Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/40

30 shook her head. They had given her that bracelet instead of a coveted week at Northfield, when the church had wanted to send her as a delegate to a conference there. They had given her her gold watch instead of an automobile trip to Boston with the Horweens. Always, always, they had given her things that money could buy, instead of things that money couldn't.

At seventeen Rebecca Jerome had learned all that Miss Billings could teach her. She could translate a little French, a little Latin, and a little Greek, with the aid of various dictionaries. She could recite the dates of the births and deaths, and principal works, of all the English poets, from Chaucer down. She was an excellent speller. She had been introduced to geometry and algebra. She could, moreover, play two or three pieces without her notes, on the grand-piano. She could make long neat rows of faultless stitches, paint in oils on china. She gave no trouble at all, as most girls do, teasing to go out, and was not "silly" about boys. She spoke to people nicely, too, with a precise correctness that was very pleasing to Aunt Augusta. She was pretty, in a soft suppressed sort of way—had brown, fawn-like eyes, a smooth olive complexion, faintly pink at times. At seventeen Rebecca was like a little tight yellowish-pink rosebud. Sometimes such a little bud fades in its vase before it opens.

But Augusta and Emma and Eunice had no notion that Reba would fade before she opened. They had a plan for her. They were going to let down her skirts later, and roll up her hair, and when she was eighteen Aunt Augusta was going to take her for two weeks to a fashionable summer-resort abounding in desirable young people. For as intolerant as she had