"She was dreadful hard to get along with, and I used to hate her like poison," confessed Emma Jane; "but I am sorry now. She was kinder toward the last, anyway, and then, you see children know so little! We never suspected she was sick or that she was worrying over that lost interest money."

"That's the trouble. People seem hard and unreasonable and unjust, and we can't help being hurt at the time, but if they die we forget everything but our own angry speeches; somehow we never remember theirs. And oh, Emma Jane, there's another such a sweet little picture out there in the road. The next day after I came to Riverboro, do you remember, I stole out of the brick house crying, and leaned against the front gate. You pushed your little fat pink-and-white face through the pickets and said: 'Don't cry! I'll kiss you if you

will me!""

Lumps rose suddenly in Emma Jane's throat, and she put her arm around Rebecca's waist as they sat together side by side.

"Oh, I do remember," she said in a choking voice. "And I can see the two of us driving over to North Riverboro and selling soap to Mr. Adam Ladd; and lighting up the premium banquet-lamp at the Simpson party; and laying the daisies round Jacky Winslow's mother when she was dead in the

cabin; and trundling Jacky up and down the street in our old baby-carriage!"

"And I remember you," continued Rebecca, "being chased down the hill by Jacob Moody, when we were being Daughters of Zion and you had been chosen to convert him!"

"And I remember you, getting the flag back from Mr. Simpson; and how you looked when you spoke your verses at the flag-raising.'

"And have you forgotten the week I refused to speak to Abijah Flagg because he fished my turban with the porcupine quills out of the river when I hoped at last that I had lost it! Oh, Emma Jane, we had dear good times together in the 'little harbor.""

"I always thought that was an elegant composition of yours that farewell to the class," said Emma Jane.

"The strong tide bears us on, out of the little harbor of childhood into the unknown seas," recalled Rebecca. "It is bearing you almost out of my sight, Emmy, these last days, when you put on a new dress in the afternoon and look out of the window instead of coming across the street. Abijah Flagg never used to be in the little harbor with the rest of us; when did he first sail in, Emmy?"

Emma Jane grew a deeper pink and her button

hole of a mouth quivered with delicious excite

ment.

"It was last year at the seminary, when he wrote me his first Latin letter from Limerick Academy," she said in a half whisper.

"I remember," laughed Rebecca. "You suddenly began the study of the dead languages, and the Latin dictionary took the place of the crochetneedle in your affections. It was cruel of you never to show me that letter, Emmy!"

"I know every word of it by heart," said the blushing Emma Jane, "and I think I really ought to say it to you, because it's the only way you will ever know how perfectly elegant Abijah is. Look the other way, Rebecca. Shall I have to translate it for you, do you think, because it seems to me I could not bear to do that!"

"It depends upon Abijah's Latin and your pronunciation," teased Rebecca. "Go on; I will turn my eyes toward the orchard.”

The Fair Emmajane, looking none too old still for the "little harbor," but almost too young for the "unknown seas," gathered up her courage and recited like a tremulous parrot the boyish loveletter that had so fired her youthful imagination:

"Vale, carissima, carissima puella!" repeated Rebecca in her musical voice. "Oh, how beautiful it sounds! I don't wonder it altered your