Explore "The Quilt of Happiness" by Kate Douglas Wiggin on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Riverboro, that generally assumed an indifferent and semi-recumbent attitude when it observed strangers, sat up and took notice the moment that Rebecca Rowena Randall arrived on the noon stage from up-country and alighted at the brick house on the main street of the village. Mrs. Perkins, the nearest neighbor, with her only daughter, Emma Jane, palpitating with interest beside her, watched the cautious descent of the little passenger from the stage and the particularly tempestuous tweak she gave her headgear as her feet touched the earth. Then they watched with equal interest the lifting of her hair trunk from the back of the stage by Jerry Cobb; the appearance of Miss Jane on the stone steps; and well at the rear, the tall, grim figure of Miranda Sawyer.
Mrs. Perkins could see Miranda's greeting in the shape of a bony finger directing the child to wipe her dusty feet on the mat; then the screen door of the brick house slammed behind her, and Rebecca was a member of the brick-house family and a citizen of Riverboro.