss, and try to train you same as I

did at first. You can punish yourself this time, like you used
to. Go fire something down the well, same as you did your pink

parasol! You've apologized and we won't say no more about it
today, but I expect you to show by extry good conduct how sorry

you be! You care altogether too much about your looks and your
clothes for a child, and you've got a temper that'll certainly

land you in state's prison some o' these days!"
Rebecca wiped her eyes and laughed aloud. "No, no, Aunt Miranda,

it won't, really! That wasn't temper; I don't get angry with
PEOPLE; but only, once in a long while, with things; like

those,-- cover them up quick before I begin again! I'm all right!
Shower's over, sun's out!"

Miss Miranda looked at her searchingly and uncomprehendingly.
Rebecca's state of mind came perilously near to disease, she

thought.
"Have you seen me buyin' any new bunnits, or your Aunt Jane?" she

asked cuttingly. "Is there any particular reason why you should
dress better than your elders? You might as well know that we're

short of cash just now, your Aunt Jane and me, and have no
intention of riggin' you out like a Milltown fact'ry girl."

"Oh-h!" cried Rebecca, the quick tears starting again to her eyes
and the color fading out of her cheeks, as she scrambled up from

her knees to a seat on the sofa beside her aunt. "Oh-h! How
ashamed I am! Quick, sew those quills on to the brown turban

while I'm good! If I can't stand them I'll make a neat little
gingham bag and slip over them!"

And so the matter ended, not as it customarily did, with cold
words on Miss Miranda's part and bitter feelings on Rebecca's,

but with a gleam of mutual understanding.
Mrs. Cobb, who was a master hand at coloring, dipped the

offending quills in brown dye and left them to soak in it all
night, not only making them a nice warm color, but somewhat

weakening their rocky spines, so that they were not quite as
rampantly hideous as before, in Rebecca's opinion.

Then Mrs. Perkins went to her bandbox in the attic and gave Miss
Dearborn some pale blue velvet, with which she bound the brim of

the brown turban and made a wonderful rosette, out of which the
porcupine's defensive armor sprang, buoyantly and gallantly, like