Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/13

Rh she scorned. "The child is named after her aunt, Rebecca Marsh, and you can't imagine Aunt Reba being 'Becky'd' by anybody, can you?"

Certainly Reba Jerome, gazing at the tintype of her namesake, inclosed in the little black coffin-like case, which was kept in the parlor-table drawer, couldn't imagine "Beckying" her.

"A strong character, was your great-aunt Reba!" Aunt Augusta often reminded her.

She looked strong. She had a big firm mouth drawn down at the corners. She was like a man—an old man of sixty or seventy—in the picture, with a thick neck, and huge hands, folded masterfully across her abdomen.

As Rebecca sat and stifled her sighs this afternoon, she welcomed the occasional whirr of the sewing-machine, before which Aunt Augusta was seated, vigorously stitching now and then. It prevented the possibility of speech. It wrapped her away alone with her contemplations.

She was twenty-five years old! She had turned another corner! Every fifth year there was a corner. Thirty would be upon her soon, then thirty-five, and forty. She wouldn't have minded growing old if the corners brought anything new, but they didn't. Nothing changed. Nothing happened. Five years ago she had sat in the same little rocking-chair, by the same western window, and helped finish a new dress for herself, her invalid mother in the same wheel-chair nearby, her aunts—her mother's older sisters—in the very places they occupied to-day: Aunt Augusta, grim and erect, before the sewing-machine, seated on its wooden cover; Aunt Emma, round-backed and