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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1375 ***
+
+
+NEW CHRONICLES OF REBECCA
+
+By Kate Douglas Wiggin
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+     First Chronicle
+     Jack O'Lantern
+
+     Second Chronicle
+     Daughters of Zion
+
+     Third Chronicle
+     Rebecca's Thought Book
+
+     Fourth Chronicle
+     A Tragedy in Millinery
+
+     Fifth Chronicle
+     The Saving of the Colors
+
+     Sixth Chronicle
+     The State of Maine Girl
+
+     Seventh Chronicle
+     The Little Prophet
+
+     Eighth Chronicle
+     Abner Simpson's New Leaf
+
+     Ninth Chronicle
+     The Green Isle
+
+     Tenth Chronicle
+     Rebecca's Reminiscences
+
+     Eleventh Chronicle
+     Abijah the Brave and the Fair Emma Jane
+
+
+
+
+First Chronicle. JACK O'LANTERN
+
+
+I
+
+Miss Miranda Sawyer's old-fashioned garden was the pleasantest spot in
+Riverboro on a sunny July morning. The rich color of the brick house
+gleamed and glowed through the shade of the elms and maples. Luxuriant
+hop-vines clambered up the lightning rods and water spouts, hanging
+their delicate clusters here and there in graceful profusion. Woodbine
+transformed the old shed and tool house to things of beauty, and the
+flower beds themselves were the prettiest and most fragrant in all
+the countryside. A row of dahlias ran directly around the garden
+spot,--dahlias scarlet, gold, and variegated. In the very centre was a
+round plot where the upturned faces of a thousand pansies smiled amid
+their leaves, and in the four corners were triangular blocks of sweet
+phlox over which the butterflies fluttered unceasingly. In the spaces
+between ran a riot of portulaca and nasturtiums, while in the more
+regular, shell-bordered beds grew spirea and gillyflowers, mignonette,
+marigolds, and clove pinks.
+
+Back of the barn and encroaching on the edge of the hay field was a
+grove of sweet clover whose white feathery tips fairly bent under the
+assaults of the bees, while banks of aromatic mint and thyme drank
+in the sunshine and sent it out again into the summer air, warm, and
+deliciously odorous.
+
+The hollyhocks were Miss Sawyer's pride, and they grew in a stately line
+beneath the four kitchen windows, their tapering tips set thickly with
+gay satin circlets of pink or lavender or crimson.
+
+“They grow something like steeples,” thought little Rebecca Randall, who
+was weeding the bed, “and the flat, round flowers are like rosettes; but
+steeples wouldn't be studded with rosettes, so if you were writing about
+them in a composition you'd have to give up one or the other, and I
+think I'll give up the steeples:--
+
+     Gay little hollyhock
+     Lifting your head,
+     Sweetly rosetted
+     Out from your bed.
+
+It's a pity the hollyhock isn't really little, instead of steepling up
+to the window top, but I can't say, 'Gay TALL hollyhock.'... I might
+have it 'Lines to a Hollyhock in May,' for then it would be small; but
+oh, no! I forgot; in May it wouldn't be blooming, and it's so pretty
+to say that its head is 'sweetly rosetted'... I wish the teacher wasn't
+away; she would like 'sweetly rosetted,' and she would like to hear me
+recite 'Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!' that I learned
+out of Aunt Jane's Byron; the rolls come booming out of it just like the
+waves at the beach.... I could make nice compositions now, everything
+is blooming so, and it's so warm and sunny and happy outdoors. Miss
+Dearborn told me to write something in my thought book every single day,
+and I'll begin this very night when I go to bed.”
+
+Rebecca Rowena Randall, the little niece of the brick-house ladies, and
+at present sojourning there for purposes of board, lodging, education,
+and incidentally such discipline and chastening as might ultimately
+produce moral excellence,--Rebecca Randall had a passion for the rhyme
+and rhythm of poetry. From her earliest childhood words had always been
+to her what dolls and toys are to other children, and now at twelve she
+amused herself with phrases and sentences and images as her schoolmates
+played with the pieces of their dissected puzzles. If the heroine of
+a story took a “cursory glance” about her “apartment,” Rebecca would
+shortly ask her Aunt Jane to take a “cursory glance” at her oversewing
+or hemming; if the villain “aided and abetted” someone in committing
+a crime, she would before long request the pleasure of “aiding and
+abetting” in dishwashing or bedmaking. Sometimes she used the borrowed
+phrases unconsciously; sometimes she brought them into the conversation
+with an intense sense of pleasure in their harmony or appropriateness;
+for a beautiful word or sentence had the same effect upon her
+imagination as a fragrant nosegay, a strain of music, or a brilliant
+sunset.
+
+“How are you gettin' on, Rebecca Rowena?” called a peremptory voice from
+within.
+
+“Pretty good, Aunt Miranda; only I wish flowers would ever come up as
+thick as this pigweed and plantain and sorrel. What MAKES weeds be thick
+and flowers be thin?--I just happened to be stopping to think a minute
+when you looked out.”
+
+“You think considerable more than you weed, I guess, by appearances. How
+many times have you peeked into that humming bird's nest? Why don't you
+work all to once and play all to once, like other folks?”
+
+“I don't know,” the child answered, confounded by the question, and
+still more by the apparent logic back of it. “I don't know, Aunt
+Miranda, but when I'm working outdoors such a Saturday morning as this,
+the whole creation just screams to me to stop it and come and play.”
+
+“Well, you needn't go if it does!” responded her aunt sharply. “It don't
+scream to me when I'm rollin' out these doughnuts, and it wouldn't to
+you if your mind was on your duty.”
+
+Rebecca's little brown hands flew in and out among the weeds as she
+thought rebelliously: “Creation WOULDN'T scream to Aunt Miranda; it
+would know she wouldn't come.”
+
+     Scream on, thou bright and gay creation, scream!
+     'Tis not Miranda that will hear thy cry!
+
+Oh, such funny, nice things come into my head out here by myself, I do
+wish I could run up and put them down in my thought book before I forget
+them, but Aunt Miranda wouldn't like me to leave off weeding:--
+
+     Rebecca was weeding the hollyhock bed
+     When wonderful thoughts came into her head.
+     Her aunt was occupied with the rolling pin
+     And the thoughts of her mind were common and thin.
+
+That wouldn't do because it's mean to Aunt Miranda, and anyway it isn't
+good. I MUST crawl under the syringa shade a minute, it's so hot, and
+anybody has to stop working once in a while, just to get their breath,
+even if they weren't making poetry.
+
+Rebecca was weeding the hollyhock bed When marvelous thoughts came into
+her head. Miranda was wielding the rolling pin And thoughts at such
+times seemed to her as a sin.
+
+How pretty the hollyhock rosettes look from down here on the sweet,
+smelly ground!
+
+“Let me see what would go with rosetting. AIDING AND ABETTING, PETTING,
+HEN-SETTING, FRETTING,--there's nothing very nice, but I can make
+fretting' do.
+
+     Cheered by Rowena's petting,
+     The flowers are rosetting,
+     But Aunt Miranda's fretting
+     Doth somewhat cloud the day.”
+
+Suddenly the sound of wagon wheels broke the silence and then a voice
+called out--a voice that could not wait until the feet that belonged to
+it reached the spot: “Miss Saw-YER! Father's got to drive over to North
+Riverboro on an errand, and please can Rebecca go, too, as it's Saturday
+morning and vacation besides?”
+
+Rebecca sprang out from under the syringa bush, eyes flashing with
+delight as only Rebecca's eyes COULD flash, her face one luminous circle
+of joyous anticipation. She clapped her grubby hands, and dancing up
+and down, cried: “May I, Aunt Miranda--can I, Aunt Jane--can I, Aunt
+Miranda-Jane? I'm more than half through the bed.”
+
+“If you finish your weeding tonight before sundown I s'pose you can go,
+so long as Mr. Perkins has been good enough to ask you,” responded Miss
+Sawyer reluctantly. “Take off that gingham apron and wash your hands
+clean at the pump. You ain't be'n out o' bed but two hours an' your head
+looks as rough as if you'd slep' in it. That comes from layin' on the
+ground same as a caterpillar. Smooth your hair down with your hands an'
+p'r'aps Emma Jane can braid it as you go along the road. Run up and get
+your second-best hair ribbon out o' your upper drawer and put on
+your shade hat. No, you can't wear your coral chain--jewelry ain't
+appropriate in the morning. How long do you cal'late to be gone, Emma
+Jane?”
+
+“I don't know. Father's just been sent for to see about a sick woman
+over to North Riverboro. She's got to go to the poor farm.”
+
+This fragment of news speedily brought Miss Sawyer, and her sister Jane
+as well, to the door, which commanded a view of Mr. Perkins and his
+wagon. Mr. Perkins, the father of Rebecca's bosom friend, was primarily
+a blacksmith, and secondarily a selectman and an overseer of the poor, a
+man therefore possessed of wide and varied information.
+
+“Who is it that's sick?” inquired Miranda.
+
+“A woman over to North Riverboro.”
+
+“What's the trouble?”
+
+“Can't say.”
+
+“Stranger?'
+
+“Yes, and no; she's that wild daughter of old Nate Perry that used to
+live up towards Moderation. You remember she ran away to work in the
+factory at Milltown and married a do--nothin' fellow by the name o' John
+Winslow?”
+
+“Yes; well, where is he? Why don't he take care of her?”
+
+“They ain't worked well in double harness. They've been rovin' round the
+country, livin' a month here and a month there wherever they could get
+work and house-room. They quarreled a couple o' weeks ago and he left
+her. She and the little boy kind o' camped out in an old loggin' cabin
+back in the woods and she took in washin' for a spell; then she got
+terrible sick and ain't expected to live.”
+
+“Who's been nursing her?” inquired Miss Jane.
+
+“Lizy Ann Dennett, that lives nearest neighbor to the cabin; but I
+guess she's tired out bein' good Samaritan. Anyways, she sent word this
+mornin' that nobody can't seem to find John Winslow; that there ain't
+no relations, and the town's got to be responsible, so I'm goin' over to
+see how the land lays. Climb in, Rebecca. You an' Emmy Jane crowd back
+on the cushion an' I'll set forrard. That's the trick! Now we're off!”
+
+“Dear, dear!” sighed Jane Sawyer as the sisters walked back into the
+brick house. “I remember once seeing Sally Perry at meeting. She was a
+handsome girl, and I'm sorry she's come to grief.”
+
+“If she'd kep' on goin' to meetin' an' hadn't looked at the men folks
+she might a' be'n earnin' an honest livin' this minute,” said Miranda.
+“Men folks are at the bottom of everything wrong in this world,” she
+continued, unconsciously reversing the verdict of history.
+
+“Then we ought to be a happy and contented community here in Riverboro,”
+ replied Jane, “as there's six women to one man.”
+
+“If 't was sixteen to one we'd be all the safer,” responded Miranda
+grimly, putting the doughnuts in a brown crock in the cellar-way and
+slamming the door.
+
+
+II
+
+The Perkins horse and wagon rumbled along over the dusty country road,
+and after a discreet silence, maintained as long as human flesh could
+endure, Rebecca remarked sedately:
+
+“It's a sad errand for such a shiny morning, isn't it, Mr. Perkins?”
+
+“Plenty o' trouble in the world, Rebecky, shiny mornin's an' all,” that
+good man replied. “If you want a bed to lay on, a roof over your head,
+an' food to eat, you've got to work for em. If I hadn't a' labored early
+an' late, learned my trade, an' denied myself when I was young, I might
+a' be'n a pauper layin' sick in a loggin' cabin, stead o' bein' an
+overseer o' the poor an' selectman drivin' along to take the pauper to
+the poor farm.”
+
+“People that are mortgaged don't have to go to the poor farm, do they,
+Mr. Perkins?” asked Rebecca, with a shiver of fear as she remembered her
+home farm at Sunnybrook and the debt upon it; a debt which had lain like
+a shadow over her childhood.
+
+“Bless your soul, no; not unless they fail to pay up; but Sal Perry an'
+her husband hadn't got fur enough along in life to BE mortgaged. You
+have to own something before you can mortgage it.”
+
+Rebecca's heart bounded as she learned that a mortgage represented a
+certain stage in worldly prosperity.
+
+“Well,” she said, sniffing in the fragrance of the new-mown hay and
+growing hopeful as she did so; “maybe the sick woman will be better such
+a beautiful day, and maybe the husband will come back to make it up and
+say he's sorry, and sweet content will reign in the humble habitation
+that was once the scene of poverty, grief, and despair. That's how it
+came out in a story I'm reading.”
+
+“I hain't noticed that life comes out like stories very much,” responded
+the pessimistic blacksmith, who, as Rebecca privately thought, had read
+less than half a dozen books in his long and prosperous career.
+
+A drive of three or four miles brought the party to a patch of woodland
+where many of the tall pines had been hewn the previous winter. The roof
+of a ramshackle hut was outlined against a background of young birches,
+and a rough path made in hauling the logs to the main road led directly
+to its door.
+
+As they drew near the figure of a woman approached--Mrs. Lizy Ann
+Dennett, in a gingham dress, with a calico apron over her head.
+
+“Good morning, Mr. Perkins,” said the woman, who looked tired and
+irritable. “I'm real glad you come right over, for she took worse after
+I sent you word, and she's dead.”
+
+Dead! The word struck heavily and mysteriously on the children's ears.
+Dead! And their young lives, just begun, stretched on and on, all
+decked, like hope, in living green. Dead! And all the rest of the world
+reveling in strength. Dead! With all the daisies and buttercups waving
+in the fields and the men heaping the mown grass into fragrant cocks
+or tossing it into heavily laden carts. Dead! With the brooks tinkling
+after the summer showers, with the potatoes and corn blossoming, the
+birds singing for joy, and every little insect humming and chirping,
+adding its note to the blithe chorus of warm, throbbing life.
+
+“I was all alone with her. She passed away suddenly jest about break o'
+day,” said Lizy Ann Dennett.
+
+“Her soul passed upward to its God Just at the break of day.”
+
+These words came suddenly into Rebecca's mind from a tiny chamber where
+such things were wont to lie quietly until something brought them to the
+surface. She could not remember whether she had heard them at a funeral
+or read them in the hymn book or made them up “out of her own head,” but
+she was so thrilled with the idea of dying just as the dawn was breaking
+that she scarcely heard Mrs. Dennett's conversation.
+
+“I sent for Aunt Beulah Day, an' she's be'n here an' laid her out,”
+ continued the long suffering Lizy Ann. “She ain't got any folks, an'
+John Winslow ain't never had any as far back as I can remember. She
+belongs to your town and you'll have to bury her and take care of
+Jacky--that's the boy. He's seventeen months old, a bright little
+feller, the image o' John, but I can't keep him another day. I'm all
+wore out; my own baby's sick, mother's rheumatiz is extry bad, and my
+husband's comin' home tonight from his week's work. If he finds a child
+o' John Winslow's under his roof I can't say what would happen; you'll
+have to take him back with you to the poor farm.”
+
+“I can't take him up there this afternoon,” objected Mr. Perkins.
+
+“Well, then, keep him over Sunday yourself; he's good as a kitten. John
+Winslow'll hear o' Sal's death sooner or later, unless he's gone out of
+the state altogether, an' when he knows the boy's at the poor farm, I
+kind o' think he'll come and claim him. Could you drive me over to the
+village to see about the coffin, and would you children be afraid to
+stay here alone for a spell?” she asked, turning to the girls.
+
+“Afraid?” they both echoed uncomprehendingly.
+
+Lizy Ann and Mr. Perkins, perceiving that the fear of a dead presence
+had not entered the minds of Rebecca or Emma Jane, said nothing, but
+drove off together, counseling them not to stray far away from the cabin
+and promising to be back in an hour.
+
+There was not a house within sight, either looking up or down the shady
+road, and the two girls stood hand in hand, watching the wagon out of
+sight; then they sat down quietly under a tree, feeling all at once a
+nameless depression hanging over their gay summer-morning spirits.
+
+It was very still in the woods; just the chirp of a grasshopper now
+and then, or the note of a bird, or the click of a far-distant mowing
+machine.
+
+“We're WATCHING!” whispered Emma Jane. “They watched with Gran'pa
+Perkins, and there was a great funeral and two ministers. He left two
+thousand dollars in the bank and a store full of goods, and a paper
+thing you could cut tickets off of twice a year, and they were just like
+money.”
+
+“They watched with my little sister Mira, too,” said Rebecca. “You
+remember when she died, and I went home to Sunnybrook Farm? It was
+winter time, but she was covered with evergreen and white pinks, and
+there was singing.”
+
+“There won't be any funeral or ministers or singing here, will there?
+Isn't that awful?”
+
+“I s'pose not; and oh, Emma Jane, no flowers either. We might get those
+for her if there's nobody else to do it.”
+
+“Would you dare put them on to her?” asked Emma Jane, in a hushed voice.
+
+“I don't know; I can't tell; it makes me shiver, but, of course, we
+COULD do it if we were the only friends she had. Let's look into
+the cabin first and be perfectly sure that there aren't any. Are you
+afraid?”
+
+“N-no; I guess not. I looked at Gran'pa Perkins, and he was just the
+same as ever.”
+
+At the door of the hut Emma Jane's courage suddenly departed. She
+held back shuddering and refused either to enter or look in. Rebecca
+shuddered too, but kept on, drawn by an insatiable curiosity about life
+and death, an overmastering desire to know and feel and understand the
+mysteries of existence, a hunger for knowledge and experience at all
+hazards and at any cost.
+
+Emma Jane hurried softly away from the felt terrors of the cabin, and
+after two or three minutes of utter silence Rebecca issued from the
+open door, her sensitive face pale and woe-begone, the ever-ready tears
+raining down her cheeks. She ran toward the edge of the wood, sinking
+down by Emma Jane's side, and covering her eyes, sobbed with excitement:
+
+“Oh, Emma Jane, she hasn't got a flower, and she's so tired and
+sad-looking, as if she'd been hurt and hurt and never had any good
+times, and there's a weeny, weeny baby side of her. Oh, I wish I hadn't
+gone in!”
+
+Emma Jane blenched for an instant. “Mrs. Dennett never said THERE WAS
+TWO DEAD ONES! ISN'T THAT DREADFUL? But,” she continued, her practical
+common sense coming to the rescue, “you've been in once and it's all
+over; it won't be so bad when you take in the flowers because you'll
+be used to it. The goldenrod hasn't begun to bud, so there's nothing
+to pick but daisies. Shall I make a long rope of them, as I did for the
+schoolroom?”
+
+“Yes,” said Rebecca, wiping her eyes and still sobbing. “Yes, that's the
+prettiest, and if we put it all round her like a frame, the undertaker
+couldn't be so cruel as to throw it away, even if she is a pauper,
+because it will look so beautiful. From what the Sunday school lessons
+say, she's only asleep now, and when she wakes up she'll be in heaven.”
+
+“THERE'S ANOTHER PLACE,” said Emma Jane, in an orthodox and sepulchral
+whisper, as she took her ever-present ball of crochet cotton from her
+pocket and began to twine the whiteweed blossoms into a rope.
+
+“Oh, well!” Rebecca replied with the easy theology that belonged to her
+temperament. “They simply couldn't send her DOWN THERE with that little
+weeny baby. Who'd take care of it? You know page six of the catechism
+says the only companions of the wicked after death are their father the
+devil and all the other evil angels; it wouldn't be any place to bring
+up a baby.”
+
+“Whenever and wherever she wakes up, I hope she won't know that the big
+baby is going to the poor farm. I wonder where he is?”
+
+“Perhaps over to Mrs. Dennett's house. She didn't seem sorry a bit, did
+she?”
+
+“No, but I suppose she's tired sitting up and nursing a stranger. Mother
+wasn't sorry when Gran'pa Perkins died; she couldn't be, for he was
+cross all the time and had to be fed like a child. Why ARE you crying
+again, Rebecca?”
+
+“Oh, I don't know, I can't tell, Emma Jane! Only I don't want to die and
+have no funeral or singing and nobody sorry for me! I just couldn't bear
+it!”
+
+“Neither could I,” Emma Jane responded sympathetically; “but p'r'aps
+if we're real good and die young before we have to be fed, they will
+be sorry. I do wish you could write some poetry for her as you did for
+Alice Robinson's canary bird, only still better, of course, like that
+you read me out of your thought book.”
+
+“I could, easy enough,” exclaimed Rebecca, somewhat consoled by the
+idea that her rhyming faculty could be of any use in such an emergency.
+“Though I don't know but it would be kind of bold to do it. I'm all
+puzzled about how people get to heaven after they're buried. I can't
+understand it a bit; but if the poetry is on her, what if that should
+go, too? And how could I write anything good enough to be read out loud
+in heaven?”
+
+“A little piece of paper couldn't get to heaven; it just couldn't,”
+ asserted Emma Jane decisively. “It would be all blown to pieces and
+dried up. And nobody knows that the angels can read writing, anyway.”
+
+“They must be as educated as we are, and more so, too,” agreed Rebecca.
+“They must be more than just dead people, or else why should they have
+wings? But I'll go off and write something while you finish the rope;
+it's lucky you brought your crochet cotton and I my lead pencil.”
+
+In fifteen or twenty minutes she returned with some lines written on a
+scrap of brown wrapping paper. Standing soberly by Emma Jane, she said,
+preparing to read them aloud: “They're not good; I was afraid your
+father'd come back before I finished, and the first verse sounds exactly
+like the funeral hymns in the church book. I couldn't call her Sally
+Winslow; it didn't seem nice when I didn't know her and she is dead, so
+I thought if I said friend' it would show she had somebody to be sorry.
+
+     “This friend of ours has died and gone
+     From us to heaven to live.
+     If she has sinned against Thee, Lord,
+     We pray Thee, Lord, forgive.
+
+     “Her husband runneth far away
+     And knoweth not she's dead.
+     Oh, bring him back--ere tis too late--
+     To mourn beside her bed.
+
+     “And if perchance it can't be so,
+     Be to the children kind;
+     The weeny one that goes with her,
+     The other left behind.”
+
+“I think that's perfectly elegant!” exclaimed Emma Jane, kissing Rebecca
+fervently. “You are the smartest girl in the whole State of Maine, and
+it sounds like a minister's prayer. I wish we could save up and buy a
+printing machine. Then I could learn to print what you write and we'd
+be partners like father and Bill Moses. Shall you sign it with your name
+like we do our school compositions?”
+
+“No,” said Rebecca soberly. “I certainly shan't sign it, not knowing
+where it's going or who'll read it. I shall just hide it in the flowers,
+and whoever finds it will guess that there wasn't any minister or
+singing, or gravestone, or anything, so somebody just did the best they
+could.”
+
+
+III
+
+The tired mother with the “weeny baby” on her arm lay on a long
+carpenter's bench, her earthly journey over, and when Rebecca stole
+in and placed the flowery garland all along the edge of the rude bier,
+death suddenly took on a more gracious and benign aspect. It was only
+a child's sympathy and intuition that softened the rigors of the sad
+moment, but poor, wild Sal Winslow, in her frame of daisies, looked
+as if she were missed a little by an unfriendly world; while the weeny
+baby, whose heart had fallen asleep almost as soon as it had learned to
+beat, the weeny baby, with Emma Jane's nosegay of buttercups in its tiny
+wrinkled hand, smiled as if it might have been loved and longed for and
+mourned.
+
+“We've done all we can now without a minister,” whispered Rebecca. “We
+could sing, God is ever good' out of the Sunday school song book, but
+I'm afraid somebody would hear us and think we were gay and happy.
+What's that?”
+
+A strange sound broke the stillness; a gurgle, a yawn, a merry little
+call. The two girls ran in the direction from which it came, and there,
+on an old coat, in a clump of goldenrod bushes, lay a child just waking
+from a refreshing nap.
+
+“It's the other baby that Lizy Ann Dennett told about!” cried Emma Jane.
+
+“Isn't he beautiful!” exclaimed Rebecca. “Come straight to me!” and she
+stretched out her arms.
+
+The child struggled to its feet, and tottered, wavering, toward the warm
+welcome of the voice and eyes. Rebecca was all mother, and her maternal
+instincts had been well developed in the large family in which she was
+next to the eldest. She had always confessed that there were perhaps a
+trifle too many babies at Sunnybrook Farm, but, nevertheless, had she
+ever heard it, she would have stood loyally by the Japanese proverb:
+“Whether brought forth upon the mountain or in the field, it matters
+nothing; more than a treasure of one thousand ryo a baby precious is.”
+
+“You darling thing!” she crooned, as she caught and lifted the child.
+“You look just like a Jack-o'-lantern.”
+
+The boy was clad in a yellow cotton dress, very full and stiff. His hair
+was of such a bright gold, and so sleek and shiny, that he looked like
+a fair, smooth little pumpkin. He had wide blue eyes full of laughter,
+a neat little vertical nose, a neat little horizontal mouth with his
+few neat little teeth showing very plainly, and on the whole Rebecca's
+figure of speech was not so wide of the mark.
+
+“Oh, Emma Jane! Isn't he too lovely to go to the poor farm? If only we
+were married we could keep him and say nothing and nobody would know the
+difference! Now that the Simpsons have gone away there isn't a single
+baby in Riverboro, and only one in Edgewood. It's a perfect shame, but
+I can't do anything; you remember Aunt Miranda wouldn't let me have the
+Simpson baby when I wanted to borrow her just for one rainy Sunday.”
+
+“My mother won't keep him, so it's no use to ask her; she says most
+every day she's glad we're grown up, and she thanks the Lord there
+wasn't but two of us.”
+
+“And Mrs. Peter Meserve is too nervous,” Rebecca went on, taking the
+village houses in turn; “and Mrs. Robinson is too neat.”
+
+“People don't seem to like any but their own babies,” observed Emma
+Jane.
+
+“Well, I can't understand it,” Rebecca answered. “A baby's a baby, I
+should think, whose ever it is! Miss Dearborn is coming back Monday;
+I wonder if she'd like it? She has nothing to do out of school, and we
+could borrow it all the time!”
+
+“I don't think it would seem very genteel for a young lady like Miss
+Dearborn, who 'boards round,' to take a baby from place to place,”
+ objected Emma Jane.
+
+“Perhaps not,” agreed Rebecca despondently, “but I think if we haven't
+got any--any--PRIVATE babies in Riverboro we ought to have one for the
+town, and all have a share in it. We've got a town hall and a town lamp
+post and a town watering trough. Things are so uneven! One house like
+mine at Sunnybrook, brimful of children, and the very next one empty!
+The only way to fix them right would be to let all the babies that ever
+are belong to all the grown-up people that ever are,--just divide
+them up, you know, if they'd go round. Oh, I have a thought! Don't
+you believe Aunt Sarah Cobb would keep him? She carries flowers to the
+graveyard every little while, and once she took me with her. There's a
+marble cross, and it says: SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF SARAH ELLEN, BELOVED
+CHILD OF SARAH AND JEREMIAH COBB, AGED 17 MONTHS. Why, that's another
+reason; Mrs. Dennett says this one is seventeen months. There's five of
+us left at the farm without me, but if we were only nearer to Riverboro,
+how quick mother would let in one more!”
+
+“We might see what father thinks, and that would settle it,” said Emma
+Jane. “Father doesn't think very sudden, but he thinks awful strong. If
+we don't bother him, and find a place ourselves for the baby, perhaps
+he'll be willing. He's coming now; I hear the wheels.”
+
+Lizy Ann Dennett volunteered to stay and perform the last rites with
+the undertaker, and Jack-o'-lantern, with his slender wardrobe tied in
+a bandanna handkerchief, was lifted into the wagon by the reluctant Mr.
+Perkins, and jubilantly held by Rebecca in her lap. Mr. Perkins drove
+off as speedily as possible, being heartily sick of the whole affair,
+and thinking wisely that the little girls had already seen and heard
+more than enough of the seamy side of life that morning.
+
+Discussion concerning Jack-o'-lantern's future was prudently deferred
+for a quarter of an hour, and then Mr. Perkins was mercilessly pelted
+with arguments against the choice of the poor farm as a place of
+residence for a baby.
+
+“His father is sure to come back some time, Mr. Perkins,” urged Rebecca.
+“He couldn't leave this beautiful thing forever; and if Emma Jane and I
+can persuade Mrs. Cobb to keep him a little while, would you care?”
+
+No; on reflection Mr. Perkins did not care. He merely wanted a quiet
+life and enough time left over from the public service to attend to his
+blacksmith's shop; so instead of going home over the same road by which
+they came he crossed the bridge into Edgewood and dropped the children
+at the long lane which led to the Cobb house.
+
+Mrs. Cobb, “Aunt Sarah” to the whole village, sat by the window looking
+for Uncle Jerry, who would soon be seen driving the noon stage to the
+post office over the hill. She always had an eye out for Rebecca, too,
+for ever since the child had been a passenger on Mr. Cobb's stagecoach,
+making the eventful trip from her home farm to the brick house in
+Riverboro in his company, she had been a constant visitor and the joy
+of the quiet household. Emma Jane, too, was a well-known figure in the
+lane, but the strange baby was in the nature of a surprise--a surprise
+somewhat modified by the fact that Rebecca was a dramatic personage and
+more liable to appear in conjunction with curious outriders, comrades,
+and retainers than the ordinary Riverboro child. She had run away from
+the too stern discipline of the brick house on one occasion, and had
+been persuaded to return by Uncle Jerry. She had escorted a wandering
+organ grinder to their door and begged a lodging for him on a rainy
+night; so on the whole there was nothing amazing about the coming
+procession.
+
+The little party toiled up to the hospitable door, and Mrs. Cobb came
+out to meet them.
+
+Rebecca was spokesman. Emma Jane's talent did not lie in eloquent
+speech, but it would have been a valiant and a fluent child indeed
+who could have usurped Rebecca's privileges and tendencies in this
+direction, language being her native element, and words of assorted
+sizes springing spontaneously to her lips.
+
+“Aunt Sarah, dear,” she said, plumping Jack-o'-lantern down on the grass
+as she pulled his dress over his feet and smoothed his hair becomingly,
+“will you please not say a word till I get through--as it's very
+important you should know everything before you answer yes or no?
+This is a baby named Jacky Winslow, and I think he looks like a
+Jack-o'-lantern. His mother has just died over to North Riverboro, all
+alone, excepting for Mrs. Lizy Ann Dennett, and there was another little
+weeny baby that died with her, and Emma Jane and I put flowers
+around them and did the best we could. The father--that's John
+Winslow--quarreled with the mother--that was Sal Perry on the Moderation
+Road--and ran away and left her. So he doesn't know his wife and the
+weeny baby are dead. And the town has got to bury them because they
+can't find the father right off quick, and Jacky has got to go to the
+poor farm this afternoon. And it seems an awful shame to take him up to
+that lonesome place with those old people that can't amuse him, and
+if Emma Jane and Alice Robinson and I take most all the care of him we
+thought perhaps you and Uncle Jerry would keep him just for a little
+while. You've got a cow and a turn-up bedstead, you know,” she hurried
+on insinuatingly, “and there's hardly any pleasure as cheap as more
+babies where there's ever been any before, for baby carriages and
+trundle beds and cradles don't wear out, and there's always clothes
+left over from the old baby to begin the new one on. Of course, we can
+collect enough things to start Jacky, so he won't be much trouble or
+expense; and anyway, he's past the most troublesome age and you won't
+have to be up nights with him, and he isn't afraid of anybody or
+anything, as you can see by his just sitting there laughing and sucking
+his thumb, though he doesn't know what's going to become of him. And
+he's just seventeen months old like dear little Sarah Ellen in the
+graveyard, and we thought we ought to give you the refusal of him before
+he goes to the poor farm, and what do you think about it? Because it's
+near my dinner time and Aunt Miranda will keep me in the whole afternoon
+if I'm late, and I've got to finish weeding the hollyhock bed before
+sundown.”
+
+IV
+
+Mrs. Cobb had enjoyed a considerable period of reflection during this
+monologue, and Jacky had not used the time unwisely, offering several
+unconscious arguments and suggestions to the matter under discussion;
+lurching over on the greensward and righting himself with a chuckle,
+kicking his bare feet about in delight at the sunshine and groping for
+his toes with arms too short to reach them, the movement involving an
+entire upsetting of equilibrium followed by more chuckles.
+
+Coming down the last of the stone steps, Sarah Ellen's mother regarded
+the baby with interest and sympathy.
+
+“Poor little mite!” she said; “that doesn't know what he's lost and
+what's going to happen to him. Seems to me we might keep him a spell
+till we're sure his father's deserted him for good. Want to come to Aunt
+Sarah, baby?”
+
+Jack-o'-lantern turned from Rebecca and Emma Jane and regarded the kind
+face gravely; then he held out both his hands and Mrs. Cobb, stooping,
+gathered him like a harvest. Being lifted into her arms, he at once tore
+her spectacles from her nose and laughed aloud. Taking them from him
+gently, she put them on again, and set him in the cushioned rocking
+chair under the lilac bushes beside the steps. Then she took one of his
+soft hands in hers and patted it, and fluttered her fingers like birds
+before his eyes, and snapped them like castanets, remembering all the
+arts she had lavished upon “Sarah Ellen, aged seventeen months,” years
+and years ago.
+
+     Motherless baby and babyless mother,
+     Bring them together to love one another.
+
+Rebecca knew nothing of this couplet, but she saw clearly enough that
+her case was won.
+
+“The boy must be hungry; when was he fed last?” asked Mrs. Cobb. “Just
+stay a second longer while I get him some morning's milk; then you
+run home to your dinners and I'll speak to Mr. Cobb this afternoon. Of
+course, we can keep the baby for a week or two till we see what happens.
+Land! He ain't goin' to be any more trouble than a wax doll! I guess he
+ain't been used to much attention, and that kind's always the easiest to
+take care of.”
+
+At six o'clock that evening Rebecca and Emma Jane flew up the hill and
+down the lane again, waving their hands to the dear old couple who were
+waiting for them in the usual place, the back piazza where they had sat
+so many summers in a blessed companionship never marred by an unloving
+word.
+
+“Where's Jacky?” called Rebecca breathlessly, her voice always
+outrunning her feet.
+
+“Go up to my chamber, both of you, if you want to see,” smiled Mrs.
+Cobb, “only don't wake him up.”
+
+The girls went softly up the stairs into Aunt Sarah's room. There, in
+the turn-up bedstead that had been so long empty, slept Jack-o'-lantern,
+in blissful unconsciousness of the doom he had so lately escaped. His
+nightgown and pillow case were clean and fragrant with lavender, but
+they were both as yellow as saffron, for they had belonged to Sarah
+Ellen.
+
+“I wish his mother could see him!” whispered Emma Jane.
+
+“You can't tell; it's all puzzly about heaven, and perhaps she does,”
+ said Rebecca, as they turned reluctantly from the fascinating scene and
+stole down to the piazza.
+
+It was a beautiful and a happy summer that year, and every day it was
+filled with blissful plays and still more blissful duties. On the
+Monday after Jack-o'-lantern's arrival in Edgewood Rebecca founded the
+Riverboro Aunts Association. The Aunts were Rebecca, Emma Jane, Alice
+Robinson, and Minnie Smellie, and each of the first three promised
+to labor for and amuse the visiting baby for two days a week, Minnie
+Smellie, who lived at some distance from the Cobbs, making herself
+responsible for Saturday afternoons.
+
+Minnie Smellie was not a general favorite among the Riverboro girls, and
+it was only in an unprecedented burst of magnanimity that they admitted
+her into the rites of fellowship, Rebecca hugging herself secretly at
+the thought, that as Minnie gave only the leisure time of one day a
+week, she could not be called a “full” Aunt. There had been long and
+bitter feuds between the two children during Rebecca's first summer in
+Riverboro, but since Mrs. Smellie had told her daughter that one more
+quarrel would invite a punishment so terrible that it could only be
+hinted at vaguely, and Miss Miranda Sawyer had remarked that any niece
+of hers who couldn't get along peaceable with the neighbors had better
+go back to the seclusion of a farm where there weren't any, hostilities
+had been veiled, and a suave and diplomatic relationship had replaced
+the former one, which had been wholly primitive, direct, and barbaric.
+Still, whenever Minnie Smellie, flaxen-haired, pink-nosed, and
+ferret-eyed, indulged in fluent conversation, Rebecca, remembering the
+old fairy story, could always see toads hopping out of her mouth. It was
+really very unpleasant, because Minnie could never see them herself; and
+what was more amazing, Emma Jane perceived nothing of the sort, being
+almost as blind, too, to the diamonds that fell continually from
+Rebecca's lips; but Emma Jane's strong point was not her imagination.
+
+A shaky perambulator was found in Mrs. Perkins's wonderful attic; shoes
+and stockings were furnished by Mrs. Robinson; Miss Jane Sawyer knitted
+a blanket and some shirts; Thirza Meserve, though too young for an aunt,
+coaxed from her mother some dresses and nightgowns, and was presented
+with a green paper certificate allowing her to wheel Jacky up and down
+the road for an hour under the superintendence of a full Aunt. Each
+girl, under the constitution of the association, could call Jacky “hers”
+ for two days in the week, and great, though friendly, was the rivalry
+between them, as they washed, ironed, and sewed for their adored nephew.
+
+If Mrs. Cobb had not been the most amiable woman in the world she might
+have had difficulty in managing the aunts, but she always had Jacky to
+herself the earlier part of the day and after dusk at night.
+
+Meanwhile Jack-o'-lantern grew healthier and heartier and jollier as the
+weeks slipped away. Uncle Jerry joined the little company of worshipers
+and slaves, and one fear alone stirred in all their hearts; not, as a
+sensible and practical person might imagine, the fear that the recreant
+father might never return to claim his child, but, on the contrary, that
+he MIGHT do so!
+
+October came at length with its cheery days and frosty nights, its glory
+of crimson leaves and its golden harvest of pumpkins and ripened corn.
+Rebecca had been down by the Edgewood side of the river and had come
+up across the pastures for a good-night play with Jacky. Her literary
+labors had been somewhat interrupted by the joys and responsibilities of
+vice-motherhood, and the thought book was less frequently drawn from its
+hiding place under the old haymow in the barn chamber.
+
+Mrs. Cobb stood behind the screen door with her face pressed against the
+wire netting, and Rebecca could see that she was wiping her eyes.
+
+All at once the child's heart gave one prophetic throb and then stood
+still. She was like a harp that vibrated with every wind of emotion,
+whether from another's grief or her own.
+
+She looked down the lane, around the curve of the stone wall, red with
+woodbine, the lane that would meet the stage road to the station. There,
+just mounting the crown of the hill and about to disappear on the other
+side, strode a stranger man, big and tall, with a crop of reddish curly
+hair showing from under his straw hat. A woman walked by his side, and
+perched on his shoulder, wearing his most radiant and triumphant mien,
+as joyous in leaving Edgewood as he had been during every hour of his
+sojourn there--rode Jack-o'-lantern!
+
+Rebecca gave a cry in which maternal longing and helpless, hopeless
+jealousy strove for supremacy. Then, with an impetuous movement she
+started to run after the disappearing trio.
+
+Mrs. Cobb opened the door hastily, calling after her, “Rebecca, Rebecca,
+come back here! You mustn't follow where you haven't any right to go. If
+there'd been anything to say or do, I'd a' done it.”
+
+“He's mine! He's mine!” stormed Rebecca. “At least he's yours and mine!”
+
+“He's his father's first of all,” faltered Mrs. Cobb; “don't let's
+forget that; and we'd ought to be glad and grateful that John Winslow's
+come to his senses an' remembers he's brought a child into the world and
+ought to take care of it. Our loss is his gain and it may make a man of
+him. Come in, and we'll put things away all neat before your Uncle Jerry
+gets home.”
+
+Rebecca sank in a pitiful little heap on Mrs. Cobb's bedroom floor
+and sobbed her heart out. “Oh, Aunt Sarah, where shall we get another
+Jack-o'-lantern, and how shall I break it to Emma Jane? What if his
+father doesn't love him, and what if he forgets to strain the milk or
+lets him go without his nap? That's the worst of babies that aren't
+private--you have to part with them sooner or later!”
+
+“Sometimes you have to part with your own, too,” said Mrs. Cobb sadly;
+and though there were lines of sadness in her face there was neither
+rebellion nor repining, as she folded up the sides of the turn-up
+bedstead preparatory to banishing it a second time to the attic. “I
+shall miss Sarah Ellen now more'n ever. Still, Rebecca, we mustn't feel
+to complain. It's the Lord that giveth and the Lord that taketh away:
+Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
+
+
+
+
+Second Chronicle. DAUGHTERS OF ZION
+
+
+I
+
+Abijah Flagg was driving over to Wareham on an errand for old Squire
+Winship, whose general chore-boy and farmer's assistant he had been for
+some years.
+
+He passed Emma Jane Perkins's house slowly, as he always did. She was
+only a little girl of thirteen and he a boy of fifteen or sixteen, but
+somehow, for no particular reason, he liked to see the sun shine on her
+thick braids of reddish-brown hair. He admired her china-blue eyes too,
+and her amiable, friendly expression. He was quite alone in the world,
+and he always thought that if he had anybody belonging to him he would
+rather have a sister like Emma Jane Perkins than anything else within
+the power of Providence to bestow. When she herself suggested this
+relationship a few years later he cast it aside with scorn, having
+changed his mind in the interval--but that story belongs to another time
+and place.
+
+Emma Jane was not to be seen in garden, field, or at the window, and
+Abijah turned his gaze to the large brick house that came next on the
+other side of the quiet village street. It might have been closed for
+a funeral. Neither Miss Miranda nor Miss Jane Sawyer sat at their
+respective windows knitting, nor was Rebecca Randall's gypsy face to be
+discerned. Ordinarily that will-o'-the wispish little person could be
+seen, heard, or felt wherever she was.
+
+“The village must be abed, I guess,” mused Abijah, as he neared the
+Robinsons' yellow cottage, where all the blinds were closed and no sign
+of life showed on porch or in shed. “No, 't aint, neither,” he thought
+again, as his horse crept cautiously down the hill, for from the
+direction of the Robinsons' barn chamber there floated out into the air
+certain burning sentiments set to the tune of “Antioch.” The words, to a
+lad brought up in the orthodox faith, were quite distinguishable:
+
+“Daughter of Zion, from the dust, Exalt thy fallen head!”
+
+Even the most religious youth is stronger on first lines than others,
+but Abijah pulled up his horse and waited till he caught another
+familiar verse, beginning:
+
+“Rebuild thy walls, thy bounds enlarge, And send thy heralds forth.”
+
+“That's Rebecca carrying the air, and I can hear Emma Jane's alto.”
+
+     “Say to the North,
+     Give up thy charge,
+     And hold not back, O South,
+     And hold not back, O South,” etc.
+
+“Land! ain't they smart, seesawin' up and down in that part they learnt
+in singin' school! I wonder what they're actin' out, singin' hymn-tunes
+up in the barn chamber? Some o' Rebecca's doins, I'll be bound! Git dap,
+Aleck!”
+
+Aleck pursued his serene and steady trot up the hills on the Edgewood
+side of the river, till at length he approached the green Common where
+the old Tory Hill meeting-house stood, its white paint and green blinds
+showing fair and pleasant in the afternoon sun. Both doors were open,
+and as Abijah turned into the Wareham road the church melodeon pealed
+out the opening bars of the Missionary Hymn, and presently a score of
+voices sent the good old tune from the choir-loft out to the dusty road:
+
+     “Shall we whose souls are lighted
+     With Wisdom from on high,
+     Shall we to men benighted
+     The lamp of life deny?”
+
+“Land!” exclaimed Abijah under his breath. “They're at it up here, too!
+That explains it all. There's a missionary meeting at the church, and
+the girls wa'n't allowed to come so they held one of their own, and I
+bate ye it's the liveliest of the two.”
+
+Abijah Flagg's shrewd Yankee guesses were not far from the truth, though
+he was not in possession of all the facts. It will be remembered by
+those who have been in the way of hearing Rebecca's experiences in
+Riverboro, that the Rev. and Mrs. Burch, returned missionaries from the
+Far East, together with some of their children, “all born under Syrian
+skies,” as they always explained to interested inquirers, spent a day or
+two at the brick house, and gave parlor meetings in native costume.
+
+These visitors, coming straight from foreign lands to the little Maine
+village, brought with them a nameless enchantment to the children, and
+especially to Rebecca, whose imagination always kindled easily. The
+romance of that visit had never died in her heart, and among the many
+careers that dazzled her youthful vision was that of converting such
+Syrian heathen as might continue in idol worship after the Burches'
+efforts in their behalf had ceased. She thought at the age of eighteen
+she might be suitably equipped for storming some minor citadel of
+Mohammedanism; and Mrs. Burch had encouraged her in the idea, not, it is
+to be feared, because Rebecca showed any surplus of virtue or Christian
+grace, but because her gift of language, her tact and sympathy, and her
+musical talent seemed to fit her for the work.
+
+It chanced that the quarterly meeting of the Maine Missionary Society
+had been appointed just at the time when a letter from Mrs. Burch to
+Miss Jane Sawyer suggested that Rebecca should form a children's branch
+in Riverboro. Mrs. Burch's real idea was that the young people should
+save their pennies and divert a gentle stream of financial aid into
+the parent fund, thus learning early in life to be useful in such work,
+either at home or abroad.
+
+The girls themselves, however, read into her letter no such modest
+participation in the conversion of the world, and wishing to effect an
+organization without delay, they chose an afternoon when every house in
+the village was vacant, and seized upon the Robinsons' barn chamber as
+the place of meeting.
+
+Rebecca, Alice Robinson, Emma Jane Perkins, Candace Milliken, and Persis
+Watson, each with her hymn book, had climbed the ladder leading to
+the haymow a half hour before Abijah Flagg had heard the strains
+of “Daughters of Zion” floating out to the road. Rebecca, being an
+executive person, had carried, besides her hymn book, a silver call-bell
+and pencil and paper. An animated discussion regarding one of two
+names for the society, The Junior Heralds or The Daughters of Zion,
+had resulted in a unanimous vote for the latter, and Rebecca had been
+elected president at an early stage of the meeting. She had modestly
+suggested that Alice Robinson, as the granddaughter of a missionary to
+China, would be much more eligible.
+
+“No,” said Alice, with entire good nature, “whoever is ELECTED
+president, you WILL be, Rebecca--you're that kind--so you might as well
+have the honor; I'd just as lieves be secretary, anyway.”
+
+“If you should want me to be treasurer, I could be, as well as not,”
+ said Persis Watson suggestively; “for you know my father keeps china
+banks at his store--ones that will hold as much as two dollars if you
+will let them. I think he'd give us one if I happen to be treasurer.”
+
+The three principal officers were thus elected at one fell swoop
+and with an entire absence of that red tape which commonly renders
+organization so tiresome, Candace Milliken suggesting that perhaps she'd
+better be vice-president, as Emma Jane Perkins was always so bashful.
+
+“We ought to have more members,” she reminded the other girls, “but if
+we had invited them the first day they'd have all wanted to be officers,
+especially Minnie Smellie, so it's just as well not to ask them till
+another time. Is Thirza Meserve too little to join?”
+
+“I can't think why anybody named Meserve should have called a baby
+Thirza,” said Rebecca, somewhat out of order, though the meeting was
+carried on with small recognition of parliamentary laws. “It always
+makes me want to say:
+
+     Thirza Meserver
+     Heaven preserve her!
+     Thirza Meserver
+     Do we deserve her?
+
+She's little, but she's sweet, and absolutely without guile. I think we
+ought to have her.”
+
+“Is 'guile' the same as 'guilt?” inquired Emma Jane Perkins.
+
+“Yes,” the president answered; “exactly the same, except one is written
+and the other spoken language.” (Rebecca was rather good at imbibing
+information, and a master hand at imparting it!) “Written language is
+for poems and graduations and occasions like this--kind of like a best
+Sunday-go-to-meeting dress that you wouldn't like to go blueberrying in
+for fear of getting it spotted.”
+
+“I'd just as 'lieves get 'guile' spotted as not,” affirmed the
+unimaginative Emma Jane. “I think it's an awful foolish word; but now
+we're all named and our officers elected, what do we do first? It's
+easy enough for Mary and Martha Burch; they just play at missionarying
+because their folks work at it, same as Living and I used to make
+believe be blacksmiths when we were little.”
+
+“It must be nicer missionarying in those foreign places,” said Persis,
+“because on 'Afric's shores and India's plains and other spots where
+Satan reigns' (that's father's favorite hymn) there's always a heathen
+bowing down to wood and stone. You can take away his idols if he'll let
+you and give him a bible and the beginning's all made. But who'll we
+begin on? Jethro Small?”
+
+“Oh, he's entirely too dirty, and foolish besides!” exclaimed Candace.
+“Why not Ethan Hunt? He swears dreadfully.”
+
+“He lives on nuts and is a hermit, and it's a mile to his camp through
+the thick woods; my mother'll never let me go there,” objected Alice.
+“There's Uncle Tut Judson.”
+
+“He's too old; he's most a hundred and deaf as a post,” complained Emma
+Jane. “Besides, his married daughter is a Sabbath-school teacher--why
+doesn't she teach him to behave? I can't think of anybody just right to
+start on!”
+
+“Don't talk like that, Emma Jane,” and Rebecca's tone had a tinge of
+reproof in it. “We are a copperated body named the Daughters of Zion,
+and, of course, we've got to find something to do. Foreigners are the
+easiest; there's a Scotch family at North Riverboro, an English one in
+Edgewood, and one Cuban man at Millkin's Mills.”
+
+“Haven't foreigners got any religion of their own?” inquired Persis
+curiously.
+
+“Ye-es, I s'pose so; kind of a one; but foreigners' religions are never
+right--ours is the only good one.” This was from Candace, the deacon's
+daughter.
+
+“I do think it must be dreadful, being born with a religion and growing
+up with it, and then finding out it's no use and all your time wasted!”
+ Here Rebecca sighed, chewed a straw, and looked troubled.
+
+“Well, that's your punishment for being a heathen,” retorted Candace,
+who had been brought up strictly.
+
+“But I can't for the life of me see how you can help being a heathen if
+you're born in Africa,” persisted Persis, who was well named.
+
+“You can't.” Rebecca was clear on this point. “I had that all out with
+Mrs. Burch when she was visiting Aunt Miranda. She says they can't help
+being heathen, but if there's a single mission station in the whole of
+Africa, they're accountable if they don't go there and get saved.”
+
+“Are there plenty of stages and railroads?” asked Alice; “because there
+must be dreadfully long distances, and what if they couldn't pay the
+fare?”
+
+“That part of it is so dreadfully puzzly we mustn't talk about it,
+please,” said Rebecca, her sensitive face quivering with the force of
+the problem. Poor little soul! She did not realize that her superiors
+in age and intellect had spent many a sleepless night over that same
+“accountability of the heathen.”
+
+“It's too bad the Simpsons have moved away,” said Candace. “It's so
+seldom you can find a real big wicked family like that to save, with
+only Clara Belle and Susan good in it.”
+
+“And numbers count for so much,” continued Alice. “My grandmother says
+if missionaries can't convert about so many in a year the Board advises
+them to come back to America and take up some other work.”
+
+“I know,” Rebecca corroborated; “and it's the same with revivalists. At
+the Centennial picnic at North Riverboro, a revivalist sat opposite to
+Mr. Ladd and Aunt Jane and me, and he was telling about his wonderful
+success in Bangor last winter. He'd converted a hundred and thirty in
+a month, he said, or about four and a third a day. I had just finished
+fractions, so I asked Mr. Ladd how the third of a man could be
+converted. He laughed and said it was just the other way; that the man
+was a third converted. Then he explained that if you were trying to
+convince a person of his sin on a Monday, and couldn't quite finish by
+sundown, perhaps you wouldn't want to sit up all night with him, and
+perhaps he wouldn't want you to; so you'd begin again on Tuesday, and
+you couldn't say just which day he was converted, because it would be
+two thirds on Monday and one third on Tuesday.”
+
+“Mr. Ladd is always making fun, and the Board couldn't expect any great
+things of us girls, new beginners,” suggested Emma Jane, who was being
+constantly warned against tautology by her teacher. “I think it's awful
+rude, anyway, to go right out and try to convert your neighbors; but if
+you borrow a horse and go to Edgewood Lower Corner, or Milliken's Mills,
+I s'pose that makes it Foreign Missions.”
+
+“Would we each go alone or wait upon them with a committee, as they did
+when they asked Deacon Tuttle for a contribution for the new hearse?”
+ asked Persis.
+
+“Oh! We must go alone,” decided Rebecca; “it would be much more refined
+and delicate. Aunt Miranda says that one man alone could never get
+a subscription from Deacon Tuttle, and that's the reason they sent a
+committee. But it seems to me Mrs. Burch couldn't mean for us to try
+and convert people when we're none of us even church members, except
+Candace. I think all we can do is to persuade them to go to meeting and
+Sabbath school, or give money for the hearse, or the new horse sheds.
+Now let's all think quietly for a minute or two who's the very most
+heathenish and reperrehensiblest person in Riverboro.”
+
+After a very brief period of silence the words “Jacob Moody” fell from
+all lips with entire accord.
+
+“You are right,” said the president tersely; “and after singing hymn
+number two hundred seventy four, to be found on the sixty-sixth page,
+we will take up the question of persuading Mr. Moody to attend divine
+service or the minister's Bible class, he not having been in the
+meeting-house for lo! these many years.
+
+     'Daughter of Zion, the power that hath saved thee
+     Extolled with the harp and the timbrel should be.'
+
+“Sing without reading, if you please, omitting the second stanza. Hymn
+two seventy four, to be found on the sixty-sixth page of the new hymn
+book or on page thirty two of Emma Jane Perkins's old one.”
+
+II
+
+It is doubtful if the Rev. Mr. Burch had ever found in Syria a person
+more difficult to persuade than the already “gospel-hardened” Jacob
+Moody of Riverboro.
+
+Tall, gaunt, swarthy, black-bearded--his masses of grizzled, uncombed
+hair and the red scar across his nose and cheek added to his sinister
+appearance. His tumble-down house stood on a rocky bit of land back of
+the Sawyer pasture, and the acres of his farm stretched out on all sides
+of it. He lived alone, ate alone, plowed, planted, sowed, harvested
+alone, and was more than willing to die alone, “unwept, unhonored, and
+unsung.” The road that bordered upon his fields was comparatively little
+used by any one, and notwithstanding the fact that it was thickly set
+with chokecherry trees and blackberry bushes it had been for years
+practically deserted by the children. Jacob's Red Astrakhan and Granny
+Garland trees hung thick with apples, but no Riverboro or Edgewood boy
+stole them; for terrifying accounts of the fate that had overtaken one
+urchin in times agone had been handed along from boy to boy, protecting
+the Moody fruit far better than any police patrol.
+
+Perhaps no circumstances could have extenuated the old man's surly
+manners or his lack of all citizenly graces and virtues; but his
+neighbors commonly rebuked his present way of living and forgot the
+troubled past that had brought it about: the sharp-tongued wife, the
+unloving and disloyal sons, the daughter's hapless fate, and all the
+other sorry tricks that fortune had played upon him--at least that was
+the way in which he had always regarded his disappointments and griefs.
+
+This, then, was the personage whose moral rehabilitation was to be
+accomplished by the Daughters of Zion. But how?
+
+“Who will volunteer to visit Mr. Moody?” blandly asked the president.
+
+VISIT MR. MOODY! It was a wonder the roof of the barn chamber did not
+fall; it did, indeed echo the words and in some way make them sound more
+grim and satirical.
+
+“Nobody'll volunteer, Rebecca Rowena Randall, and you know it,” said
+Emma Jane.
+
+“Why don't we draw lots, when none of us wants to speak to him and yet
+one of us must?”
+
+This suggestion fell from Persis Watson, who had been pale and
+thoughtful ever since the first mention of Jacob Moody. (She was fond of
+Granny Garlands; she had once met Jacob; and, as to what befell, well,
+we all have our secret tragedies!)
+
+“Wouldn't it be wicked to settle it that way?”
+
+“It's gamblers that draw lots.”
+
+“People did it in the Bible ever so often.”
+
+“It doesn't seem nice for a missionary meeting.”
+
+These remarks fell all together upon the president's bewildered ear the
+while (as she always said in compositions)--“the while” she was trying
+to adjust the ethics of this unexpected and difficult dilemma.
+
+“It is a very puzzly question,” she said thoughtfully. “I could ask Aunt
+Jane if we had time, but I suppose we haven't. It doesn't seem nice to
+draw lots, and yet how can we settle it without? We know we mean right,
+and perhaps it will be. Alice, take this paper and tear off five narrow
+pieces, all different lengths.”
+
+At this moment a voice from a distance floated up to the haymow--a voice
+saying plaintively: “Will you let me play with you, girls? Huldah has
+gone to ride, and I'm all alone.”
+
+It was the voice of the absolutely-without-guile Thirza Meserve, and it
+came at an opportune moment.
+
+“If she is going to be a member,” said Persis, “why not let her come up
+and hold the lots? She'd be real honest and not favor anybody.”
+
+It seemed an excellent idea, and was followed up so quickly that
+scarcely three minutes ensued before the guileless one was holding the
+five scraps in her hot little palm, laboriously changing their places
+again and again until they looked exactly alike and all rather soiled
+and wilted.
+
+“Come, girls, draw!” commanded the president. “Thirza, you mustn't chew
+gum at a missionary meeting, it isn't polite nor holy. Take it out and
+stick it somewhere till the exercises are over.”
+
+The five Daughters of Zion approached the spot so charged with fate, and
+extended their trembling hands one by one. Then after a moment's silent
+clutch of their papers they drew nearer to one another and compared
+them.
+
+Emma Jane Perkins had drawn the short one, becoming thus the destined
+instrument for Jacob Moody's conversion to a more seemly manner of life!
+
+She looked about her despairingly, as if to seek some painless and
+respectable method of self-destruction.
+
+“Do let's draw over again,” she pleaded. “I'm the worst of all of us.
+I'm sure to make a mess of it till I kind o' get trained in.”
+
+Rebecca's heart sank at this frank confession, which only corroborated
+her own fears.
+
+“I'm sorry, Emmy, dear,” she said, “but our only excuse for drawing lots
+at all would be to have it sacred. We must think of it as a kind of a
+sign, almost like God speaking to Moses in the burning bush.”
+
+“Oh, I WISH there was a burning bush right here!” cried the distracted
+and recalcitrant missionary. “How quick I'd step into it without even
+stopping to take off my garnet ring!”
+
+“Don't be such a scare-cat, Emma Jane!” exclaimed Candace bracingly.
+“Jacob Moody can't kill you, even if he has an awful temper. Trot right
+along now before you get more frightened. Shall we go cross lots with
+her, Rebecca, and wait at the pasture gate? Then whatever happens Alice
+can put it down in the minutes of the meeting.”
+
+In these terrible crises of life time gallops with such incredible
+velocity that it seemed to Emma Jane only a breath before she was being
+dragged through the fields by the other Daughters of Zion, the guileless
+little Thirza panting in the rear.
+
+At the entrance to the pasture Rebecca gave her an impassioned embrace,
+and whispering, “WHATEVER YOU DO, BE CAREFUL HOW YOU LEAD UP,” lifted
+off the top rail and pushed her through the bars. Then the girls turned
+their backs reluctantly on the pathetic figure, and each sought a tree
+under whose friendly shade she could watch, and perhaps pray, until the
+missionary should return from her field of labor.
+
+Alice Robinson, whose compositions were always marked 96 or 97,--100
+symbolizing such perfection as could be attained in the mortal world of
+Riverboro,--Alice, not only Daughter, but Scribe of Zion, sharpened her
+pencil and wrote a few well-chosen words of introduction, to be used
+when the records of the afternoon had been made by Emma Jane Perkins and
+Jacob Moody.
+
+Rebecca's heart beat tumultuously under her gingham dress. She felt
+that a drama was being enacted, and though unfortunately she was not the
+central figure, she had at least a modest part in it. The short lot had
+not fallen to the properest Daughter, that she quite realized; yet would
+any one of them succeed in winning Jacob Moody's attention, in
+engaging him in pleasant conversation, and finally in bringing him to
+a realization of his mistaken way of life? She doubted, but at the same
+moment her spirits rose at the thought of the difficulties involved in
+the undertaking.
+
+Difficulties always spurred Rebecca on, but they daunted poor Emma Jane,
+who had no little thrills of excitement and wonder and fear and longing
+to sustain her lagging soul. That her interview was to be entered as
+“minutes” by a secretary seemed to her the last straw. Her blue eyes
+looked lighter than usual and had the glaze of china saucers; her
+usually pink cheeks were pale, but she pressed on, determined to be
+a faithful Daughter of Zion, and above all to be worthy of Rebecca's
+admiration and respect.
+
+“Rebecca can do anything,” she thought, with enthusiastic loyalty, “and
+I mustn't be any stupider than I can help, or she'll choose one of
+the other girls for her most intimate friend.” So, mustering all her
+courage, she turned into Jacob Moody's dooryard, where he was chopping
+wood.
+
+“It's a pleasant afternoon, Mr. Moody,” she said in a polite but hoarse
+whisper, Rebecca's words, “LEAD UP! LEAD UP!” ringing in clarion tones
+through her brain.
+
+Jacob Moody looked at her curiously. “Good enough, I guess,” he growled;
+“but I don't never have time to look at afternoons.”
+
+Emma Jane seated herself timorously on the end of a large log near the
+chopping block, supposing that Jacob, like other hosts, would pause in
+his tasks and chat.
+
+“The block is kind of like an idol,” she thought; “I wish I could take
+it away from him, and then perhaps he'd talk.”
+
+At this moment Jacob raised his axe and came down on the block with such
+a stunning blow that Emma Jane fairly leaped into the air.
+
+“You'd better look out, Sissy, or you'll git chips in the eye!” said
+Moody, grimly going on with his work.
+
+The Daughter of Zion sent up a silent prayer for inspiration, but none
+came, and she sat silent, giving nervous jumps in spite of herself
+whenever the axe fell upon the log Jacob was cutting.
+
+Finally, the host became tired of his dumb visitor, and leaning on
+his axe he said, “Look here, Sis, what have you come for? What's your
+errant? Do you want apples? Or cider? Or what? Speak out, or GIT out,
+one or t'other.”
+
+Emma Jane, who had wrung her handkerchief into a clammy ball, gave it
+a last despairing wrench, and faltered: “Wouldn't you like--hadn't you
+better--don't you think you'd ought to be more constant at meeting and
+Sabbath school?”
+
+Jacob's axe almost dropped from his nerveless hand, and he regarded
+the Daughter of Zion with unspeakable rage and disdain. Then, the blood
+mounting in his face, he gathered himself together, and shouted: “You
+take yourself off that log and out o' this dooryard double-quick, you
+imperdent sanct'omus young one! You just let me ketch Bill Perkins'
+child trying to teach me where I shall go, at my age! Scuttle, I tell
+ye! And if I see your pious cantin' little mug inside my fence ag'in on
+sech a business I'll chase ye down the hill or set the dog on ye! SCOOT,
+I TELL YE!”
+
+Emma Jane obeyed orders summarily, taking herself off the log, out the
+dooryard, and otherwise scuttling and scooting down the hill at a pace
+never contemplated even by Jacob Moody, who stood regarding her flying
+heels with a sardonic grin.
+
+Down she stumbled, the tears coursing over her cheeks and mingling with
+the dust of her flight; blighted hope, shame, fear, rage, all tearing
+her bosom in turn, till with a hysterical shriek she fell over the bars
+and into Rebecca's arms outstretched to receive her. The other Daughters
+wiped her eyes and supported her almost fainting form, while Thirza,
+thoroughly frightened, burst into sympathetic tears, and refused to be
+comforted.
+
+No questions were asked, for it was felt by all parties that Emma Jane's
+demeanor was answering them before they could be framed.
+
+“He threatened to set the dog on me!” she wailed presently, when, as
+they neared the Sawyer pasture, she was able to control her voice. “He
+called me a pious, cantin' young one, and said he'd chase me out o' the
+dooryard if I ever came again! And he'll tell my father--I know he will,
+for he hates him like poison.”
+
+All at once the adult point of view dawned upon Rebecca. She never
+saw it until it was too obvious to be ignored. Had they done wrong in
+interviewing Jacob Moody? Would Aunt Miranda be angry, as well as Mr.
+Perkins?
+
+“Why was he so dreadful, Emmy?” she questioned tenderly. “What did you
+say first? How did you lead up to it?”
+
+Emma Jane sobbed more convulsively, and wiped her nose and eyes
+impartially as she tried to think.
+
+“I guess I never led up at all; not a mite. I didn't know what you
+meant. I was sent on an errant, and I went and done it the best I could!
+(Emma Jane's grammar always lapsed in moments of excitement.) And then
+Jake roared at me like Squire Winship's bull.... And he called my face
+a mug.... You shut up that secretary book, Alice Robinson! If you write
+down a single word I'll never speak to you again.... And I don't want to
+be a member' another minute for fear of drawing another short lot. I've
+got enough of the Daughters or Zion to last me the rest o' my life! I
+don't care who goes to meetin' and who don't.”
+
+The girls were at the Perkins's gate by this time, and Emma Jane went
+sadly into the empty house to remove all traces of the tragedy from her
+person before her mother should come home from the church.
+
+The others wended their way slowly down the street, feeling that their
+promising missionary branch had died almost as soon as it had budded.
+
+“Goodby,” said Rebecca, swallowing lumps of disappointment and chagrin
+as she saw the whole inspiring plan break and vanish into thin air like
+an iridescent bubble. “It's all over and we won't ever try it again.
+I'm going in to do overcasting as hard as I can, because I hate that the
+worst. Aunt Jane must write to Mrs. Burch that we don't want to be
+home missionaries. Perhaps we're not big enough, anyway. I'm perfectly
+certain it's nicer to convert people when they're yellow or brown or
+any color but white; and I believe it must be easier to save their souls
+than it is to make them go to meeting.”
+
+
+
+
+Third Chronicle. REBECCA'S THOUGHT BOOK
+
+
+I
+
+The “Sawyer girls'” barn still had its haymow in Rebecca's time,
+although the hay was a dozen years old or more, and, in the opinion of
+the occasional visiting horse, sadly juiceless and wanting in flavor.
+It still sheltered, too, old Deacon Israel Sawyer's carryall and
+mowing-machine, with his pung, his sleigh, and a dozen other survivals
+of an earlier era, when the broad acres of the brick house went to make
+one of the finest farms in Riverboro.
+
+There were no horses or cows in the stalls nowadays; no pig grunting
+comfortably of future spare ribs in the sty; no hens to peck the plants
+in the cherished garden patch. The Sawyer girls were getting on in
+years, and, mindful that care once killed a cat, they ordered their
+lives with the view of escaping that particular doom, at least, and
+succeeded fairly well until Rebecca's advent made existence a trifle
+more sensational.
+
+Once a month for years upon years, Miss Miranda and Miss Jane had put
+towels over their heads and made a solemn visit to the barn, taking off
+the enameled cloth coverings (occasionally called “emmanuel covers” in
+Riverboro), dusting the ancient implements, and sometimes sweeping
+the heaviest of the cobwebs from the corners, or giving a brush to the
+floor.
+
+Deacon Israel's tottering ladder still stood in its accustomed place,
+propped against the haymow, and the heavenly stairway leading to eternal
+glory scarcely looked fairer to Jacob of old than this to Rebecca. By
+means of its dusty rounds she mounted, mounted, mounted far away
+from time and care and maiden aunts, far away from childish tasks
+and childish troubles, to the barn chamber, a place so full of golden
+dreams, happy reveries, and vague longings, that, as her little brown
+hands clung to the sides of the ladder and her feet trod the rounds
+cautiously in her ascent, her heart almost stopped beating in the sheer
+joy of anticipation.
+
+Once having gained the heights, the next thing was to unlatch the heavy
+doors and give them a gentle swing outward. Then, oh, ever new Paradise!
+Then, oh, ever lovely green and growing world! For Rebecca had that
+something in her soul that
+
+“Gives to seas and sunset skies The unspent beauty of surprise.”
+
+At the top of Guide Board hill she could see Alice Robinson's barn with
+its shining weather vane, a huge burnished fish that swam with the wind
+and foretold the day to all Riverboro. The meadow, with its sunny
+slopes stretching up to the pine woods, was sometimes a flowing sheet
+of shimmering grass, sometimes--when daisies and buttercups were
+blooming--a vision of white and gold. Sometimes the shorn stubble would
+be dotted with “the happy hills of hay,” and a little later the rock
+maple on the edge of the pines would stand out like a golden ball
+against the green; its neighbor, the sugar maple, glowing beside it,
+brave in scarlet.
+
+It was on one of these autumn days with a wintry nip in the air that
+Adam Ladd (Rebecca's favorite “Mr. Aladdin”), after searching for her in
+field and garden, suddenly noticed the open doors of the barn chamber,
+and called to her. At the sound of his voice she dropped her precious
+diary, and flew to the edge of the haymow. He never forgot the vision
+of the startled little poetess, book in one mittened hand, pencil in
+the other, dark hair all ruffled, with the picturesque addition of an
+occasional glade of straw, her cheeks crimson, her eyes shining.
+
+“A Sappho in mittens!” he cried laughingly, and at her eager question
+told her to look up the unknown lady in the school encyclopedia, when
+she was admitted to the Female Seminary at Wareham.
+
+Now, all being ready, Rebecca went to a corner of the haymow, and
+withdrew a thick blank-book with mottled covers. Out of her gingham
+apron pocket came a pencil, a bit of rubber, and some pieces of brown
+paper; then she seated herself gravely on the floor, and drew an
+inverted soapbox nearer to her for a table.
+
+The book was reverently opened, and there was a serious reading of the
+extracts already carefully copied therein. Most of them were apparently
+to the writer's liking, for dimples of pleasure showed themselves now
+and then, and smiles of obvious delight played about her face; but
+once in a while there was a knitting of the brows and a sigh of
+discouragement, showing that the artist in the child was not wholly
+satisfied.
+
+Then came the crucial moment when the budding author was supposedly to
+be racked with the throes of composition; but seemingly there were
+no throes. Other girls could wield the darning or crochet or knitting
+needle, and send the tatting shuttle through loops of the finest cotton;
+hemstitch, oversew, braid hair in thirteen strands, but the pencil was
+never obedient in their fingers, and the pen and ink-pot were a horror
+from early childhood to the end of time.
+
+Not so with Rebecca; her pencil moved as easily as her tongue, and no
+more striking simile could possibly be used. Her handwriting was not
+Spencerian; she had neither time, nor patience, it is to be feared,
+for copybook methods, and her unformed characters were frequently the
+despair of her teachers; but write she could, write she would, write she
+must and did, in season and out; from the time she made pothooks at six,
+till now, writing was the easiest of all possible tasks; to be indulged
+in as solace and balm when the terrors of examples in least common
+multiple threatened to dethrone the reason, or the rules of grammar
+loomed huge and unconquerable in the near horizon.
+
+As to spelling, it came to her in the main by free grace, and not by
+training, and though she slipped at times from the beaten path, her
+extraordinary ear and good visual memory kept her from many or flagrant
+mistakes. It was her intention, especially when saying her prayers at
+night, to look up all doubtful words in her small dictionary, before
+copying her Thoughts into the sacred book for the inspiration
+of posterity; but when genius burned with a brilliant flame, and
+particularly when she was in the barn and the dictionary in the house,
+impulse as usual carried the day.
+
+There sits Rebecca, then, in the open door of the Sawyers barn
+chamber--the sunset door. How many a time had her grandfather, the good
+deacon, sat just underneath in his tipped-back chair, when Mrs. Israel's
+temper was uncertain, and the serenity of the barn was in comforting
+contrast to his own fireside!
+
+The open doors swinging out to the peaceful landscape, the solace of the
+pipe, not allowed in the “settin'-room”--how beautifully these simple
+agents have ministered to the family peace in days agone! “If I hadn't
+had my barn and my store BOTH, I couldn't never have lived in holy
+matrimony with Maryliza!” once said Mr. Watson feelingly.
+
+But the deacon, looking on his waving grass fields, his tasseling corn
+and his timber lands, bright and honest as were his eyes, never saw
+such visions as Rebecca. The child, transplanted from her home farm at
+Sunnybrook, from the care of the overworked but easy-going mother, and
+the companionship of the scantily fed, scantily clothed, happy-go-lucky
+brothers and sisters--she had indeed fallen on shady days in Riverboro.
+The blinds were closed in every room of the house but two, and the same
+might have been said of Miss Miranda's mind and heart, though Miss
+Jane had a few windows opening to the sun, and Rebecca already had her
+unconscious hand on several others. Brickhouse rules were rigid and many
+for a little creature so full of life, but Rebecca's gay spirit could
+not be pinioned in a strait jacket for long at a time; it escaped
+somehow and winged its merry way into the sunshine and free air; if she
+were not allowed to sing in the orchard, like the wild bird she was, she
+could still sing in the cage, like the canary.
+
+II
+
+If you had opened the carefully guarded volume with the mottled covers,
+you would first have seen a wonderful title page, constructed apparently
+on the same lines as an obituary, or the inscription on a tombstone,
+save for the quantity and variety of information contained in it. Much
+of the matter would seem to the captious critic better adapted to the
+body of the book than to the title page, but Rebecca was apparently
+anxious that the principal personages in her chronicle should be well
+described at the outset.
+
+She seems to have had a conviction that heredity plays its part in the
+evolution of genius, and her belief that the world will be inspired
+by the possession of her Thoughts is too artless to be offensive. She
+evidently has respect for rich material confided to her teacher, and
+one can imagine Miss Dearborn's woe had she been confronted by Rebecca's
+chosen literary executor and bidden to deliver certain “Valuable Poetry
+and Thoughts,” the property of posterity “unless carelessly destroyed.”
+
+THOUGHT BOOK of Rebecca Rowena Randall Really of Sunnybrook Farm But
+temporily of The Brick House Riverboro. Own niece of Miss Miranda and
+Jane Sawyer Second of seven children of her father, Mr. L. D. M. Randall
+(Now at rest in Temperance cemmetary and there will be a monument as
+soon as we pay off the mortgage on the farm) Also of her mother Mrs.
+Aurelia Randall
+
+     In case of Death the best of these Thoughts
+     May be printed in my Remerniscences
+     For the Sunday School Library at Temperance, Maine
+     Which needs more books fearfully
+     And I hereby
+     Will and Testament them to Mr. Adam Ladd
+     Who bought 300 cakes of soap from me
+     And thus secured a premium
+     A Greatly Needed Banquet Lamp
+     For my friends the Simpsons.
+     He is the only one that incourages
+     My writing Remerniscences and
+     My teacher Miss Dearborn will
+     Have much valuable Poetry and Thoughts
+     To give him unless carelessly destroyed.
+
+     The pictures are by the same hand that
+     Wrote the Thoughts.
+
+IT IS NOT NOW DECIDED WHETHER REBECCA ROWENA RANDALL WILL BE A PAINTER
+OR AN AUTHOR, BUT AFTER HER DEATH IT WILL BE KNOWN WHICH SHE HAS BEEN,
+IF ANY.
+
+FINIS
+
+From the title page, with its wealth of detail, and its unnecessary and
+irrelevant information, the book ripples on like a brook, and to the
+weary reader of problem novels it may have something of the brook's
+refreshing quality.
+
+OUR DIARIES May, 187--
+
+All the girls are keeping a diary because Miss Dearborn was very much
+ashamed when the school trustees told her that most of the girls' and
+all of the boys' compositions were disgraceful, and must be improved
+upon next term. She asked the boys to write letters to her once a week
+instead of keeping a diary, which they thought was girlish like playing
+with dolls. The boys thought it was dreadful to have to write letters
+every seven days, but she told them it was not half as bad for them as
+it was for her who had to read them.
+
+To make my diary a little different I am going to call it a THOUGHT Book
+(written just like that, with capitals). I have thoughts that I never
+can use unless I write them down, for Aunt Miranda always says, Keep
+your thoughts to yourself. Aunt Jane lets me tell her some, but does not
+like my queer ones and my true thoughts are mostly queer. Emma Jane does
+not mind hearing them now and then, and that is my only chance.
+
+If Miss Dearborn does not like the name Thought Book I will call it
+Remerniscences (written just like that with a capital R). Remerniscences
+are things you remember about yourself and write down in case you should
+die. Aunt Jane doesn't like to read any other kind of books but just
+lives of interesting dead people and she says that is what Longfellow
+(who was born in the state of Maine and we should be very proud of it
+and try to write like him) meant in his poem:
+
+     “Lives of great men all remind us
+     We should make our lives sublime,
+     And departing, leave behind us
+     Footprints on the sands of time.”
+
+I know what this means because when Emma Jane and I went to the beach
+with Uncle Jerry Cobb we ran along the wet sand and looked at the shapes
+our boots made, just as if they were stamped in wax. Emma Jane turns in
+her left foot (splayfoot the boys call it, which is not polite) and Seth
+Strout had just patched one of my shoes and it all came out in the sand
+pictures. When I learned The Psalm of Life for Friday afternoon speaking
+I thought I shouldn't like to leave a patched footprint, nor have Emma
+Jane's look crooked on the sands of time, and right away I thought Oh!
+What a splendid thought for my Thought Book when Aunt Jane buys me a
+fifteen-cent one over to Watson's store.
+
+* * * * *
+
+
+REMERNISCENCES
+
+June, 187--
+
+I told Aunt Jane I was going to begin my Remerniscences, and she says
+I am full young, but I reminded her that Candace Milliken's sister died
+when she was ten, leaving no footprints whatever, and if I should die
+suddenly who would write down my Remerniscences? Aunt Miranda says the
+sun and moon would rise and set just the same, and it was no matter if
+they didn't get written down, and to go up attic and find her piece-bag;
+but I said it would, as there was only one of everybody in the world,
+and nobody else could do their remerniscensing for them. If I should die
+tonight I know now who would describe me right. Miss Dearborn would
+say one thing and brother John another. Emma Jane would try to do me
+justice, but has no words; and I am glad Aunt Miranda never takes the
+pen in hand.
+
+My dictionary is so small it has not many genteel words in it, and I
+cannot find how to spell Remerniscences, but I remember from the cover
+of Aunt Jane's book that there was an “s” and a “c” close together in
+the middle of it, which I thought foolish and not needful.
+
+All the girls like their dairies very much, but Minnie Smellie got Alice
+Robinson's where she had hid it under the school wood pile and read
+it all through. She said it was no worse than reading anybody's
+composition, but we told her it was just like peeking through a keyhole,
+or listening at a window, or opening a bureau drawer. She said she
+didn't look at it that way, and I told her that unless her eyes got
+unscealed she would never leave any kind of a sublime footprint on
+the sands of time. I told her a diary was very sacred as you generally
+poured your deepest feelings into it expecting nobody to look at it but
+yourself and your indulgent heavenly Father who seeeth all things.
+
+Of course it would not hurt Persis Watson to show her diary because she
+has not a sacred plan and this is the way it goes, for she reads it out
+loud to us:
+
+“Arose at six this morning--(you always arise in a diary but you say
+get up when you talk about it). Ate breakfast at half past six. Had soda
+biscuits, coffee, fish hash and doughnuts. Wiped the dishes, fed the
+hens and made my bed before school. Had a good arithmetic lesson, but
+went down two in spelling. At half past four played hide and coop in the
+Sawyer pasture. Fed hens and went to bed at eight.”
+
+She says she can't put in what doesn't happen, but as I don't think her
+diary is interesting she will ask her mother to have meat hash instead
+of fish, with pie when the doughnuts give out, and she will feed the
+hens before breakfast to make a change. We are all going now to try and
+make something happen every single day so the diaries won't be so dull
+and the footprints so common.
+
+* * * * *
+
+
+AN UNCOMMON THOUGHT
+
+July 187--
+
+We dug up our rosecakes today, and that gave me a good Remerniscence.
+The way you make rose cakes is, you take the leaves of full blown roses
+and mix them with a little cinnamon and as much brown sugar as they
+will give you, which is never half enough except Persis Watson, whose
+affectionate parents let her go to the barrel in their store. Then you
+do up little bits like sedlitz powders, first in soft paper and then
+in brown, and bury them in the ground and let them stay as long as you
+possibly can hold out; then dig them up and eat them. Emma Jane and
+I stick up little signs over the holes in the ground with the date we
+buried them and when they'll be done enough to dig up, but we can never
+wait. When Aunt Jane saw us she said it was the first thing for children
+to learn,--not to be impatient,--so when I went to the barn chamber I
+made a poem.
+
+IMPATIENCE
+
+We dug our rose cakes up oh! all too soon. Twas in the orchard just at
+noon. Twas in a bright July forenoon. Twas in the sunny afternoon. Twas
+underneath the harvest moon.
+
+It was not that way at all; it was a foggy morning before school, and I
+should think poets could never possibly get to heaven, for it is so hard
+to stick to the truth when you are writing poetry. Emma Jane thinks it
+is nobody's business when we dug the rosecakes up. I like the line about
+the harvest moon best, but it would give a wrong idea of our lives and
+characters to the people that read my Thoughts, for they would think we
+were up late nights, so I have fixed it like this:
+
+                    IMPATIENCE
+
+     We dug our rose cakes up oh! all too soon,
+     We thought their sweetness would be such a boon.
+     We ne'er suspicioned they would not be done
+     After three days of autumn wind and sun.
+     Why did we from the earth our treasures draw?
+     Twas not for fear that rat or mole might naw,
+     An aged aunt doth say impatience was the reason,
+     She says that youth is ever out of season.
+
+That is just as Aunt Jane said it, and it gave me the thought for the
+poem which is rather uncommon.
+
+* * * * *
+
+
+A DREADFUL QUESTION
+
+September, 187--
+
+WHICH HAS BEEN THE MOST BENEFERCENT INFLUENCE ON CHARACTER--PUNISHMENT
+OR REWARD?
+
+This truly dreadful question was given us by Dr. Moses when he visited
+school today. He is a School Committee; not a whole one but I do not
+know the singular number of him. He told us we could ask our families
+what they thought, though he would rather we wouldn't, but we must write
+our own words and he would hear them next week.
+
+After he went out and shut the door the scholars were all plunged in
+gloom and you could have heard a pin drop. Alice Robinson cried and
+borrowed my handkerchief, and the boys looked as if the schoolhouse had
+been struck by lightning. The worst of all was poor Miss Dearborn, who
+will lose her place if she does not make us better scholars soon, for
+Dr. Moses has a daughter all ready to put right in to the school and she
+can board at home and save all her wages. Libby Moses is her name.
+
+Miss Dearborn stared out the window, and her mouth and chin shook like
+Alice Robinson's, for she knew, ah! all to well, what the coming week
+would bring forth.
+
+Then I raised my hand for permission to speak, and stood up and said:
+“Miss Dearborn, don't you mind! Just explain to us what benefercent'
+means and we'll write something real interesting; for all of us know
+what punishment is, and have seen others get rewards, and it is not so
+bad a subject as some.” And Dick Carter whispered, “GOOD ON YOUR HEAD,
+REBECCA!” which mean he was sorry for her too, and would try his best,
+but has no words.
+
+Then teacher smiled and said benefercent meant good or healthy for
+anybody, and would all rise who thought punishment made the best
+scholars and men and women; and everybody sat stock still.
+
+And then she asked all to stand who believed that rewards produced the
+finest results, and there was a mighty sound like unto the rushing of
+waters, but really was our feet scraping the floor, and the scholars
+stood up, and it looked like an army, though it was only nineteen,
+because of the strong belief that was in them. Then Miss Dearborn
+laughed and said she was thankful for every whipping she had when
+she was a child, and Living Perkins said perhaps we hadn't got to the
+thankful age, or perhaps her father hadn't used a strap, and she said
+oh! no, it was her mother with the open hand; and Dick Carter said he
+wouldn't call that punishment, and Sam Simpson said so too.
+
+I am going to write about the subject in my Thought Book first, and when
+I make it into a composition, I can leave out anything about the family
+or not genteel, as there is much to relate about punishment not pleasant
+or nice and hardly polite.
+
+* * * * * * * * * * * * *
+
+PUNISHMENT
+
+Punishment is a very puzzly thing, but I believe in it when really
+deserved, only when I punish myself it does not always turn out well.
+When I leaned over the new bridge, and got my dress all paint, and Aunt
+Sarah Cobb couldn't get it out, I had to wear it spotted for six
+months which hurt my pride, but was right. I stayed at home from Alice
+Robinson's birthday party for a punishment, and went to the circus
+next day instead, but Alice's parties are very cold and stiff, as Mrs.
+Robinson makes the boys stand on newspapers if they come inside the
+door, and the blinds are always shut, and Mrs. Robinson tells me how bad
+her liver complaint is this year. So I thought, to pay for the circus
+and a few other things, I ought to get more punishment, and I threw my
+pink parasol down the well, as the mothers in the missionary books throw
+their infants to the crocodiles in the Ganges river. But it got stuck
+in the chain that holds the bucket, and Aunt Miranda had to get Abijah
+Flagg to take out all the broken bits before we could ring up water.
+
+I punished myself this way because Aunt Miranda said that unless I
+improved I would be nothing but a Burden and a Blight.
+
+There was an old man used to go by our farm carrying a lot of broken
+chairs to bottom, and mother used to say--“Poor man! His back is too
+weak for such a burden!” and I used to take him out a doughnut, and this
+is the part I want to go into the Remerniscences. Once I told him we
+were sorry the chairs were so heavy, and he said THEY DIDN'T SEEM SO
+HEAVY WHEN HE HAD ET THE DOUGHNUT. This does not mean that the doughnut
+was heavier than the chairs which is what brother John said, but it is a
+beautiful thought and shows how the human race should have sympathy, and
+help bear burdens.
+
+I know about a Blight, for there was a dreadful east wind over at our
+farm that destroyed all the little young crops just out of the ground,
+and the farmers called it the Blight. And I would rather be hail, sleet,
+frost, or snow than a Blight, which is mean and secret, and which is the
+reason I threw away the dearest thing on earth to me, the pink parasol
+that Miss Ross brought me from Paris, France. I have also wrapped up my
+bead purse in three papers and put it away marked not to be opened till
+after my death unless needed for a party.
+
+I must not be Burden, I must not be Blight, The angels in heaven would
+weep at the sight.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+REWARDS
+
+A good way to find out which has the most benefercent effect would be to
+try rewards on myself this next week and write my composition the very
+last day, when I see how my character is. It is hard to find rewards for
+yourself, but perhaps Aunt Jane and some of the girls would each give
+me one to help out. I could carry my bead purse to school every day,
+or wear my coral chain a little while before I go to sleep at night. I
+could read Cora or the Sorrows of a Doctor's Wife a little oftener, but
+that's all the rewards I can think of. I fear Aunt Miranda would say
+they are wicked but oh! if they should turn out benefercent how glad and
+joyful life would be to me! A sweet and beautiful character, beloved
+by my teacher and schoolmates, admired and petted by my aunts and
+neighbors, yet carrying my bead purse constantly, with perhaps my best
+hat on Wednesday afternoons, as well as Sundays!
+
+* * * * *
+
+A GREAT SHOCK
+
+The reason why Alice Robinson could not play was, she was being punished
+for breaking her mother's blue platter. Just before supper my story
+being finished I went up Guide Board hill to see how she was bearing
+up and she spoke to me from her window. She said she did not mind being
+punished because she hadn't been for a long time, and she hoped it would
+help her with her composition. She thought it would give her thoughts,
+and tomorrow's the last day for her to have any. This gave me a good
+idea and I told her to call her father up and beg him to beat her
+violently. It would hurt, I said, but perhaps none of the other girls
+would have a punishment like that, and her composition would be all
+different and splendid. I would borrow Aunt Miranda's witchhayzel and
+pour it on her wounds like the Samaritan in the Bible.
+
+I went up again after supper with Dick Carter to see how it turned out.
+Alice came to the window and Dick threw up a note tied to a stick. I
+had written: “DEMAND YOUR PUNISHMENT TO THE FULL. BE BRAVE LIKE DOLORES'
+MOTHER IN THE Martyrs of Spain.”
+
+She threw down an answer, and it was: “YOU JUST BE LIKE DOLORES' MOTHER
+YOURSELF IF YOU'RE SO SMART!” Then she stamped away from the window and
+my feelings were hurt, but Dick said perhaps she was hungry, and that
+made her cross. And as Dick and I turned to go out of the yard we looked
+back and I saw something I can never forget. (The Great Shock) Mrs.
+Robinson was out behind the barn feeding the turkies. Mr. Robinson
+came softly out of the side door in the orchard and looking everywheres
+around he stepped to the wire closet and took out a saucer of cold beans
+with a pickled beet on top, and a big piece of blueberry pie. Then he
+crept up the back stairs and we could see Alice open her door and take
+in the supper.
+
+Oh! What will become of her composition, and how can she tell anything
+of the benefercent effects of punishment, when she is locked up by
+one parent, and fed by the other? I have forgiven her for the way she
+snapped me up for, of course, you couldn't beg your father to beat you
+when he was bringing you blueberry pie. Mrs. Robinson makes a kind that
+leaks out a thick purple juice into the plate and needs a spoon and
+blacks your mouth, but is heavenly.
+
+* * * * *
+
+A DREAM
+
+The week is almost up and very soon Dr. Moses will drive up to the
+school house like Elijah in the chariot and come in to hear us read.
+There is a good deal of sickness among us. Some of the boys are not able
+to come to school just now, but hope to be about again by Monday, when
+Dr. Moses goes away to a convention. It is a very hard composition to
+write, somehow. Last night I dreamed that the river was ink and I kept
+dipping into it and writing with a penstalk made of a young pine tree. I
+sliced great slabs of marble off the side of one of the White Mountains,
+the one you see when going to meeting, and wrote on those. Then I threw
+them all into the falls, not being good enough for Dr. Moses.
+
+Dick Carter had a splendid boy to stay over Sunday. He makes the real
+newspaper named The Pilot published by the boys at Wareham Academy. He
+says when he talks about himself in writing he calls himself “we,” and
+it sounds much more like print, besides conscealing him more.
+
+Example: Our hair was measured this morning and has grown two inches
+since last time.... We have a loose tooth that troubles us very much...
+Our inkspot that we made by negligence on our only white petticoat we
+have been able to remove with lemon and milk. Some of our petticoat came
+out with the spot.
+
+I shall try it in my composition sometime, for of course I shall write
+for the Pilot when I go to Wareham Seminary. Uncle Jerry Cobb says that
+I shall, and thinks that in four years I might rise to be editor if they
+ever have girls.
+
+I have never been more good than since I have been rewarding myself
+steady, even to asking Aunt Miranda kindly to offer me a company jelly
+tart, not because I was hungry, but for an experement I was trying, and
+would explain to her sometime.
+
+She said she never thought it was wise to experement with your stomach,
+and I said, with a queer thrilling look, it was not my stomach but my
+soul, that was being tried. Then she gave me the tart and walked away
+all puzzled and nervous.
+
+The new minister has asked me to come and see him any Saturday afternoon
+as he writes poetry himself, but I would rather not ask him about this
+composition.
+
+Ministers never believe in rewards, and it is useless to hope that they
+will. We had the wrath of God four times in sermons this last summer,
+but God cannot be angry all the time,--nobody could, especially in
+summer; Mr. Baxter is different and calls his wife dear which is lovely
+and the first time I ever heard it in Riverboro. Mrs. Baxter is another
+kind of people too, from those that live in Temperance. I like to
+watch her in meeting and see her listen to her husband who is young and
+handsome for a minister; it gives me very queer and uncommon feelings,
+when they look at each other, which they always do when not otherwise
+engaged.
+
+She has different clothes from anybody else. Aunt Miranda says you must
+think only of two things: will your dress keep you warm and will it wear
+well and there is nobody in the world to know how I love pink and red
+and how I hate drab and green and how I never wear my hat with the
+black and yellow porkupine quills without wishing it would blow into the
+river.
+
+Whene'er I take my walks abroad How many quills I see. But as they are
+not porkupines They never come to me.
+
+
+COMPOSITION
+
+WHICH HAS THE MOST BENEFERCENT EFFECT ON THE CHARACTER, PUNISHMENT OR
+REWARD?
+
+By Rebecca Rowena Randall
+
+(This copy not corrected by Miss Dearborn yet.)
+
+We find ourselves very puzzled in approaching this truly great and
+national question though we have tried very ernestly to understand it,
+so as to show how wisely and wonderfully our dear teacher guides the
+youthful mind, it being her wish that our composition class shall long
+be remembered in Riverboro Centre.
+
+We would say first of all that punishment seems more benefercently
+needed by boys than girls. Boys' sins are very violent, like stealing
+fruit, profane language, playing truant, fighting, breaking windows, and
+killing innocent little flies and bugs. If these were not taken out of
+them early in life it would be impossible for them to become like our
+martyred president, Abraham Lincoln.
+
+Although we have asked everybody on our street, they think boys' sins
+can only be whipped out of them with a switch or strap, which makes
+us feel very sad, as boys when not sinning the dreadful sins mentioned
+above seem just as good as girls, and never cry when switched, and say
+it does not hurt much.
+
+We now approach girls, which we know better, being one. Girls seem
+better than boys because their sins are not so noisy and showy. They
+can disobey their parents and aunts, whisper in silent hour, cheat in
+lessons, say angry things to their schoolmates, tell lies, be sulky and
+lazy, but all these can be conducted quite ladylike and genteel, and
+nobody wants to strap girls because their skins are tender and get black
+and blue very easily.
+
+Punishments make one very unhappy and rewards very happy, and one would
+think when one is happy one would behave the best. We were acquainted
+with a girl who gave herself rewards every day for a week, and it seemed
+to make her as lovely a character as one could wish; but perhaps if one
+went on for years giving rewards to onesself one would become selfish.
+One cannot tell, one can only fear.
+
+If a dog kills a sheep we should whip him straight away, and on the very
+spot where he can see the sheep, or he will not know what we mean, and
+may forget and kill another. The same is true of the human race. We must
+be firm and patient in punishing, no matter how much we love the one who
+has done wrong, and how hungry she is. It does no good to whip a person
+with one hand and offer her a pickled beet with the other. This confuses
+her mind, and she may grow up not knowing right from wrong. (The
+striking example of the pickled beet was removed from the essay by the
+refined but ruthless Miss Dearborn, who strove patiently, but vainly, to
+keep such vulgar images out of her pupils' literary efforts.)
+
+We now respectfully approach the Holy Bible and the people in the Bible
+were punished the whole time, and that would seem to make it right.
+Everybody says Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth; but we think ourself,
+that the Lord is a better punisher than we are, and knows better how and
+when to do it having attended to it ever since the year B.C. while
+the human race could not know about it till 1492 A.D., which is when
+Columbus discovered America.
+
+We do not believe we can find out all about this truly great and
+national subject till we get to heaven, where the human race, strapped
+and unstrapped, if any, can meet together and laying down their harps
+discuss how they got there.
+
+And we would gently advise boys to be more quiet and genteel in conduct
+and try rewards to see how they would work. Rewards are not all like
+the little rosebud merit cards we receive on Fridays, and which boys
+sometimes tear up and fling scornfully to the breeze when they get
+outside, but girls preserve carefully in an envelope.
+
+Some rewards are great and glorious, for boys can get to be governor or
+school trustee or road commissioner or president, while girls can only
+be wife and mother. But all of us can have the ornament of a meek and
+lowly spirit, especially girls, who have more use for it than boys.
+
+R.R.R.
+
+* * * * *
+
+
+STORIES AND PEOPLE
+
+October, 187--
+
+There are people in books and people in Riverboro, and they are not the
+same kind. They never talk of chargers and palfreys in the village, nor
+say How oft and Methinks, and if a Scotchman out of Rob Roy should come
+to Riverboro and want to marry one of us girls we could not understand
+him unless he made motions; though Huldah Meserve says if a nobleman of
+high degree should ask her to be his,--one of vast estates with serfs at
+his bidding,--she would be able to guess his meaning in any language.
+
+Uncle Jerry Cobb thinks that Riverboro people would not make a story,
+but I know that some of them would.
+
+Jack-o'-lantern, though only a baby, was just like a real story if
+anybody had written a piece about him: How his mother was dead and his
+father ran away and Emma Jane and I got Aunt Sarah Cobb to keep him so
+Mr. Perkins wouldn't take him to the poor farm; and about our lovely
+times with him that summer, and our dreadful loss when his father
+remembered him in the fall and came to take him away; and how Aunt Sarah
+carried the trundle bed up attic again and Emma Jane and I heard her
+crying and stole away.
+
+Mrs. Peter Meserve says Grandpa Sawyer was a wonderful hand at stories
+before his spirit was broken by grandmother. She says he was the life
+of the store and tavern when he was a young man, though generally sober,
+and she thinks I take after him, because I like compositions better than
+all the other lessons; but mother says I take after father, who always
+could say everything nicely whether he had anything to say or not; so
+methinks I should be grateful to both of them. They are what is called
+ancestors and much depends upon whether you have them or not. The
+Simpsons have not any at all. Aunt Miranda says the reason everybody
+is so prosperous around here is because their ancestors were all first
+settlers and raised on burnt ground. This should make us very proud.
+
+Methinks and methought are splendid words for compositions. Miss
+Dearborn likes them very much, but Alice and I never bring them in to
+suit her. Methought means the same as I thought, but sounds better.
+Example: If you are telling a dream you had about your aged aunt:
+
+     Methought I heard her say
+     My child you have so useful been
+     You need not sew today.
+
+This is a good example one way, but too unlikely, woe is me!
+
+This afternoon I was walking over to the store to buy molasses, and as
+I came off the bridge and turned up the hill, I saw lots and lots of
+heelprints in the side of the road, heelprints with little spike holes
+in them.
+
+“Oh! The river drivers have come from up country,” I thought, “and
+they'll be breaking the jam at our falls tomorrow.” I looked everywhere
+about and not a man did I see, but still I knew I was not mistaken for
+the heelprints could not lie. All the way over and back I thought about
+it, though unfortunately forgetting the molasses, and Alice Robinson
+not being able to come out, I took playtime to write a story. It is
+the first grown-up one I ever did, and is intended to be like Cora the
+Doctor's Wife, not like a school composition. It is written for Mr. Adam
+Ladd, and people like him who live in Boston, and is the printed kind
+you get money for, to pay off a mortgage.
+
+* * * * *
+
+LANCELOT OR THE PARTED LOVERS
+
+A beautiful village maiden was betrothed to a stallwart river driver,
+but they had high and bitter words and parted, he to weep into the
+crystal stream as he drove his logs, and she to sigh and moan as she
+went about her round of household tasks.
+
+At eventide the maiden was wont to lean over the bridge and her tears
+also fell into the foaming stream; so, though the two unhappy lovers did
+not know it, the river was their friend, the only one to whom they told
+their secrets and wept into.
+
+The months crept on and it was the next July when the maiden was passing
+over the bridge and up the hill. Suddenly she spied footprints on the
+sands of time.
+
+“The river drivers have come again!” she cried, putting her hand to
+her side for she had a slight heart trouble like Cora and Mrs. Peter
+Meserve, that doesn't kill.
+
+“They HAVE come indeed; ESPECIALLY ONE YOU KNOW,” said a voice, and
+out from the alder bushes sprung Lancelot Littlefield, for that was the
+lover's name and it was none other than he. His hair was curly and like
+living gold. His shirt, white of flannel, was new and dry, and of a
+handsome color, and as the maiden looked at him she could think of
+nought but a fairy prince.
+
+“Forgive,” she mermered, stretching out her waisted hands.
+
+“Nay, sweet,” he replied. “'Tis I should say that to you,” and bending
+gracefully on one knee he kissed the hem of her dress. It was a rich
+pink gingham check, ellaborately ornamented with white tape trimming.
+
+Clasping each other to the heart like Cora and the Doctor, they stood
+there for a long while, till they heard the rumble of wheels on the
+bridge and knew they must disentangle.
+
+The wheels came nearer and verily! it was the maiden's father.
+
+“Can I wed with your fair daughter this very moon,” asked Lancelot, who
+will not be called his whole name again in this story.
+
+“You may,” said the father, “for lo! she has been ready and waiting for
+many months.” This he said not noting how he was shaming the maiden,
+whose name was Linda Rowenetta.
+
+Then and there the nuptial day was appointed and when it came, the
+marriage knot was tied upon the river bank where first they met; the
+river bank where they had parted in anger, and where they had again
+scealeld their vows and clasped each other to the heart. And it was very
+low water that summer, and the river always thought it was because no
+tears dropped into it but so many smiles that like sunshine they dried
+it up.
+
+R.R.R.
+
+Finis
+
+* * * * *
+
+
+CAREERS
+
+November, 187--
+
+Long ago when I used to watch Miss Ross painting the old mill at
+Sunnybrook I thought I would be a painter, for Miss Ross went to Paris
+France where she bought my bead purse and pink parasol and I thought
+I would like to see a street with beautiful bright-colored things
+sparkling and hanging in the store windows.
+
+Then when the missionaries from Syria came to stay at the brick house
+Mrs. Burch said that after I had experienced religion I must learn music
+and train my voice and go out to heathen lands and save souls, so I
+thought that would be my career. But we girls tried to have a branch and
+be home missionaries and it did not work well. Emma Jane's father would
+not let her have her birthday party when he found out what she had done
+and Aunt Jane sent me up to Jake Moody's to tell him we did not mean
+to be rude when we asked him to go to meeting more often. He said all
+right, but just let him catch that little dough-faced Perkins young one
+in his yard once more and she'd have reason to remember the call, which
+was just as rude and impolite as our trying to lead him to a purer and a
+better life.
+
+Then Uncle Jerry and Mr. Aladdin and Miss Dearborn liked my
+compositions, and I thought I'd better be a writer, for I must be
+something the minute I'm seventeen, or how shall we ever get the
+mortgage off the farm? But even that hope is taken away from me now,
+for Uncle Jerry made fun of my story Lancelot Or The Parted Lovers and I
+have decided to be a teacher like Miss Dearborn.
+
+The pathetic announcement of a change in the career and life purposes of
+Rebecca was brought about by her reading the grown-up story to Mr. and
+Mrs. Jeremiah Cobb after supper in the orchard. Uncle Jerry was the
+person who had maintained all along that Riverboro people would not make
+a story; and Lancelot or The Parted Lovers was intended to refute that
+assertion at once and forever; an assertion which Rebecca regarded
+(quite truly) as untenable, though why she certainly never could have
+explained. Unfortunately Lancelot was a poor missionary, quite unfitted
+for the high achievements to which he was destined by the youthful
+novelist, and Uncle Jerry, though a stage-driver and no reading man, at
+once perceived the flabbiness and transparency of the Parted Lovers the
+moment they were held up to his inspection.
+
+“You see Riverboro people WILL make a story!” asserted Rebecca
+triumphantly as she finished her reading and folded the paper. “And it
+all came from my noticing the river drivers' tracks by the roadside, and
+wondering about them; and wondering always makes stories; the minister
+says so.”
+
+“Ye-es,” allowed Uncle Jerry reflectively, tipping his chair back
+against the apple tree and forcing his slow mind to violent and
+instantaneous action, for Rebecca was his pride and joy; a person, in
+his opinion, of superhuman talent, one therefore to be “whittled into
+shape” if occasion demanded.
+
+“It's a Riverboro story, sure enough, because you've got the river
+and the bridge and the hill and the drivers all right there in it; but
+there's something awful queer bout it; the folks don't act Riverboro,
+and don't talk Riverboro, cordin' to my notions. I call it a reg'lar
+book story.”
+
+“But,” objected Rebecca, “the people in Cinderella didn't act like us,
+and you thought that was a beautiful story when I told it to you.”
+
+“I know,” replied Uncle Jerry, gaining eloquence in the heat of
+argument. “They didn't act like us, but 't any rate they acted like
+'emselves! Somehow they was all of a piece. Cinderella was a little too
+good, mebbe, and the sisters was most too thunderin' bad to live on the
+face o' the earth, and that fayry old lady that kep' the punkin' coach
+up her sleeve--well, anyhow, you jest believe that punkin' coach, rats,
+mice, and all, when you're hearin' bout it, fore ever you stop to think
+it ain't so.
+
+“I don' know how tis, but the folks in that Cinderella story seem to
+match together somehow; they're all pow'ful onlikely--the prince feller
+with the glass slipper, and the hull bunch; but jest the same you kind
+o' gulp em all down in a lump. But land, Rebecky, nobody'd swaller that
+there village maiden o' your'n, and as for what's-his-name Littlefield,
+that come out o' them bushes, such a feller never 'd a' be'n IN bushes!
+No, Rebecky, you're the smartest little critter there is in this
+township, and you beat your Uncle Jerry all holler when it comes to
+usin' a lead pencil, but I say that ain't no true Riverboro story! Look
+at the way they talk! What was that' bout being BETROTHED'?”
+
+“Betrothed is a genteel word for engaged to be married,” explained the
+crushed and chastened author; and it was fortunate the doting old man
+did not notice her eyes in the twilight, or he might have known that
+tears were not far away.
+
+“Well, that's all right, then; I'm as ignorant as Cooper's cow when
+it comes to the dictionary. How about what's-his-name callin' the girl
+'Naysweet'?”
+
+“I thought myself that sounded foolish,:” confessed Rebecca; “but it's
+what the Doctor calls Cora when he tries to persuade her not to quarrel
+with his mother who comes to live with them. I know they don't say it in
+Riverboro or Temperance, but I thought perhaps it was Boston talk.”
+
+“Well, it ain't!” asserted Mr. Cobb decisively. “I've druv Boston men
+up in the stage from Milltown many's the time, and none of em ever
+said Naysweet to me, nor nothin'like it. They talked like folks, every
+mother's son of em! If I'd a' had that what's-his-name on the harricane
+deck' o' the stage and he tried any naysweetin' on me, I'd a' pitched
+him into the cornfield, side o' the road. I guess you ain't growed up
+enough for that kind of a story, Rebecky, for your poetry can't be beat
+in York County, that's sure, and your compositions are good enough to
+read out loud in town meetin' any day!”
+
+Rebecca brightened up a little and bade the old couple her usual
+affectionate good night, but she descended the hill in a saddened mood.
+When she reached the bridge the sun, a ball of red fire, was setting
+behind Squire Bean's woods. As she looked, it shone full on the broad,
+still bosom of the river, and for one perfect instant the trees on the
+shores were reflected, all swimming in a sea of pink. Leaning over the
+rail, she watched the light fade from crimson to carmine, from carmine
+to rose, from rose to amber, and from amber to gray. Then withdrawing
+Lancelot or the Parted Lovers from her apron pocket, she tore the pages
+into bits and dropped them into the water below with a sigh.
+
+“Uncle Jerry never said a word about the ending!” she thought; “and that
+was so nice!”
+
+And she was right; but while Uncle Jerry was an illuminating critic when
+it came to the actions and language of his Riverboro neighbors, he had
+no power to direct the young mariner when she “followed the gleam,” and
+used her imagination.
+
+OUR SECRET SOCIETY
+
+November, 187--
+
+Our Secret society has just had a splendid picnic in Candace Milliken's
+barn.
+
+Our name is the B.O.S.S., and not a single boy in the village has been
+able to guess it. It means Braid Over Shoulder Society, and that is the
+sign. All the members wear one of their braids over the right shoulder
+in front; the president's tied with red ribbon (I am the president) and
+all the rest tied with blue.
+
+To attract the attention of another member when in company or at a
+public place we take the braid between the thumb and little finger and
+stand carelessly on one leg. This is the Secret Signal and the password
+is Sobb (B.O.S.S. spelled backwards) which was my idea and is thought
+rather uncommon.
+
+One of the rules of the B.O.S.S. is that any member may be required to
+tell her besetting sin at any meeting, if asked to do so by a majority
+of the members.
+
+This was Candace Milliken's idea and much opposed by everybody, but when
+it came to a vote so many of the girls were afraid of offending Candace
+that they agreed because there was nobody else's father and mother
+who would let us picnic in their barn and use their plow, harrow,
+grindstone, sleigh, carryall, pung, sled, and wheelbarrow, which we did
+and injured hardly anything.
+
+They asked me to tell my besetting sin at the very first meeting, and it
+nearly killed me to do it because it is such a common greedy one. It is
+that I can't bear to call the other girls when I have found a thick spot
+when we are out berrying in the summer time.
+
+After I confessed, which made me dreadfully ashamed, every one of the
+girls seemed surprised and said they had never noticed that one but had
+each thought of something very different that I would be sure to think
+was my besetting sin. Then Emma Jane said that rather than tell hers she
+would resign from the Society and miss the picnic. So it made so
+much trouble that Candace gave up. We struck out the rule from the
+constitution and I had told my sin for nothing.
+
+The reason we named ourselves the B.O.S.S. is that Minnie Smellie has
+had her head shaved after scarlet fever and has no braid, so she can't
+be a member.
+
+I don't want her for a member but I can't be happy thinking she will
+feel slighted, and it takes away half the pleasure of belonging to the
+Society myself and being president.
+
+That, I think, is the principal trouble about doing mean and unkind
+things; that you can't do wrong and feel right, or be bad and feel good.
+If you only could you could do anything that came into your mind yet
+always be happy.
+
+Minnie Smellie spoils everything she comes into but I suppose we
+other girls must either have our hair shaved and call ourselves The
+Baldheadians or let her be some kind of a special officer in the
+B.O.S.S.
+
+She might be the B.I.T.U.D. member (Braid in the Upper Drawer), for
+there is where Mrs. Smellie keeps it now that it is cut off.
+
+WINTER THOUGHTS
+
+March, 187--
+
+It is not such a cold day for March and I am up in the barn chamber with
+my coat and hood on and Aunt Jane's waterproof and my mittens.
+
+After I do three pages I am going to hide away this book in the haymow
+till spring.
+
+Perhaps they get made into icicles on the way but I do not seem to have
+any thoughts in the winter time. The barn chamber is full of thoughts in
+warm weather. The sky gives them to me, and the trees and flowers, and
+the birds, and the river; but now it is always gray and nipping, the
+branches are bare and the river is frozen.
+
+It is too cold to write in my bedroom but while we still kept an open
+fire I had a few thoughts, but now there is an air-tight stove in the
+dining room where we sit, and we seem so close together, Aunt Miranda,
+Aunt Jane and I that I don't like to write in my book for fear they will
+ask me to read out loud my secret thoughts.
+
+I have just read over the first part of my Thought Book and I have
+outgrown it all, just exactly as I have outgrown my last year's drab
+cashmere.
+
+It is very queer how anybody can change so fast in a few months, but I
+remember that Emma Jane's cat had kittens the day my book was bought at
+Watson's store. Mrs. Perkins kept the prettiest white one, Abijah Flagg
+drowning all the others.
+
+It seems strange to me that cats will go on having kittens when they
+know what becomes of them! We were very sad about it, but Mrs. Perkins
+said it was the way of the world and how things had to be.
+
+I cannot help being glad that they do not do the same with children, or
+John and Jenny Mira Mark and me would all have had stones tied to our
+necks and been dropped into the deepest part of Sunny Brook, for Hannah
+and Fanny are the only truly handsome ones in the family.
+
+Mrs. Perkins says I dress up well, but never being dressed up it does
+not matter much. At least they didn't wait to dress up the kittens to
+see how they would improve, before drowning them, but decided right
+away.
+
+Emma Jane's kitten that was born the same day this book was is now quite
+an old cat who knows the way of the world herself, and how things have
+to be, for she has had one batch of kittens drowned already.
+
+So perhaps it is not strange that my Thought Book seems so babyish and
+foolish to me when I think of all I have gone through and the millions
+of things I have learned, and how much better I spell than I did ten
+months ago.
+
+My fingers are cold through the mittens, so good-bye dear Thought Book,
+friend of my childhood, now so far far behind me!
+
+I will hide you in the haymow where you'll be warm and cosy all the long
+winter and where nobody can find you again in the summer time but your
+affectionate author,
+
+Rebecca Rowena Randall.
+
+
+
+
+Fourth Chronicle. A TRAGEDY IN MILLINERY
+
+
+I
+
+Emma Jane Perkins's new winter dress was a blue and green Scotch plaid
+poplin, trimmed with narrow green velvet-ribbon and steel nail-heads.
+She had a gray jacket of thick furry cloth with large steel buttons
+up the front, a pair of green kid gloves, and a gray felt hat with an
+encircling band of bright green feathers. The band began in front with
+a bird's head and ended behind with a bird's tail, and angels could have
+desired no more beautiful toilette. That was her opinion, and it was
+shared to the full by Rebecca.
+
+But Emma Jane, as Rebecca had once described her to Mr. Adam Ladd, was
+a rich blacksmith's daughter, and she, Rebecca, was a little half-orphan
+from a mortgaged farm “up Temperance way,” dependent upon her spinster
+aunts for board, clothes, and schooling. Scotch plaid poplins were
+manifestly not for her, but dark-colored woolen stuffs were, and
+mittens, and last winter's coats and furs.
+
+And how about hats? Was there hope in store for her there? she wondered,
+as she walked home from the Perkins house, full of admiration for Emma
+Jane's winter outfit, and loyally trying to keep that admiration free
+from wicked envy. Her red-winged black hat was her second best, and
+although it was shabby she still liked it, but it would never do for
+church, even in Aunt Miranda's strange and never-to-be-comprehended
+views of suitable raiment.
+
+There was a brown felt turban in existence, if one could call it
+existence when it had been rained on, snowed on, and hailed on for two
+seasons; but the trimmings had at any rate perished quite off the face
+of the earth, that was one comfort!
+
+Emma Jane had said, rather indiscreetly, that at the village milliner's
+at Milliken's Mills there was a perfectly elegant pink breast to be had,
+a breast that began in a perfectly elegant solferino and terminated in a
+perfectly elegant magenta; two colors much in vogue at that time. If
+the old brown hat was to be her portion yet another winter, would Aunt
+Miranda conceal its deficiencies from a carping world beneath the shaded
+solferino breast? WOULD she, that was the question?
+
+Filled with these perplexing thoughts, Rebecca entered the brick house,
+hung up her hood in the entry, and went into the dining-room.
+
+Miss Jane was not there, but Aunt Miranda sat by the window with her lap
+full of sewing things, and a chair piled with pasteboard boxes by her
+side. In one hand was the ancient, battered, brown felt turban, and in
+the other were the orange and black porcupine 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 hateful porcupine 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 breath freely 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 the plume of Henry
+of Navarre.
+
+Rebecca was resigned, if not greatly comforted, but she had grace enough
+to conceal her feelings, now that she knew economy was at the root
+of some of her aunt's decrees in matters of dress; and she managed to
+forget the solferino breast, save in sleep, where a vision of it had a
+way of appearing to her, dangling from the ceiling, and dazzling her
+so with its rich color that she used to hope the milliner would sell it
+that she might never be tempted with it when she passed the shop window.
+
+One day, not long afterward, Miss Miranda borrowed Mr. Perkins's horse
+and wagon and took Rebecca with her on a drive to Union, to see about
+some sausage meat and head cheese. She intended to call on Mrs. Cobb,
+order a load of pine wood from Mr. Strout on the way, and leave some
+rags for a rug with old Mrs. Pease, so that the journey could be made
+as profitable as possible, consistent with the loss of time and the wear
+and tear on her second-best black dress.
+
+The red-winged black hat was forcibly removed from Rebecca's head just
+before starting, and the nightmare turban substituted.
+
+“You might as well begin to wear it first as last,” remarked Miranda,
+while Jane stood in the side door and sympathized secretly with Rebecca.
+
+“I will!” said Rebecca, ramming the stiff turban down on her head with a
+vindictive grimace, and snapping the elastic under her long braids; “but
+it makes me think of what Mr. Robinson said when the minister told him
+his mother-in-law would ride in the same buggy with him at his wife's
+funeral.”
+
+“I can't see how any speech of Mr. Robinson's, made years an' years ago,
+can have anything to do with wearin' your turban down to Union,” said
+Miranda, settling the lap robe over her knees.
+
+“Well, it can; because he said: Have it that way, then, but it'll spile
+the hull blamed trip for me!'”
+
+Jane closed the door suddenly, partly because she experienced a desire
+to smile (a desire she had not felt for years before Rebecca came to
+the brick house to live), and partly because she had no wish to overhear
+what her sister would say when she took in the full significance of
+Rebecca's anecdote, which was a favorite one with Mr. Perkins.
+
+It was a cold blustering day with a high wind that promised to bring an
+early fall of snow. The trees were stripped bare of leaves, the
+ground was hard, and the wagon wheels rattled noisily over the
+thank-you-ma'ams.
+
+“I'm glad I wore my Paisley shawl over my cloak,” said Miranda. “Be you
+warm enough, Rebecca? Tie that white rigolette tighter round your neck.
+The wind fairly blows through my bones. I most wish t we'd waited till
+a pleasanter day, for this Union road is all up hill or down, and we
+shan't get over the ground fast, it's so rough. Don't forget, when you
+go into Scott's, to say I want all the trimmin's when they send me the
+pork, for mebbe I can try out a little mite o' lard. The last load o'
+pine's gone turrible quick; I must see if “Bijah Flagg can't get us some
+cut-rounds at the mills, when he hauls for Squire Bean next time. Keep
+your mind on your drivin', Rebecca, and don't look at the trees and the
+sky so much. It's the same sky and same trees that have been here right
+along. Go awful slow down this hill and walk the hoss over Cook's Brook
+bridge, for I always suspicion it's goin' to break down under me, an' I
+shouldn't want to be dropped into that fast runnin' water this cold day.
+It'll be froze stiff by this time next week. Hadn't you better get out
+and lead”--
+
+The rest of the sentence was very possibly not vital, but at any rate
+it was never completed, for in the middle of the bridge a fierce gale
+of wind took Miss Miranda's Paisley shawl and blew it over her head. The
+long heavy ends whirled in opposite directions and wrapped themselves
+tightly about her wavering bonnet. Rebecca had the whip and the reins,
+and in trying to rescue her struggling aunt could not steady her own
+hat, which was suddenly torn from her head and tossed against the bridge
+rail, where it trembled and flapped for an instant.
+
+“My hat! Oh! Aunt Miranda, my hateful hat!” cried Rebecca, never
+remembering at the instant how often she had prayed that the “fretful
+porcupine” might some time vanish in this violent manner, since it
+refused to die a natural death.
+
+She had already stopped the horse, so, giving her aunt's shawl one last
+desperate twitch, she slipped out between the wagon wheels, and darted
+in the direction of the hated object, the loss of which had dignified it
+with a temporary value and importance.
+
+The stiff brown turban rose in the air, then dropped and flew along the
+bridge; Rebecca pursued; it danced along and stuck between two of the
+railings; Rebecca flew after it, her long braids floating in the wind.
+
+“Come back! Come back! Don't leave me alone with the team. I won't have
+it! Come back, and leave your hat!”
+
+Miranda had at length extricated herself from the submerging shawl, but
+she was so blinded by the wind, and so confused that she did not measure
+the financial loss involved in her commands.
+
+Rebecca heard, but her spirit being in arms, she made one more mad
+scramble for the vagrant hat, which now seemed possessed with an evil
+spirit, for it flew back and forth, and bounded here and there, like
+a living thing, finally distinguishing itself by blowing between the
+horse's front and hind legs, Rebecca trying to circumvent it by going
+around the wagon, and meeting it on the other side.
+
+It was no use; as she darted from behind the wheels the wind gave the
+hat an extra whirl, and scurrying in the opposite direction it soared
+above the bridge rail and disappeared into the rapid water below.
+
+“Get in again!” cried Miranda, holding on her bonnet. “You done your
+best and it can't be helped, I only wish't I'd let you wear your black
+hat as you wanted to; and I wish't we'd never come such a day! The shawl
+has broke the stems of the velvet geraniums in my bonnet, and the wind
+has blowed away my shawl pin and my back comb. I'd like to give up and
+turn right back this minute, but I don't like to borrer Perkins's hoss
+again this month. When we get up in the woods you can smooth your hair
+down and tie the rigolette over your head and settle what's left of my
+bonnet; it'll be an expensive errant, this will!”
+
+ * * * * *
+
+II
+
+It was not till next morning that Rebecca's heart really began its song
+of thanksgiving. Her Aunt Miranda announced at breakfast, that as Mrs.
+Perkins was going to Milliken's Mills, Rebecca might go too, and buy a
+serviceable hat.
+
+“You mustn't pay over two dollars and a half, and you mustn't get the
+pink bird without Mrs. Perkins says, and the milliner says, that it
+won't fade nor moult. Don't buy a light-colored felt because you'll get
+sick of it in two or three years same as you did the brown one. I always
+liked the shape of the brown one, and you'll never get another trimmin'
+that'll wear like them quills.”
+
+“I hope not!” thought Rebecca.
+
+“If you had put your elastic under your chin, same as you used to, and
+not worn it behind because you think it's more grown-up an' fash'onable,
+the wind never'd a' took the hat off your head, and you wouldn't a' lost
+it; but the mischief's done and you can go right over to Mis' Perkins
+now, so you won't miss her nor keep her waitin'. The two dollars and a
+half is in an envelope side o' the clock.”
+
+Rebecca swallowed the last spoonful of picked-up codfish on her plate,
+wiped her lips, and rose from her chair happier than the seraphs in
+Paradise.
+
+The porcupine quills had disappeared from her life, and without any
+fault or violence on her part. She was wholly innocent and virtuous, but
+nevertheless she was going to have a new hat with the solferino breast,
+should the adored object prove, under rigorous examination, to be
+practically indestructible.
+
+“Whene'er I take my walks abroad, How many hats I'll see; But if they're
+trimmed with hedgehog quills They'll not belong to me!”
+
+So she improvised, secretly and ecstatically, as she went towards the
+side entry.
+
+“There's 'Bijah Flagg drivin' in,” said Miss Miranda, going to the
+window. “Step out and see what he's got, Jane; some passel from the
+Squire, I guess. It's a paper bag and it may be a punkin, though he
+wouldn't wrop up a punkin, come to think of it! Shet the dinin' room
+door, Jane; it's turrible drafty. Make haste, for the Squire's hoss
+never stan's still a minute cept when he's goin'!”
+
+Abijah Flagg alighted and approached the side door with a grin.
+
+“Guess what I've got for ye, Rebecky?”
+
+No throb of prophetic soul warned Rebecca of her approaching doom.
+
+“Nodhead apples?” she sparkled, looking as bright and rosy and
+satin-skinned as an apple herself.
+
+“No; guess again.”
+
+“A flowering geranium?”
+
+“Guess again!”
+
+“Nuts? Oh! I can't, Bijah; I'm just going to Milliken's Mills on an
+errand, and I'm afraid of missing Mrs. Perkins. Show me quick! Is it
+really for me, or for Aunt Miranda?”
+
+“Reely for you, I guess!” and he opened the large brown paper bag and
+drew from it the remains of a water-soaked hat!
+
+They WERE remains, but there was no doubt of their nature and substance.
+They had clearly been a hat in the past, and one could even suppose
+that, when resuscitated, they might again assume their original form in
+some near and happy future.
+
+Miss Miranda, full of curiosity, joined the group in the side entry at
+this dramatic moment.
+
+“Well, I never!” she exclaimed. “Where, and how under the canopy, did
+you ever?”
+
+“I was working on the dam at Union Falls yesterday,” chuckled Abijah,
+with a pleased glance at each of the trio in turn, “an' I seen this
+little bunnit skippin' over the water jest as Becky does over the road.
+It's shaped kind o' like a boat, an' gorry, ef it wa'nt sailin' jest
+like a boat! Where hev I seen that kind of a bristlin' plume?' thinks
+I.”
+
+(“Where indeed!” thought Rebecca stormily.)
+
+“Then it come to me that I'd drove that plume to school and drove it to
+meetin' and drove it to the Fair an'drove it most everywheres on Becky.
+So I reached out a pole an' ketched it fore it got in amongst the logs
+an' come to any damage, an' here it is! The hat's passed in its checks,
+I guess; looks kind as if a wet elephant had stepped on it; but the
+plume's bout's good as new! I reely fetched the hat beck for the sake o'
+the plume.”
+
+“It was real good of you, 'Bijah, an' we're all of us obliged to you,”
+ said Miranda, as she poised the hat on one hand and turned it slowly
+with the other.
+
+“Well, I do say,” she exclaimed, “and I guess I've said it before, that
+of all the wearing' plumes that ever I see, that one's the wearin'est!
+Seems though it just wouldn't give up. Look at the way it's held Mis'
+Cobb's dye; it's about as brown's when it went int' the water.”
+
+“Dyed, but not a mite dead,” grinned Abijah, who was somewhat celebrated
+for his puns.
+
+“And I declare,” Miranda continued, “when you think o' the fuss they
+make about ostriches, killin' em off by hundreds for the sake o' their
+feathers that'll string out and spoil in one hard rainstorm,--an' all
+the time lettin' useful porcupines run round with their quills on, why
+I can't hardly understand it, without milliners have found out jest
+how good they do last, an' so they won't use em for trimmin'. 'Bijah's
+right; the hat ain't no more use, Rebecca, but you can buy you another
+this mornin'--any color or shape you fancy--an' have Miss Morton sew
+these brown quills on to it with some kind of a buckle or a bow, jest
+to hide the roots. Then you'll be fixed for another season, thanks to
+'Bijah.”
+
+Uncle Jerry and Aunt Sarah Cobb were made acquainted before very long
+with the part that destiny, or Abijah Flagg, had played in Rebecca's
+affairs, for, accompanied by the teacher, she walked to the old stage
+driver's that same afternoon. Taking off her new hat with the venerable
+trimming, she laid it somewhat ostentatiously upside down on the kitchen
+table and left the room, dimpling a little more than usual.
+
+Uncle Jerry rose from his seat, and, crossing the room, looked curiously
+into the hat and found that a circular paper lining was neatly pinned
+in the crown, and that it bore these lines, which were read aloud with
+great effect by Miss Dearborn, and with her approval were copied in the
+Thought Book for the benefit of posterity:
+
+“It was the bristling porcupine, As he stood on his native heath, He
+said, 'I'll pluck me some immortelles And make me up a wreath. For tho'
+I may not live myself To more than a hundred and ten, My quills will
+last till crack of doom, And maybe after then. They can be colored blue
+or green Or orange, brown, or red, But often as they may be dyed They
+never will be dead.' And so the bristling porcupine As he stood on his
+native heath, Said, I think I'll pluck me some immmortelles And make me
+up a wreath.'
+
+“R.R.R.”
+
+
+
+
+Fifth Chronicle. THE SAVING OF THE COLORS
+
+
+I
+
+Even when Rebecca had left school, having attained the great age of
+seventeen and therefore able to look back over a past incredibly long
+and full, she still reckoned time not by years, but by certain important
+occurrences.
+
+There was the year her father died; the year she left Sunnybrook Farm to
+come to her aunts in Riverboro; the year Sister Hannah became engaged;
+the year little Mira died; the year Abijah Flagg ceased to be Squire
+Bean's chore-boy, and astounded Riverboro by departing for Limerick
+Academy in search of an education; and finally the year of her
+graduation, which, to the mind of seventeen, seems rather the
+culmination than the beginning of existence.
+
+Between these epoch-making events certain other happenings stood out in
+bold relief against the gray of dull daily life.
+
+There was the day she first met her friend of friends, “Mr. Aladdin,”
+ and the later, even more radiant one when he gave her the coral
+necklace. There was the day the Simpson family moved away from Riverboro
+under a cloud, and she kissed Clara Belle fervently at the cross-roads,
+telling her that she would always be faithful. There was the visit of
+the Syrian missionaries to the brick house. That was a bright, romantic
+memory, as strange and brilliant as the wonderful little birds' wings
+and breasts that the strangers brought from the Far East. She remembered
+the moment they asked her to choose some for herself, and the rapture
+with which she stroked the beautiful things as they lay on the black
+haircloth sofa. Then there was the coming of the new minister, for
+though many were tried only one was chosen; and finally there was the
+flag-raising, a festivity that thrilled Riverboro and Edgewood society
+from centre to circumference, a festivity that took place just before
+she entered the Female Seminary at Wareham and said good-by to kind Miss
+Dearborn and the village school.
+
+There must have been other flag-raisings in history,--even the persons
+most interested in this particular one would grudgingly have allowed
+that much,--but it would have seemed to them improbable that any such
+flag-raising as theirs, either in magnitude of conception or brilliancy
+of actual performance, could twice glorify the same century. Of some
+pageants it is tacitly admitted that there can be no duplicates, and the
+flag-raising at Riverboro Centre was one of these; so that it is small
+wonder if Rebecca chose it as one of the important dates in her personal
+almanac.
+
+The new minister's wife was the being, under Providence, who had
+conceived the germinal idea of the flag.
+
+At this time the parish had almost settled down to the trembling belief
+that they were united on a pastor. In the earlier time a minister was
+chosen for life, and if he had faults, which was a probably enough
+contingency, and if his congregation had any, which is within the bounds
+of possibility, each bore with the other (not quite without friction),
+as old-fashioned husbands and wives once did, before the easy way out of
+the difficulty was discovered, or at least before it was popularized.
+
+The faithful old parson had died after thirty years' preaching,
+and perhaps the newer methods had begun to creep in, for it seemed
+impossible to suit the two communities most interested in the choice.
+
+The Rev. Mr. Davis, for example, was a spirited preacher, but persisted
+in keeping two horses in the parsonage stable, and in exchanging
+them whenever he could get faster ones. As a parochial visitor he was
+incomparable, dashing from house to house with such speed that he could
+cover the parish in a single afternoon. This sporting tendency, which
+would never have been remarked in a British parson, was frowned upon in
+a New England village, and Deacon Milliken told Mr. Davis, when giving
+him what he alluded to as his “walking papers,” that they didn't want
+the Edgewood church run by hoss power!
+
+The next candidate pleased Edgewood, where morning preaching was held,
+but the other parish, which had afternoon service, declined to accept
+him because he wore a wig--an ill-matched, crookedly applied wig.
+
+Number three was eloquent but given to gesticulation, and Mrs. Jere
+Burbank, the president of the Dorcas Society, who sat in a front pew,
+said she couldn't bear to see a preacher scramble round the pulpit hot
+Sundays.
+
+Number four, a genial, handsome man, gifted in prayer, was found to be
+a Democrat. The congregation was overwhelmingly Republican in its
+politics, and perceived something ludicrous, if not positively
+blasphemous, in a Democrat preaching the gospel. (“Ananias and
+Beelzebub'll be candidatin' here, first thing we know!” exclaimed the
+outraged Republican nominee for district attorney.)
+
+Number five had a feeble-minded child, which the hiring committee
+prophesied, would always be standing in the parsonage front yard, making
+talk for the other denominations.
+
+Number six was the Rev. Judson Baxter, the present incumbent; and he
+was voted to be as near perfection as a minister can be in this finite
+world. His young wife had a small income of her own, a distinct and
+unusual advantage, and the subscription committee hoped that they might
+not be eternally driving over the country to get somebody's fifty cents
+that had been over-due for eight months, but might take their onerous
+duties a little more easily.
+
+“It does seem as if our ministers were the poorest lot!” complained Mrs.
+Robinson. “If their salary is two months behindhand they begin to be
+nervous! Seems as though they might lay up a little before they come
+here, and not live from hand to mouth so! The Baxters seem quite
+different, and I only hope they won't get wasteful and run into debt.
+They say she keeps the parlor blinds open bout half the time, and the
+room is lit up so often evenin's that the neighbors think her and Mr.
+Baxter must set in there. It don't seem hardly as if it could be so, but
+Mrs. Buzzell says tis, and she says we might as well say good-by to the
+parlor carpet, which is church property, for the Baxters are living all
+over it!”
+
+This criticism was the only discordant note in the chorus of praise, and
+the people gradually grew accustomed to the open blinds and the overused
+parlor carpet, which was just completing its twenty-fifth year of honest
+service.
+
+Mrs. Baxter communicated her patriotic idea of a new flag to the Dorcas
+Society, proposing that the women should cut and make it themselves.
+
+“It may not be quite as good as those manufactured in the large cities,”
+ she said, “but we shall be proud to see our home-made flag flying in the
+breeze, and it will mean all the more to the young voters growing up, to
+remember that their mothers made it with their own hands.”
+
+“How would it do to let some of the girls help?” modestly asked Miss
+Dearborn, the Riverboro teacher. “We might choose the best sewers and
+let them put in at least a few stitches, so that they can feel they have
+a share in it.”
+
+“Just the thing!” exclaimed Mrs. Baxter. “We can cut the stripes and sew
+them together, and after we have basted on the white stars the girls can
+apply them to the blue ground. We must have it ready for the campaign
+rally, and we couldn't christen it at a better time than in this
+presidential year.”
+
+II
+
+In this way the great enterprise was started, and day by day the
+preparations went forward in the two villages.
+
+The boys, as future voters and fighters, demanded an active share in
+the proceedings, and were organized by Squire Bean into a fife and drum
+corps, so that by day and night martial but most inharmonious music woke
+the echoes, and deafened mothers felt their patriotism oozing out at the
+soles of their shoes.
+
+Dick Carter was made captain, for his grandfather had a gold medal
+given him by Queen Victoria for rescuing three hundred and twenty-six
+passengers from a sinking British vessel. Riverboro thought it high time
+to pay some graceful tribute to Great Britain in return for her handsome
+conduct to Captain Nahum Carter, and human imagination could contrive
+nothing more impressive than a vicarious share in the flag raising.
+
+Living Perkins tried to be happy in the ranks, for he was offered no
+official position, principally, Mrs. Smellie observed, because “his
+father's war record wa'nt clean.” “Oh, yes! Jim Perkins went to the
+war,” she continued. “He hid out behind the hencoop when they was
+draftin', but they found him and took him along. He got into one battle,
+too, somehow or nother, but he run away from it. He was allers cautious,
+Jim was; if he ever see trouble of any kind comin' towards him, he was
+out o' sight fore it got a chance to light. He said eight dollars a
+month, without bounty, wouldn't pay HIM to stop bullets for. He wouldn't
+fight a skeeter, Jim wouldn't, but land! we ain't to war all the time,
+and he's a good neighbor and a good blacksmith.”
+
+Miss Dearborn was to be Columbia and the older girls of the two schools
+were to be the States. Such trade in muslins and red, white, and blue
+ribbons had never been known since “Watson kep' store,” and the number
+of brief white petticoats hanging out to bleach would have caused the
+passing stranger to imagine Riverboro a continual dancing school.
+
+Juvenile virtue, both male and female, reached an almost impossible
+height, for parents had only to lift a finger and say, “you shan't go
+to the flag raising!” and the refractory spirit at once armed itself for
+new struggles toward the perfect life.
+
+Mr. Jeremiah Cobb had consented to impersonate Uncle Sam, and was to
+drive Columbia and the States to the “raising” on the top of his own
+stage. Meantime the boys were drilling, the ladies were cutting and
+basting and stitching, and the girls were sewing on stars; for the
+starry part of the spangled banner was to remain with each of them in
+turn until she had performed her share of the work.
+
+It was felt by one and all a fine and splendid service indeed to help
+in the making of the flag, and if Rebecca was proud to be of the chosen
+ones, so was her Aunt Jane Sawyer, who had taught her all her delicate
+stitches.
+
+On a long-looked-for afternoon in August the minister's wife drove up
+to the brick house door, and handed out the great piece of bunting to
+Rebecca, who received it in her arms with as much solemnity as if it had
+been a child awaiting baptismal rites.
+
+“I'm so glad!” she sighed happily. “I thought it would never come my
+turn!”
+
+“You should have had it a week ago, but Huldah Meserve upset the ink
+bottle over her star, and we had to baste on another one. You are the
+last, though, and then we shall sew the stars and stripes together, and
+Seth Strout will get the top ready for hanging. Just think, it won't
+be many days before you children will be pulling the rope with all your
+strength, the band will be playing, the men will be cheering, and the
+new flag will go higher and higher, till the red, white, and blue shows
+against the sky!”
+
+Rebecca's eyes fairly blazed. “Shall I fell on' my star, or buttonhole
+it?” she asked.
+
+“Look at all the others and make the most beautiful stitches you can,
+that's all. It is your star, you know, and you can even imagine it is
+your state, and try and have it the best of all. If everybody else
+is trying to do the same thing with her state, that will make a great
+country, won't it?”
+
+Rebecca's eyes spoke glad confirmation of the idea. “My star, my state!”
+ she repeated joyously. “Oh, Mrs. Baxter, I'll make such fine stitches
+you'll think the white grew out of the blue!”
+
+The new minister's wife looked pleased to see her spark kindle a flame
+in the young heart. “You can sew so much of yourself into your star,”
+ she went on in the glad voice that made her so winsome, “that when you
+are an old lady you can put on your specs and find it among all the
+others. Good-by! Come up to the parsonage Saturday afternoon; Mr. Baxter
+wants to see you.”
+
+“Judson, help that dear little genius of a Rebecca all you can!” she
+said that night, when they were cosily talking in their parlor and
+living “all over” the parish carpet. “I don't know what she may, or may
+not, come to, some day; I only wish she were ours! If you could have
+seen her clasp the flag tight in her arms and put her cheek against it,
+and watched the tears of feeling start in her eyes when I told her
+that her star was her state! I kept whispering to myself, Covet not thy
+neighbor's child!'”
+
+Daily at four o'clock Rebecca scrubbed her hands almost to the bone,
+brushed her hair, and otherwise prepared herself in body, mind, and
+spirit for the consecrated labor of sewing on her star. All the time
+that her needle cautiously, conscientiously formed the tiny stitches she
+was making rhymes “in her head,” her favorite achievement being this:
+
+“Your star, my star, all our stars together, They make the dear old
+banner proud To float in the bright fall weather.”
+
+There was much discussion as to which of the girls should impersonate
+the State of Maine, for that was felt to be the highest honor in the
+gift of the committee.
+
+Alice Robinson was the prettiest child in the village, but she was very
+shy and by no means a general favorite.
+
+Minnie Smellie possessed the handsomest dress and a pair of white
+slippers and open-work stockings that nearly carried the day. Still, as
+Miss Delia Weeks well said, she was so stupid that if she should
+suck her thumb in the very middle of the exercises nobody'd be a dite
+surprised!
+
+Huldah Meserve was next voted upon, and the fact that if she were not
+chosen her father might withdraw his subscription to the brass band fund
+was a matter for grave consideration.
+
+“I kind o' hate to have such a giggler for the State of Maine; let her
+be the Goddess of Liberty,” proposed Mrs. Burbank, whose patriotism was
+more local than national.
+
+“How would Rebecca Randall do for Maine, and let her speak some of her
+verses?” suggested the new minister's wife, who, could she have had her
+way, would have given all the prominent parts to Rebecca, from Uncle Sam
+down.
+
+So, beauty, fashion, and wealth having been tried and found wanting, the
+committee discussed the claims of talent, and it transpired that to
+the awe-stricken Rebecca fell the chief plum in the pudding. It was a
+tribute to her gifts that there was no jealousy or envy among the other
+girls; they readily conceded her special fitness for the role.
+
+Her life had not been pressed down full to the brim of pleasures, and
+she had a sort of distrust of joy in the bud. Not until she saw it in
+full radiance of bloom did she dare embrace it. She had never read
+any verse but Byron, Felicia Hemans, bits of “Paradise Lost,” and the
+selections in the school readers, but she would have agreed heartily
+with the poet who said:
+
+“Not by appointment do we meet delight And joy; they heed not our
+expectancy; But round some corner in the streets of life They on a
+sudden clasp us with a smile.”
+
+For many nights before the raising, when she went to her bed she said to
+herself, after she had finished her prayers: “It can't be true that I'm
+chosen for the State of Maine! It just CAN'T be true! Nobody could be
+good ENOUGH, but oh, I'll try to be as good as I can! To be going to
+Wareham Seminary next week and to be the State of Maine too! Oh! I must
+pray HARD to God to keep me meek and humble!”
+
+III
+
+The flag was to be raised on a Tuesday, and on the previous Sunday it
+became known to the children that Clara Belle Simpson was coming back
+from Acreville, coming to live with Mrs. Fogg and take care of the
+baby, called by the neighborhood boys “the Fogg horn,” on account of his
+excellent voice production.
+
+Clara Belle was one of Miss Dearborn's original flock, and if she
+were left wholly out of the festivities she would be the only girl of
+suitable age to be thus slighted; it seemed clear to the juvenile mind,
+therefore, that neither she nor her descendants would ever recover from
+such a blow. But, under all the circumstances, would she be allowed to
+join in the procession? Even Rebecca, the optimistic, feared not,
+and the committee confirmed her fears by saying that Abner Simpson's
+daughter certainly could not take any prominent part in the ceremony,
+but they hoped that Mrs. Fogg would allow her to witness it.
+
+When Abner Simpson, urged by the town authorities, took his wife and
+seven children away from Riverboro to Acreville, just over the border in
+the next county, Riverboro went to bed leaving its barn and shed doors
+unfastened, and drew long breaths of gratitude to Providence.
+
+Of most winning disposition and genial manners, Mr. Simpson had not
+that instinctive comprehension of property rights which renders a man a
+valuable citizen.
+
+Squire Bean was his nearest neighbor, and he conceived the novel idea
+of paying Simpson five dollars a year not to steal from him, a method
+occasionally used in the Highlands in the early days.
+
+The bargain was struck, and adhered to religiously for a twelve-month,
+but on the second of January Mr. Simpson announced the verbal contract
+as formally broken.
+
+“I didn't know what I was doin' when I made it, Squire,” he urged.
+“In the first place, it's a slur on my reputation and an injury to my
+self-respect. Secondly, it's a nervous strain on me; and thirdly, five
+dollars don't pay me!”
+
+Squire Bean was so struck with the unique and convincing nature of
+these arguments that he could scarcely restrain his admiration, and he
+confessed to himself afterward, that unless Simpson's mental attitude
+could be changed he was perhaps a fitter subject for medical science
+than the state prison.
+
+Abner was a most unusual thief, and conducted his operations with a tact
+and neighborly consideration none too common in the profession. He would
+never steal a man's scythe in haying-time, nor his fur lap-robe in the
+coldest of the winter. The picking of a lock offered no attractions
+to him; “he wa'n't no burglar,” he would have scornfully asserted. A
+strange horse and wagon hitched by the roadside was the most flagrant
+of his thefts; but it was the small things--the hatchet or axe on the
+chopping-block, the tin pans sunning at the side door, a stray garment
+bleaching on the grass, a hoe, rake, shovel, or a bag of early potatoes,
+that tempted him most sorely; and these appealed to him not so much for
+their intrinsic value as because they were so excellently adapted to
+swapping. The swapping was really the enjoyable part of the procedure,
+the theft was only a sad but necessary preliminary; for if Abner
+himself had been a man of sufficient property to carry on his business
+operations independently, it is doubtful if he would have helped himself
+so freely to his neighbor's goods.
+
+Riverboro regretted the loss of Mrs. Simpson, who was useful in
+scrubbing, cleaning, and washing, and was thought to exercise some
+influence over her predatory spouse. There was a story of their early
+married life, when they had a farm; a story to the effect that Mrs.
+Simpson always rode on every load of hay that her husband took to
+Milltown, with the view of keeping him sober through the day. After he
+turned out of the country road and approached the metropolis, it was
+said that he used to bury the docile lady in the load. He would then
+drive on to the scales, have the weight of the hay entered in the
+buyer's book, take his horses to the stable for feed and water, and when
+a favorable opportunity offered he would assist the hot and panting Mrs.
+Simpson out of the side or back of the rack, and gallantly brush the
+straw from her person. For this reason it was always asserted that Abner
+Simpson sold his wife every time he went to Milltown, but the story was
+never fully substantiated, and at all events it was the only suspected
+blot on meek Mrs. Simpson's personal reputation.
+
+As for the Simpson children, they were missed chiefly as familiar
+figures by the roadside; but Rebecca honestly loved Clara Belle,
+notwithstanding her Aunt Miranda's opposition to the intimacy. Rebecca's
+“taste for low company” was a source of continual anxiety to her aunt.
+
+“Anything that's human flesh is good enough for her!” Miranda groaned to
+Jane. “She'll ride with the rag-sack-and-bottle peddler just as quick as
+she would with the minister; she always sets beside the St. Vitus' dance
+young one at Sabbath school; and she's forever riggin' and onriggin'
+that dirty Simpson baby! She reminds me of a puppy that'll always go to
+everybody that'll have him!”
+
+It was thought very creditable to Mrs. Fogg that she sent for Clara
+Belle to live with her and go to school part of the year.
+
+“She'll be useful” said Mrs. Fogg, “and she'll be out of her father's
+way, and so keep honest; though she's no awful hombly I've no fears for
+her. A girl with her red hair, freckles, and cross-eyes can't fall into
+no kind of sin, I don't believe.”
+
+Mrs. Fogg requested that Clara Belle should be started on her journey
+from Acreville by train and come the rest of the way by stage, and she
+was disturbed to receive word on Sunday that Mr. Simpson had borrowed a
+“good roader” from a new acquaintance, and would himself drive the girl
+from Acreville to Riverboro, a distance of thirty-five miles. That he
+would arrive in their vicinity on the very night before the flag-raising
+was thought by Riverboro to be a public misfortune, and several
+residents hastily determined to deny themselves a sight of the
+festivities and remain watchfully on their own premises.
+
+On Monday afternoon the children were rehearsing their songs at the
+meeting-house. As Rebecca came out on the broad wooden steps she watched
+Mrs. Peter Meserve's buggy out of sight, for in front, wrapped in a
+cotton sheet, lay the previous flag. After a few chattering good-bys
+and weather prophecies with the other girls, she started on her homeward
+walk, dropping in at the parsonage to read her verses to the minister.
+
+He welcomed her gladly as she removed her white cotton gloves (hastily
+slipped on outside the door, for ceremony) and pushed back the funny hat
+with the yellow and black porcupine quills--the hat with which she made
+her first appearance in Riverboro society.
+
+“You've heard the beginning, Mr. Baxter; now will you please tell me if
+you like the last verse?” she asked, taking out her paper. “I've only
+read it to Alice Robinson, and I think perhaps she can never be a poet,
+though she's a splendid writer. Last year when she was twelve she wrote
+a birthday poem to herself, and she made natal' rhyme with Milton,.'
+which, of course, it wouldn't. I remember every verse ended:
+
+     'This is my day so natal
+     And I will follow Milton.'
+
+Another one of hers was written just because she couldn't help it, she
+said. This was it:
+
+     'Let me to the hills away,
+     Give me pen and paper;
+     I'll write until the earth will sway
+     The story of my Maker.'”
+
+The minister could scarcely refrain from smiling, but he controlled
+himself that he might lose none of Rebecca's quaint observations.
+When she was perfectly at ease, unwatched and uncriticised, she was a
+marvelous companion.
+
+“The name of the poem is going to be My Star,'” she continued, “and Mrs.
+Baxter gave me all the ideas, but somehow there's a kind of magicness
+when they get into poetry, don't you think so?” (Rebecca always talked
+to grown people as if she were their age, or, a more subtle and truer
+distinction, as if they were hers.)
+
+“It has often been so remarked, in different words,” agreed the
+minister.
+
+“Mrs. Baxter said that each star was a state, and if each state did its
+best we should have a splendid country. Then once she said that we ought
+to be glad the war is over and the States are all at peace together; and
+I thought Columbia must be glad, too, for Miss Dearborn says she's
+the mother of all the States. So I'm going to have it end like this: I
+didn't write it, I just sewed it while I was working on my star:
+
+     For it's your star, my star, all the stars together,
+     That make our country's flag so proud
+     To float in the bright fall weather.
+     Northern stars, Southern stars, stars of the East and West,
+     Side by side they lie at peace
+     On the dear flag's mother-breast.”
+
+“'Oh! many are the poets that are sown by nature,'” thought the
+minister, quoting Wordsworth to himself. “And I wonder what becomes of
+them! That's a pretty idea, little Rebecca, and I don't know whether
+you or my wife ought to have the more praise. What made you think of the
+stars lying on the flag's mother-breast'? Where did you get that word?”
+
+“Why” (and the young poet looked rather puzzled), “that's the way it is;
+the flag is the whole country--the mother--and the stars are the states.
+The stars had to lie somewhere: 'LAP' nor 'ARMS' wouldn't sound well
+with West,' so, of course, I said 'BREAST,'” Rebecca answered, with some
+surprise at the question; and the minister put his hand under her chin
+and kissed her softly on the forehead when he said good-by at the door.
+
+IV
+
+Rebecca walked rapidly along in the gathering twilight, thinking of the
+eventful morrow.
+
+As she approached the turning on the left called the old Milltown
+road, she saw a white horse and wagon, driven by a man with a rakish,
+flapping, Panama hat, come rapidly around the turn and disappear over
+the long hills leading down to the falls. There was no mistaking him;
+there never was another Abner Simpson, with his lean height, his bushy
+reddish hair, the gay cock of his hat, and the long piratical, upturned
+mustaches, which the boys used to say were used as hat-racks by the
+Simpson children at night.. The old Milltown road ran past Mrs. Fogg's
+house, so he must have left Clara Belle there, and Rebecca's heart
+glowed to think that her poor little friend need not miss the raising.
+
+She began to run now, fearful of being late for supper, and covered the
+ground to the falls in a brief time. As she crossed the bridge she again
+saw Abner Simpson's team, drawn up at the watering trough.
+
+Coming a little nearer, with the view of inquiring for the family, her
+quick eye caught sight of something unexpected. A gust of wind blew up
+a corner of a linen lap-robe in the back of the wagon, and underneath
+it she distinctly saw the white-sheeted bundle that held the flag; the
+bundle with a tiny, tiny spot of red bunting peeping out at one corner.
+It is true she had eaten, slept, dreamed red, white, and blue for weeks,
+but there was no mistaking the evidence of her senses; the idolized
+flag, longed for, worked for, sewed for, that flag was in the back of
+Abner Simpson's wagon, and if so, what would become of the raising?
+
+Acting on blind impulse, she ran toward the watering-trough, calling out
+in her clear treble: “Mr. Simpson! Oh, Mr. Simpson, will you let me ride
+a piece with you and hear all about Clara Belle? I'm going part way over
+to the Centre on an errand.” (So she was; a most important errand,--to
+recover the flag of her country at present in the hands of the foe!)
+
+Mr. Simpson turned round in his seat and cried heartily, “Certain sure I
+will!” for he liked the fair sex, young and old, and Rebecca had always
+been a prime favorite with him. “Climb right in! How's everybody? Glad
+to see ye! The folks talk bout ye from sun-up to sun-down, and Clara
+Belle can't hardly wait for a sight of ye!”
+
+Rebecca scrambled up, trembling and pale with excitement. She did not in
+the least know what was going to happen, but she was sure that the flag,
+when in the enemy's country, must be at least a little safer with the
+State of Maine sitting on top of it!
+
+Mr. Simpson began a long monologue about Acreville, the house he lived
+in, the pond in front of it, Mrs. Simpson's health, and various items of
+news about the children, varied by reports of his personal misfortunes.
+He put no questions, and asked no replies, so this gave the
+inexperienced soldier a few seconds to plan a campaign. There were
+three houses to pass; the Browns' at the corner, the Millikens', and the
+Robinsons' on the brow of the hill. If Mr. Robinson were in the front
+yard she might tell Mr. Simpson she wanted to call there and ask Mr.
+Robinson to hold the horse's head while she got out of the wagon.
+Then she might fly to the back before Mr. Simpson could realize the
+situation, and dragging out the precious bundle, sit on it hard, while
+Mr. Robinson settled the matter of ownership with Mr. Simpson.
+
+This was feasible, but it meant a quarrel between the two men, who held
+an ancient grudge against each other, and Mr. Simpson was a valiant
+fighter as the various sheriffs who had attempted to arrest him could
+cordially testify. It also meant that everybody in the village would
+hear of the incident and poor Clara Belle be branded again as the child
+of a thief.
+
+Another idea danced into her excited brain; such a clever one she could
+hardly believe it hers. She might call Mr. Robinson to the wagon, and
+when he came close to the wheels she might say, “all of a sudden”:
+“Please take the flag out of the back of the wagon, Mr. Robinson. We
+have brought it here for you to keep overnight.” Mr. Simpson might be
+so surprised that he would give up his prize rather than be suspected of
+stealing.
+
+But as they neared the Robinsons' house there was not a sign of life
+to be seen; so the last plan, ingenious though it was, was perforce
+abandoned.
+
+The road now lay between thick pine woods with no dwelling in sight.
+It was growing dusk and Rebecca was driving along the lonely way with a
+person who was generally called Slippery Simpson.
+
+Not a thought of fear crossed her mind, save the fear of bungling in
+her diplomacy, and so losing the flag. She knew Mr. Simpson well, and a
+pleasanter man was seldom to be met. She recalled an afternoon when he
+came home and surprised the whole school playing the Revolutionary War
+in his helter-skelter dooryard, and the way in which he had joined the
+British forces and impersonated General Burgoyne had greatly endeared
+him to her. The only difficulty was to find proper words for her
+delicate mission, for, of course, if Mr. Simpson's anger were aroused,
+he would politely push her out of the wagon and drive away with the
+flag. Perhaps if she led the conversation in the right direction an
+opportunity would present itself. She well remembered how Emma Jane
+Perkins had failed to convert Jacob Moody, simply because she failed to
+“lead up” to the delicate question of his manner of life. Clearing her
+throat nervously, she began: “Is it likely to be fair tomorrow?”
+
+“Guess so; clear as a bell. What's on foot; a picnic?”
+
+“No; we're to have a grand flag-raising!” (“That is,” she thought, “if
+we have any flag to raise!”)
+
+“That so? Where?”
+
+“The three villages are to club together and have a rally, and raise
+the flag at the Centre. There'll be a brass band, and speakers, and the
+Mayor of Portland, and the man that will be governor if he's elected,
+and a dinner in the Grange Hall, and we girls are chosen to raise the
+flag.”
+
+“I want to know! That'll be grand, won't it?” (Still not a sign of
+consciousness on the part of Abner.)
+
+“I hope Mrs. Fogg will take Clara Belle, for it will be splendid to look
+at! Mr. Cobb is going to be Uncle Sam and drive us on the stage. Miss
+Dearborn--Clara Belle's old teacher, you know--is going to be Columbia;
+the girls will be the States of the Union, and oh, Mr. Simpson, I am the
+one to be the State of Maine!” (This was not altogether to the point,
+but a piece of information impossible to conceal.)
+
+Mr. Simpson flourished the whipstock and gave a loud, hearty laugh. Then
+he turned in his seat and regarded Rebecca curiously. “You're kind of
+small, hain't ye, for so big a state as this one?” he asked.
+
+“Any of us would be too small,” replied Rebecca with dignity, “but the
+committee asked me, and I am going to try hard to do well.”
+
+The tragic thought that there might be no occasion for anybody to do
+anything, well or ill, suddenly overcame her here, and putting her
+hand on Mr. Simpson's sleeve, she attacked the subject practically and
+courageously.
+
+“Oh, Mr. Simpson, dear Mr. Simpson, it's such a mortifying subject I
+can't bear to say anything about it, but please give us back our flag!
+Don't, DON'T take it over to Acreville, Mr. Simpson! We've worked so
+long to make it, and it was so hard getting the money for the bunting!
+Wait a minute, please; don't be angry, and don't say no just yet, till
+I explain more. It'll be so dreadful for everybody to get there tomorrow
+morning and find no flag to raise, and the band and the mayor all
+disappointed, and the children crying, with their muslin dresses all
+bought for nothing! O dear Mr. Simpson, please don't take our flag away
+from us!”
+
+The apparently astonished Abner pulled his mustaches and exclaimed: “But
+I don't know what you're drivin' at! Who's got yer flag? I hain't!”
+
+Could duplicity, deceit, and infamy go any further, Rebecca wondered,
+and her soul filling with righteous wrath, she cast discretion to the
+winds and spoke a little more plainly, bending her great swimming eyes
+on the now embarrassed Abner, who looked like an angle-worm, wriggling
+on a pin.
+
+“Mr. Simpson, how can you say that, when I saw the flag in the back of
+your wagon myself, when you stopped to water the horse? It's wicked of
+you to take it, and I cannot bear it!” (Her voice broke now, for a doubt
+of Mr. Simpson's yielding suddenly darkened her mind.) “If you keep it,
+you'll have to keep me, for I won't be parted from it! I can't fight
+like the boys, but I can pinch and scratch, and I WILL scratch, just
+like a panther--I'll lie right down on my star and not move, if I starve
+to death!”
+
+“Look here, hold your hosses n' don't cry till you git something to cry
+for!” grumbled the outraged Abner, to whom a clue had just come; and
+leaning over the wagon-back he caught hold of a corner of white sheet
+and dragged up the bundle, scooping off Rebecca's hat in the process,
+and almost burying her in bunting.
+
+She caught the treasure passionately to her heart and stifled her sobs
+in it, while Abner exclaimed: “I swan to man, if that hain't a flag!
+Well, in that case you're good n' welcome to it! Land! I seen that
+bundle lyin' in the middle o' the road and I says to myself, that's
+somebody's washin' and I'd better pick it up and leave it at the
+post-office to be claimed; n' all the time it was a flag!”
+
+This was a Simpsonian version of the matter, the fact being that a
+white-covered bundle lying on the Meserves' front steps had attracted
+his practiced eye, and slipping in at the open gate he had swiftly and
+deftly removed it to his wagon on general principles; thinking if it
+were clean clothes it would be extremely useful, and in any event there
+was no good in passing by something flung into your very arms, so to
+speak. He had had no leisure to examine the bundle, and indeed took
+little interest in it. Probably he stole it simply from force of habit,
+and because there was nothing else in sight to steal, everybody's
+premises being preternaturally tidy and empty, almost as if his visit
+had been expected!
+
+Rebecca was a practical child, and it seemed to her almost impossible
+that so heavy a bundle should fall out of Mrs. Meserve's buggy and not
+be noticed; but she hoped that Mr. Simpson was telling the truth, and
+she was too glad and grateful to doubt anyone at the moment.
+
+“Thank you, thank you ever so much, Mr. Simpson. You're the nicest,
+kindest, politest man I ever knew, and the girls will be so pleased you
+gave us back the flag, and so will the Dorcas Society; they'll be sure
+to write you a letter of thanks; they always do.”
+
+“Tell em not to bother bout any thanks,” said Simpson, beaming
+virtuously. “But land! I'm glad twas me that happened to see that bundle
+in the road and take the trouble to pick it up.” (“Jest to think of it's
+bein' a flag!” he thought; “if ever there was a pesky, wuthless thing to
+trade off, twould be a great, gormin' flag like that!”)
+
+“Can I get out now, please?” asked Rebecca. “I want to go back, for Mrs.
+Meserve will be dreadfully nervous when she finds out she dropped the
+flag, and she has heart trouble.”
+
+“No, you don't,” objected Mr. Simpson gallantly, turning the horse. “Do
+you think I'd let a little creeter like you lug that great heavy bundle?
+I hain't got time to go back to Meserve's, but I'll take you to the
+corner and dump you there, flag n' all, and you can get some o' the
+men-folks to carry it the rest o' the way. You'll wear it out, huggin'
+it so!”
+
+“I helped make it and I adore it!” said Rebecca, who was in a
+high-pitched and grandiloquent mood. “Why don't YOU like it? It's your
+country's flag.”
+
+Simpson smiled an indulgent smile and looked a trifle bored at these
+frequent appeals to his extremely rusty higher feelings.
+
+“I don' know's I've got any partic'lar int'rest in the country,” he
+remarked languidly. “I know I don't owe nothin' to it, nor own nothin'
+in it!”
+
+“You own a star on the flag, same as everybody,” argued Rebecca, who had
+been feeding on patriotism for a month; “and you own a state, too, like
+all of us!”
+
+“Land! I wish't I did! or even a quarter section!” sighed Mr. Simpson,
+feeling somehow a little more poverty-stricken and discouraged than
+usual.
+
+As they approached the corner and the watering-trough where four
+cross-roads met, the whole neighborhood seemed to be in evidence,
+and Mr. Simpson suddenly regretted his chivalrous escort of Rebecca;
+especially when, as he neared the group, an excited lady, wringing her
+hands, turned out to be Mrs. Peter Meserve, accompanied by Huldah, the
+Browns, Mrs. Milliken, Abijah Flagg, and Miss Dearborn.
+
+“Do you know anything about the new flag, Rebecca?” shrieked Mrs.
+Meserve, too agitated, at the moment, to notice the child's companion.
+
+“It's right here in my lap, all safe,” responded Rebecca joyously.
+
+“You careless, meddlesome young one, to take it off my steps where
+I left it just long enough to go round to the back and hunt up my
+door-key! You've given me a fit of sickness with my weak heart, and what
+business was it of yours? I believe you think you OWN the flag! Hand it
+over to me this minute!”
+
+Rebecca was climbing down during this torrent of language, but as she
+turned she flashed one look of knowledge at the false Simpson, a look
+that went through him from head to foot, as if it were carried by
+electricity.
+
+He had not deceived her after all, owing to the angry chatter of Mrs.
+Meserve. He had been handcuffed twice in his life, but no sheriff had
+ever discomfited him so thoroughly as this child. Fury mounted to his
+brain, and as soon as she was safely out from between the wheels he
+stood up in the wagon and flung the flag out in the road in the midst of
+the excited group.
+
+“Take it, you pious, passimonious, cheese-parin', hair-splittin',
+back-bitin', flag-raisin' crew!” he roared. “Rebecca never took the
+flag; I found it in the road, I say!”
+
+“You never, no such a thing!” exclaimed Mrs. Meserve. “You found it on
+the doorsteps in my garden!”
+
+“Mebbe twas your garden, but it was so chock full o' weeks I THOUGHT
+twas the road,” retorted Abner. “I vow I wouldn't a' given the old
+rag back to one o' YOU, not if you begged me on your bended knees! But
+Rebecca's a friend o' my folks and can do with her flag's she's a mind
+to, and the rest o' ye can go to thunder--n' stay there, for all I
+care!”
+
+So saying, he made a sharp turn, gave the gaunt white horse a lash and
+disappeared in a cloud of dust, before the astonished Mr. Brown, the
+only man in the party, had a thought of detaining him.
+
+“I'm sorry I spoke so quick, Rebecca,” said Mrs. Meserve, greatly
+mortified at the situation. “But don't you believe a word that lyin'
+critter said! He did steal it off my doorstep, and how did you come to
+be ridin' and consortin' with him! I believe it would kill your Aunt
+Miranda if she should hear about it!”
+
+The little school-teacher put a sheltering arm round Rebecca as Mr.
+Brown picked up the flag and dusted and folded it.
+
+“I'm willing she should hear about it,” Rebecca answered. “I didn't do
+anything to be ashamed of! I saw the flag in the back of Mr. Simpson's
+wagon and I just followed it. There weren't any men or any Dorcases to
+take care of it and so it fell to me! You wouldn't have had me let it
+out of my sight, would you, and we going to raise it tomorrow morning?”
+
+“Rebecca's perfectly right, Mrs. Meserve!” said Miss Dearborn proudly.
+“And it's lucky there was somebody quick-witted enough to ride and
+consort' with Mr. Simpson! I don't know what the village will think, but
+seems to me the town clerk might write down in his book, THIS DAY THE
+STATE OF MAINE SAVED THE FLAG!'”
+
+
+
+
+Sixth Chronicle. THE STATE O' MAINE GIRL
+
+
+I
+
+The foregoing episode, if narrated in a romance, would undoubtedly have
+been called “The Saving of the Colors,” but at the nightly conversazione
+in Watson's store it was alluded to as the way little Becky Randall got
+the flag away from Slippery Simpson.
+
+Dramatic as it was, it passed into the limbo of half-forgotten things
+in Rebecca's mind, its brief importance submerged in the glories of the
+next day.
+
+There was a painful prelude to these glories. Alice Robinson came to
+spend the night with Rebecca, and when the bedroom door closed upon the
+two girls, Alice announced her intention of “doing up” Rebecca's front
+hair in leads and rags, and braiding the back in six tight, wetted
+braids.
+
+Rebecca demurred. Alice persisted.
+
+“Your hair is so long and thick and dark and straight,” she said, “that
+you'll look like an Injun!”
+
+“I am the State of Maine; it all belonged to the Indians once,” Rebecca
+remarked gloomily, for she was curiously shy about discussing her
+personal appearance.
+
+“And your wreath of little pine-cones won't set decent without crimps,”
+ continued Alice.
+
+Rebecca glanced in the cracked looking-glass and met what she considered
+an accusing lack of beauty, a sight that always either saddened or
+enraged her according to circumstances; then she sat down resignedly
+and began to help Alice in the philanthropic work of making the State of
+Maine fit to be seen at the raising.
+
+Neither of the girls was an expert hairdresser, and at the end of an
+hour, when the sixth braid was tied, and Rebecca had given one last
+shuddering look in the mirror, both were ready to weep with fatigue.
+
+The candle was blown out and Alice soon went to sleep, but Rebecca
+tossed on her pillow, its goose-feathered softness all dented by the
+cruel lead knobs and the knots of twisted rags. She slipped out of bed
+and walked to and fro, holding her aching head with both hands. Finally
+she leaned on the window-sill, watching the still weather-vane on
+Alice's barn and breathing in the fragrance of the ripening apples,
+until her restlessness subsided under the clear starry beauty of the
+night.
+
+At six in the morning the girls were out of bed, for Alice could hardly
+wait until Rebecca's hair was taken down, she was so eager to see the
+result of her labors.
+
+The leads and rags were painfully removed, together with much hair, the
+operation being punctuated by a series of squeaks, squeals, and shrieks
+on the part of Rebecca and a series of warnings from Alice, who wished
+the preliminaries to be kept secret from the aunts, that they might the
+more fully appreciate the radiant result.
+
+Then came the unbraiding, and then--dramatic moment--the “combing out;”
+ a difficult, not to say impossible process, in which the hairs that had
+resisted the earlier stages almost gave up the ghost.
+
+The long front strands had been wound up from various angles and by
+various methods, so that, when released, they assumed the strangest,
+most obstinate, most unexpected attitudes. When the comb was dragged
+through the last braid, the wild, tortured, electric hairs following,
+and then rebounding from it in a bristling, snarling tangle.
+Massachusetts gave one encompassing glance at the State o' Maine's head,
+and announced her intention of going home to breakfast! She was deeply
+grieved at the result of her attempted beautifying, but she felt that
+meeting Miss Miranda Sawyer at the morning meal would not mend matters
+in the least, so slipping out of the side door, she ran up Guide Board
+hill as fast as her legs could carry her.
+
+The State o' Maine, deserted and somewhat unnerved, sat down before the
+glass and attacked her hair doggedly and with set lips, working over it
+until Miss Jane called her to breakfast; then, with a boldness born
+of despair, she entered the dining room, where her aunts were already
+seated at table. To “draw fire” she whistled, a forbidden joy, which
+only attracted more attention, instead of diverting it. There was a
+moment of silence after the grotesque figure was fully taken in; then
+came a moan from Jane and a groan from Miranda.
+
+“What have you done to yourself?” asked Miranda sternly.
+
+“Made an effort to be beautiful and failed!” jauntily replied Rebecca,
+but she was too miserable to keep up the fiction. “Oh, Aunt Miranda,
+don't scold. I'm so unhappy! Alice and I rolled up my hair to curl it
+for the raising. She said it was so straight I looked like an Indian!”
+
+“Mebbe you did,” vigorously agreed Miranda, “but 't any rate you looked
+like a Christian Injun, 'n' now you look like a heathen Injun; that's
+all the difference I can see. What can we do with her, Jane, between
+this and nine o'clock?”
+
+“We'll all go out to the pump just as soon as we're through breakfast,”
+ answered Jane soothingly. “We can accomplish consid'rable with water and
+force.”
+
+Rebecca nibbled her corn-cake, her tearful eyes cast on her plate and
+her chin quivering.
+
+“Don't you cry and red your eyes up,” chided Miranda quite kindly; “the
+minute you've eat enough run up and get your brush and comb and meet us
+at the back door.”
+
+“I wouldn't care myself how bad I looked,” said Rebecca, “but I can't
+bear to be so homely that I shame the State of Maine!”
+
+Oh, what an hour followed this plaint! Did any aspirant for literary
+or dramatic honors ever pass to fame through such an antechamber of
+horrors? Did poet of the day ever have his head so maltreated? To be
+dipped in the rain-water tub, soused again and again; to be held under
+the spout and pumped on; to be rubbed furiously with rough roller
+towels; to be dried with hot flannels! And is it not well-nigh
+incredible that at the close of such an hour the ends of the long hair
+should still stand out straight, the braids having been turned up two
+inches by Alice, and tied hard in that position with linen thread?
+
+“Get out the skirt-board, Jane,” cried Miranda, to whom opposition
+served as a tonic, “and move that flat-iron on to the front o' the
+stove. Rebecca, set down in that low chair beside the board, and Jane,
+you spread out her hair on it and cover it up with brown paper. Don't
+cringe, Rebecca; the worst's over, and you've borne up real good! I'll
+be careful not to pull your hair nor scorch you, and oh, HOW I'd like
+to have Alice Robinson acrost my knee and a good strip o' shingle in my
+right hand! There, you're all ironed out and your Aunt Jane can put on
+your white dress and braid your hair up again good and tight. Perhaps
+you won't be the hombliest of the states, after all; but when I see you
+comin' in to breakfast I said to myself: I guess if Maine looked like
+that, it wouldn't never a' been admitted into the Union!'”
+
+When Uncle Sam and the stagecoach drew up to the brick house with a
+grand swing and a flourish, the goddess of Liberty and most of the
+States were already in their places on the “harricane deck.”
+
+Words fail to describe the gallant bearing of the horses, their
+headstalls gayly trimmed and their harnesses dotted with little flags.
+The stage windows were hung in bunting, and from within beamed Columbia,
+looking out from the bright frame as if proud of her freight of loyal
+children. Patriotic streamers floated from whip, from dash-board and
+from rumble, and the effect of the whole was something to stimulate the
+most phlegmatic voter.
+
+Rebecca came out on the steps and Aunt Jane brought a chair to assist in
+the ascent. Miss Dearborn peeped from the window, and gave a despairing
+look at her favorite.
+
+What had happened to her? Who had dressed her? Had her head been put
+through a wringing-machine? Why were her eyes red and swollen? Miss
+Dearborn determined to take her behind the trees in the pine grove
+and give her some finishing touches; touches that her skillful fingers
+fairly itched to bestow.
+
+The stage started, and as the roadside pageant grew gayer and gayer,
+Rebecca began to brighten and look prettier, for most of her beautifying
+came from within. The people, walking, driving, or standing on
+their doorsteps, cheered Uncle Sam's coach with its freight of
+gossamer-muslined, fluttering-ribboned girls, and just behind, the
+gorgeously decorated haycart, driven by Abijah Flagg, bearing the jolly
+but inharmonious fife-and-drum corps.
+
+Was ever such a golden day! Such crystal air! Such mellow sunshine! Such
+a merry Uncle Sam!
+
+The stage drew up at an appointed spot near a pine grove, and while the
+crowd was gathering, the children waited for the hour to arrive when
+they should march to the platform; the hour toward which they seemed to
+have been moving since the dawn of creation.
+
+As soon as possible Miss Dearborn whispered to Rebecca: “Come behind the
+trees with me; I want to make you prettier!”
+
+Rebecca thought she had suffered enough from that process already during
+the last twelve hours, but she put out an obedient hand and the two
+withdrew.
+
+Now Miss Dearborn was, I fear, a very indifferent teacher. Dr. Moses
+always said so, and Libbie Moses, who wanted her school, said it was
+a pity she hadn't enjoyed more social advantages in her youth. Libbie
+herself had taken music lessons in Portland; and spent a night at the
+Profile House in the White Mountains, and had visited her sister in
+Lowell, Massachusetts. These experiences gave her, in her own mind, and
+in the mind of her intimate friends, a horizon so boundless that her
+view of smaller, humbler matters was a trifle distorted.
+
+Miss Dearborn's stock in trade was small, her principal virtues being
+devotion to children and ability to gain their love, and a power of
+evolving a schoolroom order so natural, cheery, serene, and peaceful
+that it gave the beholder a certain sense of being in a district heaven.
+She was poor in arithmetic and weak in geometry, but if you gave her a
+rose, a bit of ribbon, and a seven-by-nine looking-glass she could make
+herself as pretty as a pink in two minutes.
+
+Safely sheltered behind the pines, Miss Dearborn began to practice
+mysterious feminine arts. She flew at Rebecca's tight braids, opened
+the strands and rebraided them loosely; bit and tore the red, white,
+and blue ribbon in two and tied the braids separately. Then with nimble
+fingers she pulled out little tendrils of hair behind the ears and
+around the nape of the neck. After a glance of acute disapproval
+directed at the stiff balloon skirt she knelt on the ground and gave
+a strenuous embrace to Rebecca's knees, murmuring, between her hugs,
+“Starch must be cheap at the brick house!”
+
+This particular line of beauty attained, there ensued great pinchings of
+ruffles, her fingers that could never hold a ferrule nor snap children's
+ears being incomparable fluting-irons.
+
+Next the sash was scornfully untied and tightened to suggest something
+resembling a waist. The chastened bows that had been squat, dowdy,
+spiritless, were given tweaks, flirts, bracing little pokes and dabs,
+till, acknowledging a master hand, they stood up, piquant, pert, smart,
+alert!
+
+Pride of bearing was now infused into the flattened lace at the neck,
+and a pin (removed at some sacrifice from her own toilette) was darned
+in at the back to prevent any cowardly lapsing. The short white cotton
+gloves that called attention to the tanned wrist and arms were stripped
+off and put in her own pocket. Then the wreath of pine-cones was
+adjusted at a heretofore unimagined angle, the hair was pulled softly
+into a fluffy frame, and finally, as she met Rebecca's grateful eyes
+she gave her two approving, triumphant kisses. In a second the sensitive
+face lighted into happiness; pleased dimples appeared in the cheeks, the
+kissed mouth was as red as a rose, and the little fright that had walked
+behind the pine-tree stepped out on the other side Rebecca the lovely.
+
+As to the relative value of Miss Dearborn's accomplishments, the
+decision must be left to the gentle reader; but though it is certain
+that children should be properly grounded in mathematics, no heart of
+flesh could bear to hear Miss Dearborn's methods vilified who had seen
+her patting, pulling, squeezing Rebecca from ugliness into beauty.
+
+The young superintendent of district schools was a witness of the scene,
+and when later he noted the children surrounding Columbia as bees
+a honeysuckle, he observed to Dr. Moses: “She may not be much of a
+teacher, but I think she'd be considerable of a wife!” and subsequent
+events proved that he meant what he said!
+
+II
+
+Now all was ready; the moment of fate was absolutely at hand; the
+fife-and-drum corps led the way and the States followed; but what
+actually happened Rebecca never knew; she lived through the hours in a
+waking dream. Every little detail was a facet of light that reflected
+sparkles, and among them all she was fairly dazzled. The brass band
+played inspiring strains; the mayor spoke eloquently on great themes;
+the people cheered; then the rope on which so much depended was put into
+the children's hands, they applied superhuman strength to their task,
+and the flag mounted, mounted, smoothly and slowly, and slowly unwound
+and stretched itself until its splendid size and beauty were revealed
+against the maples and pines and blue New England sky.
+
+Then after cheers upon cheers and after a patriotic chorus by the church
+choirs, the State of Maine mounted the platform, vaguely conscious
+that she was to recite a poem, though for the life of her she could not
+remember a single word.
+
+“Speak up loud and clear, Rebecky,” whispered Uncle Sam in the front
+row, but she could scarcely hear her own voice when, tremblingly, she
+began her first line. After that she gathered strength and the poem
+“said itself,” while the dream went on.
+
+She saw Adam Ladd leaning against a tree; Aunt Jane and Aunt Miranda
+palpitating with nervousness; Clara Belle Simpson gazing cross-eyed but
+adoring from a seat on the side; and in the far, far distance, on the
+very outskirts of the crowd, a tall man standing in a wagon--a tall,
+loose-jointed man with red upturned mustaches, and a gaunt white horse
+headed toward the Acreville road.
+
+Loud applause greeted the state of Maine, the slender little white-clad
+figure standing on the mossy boulder that had been used as the centre of
+the platform. The sun came up from behind a great maple and shone full
+on the star-spangled banner, making it more dazzling than ever, so that
+its beauty drew all eyes upward.
+
+Abner Simpson lifted his vagrant shifting gaze to its softy fluttering
+folds and its splendid massing of colors, thinking:
+
+“I don't know's anybody'd ought to steal a flag--the thunderin' idjuts
+seem to set such store by it, and what is it, anyway? Nothin; but a
+sheet o' buntin!”
+
+Nothing but a sheet of bunting? He looked curiously at the rapt faces
+of the mothers, their babies asleep in their arms; the parted lips and
+shining eyes of the white-clad girls; at Cap'n Lord, who had been in
+Libby prison, and Nat Strout, who had left an arm at Bull Run; at the
+friendly, jostling crowd of farmers, happy, eager, absorbed, their
+throats ready to burst with cheers. Then the breeze served, and he heard
+Rebecca's clear voice saying:
+
+“For it's your star, my star, all the stars together, That make our
+country's flag so proud To float in the bright fall weather!”
+
+“Talk about stars! She's got a couple of em right in her head,” thought
+Simpson.... “If I ever seen a young one like that lyin; on anybody's
+doorstep I'd hook her quicker'n a wink, though I've got plenty to home,
+the Lord knows! And I wouldn't swap her off neither.... Spunky little
+creeter, too; settin; up in the wagon lookin' bout's big as a pint o'
+cider, but keepin' right after the goods!... I vow I'm bout sick o' my
+job! Never WITH the crowd, allers JEST on the outside, s if I wa'n't as
+good's they be! If it paid well, mebbe I wouldn't mind, but they're so
+thunderin' stingy round here, they don't leave anything decent out for
+you to take from em, yet you're reskin' your liberty n' reputation jest
+the same!... Countin' the poor pickin's n' the time I lose in jail I
+might most's well be done with it n' work out by the day, as the folks
+want me to; I'd make bout's much n' I don't know's it would be any
+harder!”
+
+He could see Rebecca stepping down from the platform, while his own
+red-headed little girl stood up on her bench, waving her hat with one
+hand, her handkerchief with the other, and stamping with both feet.
+
+Now a man sitting beside the mayor rose from his chair and Abner heard
+him call:
+
+“Three cheers for the women who made the flag!”
+
+“HIP, HIP, HURRAH!”
+
+“Three cheers for the State of Maine!”
+
+“HIP, HIP, HURRAH!”
+
+“Three cheers for the girl that saved the flag from the hands of the
+enemy!”
+
+“HIP, HIP, HURRAH! HIP, HIP, HURRAH!”
+
+It was the Edgewood minister, whose full, vibrant voice was of the sort
+to move a crowd. His words rang out into the clear air and were carried
+from lip to lip. Hands clapped, feet stamped, hats swung, while the loud
+huzzahs might almost have wakened the echoes on old Mount Ossipee.
+
+The tall, loose-jointed man sat down in the wagon suddenly and took up
+the reins.
+
+“They're gettin' a little mite personal, and I guess it's bout time for
+you to be goin', Simpson!”
+
+The tone was jocular, but the red mustaches drooped, and the
+half-hearted cut he gave to start the white mare on her homeward journey
+showed that he was not in his usual devil-may-care mood.
+
+“Durn his skin!” he burst out in a vindictive undertone, as the mare
+swung into her long gait. “It's a lie! I thought twas somebody's wash! I
+hain't an enemy!”
+
+While the crowd at the raising dispersed in happy family groups to their
+picnics in the woods; while the Goddess of Liberty, Uncle Sam,
+Columbia, and the proud States lunched grandly in the Grange hall with
+distinguished guests and scarred veterans of two wars, the lonely
+man drove, and drove, and drove through silent woods and dull, sleepy
+villages, never alighting to replenish his wardrobe or his stock of
+swapping material.
+
+At dusk he reached a miserable tumble-down house on the edge of a pond.
+
+The faithful wife with the sad mouth and the habitual look of anxiety in
+her faded eyes came to the door at the sound of wheels and went doggedly
+to the horse-shed to help him unharness.
+
+“You didn't expect to see me back tonight, did ye?” he asked
+satirically; “leastwise not with this same horse? Well, I'm here! You
+needn't be scairt to look under the wagon seat, there hain't nothin'
+there, not even my supper, so I hope you're suited for once! No, I guess
+I hain't goin' to be an angel right away, neither. There wa'n't nothin'
+but flags layin' roun' loose down Riverboro way, n' whatever they say, I
+hain't sech a hound as to steal a flag!”
+
+It was natural that young Riverboro should have red, white, and blue
+dreams on the night after the new flag was raised. A stranger thing,
+perhaps, is the fact that Abner Simpson should lie down on his hard bed
+with the flutter of bunting before his eyes, and a whirl of unaccustomed
+words in his mind.
+
+“For it's your star, my star, all our stars together.”
+
+“I'm sick of goin' it alone,” he thought; “I guess I'll try the other
+road for a spell;” and with that he fell asleep.
+
+
+
+
+Seventh Chronicle. THE LITTLE PROPHET
+
+
+I
+
+“I guess York County will never get red of that Simpson crew!” exclaimed
+Miranda Sawyer to Jane. “I thought when the family moved to Acreville
+we'd seen the last of em, but we ain't! The big, cross-eyed, stutterin'
+boy has got a place at the mills in Maplewood; that's near enough to
+come over to Riverboro once in a while of a Sunday mornin' and set in
+the meetin' house starin' at Rebecca same as he used to do, only it's
+reskier now both of em are older. Then Mrs. Fogg must go and bring back
+the biggest girl to help her take care of her baby,--as if there wa'n't
+plenty of help nearer home! Now I hear say that the youngest twin has
+come to stop the summer with the Cames up to Edgewood Lower Corner.”
+
+“I thought two twins were always the same age,” said Rebecca,
+reflectively, as she came into the kitchen with the milk pail.
+
+“So they be,” snapped Miranda, flushing and correcting herself. “But
+that pasty-faced Simpson twin looks younger and is smaller than the
+other one. He's meek as Moses and the other one is as bold as a brass
+kettle; I don't see how they come to be twins; they ain't a mite alike.”
+
+“Elijah was always called the fighting twin' at school,” said Rebecca,
+“and Elisha's other name was Nimbi-Pamby; but I think he's a nice little
+boy, and I'm glad he has come back. He won't like living with Mr. Came,
+but he'll be almost next door to the minister's, and Mrs. Baxter is sure
+to let him play in her garden.”
+
+“I wonder why the boy's stayin' with Cassius Came,” said Jane. “To be
+sure they haven't got any of their own, but the child's too young to be
+much use.”
+
+“I know why,” remarked Rebecca promptly, “for I heard all about it over
+to Watson's when I was getting the milk. Mr. Came traded something with
+Mr. Simpson two years ago and got the best of the bargain, and Uncle
+Jerry says he's the only man that ever did, and he ought to have a
+monument put up to him. So Mr. Came owes Mr. Simpson money and won't
+pay it, and Mr. Simpson said he'd send over a child and board part of it
+out, and take the rest in stock--a pig or a calf or something.”
+
+“That's all stuff and nonsense,” exclaimed Miranda; “nothin' in the
+world but store-talk. You git a clump o' men-folks settin' round
+Watson's stove, or out on the bench at the door, an' they'll make up
+stories as fast as their tongues can wag. The man don't live that's
+smart enough to cheat Abner Simpson in a trade, and who ever heard of
+anybody's owin' him money? Tain't supposable that a woman like Mrs. Came
+would allow her husband to be in debt to a man like Abner Simpson. It's
+a sight likelier that she heard that Mrs. Simpson was ailin' and sent
+for the boy so as to help the family along. She always had Mrs. Simpson
+to wash for her once a month, if you remember Jane?”
+
+There are some facts so shrouded in obscurity that the most skillful and
+patient investigator cannot drag them into the light of day. There are
+also (but only occasionally) certain motives, acts, speeches, lines of
+conduct, that can never be wholly and satisfactorily explained, even in
+a village post-office or on the loafers' bench outside the tavern door.
+
+Cassius Came was a close man, close of mouth and close of purse; and all
+that Riverboro ever knew as to the three months' visit of the Simpson
+twin was that it actually occurred. Elisha, otherwise Nimbi-Pamby, came;
+Nimbi-Pamby stayed; and Nimbi-Pamby, when he finally rejoined his own
+domestic circle, did not go empty-handed (so to speak), for he was
+accompanied on his homeward travels by a large, red, bony, somewhat
+truculent cow, who was tied on behind the wagon, and who made the
+journey a lively and eventful one by her total lack of desire to proceed
+over the road from Edgewood to Acreville. But that, the cow's tale,
+belongs to another time and place, and the coward's tale must come
+first; for Elisha Simpson was held to be sadly lacking in the manly
+quality of courage.
+
+It was the new minister's wife who called Nimbi-Pamby the Little
+Prophet. His full name was Elisha Jeremiah Simpson, but one seldom heard
+it at full length, since, if he escaped the ignominy of Nimbi-Pamby,
+Lishe was quite enough for an urchin just in his first trousers and
+those assumed somewhat prematurely. He was “Lishe,” therefore, to the
+village, but the Little Prophet to the young minister's wife.
+
+Rebecca could see the Cames' brown farmhouse from Mrs. Baxter's
+sitting-room window. The little-traveled road with strips of tufted
+green between the wheel tracks curled dustily up to the very doorstep,
+and inside the screen door of pink mosquito netting was a wonderful
+drawn-in rug, shaped like a half pie, with “Welcome” in saffron letters
+on a green ground.
+
+Rebecca liked Mrs. Cassius Came, who was a friend of her Aunt Miranda's
+and one of the few persons who exchanged calls with that somewhat
+unsociable lady. The Came farm was not a long walk from the brick house,
+for Rebecca could go across the fields when haying-time was over, and
+her delight at being sent on an errand in that direction could not be
+measured, now that the new minister and his wife had grown to be such a
+resource in her life. She liked to see Mrs. Came shake the Welcome rug,
+flinging the cheery word out into the summer sunshine like a bright
+greeting to the day. She liked to see her go to the screen door a dozen
+times in a morning, open it a crack and chase an imaginary fly from the
+sacred precincts within. She liked to see her come up the cellar steps
+into the side garden, appearing mysteriously as from the bowels of the
+earth, carrying a shining pan of milk in both hands, and disappearing
+through the beds of hollyhocks and sunflowers to the pig-pen or the
+hen-house.
+
+Rebecca was not fond of Mr. Came, and neither was Mrs. Baxter, nor
+Elisha, for that matter; in fact Mr. Came was rather a difficult person
+to grow fond of, with his fiery red beard, his freckled skin, and his
+gruff way of speaking; for there were no children in the brown house to
+smooth the creases from his forehead or the roughness from his voice.
+
+II
+
+The new minister's wife was sitting under the shade of her great maple
+early one morning, when she first saw the Little Prophet. A tiny figure
+came down the grass-grown road leading a cow by a rope. If it had been a
+small boy and a small cow, a middle-sized boy and an ordinary cow, or a
+grown man and a big cow, she might not have noticed them; but it was the
+combination of an infinitesimal boy and a huge cow that attracted her
+attention. She could not guess the child's years, she only knew that he
+was small for his age, whatever it was.
+
+The cow was a dark red beast with a crumpled horn, a white star on her
+forehead, and a large surprised sort of eye. She had, of course, two
+eyes, and both were surprised, but the left one had an added hint of
+amazement in it by virtue of a few white hairs lurking accidentally in
+the centre of the eyebrow.
+
+The boy had a thin sensitive face and curtly brown hair, short trousers
+patched on both knees, and a ragged straw hat on the back of his head.
+He pattered along behind the cow, sometimes holding the rope with both
+hands, and getting over the ground in a jerky way, as the animal left
+him no time to think of a smooth path for bare feet.
+
+The Came pasture was a good half-mile distant, and the cow seemed in no
+hurry to reach it; accordingly she forsook the road now and then,
+and rambled in the hollows, where the grass was sweeter to her way of
+thinking. She started on one of these exploring expeditions just as she
+passed the minister's great maple, and gave Mrs. Baxter time to call out
+to the little fellow, “Is that your cow?”
+
+Elisha blushed and smiled, and tried to speak modestly, but there was a
+quiver of pride in his voice as he answered suggestively:
+
+“It's--nearly my cow.”
+
+“How is that?” asked Mrs. Baxter.
+
+“Why, Mr. Came says when I drive her twenty-nine more times to pasture
+thout her gettin' her foot over the rope or thout my bein' afraid, she's
+goin' to be my truly cow. Are you fraid of cows?”
+
+“Ye-e-es,” Mrs. Baxter confessed, “I am, just a little. You see, I am
+nothing but a woman, and boys can't understand how we feel about cows.”
+
+“I can! They're awful big things, aren't they?”
+
+“Perfectly enormous! I've always thought a cow coming towards you one of
+the biggest things in the world.”
+
+“Yes; me, too. Don't let's think about it. Do they hook people so very
+often?”
+
+“No indeed, in fact one scarcely ever hears of such a case.”
+
+“If they stepped on your bare foot they'd scrunch it, wouldn't they?”
+
+“Yes, but you are the driver; you mustn't let them do that; you are a
+free-will boy, and they are nothing but cows.”
+
+“I know; but p'raps there is free-will cows, and if they just WOULD do
+it you couldn't help being scrunched, for you mustn't let go of the rope
+nor run, Mr. Came says.
+
+“No, of course that would never do.”
+
+“Where you used to live did all the cows go down into the boggy places
+when you drove em to pasture, or did some walk in the road?”
+
+“There weren't any cows or any pastures where I used to live; that's
+what makes me so foolish; why does your cow need a rope?”
+
+“She don't like to go to pasture, Mr. Came says. Sometimes she'd druther
+stay to home, and so when she gets part way she turns round and comes
+backwards.”
+
+“Dear me!” thought Mrs. Baxter, “what becomes of this boy-mite if the
+cow has a spell of going backwards?--Do you like to drive her?” she
+asked.
+
+“N-no, not erzackly; but you see, it'll be my cow if I drive her
+twenty-nine more times thout her gettin' her foot over the rope and
+thout my bein' afraid,” and a beaming smile gave a transient brightness
+to his harassed little face. “Will she feed in the ditch much longer?”
+ he asked. “Shall I say Hurrap'? That's what Mr. Came says--HURRAP!' like
+that, and it means to hurry up.”
+
+It was rather a feeble warning that he sounded and the cow fed
+on peacefully. The little fellow looked up at the minister's wife
+confidingly, and then glanced back at the farm to see if Cassius Came
+were watching the progress of events.
+
+“What shall we do next?” he asked.
+
+Mrs. Baxter delighted in that warm, cosy little 'WE;' it took her into
+the firm so pleasantly. She was a weak prop indeed when it came to cows,
+but all the courage in her soul rose to arms when Elisha said, “What
+shall WE do next?” She became alert, ingenious, strong, on the instant.
+
+“What is the cow's name?” she asked, sitting up straight in the
+swing-chair.
+
+“Buttercup; but she don't seem to know it very well. She ain't a mite
+like a buttercup.”
+
+“Never mind; you must shout 'Buttercup!' at the top of your voice, and
+twitch the rope HARD; then I'll call, 'Hurrap!' with all my might at
+the same moment. And if she starts quickly we mustn't run nor seem
+frightened!”
+
+They did this; it worked to a charm, and Mrs. Baxter looked
+affectionately after her Little Prophet as the cow pulled him down Tory
+Hill.
+
+The lovely August days wore on. Rebecca was often at the parsonage
+and saw Elisha frequently, but Buttercup was seldom present at their
+interviews, as the boy now drove her to the pasture very early in the
+morning, the journey thither being one of considerable length and her
+method of reaching the goal being exceedingly roundabout.
+
+Mr. Came had pointed out the necessity of getting her into the pasture
+at least a few minutes before she had to be taken out again at night,
+and though Rebecca didn't like Mr. Came, she saw the common sense of
+this remark. Sometimes Mrs. Baxter and Rebecca caught a glimpse of
+the two at sundown, as they returned from the pasture to the twilight
+milking, Buttercup chewing her peaceful cud, her soft white bag of milk
+hanging full, her surprised eye rolling in its accustomed “fine frenzy.”
+ The frenzied roll did not mean anything, they used to assure Elisha; but
+if it didn't, it was an awful pity she had to do it, Rebecca thought;
+and Mrs. Baxter agreed. To have an expression of eye that meant murder,
+and yet to be a perfectly virtuous and well-meaning animal, this was a
+calamity indeed.
+
+Mrs. Baxter was looking at the sun one evening as it dropped like a ball
+of red fire into Wilkins's woods, when the Little Prophet passed.
+
+“It's the twenty-ninth night,” he called joyously.
+
+“I am so glad,” she answered, for she had often feared some accident
+might prevent his claiming the promised reward. “Then tomorrow Buttercup
+will be your own cow?”
+
+“I guess so. That's what Mr. Came said. He's off to Acreville now, but
+he'll be home tonight, and father's going to send my new hat by him.
+When Buttercup's my own cow I wish I could change her name and call her
+Red Rover, but p'r'aps her mother wouldn't like it. When she b'longs to
+me, mebbe I won't be so fraid of gettin' hooked and scrunched, because
+she'll know she's mine, and she'll go better. I haven't let her get
+snarled up in the rope one single time, and I don't show I'm afraid, do
+I?”
+
+“I should never suspect it for an instant,” said Mrs. Baxter
+encouragingly. “I've often envied you your bold, brave look!”
+
+Elisha appeared distinctly pleased. “I haven't cried, either, when she's
+dragged me over the pasture bars and peeled my legs. Bill Petes's little
+brother Charlie says he ain't afraid of anything, not even bears. He
+says he would walk right up close and cuff em if they dared to yip;
+but I ain't like that! He ain't scared of elephants or tigers or lions
+either; he says they're all the same as frogs or chickens to him!”
+
+Rebecca told her Aunt Miranda that evening that it was the Prophet's
+twenty-ninth night, and that the big red cow was to be his on the
+morrow.
+
+“Well, I hope it'll turn out that way,” she said. “But I ain't a mite
+sure that Cassius Came will give up that cow when it comes to the point.
+It won't be the first time he's tried to crawl out of a bargain with
+folks a good deal bigger than Lisha, for he's terrible close, Cassius
+is. To be sure he's stiff in his joints and he's glad enough to have
+a boy to take the cow to the pasture in summer time, but he always has
+hired help when it comes harvestin'. So Lisha'll be no use from this
+on; and I dare say the cow is Abner Simpson's anyway. If you want a walk
+tonight, I wish you'd go up there and ask Mis' Came if she'll lend me
+an' your Aunt Jane half her yeast-cake. Tell her we'll pay it back when
+we get ours a Saturday. Don't you want to take Thirza Meserve with you?
+She's alone as usual while Huldy's entertainin' beaux on the side porch.
+Don't stay too long at the parsonage!”
+
+III
+
+Rebecca was used to this sort of errand, for the whole village of
+Riverboro would sometimes be rocked to the very centre of its being by
+simultaneous desire for a yeast-cake. As the nearest repository was a
+mile and a half distant, as the yeast-cake was valued at two cents and
+wouldn't keep, as the demand was uncertain, being dependent entirely on
+a fluctuating desire for “riz bread,” the storekeeper refused to order
+more than three yeast-cakes a day at his own risk. Sometimes they
+remained on his hands a dead loss; sometimes eight or ten persons would
+“hitch up” and drive from distant farms for the coveted article, only to
+be met with the flat, “No, I'm all out o' yeast-cake; Mis' Simmons
+took the last; mebbe you can borry half o' hern, she hain't much of a
+bread-eater.”
+
+So Rebecca climbed the hills to Mrs. Came's, knowing that her daily
+bread depended on the successful issue of the call.
+
+Thirza was barefooted, and tough as her little feet were, the long walk
+over the stubble fields tired her. When they came within sight of the
+Came barn, she coaxed Rebecca to take a short cut through the turnips
+growing in long, beautifully weeded rows.
+
+“You know Mr. Came is awfully cross, Thirza, and can't bear anybody to
+tread on his crops or touch a tree or a bush that belongs to him. I'm
+kind of afraid, but come along and mind you step softly in between the
+rows and hold up your petticoat, so you can't possibly touch the turnip
+plants. I'll do the same. Skip along fast, because then we won't leave
+any deep footprints.”
+
+The children passed safely and noiselessly along, their pleasure a
+trifle enhanced by the felt dangers of their progress. Rebecca knew that
+they were doing no harm, but that did not prevent her hoping to escape
+the gimlet eye of Mr. Came.
+
+As they neared the outer edge of the turnip patch they paused suddenly,
+petticoats in air.
+
+A great clump of elderberry bushes hid them from the barn, but from the
+other side of the clump came the sound of conversation: the timid voice
+of the Little Prophet and the gruff tones of Cassius Came.
+
+Rebecca was afraid to interrupt, and too honest to wish to overhear. She
+could only hope the man and the boy would pass on to the house as they
+talked, so she motioned to the paralyzed Thirza to take two more steps
+and stand with her behind the elderberry bushes. But no! In a moment
+they heard Mr. Came drag a stool over beside the grindstone as he said:
+
+“Well, now Elisha Jeremiah, we'll talk about the red cow. You say you've
+drove her a month, do ye? And the trade between us was that if you
+could drive her a month, without her getting the rope over her foot and
+without bein' afraid, you was to have her. That's straight, ain't it?”
+
+The Prophet's face burned with excitement, his gingham shirt rose and
+fell as if he were breathing hard, but he only nodded assent and said
+nothing.
+
+“Now,” continued Mr. Came, “have you made out to keep the rope from
+under her feet?”
+
+“She ain't got t-t-tangled up one s-single time,” said Elisha,
+stuttering in his excitement, but looking up with some courage from his
+bare toes, with which he was assiduously threading the grass.
+
+“So far, so good. Now bout bein' afraid. As you seem so certain of
+gettin' the cow, I suppose you hain't been a speck scared, hev you?
+Honor bright, now!”
+
+“I--I--not but just a little mite. I”--
+
+“Hold up a minute. Of course you didn't SAY you was afraid, and didn't
+SHOW you was afraid, and nobody knew you WAS afraid, but that ain't the
+way we fixed it up. You was to call the cow your'n if you could drive
+her to the pasture for a month without BEIN' afraid. Own up square now,
+hev you be'n afraid?”
+
+A long pause, then a faint, “Yes.”
+
+“Where's your manners?”
+
+“I mean yes, sir.”
+
+“How often? If it hain't be'n too many times mebbe I'll let ye off,
+though you're a reg'lar girl-boy, and'll be runnin' away from the cat
+bimeby. Has it be'n--twice?”
+
+“Yes,” and the Little Prophet's voice was very faint now, and had a
+decided tear in it.
+
+“Yes what?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Has it be'n four times?”
+
+“Y-es, sir.” More heaving of the gingham shirt.
+
+“Well, you AIR a thunderin' coward! How many times? Speak up now.”
+
+More digging of the bare toes in the earth, and one premonitory tear
+drop stealing from under the downcast lids, then,--
+
+“A little, most every day, and you can keep the cow,” wailed the
+Prophet, as he turned abruptly and fled behind the shed, where he flung
+himself into the green depths of a tansy bed, and gave himself up to
+unmanly sobs.
+
+Cassius Came gave a sort of shamefaced guffaw at the abrupt departure
+of the boy, and went on into the house, while Rebecca and Thirza made
+a stealthy circuit of the barn and a polite and circumspect entrance
+through the parsonage front gate.
+
+Rebecca told the minister's wife what she could remember of the
+interview between Cassius Came and Elisha Simpson, and tender-hearted
+Mrs. Baxter longed to seek and comfort her Little Prophet sobbing in the
+tansy bed, the brand of coward on his forehead, and what was much worse,
+the fear in his heart that he deserved it.
+
+Rebecca could hardly be prevented from bearding Mr. Came and openly
+espousing the cause of Elisha, for she was an impetuous, reckless,
+valiant creature when a weaker vessel was attacked or threatened
+unjustly.
+
+Mrs. Baxter acknowledged that Mr. Came had been true, in a way, to his
+word and bargain, but she confessed that she had never heard of so cruel
+and hard a bargain since the days of Shylock, and it was all the worse
+for being made with a child.
+
+Rebecca hurried home, her visit quite spoiled and her errand quite
+forgotten till she reached the brick house door, where she told her
+aunts, with her customary picturesqueness of speech, that she would
+rather eat buttermilk bread till she died than partake of food mixed
+with one of Mr. Came's yeast-cakes; that it would choke her, even in the
+shape of good raised bread.
+
+“That's all very fine, Rebecky,” said her Aunt Miranda, who had a
+pin-prick for almost every bubble; “but don't forget there's two other
+mouths to feed in this house, and you might at least give your aunt and
+me the privilege of chokin' if we feel to want to!”
+
+IV
+
+Mrs. Baxter finally heard from Mrs. Came, through whom all information
+was sure to filter if you gave it time, that her husband despised a
+coward, that he considered Elisha a regular mother's-apron-string boy,
+and that he was “learnin'” him to be brave.
+
+Bill Peters, the hired man, now drove Buttercup to pasture, though
+whenever Mr. Came went to Moderation or Bonnie Eagle, as he often did,
+Mrs. Baxter noticed that Elisha took the hired man's place. She often
+joined him on these anxious expeditions, and, a like terror in both
+their souls, they attempted to train the red cow and give her some idea
+of obedience.
+
+“If she only wouldn't look at us that way we would get along real nicely
+with her, wouldn't we?” prattled the Prophet, straggling along by her
+side; “and she is a splendid cow; she gives twenty-one quarts a day, and
+Mr. Came says it's more'n half cream.”
+
+The minister's wife assented to all this, thinking that if Buttercup
+would give up her habit of turning completely round in the road to roll
+her eyes and elevate her white-tipped eyebrow, she might indeed be an
+enjoyable companion; but in her present state of development her society
+was not agreeable, even did she give sixty-one quarts of milk a day.
+Furthermore, when Mrs. Baxter discovered that she never did any of these
+reprehensible things with Bill Peters, she began to believe cows more
+intelligent creatures than she had supposed them to be, and she was
+indignant to think Buttercup could count so confidently on the weakness
+of a small boy and a timid woman.
+
+One evening, when Buttercup was more than usually exasperating, Mrs.
+Baxter said to the Prophet, who was bracing himself to keep from being
+pulled into a wayside brook where Buttercup loved to dabble, “Elisha, do
+you know anything about the superiority of mind over matter?”
+
+No, he didn't, though it was not a fair time to ask the question, for he
+had sat down in the road to get a better purchase on the rope.
+
+“Well, it doesn't signify. What I mean is that we can die but once, and
+it is a glorious thing to die for a great principle. Give me that rope.
+I can pull like an ox in my present frame of mind. You run down on the
+opposite side of the brook, take that big stick wade right in--you
+are barefooted,--brandish the stick, and, if necessary, do more than
+brandish. I would go myself, but it is better she should recognize you
+as her master, and I am in as much danger as you are, anyway. She may
+try to hook you, of course, but you must keep waving the stick,--die
+brandishing, Prophet, that's the idea! She may turn and run for me, in
+which case I shall run too; but I shall die running, and the minister
+can bury us under our favorite sweet-apple tree!”
+
+The Prophet's soul was fired by the lovely lady's eloquence. Their
+spirits mounted simultaneously, and they were flushed with a splendid
+courage in which death looked a mean and paltry thing compared with
+vanquishing that cow. She had already stepped into the pool, but the
+Prophet waded in towards her, moving the alder branch menacingly. She
+looked up with the familiar roll of the eye that had done her such good
+service all summer, but she quailed beneath the stern justice and the
+new valor of the Prophet's gaze.
+
+In that moment perhaps she felt ashamed of the misery she had caused the
+helpless mite. At any rate, actuated by fear, surprise, or remorse,
+she turned and walked back into the road without a sign of passion or
+indignation, leaving the boy and the lady rather disappointed at their
+easy victory. To be prepared for a violent death and receive not even a
+scratch made them fear that they might possibly have overestimated the
+danger.
+
+They were better friends than ever after that, the young minister's wife
+and the forlorn little boy from Acreville, sent away from home he
+knew not why, unless it were that there was little to eat there and
+considerably more at the Cash Cames', as they were called in Edgewood.
+Cassius was familiarly known as Uncle Cash, partly because there was a
+disposition in Edgewood to abbreviate all Christian names, and partly
+because the old man paid cash, and expected to be paid cash, for
+everything.
+
+The late summer grew into autumn, and the minister's great maple flung
+a flaming bough of scarlet over Mrs. Baxter's swing-chair. Uncle Cash
+found Elisha very useful at picking up potatoes and apples, but the boy
+was going back to his family as soon as the harvesting was over.
+
+One Friday evening Mrs. Baxter and Rebecca, wrapped in shawls and
+“fascinators,” were sitting on Mrs. Came's front steps enjoying the
+sunset. Rebecca was in a tremulous state of happiness, for she had
+come directly from the Seminary at Wareham to the parsonage, and as the
+minister was absent at a church conference, she was to stay the night
+with Mrs. Baxter and go with her to Portland next day.
+
+They were to go to the Islands, have ice cream for luncheon, ride on
+a horse-car, and walk by the Longfellow house, a programme that so
+unsettled Rebecca's never very steady mind that she radiated flashes
+and sparkles of joy, making Mrs. Baxter wonder if flesh could be
+translucent, enabling the spirit-fires within to shine through?
+
+Buttercup was being milked on the grassy slope near the shed door. As
+she walked to the barn, after giving up her pailfuls of yellow milk,
+she bent her neck and snatched a hasty bite from a pile of turnips lying
+temptingly near. In her haste she took more of a mouthful than would be
+considered good manners even among cows, and as she disappeared in the
+barn door they could see a forest of green tops hanging from her mouth,
+while she painfully attempted to grind up the mass of stolen material
+without allowing a single turnip to escape.
+
+It grew dark soon afterward and they went into the house to see Mrs.
+Came's new lamp lighted for the first time, to examine her last drawn-in
+rug (a wonderful achievement produced entirely from dyed flannel
+petticoats), and to hear the doctor's wife play “Oft in the Still
+Night,” on the dulcimer.
+
+As they closed the sitting-room door opening on the piazza facing
+the barn, the women heard the cow coughing and said to one another:
+“Buttercup was too greedy, and now she has indigestion.”
+
+Elisha always went to bed at sundown, and Uncle Cash had gone to the
+doctor's to have his hand dressed, for he had hurt it is some way in
+the threshing-machine. Bill Peters, the hired man, came in presently and
+asked for him, saying that the cow coughed more and more, and it must
+be that something was wrong, but he could not get her to open her mouth
+wide enough for him to see anything. “She'd up an' die ruther 'n obleege
+anybody, that tarnal, ugly cow would!” he said.
+
+When Uncle Cash had driven into the yard, he came in for a lantern, and
+went directly out to the barn. After a half-hour or so, in which the
+little party had forgotten the whole occurrence, he came in again.
+
+“I'm blamed if we ain't goin' to lose that cow,” he said. “Come out,
+will ye, Hannah, and hold the lantern? I can't do anything with my right
+hand in a sling, and Bill is the stupidest critter in the country.”
+
+Everybody went out to the barn accordingly, except the doctor's wife,
+who ran over to her house to see if her brother Moses had come home from
+Milltown, and could come and take a hand in the exercises.
+
+Buttercup was in a bad way; there was no doubt of it. Something, one
+of the turnips, presumably, had lodged in her throat, and would move
+neither way, despite her attempts to dislodge it. Her breathing was
+labored, and her eyes bloodshot from straining and choking. Once or
+twice they succeeded in getting her mouth partly open, but before they
+could fairly discover the cause of trouble she had wrested her head
+away.
+
+“I can see a little tuft of green sticking straight up in the middle,”
+ said Uncle Cash, while Bill Peters and Moses held a lantern on each side
+of Buttercup's head; “but, land! It's so far down, and such a mite of a
+thing, I couldn't git it, even if I could use my right hand. S'pose you
+try, Bill.”
+
+Bill hemmed and hawed, and confessed he didn't care to try. Buttercup's
+grinders were of good size and excellent quality, and he had no fancy
+for leaving his hand within her jaws. He said he was no good at that
+kind of work, but that he would help Uncle Cash hold the cow's head;
+that was just as necessary, and considerable safer.
+
+Moses was more inclined to the service of humanity, and did his best,
+wrapping his wrist in a cloth, and making desperate but ineffectual dabs
+at the slippery green turnip-tops in the reluctantly opened throat. But
+the cow tossed her head and stamped her feet and switched her tail
+and wriggled from under Bill's hands, so that it seemed altogether
+impossible to reach the seat of the trouble.
+
+Uncle Cash was in despair, fuming and fretting the more because of his
+own crippled hand.
+
+“Hitch up, Bill,” he said, “and, Hannah, you drive over to Milliken's
+Mills for the horse-doctor. I know we can git out that turnip if we can
+hit on the right tools and somebody to manage em right; but we've got to
+be quick about it or the critter'll choke to death, sure! Your hand's so
+clumsy, Mose, she thinks her time's come when she feels it in her mouth,
+and your fingers are so big you can't ketch holt o' that green stuff
+thout its slippin'!”
+
+“Mine ain't big; let me try,” said a timid voice, and turning round,
+they saw little Elisha Simpson, his trousers pulled on over his
+night-shirt, his curly hair ruffled, his eyes vague with sleep.
+
+Uncle Cash gave a laugh of good-humored derision. “You--that's afraid
+to drive a cow to pasture? No, sir; you hain't got sand enough for this
+job, I guess!”
+
+Buttercup just then gave a worse cough than ever, and her eyes rolled in
+her head as if she were giving up the ghost.
+
+“I'd rather do it than see her choke to death!” cried the boy, in
+despair.
+
+“Then, by ginger, you can try it, sonny!” said Uncle Cash. “Now this
+time we'll tie her head up. Take it slow, and make a good job of it.”
+
+Accordingly they pried poor Buttercup's jaws open to put a wooden gag
+between them, tied her head up, and kept her as still as they could
+while the women held the lanterns.
+
+“Now, sonny, strip up your sleeve and reach as fur down's you can! Wind
+your little fingers in among that green stuff stickin' up there that
+ain't hardly big enough to call green stuff, give it a twist, and pull
+for all you're worth. Land! What a skinny little pipe stem!”
+
+The Little Prophet had stripped up his sleeve. It was a slender thing,
+his arm; but he had driven the red cow all summer, borne her tantrums,
+protected her from the consequences of her own obstinacy, taking (as he
+thought) a future owner's pride in her splendid flow of milk--grown fond
+of her, in a word, and now she was choking to death. A skinny little
+pipe stem is capable of a deal at such a time, and only a slender hand
+and arm could have done the work.
+
+Elisha trembled with nervousness, but he made a dexterous and dashing
+entrance into the awful cavern of Buttercup's mouth; descended upon the
+tiny clump of green spills or spikes, wound his little fingers in among
+them as firmly as he could, and then gave a long, steady, determined
+pull with all the strength in this body. That was not so much in itself,
+to be sure, but he borrowed a good deal more from some reserve quarter,
+the location of which nobody knows anything about, but upon which
+everybody draws in time of need.
+
+Such a valiant pull you would never have expected of the Little Prophet.
+Such a pull it was that, to his own utter amazement, he suddenly found
+himself lying flat on his back on the barn floor with a very slippery
+something in his hand, and a fair-sized but rather dilapidated turnip at
+the end of it.
+
+“That's the business!” cried Moses.
+
+“I could 'a' done it as easy as nothin' if my arm had been a leetle mite
+smaller,” said Bill Peters.
+
+“You're a trump, sonny!” exclaimed Uncle Cash, as he helped Moses untie
+Buttercup's head and took the gag out.
+
+“You're a trump, Lisha, and, by ginger, the cow's your'n; only don't you
+let your blessed pa drink none of her cream!”
+
+The welcome air rushed into Buttercup's lungs and cooled her parched,
+torn throat. She was pretty nearly spent, poor thing, and bent her head
+(rather gently for her) over the Little Prophet's shoulder as he threw
+his arms joyfully about her neck, and whispered, “You're my truly cow
+now, ain't you, Buttercup?”
+
+“Mrs. Baxter, dear,” said Rebecca, as they walked home to the parsonage
+together under the young harvest moon; “there are all sorts of cowards,
+aren't there, and don't you think Elisha is one of the best kind.”
+
+“I don't quite know what to think about cowards, Rebecca Rowena,” said
+the minister's wife hesitatingly. “The Little Prophet is the third
+coward I have known in my short life who turned out to be a hero when
+the real testing time came. Meanwhile the heroes themselves--or the ones
+that were taken for heroes--were always busy doing something, or being
+somewhere, else.”
+
+
+
+
+Eighth Chronicle. ABNER SIMPSON'S NEW LEAF
+
+
+Rebecca had now cut the bonds that bound her to the Riverboro district
+school, and had been for a week a full-fledged pupil at the Wareham
+Seminary, towards which goal she had been speeding ever since the
+memorable day when she rode into Riverboro on the top of Uncle Jerry
+Cobb's stagecoach, and told him that education was intended to be “the
+making of her.”
+
+She went to and fro, with Emma Jane and the other Riverboro boys and
+girls, on the morning and evening trains that ran between the academy
+town and Milliken's Mills.
+
+The six days had passed like a dream!--a dream in which she sat in
+corners with her eyes cast down; flushed whenever she was addressed;
+stammered whenever she answered a question, and nearly died of heart
+failure when subjected to an examination of any sort. She delighted
+the committee when reading at sight from “King Lear,” but somewhat
+discouraged them when she could not tell the capital of the United
+States. She admitted that her former teacher, Miss Dearborn, might have
+mentioned it, but if so she had not remembered it.
+
+In these first weeks among strangers she passed for nothing but an
+interesting-looking, timid, innocent, country child, never revealing,
+even to the far-seeing Emily Maxwell, a hint of her originality,
+facility, or power in any direction. Rebecca was fourteen, but so
+slight, and under the paralyzing new conditions so shy, that she
+would have been mistaken for twelve had it not been for her general
+advancement in the school curriculum.
+
+Growing up in the solitude of a remote farm house, transplanted to a
+tiny village where she lived with two elderly spinsters, she was still
+the veriest child in all but the practical duties and responsibilities
+of life; in those she had long been a woman.
+
+It was Saturday afternoon; her lessons for Monday were all learned and
+she burst into the brick house sitting-room with the flushed face and
+embarrassed mien that always foreshadowed a request. Requests were more
+commonly answered in the negative than in the affirmative at the brick
+house, a fact that accounted for the slight confusion in her demeanor.
+
+“Aunt Miranda,” she began, “the fishman says that Clara Belle Simpson
+wants to see me very much, but Mrs. Fogg can't spare her long at a time,
+you know, on account of the baby being no better; but Clara Belle could
+walk a mile up, and I a mile down the road, and we could meet at the
+pink house half way. Then we could rest and talk an hour or so, and both
+be back in time for our suppers. I've fed the cat; she had no appetite,
+as it's only two o'clock and she had her dinner at noon, but she'll go
+back to her saucer, and it's off my mind. I could go down cellar now
+and bring up the cookies and the pie and doughnuts for supper before I
+start. Aunt Jane saw no objection; but we thought I'd better ask you so
+as to run no risks.”
+
+Miranda Sawyer, who had been patiently waiting for the end of this
+speech, laid down her knitting and raised her eyes with a half-resigned
+expression that meant: Is there anything unusual in heaven or earth or
+the waters under the earth that this child does not want to do? Will she
+ever settle down to plain, comprehensible Sawyer ways, or will she to
+the end make these sudden and radical propositions, suggesting at every
+turn the irresponsible Randall ancestry?
+
+“You know well enough, Rebecca, that I don't like you to be intimate
+with Abner Simpson's young ones,” she said decisively. “They ain't fit
+company for anybody that's got Sawyer blood in their veins, if it's ever
+so little. I don't know, I'm sure, how you're goin' to turn out! The
+fish peddler seems to be your best friend, without it's Abijah Flagg
+that you're everlastingly talkin' to lately. I should think you'd
+rather read some improvin' book than to be chatterin' with Squire Bean's
+chore-boy!”
+
+“He isn't always going to be a chore-boy,” explained Rebecca, “and
+that's what we're considering. It's his career we talk about, and he
+hasn't got any father or mother to advise him. Besides, Clara Belle kind
+of belongs to the village now that she lives with Mrs. Fogg; and she
+was always the best behaved of all the girls, either in school or
+Sunday-school. Children can't help having fathers!”
+
+“Everybody says Abner is turning over a new leaf, and if so, the
+family'd ought to be encouraged every possible way,” said Miss Jane,
+entering the room with her mending basket in hand.
+
+“If Abner Simpson is turnin' over a leaf, or anythin' else in creation,
+it's only to see what's on the under side!” remarked Miss Miranda
+promptly. “Don't talk to me about new leaves! You can't change that kind
+of a man; he is what he is, and you can't make him no different!”
+
+“The grace of God can do consid'rable,” observed Jane piously.
+
+“I ain't sayin' but it can if it sets out, but it has to begin early and
+stay late on a man like Simpson.”
+
+“Now, Mirandy, Abner ain't more'n forty! I don't know what the average
+age for repentance is in men-folks, but when you think of what an awful
+sight of em leaves it to their deathbeds, forty seems real kind
+of young. Not that I've heard Abner has experienced religion, but
+everybody's surprised at the good way he's conductin' this fall.”
+
+“They'll be surprised the other way round when they come to miss their
+firewood and apples and potatoes again,” affirmed Miranda.
+
+“Clara Belle don't seem to have inherited from her father,” Jane
+ventured again timidly. “No wonder Mrs. Fogg sets such store by the
+girl. If it hadn't been for her, the baby would have been dead by now.”
+
+“Perhaps tryin' to save it was interferin' with the Lord's will,” was
+Miranda's retort.
+
+“Folks can't stop to figure out just what's the Lord's will when a child
+has upset a kettle of scalding water on to himself,” and as she spoke
+Jane darned more excitedly. “Mrs. Fogg knows well enough she hadn't
+ought to have left that baby alone in the kitchen with the stove, even
+if she did see Clara Belle comin' across lots. She'd ought to have
+waited before drivin' off; but of course she was afraid of missing the
+train, and she's too good a woman to be held accountable.”
+
+“The minister's wife says Clara Belle is a real--I can't think of the
+word!” chimed in Rebecca. “What's the female of hero? Whatever it is,
+that's what Mrs. Baxter called her!”
+
+“Clara Belle's the female of Simpson; that's what she is,” Miss Miranda
+asserted; “but she's been brought up to use her wits, and I ain't sayin'
+but she used em.”
+
+“I should say she did!” exclaimed Miss Jane; “to put that screaming,
+suffering child in the baby-carriage and run all the way to the doctor's
+when there wasn't a soul on hand to advise her! Two or three more such
+actions would make the Simpson name sound consid'rable sweeter in this
+neighborhood.”
+
+“Simpson will always sound like Simpson to me!” vouchsafed the elder
+sister, “but we've talked enough about em an' to spare. You can go
+along, Rebecca; but remember that a child is known by the company she
+keeps.”
+
+“All right, Aunt Miranda; thank you!” cried Rebecca, leaping from the
+chair on which she had been twisting nervously for five minutes. “And
+how does this strike you? Would you be in favor of my taking Clara Belle
+a company-tart?”
+
+“Don't Mrs. Fogg feed the young one, now she's taken her right into the
+family?”
+
+“Oh, yes,” Rebecca answered, “she has lovely things to eat, and Mrs.
+Fogg won't even let her drink skim milk; but I always feel that taking
+a present lets the person know you've been thinking about them and are
+extra glad to see them. Besides, unless we have company soon, those
+tarts will have to be eaten by the family, and a new batch made; you
+remember the one I had when I was rewarding myself last week? That was
+queer--but nice,” she added hastily.
+
+“Mebbe you could think of something of your own you could give away
+without taking my tarts!” responded Miranda tersely; the joints of her
+armor having been pierced by the fatally keen tongue of her niece, who
+had insinuated that company-tarts lasted a long time in the brick house.
+This was a fact; indeed, the company-tart was so named, not from any
+idea that it would ever be eaten by guests, but because it was too good
+for every-day use.
+
+Rebecca's face crimsoned with shame that she had drifted into an
+impolite and, what was worse, an apparently ungrateful speech.
+
+“I didn't mean to say anything not nice, Aunt Miranda,” she stammered.
+“Truly the tart was splendid, but not exactly like new, that's all. And
+oh! I know what I can take Clara Belle! A few chocolate drops out of the
+box Mr. Ladd gave me on my birthday.”
+
+“You go down cellar and get that tart, same as I told you,” commanded
+Miranda, “and when you fill it don't uncover a new tumbler of jelly;
+there's some dried-apple preserves open that'll do. Wear your rubbers
+and your thick jacket. After runnin' all the way down there--for your
+legs never seem to be rigged for walkin' like other girls'--you'll set
+down on some damp stone or other and ketch your death o' cold, an' your
+Aunt Jane n' I'll be kep' up nights nursin' you and luggin' your meals
+upstairs to you on a waiter.”
+
+ Here Miranda leaned her head against the back of her rocking
+chair, dropped her knitting and closed her eyes wearily, for when the
+immovable body is opposed by the irresistible force there is a certain
+amount of jar and disturbance involved in the operation.
+
+Rebecca moved toward the side door, shooting a questioning glance at
+Aunt Jane as she passed. The look was full of mysterious suggestion and
+was accompanied by an almost imperceptible gesture. Miss Jane knew that
+certain articles were kept in the entry closet, and by this time she had
+become sufficiently expert in telegraphy to know that Rebecca's unspoken
+query meant: “COULD YOU PERMIT THE HAT WITH THE RED WINGS, IT BEING
+SATURDAY, FINE SETTLED WEATHER, AND A PLEASURE EXCURSION?”
+
+These confidential requests, though fraught with embarrassment when
+Miranda was in the room, gave Jane much secret joy; there was something
+about them that stirred her spinster heart--they were so gay, so
+appealing, so un-Sawyer-, un-Riverboro-like. The longer Rebecca lived in
+the brick house the more her Aunt Jane marveled at the child. What made
+her so different from everybody else. Could it be that her graceless
+popinjay of a father, Lorenzo de Medici Randall, had bequeathed her some
+strange combination of gifts instead of fortune? Her eyes, her brows,
+the color of her lips, the shape of her face, as well as her ways and
+words, proclaimed her a changeling in the Sawyer tribe; but what an
+enchanting changeling; bringing wit and nonsense and color and delight
+into the gray monotony of the dragging years!
+
+There was frost in the air, but a bright cheery sun, as Rebecca walked
+decorously out of the brick house yard. Emma Jane Perkins was away over
+Sunday on a visit to a cousin in Moderation; Alice Robinson and Candace
+Milliken were having measles, and Riverboro was very quiet. Still, life
+was seldom anything but a gay adventure to Rebecca, and she started
+afresh every morning to its conquest. She was not exacting; the Asmodean
+feat of spinning a sand heap into twine was, poetically speaking, always
+in her power, so the mile walk to the pink-house gate, and the tryst
+with freckled, red-haired Clara Belle Simpson, whose face Miss Miranda
+said looked like a raw pie in a brick oven, these commonplace incidents
+were sufficiently exhilarating to brighten her eye and quicken her step.
+
+As the great bare horse-chestnut near the pink-house gate loomed into
+view, the red linsey-woolsey speck going down the road spied the
+blue linsey-woolsey speck coming up, and both specks flew over the
+intervening distance and, meeting, embraced each other ardently,
+somewhat to the injury of the company-tart.
+
+“Didn't it come out splendidly?” exclaimed Rebecca. “I was so afraid
+the fishman wouldn't tell you to start exactly at two, or that one of us
+would walk faster than the other; but we met at the very spot! It was a
+very uncommon idea, wasn't it? Almost romantic!”
+
+“And what do you think?” asked Clara Belle proudly. “Look at this! Mrs.
+Fogg lent me her watch to come home by!”
+
+“Oh, Clara Belle, how wonderful! Mrs. Fogg gets kinder and kinder to
+you, doesn't she? You're not homesick any more, are you?”
+
+“No-o; not really; only when I remember there's only little Susan to
+manage the twins; though they're getting on real well without me. But I
+kind of think, Rebecca, that I'm going to be given away to the Foggs for
+good.”
+
+“Do you mean adopted?”
+
+“Yes; I think father's going to sign papers. You see we can't tell how
+many years it'll be before the poor baby outgrows its burns, and Mrs.
+Fogg'll never be the same again, and she must have somebody to help
+her.”
+
+“You'll be their real daughter, then, won't you, Clara Belle? And
+Mr. Fogg is a deacon, and a selectman, and a road commissioner, and
+everything splendid.”
+
+“Yes; I'll have board, and clothes, and school, and be named Fogg, and”
+ (here her voice sank to an awed whisper) “the upper farm if I should
+ever get married; Miss Dearborn told me that herself, when she was
+persuading me not to mind being given away.”
+
+“Clara Belle Simpson!” exclaimed Rebecca in a transport. “Who'd have
+thought you'd be a female hero and an heiress besides? It's just like
+a book story, and it happened in Riverboro. I'll make Uncle Jerry Cobb
+allow there CAN be Riverboro stories, you see if I don't.”
+
+“Of course I know it's all right,” Clara Belle replied soberly. “I'll
+have a good home and father can't keep us all; but it's kind of dreadful
+to be given away, like a piano or a horse and carriage!”
+
+Rebecca's hand went out sympathetically to Clara Belle's freckled paw.
+Suddenly her own face clouded and she whispered:
+
+“I'm not sure, Clara Belle, but I'm given away too--do you s'pose I
+am? Poor father left us in debt, you see. I thought I came away from
+Sunnybrook to get an education and then help pay off the mortgage; but
+mother doesn't say anything about my coming back, and our family's one
+of those too-big ones, you know, just like yours.”
+
+“Did your mother sign papers to your aunts?'
+
+“If she did I never heard anything about it; but there's something
+pinned on to the mortgage that mother keeps in the drawer of the
+bookcase.”
+
+“You'd know it if twas adoption papers; I guess you're just lent,” Clara
+Belle said cheeringly. “I don't believe anybody'd ever give YOU away!
+And, oh! Rebecca, father's getting on so well! He works on Daly's farm
+where they raise lots of horses and cattle, too, and he breaks all the
+young colts and trains them, and swaps off the poor ones, and drives
+all over the country. Daly told Mr. Fogg he was splendid with stock,
+and father says it's just like play. He's sent home money three Saturday
+nights.”
+
+“I'm so glad!” exclaimed Rebecca sympathetically. “Now your mother'll
+have a good time and a black silk dress, won't she?”
+
+“I don't know,” sighed Clara Belle, and her voice was grave. “Ever since
+I can remember she's just washed and cried and cried and washed. Miss
+Dearborn has been spending her vacation up to Acreville, you know,
+and she came yesterday to board next door to Mrs. Fogg's. I heard them
+talking last night when I was getting the baby to sleep--I couldn't
+help it, they were so close--and Miss Dearborn said mother doesn't like
+Acreville; she says nobody takes any notice of her, and they don't give
+her any more work. Mrs. Fogg said, well, they were dreadful stiff and
+particular up that way and they liked women to have wedding rings.”
+
+“Hasn't your mother got a wedding ring?” asked Rebecca, astonished.
+“Why, I thought everybody HAD to have them, just as they do sofas and a
+kitchen stove!”
+
+“I never noticed she didn't have one, but when they spoke I remembered
+mother's hands washing and wringing, and she doesn't wear one, I know.
+She hasn't got any jewelry, not even a breast-pin.”
+
+Rebecca's tone was somewhat censorious, “your father's been so poor
+perhaps he couldn't afford breast-pins, but I should have thought he'd
+have given your mother a wedding ring when they were married; that's the
+time to do it, right at the very first.”
+
+“They didn't have any real church dress-up wedding,” explained Clara
+Belle extenuatingly. “You see the first mother, mine, had the big boys
+and me, and then she died when we were little. Then after a while this
+mother came to housekeep, and she stayed, and by and by she was Mrs.
+Simpson, and Susan and the twins and the baby are hers, and she and
+father didn't have time for a regular wedding in church. They don't have
+veils and bridesmaids and refreshments round here like Miss Dearborn's
+sister did.”
+
+“Do they cost a great deal--wedding rings?” asked Rebecca thoughtfully.
+“They're solid gold, so I s'pose they do. If they were cheap we might
+buy one. I've got seventy-four cents saved up; how much have you?”
+
+“Fifty-three,” Clara Belle responded, in a depressing tone; “and anyway
+there are no stores nearer than Milltown. We'd have to buy it secretly,
+for I wouldn't make father angry, or shame his pride, now he's got
+steady work; and mother would know I had spent all my savings.”
+
+Rebecca looked nonplussed. “I declare,” she said, “I think the Acreville
+people must be perfectly horrid not to call on your mother only because
+she hasn't got any jewelry. You wouldn't dare tell your father what Miss
+Dearborn heard, so he'd save up and buy the ring?”
+
+“No; I certainly would not!” and Clara Belle's lips closed tightly and
+decisively.
+
+Rebecca sat quietly for a few moments, then she exclaimed jubilantly:
+“I know where we could get it! From Mr. Aladdin, and then I needn't tell
+him who it's for! He's coming to stay over tomorrow with his aunt, and
+I'll ask him to buy a ring for us in Boston. I won't explain anything,
+you know; I'll just say I need a wedding ring.”
+
+“That would be perfectly lovely,” replied Clara Belle, a look of hope
+dawning in her eyes; “and we can think afterwards how to get it over to
+mother. Perhaps you could send it to father instead, but I wouldn't dare
+to do it myself. You won't tell anybody, Rebecca?”
+
+“Cross my heart!” Rebecca exclaimed dramatically; and then with a
+reproachful look, “you know I couldn't repeat a sacred secret like
+that! Shall we meet next Saturday afternoon, and I tell you what's
+happened?--Why, Clara Belle, isn't that Mr. Ladd watering his horse at
+the foot of the hill this very minute? It is; and he's driven up from
+Milltown stead of coming on the train from Boston to Edgewood. He's all
+alone, and I can ride home with him and ask him about the ring right
+away!”
+
+Clara Belle kissed Rebecca fervently, and started on her homeward
+walk, while Rebecca waited at the top of the long hill, fluttering her
+handkerchief as a signal.
+
+“Mr. Aladdin! Mr. Aladdin!” she cried, as the horse and wagon came
+nearer.
+
+Adam Ladd drew up quickly at the sound of the eager young voice.
+
+“Well, well; here is Rebecca Rowena fluttering along the highroad like a
+red-winged blackbird! Are you going to fly home, or drive with me?”
+
+Rebecca clambered into the carriage, laughing and blushing with delight
+at his nonsense and with joy at seeing him again.
+
+“Clara Belle and I were just talking about you this minute, and I'm so
+glad you came this way, for there's something very important to ask you
+about,” she began, rather breathlessly.
+
+“No doubt,” laughed Adam Ladd, who had become, in the course of his
+acquaintance with Rebecca, a sort of high court of appeals; “I hope the
+premium banquet lamp doesn't smoke as it grows older?”
+
+“Now, Mr. Aladdin, you WILL not remember nicely. Mr. Simpson swapped off
+the banquet lamp when he was moving the family to Acreville; it's not
+the lamp at all, but once, when you were here last time, you said you'd
+make up your mind what you were going to give me for Christmas.”
+
+“Well,” and “I do remember that much quite nicely.”
+
+“Well, is it bought?”
+
+“No, I never buy Christmas presents before Thanksgiving.”
+
+“Then, DEAR Mr. Aladdin, would you buy me something different, something
+that I want to give away, and buy it a little sooner than Christmas?”
+
+“That depends. I don't relish having my Christmas presents given away.
+I like to have them kept forever in little girls' bureau drawers, all
+wrapped in pink tissue paper; but explain the matter and perhaps I'll
+change my mind. What is it you want?”
+
+“I need a wedding ring dreadfully,” said Rebecca, “but it's a sacred
+secret.”
+
+Adam Ladd's eyes flashed with surprise and he smiled to himself with
+pleasure. Had he on his list of acquaintances, he asked himself, a
+person of any age or sex so altogether irresistible and unique as this
+child? Then he turned to face her with the merry teasing look that made
+him so delightful to young people.
+
+“I thought it was perfectly understood between us,” he said, “that if
+you could ever contrive to grow up and I were willing to wait, that I
+was to ride up to the brick house on my snow white”--
+
+“Coal black,” corrected Rebecca, with a sparkling eye and a warning
+finger.
+
+“Coal black charger; put a golden circlet on your lily white finger,
+draw you up behind me on my pillion”--
+
+“And Emma Jane, too,” Rebecca interrupted.
+
+“I think I didn't mention Emma Jane,” argued Mr. Aladdin. “Three on a
+pillion is very uncomfortable. I think Emma Jane leaps on the back of a
+prancing chestnut, and we all go off to my castle in the forest.”
+
+“Emma Jane never leaps, and she'd be afraid of a prancing chestnut,”
+ objected Rebecca.
+
+“Then she shall have a gentle cream-colored pony; but now, without any
+explanation, you ask me to buy you a wedding ring, which shows
+plainly that you are planning to ride off on a snow white--I mean coal
+black--charger with somebody else.”
+
+Rebecca dimpled and laughed with joy at the nonsense. In her prosaic
+world no one but Adam Ladd played the game and answered the fool
+according to his folly. Nobody else talked delicious fairy-story twaddle
+but Mr. Aladdin.
+
+“The ring isn't for ME!” she explained carefully. “You know very well
+that Emma Jane nor I can't be married till we're through Quackenbos's
+Grammar, Greenleaf's Arithmetic, and big enough to wear long trails and
+run a sewing machine. The ring is for a friend.”
+
+“Why doesn't the groom give it to his bride himself?”
+
+“Because he's poor and kind of thoughtless, and anyway she isn't a bride
+any more; she has three step and three other kind of children.”
+
+Adam Ladd put the whip back in the socket thoughtfully, and then stooped
+to tuck in the rug over Rebecca's feet and his own. When he raised his
+head again he asked: “Why not tell me a little more, Rebecca? I'm safe!”
+
+Rebecca looked at him, feeling his wisdom and strength, and above all
+his sympathy. Then she said hesitatingly: “You remember I told you all
+about the Simpsons that day on your aunt's porch when you bought the
+soap because I told you how the family were always in trouble and how
+much they needed a banquet lamp? Mr. Simpson, Clara Belle's father, has
+always been very poor, and not always very good,--a little bit THIEVISH,
+you know--but oh, so pleasant and nice to talk to! And now he's turning
+over a new leaf. And everybody in Riverboro liked Mrs. Simpson when she
+came here a stranger, because they were sorry for her and she was so
+patient, and such a hard worker, and so kind to the children. But where
+she lives now, though they used to know her when she was a girl, they're
+not polite to her and don't give her scrubbing and washing; and Clara
+belle heard our teacher say to Mrs. Fogg that the Acreville people were
+stiff, and despised her because she didn't wear a wedding ring, like all
+the rest. And Clara Belle and I thought if they were so mean as that,
+we'd love to give her one, and then she'd be happier and have more
+work; and perhaps Mr. Simpson if he gets along better will buy her a
+breast-pin and earrings, and she'll be fitted out like the others. I
+know Mrs. Peter Meserve is looked up to by everybody in Edgewood on
+account of her gold bracelets and moss agate necklace.”
+
+Adam turned again to meet the luminous, innocent eyes that glowed under
+the delicate brows and long lashes, feeling as he had more than once
+felt before, as if his worldly-wise, grown-up thoughts had been bathed
+in some purifying spring.
+
+“How shall you send the ring to Mrs. Simpson?” he asked, with interest.
+
+“We haven't settled yet; Clara Belle's afraid to do it, and thinks I
+could manage better. Will the ring cost much? Because, of course, if it
+does, I must ask Aunt Jane first. There are things I have to ask Aunt
+Miranda, and others that belong to Aunt Jane.”
+
+“It costs the merest trifle. I'll buy one and bring it to you, and we'll
+consult about it; but I think as you're great friends with Mr. Simpson
+you'd better send it to him in a letter, letters being your strong
+point! It's a present a man ought to give his own wife, but it's worth
+trying, Rebecca. You and Clara Belle can manage it between you, and I'll
+stay in the background where nobody will see me.”
+
+
+
+
+Ninth Chronicle. THE GREEN ISLE
+
+     Many a green isle needs must be
+     In the deep sea of misery,
+     Or the mariner, worn and wan,
+     Never thus could voyage on
+     Day and night and night and day,
+     Drifting on his weary way.
+
+     --Shelley
+
+
+Meantime in these frosty autumn days life was crowded with events in the
+lonely Simpson house at Acreville.
+
+The tumble-down dwelling stood on the edge of Pliney's Pond; so called
+because old Colonel Richardson left his lands to be divided in five
+equal parts, each share to be chosen in turn by one of his five sons,
+Pliny, the eldest, having priority of choice.
+
+Pliny Richardson, having little taste for farming, and being ardently
+fond of fishing, rowing, and swimming, acted up to his reputation
+of being “a little mite odd,” and took his whole twenty acres in
+water--hence Pliny's Pond.
+
+The eldest Simpson boy had been working on a farm in Cumberland County
+for two years. Samuel, generally dubbed “see-saw,” had lately found a
+humble place in a shingle mill and was partially self-supporting. Clara
+Belle had been adopted by the Foggs; thus there were only three mouths
+to fill, the capacious ones of Elijah and Elisha, the twin boys, and
+of lisping, nine-year-old Susan, the capable houseworker and
+mother's assistant, for the baby had died during the summer; died of
+discouragement at having been born into a family unprovided with food
+or money or love or care, or even with desire for, or appreciation of,
+babies.
+
+There was no doubt that the erratic father of the house had turned over
+a new leaf. Exactly when he began, or how, or why, or how long he would
+continue the praiseworthy process,--in a word whether there would be
+more leaves turned as the months went on,--Mrs. Simpson did not know,
+and it is doubtful if any authority lower than that of Mr. Simpson's
+Maker could have decided the matter. He had stolen articles for swapping
+purposes for a long time, but had often avoided detection, and always
+escaped punishment until the last few years. Three fines imposed for
+small offenses were followed by several arrests and two imprisonments
+for brief periods, and he found himself wholly out of sympathy with
+the wages of sin. Sin itself he did not especially mind, but the wages
+thereof were decidedly unpleasant and irksome to him. He also minded
+very much the isolated position in the community which had lately become
+his; for he was a social being and would ALMOST rather not steal from a
+neighbor than have him find it out and cease intercourse! This feeling
+was working in him and rendering him unaccountably irritable and
+depressed when he took his daughter over to Riverboro at the time of the
+great flag-raising.
+
+There are seasons of refreshment, as well as seasons of drought, in the
+spiritual, as in the natural world, and in some way or other dews
+and rains of grace fell upon Abner Simpson's heart during that brief
+journey. Perhaps the giving away of a child that he could not support
+had made the soil of his heart a little softer and readier for planting
+than usual; but when he stole the new flag off Mrs. Peter Meserve's
+doorsteps, under the impression that the cotton-covered bundle
+contained freshly washed clothes, he unconsciously set certain forces in
+operation.
+
+It will be remembered that Rebecca saw an inch of red bunting peeping
+from the back of his wagon, and asked the pleasure of a drive with him.
+She was no daughter of the regiment, but she proposed to follow the
+flag. When she diplomatically requested the return of the sacred
+object which was to be the glory of the “raising” next day, and he thus
+discovered his mistake, he was furious with himself for having slipped
+into a disagreeable predicament; and later, when he unexpectedly faced
+a detachment of Riverboro society at the cross-roads, and met not only
+their wrath and scorn, but the reproachful, disappointed glance of
+Rebecca's eyes, he felt degraded as never before.
+
+The night at the Centre tavern did not help matters, nor the jolly
+patriotic meeting of the three villages at the flag-raising next
+morning. He would have enjoyed being at the head and front of the
+festive preparations, but as he had cut himself off from all such
+friendly gatherings, he intended at any rate to sit in his wagon on the
+very outskirts of the assembled crowd and see some of the gayety; for,
+heaven knows, he had little enough, he who loved talk, and song, and
+story, and laughter, and excitement.
+
+The flag was raised, the crowd cheered, the little girl to whom he had
+lied, the girl who was impersonating the State of Maine, was on the
+platform “speaking her piece,” and he could just distinguish some of the
+words she was saying:
+
+“For it's your star, my star, all the stars together, That makes our
+country's flag so proud To float in the bright fall weather.”
+
+Then suddenly there was a clarion voice cleaving the air, and he saw
+a tall man standing in the centre of the stage and heard him crying:
+“THREE CHEERS FOR THE GIRL THAT SAVED THE FLAG FROM THE HANDS OF THE
+ENEMY!”
+
+He was sore and bitter enough already; lonely, isolated enough; with
+no lot nor share in the honest community life; no hand to shake, no
+neighbor's meal to share; and this unexpected public arraignment smote
+him between the eyes. With resentment newly kindled, pride wounded,
+vanity bleeding, he flung a curse at the joyous throng and drove toward
+home, the home where he would find his ragged children and meet the
+timid eyes of a woman who had been the loyal partner of his poverty and
+disgraces.
+
+It is probable that even then his (extremely light) hand was already on
+the “new leaf.” The angels, doubtless, were not especially proud of the
+matter and manner of his reformation, but I dare say they were glad to
+count him theirs on any terms, so difficult is the reformation of this
+blind and foolish world! They must have been; for they immediately
+flung into his very lap a profitable, and what is more to the point, an
+interesting and agreeable situation where money could be earned by doing
+the very things his nature craved. There were feats of daring to be
+performed in sight of admiring and applauding stable boys; the horses
+he loved were his companions; he was OBLIGED to “swap,” for Daly, his
+employer, counted on him to get rid of all undesirable stock; power and
+responsibility of a sort were given him freely, for Daly was no Puritan,
+and felt himself amply capable of managing any number of Simpsons;
+so here were numberless advantages within the man's grasp, and wages
+besides!
+
+Abner positively felt no temptation to steal; his soul expanded with
+pride, and the admiration and astonishment with which he regarded
+his virtuous present was only equaled by the disgust with which he
+contemplated his past; not so much a vicious past, in his own generous
+estimation of it, as a “thunderin' foolish” one.
+
+Mrs. Simpson took the same view of Abner's new leaf as the angels.
+She was thankful for even a brief season of honesty coupled with the
+Saturday night remittance; and if she still washed and cried and cried
+and washed, as Clara Belle had always seen her, it was either because of
+some hidden sorrow, or because her poor strength seemed all at once to
+have deserted her.
+
+Just when employment and good fortune had come to the step-children, and
+her own were better fed and clothed than ever before, the pain that had
+always lurked, constant but dull, near her tired heart, grew fierce
+and triumphantly strong; clutching her in its talons, biting, gnawing,
+worrying, leaving her each week with slighter powers of resistance.
+Still hope was in the air and a greater content than had ever been hers
+was in her eyes; a content that came near to happiness when the doctor
+ordered her to keep her bed and sent for Clara Belle. She could not wash
+any longer, but there was the ever new miracle of the Saturday night
+remittance for household expenses.
+
+“Is your pain bad today, mother,” asked Clara Belle, who, only lately
+given away, was merely borrowed from Mrs. Fogg for what was thought to
+be a brief emergency.
+
+“Well, there, I can't hardly tell, Clara Belle,” Mrs. Simpson replied,
+with a faint smile. “I can't seem to remember the pain these days
+without it's extra bad. The neighbors are so kind; Mrs. Little has sent
+me canned mustard greens, and Mrs. Benson chocolate ice cream and mince
+pie; there's the doctor's drops to make me sleep, and these blankets
+and that great box of eatables from Mr. Ladd; and you here to keep me
+comp'ny! I declare I'm kind o' dazed with comforts. I never expected to
+see sherry wine in this house. I ain't never drawed the cork; it does
+me good enough jest to look at Mr. Ladd's bottle settin' on the
+mantel-piece with the fire shinin' on the brown glass.”
+
+Mr. Simpson had come to see his wife and had met the doctor just as he
+was leaving the house.
+
+“She looks awful bad to me. Is she goin' to pull through all right, same
+as the last time?” he asked the doctor nervously.
+
+“She's going to pull right through into the other world,” the doctor
+answered bluntly; “and as there don't seem to be anybody else to take
+the bull by the horns, I'd advise you, having made the woman's life
+about as hard and miserable as you could, to try and help her to die
+easy!”
+
+Abner, surprised and crushed by the weight of this verbal chastisement,
+sat down on the doorstep, his head in his hands, and thought a while
+solemnly. Thought was not an operation he was wont to indulge in, and
+when he opened the gate a few minutes later and walked slowly toward
+the barn for his horse, he looked pale and unnerved. It is uncommonly
+startling, first to see yourself in another man's scornful eyes, and
+then, clearly, in your own.
+
+Two days later he came again, and this time it was decreed that he
+should find Parson Carll tying his piebald mare at the post.
+
+Clara Belle's quick eye had observed the minister as he alighted from
+his buggy, and, warning her mother, she hastily smoothed the bedclothes,
+arranged the medicine bottles, and swept the hearth.
+
+“Oh! Don't let him in!” wailed Mrs. Simpson, all of a flutter at the
+prospect of such a visitor. “Oh, dear! They must think over to the
+village that I'm dreadful sick, or the minister wouldn't never think
+of callin'! Don't let him in, Clara Belle! I'm afraid he will say hard
+words to me, or pray to me; and I ain't never been prayed to since I was
+a child! Is his wife with him?”
+
+“No; he's alone; but father's just drove up and is hitching at the shed
+door.”
+
+“That's worse than all!” and Mrs. Simpson raised herself feebly on her
+pillows and clasped her hands in despair. “You mustn't let them two
+meet, Clara Belle, and you must send Mr. Carll away; your father
+wouldn't have a minister in the house, nor speak to one, for a thousand
+dollars!”
+
+“Be quiet, mother! Lie down! It'll be all right! You'll only fret
+yourself into a spell! The minister's just a good man; he won't say
+anything to frighten you. Father's talking with him real pleasant, and
+pointing the way to the front door.”
+
+The parson knocked and was admitted by the excited Clara Belle, who
+ushered him tremblingly into the sickroom, and then betook herself to
+the kitchen with the children, as he gently requested her.
+
+Abner Simpson, left alone in the shed, fumbled in his vest pocket and
+took out an envelope which held a sheet of paper and a tiny packet
+wrapped in tissue paper. The letter had been read once before and ran as
+follows:
+
+Dear Mr. Simpson:
+
+This is a secret letter. I heard that the Acreville people weren't nice
+to Mrs. Simpson because she didn't have any wedding ring like all the
+others.
+
+I know you've always been poor, dear Mr. Simpson, and troubled with a
+large family like ours at the farm; but you really ought to have given
+Mrs. Simpson a ring when you were married to her, right at the very
+first; for then it would have been over and done with, as they are solid
+gold and last forever. And probably she wouldn't feel like asking you
+for one, because ladies are just like girls, only grown up, and I know
+I'd be ashamed to beg for jewelry when just board and clothes cost
+so much. So I send you a nice, new wedding ring to save your buying,
+thinking you might get Mrs. Simpson a bracelet or eardrops for
+Christmas. It did not cost me anything, as it was a secret present from
+a friend.
+
+I hear Mrs. Simpson is sick, and it would be a great comfort to her
+while she is in bed and has so much time to look at it. When I had
+the measles Emma Jane Perkins lent me her mother's garnet ring, and it
+helped me very much to put my wasted hand outside the bedclothes and see
+the ring sparkling.
+
+Please don't be angry with me, dear Mr. Simpson, because I like you
+so much and am so glad you are happy with the horses and colts; and I
+believe now perhaps you DID think the flag was a bundle of washing
+when you took it that day; so no more from your Trusted friend, Rebecca
+Rowena Randall.
+
+Simpson tore the letter slowly and quietly into fragments and scattered
+the bits on the woodpile, took off his hat, and smoothed his hair;
+pulled his mustaches thoughtfully, straightened his shoulders, and then,
+holding the tiny packet in the palm of his hand, he went round to the
+front door, and having entered the house stood outside the sickroom for
+an instant, turned the knob and walked softly in.
+
+Then at last the angels might have enjoyed a moment of unmixed joy, for
+in that brief walk from shed to house Abner Simpson's conscience waked
+to life and attained sufficient strength to prick and sting, to provoke
+remorse, to incite penitence, to do all sorts of divine and beautiful
+things it was meant for, but had never been allowed to do.
+
+Clara Belle went about the kitchen quietly, making preparations for the
+children's supper. She had left Riverboro in haste, as the change for
+the worse in Mrs. Simpson had been very sudden, but since she had come
+she had thought more than once of the wedding ring. She had wondered
+whether Mr. Ladd had bought it for Rebecca, and whether Rebecca would
+find means to send it to Acreville; but her cares had been so many and
+varied that the subject had now finally retired to the background of her
+mind.
+
+The hands of the clock crept on and she kept hushing the strident tones
+of Elijah and Elisha, opening and shutting the oven door to look at
+the corn bread, advising Susan as to her dishes, and marveling that the
+minister stayed so long.
+
+At last she heard a door open and close and saw the old parson come
+out, wiping his spectacles, and step into the buggy for his drive to the
+village.
+
+Then there was another period of suspense, during which the house was
+as silent as the grave, and presently her father came into the kitchen,
+greeted the twins and Susan, and said to Clara Belle: “Don't go in there
+yet!” jerking his thumb towards Mrs. Simpson's room; “she's all beat out
+and she's just droppin' off to sleep. I'll send some groceries up from
+the store as I go along. Is the doctor makin' a second call tonight?”
+
+“Yes; he'll be here pretty soon, now,” Clara Belle answered, looking at
+the clock.
+
+“All right. I'll be here again tomorrow, soon as it's light, and if she
+ain't picked up any I'll send word back to Daly, and stop here with you
+for a spell till she's better.”
+
+It was true; Mrs. Simpson was “all beat out.” It had been a time of
+excitement and stress, and the poor, fluttered creature was dropping off
+into the strangest sleep--a sleep made up of waking dreams. The pain,
+that had encompassed her heart like a band of steel, lessened its cruel
+pressure, and finally left her so completely that she seemed to see it
+floating above her head; only that it looked no longer like a band of
+steel, but a golden circle.
+
+The frail bark in which she had sailed her life voyage had been rocking
+on a rough and tossing ocean, and now it floated, floated slowly into
+smoother waters.
+
+As long as she could remember, her boat had been flung about in storm
+and tempest, lashed by angry winds, borne against rocks, beaten, torn,
+buffeted. Now the waves had subsided; the sky was clear; the sea was
+warm and tranquil; the sunshine dried the tattered sails; the air was
+soft and balmy.
+
+And now, for sleep plays strange tricks, the bark disappeared from the
+dream, and it was she, herself, who was floating, floating farther and
+farther away; whither she neither knew nor cared; it was enough to be at
+rest, lulled by the lapping of the cool waves.
+
+Then there appeared a green isle rising from the sea; an isle so radiant
+and fairy-like that her famished eyes could hardly believe its reality;
+but it was real, for she sailed nearer and nearer to its shores, and at
+last her feet skimmed the shining sands and she floated through the
+air as disembodied spirits float, till she sank softly at the foot of a
+spreading tree.
+
+Then she saw the green isle was a flowering isle. Every shrub and bush
+was blooming; the trees were hung with rosy garlands, and even the earth
+was carpeted with tiny flowers. The rare fragrances, the bird songs,
+soft and musical, the ravishment of color, all bore down upon her
+swimming senses at once, taking them captive so completely that she
+remembered no past, was conscious of no present, looked forward to no
+future. She seemed to leave the body and the sad, heavy things of the
+body. The humming in her ears ceased, the light faded, the birds songs
+grew fainter and more distant, the golden circle of pain receded farther
+and farther until it was lost to view; even the flowering island gently
+drifted away, and all was peace and silence.
+
+It was time for the doctor now, and Clara Belle, too anxious to wait
+longer, softly turned the knob of her mother's door and entered the
+room. The glow of the open fire illumined the darkest side of the poor
+chamber. There were no trees near the house, and a full November moon
+streamed in at the unblinded, uncurtained windows, lighting up the bare
+interior--the unpainted floor, the gray plastered walls, and the white
+counterpane.
+
+Her mother lay quite still, her head turned and drooping a little on
+the pillow. Her left hand was folded softly up against her breast, the
+fingers of the right partly covering it, as if protecting something
+precious.
+
+Was it the moonlight that made the patient brow so white, and where were
+the lines of anxiety and pain? The face of the mother who had washed
+and cried and cried and washed was as radiant as if the closed eye were
+beholding heavenly visions.
+
+“Something must have cured her!” thought Clara Belle, awed and almost
+frightened by the whiteness and the silence.
+
+She tiptoed across the floor to look more closely at the still, smiling
+shape, and bending over it saw, under the shadow of the caressing right
+hand, a narrow gold band gleaming on the work-stained finger.
+
+“Oh, the ring came, after all!” she said in a glad whisper, “and perhaps
+it was that that made her better!”
+
+She put her hand on her mother's gently. A terrified shiver, a warning
+shudder, shook the girl from head to foot at the chilling touch. A dread
+presence she had never met before suddenly took shape. It filled the
+room; stifled the cry on her lips; froze her steps to the floor, stopped
+the beating of her heart.
+
+Just then the door opened.
+
+“Oh, doctor! Come quick!” she sobbed, stretching out her hand for
+help, and then covering her eyes. “Come close! Look at mother! Is she
+better--or is she dead?”
+
+The doctor put one hand on the shoulder of the shrinking child, and
+touched the woman with the other.
+
+“She is better!” he said gently, “and she is dead.”
+
+
+
+
+Tenth Chronicle. REBECCA'S REMINISCENCES
+
+
+Rebecca was sitting by the window in her room at the Wareham Female
+Seminary. She was alone, as her roommate, Emma Jane Perkins, was
+reciting Latin down below in some academic vault of the old brick
+building.
+
+A new and most ardent passion for the classics had been born in Emma
+Jane's hitherto unfertile brain, for Abijah Flagg, who was carrying off
+all the prizes at Limerick Academy, had written her a letter in Latin, a
+letter which she had been unable to translate for herself, even with the
+aid of a dictionary, and which she had been apparently unwilling that
+Rebecca, her bosom friend, confidant, and roommate, should render into
+English.
+
+An old-fashioned Female Seminary, with its allotment of one medium-sized
+room to two medium sized young females, gave small opportunities for
+privacy by night or day, for neither the double washstand, nor the thus
+far unimagined bathroom, nor even indeed the humble and serviceable
+screen, had been realized, in these dark ages of which I write.
+Accordingly, like the irrational ostrich, which defends itself by the
+simple process of not looking at its pursuers, Emma Jane had kept her
+Latin letter in her closed hand, in her pocket, or in her open book,
+flattering herself that no one had noticed her pleased bewilderment at
+its only half-imagined contents.
+
+All the fairies were not present at Rebecca's cradle. A goodly number of
+them telegraphed that they were previously engaged or unavoidably absent
+from town. The village of Temperance, Maine, where Rebecca first saw the
+light, was hardly a place on its own merits to attract large throngs of
+fairies. But one dear old personage who keeps her pocket full of Merry
+Leaves from the Laughing Tree, took a fancy to come to the little
+birthday party; and seeing so few of her sister-fairies present, she
+dowered the sleeping baby more richly than was her wont, because of its
+apparent lack of wealth in other directions. So the child grew, and the
+Merry Leaves from the Laughing Tree rustled where they hung from the
+hood of her cradle, and, being fairy leaves, when the cradle was
+given up they festooned themselves on the cribside, and later on blew
+themselves up to the ceilings at Sunnybrook Farm and dangled there,
+making fun for everybody. They never withered, even at the brick house
+in Riverboro, where the air was particularly inimical to fairies,
+for Miss Miranda Sawyer would have scared any ordinary elf out of her
+seventeen senses. They followed Rebecca to Wareham, and during Abijah
+Flagg's Latin correspondence with Emma Jane they fluttered about that
+young person's head in such a manner that Rebecca was almost afraid that
+she would discover them herself, although this is something, as a matter
+of fact, that never does happen.
+
+A week had gone by since the Latin missive had been taken from
+the post-office by Emma Jane, and now, by means of much midnight
+oil-burning, by much cautious questioning of Miss Maxwell, by such
+scrutiny of the moods and tenses of Latin verbs as wellnigh destroyed
+her brain tissue, she had mastered its romantic message. If it was
+conventional in style, Emma Jane never suspected it. If some of the
+similes seemed to have been culled from the Latin poets, and some of the
+phrases built up from Latin exercises, Emma Jane was neither scholar
+nor critic; the similes, the phrases, the sentiments, when finally
+translated and written down in black-and-white English, made, in her
+opinion, the most convincing and heart-melting document ever sent
+through the mails:
+
+Mea cara Emma:
+
+Cur audeo scribere ad te epistulam? Es mihi dea! Semper es in mea anima.
+Iterum et iterum es cum me in somnis. Saepe video tuas capillos auri,
+tuos pulchros oculos similes caelo, tuas genas, quasi rubentes rosas
+in nive. Tua vox est dulcior quam cantus avium aut murmur rivuli in
+montibus.
+
+Cur sum ego tam miser et pauper et indignus, et tu tam dulcis et bona et
+nobilis?
+
+Si cogitabis de me ero beatus. Tu es sola puella quam amo, et semper
+eris. Alias puellas non amavi. Forte olim amabis me, sed sum indignus.
+Sine te sum miser, cum tu es prope mea vita omni est goddamn.
+
+Vale, carissima, carissima puella!
+
+De tuo fideli servo A.F.
+
+My dear Emma:
+
+Why dare I write to you a letter? You are to me a goddess! Always you
+are in my heart. Again and again you are with me in dreams. Often I see
+your locks of gold, your beautiful eyes like the sky, your cheeks, as
+red roses in snow. Your voice is sweeter than the singing of birds or
+the murmur of the stream in the mountains.
+
+Why am I so wretched and poor and unworthy, and you so sweet and good
+and noble?
+
+If you will think of me I shall be happy. You are the only girl that I
+love and always will be. Other girls I have not loved. Perhaps sometime
+you will love me, but I am unworthy. Without you, I am wretched, when
+you are near my life is all joy.
+
+Farewell, dearest, dearest girl!
+
+From your faithful slave A.F.
+
+Emma Jane knew the letter by heart in English. She even knew it in
+Latin, only a few days before a dead language to her, but now one filled
+with life and meaning. From beginning to end the epistle had the effect
+upon her as of an intoxicating elixir. Often, at morning prayers, or
+while eating her rice pudding at the noon dinner, or when sinking off
+to sleep at night, she heard a voice murmuring in her ear, “Vale,
+carissima, carissima puella!” As to the effect on her modest,
+countrified little heart of the phrases in which Abijah stated she was
+a goddess and he her faithful slave, that quite baffles description; for
+it lifted her bodily out of the scenes in which she moved, into a new,
+rosy, ethereal atmosphere in which even Rebecca had no place.
+
+Rebecca did not know this, fortunately; she only suspected, and waited
+for the day when Emma Jane would pour out her confidences, as she always
+did, and always would until the end of time. At the present moment
+she was busily employed in thinking about her own affairs. A shabby
+composition book with mottled board covers lay open on the table before
+her, and sometimes she wrote in it with feverish haste and absorption,
+and sometimes she rested her chin in the cup of her palm, and with the
+pencil poised in the other hand looked dreamily out on the village, its
+huddle of roofs and steeples all blurred into positive beauty by the
+fast-falling snowflakes.
+
+It was the middle of December and the friendly sky was softly dropping
+a great white mantle of peace and good-will over the little town, making
+all ready within and without for the Feast o' the Babe.
+
+The main street, that in summer was made dignified by its splendid
+avenue of shade trees, now ran quiet and white between rows of stalwart
+trunks, whose leafless branches were all hanging heavy under their
+dazzling burden.
+
+The path leading straight up the hill to the Academy was broken only by
+the feet of the hurrying, breathless boys and girls who ran up and down,
+carrying piles of books under their arms; books which they remembered
+so long as they were within the four walls of the recitation room, and
+which they eagerly forgot as soon as they met one another in the living,
+laughing world, going up and down the hill.
+
+“It's very becoming to the universe, snow is!” thought Rebecca, looking
+out of the window dreamily. “Really there's little to choose between the
+world and heaven when a snowstorm is going on. I feel as if I ought to
+look at it every minute. I wish I could get over being greedy, but it
+still seems to me at sixteen as if there weren't waking hours enough
+in the day, and as if somehow I were pressed for time and continually
+losing something. How well I remember mother's story about me when I
+was four. It was at early breakfast on the farm, but I called all meals
+dinner' then, and when I had finished I folded up my bib and sighed: O,
+dear! Only two more dinners, play a while and go to bed!' This was at
+six in the morning--lamplight in the kitchen, snowlight outside!
+
+     Powdery, powdery, powdery snow,
+     Making things lovely wherever you go!
+     Merciful, merciful, merciful snow,
+     Masking the ugliness hidden below.
+
+Herbert made me promise to do a poem for the January 'Pilot,' but I
+mustn't take the snow as a subject; there has been too great competition
+among the older poets!” And with that she turned in her chair and began
+writing again in the shabby book, which was already three quarters
+filled with childish scribblings, sometimes in pencil, and sometimes in
+violet ink with carefully shaded capital letters.”
+
+* * * * *
+
+Squire Bean has had a sharp attack of rheumatism and Abijah Flagg came
+back from Limerick for a few days to nurse him. One morning the Burnham
+sisters from North Riverboro came over to spend the day with Aunt
+Miranda, and Abijah went down to put up their horse. (“'Commodatin'
+'Bijah” was his pet name when we were all young.)
+
+He scaled the ladder to the barn chamber--the dear old ladder that
+used to be my safety valve!--and pitched down the last forkful of
+grandfather's hay that will ever be eaten by any visiting horse. They
+WILL be delighted to hear that it is all gone; they have grumbled at it
+for years and years.
+
+What should Abijah find at the bottom of the heap but my Thought Book,
+hidden there two or three years ago and forgotten!
+
+When I think of what it was to me, the place it filled in my life, the
+affection I lavished on it, I wonder that I could forget it, even in
+all the excitement of coming to Wareham to school. And that gives me
+“an uncommon thought” as I used to say! It is this: that when we finish
+building an air castle we seldom live in it after all; we sometimes even
+forget that we ever longed to! Perhaps we have gone so far as to
+begin another castle on a higher hilltop, and this is so
+beautiful,--especially while we are building, and before we live in
+it!--that the first one has quite vanished from sight and mind, like the
+outgrown shell of the nautilus that he casts off on the shore and never
+looks at again. (At least I suppose he doesn't; but perhaps he takes one
+backward glance, half-smiling, half-serious, just as I am doing at my
+old Thought Book, and says, “WAS THAT MY SHELL! GOODNESS GRACIOUS! HOW
+DID I EVER SQUEEZE MYSELF INTO IT!”)
+
+That bit about the nautilus sounds like an extract from a school theme,
+or a “Pilot” editorial, or a fragment of one of dear Miss Maxwell's
+lectures, but I think girls of sixteen are principally imitations of the
+people and things they love and admire; and between editing the “Pilot,”
+ writing out Virgil translations, searching for composition subjects, and
+studying rhetorical models, there is very little of the original
+Rebecca Rowena about me at the present moment; I am just a member of
+the graduating class in good and regular standing. We do our hair alike,
+dress alike as much as possible, eat and drink alike, talk alike,--I am
+not even sure that we do not think alike; and what will become of the
+poor world when we are all let loose upon it on the same day of June?
+Will life, real life, bring our true selves back to us? Will love and
+duty and sorrow and trouble and work finally wear off the “school stamp”
+ that has been pressed upon all of us until we look like rows of shining
+copper cents fresh from the mint?
+
+Yet there must be a little difference between us somewhere, or why does
+Abijah Flagg write Latin letters to Emma Jane, instead of to me? There
+is one example on the other side of the argument,--Abijah Flagg. He
+stands out from all the rest of the boys like the Rock of Gibraltar in
+the geography pictures. Is it because he never went to school until he
+was sixteen? He almost died of longing to go, and the longing seemed to
+teach him more than going. He knew his letters, and could read simple
+things, but it was I who taught him what books really meant when I was
+eleven and he thirteen. We studied while he was husking corn or cutting
+potatoes for seed, or shelling beans in the Squire's barn. His beloved
+Emma Jane didn't teach him; her father would not have let her be friends
+with a chore-boy! It was I who found him after milking-time, summer
+nights, suffering, yes dying, of Least Common Multiple and Greatest
+Common Divisor; I who struck the shackles from the slave and told him to
+skip it all and go on to something easier, like Fractions, Percentage,
+and Compound Interest, as I did myself. Oh! How he used to smell of the
+cows when I was correcting his sums on warm evenings, but I don't regret
+it, for he is now the joy of Limerick and the pride of Riverboro, and I
+suppose has forgotten the proper side on which to approach a cow if you
+wish to milk her. This now unserviceable knowledge is neatly inclosed in
+the outgrown shell he threw off two or three years ago. His gratitude
+to me knows no bounds, but--he writes Latin letters to Emma Jane! But as
+Mr. Perkins said about drowning the kittens (I now quote from myself at
+thirteen), “It is the way of the world and how things have to be!”
+
+Well, I have read the Thought Book all through, and when I want to
+make Mr. Aladdin laugh, I shall show him my composition on the relative
+values of punishment and reward as builders of character.
+
+I am not at all the same Rebecca today at sixteen that I was then,
+at twelve and thirteen. I hope, in getting rid of my failings, that I
+haven't scrubbed and rubbed so hard that I have taken the gloss off the
+poor little virtues that lay just alongside of the faults; for as I read
+the foolish doggerel and the funny, funny “Remerniscences,” I see on the
+whole a nice, well-meaning, trusting, loving heedless little creature,
+that after all I'd rather build on than outgrow altogether, because she
+is Me; the Me that was made and born just a little different from all
+the rest of the babies in my birthday year.
+
+One thing is alike in the child and the girl. They both love to set
+thoughts down in black and white; to see how they look, how they sound,
+and how they make one feel when one reads them over.
+
+They both love the sound of beautiful sentences and the tinkle of
+rhyming words, and in fact, of the three great R's of life, they adore
+Reading and Riting, as much as they abhor 'Rithmetic.
+
+The little girl in the old book is always thinking of what she is “going
+to be.”
+
+Uncle Jerry Cobb spoiled me a good deal in this direction. I remember
+he said to everybody when I wrote my verses for the flag-raising: “Nary
+rung on the ladder o' fame but that child'll climb if you give her
+time!”--poor Uncle Jerry! He will be so disappointed in me as time goes
+on. And still he would think I have already climbed two rungs on the
+ladder, although it is only a little Wareham ladder, for I am one of
+the “Pilot” editors, the first “girl editor”--and I have taken a fifty
+dollar prize in composition and paid off the interest on a twelve
+hundred dollar mortgage with it.
+
+     “High is the rank we now possess,
+     But higher we shall rise;
+     Though what we shall hereafter be
+     Is hid from mortal eyes.”
+
+This hymn was sung in meeting the Sunday after my election, and Mr.
+Aladdin was there that day and looked across the aisle and smiled at me.
+Then he sent me a sheet of paper from Boston the next morning with just
+one verse in the middle of it.
+
+“She made the cleverest people quite ashamed; And ev'n the good with
+inward envy groan, Finding themselves so very much exceeded, In their
+own way by all the things that she did.”
+
+Miss Maxwell says it is Byron, and I wish I had thought of the last
+rhyme before Byron did; my rhymes are always so common.
+
+I am too busy doing, nowadays, to give very much thought to being.
+Mr. Aladdin was teasing me one day about what he calls my “cast-off
+careers.”
+
+“What makes you aim at any mark in particular, Rebecca?” he asked,
+looking at Miss Maxwell and laughing. “Women never hit what they aim at,
+anyway; but if they shut their eyes and shoot in the air they generally
+find themselves in the bull's eye.”
+
+I think one reason that I have always dreamed of what I should be, when
+I grew up, was, that even before father died mother worried about the
+mortgage on the farm, and what would become of us if it were foreclosed.
+
+It was hard on children to be brought up on a mortgage that way, but
+oh! it was harder still on poor dear mother, who had seven of us then
+to think of, and still has three at home to feed and clothe out of the
+farm.
+
+Aunt Jane says I am young for my age, Aunt Miranda is afraid that I will
+never really “grow up,” Mr. Aladdin says that I don't know the world any
+better than the pearl inside of the oyster. They none of them know the
+old, old thoughts I have, some of them going back years and years; for
+they are never ones that I can speak about.
+
+I remember how we children used to admire father, he was so handsome and
+graceful and amusing, never cross like mother, or too busy to play with
+us. He never did any work at home because he had to keep his hands nice
+for playing the church melodeon, or the violin or piano for dances.
+
+Mother used to say: “Hannah and Rebecca, you must hull the strawberries,
+your father cannot help.” “John, you must milk next year for I haven't
+the time and it would spoil your father's hands.”
+
+All the other men in Temperance village wore calico, or flannel shirts,
+except on Sundays, but Father never wore any but white ones with
+starched bosoms. He was very particular about them and mother used to
+stitch and stitch on the pleats, and press and press the bosoms and
+collar and cuffs, sometimes late at night.
+
+Then she was tired and thin and gray, with no time to sew on new dresses
+for herself, and no time to wear them, because she was always taking
+care of the babies; and father was happy and well and handsome. But
+we children never thought much about it until once, after father had
+mortgaged the farm, there was going to be a sociable in Temperance
+village. Mother could not go as Jenny had whooping-cough and Mark had
+just broken his arm, and when she was tying father's necktie, the last
+thing before he started, he said: “I wish, Aurelia, that you cared a
+little about YOUR appearance and YOUR dress; it goes a long way with a
+man like me.”
+
+Mother had finished the tie, and her hands dropped suddenly. I looked at
+her eyes and mouth while she looked at father and in a minute I was ever
+so old, with a grown-up ache in my heart. It has always stayed there,
+although I admired my handsome father and was proud of him because he
+was so talented; but now that I am older and have thought about things,
+my love for mother is different from what it used to be. Father was
+always the favorite when we were little, he was so interesting, and
+I wonder sometimes if we don't remember interesting people longer and
+better than we do those who are just good and patient. If so it seems
+very cruel.
+
+As I look back I see that Miss Ross, the artist who brought me my
+pink parasol from Paris, sowed the first seeds in me of ambition to do
+something special. Her life seemed so beautiful and so easy to a child.
+I had not been to school then, or read George Macdonald, so I did not
+know that “Ease is the lovely result of forgotten toil.”
+
+Miss Ross sat out of doors and painted lovely things, and everybody said
+how wonderful they were, and bought them straight away; and she took
+care of a blind father and two brothers, and traveled wherever she
+wished. It comes back to me now, that summer when I was ten and Miss
+Ross painted me sitting by the mill-wheel while she talked to me of
+foreign countries!
+
+The other day Miss Maxwell read something from Browning's poems to the
+girls of her literature class. It was about David the shepherd boy
+who used to lie in his hollow watching one eagle “wheeling slow as in
+sleep.” He used to wonder about the wide world that the eagle beheld,
+the eagle that was stretching his wings so far up in the blue, while he,
+the poor shepherd boy, could see only the “strip twixt the hill and the
+sky;” for he lay in a hollow.
+
+I told Mr. Baxter about it the next day, which was the Saturday before
+I joined the church. I asked him if it was wicked to long to see as much
+as the eagle saw?
+
+There was never anybody quite like Mr. Baxter. “Rebecca dear,” he said,
+“it may be that you need not always lie in a hollow, as the shepherd boy
+did; but wherever you lie, that little strip you see 'twixt the hill
+and the sky' is able to hold all of earth and all of heaven, if only you
+have the right sort of vision.”
+
+I was a long, long time about “experiencing religion.” I remember Sunday
+afternoons at the brick house the first winter after I went there; when
+I used to sit in the middle of the dining-room as I was bid, silent and
+still, with the big family Bible on my knees. Aunt Miranda had Baxter's
+“Saints' Rest,” but her seat was by the window, and she at least could
+give a glance into the street now and then without being positively
+wicked.
+
+Aunt Jane used to read the “Pilgrim's Progress.” The fire burned low;
+the tall clock ticked, ticked, so slowly and steadily, that the pictures
+swam before my eyes and I almost fell asleep.
+
+They thought by shutting everything else out that I should see God;
+but I didn't, not once. I was so homesick for Sunnybrook and John that
+I could hardly learn my weekly hymns, especially the sad, long one
+beginning:
+
+     “My thoughts on awful subjects roll,
+     Damnation and the dead.”
+
+It was brother John for whom I was chiefly homesick on Sunday
+afternoons, because at Sunnybrook Farm father was dead and mother was
+always busy, and Hannah never liked to talk.
+
+Then the next year the missionaries from Syria came to Riverboro; and
+at the meeting Mr. Burch saw me playing the melodeon, and thought I was
+grown up and a church member, and so he asked me to lead in prayer.
+
+I didn't dare to refuse, and when I prayed, which was just like thinking
+out loud, I found I could talk to God a great deal easier than to Aunt
+Miranda or even to Uncle Jerry Cobb. There were things I could say to
+Him that I could never say to anybody else, and saying them always made
+me happy and contented.
+
+When Mr. Baxter asked me last year about joining the church, I told him
+I was afraid I did not understand God quite well enough to be a real
+member.
+
+“So you don't quite understand God, Rebecca?” he asked, smiling.
+“Well, there is something else much more important, which is, that
+He understands you! He understands your feeble love, your longings,
+desires, hopes, faults, ambitions, crosses; and that, after all, is what
+counts! Of course you don't understand Him! You are overshadowed by His
+love, His power, His benignity, His wisdom; that is as it should be!
+Why, Rebecca, dear, if you could stand erect and unabashed in God's
+presence, as one who perfectly comprehended His nature or His purposes,
+it would be sacrilege! Don't be puzzled out of your blessed inheritance
+of faith, my child; accept God easily and naturally, just as He accepts
+you!”
+
+“God never puzzled me, Mr. Baxter; it isn't that,” I said; “but the
+doctrines do worry me dreadfully.”
+
+“Let them alone for the present,” Mr Baxter said. “Anyway, Rebecca, you
+can never prove God; you can only find Him!”
+
+“Then do you think I have really experienced religion, Mr. Baxter?” I
+asked. “Am I the beginnings of a Christian?”
+
+“You are a dear child of the understanding God!” Mr. Baxter said; “and I
+say it over to myself night and morning so that I can never forget it.”
+
+* * * * *
+
+The year is nearly over and the next few months will be lived in the
+rush and whirlwind of work that comes before graduation. The bell for
+philosophy class will ring in ten minutes, and as I have been writing
+for nearly two hours, I must learn my lesson going up the Academy
+hill. It will not be the first time; it is a grand hill for learning! I
+suppose after fifty years or so the very ground has become soaked with
+knowledge, and every particle of air in the vicinity is crammed with
+useful information.
+
+I will put my book into my trunk (having no blessed haymow hereabouts)
+and take it out again,--when shall I take it out again?
+
+After graduation perhaps I shall be too grown up and too busy to write
+in a Thought Book; but oh, if only something would happen worth putting
+down; something strange; something unusual; something different from the
+things that happen every day in Riverboro and Edgewood!
+
+Graduation will surely take me a little out of “the hollow,”--make me
+a little more like the soaring eagle, gazing at the whole wide world
+beneath him while he wheels “slow as in sleep.” But whether or not,
+I'll try not to be a discontented shepherd, but remember what Mr. Baxter
+said, that the little strip that I see “twixt the hill and the sky” is
+able to hold all of earth and all of heaven, if only I have the eyes to
+see it.
+
+Rebecca Rowena Randall.
+
+Wareham Female Seminary, December 187--.
+
+
+
+
+Eleventh Chronicle. ABIJAH THE BRAVE AND THE FAIR EMMAJANE
+
+
+I
+
+     “A warrior so bold and a maiden so bright
+     Conversed as they sat on the green.
+     They gazed at each other in tender delight.
+     Alonzo the brave was the name of the knight,
+     And the maid was the fair Imogene.
+
+     “Alas!' said the youth, 'since tomorrow I go
+     To fight in a far distant land,
+     Your tears for my absence soon ceasing to flow,
+     Some other will court you, and you will bestow
+     On a wealthier suitor your hand.'
+
+     'Oh, hush these suspicions!' Fair Imogene said,
+     “So hurtful to love and to me!
+     For if you be living, or if you be dead,
+     I swear by the Virgin that none in your stead
+     Shall the husband of Imogene be!'
+
+Ever since she was eight years old Rebecca had wished to be eighteen,
+but now that she was within a month of that awe-inspiring and
+long-desired age she wondered if, after all, it was destined to be a
+turning point in her quiet existence. Her eleventh year, for instance,
+had been a real turning-point, since it was then that she had left
+Sunnybrook Farm and come to her maiden aunts in Riverboro. Aurelia
+Randall may have been doubtful as to the effect upon her spinster
+sisters of the irrepressible child, but she was hopeful from the first
+that the larger opportunities of Riverboro would be the “making” of
+Rebecca herself.
+
+The next turning-point was her fourteenth year, when she left the
+district school for the Wareham Female Seminary, then in the hey-day
+of its local fame. Graduation (next to marriage, perhaps, the most
+thrilling episode in the life of a little country girl) happened at
+seventeen, and not long afterward her Aunt Miranda's death, sudden and
+unexpected, changed not only all the outward activities and conditions
+of her life, but played its own part in her development.
+
+The brick house looked very homelike and pleasant on a June morning
+nowadays with children's faces smiling at the windows and youthful
+footsteps sounding through the halls; and the brass knocker on the
+red-painted front door might have remembered Rebecca's prayer of a year
+before, when she leaned against its sun-warmed brightness and whispered:
+“God bless Aunt Miranda; God bless the brick house that was; God bless
+the brick house that's going to be!”
+
+All the doors and blinds were open to the sun and air as they had never
+been in Miss Miranda Sawyer's time. The hollyhock bed that had been her
+chief pride was never neglected, and Rebecca liked to hear the neighbors
+say that there was no such row of beautiful plants and no such variety
+of beautiful colors in Riverboro as those that climbed up and peeped in
+at the kitchen windows where old Miss Miranda used to sit.
+
+Now that the place was her very own Rebecca felt a passion of pride in
+its smoothly mown fields, its carefully thinned-out woods, its blooming
+garden spots, and its well-weeded vegetable patch; felt, too whenever
+she looked at any part of it, a passion of gratitude to the stern old
+aunt who had looked upon her as the future head of the family, as well
+as a passion of desire to be worthy of that trust.
+
+It had been a very difficult year for a girl fresh from school: the
+death of her aunt, the nursing of Miss Jane, prematurely enfeebled by
+the shock, the removal of her own invalid mother and the rest of the
+little family from Sunnybrook Farm. But all had gone smoothly; and when
+once the Randall fortunes had taken an upward turn nothing seemed able
+to stop their intrepid ascent.
+
+Aurelia Randall renewed her youth in the companionship of her sister
+Jane and the comforts by which her children were surrounded; the
+mortgage was no longer a daily terror, for Sunnybrook had been sold to
+the new railroad; Hannah, now Mrs. Will Melville, was happily situated;
+John, at last, was studying medicine; Mark, the boisterous and unlucky
+brother, had broken no bones for several months; while Jenny and Fanny
+were doing well at the district school under Miss Libby Moses, Miss
+Dearborn's successor.
+
+“I don't feel very safe,” thought Rebecca, remembering all these
+unaccustomed mercies as she sat on the front doorsteps, with her tatting
+shuttle flying in and out of the fine cotton like a hummingbird. “It's
+just like one of those too beautiful July days that winds up with a
+thundershower before night! Still, when you remember that the Randalls
+never had anything but thunder and lightning, rain, snow, and hail, in
+their family history for twelve or fifteen years, perhaps it is only
+natural that they should enjoy a little spell of settled weather. If it
+really turns out to BE settled, now that Aunt Jane and mother are strong
+again I must be looking up one of what Mr. Aladdin calls my cast-off
+careers.”--“There comes Emma Jane Perkins through her front gate; she
+will be here in a minute, and I'll tease her!” and Rebecca ran in the
+door and seated herself at the old piano that stood between the open
+windows in the parlor.
+
+Peeping from behind the muslin curtains, she waited until Emma Jane
+was on the very threshold and then began singing her version of an old
+ballad, made that morning while she was dressing. The ballad was a great
+favorite of hers, and she counted on doing telling execution with it in
+the present instance by the simple subterfuge of removing the original
+hero and heroine, Alonzo and Imogene, and substituting Abijah the Brave
+and the Fair Emmajane, leaving the circumstances in the first three
+verses unaltered, because in truth they seemed to require no alteration.
+
+Her high, clear voice, quivering with merriment, floated through the
+windows into the still summer air:
+
+     “'A warrior so bold and a maiden so bright
+     Conversed as they sat on the green.
+     They gazed at each other in tender delight.
+     Abijah the Brave was the name of the knight,
+     And the maid was the Fair Emmajane.'”
+
+“Rebecca Randall, stop! Somebody'll hear you!”
+
+“No, they won't--they're making jelly in the kitchen, miles away.”
+
+     “'Alas!' said the youth, since tomorrow I go
+     To fight in a far distant land,
+     Your tears for my absence soon ceasing to flow,
+     Some other will court you, and you will bestow
+     On a wealthier suitor your hand.'”
+
+“Rebecca, you can't THINK how your voice carries! I believe mother can
+hear it over to my house!”
+
+“Then, if she can, I must sing the third verse, just to clear your
+reputation from the cloud cast upon it in the second,” laughed her
+tormentor, going on with the song:
+
+“'Oh, hush these suspicions!' Fair Emmajane said, 'So hurtful to love
+and to me! For if you be living, or if you be dead, I swear, my Abijah,
+that none in your stead, Shall the husband of Emmajane be!'”
+
+After ending the third verse Rebecca wheeled around on the piano
+stool and confronted her friend, who was carefully closing the parlor
+windows:--
+
+“Emma Jane Perkins, it is an ordinary Thursday afternoon at four o'clock
+and you have on your new blue barege, although there is not even a
+church sociable in prospect this evening. What does this mean? Is Abijah
+the Brave coming at last?”
+
+“I don't know certainly, but it will be some time this week.”
+
+“And of course you'd rather be dressed up and not seen, than seen when
+not dressed up. Right, my Fair Emmajane; so would I. Not that it makes
+any difference to poor me, wearing my fourth best black and white calico
+and expecting nobody.
+
+“Oh, well, YOU! There's something inside of you that does instead of
+pretty dresses,” cried Emma Jane, whose adoration of her friend had
+never altered nor lessened since they met at the age of eleven. “You
+know you are as different from anybody else in Riverboro as a princess
+in a fairy story. Libby Moses says they would notice you in Lowell,
+Massachusetts!”
+
+“Would they? I wonder,” speculated Rebecca, rendered almost speechless
+by this tribute to her charms. “Well, if Lowell, Massachusetts, could
+see me, or if you could see me, in my new lavender muslin with the
+violet sash, it would die of envy, and so would you!”
+
+“If I had been going to be envious of you, Rebecca, I should have died
+years ago. Come, let's go out on the steps where it's shady and cool.”
+
+“And where we can see the Perkins front gate and the road running both
+ways,” teased Rebecca, and then, softening her tone, she said: “How
+is it getting on, Emmy? Tell me what's happened since I've been in
+Brunswick.”
+
+“Nothing much,” confessed Emma Jane. “He writes to me, but I don't write
+to him, you know. I don't dare to, till he comes to the house.”
+
+“Are his letters still in Latin?” asked Rebecca, with a twinkling eye.
+
+“Oh, no! Not now, because--well, because there are things you can't seem
+to write in Latin. I saw him at the Masonic picnic in the grove, but he
+won't say anything REAL to me till he gets more pay and dares to speak
+to mother and father. He IS brave in all other ways, but I ain't sure
+he'll ever have the courage for that, he's so afraid of them and always
+has been. Just remember what's in his mind all the time, Rebecca, that
+my folks know all about what his mother was, and how he was born on the
+poor-farm. Not that I care; look how he's educated and worked himself
+up! I think he's perfectly elegant, and I shouldn't mind if he had been
+born in the bulrushes, like Moses.”
+
+Emma Jane's every-day vocabulary was pretty much what it had been before
+she went to the expensive Wareham Female Seminary. She had acquired
+a certain amount of information concerning the art of speech, but in
+moments of strong feeling she lapsed into the vernacular. She grew
+slowly in all directions, did Emma Jane, and, to use Rebecca's favorite
+nautilus figure, she had left comparatively few outgrown shells on the
+shores of “life's unresting sea.”
+
+“Moses wasn't born in the bulrushes, Emmy dear,” corrected Rebecca
+laughingly. “Pharaoh's daughter found him there. It wasn't quite as
+romantic a scene--Squire Bean's wife taking little Abijah Flagg from the
+poorhouse when his girl-mother died, but, oh, I think Abijah's splendid!
+Mr. Ladd says Riverboro'll be proud of him yet, and I shouldn't wonder,
+Emmy dear, if you had a three-story house with a cupola on it, some day;
+and sitting down at your mahogany desk inlaid with garnets, you will
+write notes stating that Mrs. Abijah Flagg requests the pleasure of Miss
+Rebecca Randall's company to tea, and that the Hon. Abijah Flagg, M.C.,
+will call for her on his way from the station with a span of horses and
+the turquoise carryall!”
+
+Emma Jane laughed at the ridiculous prophecy, and answered: “If I ever
+write the invitation I shan't be addressing it to Miss Randall, I'm sure
+of that; it'll be to Mrs.-----”
+
+“Don't!” cried Rebecca impetuously, changing color and putting her hand
+over Emma Jane's lips. “If you won't I'll stop teasing. I couldn't bear
+a name put to anything, I couldn't, Emmy dear! I wouldn't tease you,
+either, if it weren't something we've both known ever so long--something
+that you have always consulted me about of your own accord, and Abijah
+too.”
+
+“Don't get excited,” replied Emma Jane, “I was only going to say you
+were sure to be Mrs. Somebody in course of time.”
+
+“Oh,” said Rebecca with a relieved sigh, her color coming back; “if
+that's all you meant, just nonsense; but I thought, I thought--I don't
+really know just what I thought!”
+
+“I think you thought something you didn't want me to think you thought,”
+ said Emma Jane with unusual felicity.
+
+“No, it's not that; but somehow, today, I have been remembering things.
+Perhaps it was because at breakfast Aunt Jane and mother reminded me of
+my coming birthday and said that Squire Bean would give me the deed of
+the brick house. That made me feel very old and responsible; and when I
+came out on the steps this afternoon it was just as if pictures of the
+old years were moving up and down the road. Everything is so beautiful
+today! Doesn't the sky look as if it had been dyed blue and the fields
+painted pink and green and yellow this very minute?”
+
+“It's a perfectly elegant day!” responded Emma Jane with a sigh. “If
+only my mind was at rest! That's the difference between being young and
+grown-up. We never used to think and worry.”
+
+“Indeed we didn't! Look, Emmy, there's the very spot where Uncle Jerry
+Cobb stopped the stage and I stepped out with my pink parasol and my
+bouquet of purple lilacs, and you were watching me from your bedroom
+window and wondering what I had in mother's little hair trunk strapped
+on behind. Poor Aunt Miranda didn't love me at first sight, and oh, how
+cross she was the first two years! But now every hard thought I ever had
+comes back to me and cuts like a knife!”
+
+“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 excitement.
+
+“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 crochet needle
+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 love letter 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
+feeling for Abijah! Upon my word, Emma Jane,” she cried with a sudden
+change of tone, “if I had suspected for an instant that Abijah the Brave
+had that Latin letter in him I should have tried to get him to write it
+to me; and then it would be I who would sit down at my mahogany desk and
+ask Miss Perkins to come to tea with Mrs. Flagg.”
+
+Emma Jane paled and shuddered openly. “I speak as a church member,
+Rebecca,” she said, “when I tell you I've always thanked the Lord that
+you never looked at Abijah Flagg and he never looked at you. If either
+of you ever had, there never would have been a chance for me, and I've
+always known it!”
+
+II
+
+The romance alluded to in the foregoing chapter had been going on, so
+far as Abijah Flagg's part of it was concerned, for many years, his
+affection dating back in his own mind to the first moment that he saw
+Emma Jane Perkins at the age of nine.
+
+Emma Jane had shown no sign of reciprocating his attachment until the
+last three years, when the evolution of the chore-boy into the
+budding scholar and man of affairs had inflamed even her somewhat dull
+imagination.
+
+Squire Bean's wife had taken Abijah away from the poorhouse, thinking
+that she could make him of some little use in her home. Abbie Flagg, the
+mother, was neither wise nor beautiful; it is to be feared that she
+was not even good, and her lack of all these desirable qualities,
+particularly the last one, had been impressed upon the child ever since
+he could remember. People seemed to blame him for being in the world at
+all; this world that had not expected him nor desired him, nor made any
+provision for him. The great battle-axe of poorhouse opinion was forever
+leveled at the mere little atom of innocent transgression, until he grew
+sad and shy, clumsy, stiff, and self-conscious. He had an indomitable
+craving for love in his heart and had never received a caress in his
+life.
+
+He was more contented when he came to Squire Bean's house. The first
+year he could only pick up chips, carry pine wood into the kitchen, go
+to the post-office, run errands, drive the cows, and feed the hens, but
+every day he grew more and more useful.
+
+His only friend was little Jim Watson, the storekeeper's son, and they
+were inseparable companions whenever Abijah had time for play.
+
+One never-to-be-forgotten July day a new family moved into the white
+cottage between Squire Bean's house and the Sawyers'. Mr. Perkins had
+sold his farm beyond North Riverboro and had established a blacksmith's
+shop in the village, at the Edgewood end of the bridge. This fact was of
+no special interest to the nine-year-old Abijah, but what really was of
+importance, was the appearance of a pretty little girl of seven in the
+front yard; a pretty little fat doll of a girl, with bright fuzzy hair,
+pink cheeks, blue eyes, and a smile of almost bewildering continuity.
+Another might have criticised it as having the air of being glued on,
+but Abijah was already in the toils and never wished it to move.
+
+The next day being the glorious Fourth and a holiday, Jimmy Watson came
+over like David, to visit his favorite Jonathan. His Jonathan met him
+at the top of the hill, pleaded a pressing engagement, curtly sent him
+home, and then went back to play with his new idol, with whom he
+had already scraped acquaintance, her parents being exceedingly busy
+settling the new house.
+
+After the noon dinner Jimmy again yearned to resume friendly relations,
+and, forgetting his rebuff, again toiled up the hill and appeared
+unexpectedly at no great distance from the Perkins premises, wearing the
+broad and beaming smile of one who is confident of welcome.
+
+His morning call had been officious and unpleasant and unsolicited, but
+his afternoon visit could only be regarded as impudent, audacious,
+and positively dangerous; for Abijah and Emma Jane were cosily playing
+house, the game of all others in which it is particularly desirable to
+have two and not three participants.
+
+At that moment the nature of Abijah changed, at once and forever.
+Without a pang of conscience he flew over the intervening patch of
+ground between himself and his dreaded rival, and seizing small stones
+and larger ones, as haste and fury demanded, flung them at Jimmy Watson,
+and flung and flung, till the bewildered boy ran down the hill howling.
+Then he made a “stickin'” door to the play-house, put the awed Emma Jane
+inside and strode up and down in front of the edifice like an Indian
+brave. At such an early age does woman become a distracting and
+disturbing influence in man's career!
+
+Time went on, and so did the rivalry between the poorhouse boy and the
+son of wealth, but Abijah's chances of friendship with Emma Jane grew
+fewer and fewer as they both grew older. He did not go to school, so
+there was no meeting-ground there, but sometimes, when he saw the knot
+of boys and girls returning in the afternoon, he would invite Elijah and
+Elisha, the Simpson twins, to visit him, and take pains to be in Squire
+Bean's front yard, doing something that might impress his inamorata as
+she passed the premises.
+
+As Jimmy Watson was particularly small and fragile, Abijah generally
+chose feats of strength and skill for these prearranged performances.
+
+Sometimes he would throw his hat up into the elm trees as far as he
+could and, when it came down, catch it on his head. Sometimes he would
+walk on his hands, with his legs wriggling in the air, or turn a double
+somersault, or jump incredible distances across the extended arms of
+the Simpson twins; and his bosom swelled with pride when the girls
+exclaimed, “Isn't he splendid!” although he often heard his rival murmur
+scornfully, “SMARTY ALECK!”--a scathing allusion of unknown origin.
+
+Squire Bean, although he did not send the boy to school (thinking, as
+he was of no possible importance in the universe, it was not worth
+while bothering about his education), finally became impressed with his
+ability, lent him books, and gave him more time to study. These were all
+he needed, books and time, and when there was an especially hard knot to
+untie, Rebecca, as the star scholar of the neighborhood, helped him to
+untie it.
+
+When he was sixteen he longed to go away from Riverboro and be something
+better than a chore boy. Squire Bean had been giving him small wages
+for three or four years, and when the time of parting came presented him
+with a ten-dollar bill and a silver watch.
+
+Many a time had he discussed his future with Rebecca and asked her
+opinion.
+
+This was not strange, for there was nothing in human form that she could
+not and did not converse with, easily and delightedly. She had ideas
+on every conceivable subject, and would have cheerfully advised the
+minister if he had asked her. The fishman consulted her when he couldn't
+endure his mother-in-law another minute in the house; Uncle Jerry
+Cobb didn't part with his river field until he had talked it over with
+Rebecca; and as for Aunt Jane, she couldn't decide whether to wear her
+black merino or her gray thibet unless Rebecca cast the final vote.
+
+Abijah wanted to go far away from Riverboro, as far as Limerick Academy,
+which was at least fifteen miles; but although this seemed extreme,
+Rebecca agreed, saying pensively: “There IS a kind of magicness about
+going far away and then coming back all changed.”
+
+This was precisely Abijah's unspoken thought. Limerick knew nothing of
+Abbie Flagg's worthlessness, birth, and training, and the awful stigma
+of his poorhouse birth, so that he would start fair. He could have gone
+to Wareham and thus remained within daily sight of the beloved Emma
+Jane; but no, he was not going to permit her to watch him in the process
+of “becoming,” but after he had “become” something. He did not propose
+to take any risks after all these years of silence and patience. Not he!
+He proposed to disappear, like the moon on a dark night, and as he was,
+at present, something that Mr. Perkins would by no means have in the
+family nor Mrs. Perkins allow in the house, he would neither return to
+Riverboro nor ask any favors of them until he had something to offer.
+Yes, sir. He was going to be crammed to the eyebrows with learning for
+one thing,--useless kinds and all,--going to have good clothes, and a
+good income. Everything that was in his power should be right, because
+there would always be lurking in the background the things he never
+could help--the mother and the poorhouse.
+
+So he went away, and, although at Squire Bean's invitation he came back
+the first year for two brief visits at Christmas and Easter, he was
+little seen in Riverboro, for Mr. Ladd finally found him a place where
+he could make his vacations profitable and learn bookkeeping at the same
+time.
+
+The visits in Riverboro were tantalizing rather than pleasant. He
+was invited to two parties, but he was all the time conscious of his
+shirt-collar, and he was sure that his “pants” were not the proper
+thing, for by this time his ideals of dress had attained an almost
+unrealizable height. As for his shoes, he felt that he walked on carpets
+as if they were furrows and he were propelling a plow or a harrow before
+him. They played Drop the Handkerchief and Copenhagen at the parties,
+but he had not had the audacity to kiss Emma Jane, which was bad enough,
+but Jimmy had and did, which was infinitely worse! The sight of James
+Watson's unworthy and over-ambitious lips on Emma Jane's pink cheek
+almost destroyed his faith in an overruling Providence.
+
+After the parties were over he went back to his old room in Squire
+Bean's shed chamber. As he lay in bed his thoughts fluttered about
+Emma Jane as swallows circle around the eaves. The terrible sickness of
+hopeless handicapped love kept him awake. Once he crawled out of bed in
+the night, lighted the lamp, and looked for his mustache, remembering
+that he had seen a suspicion of down on his rival's upper lip. He rose
+again half an hour later, again lighted the lamp, put a few drops of oil
+on his hair, and brushed it violently for several minutes. Then he went
+back to bed, and after making up his mind that he would buy a dulcimer
+and learn to play on it so that he would be more attractive at parties,
+and outshine his rival in society as he had aforetime in athletics, he
+finally sank into a troubled slumber.
+
+Those days, so full of hope and doubt and torture, seemed mercifully
+unreal now, they lay so far back in the past--six or eight years, in
+fact, which is a lifetime to the lad of twenty--and meantime he had
+conquered many of the adverse circumstances that had threatened to cloud
+his career.
+
+Abijah Flagg was a true child of his native State. Something of the same
+timber that Maine puts into her forests, something of the same strength
+and resisting power that she works into her rocks, goes into her sons
+and daughters; and at twenty Abijah was going to take his fate in his
+hand and ask Mr. Perkins, the rich blacksmith, if, after a suitable
+period of probation (during which he would further prepare himself for
+his exalted destiny), he might marry the fair Emma Jane, sole heiress of
+the Perkins house and fortunes.
+
+III
+
+This was boy and girl love, calf love, perhaps, though even that may
+develop into something larger, truer, and finer; but not so far away
+were other and very different hearts growing and budding, each in its
+own way. There was little Miss Dearborn, the pretty school teacher,
+drifting into a foolish alliance because she did not agree with her
+stepmother at home; there was Herbert Dunn, valedictorian of his class,
+dazzled by Huldah Meserve, who like a glowworm “shone afar off bright,
+but looked at near, had neither heat nor light.”
+
+There was sweet Emily Maxwell, less than thirty still, with most of her
+heart bestowed in the wrong quarter. She was toiling on at the Wareham
+school, living as unselfish a life as a nun in a convent; lavishing the
+mind and soul of her, the heart and body of her, on her chosen work.
+How many women give themselves thus, consciously and unconsciously;
+and, though they themselves miss the joys and compensations of mothering
+their own little twos and threes, God must be grateful to them for
+their mothering of the hundreds which make them so precious in His
+regenerating purposes.
+
+Then there was Adam Ladd, waiting at thirty-five for a girl to grow a
+little older, simply because he could not find one already grown who
+suited his somewhat fastidious and exacting tastes.
+
+“I'll not call Rebecca perfection,” he quoted once, in a letter to Emily
+Maxwell,--“I'll not call her perfection, for that's a post, afraid to
+move. But she's a dancing sprig of the tree next it.”
+
+When first she appeared on his aunt's piazza in North Riverboro and
+insisted on selling him a large quantity of very inferior soap in order
+that her friends, the Simpsons, might possess a premium in the shape of
+a greatly needed banquet lamp, she had riveted his attention. He thought
+all the time that he enjoyed talking with her more than with any woman
+alive, and he had never changed his opinion. She always caught what
+he said as if it were a ball tossed to her, and sometimes her mind, as
+through it his thoughts came back to him, seemed like a prism which had
+dyed them with deeper colors.
+
+Adam Ladd always called Rebecca in his heart his little Spring. His
+boyhood had been lonely and unhappy. That was the part of life he had
+missed, and although it was the full summer of success and prosperity
+with him now, he found his lost youth only in her.
+
+She was to him--how shall I describe it?
+
+Do you remember an early day in May with budding leaf, warm earth,
+tremulous air, and changing, willful sky--how new it seemed? How fresh
+and joyous beyond all explaining?
+
+Have you lain with half-closed eyes where the flickering of sunlight
+through young leaves, the song of birds and brook and the fragrance of
+wild flowers combined to charm your senses, and you felt the sweetness
+and grace of nature as never before?
+
+Rebecca was springtide to Adam's thirsty heart. She was blithe youth
+incarnate; she was music--an Aeolian harp that every passing breeze
+woke to some whispering little tune; she was a changing, iridescent
+joy-bubble; she was the shadow of a leaf dancing across a dusty floor.
+No bough of his thought could be so bare but she somehow built a nest in
+it and evoked life where none was before.
+
+And Rebecca herself?
+
+She had been quite unconscious of all this until very lately, and even
+now she was but half awakened; searching among her childish instincts
+and her girlish dreams for some Ariadne thread that should guide her
+safely through the labyrinth of her new sensations.
+
+For the moment she was absorbed, or thought she was, in the little love
+story of Abijah and Emma Jane, but in reality, had she realized it, that
+love story served chiefly as a basis of comparison for a possible one of
+her own, later on.
+
+She liked and respected Abijah Flagg, and loving Emma Jane was a habit
+contracted early in life; but everything that they did or said, or
+thought or wrote, or hoped or feared, seemed so inadequate, so painfully
+short of what might be done or said, or thought or written, or hoped or
+feared, under easily conceivable circumstances, that she almost felt a
+disposition to smile gently at the fancy of the ignorant young couple
+that they had caught a glimpse of the great vision.
+
+She was sitting under the sweet apple tree at twilight. Supper was over;
+Mark's restless feet were quiet, Fanny and Jenny were tucked safely in
+bed; her aunt and her mother were stemming currants on the side porch.
+
+A blue spot at one of the Perkins windows showed that in one vestal
+bosom hope was not dead yet, although it was seven o'clock.
+
+Suddenly there was the sound of a horse's feet coming up the quiet road;
+plainly a steed hired from some metropolis like Milltown or Wareham,
+as Riverboro horses when through with their day's work never disported
+themselves so gayly.
+
+A little open vehicle came in sight, and in it sat Abijah Flagg. The
+wagon was so freshly painted and so shiny that Rebecca thought that he
+must have alighted at the bridge and given it a last polish. The creases
+in his trousers, too, had an air of having been pressed in only a few
+minutes before. The whip was new and had a yellow ribbon on it; the
+gray suit of clothes was new, and the coat flourished a flower in its
+button-hole. The hat was the latest thing in hats, and the intrepid
+swain wore a seal-ring on the little finger of his right hand. As
+Rebecca remembered that she had guided it in making capital G's in his
+copy-book, she felt positively maternal, although she was two years
+younger than Abijah the Brave.
+
+He drove up to the Perkins gate and was so long about hitching the horse
+that Rebecca's heart beat tumultuously at the thought of Emma Jane's
+heart waiting under the blue barege. Then he brushed an imaginary speck
+off his sleeve, then he drew on a pair of buff kid gloves, then he went
+up the path, rapped at the knocker, and went in.
+
+“Not all the heroes go to the wars,” thought Rebecca. “Abijah has laid
+the ghost of his father and redeemed the memory of his mother, for no
+one will dare say again that Abbie Flagg's son could never amount to
+anything!”
+
+The minutes went by, and more minutes, and more. The tranquil dusk
+settled down over the little village street and the young moon came out
+just behind the top of the Perkins pine tree.
+
+The Perkins front door opened and Abijah the Brave came out hand in hand
+with his Fair Emma Jane.
+
+They walked through the orchard, the eyes of the old couple following
+them from the window, and just as they disappeared down the green slope
+that led to the riverside the gray coat sleeve encircled the blue barege
+waist.
+
+Rebecca, quivering with instant sympathy and comprehension, hid her face
+in her hands.
+
+“Emmy has sailed away and I am all alone in the little harbor,” she
+thought.
+
+It was as if childhood, like a thing real and visible, were slipping
+down the grassy river banks, after Abijah and Emma Jane, and
+disappearing like them into the moon-lit shadows of the summer night.
+
+“I am all alone in the little harbor,” she repeated; “and oh, I wonder,
+I wonder, shall I be afraid to leave it, if anybody ever comes to carry
+me out to sea!”
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1375 ***
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+  <meta charset="utf-8">
+  <title>New Chronicles of Rebecca | Project Gutenberg</title>
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+  <style>
+    body { margin:10%; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
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+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+  </style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1375 ***</div>
+    <h1>
+      NEW CHRONICLES OF REBECCA
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Kate Douglas Wiggin
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br> <br>
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      <br> <br>
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      Contents
+    </h2>
+    <table style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto">
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> First Chronicle. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          JACK O'LANTERN
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> Second Chronicle. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          DAUGHTERS OF ZION
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> Third Chronicle. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          REBECCA'S THOUGHT BOOK
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> Fourth Chronicle. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          A TRAGEDY IN MILLINERY
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> Fifth Chronicle. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          THE SAVING OF THE COLORS
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> Sixth Chronicle. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          THE STATE O' MAINE GIRL
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> Seventh Chronicle. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          THE LITTLE PROPHET
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> Eighth Chronicle. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          ABNER SIMPSON'S NEW LEAF
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> Ninth Chronicle. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          THE GREEN ISLE
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> Tenth Chronicle. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          REBECCA'S REMINISCENCES
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> Eleventh Chronicle.</a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          ABIJAH THE BRAVE AND THE FAIR EMMAJANE
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+    </table>
+    <p>
+      <br> <br>
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      <br> <br> <a id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      First Chronicle. JACK O'LANTERN
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Miranda Sawyer's old-fashioned garden was the pleasantest spot in
+      Riverboro on a sunny July morning. The rich color of the brick house
+      gleamed and glowed through the shade of the elms and maples. Luxuriant
+      hop-vines clambered up the lightning rods and water spouts, hanging their
+      delicate clusters here and there in graceful profusion. Woodbine
+      transformed the old shed and tool house to things of beauty, and the
+      flower beds themselves were the prettiest and most fragrant in all the
+      countryside. A row of dahlias ran directly around the garden spot,&mdash;dahlias
+      scarlet, gold, and variegated. In the very centre was a round plot where
+      the upturned faces of a thousand pansies smiled amid their leaves, and in
+      the four corners were triangular blocks of sweet phlox over which the
+      butterflies fluttered unceasingly. In the spaces between ran a riot of
+      portulaca and nasturtiums, while in the more regular, shell-bordered beds
+      grew spirea and gillyflowers, mignonette, marigolds, and clove pinks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Back of the barn and encroaching on the edge of the hay field was a grove
+      of sweet clover whose white feathery tips fairly bent under the assaults
+      of the bees, while banks of aromatic mint and thyme drank in the sunshine
+      and sent it out again into the summer air, warm, and deliciously odorous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hollyhocks were Miss Sawyer's pride, and they grew in a stately line
+      beneath the four kitchen windows, their tapering tips set thickly with gay
+      satin circlets of pink or lavender or crimson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They grow something like steeples,&rdquo; thought little Rebecca Randall, who
+      was weeding the bed, &ldquo;and the flat, round flowers are like rosettes; but
+      steeples wouldn't be studded with rosettes, so if you were writing about
+      them in a composition you'd have to give up one or the other, and I think
+      I'll give up the steeples:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre>
+     Gay little hollyhock
+     Lifting your head,
+     Sweetly rosetted
+     Out from your bed.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      It's a pity the hollyhock isn't really little, instead of steepling up to
+      the window top, but I can't say, 'Gay TALL hollyhock.'... I might have it
+      'Lines to a Hollyhock in May,' for then it would be small; but oh, no! I
+      forgot; in May it wouldn't be blooming, and it's so pretty to say that its
+      head is 'sweetly rosetted'... I wish the teacher wasn't away; she would
+      like 'sweetly rosetted,' and she would like to hear me recite 'Roll on,
+      thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!' that I learned out of Aunt Jane's
+      Byron; the rolls come booming out of it just like the waves at the
+      beach.... I could make nice compositions now, everything is blooming so,
+      and it's so warm and sunny and happy outdoors. Miss Dearborn told me to
+      write something in my thought book every single day, and I'll begin this
+      very night when I go to bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca Rowena Randall, the little niece of the brick-house ladies, and at
+      present sojourning there for purposes of board, lodging, education, and
+      incidentally such discipline and chastening as might ultimately produce
+      moral excellence,&mdash;Rebecca Randall had a passion for the rhyme and
+      rhythm of poetry. From her earliest childhood words had always been to her
+      what dolls and toys are to other children, and now at twelve she amused
+      herself with phrases and sentences and images as her schoolmates played
+      with the pieces of their dissected puzzles. If the heroine of a story took
+      a &ldquo;cursory glance&rdquo; about her &ldquo;apartment,&rdquo; Rebecca would shortly ask her
+      Aunt Jane to take a &ldquo;cursory glance&rdquo; at her oversewing or hemming; if the
+      villain &ldquo;aided and abetted&rdquo; someone in committing a crime, she would
+      before long request the pleasure of &ldquo;aiding and abetting&rdquo; in dishwashing
+      or bedmaking. Sometimes she used the borrowed phrases unconsciously;
+      sometimes she brought them into the conversation with an intense sense of
+      pleasure in their harmony or appropriateness; for a beautiful word or
+      sentence had the same effect upon her imagination as a fragrant nosegay, a
+      strain of music, or a brilliant sunset.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How are you gettin' on, Rebecca Rowena?&rdquo; called a peremptory voice from
+      within.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pretty good, Aunt Miranda; only I wish flowers would ever come up as
+      thick as this pigweed and plantain and sorrel. What MAKES weeds be thick
+      and flowers be thin?&mdash;I just happened to be stopping to think a
+      minute when you looked out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think considerable more than you weed, I guess, by appearances. How
+      many times have you peeked into that humming bird's nest? Why don't you
+      work all to once and play all to once, like other folks?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know,&rdquo; the child answered, confounded by the question, and still
+      more by the apparent logic back of it. &ldquo;I don't know, Aunt Miranda, but
+      when I'm working outdoors such a Saturday morning as this, the whole
+      creation just screams to me to stop it and come and play.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you needn't go if it does!&rdquo; responded her aunt sharply. &ldquo;It don't
+      scream to me when I'm rollin' out these doughnuts, and it wouldn't to you
+      if your mind was on your duty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<pre>
+Rebecca's little brown hands flew in and out among the weeds as she
+thought rebelliously: &ldquo;Creation WOULDN'T scream to Aunt Miranda; it
+would know she wouldn't come.&rdquo;
+
+     Scream on, thou bright and gay creation, scream!
+     'Tis not Miranda that will hear thy cry!
+</pre>
+<pre>
+Oh, such funny, nice things come into my head out here by myself, I do
+wish I could run up and put them down in my thought book before I forget
+them, but Aunt Miranda wouldn't like me to leave off weeding:&mdash;
+
+     Rebecca was weeding the hollyhock bed
+     When wonderful thoughts came into her head.
+     Her aunt was occupied with the rolling pin
+     And the thoughts of her mind were common and thin.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      That wouldn't do because it's mean to Aunt Miranda, and anyway it isn't
+      good. I MUST crawl under the syringa shade a minute, it's so hot, and
+      anybody has to stop working once in a while, just to get their breath,
+      even if they weren't making poetry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca was weeding the hollyhock bed When marvelous thoughts came into
+      her head. Miranda was wielding the rolling pin And thoughts at such times
+      seemed to her as a sin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How pretty the hollyhock rosettes look from down here on the sweet, smelly
+      ground!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me see what would go with rosetting. AIDING AND ABETTING, PETTING,
+      HEN-SETTING, FRETTING,&mdash;there's nothing very nice, but I can make
+      fretting' do.
+    </p>
+<pre>
+     Cheered by Rowena's petting,
+     The flowers are rosetting,
+     But Aunt Miranda's fretting
+     Doth somewhat cloud the day.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly the sound of wagon wheels broke the silence and then a voice
+      called out&mdash;a voice that could not wait until the feet that belonged
+      to it reached the spot: &ldquo;Miss Saw-YER! Father's got to drive over to North
+      Riverboro on an errand, and please can Rebecca go, too, as it's Saturday
+      morning and vacation besides?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca sprang out from under the syringa bush, eyes flashing with delight
+      as only Rebecca's eyes COULD flash, her face one luminous circle of joyous
+      anticipation. She clapped her grubby hands, and dancing up and down,
+      cried: &ldquo;May I, Aunt Miranda&mdash;can I, Aunt Jane&mdash;can I, Aunt
+      Miranda-Jane? I'm more than half through the bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you finish your weeding tonight before sundown I s'pose you can go, so
+      long as Mr. Perkins has been good enough to ask you,&rdquo; responded Miss
+      Sawyer reluctantly. &ldquo;Take off that gingham apron and wash your hands clean
+      at the pump. You ain't be'n out o' bed but two hours an' your head looks
+      as rough as if you'd slep' in it. That comes from layin' on the ground
+      same as a caterpillar. Smooth your hair down with your hands an' p'r'aps
+      Emma Jane can braid it as you go along the road. Run up and get your
+      second-best hair ribbon out o' your upper drawer and put on your shade
+      hat. No, you can't wear your coral chain&mdash;jewelry ain't appropriate
+      in the morning. How long do you cal'late to be gone, Emma Jane?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know. Father's just been sent for to see about a sick woman over
+      to North Riverboro. She's got to go to the poor farm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This fragment of news speedily brought Miss Sawyer, and her sister Jane as
+      well, to the door, which commanded a view of Mr. Perkins and his wagon.
+      Mr. Perkins, the father of Rebecca's bosom friend, was primarily a
+      blacksmith, and secondarily a selectman and an overseer of the poor, a man
+      therefore possessed of wide and varied information.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is it that's sick?&rdquo; inquired Miranda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A woman over to North Riverboro.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the trouble?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stranger?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and no; she's that wild daughter of old Nate Perry that used to live
+      up towards Moderation. You remember she ran away to work in the factory at
+      Milltown and married a do&mdash;nothin' fellow by the name o' John
+      Winslow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; well, where is he? Why don't he take care of her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They ain't worked well in double harness. They've been rovin' round the
+      country, livin' a month here and a month there wherever they could get
+      work and house-room. They quarreled a couple o' weeks ago and he left her.
+      She and the little boy kind o' camped out in an old loggin' cabin back in
+      the woods and she took in washin' for a spell; then she got terrible sick
+      and ain't expected to live.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who's been nursing her?&rdquo; inquired Miss Jane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lizy Ann Dennett, that lives nearest neighbor to the cabin; but I guess
+      she's tired out bein' good Samaritan. Anyways, she sent word this mornin'
+      that nobody can't seem to find John Winslow; that there ain't no
+      relations, and the town's got to be responsible, so I'm goin' over to see
+      how the land lays. Climb in, Rebecca. You an' Emmy Jane crowd back on the
+      cushion an' I'll set forrard. That's the trick! Now we're off!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear, dear!&rdquo; sighed Jane Sawyer as the sisters walked back into the brick
+      house. &ldquo;I remember once seeing Sally Perry at meeting. She was a handsome
+      girl, and I'm sorry she's come to grief.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If she'd kep' on goin' to meetin' an' hadn't looked at the men folks she
+      might a' be'n earnin' an honest livin' this minute,&rdquo; said Miranda. &ldquo;Men
+      folks are at the bottom of everything wrong in this world,&rdquo; she continued,
+      unconsciously reversing the verdict of history.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then we ought to be a happy and contented community here in Riverboro,&rdquo;
+       replied Jane, &ldquo;as there's six women to one man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If 't was sixteen to one we'd be all the safer,&rdquo; responded Miranda
+      grimly, putting the doughnuts in a brown crock in the cellar-way and
+      slamming the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      II
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Perkins horse and wagon rumbled along over the dusty country road, and
+      after a discreet silence, maintained as long as human flesh could endure,
+      Rebecca remarked sedately:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a sad errand for such a shiny morning, isn't it, Mr. Perkins?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Plenty o' trouble in the world, Rebecky, shiny mornin's an' all,&rdquo; that
+      good man replied. &ldquo;If you want a bed to lay on, a roof over your head, an'
+      food to eat, you've got to work for em. If I hadn't a' labored early an'
+      late, learned my trade, an' denied myself when I was young, I might a'
+      be'n a pauper layin' sick in a loggin' cabin, stead o' bein' an overseer
+      o' the poor an' selectman drivin' along to take the pauper to the poor
+      farm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;People that are mortgaged don't have to go to the poor farm, do they, Mr.
+      Perkins?&rdquo; asked Rebecca, with a shiver of fear as she remembered her home
+      farm at Sunnybrook and the debt upon it; a debt which had lain like a
+      shadow over her childhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bless your soul, no; not unless they fail to pay up; but Sal Perry an'
+      her husband hadn't got fur enough along in life to BE mortgaged. You have
+      to own something before you can mortgage it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca's heart bounded as she learned that a mortgage represented a
+      certain stage in worldly prosperity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she said, sniffing in the fragrance of the new-mown hay and
+      growing hopeful as she did so; &ldquo;maybe the sick woman will be better such a
+      beautiful day, and maybe the husband will come back to make it up and say
+      he's sorry, and sweet content will reign in the humble habitation that was
+      once the scene of poverty, grief, and despair. That's how it came out in a
+      story I'm reading.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hain't noticed that life comes out like stories very much,&rdquo; responded
+      the pessimistic blacksmith, who, as Rebecca privately thought, had read
+      less than half a dozen books in his long and prosperous career.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A drive of three or four miles brought the party to a patch of woodland
+      where many of the tall pines had been hewn the previous winter. The roof
+      of a ramshackle hut was outlined against a background of young birches,
+      and a rough path made in hauling the logs to the main road led directly to
+      its door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they drew near the figure of a woman approached&mdash;Mrs. Lizy Ann
+      Dennett, in a gingham dress, with a calico apron over her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good morning, Mr. Perkins,&rdquo; said the woman, who looked tired and
+      irritable. &ldquo;I'm real glad you come right over, for she took worse after I
+      sent you word, and she's dead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dead! The word struck heavily and mysteriously on the children's ears.
+      Dead! And their young lives, just begun, stretched on and on, all decked,
+      like hope, in living green. Dead! And all the rest of the world reveling
+      in strength. Dead! With all the daisies and buttercups waving in the
+      fields and the men heaping the mown grass into fragrant cocks or tossing
+      it into heavily laden carts. Dead! With the brooks tinkling after the
+      summer showers, with the potatoes and corn blossoming, the birds singing
+      for joy, and every little insect humming and chirping, adding its note to
+      the blithe chorus of warm, throbbing life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was all alone with her. She passed away suddenly jest about break o'
+      day,&rdquo; said Lizy Ann Dennett.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her soul passed upward to its God Just at the break of day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      These words came suddenly into Rebecca's mind from a tiny chamber where
+      such things were wont to lie quietly until something brought them to the
+      surface. She could not remember whether she had heard them at a funeral or
+      read them in the hymn book or made them up &ldquo;out of her own head,&rdquo; but she
+      was so thrilled with the idea of dying just as the dawn was breaking that
+      she scarcely heard Mrs. Dennett's conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I sent for Aunt Beulah Day, an' she's be'n here an' laid her out,&rdquo;
+       continued the long suffering Lizy Ann. &ldquo;She ain't got any folks, an' John
+      Winslow ain't never had any as far back as I can remember. She belongs to
+      your town and you'll have to bury her and take care of Jacky&mdash;that's
+      the boy. He's seventeen months old, a bright little feller, the image o'
+      John, but I can't keep him another day. I'm all wore out; my own baby's
+      sick, mother's rheumatiz is extry bad, and my husband's comin' home
+      tonight from his week's work. If he finds a child o' John Winslow's under
+      his roof I can't say what would happen; you'll have to take him back with
+      you to the poor farm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't take him up there this afternoon,&rdquo; objected Mr. Perkins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, keep him over Sunday yourself; he's good as a kitten. John
+      Winslow'll hear o' Sal's death sooner or later, unless he's gone out of
+      the state altogether, an' when he knows the boy's at the poor farm, I kind
+      o' think he'll come and claim him. Could you drive me over to the village
+      to see about the coffin, and would you children be afraid to stay here
+      alone for a spell?&rdquo; she asked, turning to the girls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Afraid?&rdquo; they both echoed uncomprehendingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lizy Ann and Mr. Perkins, perceiving that the fear of a dead presence had
+      not entered the minds of Rebecca or Emma Jane, said nothing, but drove off
+      together, counseling them not to stray far away from the cabin and
+      promising to be back in an hour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was not a house within sight, either looking up or down the shady
+      road, and the two girls stood hand in hand, watching the wagon out of
+      sight; then they sat down quietly under a tree, feeling all at once a
+      nameless depression hanging over their gay summer-morning spirits.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was very still in the woods; just the chirp of a grasshopper now and
+      then, or the note of a bird, or the click of a far-distant mowing machine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We're WATCHING!&rdquo; whispered Emma Jane. &ldquo;They watched with Gran'pa Perkins,
+      and there was a great funeral and two ministers. He left two thousand
+      dollars in the bank and a store full of goods, and a paper thing you could
+      cut tickets off of twice a year, and they were just like money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They watched with my little sister Mira, too,&rdquo; said Rebecca. &ldquo;You
+      remember when she died, and I went home to Sunnybrook Farm? It was winter
+      time, but she was covered with evergreen and white pinks, and there was
+      singing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There won't be any funeral or ministers or singing here, will there?
+      Isn't that awful?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I s'pose not; and oh, Emma Jane, no flowers either. We might get those
+      for her if there's nobody else to do it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you dare put them on to her?&rdquo; asked Emma Jane, in a hushed voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know; I can't tell; it makes me shiver, but, of course, we COULD
+      do it if we were the only friends she had. Let's look into the cabin first
+      and be perfectly sure that there aren't any. Are you afraid?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;N-no; I guess not. I looked at Gran'pa Perkins, and he was just the same
+      as ever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the door of the hut Emma Jane's courage suddenly departed. She held
+      back shuddering and refused either to enter or look in. Rebecca shuddered
+      too, but kept on, drawn by an insatiable curiosity about life and death,
+      an overmastering desire to know and feel and understand the mysteries of
+      existence, a hunger for knowledge and experience at all hazards and at any
+      cost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane hurried softly away from the felt terrors of the cabin, and
+      after two or three minutes of utter silence Rebecca issued from the open
+      door, her sensitive face pale and woe-begone, the ever-ready tears raining
+      down her cheeks. She ran toward the edge of the wood, sinking down by Emma
+      Jane's side, and covering her eyes, sobbed with excitement:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Emma Jane, she hasn't got a flower, and she's so tired and
+      sad-looking, as if she'd been hurt and hurt and never had any good times,
+      and there's a weeny, weeny baby side of her. Oh, I wish I hadn't gone in!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane blenched for an instant. &ldquo;Mrs. Dennett never said THERE WAS TWO
+      DEAD ONES! ISN'T THAT DREADFUL? But,&rdquo; she continued, her practical common
+      sense coming to the rescue, &ldquo;you've been in once and it's all over; it
+      won't be so bad when you take in the flowers because you'll be used to it.
+      The goldenrod hasn't begun to bud, so there's nothing to pick but daisies.
+      Shall I make a long rope of them, as I did for the schoolroom?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Rebecca, wiping her eyes and still sobbing. &ldquo;Yes, that's the
+      prettiest, and if we put it all round her like a frame, the undertaker
+      couldn't be so cruel as to throw it away, even if she is a pauper, because
+      it will look so beautiful. From what the Sunday school lessons say, she's
+      only asleep now, and when she wakes up she'll be in heaven.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;THERE'S ANOTHER PLACE,&rdquo; said Emma Jane, in an orthodox and sepulchral
+      whisper, as she took her ever-present ball of crochet cotton from her
+      pocket and began to twine the whiteweed blossoms into a rope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, well!&rdquo; Rebecca replied with the easy theology that belonged to her
+      temperament. &ldquo;They simply couldn't send her DOWN THERE with that little
+      weeny baby. Who'd take care of it? You know page six of the catechism says
+      the only companions of the wicked after death are their father the devil
+      and all the other evil angels; it wouldn't be any place to bring up a
+      baby.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whenever and wherever she wakes up, I hope she won't know that the big
+      baby is going to the poor farm. I wonder where he is?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps over to Mrs. Dennett's house. She didn't seem sorry a bit, did
+      she?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, but I suppose she's tired sitting up and nursing a stranger. Mother
+      wasn't sorry when Gran'pa Perkins died; she couldn't be, for he was cross
+      all the time and had to be fed like a child. Why ARE you crying again,
+      Rebecca?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I don't know, I can't tell, Emma Jane! Only I don't want to die and
+      have no funeral or singing and nobody sorry for me! I just couldn't bear
+      it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Neither could I,&rdquo; Emma Jane responded sympathetically; &ldquo;but p'r'aps if
+      we're real good and die young before we have to be fed, they will be
+      sorry. I do wish you could write some poetry for her as you did for Alice
+      Robinson's canary bird, only still better, of course, like that you read
+      me out of your thought book.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could, easy enough,&rdquo; exclaimed Rebecca, somewhat consoled by the idea
+      that her rhyming faculty could be of any use in such an emergency. &ldquo;Though
+      I don't know but it would be kind of bold to do it. I'm all puzzled about
+      how people get to heaven after they're buried. I can't understand it a
+      bit; but if the poetry is on her, what if that should go, too? And how
+      could I write anything good enough to be read out loud in heaven?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A little piece of paper couldn't get to heaven; it just couldn't,&rdquo;
+       asserted Emma Jane decisively. &ldquo;It would be all blown to pieces and dried
+      up. And nobody knows that the angels can read writing, anyway.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They must be as educated as we are, and more so, too,&rdquo; agreed Rebecca.
+      &ldquo;They must be more than just dead people, or else why should they have
+      wings? But I'll go off and write something while you finish the rope; it's
+      lucky you brought your crochet cotton and I my lead pencil.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In fifteen or twenty minutes she returned with some lines written on a
+      scrap of brown wrapping paper. Standing soberly by Emma Jane, she said,
+      preparing to read them aloud: &ldquo;They're not good; I was afraid your
+      father'd come back before I finished, and the first verse sounds exactly
+      like the funeral hymns in the church book. I couldn't call her Sally
+      Winslow; it didn't seem nice when I didn't know her and she is dead, so I
+      thought if I said friend' it would show she had somebody to be sorry.
+    </p>
+<pre>
+     &ldquo;This friend of ours has died and gone
+     From us to heaven to live.
+     If she has sinned against Thee, Lord,
+     We pray Thee, Lord, forgive.
+
+     &ldquo;Her husband runneth far away
+     And knoweth not she's dead.
+     Oh, bring him back&mdash;ere tis too late&mdash;
+     To mourn beside her bed.
+
+     &ldquo;And if perchance it can't be so,
+     Be to the children kind;
+     The weeny one that goes with her,
+     The other left behind.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think that's perfectly elegant!&rdquo; exclaimed Emma Jane, kissing Rebecca
+      fervently. &ldquo;You are the smartest girl in the whole State of Maine, and it
+      sounds like a minister's prayer. I wish we could save up and buy a
+      printing machine. Then I could learn to print what you write and we'd be
+      partners like father and Bill Moses. Shall you sign it with your name like
+      we do our school compositions?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Rebecca soberly. &ldquo;I certainly shan't sign it, not knowing where
+      it's going or who'll read it. I shall just hide it in the flowers, and
+      whoever finds it will guess that there wasn't any minister or singing, or
+      gravestone, or anything, so somebody just did the best they could.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      III
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tired mother with the &ldquo;weeny baby&rdquo; on her arm lay on a long
+      carpenter's bench, her earthly journey over, and when Rebecca stole in and
+      placed the flowery garland all along the edge of the rude bier, death
+      suddenly took on a more gracious and benign aspect. It was only a child's
+      sympathy and intuition that softened the rigors of the sad moment, but
+      poor, wild Sal Winslow, in her frame of daisies, looked as if she were
+      missed a little by an unfriendly world; while the weeny baby, whose heart
+      had fallen asleep almost as soon as it had learned to beat, the weeny
+      baby, with Emma Jane's nosegay of buttercups in its tiny wrinkled hand,
+      smiled as if it might have been loved and longed for and mourned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We've done all we can now without a minister,&rdquo; whispered Rebecca. &ldquo;We
+      could sing, God is ever good' out of the Sunday school song book, but I'm
+      afraid somebody would hear us and think we were gay and happy. What's
+      that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A strange sound broke the stillness; a gurgle, a yawn, a merry little
+      call. The two girls ran in the direction from which it came, and there, on
+      an old coat, in a clump of goldenrod bushes, lay a child just waking from
+      a refreshing nap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's the other baby that Lizy Ann Dennett told about!&rdquo; cried Emma Jane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn't he beautiful!&rdquo; exclaimed Rebecca. &ldquo;Come straight to me!&rdquo; and she
+      stretched out her arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The child struggled to its feet, and tottered, wavering, toward the warm
+      welcome of the voice and eyes. Rebecca was all mother, and her maternal
+      instincts had been well developed in the large family in which she was
+      next to the eldest. She had always confessed that there were perhaps a
+      trifle too many babies at Sunnybrook Farm, but, nevertheless, had she ever
+      heard it, she would have stood loyally by the Japanese proverb: &ldquo;Whether
+      brought forth upon the mountain or in the field, it matters nothing; more
+      than a treasure of one thousand ryo a baby precious is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You darling thing!&rdquo; she crooned, as she caught and lifted the child. &ldquo;You
+      look just like a Jack-o'-lantern.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy was clad in a yellow cotton dress, very full and stiff. His hair
+      was of such a bright gold, and so sleek and shiny, that he looked like a
+      fair, smooth little pumpkin. He had wide blue eyes full of laughter, a
+      neat little vertical nose, a neat little horizontal mouth with his few
+      neat little teeth showing very plainly, and on the whole Rebecca's figure
+      of speech was not so wide of the mark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Emma Jane! Isn't he too lovely to go to the poor farm? If only we
+      were married we could keep him and say nothing and nobody would know the
+      difference! Now that the Simpsons have gone away there isn't a single baby
+      in Riverboro, and only one in Edgewood. It's a perfect shame, but I can't
+      do anything; you remember Aunt Miranda wouldn't let me have the Simpson
+      baby when I wanted to borrow her just for one rainy Sunday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My mother won't keep him, so it's no use to ask her; she says most every
+      day she's glad we're grown up, and she thanks the Lord there wasn't but
+      two of us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Mrs. Peter Meserve is too nervous,&rdquo; Rebecca went on, taking the
+      village houses in turn; &ldquo;and Mrs. Robinson is too neat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;People don't seem to like any but their own babies,&rdquo; observed Emma Jane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I can't understand it,&rdquo; Rebecca answered. &ldquo;A baby's a baby, I
+      should think, whose ever it is! Miss Dearborn is coming back Monday; I
+      wonder if she'd like it? She has nothing to do out of school, and we could
+      borrow it all the time!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't think it would seem very genteel for a young lady like Miss
+      Dearborn, who 'boards round,' to take a baby from place to place,&rdquo;
+       objected Emma Jane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps not,&rdquo; agreed Rebecca despondently, &ldquo;but I think if we haven't got
+      any&mdash;any&mdash;PRIVATE babies in Riverboro we ought to have one for
+      the town, and all have a share in it. We've got a town hall and a town
+      lamp post and a town watering trough. Things are so uneven! One house like
+      mine at Sunnybrook, brimful of children, and the very next one empty! The
+      only way to fix them right would be to let all the babies that ever are
+      belong to all the grown-up people that ever are,&mdash;just divide them
+      up, you know, if they'd go round. Oh, I have a thought! Don't you believe
+      Aunt Sarah Cobb would keep him? She carries flowers to the graveyard every
+      little while, and once she took me with her. There's a marble cross, and
+      it says: SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF SARAH ELLEN, BELOVED CHILD OF SARAH AND
+      JEREMIAH COBB, AGED 17 MONTHS. Why, that's another reason; Mrs. Dennett
+      says this one is seventeen months. There's five of us left at the farm
+      without me, but if we were only nearer to Riverboro, how quick mother
+      would let in one more!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We might see what father thinks, and that would settle it,&rdquo; said Emma
+      Jane. &ldquo;Father doesn't think very sudden, but he thinks awful strong. If we
+      don't bother him, and find a place ourselves for the baby, perhaps he'll
+      be willing. He's coming now; I hear the wheels.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lizy Ann Dennett volunteered to stay and perform the last rites with the
+      undertaker, and Jack-o'-lantern, with his slender wardrobe tied in a
+      bandanna handkerchief, was lifted into the wagon by the reluctant Mr.
+      Perkins, and jubilantly held by Rebecca in her lap. Mr. Perkins drove off
+      as speedily as possible, being heartily sick of the whole affair, and
+      thinking wisely that the little girls had already seen and heard more than
+      enough of the seamy side of life that morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Discussion concerning Jack-o'-lantern's future was prudently deferred for
+      a quarter of an hour, and then Mr. Perkins was mercilessly pelted with
+      arguments against the choice of the poor farm as a place of residence for
+      a baby.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His father is sure to come back some time, Mr. Perkins,&rdquo; urged Rebecca.
+      &ldquo;He couldn't leave this beautiful thing forever; and if Emma Jane and I
+      can persuade Mrs. Cobb to keep him a little while, would you care?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      No; on reflection Mr. Perkins did not care. He merely wanted a quiet life
+      and enough time left over from the public service to attend to his
+      blacksmith's shop; so instead of going home over the same road by which
+      they came he crossed the bridge into Edgewood and dropped the children at
+      the long lane which led to the Cobb house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Cobb, &ldquo;Aunt Sarah&rdquo; to the whole village, sat by the window looking
+      for Uncle Jerry, who would soon be seen driving the noon stage to the post
+      office over the hill. She always had an eye out for Rebecca, too, for ever
+      since the child had been a passenger on Mr. Cobb's stagecoach, making the
+      eventful trip from her home farm to the brick house in Riverboro in his
+      company, she had been a constant visitor and the joy of the quiet
+      household. Emma Jane, too, was a well-known figure in the lane, but the
+      strange baby was in the nature of a surprise&mdash;a surprise somewhat
+      modified by the fact that Rebecca was a dramatic personage and more liable
+      to appear in conjunction with curious outriders, comrades, and retainers
+      than the ordinary Riverboro child. She had run away from the too stern
+      discipline of the brick house on one occasion, and had been persuaded to
+      return by Uncle Jerry. She had escorted a wandering organ grinder to their
+      door and begged a lodging for him on a rainy night; so on the whole there
+      was nothing amazing about the coming procession.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little party toiled up to the hospitable door, and Mrs. Cobb came out
+      to meet them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca was spokesman. Emma Jane's talent did not lie in eloquent speech,
+      but it would have been a valiant and a fluent child indeed who could have
+      usurped Rebecca's privileges and tendencies in this direction, language
+      being her native element, and words of assorted sizes springing
+      spontaneously to her lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aunt Sarah, dear,&rdquo; she said, plumping Jack-o'-lantern down on the grass
+      as she pulled his dress over his feet and smoothed his hair becomingly,
+      &ldquo;will you please not say a word till I get through&mdash;as it's very
+      important you should know everything before you answer yes or no? This is
+      a baby named Jacky Winslow, and I think he looks like a Jack-o'-lantern.
+      His mother has just died over to North Riverboro, all alone, excepting for
+      Mrs. Lizy Ann Dennett, and there was another little weeny baby that died
+      with her, and Emma Jane and I put flowers around them and did the best we
+      could. The father&mdash;that's John Winslow&mdash;quarreled with the
+      mother&mdash;that was Sal Perry on the Moderation Road&mdash;and ran away
+      and left her. So he doesn't know his wife and the weeny baby are dead. And
+      the town has got to bury them because they can't find the father right off
+      quick, and Jacky has got to go to the poor farm this afternoon. And it
+      seems an awful shame to take him up to that lonesome place with those old
+      people that can't amuse him, and if Emma Jane and Alice Robinson and I
+      take most all the care of him we thought perhaps you and Uncle Jerry would
+      keep him just for a little while. You've got a cow and a turn-up bedstead,
+      you know,&rdquo; she hurried on insinuatingly, &ldquo;and there's hardly any pleasure
+      as cheap as more babies where there's ever been any before, for baby
+      carriages and trundle beds and cradles don't wear out, and there's always
+      clothes left over from the old baby to begin the new one on. Of course, we
+      can collect enough things to start Jacky, so he won't be much trouble or
+      expense; and anyway, he's past the most troublesome age and you won't have
+      to be up nights with him, and he isn't afraid of anybody or anything, as
+      you can see by his just sitting there laughing and sucking his thumb,
+      though he doesn't know what's going to become of him. And he's just
+      seventeen months old like dear little Sarah Ellen in the graveyard, and we
+      thought we ought to give you the refusal of him before he goes to the poor
+      farm, and what do you think about it? Because it's near my dinner time and
+      Aunt Miranda will keep me in the whole afternoon if I'm late, and I've got
+      to finish weeding the hollyhock bed before sundown.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      IV
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Cobb had enjoyed a considerable period of reflection during this
+      monologue, and Jacky had not used the time unwisely, offering several
+      unconscious arguments and suggestions to the matter under discussion;
+      lurching over on the greensward and righting himself with a chuckle,
+      kicking his bare feet about in delight at the sunshine and groping for his
+      toes with arms too short to reach them, the movement involving an entire
+      upsetting of equilibrium followed by more chuckles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Coming down the last of the stone steps, Sarah Ellen's mother regarded the
+      baby with interest and sympathy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor little mite!&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;that doesn't know what he's lost and what's
+      going to happen to him. Seems to me we might keep him a spell till we're
+      sure his father's deserted him for good. Want to come to Aunt Sarah,
+      baby?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jack-o'-lantern turned from Rebecca and Emma Jane and regarded the kind
+      face gravely; then he held out both his hands and Mrs. Cobb, stooping,
+      gathered him like a harvest. Being lifted into her arms, he at once tore
+      her spectacles from her nose and laughed aloud. Taking them from him
+      gently, she put them on again, and set him in the cushioned rocking chair
+      under the lilac bushes beside the steps. Then she took one of his soft
+      hands in hers and patted it, and fluttered her fingers like birds before
+      his eyes, and snapped them like castanets, remembering all the arts she
+      had lavished upon &ldquo;Sarah Ellen, aged seventeen months,&rdquo; years and years
+      ago.
+    </p>
+<pre>
+     Motherless baby and babyless mother,
+     Bring them together to love one another.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca knew nothing of this couplet, but she saw clearly enough that her
+      case was won.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The boy must be hungry; when was he fed last?&rdquo; asked Mrs. Cobb. &ldquo;Just
+      stay a second longer while I get him some morning's milk; then you run
+      home to your dinners and I'll speak to Mr. Cobb this afternoon. Of course,
+      we can keep the baby for a week or two till we see what happens. Land! He
+      ain't goin' to be any more trouble than a wax doll! I guess he ain't been
+      used to much attention, and that kind's always the easiest to take care
+      of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At six o'clock that evening Rebecca and Emma Jane flew up the hill and
+      down the lane again, waving their hands to the dear old couple who were
+      waiting for them in the usual place, the back piazza where they had sat so
+      many summers in a blessed companionship never marred by an unloving word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where's Jacky?&rdquo; called Rebecca breathlessly, her voice always outrunning
+      her feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go up to my chamber, both of you, if you want to see,&rdquo; smiled Mrs. Cobb,
+      &ldquo;only don't wake him up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girls went softly up the stairs into Aunt Sarah's room. There, in the
+      turn-up bedstead that had been so long empty, slept Jack-o'-lantern, in
+      blissful unconsciousness of the doom he had so lately escaped. His
+      nightgown and pillow case were clean and fragrant with lavender, but they
+      were both as yellow as saffron, for they had belonged to Sarah Ellen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish his mother could see him!&rdquo; whispered Emma Jane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can't tell; it's all puzzly about heaven, and perhaps she does,&rdquo; said
+      Rebecca, as they turned reluctantly from the fascinating scene and stole
+      down to the piazza.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a beautiful and a happy summer that year, and every day it was
+      filled with blissful plays and still more blissful duties. On the Monday
+      after Jack-o'-lantern's arrival in Edgewood Rebecca founded the Riverboro
+      Aunts Association. The Aunts were Rebecca, Emma Jane, Alice Robinson, and
+      Minnie Smellie, and each of the first three promised to labor for and
+      amuse the visiting baby for two days a week, Minnie Smellie, who lived at
+      some distance from the Cobbs, making herself responsible for Saturday
+      afternoons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Minnie Smellie was not a general favorite among the Riverboro girls, and
+      it was only in an unprecedented burst of magnanimity that they admitted
+      her into the rites of fellowship, Rebecca hugging herself secretly at the
+      thought, that as Minnie gave only the leisure time of one day a week, she
+      could not be called a &ldquo;full&rdquo; Aunt. There had been long and bitter feuds
+      between the two children during Rebecca's first summer in Riverboro, but
+      since Mrs. Smellie had told her daughter that one more quarrel would
+      invite a punishment so terrible that it could only be hinted at vaguely,
+      and Miss Miranda Sawyer had remarked that any niece of hers who couldn't
+      get along peaceable with the neighbors had better go back to the seclusion
+      of a farm where there weren't any, hostilities had been veiled, and a
+      suave and diplomatic relationship had replaced the former one, which had
+      been wholly primitive, direct, and barbaric. Still, whenever Minnie
+      Smellie, flaxen-haired, pink-nosed, and ferret-eyed, indulged in fluent
+      conversation, Rebecca, remembering the old fairy story, could always see
+      toads hopping out of her mouth. It was really very unpleasant, because
+      Minnie could never see them herself; and what was more amazing, Emma Jane
+      perceived nothing of the sort, being almost as blind, too, to the diamonds
+      that fell continually from Rebecca's lips; but Emma Jane's strong point
+      was not her imagination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A shaky perambulator was found in Mrs. Perkins's wonderful attic; shoes
+      and stockings were furnished by Mrs. Robinson; Miss Jane Sawyer knitted a
+      blanket and some shirts; Thirza Meserve, though too young for an aunt,
+      coaxed from her mother some dresses and nightgowns, and was presented with
+      a green paper certificate allowing her to wheel Jacky up and down the road
+      for an hour under the superintendence of a full Aunt. Each girl, under the
+      constitution of the association, could call Jacky &ldquo;hers&rdquo; for two days in
+      the week, and great, though friendly, was the rivalry between them, as
+      they washed, ironed, and sewed for their adored nephew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If Mrs. Cobb had not been the most amiable woman in the world she might
+      have had difficulty in managing the aunts, but she always had Jacky to
+      herself the earlier part of the day and after dusk at night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile Jack-o'-lantern grew healthier and heartier and jollier as the
+      weeks slipped away. Uncle Jerry joined the little company of worshipers
+      and slaves, and one fear alone stirred in all their hearts; not, as a
+      sensible and practical person might imagine, the fear that the recreant
+      father might never return to claim his child, but, on the contrary, that
+      he MIGHT do so!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      October came at length with its cheery days and frosty nights, its glory
+      of crimson leaves and its golden harvest of pumpkins and ripened corn.
+      Rebecca had been down by the Edgewood side of the river and had come up
+      across the pastures for a good-night play with Jacky. Her literary labors
+      had been somewhat interrupted by the joys and responsibilities of
+      vice-motherhood, and the thought book was less frequently drawn from its
+      hiding place under the old haymow in the barn chamber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Cobb stood behind the screen door with her face pressed against the
+      wire netting, and Rebecca could see that she was wiping her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All at once the child's heart gave one prophetic throb and then stood
+      still. She was like a harp that vibrated with every wind of emotion,
+      whether from another's grief or her own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked down the lane, around the curve of the stone wall, red with
+      woodbine, the lane that would meet the stage road to the station. There,
+      just mounting the crown of the hill and about to disappear on the other
+      side, strode a stranger man, big and tall, with a crop of reddish curly
+      hair showing from under his straw hat. A woman walked by his side, and
+      perched on his shoulder, wearing his most radiant and triumphant mien, as
+      joyous in leaving Edgewood as he had been during every hour of his sojourn
+      there&mdash;rode Jack-o'-lantern!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca gave a cry in which maternal longing and helpless, hopeless
+      jealousy strove for supremacy. Then, with an impetuous movement she
+      started to run after the disappearing trio.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Cobb opened the door hastily, calling after her, &ldquo;Rebecca, Rebecca,
+      come back here! You mustn't follow where you haven't any right to go. If
+      there'd been anything to say or do, I'd a' done it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's mine! He's mine!&rdquo; stormed Rebecca. &ldquo;At least he's yours and mine!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's his father's first of all,&rdquo; faltered Mrs. Cobb; &ldquo;don't let's forget
+      that; and we'd ought to be glad and grateful that John Winslow's come to
+      his senses an' remembers he's brought a child into the world and ought to
+      take care of it. Our loss is his gain and it may make a man of him. Come
+      in, and we'll put things away all neat before your Uncle Jerry gets home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca sank in a pitiful little heap on Mrs. Cobb's bedroom floor and
+      sobbed her heart out. &ldquo;Oh, Aunt Sarah, where shall we get another
+      Jack-o'-lantern, and how shall I break it to Emma Jane? What if his father
+      doesn't love him, and what if he forgets to strain the milk or lets him go
+      without his nap? That's the worst of babies that aren't private&mdash;you
+      have to part with them sooner or later!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sometimes you have to part with your own, too,&rdquo; said Mrs. Cobb sadly; and
+      though there were lines of sadness in her face there was neither rebellion
+      nor repining, as she folded up the sides of the turn-up bedstead
+      preparatory to banishing it a second time to the attic. &ldquo;I shall miss
+      Sarah Ellen now more'n ever. Still, Rebecca, we mustn't feel to complain.
+      It's the Lord that giveth and the Lord that taketh away: Blessed be the
+      name of the Lord.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Second Chronicle. DAUGHTERS OF ZION
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abijah Flagg was driving over to Wareham on an errand for old Squire
+      Winship, whose general chore-boy and farmer's assistant he had been for
+      some years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He passed Emma Jane Perkins's house slowly, as he always did. She was only
+      a little girl of thirteen and he a boy of fifteen or sixteen, but somehow,
+      for no particular reason, he liked to see the sun shine on her thick
+      braids of reddish-brown hair. He admired her china-blue eyes too, and her
+      amiable, friendly expression. He was quite alone in the world, and he
+      always thought that if he had anybody belonging to him he would rather
+      have a sister like Emma Jane Perkins than anything else within the power
+      of Providence to bestow. When she herself suggested this relationship a
+      few years later he cast it aside with scorn, having changed his mind in
+      the interval&mdash;but that story belongs to another time and place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane was not to be seen in garden, field, or at the window, and
+      Abijah turned his gaze to the large brick house that came next on the
+      other side of the quiet village street. It might have been closed for a
+      funeral. Neither Miss Miranda nor Miss Jane Sawyer sat at their respective
+      windows knitting, nor was Rebecca Randall's gypsy face to be discerned.
+      Ordinarily that will-o'-the wispish little person could be seen, heard, or
+      felt wherever she was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The village must be abed, I guess,&rdquo; mused Abijah, as he neared the
+      Robinsons' yellow cottage, where all the blinds were closed and no sign of
+      life showed on porch or in shed. &ldquo;No, 't aint, neither,&rdquo; he thought again,
+      as his horse crept cautiously down the hill, for from the direction of the
+      Robinsons' barn chamber there floated out into the air certain burning
+      sentiments set to the tune of &ldquo;Antioch.&rdquo; The words, to a lad brought up in
+      the orthodox faith, were quite distinguishable:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Daughter of Zion, from the dust, Exalt thy fallen head!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Even the most religious youth is stronger on first lines than others, but
+      Abijah pulled up his horse and waited till he caught another familiar
+      verse, beginning:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rebuild thy walls, thy bounds enlarge, And send thy heralds forth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's Rebecca carrying the air, and I can hear Emma Jane's alto.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<pre>
+     &ldquo;Say to the North,
+     Give up thy charge,
+     And hold not back, O South,
+     And hold not back, O South,&rdquo; etc.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Land! ain't they smart, seesawin' up and down in that part they learnt in
+      singin' school! I wonder what they're actin' out, singin' hymn-tunes up in
+      the barn chamber? Some o' Rebecca's doins, I'll be bound! Git dap, Aleck!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Aleck pursued his serene and steady trot up the hills on the Edgewood side
+      of the river, till at length he approached the green Common where the old
+      Tory Hill meeting-house stood, its white paint and green blinds showing
+      fair and pleasant in the afternoon sun. Both doors were open, and as
+      Abijah turned into the Wareham road the church melodeon pealed out the
+      opening bars of the Missionary Hymn, and presently a score of voices sent
+      the good old tune from the choir-loft out to the dusty road:
+    </p>
+<pre>
+     &ldquo;Shall we whose souls are lighted
+     With Wisdom from on high,
+     Shall we to men benighted
+     The lamp of life deny?&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Land!&rdquo; exclaimed Abijah under his breath. &ldquo;They're at it up here, too!
+      That explains it all. There's a missionary meeting at the church, and the
+      girls wa'n't allowed to come so they held one of their own, and I bate ye
+      it's the liveliest of the two.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Abijah Flagg's shrewd Yankee guesses were not far from the truth, though
+      he was not in possession of all the facts. It will be remembered by those
+      who have been in the way of hearing Rebecca's experiences in Riverboro,
+      that the Rev. and Mrs. Burch, returned missionaries from the Far East,
+      together with some of their children, &ldquo;all born under Syrian skies,&rdquo; as
+      they always explained to interested inquirers, spent a day or two at the
+      brick house, and gave parlor meetings in native costume.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These visitors, coming straight from foreign lands to the little Maine
+      village, brought with them a nameless enchantment to the children, and
+      especially to Rebecca, whose imagination always kindled easily. The
+      romance of that visit had never died in her heart, and among the many
+      careers that dazzled her youthful vision was that of converting such
+      Syrian heathen as might continue in idol worship after the Burches'
+      efforts in their behalf had ceased. She thought at the age of eighteen she
+      might be suitably equipped for storming some minor citadel of
+      Mohammedanism; and Mrs. Burch had encouraged her in the idea, not, it is
+      to be feared, because Rebecca showed any surplus of virtue or Christian
+      grace, but because her gift of language, her tact and sympathy, and her
+      musical talent seemed to fit her for the work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It chanced that the quarterly meeting of the Maine Missionary Society had
+      been appointed just at the time when a letter from Mrs. Burch to Miss Jane
+      Sawyer suggested that Rebecca should form a children's branch in
+      Riverboro. Mrs. Burch's real idea was that the young people should save
+      their pennies and divert a gentle stream of financial aid into the parent
+      fund, thus learning early in life to be useful in such work, either at
+      home or abroad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girls themselves, however, read into her letter no such modest
+      participation in the conversion of the world, and wishing to effect an
+      organization without delay, they chose an afternoon when every house in
+      the village was vacant, and seized upon the Robinsons' barn chamber as the
+      place of meeting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca, Alice Robinson, Emma Jane Perkins, Candace Milliken, and Persis
+      Watson, each with her hymn book, had climbed the ladder leading to the
+      haymow a half hour before Abijah Flagg had heard the strains of &ldquo;Daughters
+      of Zion&rdquo; floating out to the road. Rebecca, being an executive person, had
+      carried, besides her hymn book, a silver call-bell and pencil and paper.
+      An animated discussion regarding one of two names for the society, The
+      Junior Heralds or The Daughters of Zion, had resulted in a unanimous vote
+      for the latter, and Rebecca had been elected president at an early stage
+      of the meeting. She had modestly suggested that Alice Robinson, as the
+      granddaughter of a missionary to China, would be much more eligible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Alice, with entire good nature, &ldquo;whoever is ELECTED president,
+      you WILL be, Rebecca&mdash;you're that kind&mdash;so you might as well
+      have the honor; I'd just as lieves be secretary, anyway.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you should want me to be treasurer, I could be, as well as not,&rdquo; said
+      Persis Watson suggestively; &ldquo;for you know my father keeps china banks at
+      his store&mdash;ones that will hold as much as two dollars if you will let
+      them. I think he'd give us one if I happen to be treasurer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The three principal officers were thus elected at one fell swoop and with
+      an entire absence of that red tape which commonly renders organization so
+      tiresome, Candace Milliken suggesting that perhaps she'd better be
+      vice-president, as Emma Jane Perkins was always so bashful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We ought to have more members,&rdquo; she reminded the other girls, &ldquo;but if we
+      had invited them the first day they'd have all wanted to be officers,
+      especially Minnie Smellie, so it's just as well not to ask them till
+      another time. Is Thirza Meserve too little to join?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't think why anybody named Meserve should have called a baby
+      Thirza,&rdquo; said Rebecca, somewhat out of order, though the meeting was
+      carried on with small recognition of parliamentary laws. &ldquo;It always makes
+      me want to say:
+    </p>
+<pre>
+     Thirza Meserver
+     Heaven preserve her!
+     Thirza Meserver
+     Do we deserve her?
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      She's little, but she's sweet, and absolutely without guile. I think we
+      ought to have her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is 'guile' the same as 'guilt?&rdquo; inquired Emma Jane Perkins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; the president answered; &ldquo;exactly the same, except one is written
+      and the other spoken language.&rdquo; (Rebecca was rather good at imbibing
+      information, and a master hand at imparting it!) &ldquo;Written language is for
+      poems and graduations and occasions like this&mdash;kind of like a best
+      Sunday-go-to-meeting dress that you wouldn't like to go blueberrying in
+      for fear of getting it spotted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd just as 'lieves get 'guile' spotted as not,&rdquo; affirmed the
+      unimaginative Emma Jane. &ldquo;I think it's an awful foolish word; but now
+      we're all named and our officers elected, what do we do first? It's easy
+      enough for Mary and Martha Burch; they just play at missionarying because
+      their folks work at it, same as Living and I used to make believe be
+      blacksmiths when we were little.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It must be nicer missionarying in those foreign places,&rdquo; said Persis,
+      &ldquo;because on 'Afric's shores and India's plains and other spots where Satan
+      reigns' (that's father's favorite hymn) there's always a heathen bowing
+      down to wood and stone. You can take away his idols if he'll let you and
+      give him a bible and the beginning's all made. But who'll we begin on?
+      Jethro Small?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, he's entirely too dirty, and foolish besides!&rdquo; exclaimed Candace.
+      &ldquo;Why not Ethan Hunt? He swears dreadfully.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He lives on nuts and is a hermit, and it's a mile to his camp through the
+      thick woods; my mother'll never let me go there,&rdquo; objected Alice. &ldquo;There's
+      Uncle Tut Judson.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's too old; he's most a hundred and deaf as a post,&rdquo; complained Emma
+      Jane. &ldquo;Besides, his married daughter is a Sabbath-school teacher&mdash;why
+      doesn't she teach him to behave? I can't think of anybody just right to
+      start on!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't talk like that, Emma Jane,&rdquo; and Rebecca's tone had a tinge of
+      reproof in it. &ldquo;We are a copperated body named the Daughters of Zion, and,
+      of course, we've got to find something to do. Foreigners are the easiest;
+      there's a Scotch family at North Riverboro, an English one in Edgewood,
+      and one Cuban man at Millkin's Mills.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Haven't foreigners got any religion of their own?&rdquo; inquired Persis
+      curiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye-es, I s'pose so; kind of a one; but foreigners' religions are never
+      right&mdash;ours is the only good one.&rdquo; This was from Candace, the
+      deacon's daughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do think it must be dreadful, being born with a religion and growing up
+      with it, and then finding out it's no use and all your time wasted!&rdquo; Here
+      Rebecca sighed, chewed a straw, and looked troubled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that's your punishment for being a heathen,&rdquo; retorted Candace, who
+      had been brought up strictly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I can't for the life of me see how you can help being a heathen if
+      you're born in Africa,&rdquo; persisted Persis, who was well named.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can't.&rdquo; Rebecca was clear on this point. &ldquo;I had that all out with
+      Mrs. Burch when she was visiting Aunt Miranda. She says they can't help
+      being heathen, but if there's a single mission station in the whole of
+      Africa, they're accountable if they don't go there and get saved.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are there plenty of stages and railroads?&rdquo; asked Alice; &ldquo;because there
+      must be dreadfully long distances, and what if they couldn't pay the
+      fare?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That part of it is so dreadfully puzzly we mustn't talk about it,
+      please,&rdquo; said Rebecca, her sensitive face quivering with the force of the
+      problem. Poor little soul! She did not realize that her superiors in age
+      and intellect had spent many a sleepless night over that same
+      &ldquo;accountability of the heathen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's too bad the Simpsons have moved away,&rdquo; said Candace. &ldquo;It's so seldom
+      you can find a real big wicked family like that to save, with only Clara
+      Belle and Susan good in it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And numbers count for so much,&rdquo; continued Alice. &ldquo;My grandmother says if
+      missionaries can't convert about so many in a year the Board advises them
+      to come back to America and take up some other work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; Rebecca corroborated; &ldquo;and it's the same with revivalists. At
+      the Centennial picnic at North Riverboro, a revivalist sat opposite to Mr.
+      Ladd and Aunt Jane and me, and he was telling about his wonderful success
+      in Bangor last winter. He'd converted a hundred and thirty in a month, he
+      said, or about four and a third a day. I had just finished fractions, so I
+      asked Mr. Ladd how the third of a man could be converted. He laughed and
+      said it was just the other way; that the man was a third converted. Then
+      he explained that if you were trying to convince a person of his sin on a
+      Monday, and couldn't quite finish by sundown, perhaps you wouldn't want to
+      sit up all night with him, and perhaps he wouldn't want you to; so you'd
+      begin again on Tuesday, and you couldn't say just which day he was
+      converted, because it would be two thirds on Monday and one third on
+      Tuesday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Ladd is always making fun, and the Board couldn't expect any great
+      things of us girls, new beginners,&rdquo; suggested Emma Jane, who was being
+      constantly warned against tautology by her teacher. &ldquo;I think it's awful
+      rude, anyway, to go right out and try to convert your neighbors; but if
+      you borrow a horse and go to Edgewood Lower Corner, or Milliken's Mills, I
+      s'pose that makes it Foreign Missions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would we each go alone or wait upon them with a committee, as they did
+      when they asked Deacon Tuttle for a contribution for the new hearse?&rdquo;
+       asked Persis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! We must go alone,&rdquo; decided Rebecca; &ldquo;it would be much more refined
+      and delicate. Aunt Miranda says that one man alone could never get a
+      subscription from Deacon Tuttle, and that's the reason they sent a
+      committee. But it seems to me Mrs. Burch couldn't mean for us to try and
+      convert people when we're none of us even church members, except Candace.
+      I think all we can do is to persuade them to go to meeting and Sabbath
+      school, or give money for the hearse, or the new horse sheds. Now let's
+      all think quietly for a minute or two who's the very most heathenish and
+      reperrehensiblest person in Riverboro.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After a very brief period of silence the words &ldquo;Jacob Moody&rdquo; fell from all
+      lips with entire accord.
+    </p>
+<pre>
+&ldquo;You are right,&rdquo; said the president tersely; &ldquo;and after singing hymn
+number two hundred seventy four, to be found on the sixty-sixth page,
+we will take up the question of persuading Mr. Moody to attend divine
+service or the minister's Bible class, he not having been in the
+meeting-house for lo! these many years.
+
+     'Daughter of Zion, the power that hath saved thee
+     Extolled with the harp and the timbrel should be.'
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sing without reading, if you please, omitting the second stanza. Hymn two
+      seventy four, to be found on the sixty-sixth page of the new hymn book or
+      on page thirty two of Emma Jane Perkins's old one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      II
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is doubtful if the Rev. Mr. Burch had ever found in Syria a person more
+      difficult to persuade than the already &ldquo;gospel-hardened&rdquo; Jacob Moody of
+      Riverboro.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tall, gaunt, swarthy, black-bearded&mdash;his masses of grizzled, uncombed
+      hair and the red scar across his nose and cheek added to his sinister
+      appearance. His tumble-down house stood on a rocky bit of land back of the
+      Sawyer pasture, and the acres of his farm stretched out on all sides of
+      it. He lived alone, ate alone, plowed, planted, sowed, harvested alone,
+      and was more than willing to die alone, &ldquo;unwept, unhonored, and unsung.&rdquo;
+       The road that bordered upon his fields was comparatively little used by
+      any one, and notwithstanding the fact that it was thickly set with
+      chokecherry trees and blackberry bushes it had been for years practically
+      deserted by the children. Jacob's Red Astrakhan and Granny Garland trees
+      hung thick with apples, but no Riverboro or Edgewood boy stole them; for
+      terrifying accounts of the fate that had overtaken one urchin in times
+      agone had been handed along from boy to boy, protecting the Moody fruit
+      far better than any police patrol.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps no circumstances could have extenuated the old man's surly manners
+      or his lack of all citizenly graces and virtues; but his neighbors
+      commonly rebuked his present way of living and forgot the troubled past
+      that had brought it about: the sharp-tongued wife, the unloving and
+      disloyal sons, the daughter's hapless fate, and all the other sorry tricks
+      that fortune had played upon him&mdash;at least that was the way in which
+      he had always regarded his disappointments and griefs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This, then, was the personage whose moral rehabilitation was to be
+      accomplished by the Daughters of Zion. But how?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who will volunteer to visit Mr. Moody?&rdquo; blandly asked the president.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VISIT MR. MOODY! It was a wonder the roof of the barn chamber did not
+      fall; it did, indeed echo the words and in some way make them sound more
+      grim and satirical.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nobody'll volunteer, Rebecca Rowena Randall, and you know it,&rdquo; said Emma
+      Jane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why don't we draw lots, when none of us wants to speak to him and yet one
+      of us must?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This suggestion fell from Persis Watson, who had been pale and thoughtful
+      ever since the first mention of Jacob Moody. (She was fond of Granny
+      Garlands; she had once met Jacob; and, as to what befell, well, we all
+      have our secret tragedies!)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wouldn't it be wicked to settle it that way?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's gamblers that draw lots.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;People did it in the Bible ever so often.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It doesn't seem nice for a missionary meeting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      These remarks fell all together upon the president's bewildered ear the
+      while (as she always said in compositions)&mdash;&ldquo;the while&rdquo; she was
+      trying to adjust the ethics of this unexpected and difficult dilemma.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a very puzzly question,&rdquo; she said thoughtfully. &ldquo;I could ask Aunt
+      Jane if we had time, but I suppose we haven't. It doesn't seem nice to
+      draw lots, and yet how can we settle it without? We know we mean right,
+      and perhaps it will be. Alice, take this paper and tear off five narrow
+      pieces, all different lengths.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment a voice from a distance floated up to the haymow&mdash;a
+      voice saying plaintively: &ldquo;Will you let me play with you, girls? Huldah
+      has gone to ride, and I'm all alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the voice of the absolutely-without-guile Thirza Meserve, and it
+      came at an opportune moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If she is going to be a member,&rdquo; said Persis, &ldquo;why not let her come up
+      and hold the lots? She'd be real honest and not favor anybody.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed an excellent idea, and was followed up so quickly that scarcely
+      three minutes ensued before the guileless one was holding the five scraps
+      in her hot little palm, laboriously changing their places again and again
+      until they looked exactly alike and all rather soiled and wilted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, girls, draw!&rdquo; commanded the president. &ldquo;Thirza, you mustn't chew
+      gum at a missionary meeting, it isn't polite nor holy. Take it out and
+      stick it somewhere till the exercises are over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The five Daughters of Zion approached the spot so charged with fate, and
+      extended their trembling hands one by one. Then after a moment's silent
+      clutch of their papers they drew nearer to one another and compared them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane Perkins had drawn the short one, becoming thus the destined
+      instrument for Jacob Moody's conversion to a more seemly manner of life!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked about her despairingly, as if to seek some painless and
+      respectable method of self-destruction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do let's draw over again,&rdquo; she pleaded. &ldquo;I'm the worst of all of us. I'm
+      sure to make a mess of it till I kind o' get trained in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca's heart sank at this frank confession, which only corroborated her
+      own fears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sorry, Emmy, dear,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;but our only excuse for drawing lots
+      at all would be to have it sacred. We must think of it as a kind of a
+      sign, almost like God speaking to Moses in the burning bush.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I WISH there was a burning bush right here!&rdquo; cried the distracted and
+      recalcitrant missionary. &ldquo;How quick I'd step into it without even stopping
+      to take off my garnet ring!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't be such a scare-cat, Emma Jane!&rdquo; exclaimed Candace bracingly.
+      &ldquo;Jacob Moody can't kill you, even if he has an awful temper. Trot right
+      along now before you get more frightened. Shall we go cross lots with her,
+      Rebecca, and wait at the pasture gate? Then whatever happens Alice can put
+      it down in the minutes of the meeting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In these terrible crises of life time gallops with such incredible
+      velocity that it seemed to Emma Jane only a breath before she was being
+      dragged through the fields by the other Daughters of Zion, the guileless
+      little Thirza panting in the rear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the entrance to the pasture Rebecca gave her an impassioned embrace,
+      and whispering, &ldquo;WHATEVER YOU DO, BE CAREFUL HOW YOU LEAD UP,&rdquo; lifted off
+      the top rail and pushed her through the bars. Then the girls turned their
+      backs reluctantly on the pathetic figure, and each sought a tree under
+      whose friendly shade she could watch, and perhaps pray, until the
+      missionary should return from her field of labor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Alice Robinson, whose compositions were always marked 96 or 97,&mdash;100
+      symbolizing such perfection as could be attained in the mortal world of
+      Riverboro,&mdash;Alice, not only Daughter, but Scribe of Zion, sharpened
+      her pencil and wrote a few well-chosen words of introduction, to be used
+      when the records of the afternoon had been made by Emma Jane Perkins and
+      Jacob Moody.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca's heart beat tumultuously under her gingham dress. She felt that a
+      drama was being enacted, and though unfortunately she was not the central
+      figure, she had at least a modest part in it. The short lot had not fallen
+      to the properest Daughter, that she quite realized; yet would any one of
+      them succeed in winning Jacob Moody's attention, in engaging him in
+      pleasant conversation, and finally in bringing him to a realization of his
+      mistaken way of life? She doubted, but at the same moment her spirits rose
+      at the thought of the difficulties involved in the undertaking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Difficulties always spurred Rebecca on, but they daunted poor Emma Jane,
+      who had no little thrills of excitement and wonder and fear and longing to
+      sustain her lagging soul. That her interview was to be entered as
+      &ldquo;minutes&rdquo; by a secretary seemed to her the last straw. Her blue eyes
+      looked lighter than usual and had the glaze of china saucers; her usually
+      pink cheeks were pale, but she pressed on, determined to be a faithful
+      Daughter of Zion, and above all to be worthy of Rebecca's admiration and
+      respect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rebecca can do anything,&rdquo; she thought, with enthusiastic loyalty, &ldquo;and I
+      mustn't be any stupider than I can help, or she'll choose one of the other
+      girls for her most intimate friend.&rdquo; So, mustering all her courage, she
+      turned into Jacob Moody's dooryard, where he was chopping wood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a pleasant afternoon, Mr. Moody,&rdquo; she said in a polite but hoarse
+      whisper, Rebecca's words, &ldquo;LEAD UP! LEAD UP!&rdquo; ringing in clarion tones
+      through her brain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jacob Moody looked at her curiously. &ldquo;Good enough, I guess,&rdquo; he growled;
+      &ldquo;but I don't never have time to look at afternoons.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane seated herself timorously on the end of a large log near the
+      chopping block, supposing that Jacob, like other hosts, would pause in his
+      tasks and chat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The block is kind of like an idol,&rdquo; she thought; &ldquo;I wish I could take it
+      away from him, and then perhaps he'd talk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment Jacob raised his axe and came down on the block with such a
+      stunning blow that Emma Jane fairly leaped into the air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'd better look out, Sissy, or you'll git chips in the eye!&rdquo; said
+      Moody, grimly going on with his work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Daughter of Zion sent up a silent prayer for inspiration, but none
+      came, and she sat silent, giving nervous jumps in spite of herself
+      whenever the axe fell upon the log Jacob was cutting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Finally, the host became tired of his dumb visitor, and leaning on his axe
+      he said, &ldquo;Look here, Sis, what have you come for? What's your errant? Do
+      you want apples? Or cider? Or what? Speak out, or GIT out, one or
+      t'other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane, who had wrung her handkerchief into a clammy ball, gave it a
+      last despairing wrench, and faltered: &ldquo;Wouldn't you like&mdash;hadn't you
+      better&mdash;don't you think you'd ought to be more constant at meeting
+      and Sabbath school?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jacob's axe almost dropped from his nerveless hand, and he regarded the
+      Daughter of Zion with unspeakable rage and disdain. Then, the blood
+      mounting in his face, he gathered himself together, and shouted: &ldquo;You take
+      yourself off that log and out o' this dooryard double-quick, you imperdent
+      sanct'omus young one! You just let me ketch Bill Perkins' child trying to
+      teach me where I shall go, at my age! Scuttle, I tell ye! And if I see
+      your pious cantin' little mug inside my fence ag'in on sech a business
+      I'll chase ye down the hill or set the dog on ye! SCOOT, I TELL YE!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane obeyed orders summarily, taking herself off the log, out the
+      dooryard, and otherwise scuttling and scooting down the hill at a pace
+      never contemplated even by Jacob Moody, who stood regarding her flying
+      heels with a sardonic grin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Down she stumbled, the tears coursing over her cheeks and mingling with
+      the dust of her flight; blighted hope, shame, fear, rage, all tearing her
+      bosom in turn, till with a hysterical shriek she fell over the bars and
+      into Rebecca's arms outstretched to receive her. The other Daughters wiped
+      her eyes and supported her almost fainting form, while Thirza, thoroughly
+      frightened, burst into sympathetic tears, and refused to be comforted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No questions were asked, for it was felt by all parties that Emma Jane's
+      demeanor was answering them before they could be framed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He threatened to set the dog on me!&rdquo; she wailed presently, when, as they
+      neared the Sawyer pasture, she was able to control her voice. &ldquo;He called
+      me a pious, cantin' young one, and said he'd chase me out o' the dooryard
+      if I ever came again! And he'll tell my father&mdash;I know he will, for
+      he hates him like poison.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All at once the adult point of view dawned upon Rebecca. She never saw it
+      until it was too obvious to be ignored. Had they done wrong in
+      interviewing Jacob Moody? Would Aunt Miranda be angry, as well as Mr.
+      Perkins?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why was he so dreadful, Emmy?&rdquo; she questioned tenderly. &ldquo;What did you say
+      first? How did you lead up to it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane sobbed more convulsively, and wiped her nose and eyes
+      impartially as she tried to think.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess I never led up at all; not a mite. I didn't know what you meant.
+      I was sent on an errant, and I went and done it the best I could! (Emma
+      Jane's grammar always lapsed in moments of excitement.) And then Jake
+      roared at me like Squire Winship's bull.... And he called my face a
+      mug.... You shut up that secretary book, Alice Robinson! If you write down
+      a single word I'll never speak to you again.... And I don't want to be a
+      member' another minute for fear of drawing another short lot. I've got
+      enough of the Daughters or Zion to last me the rest o' my life! I don't
+      care who goes to meetin' and who don't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girls were at the Perkins's gate by this time, and Emma Jane went
+      sadly into the empty house to remove all traces of the tragedy from her
+      person before her mother should come home from the church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The others wended their way slowly down the street, feeling that their
+      promising missionary branch had died almost as soon as it had budded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Goodby,&rdquo; said Rebecca, swallowing lumps of disappointment and chagrin as
+      she saw the whole inspiring plan break and vanish into thin air like an
+      iridescent bubble. &ldquo;It's all over and we won't ever try it again. I'm
+      going in to do overcasting as hard as I can, because I hate that the
+      worst. Aunt Jane must write to Mrs. Burch that we don't want to be home
+      missionaries. Perhaps we're not big enough, anyway. I'm perfectly certain
+      it's nicer to convert people when they're yellow or brown or any color but
+      white; and I believe it must be easier to save their souls than it is to
+      make them go to meeting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link2H_4_0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Third Chronicle. REBECCA'S THOUGHT BOOK
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The &ldquo;Sawyer girls'&rdquo; barn still had its haymow in Rebecca's time, although
+      the hay was a dozen years old or more, and, in the opinion of the
+      occasional visiting horse, sadly juiceless and wanting in flavor. It still
+      sheltered, too, old Deacon Israel Sawyer's carryall and mowing-machine,
+      with his pung, his sleigh, and a dozen other survivals of an earlier era,
+      when the broad acres of the brick house went to make one of the finest
+      farms in Riverboro.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were no horses or cows in the stalls nowadays; no pig grunting
+      comfortably of future spare ribs in the sty; no hens to peck the plants in
+      the cherished garden patch. The Sawyer girls were getting on in years,
+      and, mindful that care once killed a cat, they ordered their lives with
+      the view of escaping that particular doom, at least, and succeeded fairly
+      well until Rebecca's advent made existence a trifle more sensational.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once a month for years upon years, Miss Miranda and Miss Jane had put
+      towels over their heads and made a solemn visit to the barn, taking off
+      the enameled cloth coverings (occasionally called &ldquo;emmanuel covers&rdquo; in
+      Riverboro), dusting the ancient implements, and sometimes sweeping the
+      heaviest of the cobwebs from the corners, or giving a brush to the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deacon Israel's tottering ladder still stood in its accustomed place,
+      propped against the haymow, and the heavenly stairway leading to eternal
+      glory scarcely looked fairer to Jacob of old than this to Rebecca. By
+      means of its dusty rounds she mounted, mounted, mounted far away from time
+      and care and maiden aunts, far away from childish tasks and childish
+      troubles, to the barn chamber, a place so full of golden dreams, happy
+      reveries, and vague longings, that, as her little brown hands clung to the
+      sides of the ladder and her feet trod the rounds cautiously in her ascent,
+      her heart almost stopped beating in the sheer joy of anticipation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once having gained the heights, the next thing was to unlatch the heavy
+      doors and give them a gentle swing outward. Then, oh, ever new Paradise!
+      Then, oh, ever lovely green and growing world! For Rebecca had that
+      something in her soul that
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gives to seas and sunset skies The unspent beauty of surprise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the top of Guide Board hill she could see Alice Robinson's barn with
+      its shining weather vane, a huge burnished fish that swam with the wind
+      and foretold the day to all Riverboro. The meadow, with its sunny slopes
+      stretching up to the pine woods, was sometimes a flowing sheet of
+      shimmering grass, sometimes&mdash;when daisies and buttercups were
+      blooming&mdash;a vision of white and gold. Sometimes the shorn stubble
+      would be dotted with &ldquo;the happy hills of hay,&rdquo; and a little later the rock
+      maple on the edge of the pines would stand out like a golden ball against
+      the green; its neighbor, the sugar maple, glowing beside it, brave in
+      scarlet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was on one of these autumn days with a wintry nip in the air that Adam
+      Ladd (Rebecca's favorite &ldquo;Mr. Aladdin&rdquo;), after searching for her in field
+      and garden, suddenly noticed the open doors of the barn chamber, and
+      called to her. At the sound of his voice she dropped her precious diary,
+      and flew to the edge of the haymow. He never forgot the vision of the
+      startled little poetess, book in one mittened hand, pencil in the other,
+      dark hair all ruffled, with the picturesque addition of an occasional
+      glade of straw, her cheeks crimson, her eyes shining.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A Sappho in mittens!&rdquo; he cried laughingly, and at her eager question told
+      her to look up the unknown lady in the school encyclopedia, when she was
+      admitted to the Female Seminary at Wareham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, all being ready, Rebecca went to a corner of the haymow, and withdrew
+      a thick blank-book with mottled covers. Out of her gingham apron pocket
+      came a pencil, a bit of rubber, and some pieces of brown paper; then she
+      seated herself gravely on the floor, and drew an inverted soapbox nearer
+      to her for a table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The book was reverently opened, and there was a serious reading of the
+      extracts already carefully copied therein. Most of them were apparently to
+      the writer's liking, for dimples of pleasure showed themselves now and
+      then, and smiles of obvious delight played about her face; but once in a
+      while there was a knitting of the brows and a sigh of discouragement,
+      showing that the artist in the child was not wholly satisfied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then came the crucial moment when the budding author was supposedly to be
+      racked with the throes of composition; but seemingly there were no throes.
+      Other girls could wield the darning or crochet or knitting needle, and
+      send the tatting shuttle through loops of the finest cotton; hemstitch,
+      oversew, braid hair in thirteen strands, but the pencil was never obedient
+      in their fingers, and the pen and ink-pot were a horror from early
+      childhood to the end of time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not so with Rebecca; her pencil moved as easily as her tongue, and no more
+      striking simile could possibly be used. Her handwriting was not
+      Spencerian; she had neither time, nor patience, it is to be feared, for
+      copybook methods, and her unformed characters were frequently the despair
+      of her teachers; but write she could, write she would, write she must and
+      did, in season and out; from the time she made pothooks at six, till now,
+      writing was the easiest of all possible tasks; to be indulged in as solace
+      and balm when the terrors of examples in least common multiple threatened
+      to dethrone the reason, or the rules of grammar loomed huge and
+      unconquerable in the near horizon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As to spelling, it came to her in the main by free grace, and not by
+      training, and though she slipped at times from the beaten path, her
+      extraordinary ear and good visual memory kept her from many or flagrant
+      mistakes. It was her intention, especially when saying her prayers at
+      night, to look up all doubtful words in her small dictionary, before
+      copying her Thoughts into the sacred book for the inspiration of
+      posterity; but when genius burned with a brilliant flame, and particularly
+      when she was in the barn and the dictionary in the house, impulse as usual
+      carried the day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There sits Rebecca, then, in the open door of the Sawyers barn chamber&mdash;the
+      sunset door. How many a time had her grandfather, the good deacon, sat
+      just underneath in his tipped-back chair, when Mrs. Israel's temper was
+      uncertain, and the serenity of the barn was in comforting contrast to his
+      own fireside!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The open doors swinging out to the peaceful landscape, the solace of the
+      pipe, not allowed in the &ldquo;settin'-room&rdquo;&mdash;how beautifully these simple
+      agents have ministered to the family peace in days agone! &ldquo;If I hadn't had
+      my barn and my store BOTH, I couldn't never have lived in holy matrimony
+      with Maryliza!&rdquo; once said Mr. Watson feelingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the deacon, looking on his waving grass fields, his tasseling corn and
+      his timber lands, bright and honest as were his eyes, never saw such
+      visions as Rebecca. The child, transplanted from her home farm at
+      Sunnybrook, from the care of the overworked but easy-going mother, and the
+      companionship of the scantily fed, scantily clothed, happy-go-lucky
+      brothers and sisters&mdash;she had indeed fallen on shady days in
+      Riverboro. The blinds were closed in every room of the house but two, and
+      the same might have been said of Miss Miranda's mind and heart, though
+      Miss Jane had a few windows opening to the sun, and Rebecca already had
+      her unconscious hand on several others. Brickhouse rules were rigid and
+      many for a little creature so full of life, but Rebecca's gay spirit could
+      not be pinioned in a strait jacket for long at a time; it escaped somehow
+      and winged its merry way into the sunshine and free air; if she were not
+      allowed to sing in the orchard, like the wild bird she was, she could
+      still sing in the cage, like the canary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      II
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If you had opened the carefully guarded volume with the mottled covers,
+      you would first have seen a wonderful title page, constructed apparently
+      on the same lines as an obituary, or the inscription on a tombstone, save
+      for the quantity and variety of information contained in it. Much of the
+      matter would seem to the captious critic better adapted to the body of the
+      book than to the title page, but Rebecca was apparently anxious that the
+      principal personages in her chronicle should be well described at the
+      outset.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She seems to have had a conviction that heredity plays its part in the
+      evolution of genius, and her belief that the world will be inspired by the
+      possession of her Thoughts is too artless to be offensive. She evidently
+      has respect for rich material confided to her teacher, and one can imagine
+      Miss Dearborn's woe had she been confronted by Rebecca's chosen literary
+      executor and bidden to deliver certain &ldquo;Valuable Poetry and Thoughts,&rdquo; the
+      property of posterity &ldquo;unless carelessly destroyed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      THOUGHT BOOK of Rebecca Rowena Randall Really of Sunnybrook Farm But
+      temporily of The Brick House Riverboro. Own niece of Miss Miranda and Jane
+      Sawyer Second of seven children of her father, Mr. L. D. M. Randall (Now
+      at rest in Temperance cemmetary and there will be a monument as soon as we
+      pay off the mortgage on the farm) Also of her mother Mrs. Aurelia Randall
+    </p>
+<pre>
+     In case of Death the best of these Thoughts
+     May be printed in my Remerniscences
+     For the Sunday School Library at Temperance, Maine
+     Which needs more books fearfully
+     And I hereby
+     Will and Testament them to Mr. Adam Ladd
+     Who bought 300 cakes of soap from me
+     And thus secured a premium
+     A Greatly Needed Banquet Lamp
+     For my friends the Simpsons.
+     He is the only one that incourages
+     My writing Remerniscences and
+     My teacher Miss Dearborn will
+     Have much valuable Poetry and Thoughts
+     To give him unless carelessly destroyed.
+
+     The pictures are by the same hand that
+     Wrote the Thoughts.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      IT IS NOT NOW DECIDED WHETHER REBECCA ROWENA RANDALL WILL BE A PAINTER OR
+      AN AUTHOR, BUT AFTER HER DEATH IT WILL BE KNOWN WHICH SHE HAS BEEN, IF
+      ANY.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FINIS
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the title page, with its wealth of detail, and its unnecessary and
+      irrelevant information, the book ripples on like a brook, and to the weary
+      reader of problem novels it may have something of the brook's refreshing
+      quality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      OUR DIARIES May, 187&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All the girls are keeping a diary because Miss Dearborn was very much
+      ashamed when the school trustees told her that most of the girls' and all
+      of the boys' compositions were disgraceful, and must be improved upon next
+      term. She asked the boys to write letters to her once a week instead of
+      keeping a diary, which they thought was girlish like playing with dolls.
+      The boys thought it was dreadful to have to write letters every seven
+      days, but she told them it was not half as bad for them as it was for her
+      who had to read them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To make my diary a little different I am going to call it a THOUGHT Book
+      (written just like that, with capitals). I have thoughts that I never can
+      use unless I write them down, for Aunt Miranda always says, Keep your
+      thoughts to yourself. Aunt Jane lets me tell her some, but does not like
+      my queer ones and my true thoughts are mostly queer. Emma Jane does not
+      mind hearing them now and then, and that is my only chance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If Miss Dearborn does not like the name Thought Book I will call it
+      Remerniscences (written just like that with a capital R). Remerniscences
+      are things you remember about yourself and write down in case you should
+      die. Aunt Jane doesn't like to read any other kind of books but just lives
+      of interesting dead people and she says that is what Longfellow (who was
+      born in the state of Maine and we should be very proud of it and try to
+      write like him) meant in his poem:
+    </p>
+<pre>
+     &ldquo;Lives of great men all remind us
+     We should make our lives sublime,
+     And departing, leave behind us
+     Footprints on the sands of time.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      I know what this means because when Emma Jane and I went to the beach with
+      Uncle Jerry Cobb we ran along the wet sand and looked at the shapes our
+      boots made, just as if they were stamped in wax. Emma Jane turns in her
+      left foot (splayfoot the boys call it, which is not polite) and Seth
+      Strout had just patched one of my shoes and it all came out in the sand
+      pictures. When I learned The Psalm of Life for Friday afternoon speaking I
+      thought I shouldn't like to leave a patched footprint, nor have Emma
+      Jane's look crooked on the sands of time, and right away I thought Oh!
+      What a splendid thought for my Thought Book when Aunt Jane buys me a
+      fifteen-cent one over to Watson's store.
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      REMERNISCENCES
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      June, 187&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I told Aunt Jane I was going to begin my Remerniscences, and she says I am
+      full young, but I reminded her that Candace Milliken's sister died when
+      she was ten, leaving no footprints whatever, and if I should die suddenly
+      who would write down my Remerniscences? Aunt Miranda says the sun and moon
+      would rise and set just the same, and it was no matter if they didn't get
+      written down, and to go up attic and find her piece-bag; but I said it
+      would, as there was only one of everybody in the world, and nobody else
+      could do their remerniscensing for them. If I should die tonight I know
+      now who would describe me right. Miss Dearborn would say one thing and
+      brother John another. Emma Jane would try to do me justice, but has no
+      words; and I am glad Aunt Miranda never takes the pen in hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My dictionary is so small it has not many genteel words in it, and I
+      cannot find how to spell Remerniscences, but I remember from the cover of
+      Aunt Jane's book that there was an &ldquo;s&rdquo; and a &ldquo;c&rdquo; close together in the
+      middle of it, which I thought foolish and not needful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All the girls like their dairies very much, but Minnie Smellie got Alice
+      Robinson's where she had hid it under the school wood pile and read it all
+      through. She said it was no worse than reading anybody's composition, but
+      we told her it was just like peeking through a keyhole, or listening at a
+      window, or opening a bureau drawer. She said she didn't look at it that
+      way, and I told her that unless her eyes got unscealed she would never
+      leave any kind of a sublime footprint on the sands of time. I told her a
+      diary was very sacred as you generally poured your deepest feelings into
+      it expecting nobody to look at it but yourself and your indulgent heavenly
+      Father who seeeth all things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course it would not hurt Persis Watson to show her diary because she
+      has not a sacred plan and this is the way it goes, for she reads it out
+      loud to us:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Arose at six this morning&mdash;(you always arise in a diary but you say
+      get up when you talk about it). Ate breakfast at half past six. Had soda
+      biscuits, coffee, fish hash and doughnuts. Wiped the dishes, fed the hens
+      and made my bed before school. Had a good arithmetic lesson, but went down
+      two in spelling. At half past four played hide and coop in the Sawyer
+      pasture. Fed hens and went to bed at eight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She says she can't put in what doesn't happen, but as I don't think her
+      diary is interesting she will ask her mother to have meat hash instead of
+      fish, with pie when the doughnuts give out, and she will feed the hens
+      before breakfast to make a change. We are all going now to try and make
+      something happen every single day so the diaries won't be so dull and the
+      footprints so common.
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      AN UNCOMMON THOUGHT
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      July 187&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We dug up our rosecakes today, and that gave me a good Remerniscence. The
+      way you make rose cakes is, you take the leaves of full blown roses and
+      mix them with a little cinnamon and as much brown sugar as they will give
+      you, which is never half enough except Persis Watson, whose affectionate
+      parents let her go to the barrel in their store. Then you do up little
+      bits like sedlitz powders, first in soft paper and then in brown, and bury
+      them in the ground and let them stay as long as you possibly can hold out;
+      then dig them up and eat them. Emma Jane and I stick up little signs over
+      the holes in the ground with the date we buried them and when they'll be
+      done enough to dig up, but we can never wait. When Aunt Jane saw us she
+      said it was the first thing for children to learn,&mdash;not to be
+      impatient,&mdash;so when I went to the barn chamber I made a poem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IMPATIENCE
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We dug our rose cakes up oh! all too soon. Twas in the orchard just at
+      noon. Twas in a bright July forenoon. Twas in the sunny afternoon. Twas
+      underneath the harvest moon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not that way at all; it was a foggy morning before school, and I
+      should think poets could never possibly get to heaven, for it is so hard
+      to stick to the truth when you are writing poetry. Emma Jane thinks it is
+      nobody's business when we dug the rosecakes up. I like the line about the
+      harvest moon best, but it would give a wrong idea of our lives and
+      characters to the people that read my Thoughts, for they would think we
+      were up late nights, so I have fixed it like this:
+    </p>
+<pre>
+                    IMPATIENCE
+
+     We dug our rose cakes up oh! all too soon,
+     We thought their sweetness would be such a boon.
+     We ne'er suspicioned they would not be done
+     After three days of autumn wind and sun.
+     Why did we from the earth our treasures draw?
+     Twas not for fear that rat or mole might naw,
+     An aged aunt doth say impatience was the reason,
+     She says that youth is ever out of season.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      That is just as Aunt Jane said it, and it gave me the thought for the poem
+      which is rather uncommon.
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      A DREADFUL QUESTION
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      September, 187&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      WHICH HAS BEEN THE MOST BENEFERCENT INFLUENCE ON CHARACTER&mdash;PUNISHMENT
+      OR REWARD?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This truly dreadful question was given us by Dr. Moses when he visited
+      school today. He is a School Committee; not a whole one but I do not know
+      the singular number of him. He told us we could ask our families what they
+      thought, though he would rather we wouldn't, but we must write our own
+      words and he would hear them next week.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After he went out and shut the door the scholars were all plunged in gloom
+      and you could have heard a pin drop. Alice Robinson cried and borrowed my
+      handkerchief, and the boys looked as if the schoolhouse had been struck by
+      lightning. The worst of all was poor Miss Dearborn, who will lose her
+      place if she does not make us better scholars soon, for Dr. Moses has a
+      daughter all ready to put right in to the school and she can board at home
+      and save all her wages. Libby Moses is her name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Dearborn stared out the window, and her mouth and chin shook like
+      Alice Robinson's, for she knew, ah! all to well, what the coming week
+      would bring forth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then I raised my hand for permission to speak, and stood up and said:
+      &ldquo;Miss Dearborn, don't you mind! Just explain to us what benefercent' means
+      and we'll write something real interesting; for all of us know what
+      punishment is, and have seen others get rewards, and it is not so bad a
+      subject as some.&rdquo; And Dick Carter whispered, &ldquo;GOOD ON YOUR HEAD, REBECCA!&rdquo;
+       which mean he was sorry for her too, and would try his best, but has no
+      words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then teacher smiled and said benefercent meant good or healthy for
+      anybody, and would all rise who thought punishment made the best scholars
+      and men and women; and everybody sat stock still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then she asked all to stand who believed that rewards produced the
+      finest results, and there was a mighty sound like unto the rushing of
+      waters, but really was our feet scraping the floor, and the scholars stood
+      up, and it looked like an army, though it was only nineteen, because of
+      the strong belief that was in them. Then Miss Dearborn laughed and said
+      she was thankful for every whipping she had when she was a child, and
+      Living Perkins said perhaps we hadn't got to the thankful age, or perhaps
+      her father hadn't used a strap, and she said oh! no, it was her mother
+      with the open hand; and Dick Carter said he wouldn't call that punishment,
+      and Sam Simpson said so too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am going to write about the subject in my Thought Book first, and when I
+      make it into a composition, I can leave out anything about the family or
+      not genteel, as there is much to relate about punishment not pleasant or
+      nice and hardly polite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      * * * * * * * * * * * * * PUNISHMENT
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Punishment is a very puzzly thing, but I believe in it when really
+      deserved, only when I punish myself it does not always turn out well. When
+      I leaned over the new bridge, and got my dress all paint, and Aunt Sarah
+      Cobb couldn't get it out, I had to wear it spotted for six months which
+      hurt my pride, but was right. I stayed at home from Alice Robinson's
+      birthday party for a punishment, and went to the circus next day instead,
+      but Alice's parties are very cold and stiff, as Mrs. Robinson makes the
+      boys stand on newspapers if they come inside the door, and the blinds are
+      always shut, and Mrs. Robinson tells me how bad her liver complaint is
+      this year. So I thought, to pay for the circus and a few other things, I
+      ought to get more punishment, and I threw my pink parasol down the well,
+      as the mothers in the missionary books throw their infants to the
+      crocodiles in the Ganges river. But it got stuck in the chain that holds
+      the bucket, and Aunt Miranda had to get Abijah Flagg to take out all the
+      broken bits before we could ring up water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I punished myself this way because Aunt Miranda said that unless I
+      improved I would be nothing but a Burden and a Blight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an old man used to go by our farm carrying a lot of broken
+      chairs to bottom, and mother used to say&mdash;&ldquo;Poor man! His back is too
+      weak for such a burden!&rdquo; and I used to take him out a doughnut, and this
+      is the part I want to go into the Remerniscences. Once I told him we were
+      sorry the chairs were so heavy, and he said THEY DIDN'T SEEM SO HEAVY WHEN
+      HE HAD ET THE DOUGHNUT. This does not mean that the doughnut was heavier
+      than the chairs which is what brother John said, but it is a beautiful
+      thought and shows how the human race should have sympathy, and help bear
+      burdens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I know about a Blight, for there was a dreadful east wind over at our farm
+      that destroyed all the little young crops just out of the ground, and the
+      farmers called it the Blight. And I would rather be hail, sleet, frost, or
+      snow than a Blight, which is mean and secret, and which is the reason I
+      threw away the dearest thing on earth to me, the pink parasol that Miss
+      Ross brought me from Paris, France. I have also wrapped up my bead purse
+      in three papers and put it away marked not to be opened till after my
+      death unless needed for a party.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I must not be Burden, I must not be Blight, The angels in heaven would
+      weep at the sight.
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      REWARDS
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A good way to find out which has the most benefercent effect would be to
+      try rewards on myself this next week and write my composition the very
+      last day, when I see how my character is. It is hard to find rewards for
+      yourself, but perhaps Aunt Jane and some of the girls would each give me
+      one to help out. I could carry my bead purse to school every day, or wear
+      my coral chain a little while before I go to sleep at night. I could read
+      Cora or the Sorrows of a Doctor's Wife a little oftener, but that's all
+      the rewards I can think of. I fear Aunt Miranda would say they are wicked
+      but oh! if they should turn out benefercent how glad and joyful life would
+      be to me! A sweet and beautiful character, beloved by my teacher and
+      schoolmates, admired and petted by my aunts and neighbors, yet carrying my
+      bead purse constantly, with perhaps my best hat on Wednesday afternoons,
+      as well as Sundays!
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      A GREAT SHOCK
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reason why Alice Robinson could not play was, she was being punished
+      for breaking her mother's blue platter. Just before supper my story being
+      finished I went up Guide Board hill to see how she was bearing up and she
+      spoke to me from her window. She said she did not mind being punished
+      because she hadn't been for a long time, and she hoped it would help her
+      with her composition. She thought it would give her thoughts, and
+      tomorrow's the last day for her to have any. This gave me a good idea and
+      I told her to call her father up and beg him to beat her violently. It
+      would hurt, I said, but perhaps none of the other girls would have a
+      punishment like that, and her composition would be all different and
+      splendid. I would borrow Aunt Miranda's witchhayzel and pour it on her
+      wounds like the Samaritan in the Bible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I went up again after supper with Dick Carter to see how it turned out.
+      Alice came to the window and Dick threw up a note tied to a stick. I had
+      written: &ldquo;DEMAND YOUR PUNISHMENT TO THE FULL. BE BRAVE LIKE DOLORES'
+      MOTHER IN THE Martyrs of Spain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She threw down an answer, and it was: &ldquo;YOU JUST BE LIKE DOLORES' MOTHER
+      YOURSELF IF YOU'RE SO SMART!&rdquo; Then she stamped away from the window and my
+      feelings were hurt, but Dick said perhaps she was hungry, and that made
+      her cross. And as Dick and I turned to go out of the yard we looked back
+      and I saw something I can never forget. (The Great Shock) Mrs. Robinson
+      was out behind the barn feeding the turkies. Mr. Robinson came softly out
+      of the side door in the orchard and looking everywheres around he stepped
+      to the wire closet and took out a saucer of cold beans with a pickled beet
+      on top, and a big piece of blueberry pie. Then he crept up the back stairs
+      and we could see Alice open her door and take in the supper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh! What will become of her composition, and how can she tell anything of
+      the benefercent effects of punishment, when she is locked up by one
+      parent, and fed by the other? I have forgiven her for the way she snapped
+      me up for, of course, you couldn't beg your father to beat you when he was
+      bringing you blueberry pie. Mrs. Robinson makes a kind that leaks out a
+      thick purple juice into the plate and needs a spoon and blacks your mouth,
+      but is heavenly.
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      A DREAM
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The week is almost up and very soon Dr. Moses will drive up to the school
+      house like Elijah in the chariot and come in to hear us read. There is a
+      good deal of sickness among us. Some of the boys are not able to come to
+      school just now, but hope to be about again by Monday, when Dr. Moses goes
+      away to a convention. It is a very hard composition to write, somehow.
+      Last night I dreamed that the river was ink and I kept dipping into it and
+      writing with a penstalk made of a young pine tree. I sliced great slabs of
+      marble off the side of one of the White Mountains, the one you see when
+      going to meeting, and wrote on those. Then I threw them all into the
+      falls, not being good enough for Dr. Moses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dick Carter had a splendid boy to stay over Sunday. He makes the real
+      newspaper named The Pilot published by the boys at Wareham Academy. He
+      says when he talks about himself in writing he calls himself &ldquo;we,&rdquo; and it
+      sounds much more like print, besides conscealing him more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Example: Our hair was measured this morning and has grown two inches since
+      last time.... We have a loose tooth that troubles us very much... Our
+      inkspot that we made by negligence on our only white petticoat we have
+      been able to remove with lemon and milk. Some of our petticoat came out
+      with the spot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I shall try it in my composition sometime, for of course I shall write for
+      the Pilot when I go to Wareham Seminary. Uncle Jerry Cobb says that I
+      shall, and thinks that in four years I might rise to be editor if they
+      ever have girls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have never been more good than since I have been rewarding myself
+      steady, even to asking Aunt Miranda kindly to offer me a company jelly
+      tart, not because I was hungry, but for an experement I was trying, and
+      would explain to her sometime.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She said she never thought it was wise to experement with your stomach,
+      and I said, with a queer thrilling look, it was not my stomach but my
+      soul, that was being tried. Then she gave me the tart and walked away all
+      puzzled and nervous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The new minister has asked me to come and see him any Saturday afternoon
+      as he writes poetry himself, but I would rather not ask him about this
+      composition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ministers never believe in rewards, and it is useless to hope that they
+      will. We had the wrath of God four times in sermons this last summer, but
+      God cannot be angry all the time,&mdash;nobody could, especially in
+      summer; Mr. Baxter is different and calls his wife dear which is lovely
+      and the first time I ever heard it in Riverboro. Mrs. Baxter is another
+      kind of people too, from those that live in Temperance. I like to watch
+      her in meeting and see her listen to her husband who is young and handsome
+      for a minister; it gives me very queer and uncommon feelings, when they
+      look at each other, which they always do when not otherwise engaged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She has different clothes from anybody else. Aunt Miranda says you must
+      think only of two things: will your dress keep you warm and will it wear
+      well and there is nobody in the world to know how I love pink and red and
+      how I hate drab and green and how I never wear my hat with the black and
+      yellow porkupine quills without wishing it would blow into the river.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whene'er I take my walks abroad How many quills I see. But as they are not
+      porkupines They never come to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      COMPOSITION
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      WHICH HAS THE MOST BENEFERCENT EFFECT ON THE CHARACTER, PUNISHMENT OR
+      REWARD?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By Rebecca Rowena Randall
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (This copy not corrected by Miss Dearborn yet.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We find ourselves very puzzled in approaching this truly great and
+      national question though we have tried very ernestly to understand it, so
+      as to show how wisely and wonderfully our dear teacher guides the youthful
+      mind, it being her wish that our composition class shall long be
+      remembered in Riverboro Centre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We would say first of all that punishment seems more benefercently needed
+      by boys than girls. Boys' sins are very violent, like stealing fruit,
+      profane language, playing truant, fighting, breaking windows, and killing
+      innocent little flies and bugs. If these were not taken out of them early
+      in life it would be impossible for them to become like our martyred
+      president, Abraham Lincoln.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Although we have asked everybody on our street, they think boys' sins can
+      only be whipped out of them with a switch or strap, which makes us feel
+      very sad, as boys when not sinning the dreadful sins mentioned above seem
+      just as good as girls, and never cry when switched, and say it does not
+      hurt much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We now approach girls, which we know better, being one. Girls seem better
+      than boys because their sins are not so noisy and showy. They can disobey
+      their parents and aunts, whisper in silent hour, cheat in lessons, say
+      angry things to their schoolmates, tell lies, be sulky and lazy, but all
+      these can be conducted quite ladylike and genteel, and nobody wants to
+      strap girls because their skins are tender and get black and blue very
+      easily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Punishments make one very unhappy and rewards very happy, and one would
+      think when one is happy one would behave the best. We were acquainted with
+      a girl who gave herself rewards every day for a week, and it seemed to
+      make her as lovely a character as one could wish; but perhaps if one went
+      on for years giving rewards to onesself one would become selfish. One
+      cannot tell, one can only fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If a dog kills a sheep we should whip him straight away, and on the very
+      spot where he can see the sheep, or he will not know what we mean, and may
+      forget and kill another. The same is true of the human race. We must be
+      firm and patient in punishing, no matter how much we love the one who has
+      done wrong, and how hungry she is. It does no good to whip a person with
+      one hand and offer her a pickled beet with the other. This confuses her
+      mind, and she may grow up not knowing right from wrong. (The striking
+      example of the pickled beet was removed from the essay by the refined but
+      ruthless Miss Dearborn, who strove patiently, but vainly, to keep such
+      vulgar images out of her pupils' literary efforts.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We now respectfully approach the Holy Bible and the people in the Bible
+      were punished the whole time, and that would seem to make it right.
+      Everybody says Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth; but we think ourself,
+      that the Lord is a better punisher than we are, and knows better how and
+      when to do it having attended to it ever since the year B.C. while the
+      human race could not know about it till 1492 A.D., which is when Columbus
+      discovered America.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We do not believe we can find out all about this truly great and national
+      subject till we get to heaven, where the human race, strapped and
+      unstrapped, if any, can meet together and laying down their harps discuss
+      how they got there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And we would gently advise boys to be more quiet and genteel in conduct
+      and try rewards to see how they would work. Rewards are not all like the
+      little rosebud merit cards we receive on Fridays, and which boys sometimes
+      tear up and fling scornfully to the breeze when they get outside, but
+      girls preserve carefully in an envelope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some rewards are great and glorious, for boys can get to be governor or
+      school trustee or road commissioner or president, while girls can only be
+      wife and mother. But all of us can have the ornament of a meek and lowly
+      spirit, especially girls, who have more use for it than boys.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      R.R.R.
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      STORIES AND PEOPLE
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      October, 187&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are people in books and people in Riverboro, and they are not the
+      same kind. They never talk of chargers and palfreys in the village, nor
+      say How oft and Methinks, and if a Scotchman out of Rob Roy should come to
+      Riverboro and want to marry one of us girls we could not understand him
+      unless he made motions; though Huldah Meserve says if a nobleman of high
+      degree should ask her to be his,&mdash;one of vast estates with serfs at
+      his bidding,&mdash;she would be able to guess his meaning in any language.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Uncle Jerry Cobb thinks that Riverboro people would not make a story, but
+      I know that some of them would.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jack-o'-lantern, though only a baby, was just like a real story if anybody
+      had written a piece about him: How his mother was dead and his father ran
+      away and Emma Jane and I got Aunt Sarah Cobb to keep him so Mr. Perkins
+      wouldn't take him to the poor farm; and about our lovely times with him
+      that summer, and our dreadful loss when his father remembered him in the
+      fall and came to take him away; and how Aunt Sarah carried the trundle bed
+      up attic again and Emma Jane and I heard her crying and stole away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peter Meserve says Grandpa Sawyer was a wonderful hand at stories
+      before his spirit was broken by grandmother. She says he was the life of
+      the store and tavern when he was a young man, though generally sober, and
+      she thinks I take after him, because I like compositions better than all
+      the other lessons; but mother says I take after father, who always could
+      say everything nicely whether he had anything to say or not; so methinks I
+      should be grateful to both of them. They are what is called ancestors and
+      much depends upon whether you have them or not. The Simpsons have not any
+      at all. Aunt Miranda says the reason everybody is so prosperous around
+      here is because their ancestors were all first settlers and raised on
+      burnt ground. This should make us very proud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Methinks and methought are splendid words for compositions. Miss Dearborn
+      likes them very much, but Alice and I never bring them in to suit her.
+      Methought means the same as I thought, but sounds better. Example: If you
+      are telling a dream you had about your aged aunt:
+    </p>
+<pre>
+     Methought I heard her say
+     My child you have so useful been
+     You need not sew today.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      This is a good example one way, but too unlikely, woe is me!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This afternoon I was walking over to the store to buy molasses, and as I
+      came off the bridge and turned up the hill, I saw lots and lots of
+      heelprints in the side of the road, heelprints with little spike holes in
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! The river drivers have come from up country,&rdquo; I thought, &ldquo;and they'll
+      be breaking the jam at our falls tomorrow.&rdquo; I looked everywhere about and
+      not a man did I see, but still I knew I was not mistaken for the
+      heelprints could not lie. All the way over and back I thought about it,
+      though unfortunately forgetting the molasses, and Alice Robinson not being
+      able to come out, I took playtime to write a story. It is the first
+      grown-up one I ever did, and is intended to be like Cora the Doctor's
+      Wife, not like a school composition. It is written for Mr. Adam Ladd, and
+      people like him who live in Boston, and is the printed kind you get money
+      for, to pay off a mortgage.
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      LANCELOT OR THE PARTED LOVERS
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A beautiful village maiden was betrothed to a stallwart river driver, but
+      they had high and bitter words and parted, he to weep into the crystal
+      stream as he drove his logs, and she to sigh and moan as she went about
+      her round of household tasks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At eventide the maiden was wont to lean over the bridge and her tears also
+      fell into the foaming stream; so, though the two unhappy lovers did not
+      know it, the river was their friend, the only one to whom they told their
+      secrets and wept into.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The months crept on and it was the next July when the maiden was passing
+      over the bridge and up the hill. Suddenly she spied footprints on the
+      sands of time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The river drivers have come again!&rdquo; she cried, putting her hand to her
+      side for she had a slight heart trouble like Cora and Mrs. Peter Meserve,
+      that doesn't kill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They HAVE come indeed; ESPECIALLY ONE YOU KNOW,&rdquo; said a voice, and out
+      from the alder bushes sprung Lancelot Littlefield, for that was the
+      lover's name and it was none other than he. His hair was curly and like
+      living gold. His shirt, white of flannel, was new and dry, and of a
+      handsome color, and as the maiden looked at him she could think of nought
+      but a fairy prince.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Forgive,&rdquo; she mermered, stretching out her waisted hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay, sweet,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;'Tis I should say that to you,&rdquo; and bending
+      gracefully on one knee he kissed the hem of her dress. It was a rich pink
+      gingham check, ellaborately ornamented with white tape trimming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Clasping each other to the heart like Cora and the Doctor, they stood
+      there for a long while, till they heard the rumble of wheels on the bridge
+      and knew they must disentangle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wheels came nearer and verily! it was the maiden's father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can I wed with your fair daughter this very moon,&rdquo; asked Lancelot, who
+      will not be called his whole name again in this story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may,&rdquo; said the father, &ldquo;for lo! she has been ready and waiting for
+      many months.&rdquo; This he said not noting how he was shaming the maiden, whose
+      name was Linda Rowenetta.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then and there the nuptial day was appointed and when it came, the
+      marriage knot was tied upon the river bank where first they met; the river
+      bank where they had parted in anger, and where they had again scealeld
+      their vows and clasped each other to the heart. And it was very low water
+      that summer, and the river always thought it was because no tears dropped
+      into it but so many smiles that like sunshine they dried it up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      R.R.R.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Finis
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      CAREERS
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      November, 187&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Long ago when I used to watch Miss Ross painting the old mill at
+      Sunnybrook I thought I would be a painter, for Miss Ross went to Paris
+      France where she bought my bead purse and pink parasol and I thought I
+      would like to see a street with beautiful bright-colored things sparkling
+      and hanging in the store windows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then when the missionaries from Syria came to stay at the brick house Mrs.
+      Burch said that after I had experienced religion I must learn music and
+      train my voice and go out to heathen lands and save souls, so I thought
+      that would be my career. But we girls tried to have a branch and be home
+      missionaries and it did not work well. Emma Jane's father would not let
+      her have her birthday party when he found out what she had done and Aunt
+      Jane sent me up to Jake Moody's to tell him we did not mean to be rude
+      when we asked him to go to meeting more often. He said all right, but just
+      let him catch that little dough-faced Perkins young one in his yard once
+      more and she'd have reason to remember the call, which was just as rude
+      and impolite as our trying to lead him to a purer and a better life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Uncle Jerry and Mr. Aladdin and Miss Dearborn liked my compositions,
+      and I thought I'd better be a writer, for I must be something the minute
+      I'm seventeen, or how shall we ever get the mortgage off the farm? But
+      even that hope is taken away from me now, for Uncle Jerry made fun of my
+      story Lancelot Or The Parted Lovers and I have decided to be a teacher
+      like Miss Dearborn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pathetic announcement of a change in the career and life purposes of
+      Rebecca was brought about by her reading the grown-up story to Mr. and
+      Mrs. Jeremiah Cobb after supper in the orchard. Uncle Jerry was the person
+      who had maintained all along that Riverboro people would not make a story;
+      and Lancelot or The Parted Lovers was intended to refute that assertion at
+      once and forever; an assertion which Rebecca regarded (quite truly) as
+      untenable, though why she certainly never could have explained.
+      Unfortunately Lancelot was a poor missionary, quite unfitted for the high
+      achievements to which he was destined by the youthful novelist, and Uncle
+      Jerry, though a stage-driver and no reading man, at once perceived the
+      flabbiness and transparency of the Parted Lovers the moment they were held
+      up to his inspection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see Riverboro people WILL make a story!&rdquo; asserted Rebecca
+      triumphantly as she finished her reading and folded the paper. &ldquo;And it all
+      came from my noticing the river drivers' tracks by the roadside, and
+      wondering about them; and wondering always makes stories; the minister
+      says so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye-es,&rdquo; allowed Uncle Jerry reflectively, tipping his chair back against
+      the apple tree and forcing his slow mind to violent and instantaneous
+      action, for Rebecca was his pride and joy; a person, in his opinion, of
+      superhuman talent, one therefore to be &ldquo;whittled into shape&rdquo; if occasion
+      demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a Riverboro story, sure enough, because you've got the river and the
+      bridge and the hill and the drivers all right there in it; but there's
+      something awful queer bout it; the folks don't act Riverboro, and don't
+      talk Riverboro, cordin' to my notions. I call it a reg'lar book story.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; objected Rebecca, &ldquo;the people in Cinderella didn't act like us, and
+      you thought that was a beautiful story when I told it to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; replied Uncle Jerry, gaining eloquence in the heat of argument.
+      &ldquo;They didn't act like us, but 't any rate they acted like 'emselves!
+      Somehow they was all of a piece. Cinderella was a little too good, mebbe,
+      and the sisters was most too thunderin' bad to live on the face o' the
+      earth, and that fayry old lady that kep' the punkin' coach up her sleeve&mdash;well,
+      anyhow, you jest believe that punkin' coach, rats, mice, and all, when
+      you're hearin' bout it, fore ever you stop to think it ain't so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don' know how tis, but the folks in that Cinderella story seem to match
+      together somehow; they're all pow'ful onlikely&mdash;the prince feller
+      with the glass slipper, and the hull bunch; but jest the same you kind o'
+      gulp em all down in a lump. But land, Rebecky, nobody'd swaller that there
+      village maiden o' your'n, and as for what's-his-name Littlefield, that
+      come out o' them bushes, such a feller never 'd a' be'n IN bushes! No,
+      Rebecky, you're the smartest little critter there is in this township, and
+      you beat your Uncle Jerry all holler when it comes to usin' a lead pencil,
+      but I say that ain't no true Riverboro story! Look at the way they talk!
+      What was that' bout being BETROTHED'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Betrothed is a genteel word for engaged to be married,&rdquo; explained the
+      crushed and chastened author; and it was fortunate the doting old man did
+      not notice her eyes in the twilight, or he might have known that tears
+      were not far away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that's all right, then; I'm as ignorant as Cooper's cow when it
+      comes to the dictionary. How about what's-his-name callin' the girl
+      'Naysweet'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought myself that sounded foolish,:&rdquo; confessed Rebecca; &ldquo;but it's
+      what the Doctor calls Cora when he tries to persuade her not to quarrel
+      with his mother who comes to live with them. I know they don't say it in
+      Riverboro or Temperance, but I thought perhaps it was Boston talk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it ain't!&rdquo; asserted Mr. Cobb decisively. &ldquo;I've druv Boston men up
+      in the stage from Milltown many's the time, and none of em ever said
+      Naysweet to me, nor nothin'like it. They talked like folks, every mother's
+      son of em! If I'd a' had that what's-his-name on the harricane deck' o'
+      the stage and he tried any naysweetin' on me, I'd a' pitched him into the
+      cornfield, side o' the road. I guess you ain't growed up enough for that
+      kind of a story, Rebecky, for your poetry can't be beat in York County,
+      that's sure, and your compositions are good enough to read out loud in
+      town meetin' any day!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca brightened up a little and bade the old couple her usual
+      affectionate good night, but she descended the hill in a saddened mood.
+      When she reached the bridge the sun, a ball of red fire, was setting
+      behind Squire Bean's woods. As she looked, it shone full on the broad,
+      still bosom of the river, and for one perfect instant the trees on the
+      shores were reflected, all swimming in a sea of pink. Leaning over the
+      rail, she watched the light fade from crimson to carmine, from carmine to
+      rose, from rose to amber, and from amber to gray. Then withdrawing
+      Lancelot or the Parted Lovers from her apron pocket, she tore the pages
+      into bits and dropped them into the water below with a sigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Uncle Jerry never said a word about the ending!&rdquo; she thought; &ldquo;and that
+      was so nice!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And she was right; but while Uncle Jerry was an illuminating critic when
+      it came to the actions and language of his Riverboro neighbors, he had no
+      power to direct the young mariner when she &ldquo;followed the gleam,&rdquo; and used
+      her imagination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      OUR SECRET SOCIETY
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      November, 187&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our Secret society has just had a splendid picnic in Candace Milliken's
+      barn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our name is the B.O.S.S., and not a single boy in the village has been
+      able to guess it. It means Braid Over Shoulder Society, and that is the
+      sign. All the members wear one of their braids over the right shoulder in
+      front; the president's tied with red ribbon (I am the president) and all
+      the rest tied with blue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To attract the attention of another member when in company or at a public
+      place we take the braid between the thumb and little finger and stand
+      carelessly on one leg. This is the Secret Signal and the password is Sobb
+      (B.O.S.S. spelled backwards) which was my idea and is thought rather
+      uncommon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the rules of the B.O.S.S. is that any member may be required to
+      tell her besetting sin at any meeting, if asked to do so by a majority of
+      the members.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was Candace Milliken's idea and much opposed by everybody, but when
+      it came to a vote so many of the girls were afraid of offending Candace
+      that they agreed because there was nobody else's father and mother who
+      would let us picnic in their barn and use their plow, harrow, grindstone,
+      sleigh, carryall, pung, sled, and wheelbarrow, which we did and injured
+      hardly anything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They asked me to tell my besetting sin at the very first meeting, and it
+      nearly killed me to do it because it is such a common greedy one. It is
+      that I can't bear to call the other girls when I have found a thick spot
+      when we are out berrying in the summer time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After I confessed, which made me dreadfully ashamed, every one of the
+      girls seemed surprised and said they had never noticed that one but had
+      each thought of something very different that I would be sure to think was
+      my besetting sin. Then Emma Jane said that rather than tell hers she would
+      resign from the Society and miss the picnic. So it made so much trouble
+      that Candace gave up. We struck out the rule from the constitution and I
+      had told my sin for nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reason we named ourselves the B.O.S.S. is that Minnie Smellie has had
+      her head shaved after scarlet fever and has no braid, so she can't be a
+      member.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I don't want her for a member but I can't be happy thinking she will feel
+      slighted, and it takes away half the pleasure of belonging to the Society
+      myself and being president.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That, I think, is the principal trouble about doing mean and unkind
+      things; that you can't do wrong and feel right, or be bad and feel good.
+      If you only could you could do anything that came into your mind yet
+      always be happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Minnie Smellie spoils everything she comes into but I suppose we other
+      girls must either have our hair shaved and call ourselves The Baldheadians
+      or let her be some kind of a special officer in the B.O.S.S.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She might be the B.I.T.U.D. member (Braid in the Upper Drawer), for there
+      is where Mrs. Smellie keeps it now that it is cut off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      WINTER THOUGHTS
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      March, 187&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is not such a cold day for March and I am up in the barn chamber with
+      my coat and hood on and Aunt Jane's waterproof and my mittens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After I do three pages I am going to hide away this book in the haymow
+      till spring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps they get made into icicles on the way but I do not seem to have
+      any thoughts in the winter time. The barn chamber is full of thoughts in
+      warm weather. The sky gives them to me, and the trees and flowers, and the
+      birds, and the river; but now it is always gray and nipping, the branches
+      are bare and the river is frozen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is too cold to write in my bedroom but while we still kept an open fire
+      I had a few thoughts, but now there is an air-tight stove in the dining
+      room where we sit, and we seem so close together, Aunt Miranda, Aunt Jane
+      and I that I don't like to write in my book for fear they will ask me to
+      read out loud my secret thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have just read over the first part of my Thought Book and I have
+      outgrown it all, just exactly as I have outgrown my last year's drab
+      cashmere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is very queer how anybody can change so fast in a few months, but I
+      remember that Emma Jane's cat had kittens the day my book was bought at
+      Watson's store. Mrs. Perkins kept the prettiest white one, Abijah Flagg
+      drowning all the others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seems strange to me that cats will go on having kittens when they know
+      what becomes of them! We were very sad about it, but Mrs. Perkins said it
+      was the way of the world and how things had to be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I cannot help being glad that they do not do the same with children, or
+      John and Jenny Mira Mark and me would all have had stones tied to our
+      necks and been dropped into the deepest part of Sunny Brook, for Hannah
+      and Fanny are the only truly handsome ones in the family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Perkins says I dress up well, but never being dressed up it does not
+      matter much. At least they didn't wait to dress up the kittens to see how
+      they would improve, before drowning them, but decided right away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane's kitten that was born the same day this book was is now quite
+      an old cat who knows the way of the world herself, and how things have to
+      be, for she has had one batch of kittens drowned already.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So perhaps it is not strange that my Thought Book seems so babyish and
+      foolish to me when I think of all I have gone through and the millions of
+      things I have learned, and how much better I spell than I did ten months
+      ago.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My fingers are cold through the mittens, so good-bye dear Thought Book,
+      friend of my childhood, now so far far behind me!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I will hide you in the haymow where you'll be warm and cosy all the long
+      winter and where nobody can find you again in the summer time but your
+      affectionate author,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca Rowena Randall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link2H_4_0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Fourth Chronicle. A TRAGEDY IN MILLINERY
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane Perkins's new winter dress was a blue and green Scotch plaid
+      poplin, trimmed with narrow green velvet-ribbon and steel nail-heads. She
+      had a gray jacket of thick furry cloth with large steel buttons up the
+      front, a pair of green kid gloves, and a gray felt hat with an encircling
+      band of bright green feathers. The band began in front with a bird's head
+      and ended behind with a bird's tail, and angels could have desired no more
+      beautiful toilette. That was her opinion, and it was shared to the full by
+      Rebecca.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Emma Jane, as Rebecca had once described her to Mr. Adam Ladd, was a
+      rich blacksmith's daughter, and she, Rebecca, was a little half-orphan
+      from a mortgaged farm &ldquo;up Temperance way,&rdquo; dependent upon her spinster
+      aunts for board, clothes, and schooling. Scotch plaid poplins were
+      manifestly not for her, but dark-colored woolen stuffs were, and mittens,
+      and last winter's coats and furs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And how about hats? Was there hope in store for her there? she wondered,
+      as she walked home from the Perkins house, full of admiration for Emma
+      Jane's winter outfit, and loyally trying to keep that admiration free from
+      wicked envy. Her red-winged black hat was her second best, and although it
+      was shabby she still liked it, but it would never do for church, even in
+      Aunt Miranda's strange and never-to-be-comprehended views of suitable
+      raiment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a brown felt turban in existence, if one could call it existence
+      when it had been rained on, snowed on, and hailed on for two seasons; but
+      the trimmings had at any rate perished quite off the face of the earth,
+      that was one comfort!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane had said, rather indiscreetly, that at the village milliner's at
+      Milliken's Mills there was a perfectly elegant pink breast to be had, a
+      breast that began in a perfectly elegant solferino and terminated in a
+      perfectly elegant magenta; two colors much in vogue at that time. If the
+      old brown hat was to be her portion yet another winter, would Aunt Miranda
+      conceal its deficiencies from a carping world beneath the shaded solferino
+      breast? WOULD she, that was the question?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Filled with these perplexing thoughts, Rebecca entered the brick house,
+      hung up her hood in the entry, and went into the dining-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Jane was not there, but Aunt Miranda sat by the window with her lap
+      full of sewing things, and a chair piled with pasteboard boxes by her
+      side. In one hand was the ancient, battered, brown felt turban, and in the
+      other were the orange and black porcupine 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!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Sawyer glanced up for a second with a satisfied expression and then
+      bent her eyes again upon her work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I was going to buy a hat trimming,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;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,&mdash;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?&rdquo; she asked,
+      inclining her head in a discriminating attitude and poising them awkwardly
+      on the hat with her work-stained hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How did she like them on the brown felt indeed?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will NOT wear those hateful porcupine 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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miranda Sawyer had learned a few lessons in the last two years, lessons
+      which were making her (at least on her &ldquo;good days&rdquo;) 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 breath freely and enjoy the sunshine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she said finally, after staring first at Rebecca and then at the
+      porcupine quills, as if to gain some insight into the situation, &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca wiped her eyes and laughed aloud. &ldquo;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,&mdash;cover them up quick before
+      I begin again! I'm all right! Shower's over, sun's out!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Miranda looked at her searchingly and uncomprehendingly. Rebecca's
+      state of mind came perilously near to disease, she thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you seen me buyin' any new bunnits, or your Aunt Jane?&rdquo; she asked
+      cuttingly. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh-h!&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 the plume of Henry of Navarre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca was resigned, if not greatly comforted, but she had grace enough
+      to conceal her feelings, now that she knew economy was at the root of some
+      of her aunt's decrees in matters of dress; and she managed to forget the
+      solferino breast, save in sleep, where a vision of it had a way of
+      appearing to her, dangling from the ceiling, and dazzling her so with its
+      rich color that she used to hope the milliner would sell it that she might
+      never be tempted with it when she passed the shop window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day, not long afterward, Miss Miranda borrowed Mr. Perkins's horse and
+      wagon and took Rebecca with her on a drive to Union, to see about some
+      sausage meat and head cheese. She intended to call on Mrs. Cobb, order a
+      load of pine wood from Mr. Strout on the way, and leave some rags for a
+      rug with old Mrs. Pease, so that the journey could be made as profitable
+      as possible, consistent with the loss of time and the wear and tear on her
+      second-best black dress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The red-winged black hat was forcibly removed from Rebecca's head just
+      before starting, and the nightmare turban substituted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You might as well begin to wear it first as last,&rdquo; remarked Miranda,
+      while Jane stood in the side door and sympathized secretly with Rebecca.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will!&rdquo; said Rebecca, ramming the stiff turban down on her head with a
+      vindictive grimace, and snapping the elastic under her long braids; &ldquo;but
+      it makes me think of what Mr. Robinson said when the minister told him his
+      mother-in-law would ride in the same buggy with him at his wife's
+      funeral.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't see how any speech of Mr. Robinson's, made years an' years ago,
+      can have anything to do with wearin' your turban down to Union,&rdquo; said
+      Miranda, settling the lap robe over her knees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it can; because he said: Have it that way, then, but it'll spile
+      the hull blamed trip for me!'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jane closed the door suddenly, partly because she experienced a desire to
+      smile (a desire she had not felt for years before Rebecca came to the
+      brick house to live), and partly because she had no wish to overhear what
+      her sister would say when she took in the full significance of Rebecca's
+      anecdote, which was a favorite one with Mr. Perkins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a cold blustering day with a high wind that promised to bring an
+      early fall of snow. The trees were stripped bare of leaves, the ground was
+      hard, and the wagon wheels rattled noisily over the thank-you-ma'ams.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm glad I wore my Paisley shawl over my cloak,&rdquo; said Miranda. &ldquo;Be you
+      warm enough, Rebecca? Tie that white rigolette tighter round your neck.
+      The wind fairly blows through my bones. I most wish t we'd waited till a
+      pleasanter day, for this Union road is all up hill or down, and we shan't
+      get over the ground fast, it's so rough. Don't forget, when you go into
+      Scott's, to say I want all the trimmin's when they send me the pork, for
+      mebbe I can try out a little mite o' lard. The last load o' pine's gone
+      turrible quick; I must see if &ldquo;Bijah Flagg can't get us some cut-rounds at
+      the mills, when he hauls for Squire Bean next time. Keep your mind on your
+      drivin', Rebecca, and don't look at the trees and the sky so much. It's
+      the same sky and same trees that have been here right along. Go awful slow
+      down this hill and walk the hoss over Cook's Brook bridge, for I always
+      suspicion it's goin' to break down under me, an' I shouldn't want to be
+      dropped into that fast runnin' water this cold day. It'll be froze stiff
+      by this time next week. Hadn't you better get out and lead&rdquo;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rest of the sentence was very possibly not vital, but at any rate it
+      was never completed, for in the middle of the bridge a fierce gale of wind
+      took Miss Miranda's Paisley shawl and blew it over her head. The long
+      heavy ends whirled in opposite directions and wrapped themselves tightly
+      about her wavering bonnet. Rebecca had the whip and the reins, and in
+      trying to rescue her struggling aunt could not steady her own hat, which
+      was suddenly torn from her head and tossed against the bridge rail, where
+      it trembled and flapped for an instant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My hat! Oh! Aunt Miranda, my hateful hat!&rdquo; cried Rebecca, never
+      remembering at the instant how often she had prayed that the &ldquo;fretful
+      porcupine&rdquo; might some time vanish in this violent manner, since it refused
+      to die a natural death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had already stopped the horse, so, giving her aunt's shawl one last
+      desperate twitch, she slipped out between the wagon wheels, and darted in
+      the direction of the hated object, the loss of which had dignified it with
+      a temporary value and importance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stiff brown turban rose in the air, then dropped and flew along the
+      bridge; Rebecca pursued; it danced along and stuck between two of the
+      railings; Rebecca flew after it, her long braids floating in the wind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come back! Come back! Don't leave me alone with the team. I won't have
+      it! Come back, and leave your hat!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miranda had at length extricated herself from the submerging shawl, but
+      she was so blinded by the wind, and so confused that she did not measure
+      the financial loss involved in her commands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca heard, but her spirit being in arms, she made one more mad
+      scramble for the vagrant hat, which now seemed possessed with an evil
+      spirit, for it flew back and forth, and bounded here and there, like a
+      living thing, finally distinguishing itself by blowing between the horse's
+      front and hind legs, Rebecca trying to circumvent it by going around the
+      wagon, and meeting it on the other side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was no use; as she darted from behind the wheels the wind gave the hat
+      an extra whirl, and scurrying in the opposite direction it soared above
+      the bridge rail and disappeared into the rapid water below.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get in again!&rdquo; cried Miranda, holding on her bonnet. &ldquo;You done your best
+      and it can't be helped, I only wish't I'd let you wear your black hat as
+      you wanted to; and I wish't we'd never come such a day! The shawl has
+      broke the stems of the velvet geraniums in my bonnet, and the wind has
+      blowed away my shawl pin and my back comb. I'd like to give up and turn
+      right back this minute, but I don't like to borrer Perkins's hoss again
+      this month. When we get up in the woods you can smooth your hair down and
+      tie the rigolette over your head and settle what's left of my bonnet;
+      it'll be an expensive errant, this will!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      II
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not till next morning that Rebecca's heart really began its song of
+      thanksgiving. Her Aunt Miranda announced at breakfast, that as Mrs.
+      Perkins was going to Milliken's Mills, Rebecca might go too, and buy a
+      serviceable hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mustn't pay over two dollars and a half, and you mustn't get the pink
+      bird without Mrs. Perkins says, and the milliner says, that it won't fade
+      nor moult. Don't buy a light-colored felt because you'll get sick of it in
+      two or three years same as you did the brown one. I always liked the shape
+      of the brown one, and you'll never get another trimmin' that'll wear like
+      them quills.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope not!&rdquo; thought Rebecca.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you had put your elastic under your chin, same as you used to, and not
+      worn it behind because you think it's more grown-up an' fash'onable, the
+      wind never'd a' took the hat off your head, and you wouldn't a' lost it;
+      but the mischief's done and you can go right over to Mis' Perkins now, so
+      you won't miss her nor keep her waitin'. The two dollars and a half is in
+      an envelope side o' the clock.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca swallowed the last spoonful of picked-up codfish on her plate,
+      wiped her lips, and rose from her chair happier than the seraphs in
+      Paradise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The porcupine quills had disappeared from her life, and without any fault
+      or violence on her part. She was wholly innocent and virtuous, but
+      nevertheless she was going to have a new hat with the solferino breast,
+      should the adored object prove, under rigorous examination, to be
+      practically indestructible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whene'er I take my walks abroad, How many hats I'll see; But if they're
+      trimmed with hedgehog quills They'll not belong to me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So she improvised, secretly and ecstatically, as she went towards the side
+      entry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's 'Bijah Flagg drivin' in,&rdquo; said Miss Miranda, going to the window.
+      &ldquo;Step out and see what he's got, Jane; some passel from the Squire, I
+      guess. It's a paper bag and it may be a punkin, though he wouldn't wrop up
+      a punkin, come to think of it! Shet the dinin' room door, Jane; it's
+      turrible drafty. Make haste, for the Squire's hoss never stan's still a
+      minute cept when he's goin'!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Abijah Flagg alighted and approached the side door with a grin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Guess what I've got for ye, Rebecky?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      No throb of prophetic soul warned Rebecca of her approaching doom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nodhead apples?&rdquo; she sparkled, looking as bright and rosy and
+      satin-skinned as an apple herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; guess again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A flowering geranium?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Guess again!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nuts? Oh! I can't, Bijah; I'm just going to Milliken's Mills on an
+      errand, and I'm afraid of missing Mrs. Perkins. Show me quick! Is it
+      really for me, or for Aunt Miranda?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Reely for you, I guess!&rdquo; and he opened the large brown paper bag and drew
+      from it the remains of a water-soaked hat!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They WERE remains, but there was no doubt of their nature and substance.
+      They had clearly been a hat in the past, and one could even suppose that,
+      when resuscitated, they might again assume their original form in some
+      near and happy future.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Miranda, full of curiosity, joined the group in the side entry at
+      this dramatic moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I never!&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;Where, and how under the canopy, did you
+      ever?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was working on the dam at Union Falls yesterday,&rdquo; chuckled Abijah, with
+      a pleased glance at each of the trio in turn, &ldquo;an' I seen this little
+      bunnit skippin' over the water jest as Becky does over the road. It's
+      shaped kind o' like a boat, an' gorry, ef it wa'nt sailin' jest like a
+      boat! Where hev I seen that kind of a bristlin' plume?' thinks I.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      (&ldquo;Where indeed!&rdquo; thought Rebecca stormily.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then it come to me that I'd drove that plume to school and drove it to
+      meetin' and drove it to the Fair an'drove it most everywheres on Becky. So
+      I reached out a pole an' ketched it fore it got in amongst the logs an'
+      come to any damage, an' here it is! The hat's passed in its checks, I
+      guess; looks kind as if a wet elephant had stepped on it; but the plume's
+      bout's good as new! I reely fetched the hat beck for the sake o' the
+      plume.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was real good of you, 'Bijah, an' we're all of us obliged to you,&rdquo;
+       said Miranda, as she poised the hat on one hand and turned it slowly with
+      the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I do say,&rdquo; she exclaimed, &ldquo;and I guess I've said it before, that of
+      all the wearing' plumes that ever I see, that one's the wearin'est! Seems
+      though it just wouldn't give up. Look at the way it's held Mis' Cobb's
+      dye; it's about as brown's when it went int' the water.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dyed, but not a mite dead,&rdquo; grinned Abijah, who was somewhat celebrated
+      for his puns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I declare,&rdquo; Miranda continued, &ldquo;when you think o' the fuss they make
+      about ostriches, killin' em off by hundreds for the sake o' their feathers
+      that'll string out and spoil in one hard rainstorm,&mdash;an' all the time
+      lettin' useful porcupines run round with their quills on, why I can't
+      hardly understand it, without milliners have found out jest how good they
+      do last, an' so they won't use em for trimmin'. 'Bijah's right; the hat
+      ain't no more use, Rebecca, but you can buy you another this mornin'&mdash;any
+      color or shape you fancy&mdash;an' have Miss Morton sew these brown quills
+      on to it with some kind of a buckle or a bow, jest to hide the roots. Then
+      you'll be fixed for another season, thanks to 'Bijah.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Uncle Jerry and Aunt Sarah Cobb were made acquainted before very long with
+      the part that destiny, or Abijah Flagg, had played in Rebecca's affairs,
+      for, accompanied by the teacher, she walked to the old stage driver's that
+      same afternoon. Taking off her new hat with the venerable trimming, she
+      laid it somewhat ostentatiously upside down on the kitchen table and left
+      the room, dimpling a little more than usual.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Uncle Jerry rose from his seat, and, crossing the room, looked curiously
+      into the hat and found that a circular paper lining was neatly pinned in
+      the crown, and that it bore these lines, which were read aloud with great
+      effect by Miss Dearborn, and with her approval were copied in the Thought
+      Book for the benefit of posterity:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was the bristling porcupine, As he stood on his native heath, He said,
+      'I'll pluck me some immortelles And make me up a wreath. For tho' I may
+      not live myself To more than a hundred and ten, My quills will last till
+      crack of doom, And maybe after then. They can be colored blue or green Or
+      orange, brown, or red, But often as they may be dyed They never will be
+      dead.' And so the bristling porcupine As he stood on his native heath,
+      Said, I think I'll pluck me some immmortelles And make me up a wreath.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;R.R.R.&rdquo; <a id="link2H_4_0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Fifth Chronicle. THE SAVING OF THE COLORS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even when Rebecca had left school, having attained the great age of
+      seventeen and therefore able to look back over a past incredibly long and
+      full, she still reckoned time not by years, but by certain important
+      occurrences.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was the year her father died; the year she left Sunnybrook Farm to
+      come to her aunts in Riverboro; the year Sister Hannah became engaged; the
+      year little Mira died; the year Abijah Flagg ceased to be Squire Bean's
+      chore-boy, and astounded Riverboro by departing for Limerick Academy in
+      search of an education; and finally the year of her graduation, which, to
+      the mind of seventeen, seems rather the culmination than the beginning of
+      existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Between these epoch-making events certain other happenings stood out in
+      bold relief against the gray of dull daily life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was the day she first met her friend of friends, &ldquo;Mr. Aladdin,&rdquo; and
+      the later, even more radiant one when he gave her the coral necklace.
+      There was the day the Simpson family moved away from Riverboro under a
+      cloud, and she kissed Clara Belle fervently at the cross-roads, telling
+      her that she would always be faithful. There was the visit of the Syrian
+      missionaries to the brick house. That was a bright, romantic memory, as
+      strange and brilliant as the wonderful little birds' wings and breasts
+      that the strangers brought from the Far East. She remembered the moment
+      they asked her to choose some for herself, and the rapture with which she
+      stroked the beautiful things as they lay on the black haircloth sofa. Then
+      there was the coming of the new minister, for though many were tried only
+      one was chosen; and finally there was the flag-raising, a festivity that
+      thrilled Riverboro and Edgewood society from centre to circumference, a
+      festivity that took place just before she entered the Female Seminary at
+      Wareham and said good-by to kind Miss Dearborn and the village school.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There must have been other flag-raisings in history,&mdash;even the
+      persons most interested in this particular one would grudgingly have
+      allowed that much,&mdash;but it would have seemed to them improbable that
+      any such flag-raising as theirs, either in magnitude of conception or
+      brilliancy of actual performance, could twice glorify the same century. Of
+      some pageants it is tacitly admitted that there can be no duplicates, and
+      the flag-raising at Riverboro Centre was one of these; so that it is small
+      wonder if Rebecca chose it as one of the important dates in her personal
+      almanac.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The new minister's wife was the being, under Providence, who had conceived
+      the germinal idea of the flag.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this time the parish had almost settled down to the trembling belief
+      that they were united on a pastor. In the earlier time a minister was
+      chosen for life, and if he had faults, which was a probably enough
+      contingency, and if his congregation had any, which is within the bounds
+      of possibility, each bore with the other (not quite without friction), as
+      old-fashioned husbands and wives once did, before the easy way out of the
+      difficulty was discovered, or at least before it was popularized.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The faithful old parson had died after thirty years' preaching, and
+      perhaps the newer methods had begun to creep in, for it seemed impossible
+      to suit the two communities most interested in the choice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Rev. Mr. Davis, for example, was a spirited preacher, but persisted in
+      keeping two horses in the parsonage stable, and in exchanging them
+      whenever he could get faster ones. As a parochial visitor he was
+      incomparable, dashing from house to house with such speed that he could
+      cover the parish in a single afternoon. This sporting tendency, which
+      would never have been remarked in a British parson, was frowned upon in a
+      New England village, and Deacon Milliken told Mr. Davis, when giving him
+      what he alluded to as his &ldquo;walking papers,&rdquo; that they didn't want the
+      Edgewood church run by hoss power!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next candidate pleased Edgewood, where morning preaching was held, but
+      the other parish, which had afternoon service, declined to accept him
+      because he wore a wig&mdash;an ill-matched, crookedly applied wig.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Number three was eloquent but given to gesticulation, and Mrs. Jere
+      Burbank, the president of the Dorcas Society, who sat in a front pew, said
+      she couldn't bear to see a preacher scramble round the pulpit hot Sundays.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Number four, a genial, handsome man, gifted in prayer, was found to be a
+      Democrat. The congregation was overwhelmingly Republican in its politics,
+      and perceived something ludicrous, if not positively blasphemous, in a
+      Democrat preaching the gospel. (&ldquo;Ananias and Beelzebub'll be candidatin'
+      here, first thing we know!&rdquo; exclaimed the outraged Republican nominee for
+      district attorney.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Number five had a feeble-minded child, which the hiring committee
+      prophesied, would always be standing in the parsonage front yard, making
+      talk for the other denominations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Number six was the Rev. Judson Baxter, the present incumbent; and he was
+      voted to be as near perfection as a minister can be in this finite world.
+      His young wife had a small income of her own, a distinct and unusual
+      advantage, and the subscription committee hoped that they might not be
+      eternally driving over the country to get somebody's fifty cents that had
+      been over-due for eight months, but might take their onerous duties a
+      little more easily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It does seem as if our ministers were the poorest lot!&rdquo; complained Mrs.
+      Robinson. &ldquo;If their salary is two months behindhand they begin to be
+      nervous! Seems as though they might lay up a little before they come here,
+      and not live from hand to mouth so! The Baxters seem quite different, and
+      I only hope they won't get wasteful and run into debt. They say she keeps
+      the parlor blinds open bout half the time, and the room is lit up so often
+      evenin's that the neighbors think her and Mr. Baxter must set in there. It
+      don't seem hardly as if it could be so, but Mrs. Buzzell says tis, and she
+      says we might as well say good-by to the parlor carpet, which is church
+      property, for the Baxters are living all over it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This criticism was the only discordant note in the chorus of praise, and
+      the people gradually grew accustomed to the open blinds and the overused
+      parlor carpet, which was just completing its twenty-fifth year of honest
+      service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Baxter communicated her patriotic idea of a new flag to the Dorcas
+      Society, proposing that the women should cut and make it themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It may not be quite as good as those manufactured in the large cities,&rdquo;
+       she said, &ldquo;but we shall be proud to see our home-made flag flying in the
+      breeze, and it will mean all the more to the young voters growing up, to
+      remember that their mothers made it with their own hands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How would it do to let some of the girls help?&rdquo; modestly asked Miss
+      Dearborn, the Riverboro teacher. &ldquo;We might choose the best sewers and let
+      them put in at least a few stitches, so that they can feel they have a
+      share in it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just the thing!&rdquo; exclaimed Mrs. Baxter. &ldquo;We can cut the stripes and sew
+      them together, and after we have basted on the white stars the girls can
+      apply them to the blue ground. We must have it ready for the campaign
+      rally, and we couldn't christen it at a better time than in this
+      presidential year.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      II
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this way the great enterprise was started, and day by day the
+      preparations went forward in the two villages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boys, as future voters and fighters, demanded an active share in the
+      proceedings, and were organized by Squire Bean into a fife and drum corps,
+      so that by day and night martial but most inharmonious music woke the
+      echoes, and deafened mothers felt their patriotism oozing out at the soles
+      of their shoes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dick Carter was made captain, for his grandfather had a gold medal given
+      him by Queen Victoria for rescuing three hundred and twenty-six passengers
+      from a sinking British vessel. Riverboro thought it high time to pay some
+      graceful tribute to Great Britain in return for her handsome conduct to
+      Captain Nahum Carter, and human imagination could contrive nothing more
+      impressive than a vicarious share in the flag raising.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Living Perkins tried to be happy in the ranks, for he was offered no
+      official position, principally, Mrs. Smellie observed, because &ldquo;his
+      father's war record wa'nt clean.&rdquo; &ldquo;Oh, yes! Jim Perkins went to the war,&rdquo;
+       she continued. &ldquo;He hid out behind the hencoop when they was draftin', but
+      they found him and took him along. He got into one battle, too, somehow or
+      nother, but he run away from it. He was allers cautious, Jim was; if he
+      ever see trouble of any kind comin' towards him, he was out o' sight fore
+      it got a chance to light. He said eight dollars a month, without bounty,
+      wouldn't pay HIM to stop bullets for. He wouldn't fight a skeeter, Jim
+      wouldn't, but land! we ain't to war all the time, and he's a good neighbor
+      and a good blacksmith.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Dearborn was to be Columbia and the older girls of the two schools
+      were to be the States. Such trade in muslins and red, white, and blue
+      ribbons had never been known since &ldquo;Watson kep' store,&rdquo; and the number of
+      brief white petticoats hanging out to bleach would have caused the passing
+      stranger to imagine Riverboro a continual dancing school.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Juvenile virtue, both male and female, reached an almost impossible
+      height, for parents had only to lift a finger and say, &ldquo;you shan't go to
+      the flag raising!&rdquo; and the refractory spirit at once armed itself for new
+      struggles toward the perfect life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Jeremiah Cobb had consented to impersonate Uncle Sam, and was to drive
+      Columbia and the States to the &ldquo;raising&rdquo; on the top of his own stage.
+      Meantime the boys were drilling, the ladies were cutting and basting and
+      stitching, and the girls were sewing on stars; for the starry part of the
+      spangled banner was to remain with each of them in turn until she had
+      performed her share of the work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was felt by one and all a fine and splendid service indeed to help in
+      the making of the flag, and if Rebecca was proud to be of the chosen ones,
+      so was her Aunt Jane Sawyer, who had taught her all her delicate stitches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On a long-looked-for afternoon in August the minister's wife drove up to
+      the brick house door, and handed out the great piece of bunting to
+      Rebecca, who received it in her arms with as much solemnity as if it had
+      been a child awaiting baptismal rites.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm so glad!&rdquo; she sighed happily. &ldquo;I thought it would never come my
+      turn!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You should have had it a week ago, but Huldah Meserve upset the ink
+      bottle over her star, and we had to baste on another one. You are the
+      last, though, and then we shall sew the stars and stripes together, and
+      Seth Strout will get the top ready for hanging. Just think, it won't be
+      many days before you children will be pulling the rope with all your
+      strength, the band will be playing, the men will be cheering, and the new
+      flag will go higher and higher, till the red, white, and blue shows
+      against the sky!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca's eyes fairly blazed. &ldquo;Shall I fell on' my star, or buttonhole
+      it?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look at all the others and make the most beautiful stitches you can,
+      that's all. It is your star, you know, and you can even imagine it is your
+      state, and try and have it the best of all. If everybody else is trying to
+      do the same thing with her state, that will make a great country, won't
+      it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca's eyes spoke glad confirmation of the idea. &ldquo;My star, my state!&rdquo;
+       she repeated joyously. &ldquo;Oh, Mrs. Baxter, I'll make such fine stitches
+      you'll think the white grew out of the blue!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The new minister's wife looked pleased to see her spark kindle a flame in
+      the young heart. &ldquo;You can sew so much of yourself into your star,&rdquo; she
+      went on in the glad voice that made her so winsome, &ldquo;that when you are an
+      old lady you can put on your specs and find it among all the others.
+      Good-by! Come up to the parsonage Saturday afternoon; Mr. Baxter wants to
+      see you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Judson, help that dear little genius of a Rebecca all you can!&rdquo; she said
+      that night, when they were cosily talking in their parlor and living &ldquo;all
+      over&rdquo; the parish carpet. &ldquo;I don't know what she may, or may not, come to,
+      some day; I only wish she were ours! If you could have seen her clasp the
+      flag tight in her arms and put her cheek against it, and watched the tears
+      of feeling start in her eyes when I told her that her star was her state!
+      I kept whispering to myself, Covet not thy neighbor's child!'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Daily at four o'clock Rebecca scrubbed her hands almost to the bone,
+      brushed her hair, and otherwise prepared herself in body, mind, and spirit
+      for the consecrated labor of sewing on her star. All the time that her
+      needle cautiously, conscientiously formed the tiny stitches she was making
+      rhymes &ldquo;in her head,&rdquo; her favorite achievement being this:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your star, my star, all our stars together, They make the dear old banner
+      proud To float in the bright fall weather.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was much discussion as to which of the girls should impersonate the
+      State of Maine, for that was felt to be the highest honor in the gift of
+      the committee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Alice Robinson was the prettiest child in the village, but she was very
+      shy and by no means a general favorite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Minnie Smellie possessed the handsomest dress and a pair of white slippers
+      and open-work stockings that nearly carried the day. Still, as Miss Delia
+      Weeks well said, she was so stupid that if she should suck her thumb in
+      the very middle of the exercises nobody'd be a dite surprised!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Huldah Meserve was next voted upon, and the fact that if she were not
+      chosen her father might withdraw his subscription to the brass band fund
+      was a matter for grave consideration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I kind o' hate to have such a giggler for the State of Maine; let her be
+      the Goddess of Liberty,&rdquo; proposed Mrs. Burbank, whose patriotism was more
+      local than national.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How would Rebecca Randall do for Maine, and let her speak some of her
+      verses?&rdquo; suggested the new minister's wife, who, could she have had her
+      way, would have given all the prominent parts to Rebecca, from Uncle Sam
+      down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So, beauty, fashion, and wealth having been tried and found wanting, the
+      committee discussed the claims of talent, and it transpired that to the
+      awe-stricken Rebecca fell the chief plum in the pudding. It was a tribute
+      to her gifts that there was no jealousy or envy among the other girls;
+      they readily conceded her special fitness for the role.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her life had not been pressed down full to the brim of pleasures, and she
+      had a sort of distrust of joy in the bud. Not until she saw it in full
+      radiance of bloom did she dare embrace it. She had never read any verse
+      but Byron, Felicia Hemans, bits of &ldquo;Paradise Lost,&rdquo; and the selections in
+      the school readers, but she would have agreed heartily with the poet who
+      said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not by appointment do we meet delight And joy; they heed not our
+      expectancy; But round some corner in the streets of life They on a sudden
+      clasp us with a smile.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For many nights before the raising, when she went to her bed she said to
+      herself, after she had finished her prayers: &ldquo;It can't be true that I'm
+      chosen for the State of Maine! It just CAN'T be true! Nobody could be good
+      ENOUGH, but oh, I'll try to be as good as I can! To be going to Wareham
+      Seminary next week and to be the State of Maine too! Oh! I must pray HARD
+      to God to keep me meek and humble!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      III
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The flag was to be raised on a Tuesday, and on the previous Sunday it
+      became known to the children that Clara Belle Simpson was coming back from
+      Acreville, coming to live with Mrs. Fogg and take care of the baby, called
+      by the neighborhood boys &ldquo;the Fogg horn,&rdquo; on account of his excellent
+      voice production.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Clara Belle was one of Miss Dearborn's original flock, and if she were
+      left wholly out of the festivities she would be the only girl of suitable
+      age to be thus slighted; it seemed clear to the juvenile mind, therefore,
+      that neither she nor her descendants would ever recover from such a blow.
+      But, under all the circumstances, would she be allowed to join in the
+      procession? Even Rebecca, the optimistic, feared not, and the committee
+      confirmed her fears by saying that Abner Simpson's daughter certainly
+      could not take any prominent part in the ceremony, but they hoped that
+      Mrs. Fogg would allow her to witness it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Abner Simpson, urged by the town authorities, took his wife and seven
+      children away from Riverboro to Acreville, just over the border in the
+      next county, Riverboro went to bed leaving its barn and shed doors
+      unfastened, and drew long breaths of gratitude to Providence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of most winning disposition and genial manners, Mr. Simpson had not that
+      instinctive comprehension of property rights which renders a man a
+      valuable citizen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Squire Bean was his nearest neighbor, and he conceived the novel idea of
+      paying Simpson five dollars a year not to steal from him, a method
+      occasionally used in the Highlands in the early days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bargain was struck, and adhered to religiously for a twelve-month, but
+      on the second of January Mr. Simpson announced the verbal contract as
+      formally broken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't know what I was doin' when I made it, Squire,&rdquo; he urged. &ldquo;In the
+      first place, it's a slur on my reputation and an injury to my
+      self-respect. Secondly, it's a nervous strain on me; and thirdly, five
+      dollars don't pay me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Squire Bean was so struck with the unique and convincing nature of these
+      arguments that he could scarcely restrain his admiration, and he confessed
+      to himself afterward, that unless Simpson's mental attitude could be
+      changed he was perhaps a fitter subject for medical science than the state
+      prison.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abner was a most unusual thief, and conducted his operations with a tact
+      and neighborly consideration none too common in the profession. He would
+      never steal a man's scythe in haying-time, nor his fur lap-robe in the
+      coldest of the winter. The picking of a lock offered no attractions to
+      him; &ldquo;he wa'n't no burglar,&rdquo; he would have scornfully asserted. A strange
+      horse and wagon hitched by the roadside was the most flagrant of his
+      thefts; but it was the small things&mdash;the hatchet or axe on the
+      chopping-block, the tin pans sunning at the side door, a stray garment
+      bleaching on the grass, a hoe, rake, shovel, or a bag of early potatoes,
+      that tempted him most sorely; and these appealed to him not so much for
+      their intrinsic value as because they were so excellently adapted to
+      swapping. The swapping was really the enjoyable part of the procedure, the
+      theft was only a sad but necessary preliminary; for if Abner himself had
+      been a man of sufficient property to carry on his business operations
+      independently, it is doubtful if he would have helped himself so freely to
+      his neighbor's goods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Riverboro regretted the loss of Mrs. Simpson, who was useful in scrubbing,
+      cleaning, and washing, and was thought to exercise some influence over her
+      predatory spouse. There was a story of their early married life, when they
+      had a farm; a story to the effect that Mrs. Simpson always rode on every
+      load of hay that her husband took to Milltown, with the view of keeping
+      him sober through the day. After he turned out of the country road and
+      approached the metropolis, it was said that he used to bury the docile
+      lady in the load. He would then drive on to the scales, have the weight of
+      the hay entered in the buyer's book, take his horses to the stable for
+      feed and water, and when a favorable opportunity offered he would assist
+      the hot and panting Mrs. Simpson out of the side or back of the rack, and
+      gallantly brush the straw from her person. For this reason it was always
+      asserted that Abner Simpson sold his wife every time he went to Milltown,
+      but the story was never fully substantiated, and at all events it was the
+      only suspected blot on meek Mrs. Simpson's personal reputation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for the Simpson children, they were missed chiefly as familiar figures
+      by the roadside; but Rebecca honestly loved Clara Belle, notwithstanding
+      her Aunt Miranda's opposition to the intimacy. Rebecca's &ldquo;taste for low
+      company&rdquo; was a source of continual anxiety to her aunt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anything that's human flesh is good enough for her!&rdquo; Miranda groaned to
+      Jane. &ldquo;She'll ride with the rag-sack-and-bottle peddler just as quick as
+      she would with the minister; she always sets beside the St. Vitus' dance
+      young one at Sabbath school; and she's forever riggin' and onriggin' that
+      dirty Simpson baby! She reminds me of a puppy that'll always go to
+      everybody that'll have him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was thought very creditable to Mrs. Fogg that she sent for Clara Belle
+      to live with her and go to school part of the year.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She'll be useful&rdquo; said Mrs. Fogg, &ldquo;and she'll be out of her father's way,
+      and so keep honest; though she's no awful hombly I've no fears for her. A
+      girl with her red hair, freckles, and cross-eyes can't fall into no kind
+      of sin, I don't believe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Fogg requested that Clara Belle should be started on her journey from
+      Acreville by train and come the rest of the way by stage, and she was
+      disturbed to receive word on Sunday that Mr. Simpson had borrowed a &ldquo;good
+      roader&rdquo; from a new acquaintance, and would himself drive the girl from
+      Acreville to Riverboro, a distance of thirty-five miles. That he would
+      arrive in their vicinity on the very night before the flag-raising was
+      thought by Riverboro to be a public misfortune, and several residents
+      hastily determined to deny themselves a sight of the festivities and
+      remain watchfully on their own premises.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On Monday afternoon the children were rehearsing their songs at the
+      meeting-house. As Rebecca came out on the broad wooden steps she watched
+      Mrs. Peter Meserve's buggy out of sight, for in front, wrapped in a cotton
+      sheet, lay the previous flag. After a few chattering good-bys and weather
+      prophecies with the other girls, she started on her homeward walk,
+      dropping in at the parsonage to read her verses to the minister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He welcomed her gladly as she removed her white cotton gloves (hastily
+      slipped on outside the door, for ceremony) and pushed back the funny hat
+      with the yellow and black porcupine quills&mdash;the hat with which she
+      made her first appearance in Riverboro society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've heard the beginning, Mr. Baxter; now will you please tell me if
+      you like the last verse?&rdquo; she asked, taking out her paper. &ldquo;I've only read
+      it to Alice Robinson, and I think perhaps she can never be a poet, though
+      she's a splendid writer. Last year when she was twelve she wrote a
+      birthday poem to herself, and she made natal' rhyme with Milton,.' which,
+      of course, it wouldn't. I remember every verse ended:
+    </p>
+<pre>
+     'This is my day so natal
+     And I will follow Milton.'
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Another one of hers was written just because she couldn't help it, she
+      said. This was it:
+    </p>
+<pre>
+     'Let me to the hills away,
+     Give me pen and paper;
+     I'll write until the earth will sway
+     The story of my Maker.'&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      The minister could scarcely refrain from smiling, but he controlled
+      himself that he might lose none of Rebecca's quaint observations. When she
+      was perfectly at ease, unwatched and uncriticised, she was a marvelous
+      companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The name of the poem is going to be My Star,'&rdquo; she continued, &ldquo;and Mrs.
+      Baxter gave me all the ideas, but somehow there's a kind of magicness when
+      they get into poetry, don't you think so?&rdquo; (Rebecca always talked to grown
+      people as if she were their age, or, a more subtle and truer distinction,
+      as if they were hers.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It has often been so remarked, in different words,&rdquo; agreed the minister.
+    </p>
+<pre>
+&ldquo;Mrs. Baxter said that each star was a state, and if each state did its
+best we should have a splendid country. Then once she said that we ought
+to be glad the war is over and the States are all at peace together; and
+I thought Columbia must be glad, too, for Miss Dearborn says she's
+the mother of all the States. So I'm going to have it end like this: I
+didn't write it, I just sewed it while I was working on my star:
+
+     For it's your star, my star, all the stars together,
+     That make our country's flag so proud
+     To float in the bright fall weather.
+     Northern stars, Southern stars, stars of the East and West,
+     Side by side they lie at peace
+     On the dear flag's mother-breast.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Oh! many are the poets that are sown by nature,'&rdquo; thought the minister,
+      quoting Wordsworth to himself. &ldquo;And I wonder what becomes of them! That's
+      a pretty idea, little Rebecca, and I don't know whether you or my wife
+      ought to have the more praise. What made you think of the stars lying on
+      the flag's mother-breast'? Where did you get that word?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why&rdquo; (and the young poet looked rather puzzled), &ldquo;that's the way it is;
+      the flag is the whole country&mdash;the mother&mdash;and the stars are the
+      states. The stars had to lie somewhere: 'LAP' nor 'ARMS' wouldn't sound
+      well with West,' so, of course, I said 'BREAST,'&rdquo; Rebecca answered, with
+      some surprise at the question; and the minister put his hand under her
+      chin and kissed her softly on the forehead when he said good-by at the
+      door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IV
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca walked rapidly along in the gathering twilight, thinking of the
+      eventful morrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As she approached the turning on the left called the old Milltown road,
+      she saw a white horse and wagon, driven by a man with a rakish, flapping,
+      Panama hat, come rapidly around the turn and disappear over the long hills
+      leading down to the falls. There was no mistaking him; there never was
+      another Abner Simpson, with his lean height, his bushy reddish hair, the
+      gay cock of his hat, and the long piratical, upturned mustaches, which the
+      boys used to say were used as hat-racks by the Simpson children at night..
+      The old Milltown road ran past Mrs. Fogg's house, so he must have left
+      Clara Belle there, and Rebecca's heart glowed to think that her poor
+      little friend need not miss the raising.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She began to run now, fearful of being late for supper, and covered the
+      ground to the falls in a brief time. As she crossed the bridge she again
+      saw Abner Simpson's team, drawn up at the watering trough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Coming a little nearer, with the view of inquiring for the family, her
+      quick eye caught sight of something unexpected. A gust of wind blew up a
+      corner of a linen lap-robe in the back of the wagon, and underneath it she
+      distinctly saw the white-sheeted bundle that held the flag; the bundle
+      with a tiny, tiny spot of red bunting peeping out at one corner. It is
+      true she had eaten, slept, dreamed red, white, and blue for weeks, but
+      there was no mistaking the evidence of her senses; the idolized flag,
+      longed for, worked for, sewed for, that flag was in the back of Abner
+      Simpson's wagon, and if so, what would become of the raising?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Acting on blind impulse, she ran toward the watering-trough, calling out
+      in her clear treble: &ldquo;Mr. Simpson! Oh, Mr. Simpson, will you let me ride a
+      piece with you and hear all about Clara Belle? I'm going part way over to
+      the Centre on an errand.&rdquo; (So she was; a most important errand,&mdash;to
+      recover the flag of her country at present in the hands of the foe!)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Simpson turned round in his seat and cried heartily, &ldquo;Certain sure I
+      will!&rdquo; for he liked the fair sex, young and old, and Rebecca had always
+      been a prime favorite with him. &ldquo;Climb right in! How's everybody? Glad to
+      see ye! The folks talk bout ye from sun-up to sun-down, and Clara Belle
+      can't hardly wait for a sight of ye!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca scrambled up, trembling and pale with excitement. She did not in
+      the least know what was going to happen, but she was sure that the flag,
+      when in the enemy's country, must be at least a little safer with the
+      State of Maine sitting on top of it!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Simpson began a long monologue about Acreville, the house he lived in,
+      the pond in front of it, Mrs. Simpson's health, and various items of news
+      about the children, varied by reports of his personal misfortunes. He put
+      no questions, and asked no replies, so this gave the inexperienced soldier
+      a few seconds to plan a campaign. There were three houses to pass; the
+      Browns' at the corner, the Millikens', and the Robinsons' on the brow of
+      the hill. If Mr. Robinson were in the front yard she might tell Mr.
+      Simpson she wanted to call there and ask Mr. Robinson to hold the horse's
+      head while she got out of the wagon. Then she might fly to the back before
+      Mr. Simpson could realize the situation, and dragging out the precious
+      bundle, sit on it hard, while Mr. Robinson settled the matter of ownership
+      with Mr. Simpson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was feasible, but it meant a quarrel between the two men, who held an
+      ancient grudge against each other, and Mr. Simpson was a valiant fighter
+      as the various sheriffs who had attempted to arrest him could cordially
+      testify. It also meant that everybody in the village would hear of the
+      incident and poor Clara Belle be branded again as the child of a thief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another idea danced into her excited brain; such a clever one she could
+      hardly believe it hers. She might call Mr. Robinson to the wagon, and when
+      he came close to the wheels she might say, &ldquo;all of a sudden&rdquo;: &ldquo;Please take
+      the flag out of the back of the wagon, Mr. Robinson. We have brought it
+      here for you to keep overnight.&rdquo; Mr. Simpson might be so surprised that he
+      would give up his prize rather than be suspected of stealing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But as they neared the Robinsons' house there was not a sign of life to be
+      seen; so the last plan, ingenious though it was, was perforce abandoned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The road now lay between thick pine woods with no dwelling in sight. It
+      was growing dusk and Rebecca was driving along the lonely way with a
+      person who was generally called Slippery Simpson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not a thought of fear crossed her mind, save the fear of bungling in her
+      diplomacy, and so losing the flag. She knew Mr. Simpson well, and a
+      pleasanter man was seldom to be met. She recalled an afternoon when he
+      came home and surprised the whole school playing the Revolutionary War in
+      his helter-skelter dooryard, and the way in which he had joined the
+      British forces and impersonated General Burgoyne had greatly endeared him
+      to her. The only difficulty was to find proper words for her delicate
+      mission, for, of course, if Mr. Simpson's anger were aroused, he would
+      politely push her out of the wagon and drive away with the flag. Perhaps
+      if she led the conversation in the right direction an opportunity would
+      present itself. She well remembered how Emma Jane Perkins had failed to
+      convert Jacob Moody, simply because she failed to &ldquo;lead up&rdquo; to the
+      delicate question of his manner of life. Clearing her throat nervously,
+      she began: &ldquo;Is it likely to be fair tomorrow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Guess so; clear as a bell. What's on foot; a picnic?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; we're to have a grand flag-raising!&rdquo; (&ldquo;That is,&rdquo; she thought, &ldquo;if we
+      have any flag to raise!&rdquo;)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That so? Where?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The three villages are to club together and have a rally, and raise the
+      flag at the Centre. There'll be a brass band, and speakers, and the Mayor
+      of Portland, and the man that will be governor if he's elected, and a
+      dinner in the Grange Hall, and we girls are chosen to raise the flag.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to know! That'll be grand, won't it?&rdquo; (Still not a sign of
+      consciousness on the part of Abner.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope Mrs. Fogg will take Clara Belle, for it will be splendid to look
+      at! Mr. Cobb is going to be Uncle Sam and drive us on the stage. Miss
+      Dearborn&mdash;Clara Belle's old teacher, you know&mdash;is going to be
+      Columbia; the girls will be the States of the Union, and oh, Mr. Simpson,
+      I am the one to be the State of Maine!&rdquo; (This was not altogether to the
+      point, but a piece of information impossible to conceal.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Simpson flourished the whipstock and gave a loud, hearty laugh. Then
+      he turned in his seat and regarded Rebecca curiously. &ldquo;You're kind of
+      small, hain't ye, for so big a state as this one?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Any of us would be too small,&rdquo; replied Rebecca with dignity, &ldquo;but the
+      committee asked me, and I am going to try hard to do well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tragic thought that there might be no occasion for anybody to do
+      anything, well or ill, suddenly overcame her here, and putting her hand on
+      Mr. Simpson's sleeve, she attacked the subject practically and
+      courageously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Mr. Simpson, dear Mr. Simpson, it's such a mortifying subject I can't
+      bear to say anything about it, but please give us back our flag! Don't,
+      DON'T take it over to Acreville, Mr. Simpson! We've worked so long to make
+      it, and it was so hard getting the money for the bunting! Wait a minute,
+      please; don't be angry, and don't say no just yet, till I explain more.
+      It'll be so dreadful for everybody to get there tomorrow morning and find
+      no flag to raise, and the band and the mayor all disappointed, and the
+      children crying, with their muslin dresses all bought for nothing! O dear
+      Mr. Simpson, please don't take our flag away from us!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The apparently astonished Abner pulled his mustaches and exclaimed: &ldquo;But I
+      don't know what you're drivin' at! Who's got yer flag? I hain't!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Could duplicity, deceit, and infamy go any further, Rebecca wondered, and
+      her soul filling with righteous wrath, she cast discretion to the winds
+      and spoke a little more plainly, bending her great swimming eyes on the
+      now embarrassed Abner, who looked like an angle-worm, wriggling on a pin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Simpson, how can you say that, when I saw the flag in the back of
+      your wagon myself, when you stopped to water the horse? It's wicked of you
+      to take it, and I cannot bear it!&rdquo; (Her voice broke now, for a doubt of
+      Mr. Simpson's yielding suddenly darkened her mind.) &ldquo;If you keep it,
+      you'll have to keep me, for I won't be parted from it! I can't fight like
+      the boys, but I can pinch and scratch, and I WILL scratch, just like a
+      panther&mdash;I'll lie right down on my star and not move, if I starve to
+      death!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here, hold your hosses n' don't cry till you git something to cry
+      for!&rdquo; grumbled the outraged Abner, to whom a clue had just come; and
+      leaning over the wagon-back he caught hold of a corner of white sheet and
+      dragged up the bundle, scooping off Rebecca's hat in the process, and
+      almost burying her in bunting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She caught the treasure passionately to her heart and stifled her sobs in
+      it, while Abner exclaimed: &ldquo;I swan to man, if that hain't a flag! Well, in
+      that case you're good n' welcome to it! Land! I seen that bundle lyin' in
+      the middle o' the road and I says to myself, that's somebody's washin' and
+      I'd better pick it up and leave it at the post-office to be claimed; n'
+      all the time it was a flag!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was a Simpsonian version of the matter, the fact being that a
+      white-covered bundle lying on the Meserves' front steps had attracted his
+      practiced eye, and slipping in at the open gate he had swiftly and deftly
+      removed it to his wagon on general principles; thinking if it were clean
+      clothes it would be extremely useful, and in any event there was no good
+      in passing by something flung into your very arms, so to speak. He had had
+      no leisure to examine the bundle, and indeed took little interest in it.
+      Probably he stole it simply from force of habit, and because there was
+      nothing else in sight to steal, everybody's premises being preternaturally
+      tidy and empty, almost as if his visit had been expected!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca was a practical child, and it seemed to her almost impossible that
+      so heavy a bundle should fall out of Mrs. Meserve's buggy and not be
+      noticed; but she hoped that Mr. Simpson was telling the truth, and she was
+      too glad and grateful to doubt anyone at the moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, thank you ever so much, Mr. Simpson. You're the nicest,
+      kindest, politest man I ever knew, and the girls will be so pleased you
+      gave us back the flag, and so will the Dorcas Society; they'll be sure to
+      write you a letter of thanks; they always do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell em not to bother bout any thanks,&rdquo; said Simpson, beaming virtuously.
+      &ldquo;But land! I'm glad twas me that happened to see that bundle in the road
+      and take the trouble to pick it up.&rdquo; (&ldquo;Jest to think of it's bein' a
+      flag!&rdquo; he thought; &ldquo;if ever there was a pesky, wuthless thing to trade
+      off, twould be a great, gormin' flag like that!&rdquo;)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can I get out now, please?&rdquo; asked Rebecca. &ldquo;I want to go back, for Mrs.
+      Meserve will be dreadfully nervous when she finds out she dropped the
+      flag, and she has heart trouble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, you don't,&rdquo; objected Mr. Simpson gallantly, turning the horse. &ldquo;Do
+      you think I'd let a little creeter like you lug that great heavy bundle? I
+      hain't got time to go back to Meserve's, but I'll take you to the corner
+      and dump you there, flag n' all, and you can get some o' the men-folks to
+      carry it the rest o' the way. You'll wear it out, huggin' it so!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I helped make it and I adore it!&rdquo; said Rebecca, who was in a high-pitched
+      and grandiloquent mood. &ldquo;Why don't YOU like it? It's your country's flag.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Simpson smiled an indulgent smile and looked a trifle bored at these
+      frequent appeals to his extremely rusty higher feelings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don' know's I've got any partic'lar int'rest in the country,&rdquo; he
+      remarked languidly. &ldquo;I know I don't owe nothin' to it, nor own nothin' in
+      it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You own a star on the flag, same as everybody,&rdquo; argued Rebecca, who had
+      been feeding on patriotism for a month; &ldquo;and you own a state, too, like
+      all of us!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Land! I wish't I did! or even a quarter section!&rdquo; sighed Mr. Simpson,
+      feeling somehow a little more poverty-stricken and discouraged than usual.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they approached the corner and the watering-trough where four
+      cross-roads met, the whole neighborhood seemed to be in evidence, and Mr.
+      Simpson suddenly regretted his chivalrous escort of Rebecca; especially
+      when, as he neared the group, an excited lady, wringing her hands, turned
+      out to be Mrs. Peter Meserve, accompanied by Huldah, the Browns, Mrs.
+      Milliken, Abijah Flagg, and Miss Dearborn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know anything about the new flag, Rebecca?&rdquo; shrieked Mrs. Meserve,
+      too agitated, at the moment, to notice the child's companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's right here in my lap, all safe,&rdquo; responded Rebecca joyously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You careless, meddlesome young one, to take it off my steps where I left
+      it just long enough to go round to the back and hunt up my door-key!
+      You've given me a fit of sickness with my weak heart, and what business
+      was it of yours? I believe you think you OWN the flag! Hand it over to me
+      this minute!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca was climbing down during this torrent of language, but as she
+      turned she flashed one look of knowledge at the false Simpson, a look that
+      went through him from head to foot, as if it were carried by electricity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had not deceived her after all, owing to the angry chatter of Mrs.
+      Meserve. He had been handcuffed twice in his life, but no sheriff had ever
+      discomfited him so thoroughly as this child. Fury mounted to his brain,
+      and as soon as she was safely out from between the wheels he stood up in
+      the wagon and flung the flag out in the road in the midst of the excited
+      group.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take it, you pious, passimonious, cheese-parin', hair-splittin',
+      back-bitin', flag-raisin' crew!&rdquo; he roared. &ldquo;Rebecca never took the flag;
+      I found it in the road, I say!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You never, no such a thing!&rdquo; exclaimed Mrs. Meserve. &ldquo;You found it on the
+      doorsteps in my garden!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mebbe twas your garden, but it was so chock full o' weeks I THOUGHT twas
+      the road,&rdquo; retorted Abner. &ldquo;I vow I wouldn't a' given the old rag back to
+      one o' YOU, not if you begged me on your bended knees! But Rebecca's a
+      friend o' my folks and can do with her flag's she's a mind to, and the
+      rest o' ye can go to thunder&mdash;n' stay there, for all I care!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So saying, he made a sharp turn, gave the gaunt white horse a lash and
+      disappeared in a cloud of dust, before the astonished Mr. Brown, the only
+      man in the party, had a thought of detaining him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sorry I spoke so quick, Rebecca,&rdquo; said Mrs. Meserve, greatly
+      mortified at the situation. &ldquo;But don't you believe a word that lyin'
+      critter said! He did steal it off my doorstep, and how did you come to be
+      ridin' and consortin' with him! I believe it would kill your Aunt Miranda
+      if she should hear about it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The little school-teacher put a sheltering arm round Rebecca as Mr. Brown
+      picked up the flag and dusted and folded it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm willing she should hear about it,&rdquo; Rebecca answered. &ldquo;I didn't do
+      anything to be ashamed of! I saw the flag in the back of Mr. Simpson's
+      wagon and I just followed it. There weren't any men or any Dorcases to
+      take care of it and so it fell to me! You wouldn't have had me let it out
+      of my sight, would you, and we going to raise it tomorrow morning?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rebecca's perfectly right, Mrs. Meserve!&rdquo; said Miss Dearborn proudly.
+      &ldquo;And it's lucky there was somebody quick-witted enough to ride and
+      consort' with Mr. Simpson! I don't know what the village will think, but
+      seems to me the town clerk might write down in his book, THIS DAY THE
+      STATE OF MAINE SAVED THE FLAG!'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link2H_4_0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Sixth Chronicle. THE STATE O' MAINE GIRL
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The foregoing episode, if narrated in a romance, would undoubtedly have
+      been called &ldquo;The Saving of the Colors,&rdquo; but at the nightly conversazione
+      in Watson's store it was alluded to as the way little Becky Randall got
+      the flag away from Slippery Simpson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dramatic as it was, it passed into the limbo of half-forgotten things in
+      Rebecca's mind, its brief importance submerged in the glories of the next
+      day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a painful prelude to these glories. Alice Robinson came to spend
+      the night with Rebecca, and when the bedroom door closed upon the two
+      girls, Alice announced her intention of &ldquo;doing up&rdquo; Rebecca's front hair
+      in leads and rags, and braiding the back in six tight, wetted braids.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca demurred. Alice persisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your hair is so long and thick and dark and straight,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that
+      you'll look like an Injun!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am the State of Maine; it all belonged to the Indians once,&rdquo; Rebecca
+      remarked gloomily, for she was curiously shy about discussing her personal
+      appearance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And your wreath of little pine-cones won't set decent without crimps,&rdquo;
+       continued Alice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca glanced in the cracked looking-glass and met what she considered
+      an accusing lack of beauty, a sight that always either saddened or enraged
+      her according to circumstances; then she sat down resignedly and began to
+      help Alice in the philanthropic work of making the State of Maine fit to
+      be seen at the raising.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Neither of the girls was an expert hairdresser, and at the end of an hour,
+      when the sixth braid was tied, and Rebecca had given one last shuddering
+      look in the mirror, both were ready to weep with fatigue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The candle was blown out and Alice soon went to sleep, but Rebecca tossed
+      on her pillow, its goose-feathered softness all dented by the cruel lead
+      knobs and the knots of twisted rags. She slipped out of bed and walked to
+      and fro, holding her aching head with both hands. Finally she leaned on
+      the window-sill, watching the still weather-vane on Alice's barn and
+      breathing in the fragrance of the ripening apples, until her restlessness
+      subsided under the clear starry beauty of the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At six in the morning the girls were out of bed, for Alice could hardly
+      wait until Rebecca's hair was taken down, she was so eager to see the
+      result of her labors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The leads and rags were painfully removed, together with much hair, the
+      operation being punctuated by a series of squeaks, squeals, and shrieks on
+      the part of Rebecca and a series of warnings from Alice, who wished the
+      preliminaries to be kept secret from the aunts, that they might the more
+      fully appreciate the radiant result.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then came the unbraiding, and then&mdash;dramatic moment&mdash;the
+      &ldquo;combing out;&rdquo; a difficult, not to say impossible process, in which the
+      hairs that had resisted the earlier stages almost gave up the ghost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The long front strands had been wound up from various angles and by
+      various methods, so that, when released, they assumed the strangest, most
+      obstinate, most unexpected attitudes. When the comb was dragged through
+      the last braid, the wild, tortured, electric hairs following, and then
+      rebounding from it in a bristling, snarling tangle. Massachusetts gave one
+      encompassing glance at the State o' Maine's head, and announced her
+      intention of going home to breakfast! She was deeply grieved at the result
+      of her attempted beautifying, but she felt that meeting Miss Miranda
+      Sawyer at the morning meal would not mend matters in the least, so
+      slipping out of the side door, she ran up Guide Board hill as fast as her
+      legs could carry her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The State o' Maine, deserted and somewhat unnerved, sat down before the
+      glass and attacked her hair doggedly and with set lips, working over it
+      until Miss Jane called her to breakfast; then, with a boldness born of
+      despair, she entered the dining room, where her aunts were already seated
+      at table. To &ldquo;draw fire&rdquo; she whistled, a forbidden joy, which only
+      attracted more attention, instead of diverting it. There was a moment of
+      silence after the grotesque figure was fully taken in; then came a moan
+      from Jane and a groan from Miranda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What have you done to yourself?&rdquo; asked Miranda sternly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Made an effort to be beautiful and failed!&rdquo; jauntily replied Rebecca, but
+      she was too miserable to keep up the fiction. &ldquo;Oh, Aunt Miranda, don't
+      scold. I'm so unhappy! Alice and I rolled up my hair to curl it for the
+      raising. She said it was so straight I looked like an Indian!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mebbe you did,&rdquo; vigorously agreed Miranda, &ldquo;but 't any rate you looked
+      like a Christian Injun, 'n' now you look like a heathen Injun; that's all
+      the difference I can see. What can we do with her, Jane, between this and
+      nine o'clock?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll all go out to the pump just as soon as we're through breakfast,&rdquo;
+       answered Jane soothingly. &ldquo;We can accomplish consid'rable with water and
+      force.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca nibbled her corn-cake, her tearful eyes cast on her plate and her
+      chin quivering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you cry and red your eyes up,&rdquo; chided Miranda quite kindly; &ldquo;the
+      minute you've eat enough run up and get your brush and comb and meet us at
+      the back door.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wouldn't care myself how bad I looked,&rdquo; said Rebecca, &ldquo;but I can't bear
+      to be so homely that I shame the State of Maine!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh, what an hour followed this plaint! Did any aspirant for literary or
+      dramatic honors ever pass to fame through such an antechamber of horrors?
+      Did poet of the day ever have his head so maltreated? To be dipped in the
+      rain-water tub, soused again and again; to be held under the spout and
+      pumped on; to be rubbed furiously with rough roller towels; to be dried
+      with hot flannels! And is it not well-nigh incredible that at the close of
+      such an hour the ends of the long hair should still stand out straight,
+      the braids having been turned up two inches by Alice, and tied hard in
+      that position with linen thread?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get out the skirt-board, Jane,&rdquo; cried Miranda, to whom opposition served
+      as a tonic, &ldquo;and move that flat-iron on to the front o' the stove.
+      Rebecca, set down in that low chair beside the board, and Jane, you spread
+      out her hair on it and cover it up with brown paper. Don't cringe,
+      Rebecca; the worst's over, and you've borne up real good! I'll be careful
+      not to pull your hair nor scorch you, and oh, HOW I'd like to have Alice
+      Robinson acrost my knee and a good strip o' shingle in my right hand!
+      There, you're all ironed out and your Aunt Jane can put on your white
+      dress and braid your hair up again good and tight. Perhaps you won't be
+      the hombliest of the states, after all; but when I see you comin' in to
+      breakfast I said to myself: I guess if Maine looked like that, it wouldn't
+      never a' been admitted into the Union!'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When Uncle Sam and the stagecoach drew up to the brick house with a grand
+      swing and a flourish, the goddess of Liberty and most of the States were
+      already in their places on the &ldquo;harricane deck.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Words fail to describe the gallant bearing of the horses, their headstalls
+      gayly trimmed and their harnesses dotted with little flags. The stage
+      windows were hung in bunting, and from within beamed Columbia, looking out
+      from the bright frame as if proud of her freight of loyal children.
+      Patriotic streamers floated from whip, from dash-board and from rumble,
+      and the effect of the whole was something to stimulate the most phlegmatic
+      voter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca came out on the steps and Aunt Jane brought a chair to assist in
+      the ascent. Miss Dearborn peeped from the window, and gave a despairing
+      look at her favorite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What had happened to her? Who had dressed her? Had her head been put
+      through a wringing-machine? Why were her eyes red and swollen? Miss
+      Dearborn determined to take her behind the trees in the pine grove and
+      give her some finishing touches; touches that her skillful fingers fairly
+      itched to bestow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stage started, and as the roadside pageant grew gayer and gayer,
+      Rebecca began to brighten and look prettier, for most of her beautifying
+      came from within. The people, walking, driving, or standing on their
+      doorsteps, cheered Uncle Sam's coach with its freight of
+      gossamer-muslined, fluttering-ribboned girls, and just behind, the
+      gorgeously decorated haycart, driven by Abijah Flagg, bearing the jolly
+      but inharmonious fife-and-drum corps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Was ever such a golden day! Such crystal air! Such mellow sunshine! Such a
+      merry Uncle Sam!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stage drew up at an appointed spot near a pine grove, and while the
+      crowd was gathering, the children waited for the hour to arrive when they
+      should march to the platform; the hour toward which they seemed to have
+      been moving since the dawn of creation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as possible Miss Dearborn whispered to Rebecca: &ldquo;Come behind the
+      trees with me; I want to make you prettier!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca thought she had suffered enough from that process already during
+      the last twelve hours, but she put out an obedient hand and the two
+      withdrew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now Miss Dearborn was, I fear, a very indifferent teacher. Dr. Moses
+      always said so, and Libbie Moses, who wanted her school, said it was a
+      pity she hadn't enjoyed more social advantages in her youth. Libbie
+      herself had taken music lessons in Portland; and spent a night at the
+      Profile House in the White Mountains, and had visited her sister in
+      Lowell, Massachusetts. These experiences gave her, in her own mind, and in
+      the mind of her intimate friends, a horizon so boundless that her view of
+      smaller, humbler matters was a trifle distorted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Dearborn's stock in trade was small, her principal virtues being
+      devotion to children and ability to gain their love, and a power of
+      evolving a schoolroom order so natural, cheery, serene, and peaceful that
+      it gave the beholder a certain sense of being in a district heaven. She
+      was poor in arithmetic and weak in geometry, but if you gave her a rose, a
+      bit of ribbon, and a seven-by-nine looking-glass she could make herself as
+      pretty as a pink in two minutes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Safely sheltered behind the pines, Miss Dearborn began to practice
+      mysterious feminine arts. She flew at Rebecca's tight braids, opened the
+      strands and rebraided them loosely; bit and tore the red, white, and blue
+      ribbon in two and tied the braids separately. Then with nimble fingers she
+      pulled out little tendrils of hair behind the ears and around the nape of
+      the neck. After a glance of acute disapproval directed at the stiff
+      balloon skirt she knelt on the ground and gave a strenuous embrace to
+      Rebecca's knees, murmuring, between her hugs, &ldquo;Starch must be cheap at the
+      brick house!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This particular line of beauty attained, there ensued great pinchings of
+      ruffles, her fingers that could never hold a ferrule nor snap children's
+      ears being incomparable fluting-irons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next the sash was scornfully untied and tightened to suggest something
+      resembling a waist. The chastened bows that had been squat, dowdy,
+      spiritless, were given tweaks, flirts, bracing little pokes and dabs,
+      till, acknowledging a master hand, they stood up, piquant, pert, smart,
+      alert!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pride of bearing was now infused into the flattened lace at the neck, and
+      a pin (removed at some sacrifice from her own toilette) was darned in at
+      the back to prevent any cowardly lapsing. The short white cotton gloves
+      that called attention to the tanned wrist and arms were stripped off and
+      put in her own pocket. Then the wreath of pine-cones was adjusted at a
+      heretofore unimagined angle, the hair was pulled softly into a fluffy
+      frame, and finally, as she met Rebecca's grateful eyes she gave her two
+      approving, triumphant kisses. In a second the sensitive face lighted into
+      happiness; pleased dimples appeared in the cheeks, the kissed mouth was as
+      red as a rose, and the little fright that had walked behind the pine-tree
+      stepped out on the other side Rebecca the lovely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As to the relative value of Miss Dearborn's accomplishments, the decision
+      must be left to the gentle reader; but though it is certain that children
+      should be properly grounded in mathematics, no heart of flesh could bear
+      to hear Miss Dearborn's methods vilified who had seen her patting,
+      pulling, squeezing Rebecca from ugliness into beauty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young superintendent of district schools was a witness of the scene,
+      and when later he noted the children surrounding Columbia as bees a
+      honeysuckle, he observed to Dr. Moses: &ldquo;She may not be much of a teacher,
+      but I think she'd be considerable of a wife!&rdquo; and subsequent events proved
+      that he meant what he said!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      II
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now all was ready; the moment of fate was absolutely at hand; the
+      fife-and-drum corps led the way and the States followed; but what actually
+      happened Rebecca never knew; she lived through the hours in a waking
+      dream. Every little detail was a facet of light that reflected sparkles,
+      and among them all she was fairly dazzled. The brass band played inspiring
+      strains; the mayor spoke eloquently on great themes; the people cheered;
+      then the rope on which so much depended was put into the children's hands,
+      they applied superhuman strength to their task, and the flag mounted,
+      mounted, smoothly and slowly, and slowly unwound and stretched itself
+      until its splendid size and beauty were revealed against the maples and
+      pines and blue New England sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then after cheers upon cheers and after a patriotic chorus by the church
+      choirs, the State of Maine mounted the platform, vaguely conscious that
+      she was to recite a poem, though for the life of her she could not
+      remember a single word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Speak up loud and clear, Rebecky,&rdquo; whispered Uncle Sam in the front row,
+      but she could scarcely hear her own voice when, tremblingly, she began her
+      first line. After that she gathered strength and the poem &ldquo;said itself,&rdquo;
+       while the dream went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She saw Adam Ladd leaning against a tree; Aunt Jane and Aunt Miranda
+      palpitating with nervousness; Clara Belle Simpson gazing cross-eyed but
+      adoring from a seat on the side; and in the far, far distance, on the very
+      outskirts of the crowd, a tall man standing in a wagon&mdash;a tall,
+      loose-jointed man with red upturned mustaches, and a gaunt white horse
+      headed toward the Acreville road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Loud applause greeted the state of Maine, the slender little white-clad
+      figure standing on the mossy boulder that had been used as the centre of
+      the platform. The sun came up from behind a great maple and shone full on
+      the star-spangled banner, making it more dazzling than ever, so that its
+      beauty drew all eyes upward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abner Simpson lifted his vagrant shifting gaze to its softy fluttering
+      folds and its splendid massing of colors, thinking:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know's anybody'd ought to steal a flag&mdash;the thunderin'
+      idjuts seem to set such store by it, and what is it, anyway? Nothin; but a
+      sheet o' buntin!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nothing but a sheet of bunting? He looked curiously at the rapt faces of
+      the mothers, their babies asleep in their arms; the parted lips and
+      shining eyes of the white-clad girls; at Cap'n Lord, who had been in Libby
+      prison, and Nat Strout, who had left an arm at Bull Run; at the friendly,
+      jostling crowd of farmers, happy, eager, absorbed, their throats ready to
+      burst with cheers. Then the breeze served, and he heard Rebecca's clear
+      voice saying:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For it's your star, my star, all the stars together, That make our
+      country's flag so proud To float in the bright fall weather!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Talk about stars! She's got a couple of em right in her head,&rdquo; thought
+      Simpson.... &ldquo;If I ever seen a young one like that lyin; on anybody's
+      doorstep I'd hook her quicker'n a wink, though I've got plenty to home,
+      the Lord knows! And I wouldn't swap her off neither.... Spunky little
+      creeter, too; settin; up in the wagon lookin' bout's big as a pint o'
+      cider, but keepin' right after the goods!... I vow I'm bout sick o' my
+      job! Never WITH the crowd, allers JEST on the outside, s if I wa'n't as
+      good's they be! If it paid well, mebbe I wouldn't mind, but they're so
+      thunderin' stingy round here, they don't leave anything decent out for you
+      to take from em, yet you're reskin' your liberty n' reputation jest the
+      same!... Countin' the poor pickin's n' the time I lose in jail I might
+      most's well be done with it n' work out by the day, as the folks want me
+      to; I'd make bout's much n' I don't know's it would be any harder!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He could see Rebecca stepping down from the platform, while his own
+      red-headed little girl stood up on her bench, waving her hat with one
+      hand, her handkerchief with the other, and stamping with both feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now a man sitting beside the mayor rose from his chair and Abner heard him
+      call:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Three cheers for the women who made the flag!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;HIP, HIP, HURRAH!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Three cheers for the State of Maine!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;HIP, HIP, HURRAH!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Three cheers for the girl that saved the flag from the hands of the
+      enemy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;HIP, HIP, HURRAH! HIP, HIP, HURRAH!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the Edgewood minister, whose full, vibrant voice was of the sort to
+      move a crowd. His words rang out into the clear air and were carried from
+      lip to lip. Hands clapped, feet stamped, hats swung, while the loud
+      huzzahs might almost have wakened the echoes on old Mount Ossipee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tall, loose-jointed man sat down in the wagon suddenly and took up the
+      reins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're gettin' a little mite personal, and I guess it's bout time for
+      you to be goin', Simpson!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tone was jocular, but the red mustaches drooped, and the half-hearted
+      cut he gave to start the white mare on her homeward journey showed that he
+      was not in his usual devil-may-care mood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Durn his skin!&rdquo; he burst out in a vindictive undertone, as the mare swung
+      into her long gait. &ldquo;It's a lie! I thought twas somebody's wash! I hain't
+      an enemy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While the crowd at the raising dispersed in happy family groups to their
+      picnics in the woods; while the Goddess of Liberty, Uncle Sam, Columbia,
+      and the proud States lunched grandly in the Grange hall with distinguished
+      guests and scarred veterans of two wars, the lonely man drove, and drove,
+      and drove through silent woods and dull, sleepy villages, never alighting
+      to replenish his wardrobe or his stock of swapping material.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At dusk he reached a miserable tumble-down house on the edge of a pond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The faithful wife with the sad mouth and the habitual look of anxiety in
+      her faded eyes came to the door at the sound of wheels and went doggedly
+      to the horse-shed to help him unharness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You didn't expect to see me back tonight, did ye?&rdquo; he asked satirically;
+      &ldquo;leastwise not with this same horse? Well, I'm here! You needn't be scairt
+      to look under the wagon seat, there hain't nothin' there, not even my
+      supper, so I hope you're suited for once! No, I guess I hain't goin' to be
+      an angel right away, neither. There wa'n't nothin' but flags layin' roun'
+      loose down Riverboro way, n' whatever they say, I hain't sech a hound as
+      to steal a flag!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was natural that young Riverboro should have red, white, and blue
+      dreams on the night after the new flag was raised. A stranger thing,
+      perhaps, is the fact that Abner Simpson should lie down on his hard bed
+      with the flutter of bunting before his eyes, and a whirl of unaccustomed
+      words in his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For it's your star, my star, all our stars together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sick of goin' it alone,&rdquo; he thought; &ldquo;I guess I'll try the other road
+      for a spell;&rdquo; and with that he fell asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link2H_4_0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Seventh Chronicle. THE LITTLE PROPHET
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess York County will never get red of that Simpson crew!&rdquo; exclaimed
+      Miranda Sawyer to Jane. &ldquo;I thought when the family moved to Acreville we'd
+      seen the last of em, but we ain't! The big, cross-eyed, stutterin' boy has
+      got a place at the mills in Maplewood; that's near enough to come over to
+      Riverboro once in a while of a Sunday mornin' and set in the meetin' house
+      starin' at Rebecca same as he used to do, only it's reskier now both of em
+      are older. Then Mrs. Fogg must go and bring back the biggest girl to help
+      her take care of her baby,&mdash;as if there wa'n't plenty of help nearer
+      home! Now I hear say that the youngest twin has come to stop the summer
+      with the Cames up to Edgewood Lower Corner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought two twins were always the same age,&rdquo; said Rebecca,
+      reflectively, as she came into the kitchen with the milk pail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So they be,&rdquo; snapped Miranda, flushing and correcting herself. &ldquo;But that
+      pasty-faced Simpson twin looks younger and is smaller than the other one.
+      He's meek as Moses and the other one is as bold as a brass kettle; I don't
+      see how they come to be twins; they ain't a mite alike.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Elijah was always called the fighting twin' at school,&rdquo; said Rebecca,
+      &ldquo;and Elisha's other name was Nimbi-Pamby; but I think he's a nice little
+      boy, and I'm glad he has come back. He won't like living with Mr. Came,
+      but he'll be almost next door to the minister's, and Mrs. Baxter is sure
+      to let him play in her garden.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder why the boy's stayin' with Cassius Came,&rdquo; said Jane. &ldquo;To be sure
+      they haven't got any of their own, but the child's too young to be much
+      use.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know why,&rdquo; remarked Rebecca promptly, &ldquo;for I heard all about it over to
+      Watson's when I was getting the milk. Mr. Came traded something with Mr.
+      Simpson two years ago and got the best of the bargain, and Uncle Jerry
+      says he's the only man that ever did, and he ought to have a monument put
+      up to him. So Mr. Came owes Mr. Simpson money and won't pay it, and Mr.
+      Simpson said he'd send over a child and board part of it out, and take the
+      rest in stock&mdash;a pig or a calf or something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's all stuff and nonsense,&rdquo; exclaimed Miranda; &ldquo;nothin' in the world
+      but store-talk. You git a clump o' men-folks settin' round Watson's stove,
+      or out on the bench at the door, an' they'll make up stories as fast as
+      their tongues can wag. The man don't live that's smart enough to cheat
+      Abner Simpson in a trade, and who ever heard of anybody's owin' him money?
+      Tain't supposable that a woman like Mrs. Came would allow her husband to
+      be in debt to a man like Abner Simpson. It's a sight likelier that she
+      heard that Mrs. Simpson was ailin' and sent for the boy so as to help the
+      family along. She always had Mrs. Simpson to wash for her once a month, if
+      you remember Jane?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There are some facts so shrouded in obscurity that the most skillful and
+      patient investigator cannot drag them into the light of day. There are
+      also (but only occasionally) certain motives, acts, speeches, lines of
+      conduct, that can never be wholly and satisfactorily explained, even in a
+      village post-office or on the loafers' bench outside the tavern door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cassius Came was a close man, close of mouth and close of purse; and all
+      that Riverboro ever knew as to the three months' visit of the Simpson twin
+      was that it actually occurred. Elisha, otherwise Nimbi-Pamby, came;
+      Nimbi-Pamby stayed; and Nimbi-Pamby, when he finally rejoined his own
+      domestic circle, did not go empty-handed (so to speak), for he was
+      accompanied on his homeward travels by a large, red, bony, somewhat
+      truculent cow, who was tied on behind the wagon, and who made the journey
+      a lively and eventful one by her total lack of desire to proceed over the
+      road from Edgewood to Acreville. But that, the cow's tale, belongs to
+      another time and place, and the coward's tale must come first; for Elisha
+      Simpson was held to be sadly lacking in the manly quality of courage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the new minister's wife who called Nimbi-Pamby the Little Prophet.
+      His full name was Elisha Jeremiah Simpson, but one seldom heard it at full
+      length, since, if he escaped the ignominy of Nimbi-Pamby, Lishe was quite
+      enough for an urchin just in his first trousers and those assumed somewhat
+      prematurely. He was &ldquo;Lishe,&rdquo; therefore, to the village, but the Little
+      Prophet to the young minister's wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca could see the Cames' brown farmhouse from Mrs. Baxter's
+      sitting-room window. The little-traveled road with strips of tufted green
+      between the wheel tracks curled dustily up to the very doorstep, and
+      inside the screen door of pink mosquito netting was a wonderful drawn-in
+      rug, shaped like a half pie, with &ldquo;Welcome&rdquo; in saffron letters on a green
+      ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca liked Mrs. Cassius Came, who was a friend of her Aunt Miranda's
+      and one of the few persons who exchanged calls with that somewhat
+      unsociable lady. The Came farm was not a long walk from the brick house,
+      for Rebecca could go across the fields when haying-time was over, and her
+      delight at being sent on an errand in that direction could not be
+      measured, now that the new minister and his wife had grown to be such a
+      resource in her life. She liked to see Mrs. Came shake the Welcome rug,
+      flinging the cheery word out into the summer sunshine like a bright
+      greeting to the day. She liked to see her go to the screen door a dozen
+      times in a morning, open it a crack and chase an imaginary fly from the
+      sacred precincts within. She liked to see her come up the cellar steps
+      into the side garden, appearing mysteriously as from the bowels of the
+      earth, carrying a shining pan of milk in both hands, and disappearing
+      through the beds of hollyhocks and sunflowers to the pig-pen or the
+      hen-house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca was not fond of Mr. Came, and neither was Mrs. Baxter, nor Elisha,
+      for that matter; in fact Mr. Came was rather a difficult person to grow
+      fond of, with his fiery red beard, his freckled skin, and his gruff way of
+      speaking; for there were no children in the brown house to smooth the
+      creases from his forehead or the roughness from his voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      II
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The new minister's wife was sitting under the shade of her great maple
+      early one morning, when she first saw the Little Prophet. A tiny figure
+      came down the grass-grown road leading a cow by a rope. If it had been a
+      small boy and a small cow, a middle-sized boy and an ordinary cow, or a
+      grown man and a big cow, she might not have noticed them; but it was the
+      combination of an infinitesimal boy and a huge cow that attracted her
+      attention. She could not guess the child's years, she only knew that he
+      was small for his age, whatever it was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cow was a dark red beast with a crumpled horn, a white star on her
+      forehead, and a large surprised sort of eye. She had, of course, two eyes,
+      and both were surprised, but the left one had an added hint of amazement
+      in it by virtue of a few white hairs lurking accidentally in the centre of
+      the eyebrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy had a thin sensitive face and curtly brown hair, short trousers
+      patched on both knees, and a ragged straw hat on the back of his head. He
+      pattered along behind the cow, sometimes holding the rope with both hands,
+      and getting over the ground in a jerky way, as the animal left him no time
+      to think of a smooth path for bare feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Came pasture was a good half-mile distant, and the cow seemed in no
+      hurry to reach it; accordingly she forsook the road now and then, and
+      rambled in the hollows, where the grass was sweeter to her way of
+      thinking. She started on one of these exploring expeditions just as she
+      passed the minister's great maple, and gave Mrs. Baxter time to call out
+      to the little fellow, &ldquo;Is that your cow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Elisha blushed and smiled, and tried to speak modestly, but there was a
+      quiver of pride in his voice as he answered suggestively:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's&mdash;nearly my cow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How is that?&rdquo; asked Mrs. Baxter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Mr. Came says when I drive her twenty-nine more times to pasture
+      thout her gettin' her foot over the rope or thout my bein' afraid, she's
+      goin' to be my truly cow. Are you fraid of cows?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye-e-es,&rdquo; Mrs. Baxter confessed, &ldquo;I am, just a little. You see, I am
+      nothing but a woman, and boys can't understand how we feel about cows.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can! They're awful big things, aren't they?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perfectly enormous! I've always thought a cow coming towards you one of
+      the biggest things in the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; me, too. Don't let's think about it. Do they hook people so very
+      often?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No indeed, in fact one scarcely ever hears of such a case.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If they stepped on your bare foot they'd scrunch it, wouldn't they?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but you are the driver; you mustn't let them do that; you are a
+      free-will boy, and they are nothing but cows.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know; but p'raps there is free-will cows, and if they just WOULD do it
+      you couldn't help being scrunched, for you mustn't let go of the rope nor
+      run, Mr. Came says.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, of course that would never do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where you used to live did all the cows go down into the boggy places
+      when you drove em to pasture, or did some walk in the road?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There weren't any cows or any pastures where I used to live; that's what
+      makes me so foolish; why does your cow need a rope?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She don't like to go to pasture, Mr. Came says. Sometimes she'd druther
+      stay to home, and so when she gets part way she turns round and comes
+      backwards.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear me!&rdquo; thought Mrs. Baxter, &ldquo;what becomes of this boy-mite if the cow
+      has a spell of going backwards?&mdash;Do you like to drive her?&rdquo; she
+      asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;N-no, not erzackly; but you see, it'll be my cow if I drive her
+      twenty-nine more times thout her gettin' her foot over the rope and thout
+      my bein' afraid,&rdquo; and a beaming smile gave a transient brightness to his
+      harassed little face. &ldquo;Will she feed in the ditch much longer?&rdquo; he asked.
+      &ldquo;Shall I say Hurrap'? That's what Mr. Came says&mdash;HURRAP!' like that,
+      and it means to hurry up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was rather a feeble warning that he sounded and the cow fed on
+      peacefully. The little fellow looked up at the minister's wife
+      confidingly, and then glanced back at the farm to see if Cassius Came were
+      watching the progress of events.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What shall we do next?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Baxter delighted in that warm, cosy little 'WE;' it took her into the
+      firm so pleasantly. She was a weak prop indeed when it came to cows, but
+      all the courage in her soul rose to arms when Elisha said, &ldquo;What shall WE
+      do next?&rdquo; She became alert, ingenious, strong, on the instant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the cow's name?&rdquo; she asked, sitting up straight in the
+      swing-chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Buttercup; but she don't seem to know it very well. She ain't a mite like
+      a buttercup.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind; you must shout 'Buttercup!' at the top of your voice, and
+      twitch the rope HARD; then I'll call, 'Hurrap!' with all my might at the
+      same moment. And if she starts quickly we mustn't run nor seem
+      frightened!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They did this; it worked to a charm, and Mrs. Baxter looked affectionately
+      after her Little Prophet as the cow pulled him down Tory Hill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lovely August days wore on. Rebecca was often at the parsonage and saw
+      Elisha frequently, but Buttercup was seldom present at their interviews,
+      as the boy now drove her to the pasture very early in the morning, the
+      journey thither being one of considerable length and her method of
+      reaching the goal being exceedingly roundabout.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Came had pointed out the necessity of getting her into the pasture at
+      least a few minutes before she had to be taken out again at night, and
+      though Rebecca didn't like Mr. Came, she saw the common sense of this
+      remark. Sometimes Mrs. Baxter and Rebecca caught a glimpse of the two at
+      sundown, as they returned from the pasture to the twilight milking,
+      Buttercup chewing her peaceful cud, her soft white bag of milk hanging
+      full, her surprised eye rolling in its accustomed &ldquo;fine frenzy.&rdquo; The
+      frenzied roll did not mean anything, they used to assure Elisha; but if it
+      didn't, it was an awful pity she had to do it, Rebecca thought; and Mrs.
+      Baxter agreed. To have an expression of eye that meant murder, and yet to
+      be a perfectly virtuous and well-meaning animal, this was a calamity
+      indeed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Baxter was looking at the sun one evening as it dropped like a ball
+      of red fire into Wilkins's woods, when the Little Prophet passed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's the twenty-ninth night,&rdquo; he called joyously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am so glad,&rdquo; she answered, for she had often feared some accident might
+      prevent his claiming the promised reward. &ldquo;Then tomorrow Buttercup will be
+      your own cow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess so. That's what Mr. Came said. He's off to Acreville now, but
+      he'll be home tonight, and father's going to send my new hat by him. When
+      Buttercup's my own cow I wish I could change her name and call her Red
+      Rover, but p'r'aps her mother wouldn't like it. When she b'longs to me,
+      mebbe I won't be so fraid of gettin' hooked and scrunched, because she'll
+      know she's mine, and she'll go better. I haven't let her get snarled up in
+      the rope one single time, and I don't show I'm afraid, do I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should never suspect it for an instant,&rdquo; said Mrs. Baxter
+      encouragingly. &ldquo;I've often envied you your bold, brave look!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Elisha appeared distinctly pleased. &ldquo;I haven't cried, either, when she's
+      dragged me over the pasture bars and peeled my legs. Bill Petes's little
+      brother Charlie says he ain't afraid of anything, not even bears. He says
+      he would walk right up close and cuff em if they dared to yip; but I ain't
+      like that! He ain't scared of elephants or tigers or lions either; he says
+      they're all the same as frogs or chickens to him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca told her Aunt Miranda that evening that it was the Prophet's
+      twenty-ninth night, and that the big red cow was to be his on the morrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I hope it'll turn out that way,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;But I ain't a mite sure
+      that Cassius Came will give up that cow when it comes to the point. It
+      won't be the first time he's tried to crawl out of a bargain with folks a
+      good deal bigger than Lisha, for he's terrible close, Cassius is. To be
+      sure he's stiff in his joints and he's glad enough to have a boy to take
+      the cow to the pasture in summer time, but he always has hired help when
+      it comes harvestin'. So Lisha'll be no use from this on; and I dare say
+      the cow is Abner Simpson's anyway. If you want a walk tonight, I wish
+      you'd go up there and ask Mis' Came if she'll lend me an' your Aunt Jane
+      half her yeast-cake. Tell her we'll pay it back when we get ours a
+      Saturday. Don't you want to take Thirza Meserve with you? She's alone as
+      usual while Huldy's entertainin' beaux on the side porch. Don't stay too
+      long at the parsonage!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      III
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca was used to this sort of errand, for the whole village of
+      Riverboro would sometimes be rocked to the very centre of its being by
+      simultaneous desire for a yeast-cake. As the nearest repository was a mile
+      and a half distant, as the yeast-cake was valued at two cents and wouldn't
+      keep, as the demand was uncertain, being dependent entirely on a
+      fluctuating desire for &ldquo;riz bread,&rdquo; the storekeeper refused to order more
+      than three yeast-cakes a day at his own risk. Sometimes they remained on
+      his hands a dead loss; sometimes eight or ten persons would &ldquo;hitch up&rdquo; and
+      drive from distant farms for the coveted article, only to be met with the
+      flat, &ldquo;No, I'm all out o' yeast-cake; Mis' Simmons took the last; mebbe
+      you can borry half o' hern, she hain't much of a bread-eater.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So Rebecca climbed the hills to Mrs. Came's, knowing that her daily bread
+      depended on the successful issue of the call.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thirza was barefooted, and tough as her little feet were, the long walk
+      over the stubble fields tired her. When they came within sight of the Came
+      barn, she coaxed Rebecca to take a short cut through the turnips growing
+      in long, beautifully weeded rows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know Mr. Came is awfully cross, Thirza, and can't bear anybody to
+      tread on his crops or touch a tree or a bush that belongs to him. I'm kind
+      of afraid, but come along and mind you step softly in between the rows and
+      hold up your petticoat, so you can't possibly touch the turnip plants.
+      I'll do the same. Skip along fast, because then we won't leave any deep
+      footprints.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The children passed safely and noiselessly along, their pleasure a trifle
+      enhanced by the felt dangers of their progress. Rebecca knew that they
+      were doing no harm, but that did not prevent her hoping to escape the
+      gimlet eye of Mr. Came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they neared the outer edge of the turnip patch they paused suddenly,
+      petticoats in air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A great clump of elderberry bushes hid them from the barn, but from the
+      other side of the clump came the sound of conversation: the timid voice of
+      the Little Prophet and the gruff tones of Cassius Came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca was afraid to interrupt, and too honest to wish to overhear. She
+      could only hope the man and the boy would pass on to the house as they
+      talked, so she motioned to the paralyzed Thirza to take two more steps and
+      stand with her behind the elderberry bushes. But no! In a moment they
+      heard Mr. Came drag a stool over beside the grindstone as he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, now Elisha Jeremiah, we'll talk about the red cow. You say you've
+      drove her a month, do ye? And the trade between us was that if you could
+      drive her a month, without her getting the rope over her foot and without
+      bein' afraid, you was to have her. That's straight, ain't it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Prophet's face burned with excitement, his gingham shirt rose and fell
+      as if he were breathing hard, but he only nodded assent and said nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now,&rdquo; continued Mr. Came, &ldquo;have you made out to keep the rope from under
+      her feet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She ain't got t-t-tangled up one s-single time,&rdquo; said Elisha, stuttering
+      in his excitement, but looking up with some courage from his bare toes,
+      with which he was assiduously threading the grass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So far, so good. Now bout bein' afraid. As you seem so certain of gettin'
+      the cow, I suppose you hain't been a speck scared, hev you? Honor bright,
+      now!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;I&mdash;not but just a little mite. I&rdquo;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hold up a minute. Of course you didn't SAY you was afraid, and didn't
+      SHOW you was afraid, and nobody knew you WAS afraid, but that ain't the
+      way we fixed it up. You was to call the cow your'n if you could drive her
+      to the pasture for a month without BEIN' afraid. Own up square now, hev
+      you be'n afraid?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A long pause, then a faint, &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where's your manners?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean yes, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How often? If it hain't be'n too many times mebbe I'll let ye off, though
+      you're a reg'lar girl-boy, and'll be runnin' away from the cat bimeby. Has
+      it be'n&mdash;twice?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; and the Little Prophet's voice was very faint now, and had a
+      decided tear in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has it be'n four times?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Y-es, sir.&rdquo; More heaving of the gingham shirt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you AIR a thunderin' coward! How many times? Speak up now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      More digging of the bare toes in the earth, and one premonitory tear drop
+      stealing from under the downcast lids, then,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A little, most every day, and you can keep the cow,&rdquo; wailed the Prophet,
+      as he turned abruptly and fled behind the shed, where he flung himself
+      into the green depths of a tansy bed, and gave himself up to unmanly sobs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cassius Came gave a sort of shamefaced guffaw at the abrupt departure of
+      the boy, and went on into the house, while Rebecca and Thirza made a
+      stealthy circuit of the barn and a polite and circumspect entrance through
+      the parsonage front gate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca told the minister's wife what she could remember of the interview
+      between Cassius Came and Elisha Simpson, and tender-hearted Mrs. Baxter
+      longed to seek and comfort her Little Prophet sobbing in the tansy bed,
+      the brand of coward on his forehead, and what was much worse, the fear in
+      his heart that he deserved it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca could hardly be prevented from bearding Mr. Came and openly
+      espousing the cause of Elisha, for she was an impetuous, reckless, valiant
+      creature when a weaker vessel was attacked or threatened unjustly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Baxter acknowledged that Mr. Came had been true, in a way, to his
+      word and bargain, but she confessed that she had never heard of so cruel
+      and hard a bargain since the days of Shylock, and it was all the worse for
+      being made with a child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca hurried home, her visit quite spoiled and her errand quite
+      forgotten till she reached the brick house door, where she told her aunts,
+      with her customary picturesqueness of speech, that she would rather eat
+      buttermilk bread till she died than partake of food mixed with one of Mr.
+      Came's yeast-cakes; that it would choke her, even in the shape of good
+      raised bread.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's all very fine, Rebecky,&rdquo; said her Aunt Miranda, who had a
+      pin-prick for almost every bubble; &ldquo;but don't forget there's two other
+      mouths to feed in this house, and you might at least give your aunt and me
+      the privilege of chokin' if we feel to want to!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      IV
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Baxter finally heard from Mrs. Came, through whom all information was
+      sure to filter if you gave it time, that her husband despised a coward,
+      that he considered Elisha a regular mother's-apron-string boy, and that he
+      was &ldquo;learnin'&rdquo; him to be brave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bill Peters, the hired man, now drove Buttercup to pasture, though
+      whenever Mr. Came went to Moderation or Bonnie Eagle, as he often did,
+      Mrs. Baxter noticed that Elisha took the hired man's place. She often
+      joined him on these anxious expeditions, and, a like terror in both their
+      souls, they attempted to train the red cow and give her some idea of
+      obedience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If she only wouldn't look at us that way we would get along real nicely
+      with her, wouldn't we?&rdquo; prattled the Prophet, straggling along by her
+      side; &ldquo;and she is a splendid cow; she gives twenty-one quarts a day, and
+      Mr. Came says it's more'n half cream.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The minister's wife assented to all this, thinking that if Buttercup would
+      give up her habit of turning completely round in the road to roll her eyes
+      and elevate her white-tipped eyebrow, she might indeed be an enjoyable
+      companion; but in her present state of development her society was not
+      agreeable, even did she give sixty-one quarts of milk a day. Furthermore,
+      when Mrs. Baxter discovered that she never did any of these reprehensible
+      things with Bill Peters, she began to believe cows more intelligent
+      creatures than she had supposed them to be, and she was indignant to think
+      Buttercup could count so confidently on the weakness of a small boy and a
+      timid woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One evening, when Buttercup was more than usually exasperating, Mrs.
+      Baxter said to the Prophet, who was bracing himself to keep from being
+      pulled into a wayside brook where Buttercup loved to dabble, &ldquo;Elisha, do
+      you know anything about the superiority of mind over matter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      No, he didn't, though it was not a fair time to ask the question, for he
+      had sat down in the road to get a better purchase on the rope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it doesn't signify. What I mean is that we can die but once, and it
+      is a glorious thing to die for a great principle. Give me that rope. I can
+      pull like an ox in my present frame of mind. You run down on the opposite
+      side of the brook, take that big stick wade right in&mdash;you are
+      barefooted,&mdash;brandish the stick, and, if necessary, do more than
+      brandish. I would go myself, but it is better she should recognize you as
+      her master, and I am in as much danger as you are, anyway. She may try to
+      hook you, of course, but you must keep waving the stick,&mdash;die
+      brandishing, Prophet, that's the idea! She may turn and run for me, in
+      which case I shall run too; but I shall die running, and the minister can
+      bury us under our favorite sweet-apple tree!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Prophet's soul was fired by the lovely lady's eloquence. Their spirits
+      mounted simultaneously, and they were flushed with a splendid courage in
+      which death looked a mean and paltry thing compared with vanquishing that
+      cow. She had already stepped into the pool, but the Prophet waded in
+      towards her, moving the alder branch menacingly. She looked up with the
+      familiar roll of the eye that had done her such good service all summer,
+      but she quailed beneath the stern justice and the new valor of the
+      Prophet's gaze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In that moment perhaps she felt ashamed of the misery she had caused the
+      helpless mite. At any rate, actuated by fear, surprise, or remorse, she
+      turned and walked back into the road without a sign of passion or
+      indignation, leaving the boy and the lady rather disappointed at their
+      easy victory. To be prepared for a violent death and receive not even a
+      scratch made them fear that they might possibly have overestimated the
+      danger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were better friends than ever after that, the young minister's wife
+      and the forlorn little boy from Acreville, sent away from home he knew not
+      why, unless it were that there was little to eat there and considerably
+      more at the Cash Cames', as they were called in Edgewood. Cassius was
+      familiarly known as Uncle Cash, partly because there was a disposition in
+      Edgewood to abbreviate all Christian names, and partly because the old man
+      paid cash, and expected to be paid cash, for everything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The late summer grew into autumn, and the minister's great maple flung a
+      flaming bough of scarlet over Mrs. Baxter's swing-chair. Uncle Cash found
+      Elisha very useful at picking up potatoes and apples, but the boy was
+      going back to his family as soon as the harvesting was over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One Friday evening Mrs. Baxter and Rebecca, wrapped in shawls and
+      &ldquo;fascinators,&rdquo; were sitting on Mrs. Came's front steps enjoying the
+      sunset. Rebecca was in a tremulous state of happiness, for she had come
+      directly from the Seminary at Wareham to the parsonage, and as the
+      minister was absent at a church conference, she was to stay the night with
+      Mrs. Baxter and go with her to Portland next day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were to go to the Islands, have ice cream for luncheon, ride on a
+      horse-car, and walk by the Longfellow house, a programme that so unsettled
+      Rebecca's never very steady mind that she radiated flashes and sparkles of
+      joy, making Mrs. Baxter wonder if flesh could be translucent, enabling the
+      spirit-fires within to shine through?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Buttercup was being milked on the grassy slope near the shed door. As she
+      walked to the barn, after giving up her pailfuls of yellow milk, she bent
+      her neck and snatched a hasty bite from a pile of turnips lying temptingly
+      near. In her haste she took more of a mouthful than would be considered
+      good manners even among cows, and as she disappeared in the barn door they
+      could see a forest of green tops hanging from her mouth, while she
+      painfully attempted to grind up the mass of stolen material without
+      allowing a single turnip to escape.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It grew dark soon afterward and they went into the house to see Mrs.
+      Came's new lamp lighted for the first time, to examine her last drawn-in
+      rug (a wonderful achievement produced entirely from dyed flannel
+      petticoats), and to hear the doctor's wife play &ldquo;Oft in the Still Night,&rdquo;
+       on the dulcimer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they closed the sitting-room door opening on the piazza facing the
+      barn, the women heard the cow coughing and said to one another: &ldquo;Buttercup
+      was too greedy, and now she has indigestion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Elisha always went to bed at sundown, and Uncle Cash had gone to the
+      doctor's to have his hand dressed, for he had hurt it is some way in the
+      threshing-machine. Bill Peters, the hired man, came in presently and asked
+      for him, saying that the cow coughed more and more, and it must be that
+      something was wrong, but he could not get her to open her mouth wide
+      enough for him to see anything. &ldquo;She'd up an' die ruther 'n obleege
+      anybody, that tarnal, ugly cow would!&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Uncle Cash had driven into the yard, he came in for a lantern, and
+      went directly out to the barn. After a half-hour or so, in which the
+      little party had forgotten the whole occurrence, he came in again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm blamed if we ain't goin' to lose that cow,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Come out, will
+      ye, Hannah, and hold the lantern? I can't do anything with my right hand
+      in a sling, and Bill is the stupidest critter in the country.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Everybody went out to the barn accordingly, except the doctor's wife, who
+      ran over to her house to see if her brother Moses had come home from
+      Milltown, and could come and take a hand in the exercises.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Buttercup was in a bad way; there was no doubt of it. Something, one of
+      the turnips, presumably, had lodged in her throat, and would move neither
+      way, despite her attempts to dislodge it. Her breathing was labored, and
+      her eyes bloodshot from straining and choking. Once or twice they
+      succeeded in getting her mouth partly open, but before they could fairly
+      discover the cause of trouble she had wrested her head away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can see a little tuft of green sticking straight up in the middle,&rdquo;
+       said Uncle Cash, while Bill Peters and Moses held a lantern on each side
+      of Buttercup's head; &ldquo;but, land! It's so far down, and such a mite of a
+      thing, I couldn't git it, even if I could use my right hand. S'pose you
+      try, Bill.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bill hemmed and hawed, and confessed he didn't care to try. Buttercup's
+      grinders were of good size and excellent quality, and he had no fancy for
+      leaving his hand within her jaws. He said he was no good at that kind of
+      work, but that he would help Uncle Cash hold the cow's head; that was just
+      as necessary, and considerable safer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moses was more inclined to the service of humanity, and did his best,
+      wrapping his wrist in a cloth, and making desperate but ineffectual dabs
+      at the slippery green turnip-tops in the reluctantly opened throat. But
+      the cow tossed her head and stamped her feet and switched her tail and
+      wriggled from under Bill's hands, so that it seemed altogether impossible
+      to reach the seat of the trouble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Uncle Cash was in despair, fuming and fretting the more because of his own
+      crippled hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hitch up, Bill,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and, Hannah, you drive over to Milliken's
+      Mills for the horse-doctor. I know we can git out that turnip if we can
+      hit on the right tools and somebody to manage em right; but we've got to
+      be quick about it or the critter'll choke to death, sure! Your hand's so
+      clumsy, Mose, she thinks her time's come when she feels it in her mouth,
+      and your fingers are so big you can't ketch holt o' that green stuff thout
+      its slippin'!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mine ain't big; let me try,&rdquo; said a timid voice, and turning round, they
+      saw little Elisha Simpson, his trousers pulled on over his night-shirt,
+      his curly hair ruffled, his eyes vague with sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Uncle Cash gave a laugh of good-humored derision. &ldquo;You&mdash;that's afraid
+      to drive a cow to pasture? No, sir; you hain't got sand enough for this
+      job, I guess!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Buttercup just then gave a worse cough than ever, and her eyes rolled in
+      her head as if she were giving up the ghost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd rather do it than see her choke to death!&rdquo; cried the boy, in despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, by ginger, you can try it, sonny!&rdquo; said Uncle Cash. &ldquo;Now this time
+      we'll tie her head up. Take it slow, and make a good job of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Accordingly they pried poor Buttercup's jaws open to put a wooden gag
+      between them, tied her head up, and kept her as still as they could while
+      the women held the lanterns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, sonny, strip up your sleeve and reach as fur down's you can! Wind
+      your little fingers in among that green stuff stickin' up there that ain't
+      hardly big enough to call green stuff, give it a twist, and pull for all
+      you're worth. Land! What a skinny little pipe stem!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Little Prophet had stripped up his sleeve. It was a slender thing, his
+      arm; but he had driven the red cow all summer, borne her tantrums,
+      protected her from the consequences of her own obstinacy, taking (as he
+      thought) a future owner's pride in her splendid flow of milk&mdash;grown
+      fond of her, in a word, and now she was choking to death. A skinny little
+      pipe stem is capable of a deal at such a time, and only a slender hand and
+      arm could have done the work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elisha trembled with nervousness, but he made a dexterous and dashing
+      entrance into the awful cavern of Buttercup's mouth; descended upon the
+      tiny clump of green spills or spikes, wound his little fingers in among
+      them as firmly as he could, and then gave a long, steady, determined pull
+      with all the strength in this body. That was not so much in itself, to be
+      sure, but he borrowed a good deal more from some reserve quarter, the
+      location of which nobody knows anything about, but upon which everybody
+      draws in time of need.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such a valiant pull you would never have expected of the Little Prophet.
+      Such a pull it was that, to his own utter amazement, he suddenly found
+      himself lying flat on his back on the barn floor with a very slippery
+      something in his hand, and a fair-sized but rather dilapidated turnip at
+      the end of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the business!&rdquo; cried Moses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could 'a' done it as easy as nothin' if my arm had been a leetle mite
+      smaller,&rdquo; said Bill Peters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're a trump, sonny!&rdquo; exclaimed Uncle Cash, as he helped Moses untie
+      Buttercup's head and took the gag out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're a trump, Lisha, and, by ginger, the cow's your'n; only don't you
+      let your blessed pa drink none of her cream!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The welcome air rushed into Buttercup's lungs and cooled her parched, torn
+      throat. She was pretty nearly spent, poor thing, and bent her head (rather
+      gently for her) over the Little Prophet's shoulder as he threw his arms
+      joyfully about her neck, and whispered, &ldquo;You're my truly cow now, ain't
+      you, Buttercup?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Baxter, dear,&rdquo; said Rebecca, as they walked home to the parsonage
+      together under the young harvest moon; &ldquo;there are all sorts of cowards,
+      aren't there, and don't you think Elisha is one of the best kind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't quite know what to think about cowards, Rebecca Rowena,&rdquo; said the
+      minister's wife hesitatingly. &ldquo;The Little Prophet is the third coward I
+      have known in my short life who turned out to be a hero when the real
+      testing time came. Meanwhile the heroes themselves&mdash;or the ones that
+      were taken for heroes&mdash;were always busy doing something, or being
+      somewhere, else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link2H_4_0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Eighth Chronicle. ABNER SIMPSON'S NEW LEAF
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca had now cut the bonds that bound her to the Riverboro district
+      school, and had been for a week a full-fledged pupil at the Wareham
+      Seminary, towards which goal she had been speeding ever since the
+      memorable day when she rode into Riverboro on the top of Uncle Jerry
+      Cobb's stagecoach, and told him that education was intended to be &ldquo;the
+      making of her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She went to and fro, with Emma Jane and the other Riverboro boys and
+      girls, on the morning and evening trains that ran between the academy town
+      and Milliken's Mills.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The six days had passed like a dream!&mdash;a dream in which she sat in
+      corners with her eyes cast down; flushed whenever she was addressed;
+      stammered whenever she answered a question, and nearly died of heart
+      failure when subjected to an examination of any sort. She delighted the
+      committee when reading at sight from &ldquo;King Lear,&rdquo; but somewhat discouraged
+      them when she could not tell the capital of the United States. She
+      admitted that her former teacher, Miss Dearborn, might have mentioned it,
+      but if so she had not remembered it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In these first weeks among strangers she passed for nothing but an
+      interesting-looking, timid, innocent, country child, never revealing, even
+      to the far-seeing Emily Maxwell, a hint of her originality, facility, or
+      power in any direction. Rebecca was fourteen, but so slight, and under the
+      paralyzing new conditions so shy, that she would have been mistaken for
+      twelve had it not been for her general advancement in the school
+      curriculum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Growing up in the solitude of a remote farm house, transplanted to a tiny
+      village where she lived with two elderly spinsters, she was still the
+      veriest child in all but the practical duties and responsibilities of
+      life; in those she had long been a woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Saturday afternoon; her lessons for Monday were all learned and she
+      burst into the brick house sitting-room with the flushed face and
+      embarrassed mien that always foreshadowed a request. Requests were more
+      commonly answered in the negative than in the affirmative at the brick
+      house, a fact that accounted for the slight confusion in her demeanor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aunt Miranda,&rdquo; she began, &ldquo;the fishman says that Clara Belle Simpson
+      wants to see me very much, but Mrs. Fogg can't spare her long at a time,
+      you know, on account of the baby being no better; but Clara Belle could
+      walk a mile up, and I a mile down the road, and we could meet at the pink
+      house half way. Then we could rest and talk an hour or so, and both be
+      back in time for our suppers. I've fed the cat; she had no appetite, as
+      it's only two o'clock and she had her dinner at noon, but she'll go back
+      to her saucer, and it's off my mind. I could go down cellar now and bring
+      up the cookies and the pie and doughnuts for supper before I start. Aunt
+      Jane saw no objection; but we thought I'd better ask you so as to run no
+      risks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miranda Sawyer, who had been patiently waiting for the end of this speech,
+      laid down her knitting and raised her eyes with a half-resigned expression
+      that meant: Is there anything unusual in heaven or earth or the waters
+      under the earth that this child does not want to do? Will she ever settle
+      down to plain, comprehensible Sawyer ways, or will she to the end make
+      these sudden and radical propositions, suggesting at every turn the
+      irresponsible Randall ancestry?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know well enough, Rebecca, that I don't like you to be intimate with
+      Abner Simpson's young ones,&rdquo; she said decisively. &ldquo;They ain't fit company
+      for anybody that's got Sawyer blood in their veins, if it's ever so
+      little. I don't know, I'm sure, how you're goin' to turn out! The fish
+      peddler seems to be your best friend, without it's Abijah Flagg that
+      you're everlastingly talkin' to lately. I should think you'd rather read
+      some improvin' book than to be chatterin' with Squire Bean's chore-boy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He isn't always going to be a chore-boy,&rdquo; explained Rebecca, &ldquo;and that's
+      what we're considering. It's his career we talk about, and he hasn't got
+      any father or mother to advise him. Besides, Clara Belle kind of belongs
+      to the village now that she lives with Mrs. Fogg; and she was always the
+      best behaved of all the girls, either in school or Sunday-school. Children
+      can't help having fathers!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everybody says Abner is turning over a new leaf, and if so, the family'd
+      ought to be encouraged every possible way,&rdquo; said Miss Jane, entering the
+      room with her mending basket in hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If Abner Simpson is turnin' over a leaf, or anythin' else in creation,
+      it's only to see what's on the under side!&rdquo; remarked Miss Miranda
+      promptly. &ldquo;Don't talk to me about new leaves! You can't change that kind
+      of a man; he is what he is, and you can't make him no different!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The grace of God can do consid'rable,&rdquo; observed Jane piously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ain't sayin' but it can if it sets out, but it has to begin early and
+      stay late on a man like Simpson.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Mirandy, Abner ain't more'n forty! I don't know what the average age
+      for repentance is in men-folks, but when you think of what an awful sight
+      of em leaves it to their deathbeds, forty seems real kind of young. Not
+      that I've heard Abner has experienced religion, but everybody's surprised
+      at the good way he's conductin' this fall.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They'll be surprised the other way round when they come to miss their
+      firewood and apples and potatoes again,&rdquo; affirmed Miranda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Clara Belle don't seem to have inherited from her father,&rdquo; Jane ventured
+      again timidly. &ldquo;No wonder Mrs. Fogg sets such store by the girl. If it
+      hadn't been for her, the baby would have been dead by now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps tryin' to save it was interferin' with the Lord's will,&rdquo; was
+      Miranda's retort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Folks can't stop to figure out just what's the Lord's will when a child
+      has upset a kettle of scalding water on to himself,&rdquo; and as she spoke Jane
+      darned more excitedly. &ldquo;Mrs. Fogg knows well enough she hadn't ought to
+      have left that baby alone in the kitchen with the stove, even if she did
+      see Clara Belle comin' across lots. She'd ought to have waited before
+      drivin' off; but of course she was afraid of missing the train, and she's
+      too good a woman to be held accountable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The minister's wife says Clara Belle is a real&mdash;I can't think of the
+      word!&rdquo; chimed in Rebecca. &ldquo;What's the female of hero? Whatever it is,
+      that's what Mrs. Baxter called her!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Clara Belle's the female of Simpson; that's what she is,&rdquo; Miss Miranda
+      asserted; &ldquo;but she's been brought up to use her wits, and I ain't sayin'
+      but she used em.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should say she did!&rdquo; exclaimed Miss Jane; &ldquo;to put that screaming,
+      suffering child in the baby-carriage and run all the way to the doctor's
+      when there wasn't a soul on hand to advise her! Two or three more such
+      actions would make the Simpson name sound consid'rable sweeter in this
+      neighborhood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Simpson will always sound like Simpson to me!&rdquo; vouchsafed the elder
+      sister, &ldquo;but we've talked enough about em an' to spare. You can go along,
+      Rebecca; but remember that a child is known by the company she keeps.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, Aunt Miranda; thank you!&rdquo; cried Rebecca, leaping from the
+      chair on which she had been twisting nervously for five minutes. &ldquo;And how
+      does this strike you? Would you be in favor of my taking Clara Belle a
+      company-tart?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't Mrs. Fogg feed the young one, now she's taken her right into the
+      family?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes,&rdquo; Rebecca answered, &ldquo;she has lovely things to eat, and Mrs. Fogg
+      won't even let her drink skim milk; but I always feel that taking a
+      present lets the person know you've been thinking about them and are extra
+      glad to see them. Besides, unless we have company soon, those tarts will
+      have to be eaten by the family, and a new batch made; you remember the one
+      I had when I was rewarding myself last week? That was queer&mdash;but
+      nice,&rdquo; she added hastily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mebbe you could think of something of your own you could give away
+      without taking my tarts!&rdquo; responded Miranda tersely; the joints of her
+      armor having been pierced by the fatally keen tongue of her niece, who had
+      insinuated that company-tarts lasted a long time in the brick house. This
+      was a fact; indeed, the company-tart was so named, not from any idea that
+      it would ever be eaten by guests, but because it was too good for
+      every-day use.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca's face crimsoned with shame that she had drifted into an impolite
+      and, what was worse, an apparently ungrateful speech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't mean to say anything not nice, Aunt Miranda,&rdquo; she stammered.
+      &ldquo;Truly the tart was splendid, but not exactly like new, that's all. And
+      oh! I know what I can take Clara Belle! A few chocolate drops out of the
+      box Mr. Ladd gave me on my birthday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<pre>
+&ldquo;You go down cellar and get that tart, same as I told you,&rdquo; commanded
+Miranda, &ldquo;and when you fill it don't uncover a new tumbler of jelly;
+there's some dried-apple preserves open that'll do. Wear your rubbers
+and your thick jacket. After runnin' all the way down there&mdash;for your
+legs never seem to be rigged for walkin' like other girls'&mdash;you'll set
+down on some damp stone or other and ketch your death o' cold, an' your
+Aunt Jane n' I'll be kep' up nights nursin' you and luggin' your meals
+upstairs to you on a waiter.&rdquo;
+
+ Here Miranda leaned her head against the back of her rocking
+chair, dropped her knitting and closed her eyes wearily, for when the
+immovable body is opposed by the irresistible force there is a certain
+amount of jar and disturbance involved in the operation.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca moved toward the side door, shooting a questioning glance at Aunt
+      Jane as she passed. The look was full of mysterious suggestion and was
+      accompanied by an almost imperceptible gesture. Miss Jane knew that
+      certain articles were kept in the entry closet, and by this time she had
+      become sufficiently expert in telegraphy to know that Rebecca's unspoken
+      query meant: &ldquo;COULD YOU PERMIT THE HAT WITH THE RED WINGS, IT BEING
+      SATURDAY, FINE SETTLED WEATHER, AND A PLEASURE EXCURSION?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      These confidential requests, though fraught with embarrassment when
+      Miranda was in the room, gave Jane much secret joy; there was something
+      about them that stirred her spinster heart&mdash;they were so gay, so
+      appealing, so un-Sawyer-, un-Riverboro-like. The longer Rebecca lived in
+      the brick house the more her Aunt Jane marveled at the child. What made
+      her so different from everybody else. Could it be that her graceless
+      popinjay of a father, Lorenzo de Medici Randall, had bequeathed her some
+      strange combination of gifts instead of fortune? Her eyes, her brows, the
+      color of her lips, the shape of her face, as well as her ways and words,
+      proclaimed her a changeling in the Sawyer tribe; but what an enchanting
+      changeling; bringing wit and nonsense and color and delight into the gray
+      monotony of the dragging years!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was frost in the air, but a bright cheery sun, as Rebecca walked
+      decorously out of the brick house yard. Emma Jane Perkins was away over
+      Sunday on a visit to a cousin in Moderation; Alice Robinson and Candace
+      Milliken were having measles, and Riverboro was very quiet. Still, life
+      was seldom anything but a gay adventure to Rebecca, and she started afresh
+      every morning to its conquest. She was not exacting; the Asmodean feat of
+      spinning a sand heap into twine was, poetically speaking, always in her
+      power, so the mile walk to the pink-house gate, and the tryst with
+      freckled, red-haired Clara Belle Simpson, whose face Miss Miranda said
+      looked like a raw pie in a brick oven, these commonplace incidents were
+      sufficiently exhilarating to brighten her eye and quicken her step.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the great bare horse-chestnut near the pink-house gate loomed into
+      view, the red linsey-woolsey speck going down the road spied the blue
+      linsey-woolsey speck coming up, and both specks flew over the intervening
+      distance and, meeting, embraced each other ardently, somewhat to the
+      injury of the company-tart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn't it come out splendidly?&rdquo; exclaimed Rebecca. &ldquo;I was so afraid the
+      fishman wouldn't tell you to start exactly at two, or that one of us would
+      walk faster than the other; but we met at the very spot! It was a very
+      uncommon idea, wasn't it? Almost romantic!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what do you think?&rdquo; asked Clara Belle proudly. &ldquo;Look at this! Mrs.
+      Fogg lent me her watch to come home by!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Clara Belle, how wonderful! Mrs. Fogg gets kinder and kinder to you,
+      doesn't she? You're not homesick any more, are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No-o; not really; only when I remember there's only little Susan to
+      manage the twins; though they're getting on real well without me. But I
+      kind of think, Rebecca, that I'm going to be given away to the Foggs for
+      good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean adopted?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I think father's going to sign papers. You see we can't tell how
+      many years it'll be before the poor baby outgrows its burns, and Mrs.
+      Fogg'll never be the same again, and she must have somebody to help her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll be their real daughter, then, won't you, Clara Belle? And Mr. Fogg
+      is a deacon, and a selectman, and a road commissioner, and everything
+      splendid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I'll have board, and clothes, and school, and be named Fogg, and&rdquo;
+       (here her voice sank to an awed whisper) &ldquo;the upper farm if I should ever
+      get married; Miss Dearborn told me that herself, when she was persuading
+      me not to mind being given away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Clara Belle Simpson!&rdquo; exclaimed Rebecca in a transport. &ldquo;Who'd have
+      thought you'd be a female hero and an heiress besides? It's just like a
+      book story, and it happened in Riverboro. I'll make Uncle Jerry Cobb allow
+      there CAN be Riverboro stories, you see if I don't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I know it's all right,&rdquo; Clara Belle replied soberly. &ldquo;I'll have
+      a good home and father can't keep us all; but it's kind of dreadful to be
+      given away, like a piano or a horse and carriage!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca's hand went out sympathetically to Clara Belle's freckled paw.
+      Suddenly her own face clouded and she whispered:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not sure, Clara Belle, but I'm given away too&mdash;do you s'pose I
+      am? Poor father left us in debt, you see. I thought I came away from
+      Sunnybrook to get an education and then help pay off the mortgage; but
+      mother doesn't say anything about my coming back, and our family's one of
+      those too-big ones, you know, just like yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did your mother sign papers to your aunts?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If she did I never heard anything about it; but there's something pinned
+      on to the mortgage that mother keeps in the drawer of the bookcase.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'd know it if twas adoption papers; I guess you're just lent,&rdquo; Clara
+      Belle said cheeringly. &ldquo;I don't believe anybody'd ever give YOU away! And,
+      oh! Rebecca, father's getting on so well! He works on Daly's farm where
+      they raise lots of horses and cattle, too, and he breaks all the young
+      colts and trains them, and swaps off the poor ones, and drives all over
+      the country. Daly told Mr. Fogg he was splendid with stock, and father
+      says it's just like play. He's sent home money three Saturday nights.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm so glad!&rdquo; exclaimed Rebecca sympathetically. &ldquo;Now your mother'll have
+      a good time and a black silk dress, won't she?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know,&rdquo; sighed Clara Belle, and her voice was grave. &ldquo;Ever since I
+      can remember she's just washed and cried and cried and washed. Miss
+      Dearborn has been spending her vacation up to Acreville, you know, and she
+      came yesterday to board next door to Mrs. Fogg's. I heard them talking
+      last night when I was getting the baby to sleep&mdash;I couldn't help it,
+      they were so close&mdash;and Miss Dearborn said mother doesn't like
+      Acreville; she says nobody takes any notice of her, and they don't give
+      her any more work. Mrs. Fogg said, well, they were dreadful stiff and
+      particular up that way and they liked women to have wedding rings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hasn't your mother got a wedding ring?&rdquo; asked Rebecca, astonished. &ldquo;Why,
+      I thought everybody HAD to have them, just as they do sofas and a kitchen
+      stove!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never noticed she didn't have one, but when they spoke I remembered
+      mother's hands washing and wringing, and she doesn't wear one, I know. She
+      hasn't got any jewelry, not even a breast-pin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca's tone was somewhat censorious, &ldquo;your father's been so poor
+      perhaps he couldn't afford breast-pins, but I should have thought he'd
+      have given your mother a wedding ring when they were married; that's the
+      time to do it, right at the very first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They didn't have any real church dress-up wedding,&rdquo; explained Clara Belle
+      extenuatingly. &ldquo;You see the first mother, mine, had the big boys and me,
+      and then she died when we were little. Then after a while this mother came
+      to housekeep, and she stayed, and by and by she was Mrs. Simpson, and
+      Susan and the twins and the baby are hers, and she and father didn't have
+      time for a regular wedding in church. They don't have veils and
+      bridesmaids and refreshments round here like Miss Dearborn's sister did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do they cost a great deal&mdash;wedding rings?&rdquo; asked Rebecca
+      thoughtfully. &ldquo;They're solid gold, so I s'pose they do. If they were cheap
+      we might buy one. I've got seventy-four cents saved up; how much have
+      you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fifty-three,&rdquo; Clara Belle responded, in a depressing tone; &ldquo;and anyway
+      there are no stores nearer than Milltown. We'd have to buy it secretly,
+      for I wouldn't make father angry, or shame his pride, now he's got steady
+      work; and mother would know I had spent all my savings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca looked nonplussed. &ldquo;I declare,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I think the Acreville
+      people must be perfectly horrid not to call on your mother only because
+      she hasn't got any jewelry. You wouldn't dare tell your father what Miss
+      Dearborn heard, so he'd save up and buy the ring?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I certainly would not!&rdquo; and Clara Belle's lips closed tightly and
+      decisively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca sat quietly for a few moments, then she exclaimed jubilantly: &ldquo;I
+      know where we could get it! From Mr. Aladdin, and then I needn't tell him
+      who it's for! He's coming to stay over tomorrow with his aunt, and I'll
+      ask him to buy a ring for us in Boston. I won't explain anything, you
+      know; I'll just say I need a wedding ring.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That would be perfectly lovely,&rdquo; replied Clara Belle, a look of hope
+      dawning in her eyes; &ldquo;and we can think afterwards how to get it over to
+      mother. Perhaps you could send it to father instead, but I wouldn't dare
+      to do it myself. You won't tell anybody, Rebecca?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cross my heart!&rdquo; Rebecca exclaimed dramatically; and then with a
+      reproachful look, &ldquo;you know I couldn't repeat a sacred secret like that!
+      Shall we meet next Saturday afternoon, and I tell you what's happened?&mdash;Why,
+      Clara Belle, isn't that Mr. Ladd watering his horse at the foot of the
+      hill this very minute? It is; and he's driven up from Milltown stead of
+      coming on the train from Boston to Edgewood. He's all alone, and I can
+      ride home with him and ask him about the ring right away!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Clara Belle kissed Rebecca fervently, and started on her homeward walk,
+      while Rebecca waited at the top of the long hill, fluttering her
+      handkerchief as a signal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Aladdin! Mr. Aladdin!&rdquo; she cried, as the horse and wagon came nearer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Adam Ladd drew up quickly at the sound of the eager young voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, well; here is Rebecca Rowena fluttering along the highroad like a
+      red-winged blackbird! Are you going to fly home, or drive with me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca clambered into the carriage, laughing and blushing with delight at
+      his nonsense and with joy at seeing him again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Clara Belle and I were just talking about you this minute, and I'm so
+      glad you came this way, for there's something very important to ask you
+      about,&rdquo; she began, rather breathlessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No doubt,&rdquo; laughed Adam Ladd, who had become, in the course of his
+      acquaintance with Rebecca, a sort of high court of appeals; &ldquo;I hope the
+      premium banquet lamp doesn't smoke as it grows older?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Mr. Aladdin, you WILL not remember nicely. Mr. Simpson swapped off
+      the banquet lamp when he was moving the family to Acreville; it's not the
+      lamp at all, but once, when you were here last time, you said you'd make
+      up your mind what you were going to give me for Christmas.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; and &ldquo;I do remember that much quite nicely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, is it bought?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I never buy Christmas presents before Thanksgiving.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, DEAR Mr. Aladdin, would you buy me something different, something
+      that I want to give away, and buy it a little sooner than Christmas?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That depends. I don't relish having my Christmas presents given away. I
+      like to have them kept forever in little girls' bureau drawers, all
+      wrapped in pink tissue paper; but explain the matter and perhaps I'll
+      change my mind. What is it you want?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I need a wedding ring dreadfully,&rdquo; said Rebecca, &ldquo;but it's a sacred
+      secret.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Adam Ladd's eyes flashed with surprise and he smiled to himself with
+      pleasure. Had he on his list of acquaintances, he asked himself, a person
+      of any age or sex so altogether irresistible and unique as this child?
+      Then he turned to face her with the merry teasing look that made him so
+      delightful to young people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought it was perfectly understood between us,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that if you
+      could ever contrive to grow up and I were willing to wait, that I was to
+      ride up to the brick house on my snow white&rdquo;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Coal black,&rdquo; corrected Rebecca, with a sparkling eye and a warning
+      finger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Coal black charger; put a golden circlet on your lily white finger, draw
+      you up behind me on my pillion&rdquo;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Emma Jane, too,&rdquo; Rebecca interrupted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I didn't mention Emma Jane,&rdquo; argued Mr. Aladdin. &ldquo;Three on a
+      pillion is very uncomfortable. I think Emma Jane leaps on the back of a
+      prancing chestnut, and we all go off to my castle in the forest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Emma Jane never leaps, and she'd be afraid of a prancing chestnut,&rdquo;
+       objected Rebecca.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then she shall have a gentle cream-colored pony; but now, without any
+      explanation, you ask me to buy you a wedding ring, which shows plainly
+      that you are planning to ride off on a snow white&mdash;I mean coal black&mdash;charger
+      with somebody else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca dimpled and laughed with joy at the nonsense. In her prosaic world
+      no one but Adam Ladd played the game and answered the fool according to
+      his folly. Nobody else talked delicious fairy-story twaddle but Mr.
+      Aladdin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The ring isn't for ME!&rdquo; she explained carefully. &ldquo;You know very well that
+      Emma Jane nor I can't be married till we're through Quackenbos's Grammar,
+      Greenleaf's Arithmetic, and big enough to wear long trails and run a
+      sewing machine. The ring is for a friend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why doesn't the groom give it to his bride himself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because he's poor and kind of thoughtless, and anyway she isn't a bride
+      any more; she has three step and three other kind of children.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Adam Ladd put the whip back in the socket thoughtfully, and then stooped
+      to tuck in the rug over Rebecca's feet and his own. When he raised his
+      head again he asked: &ldquo;Why not tell me a little more, Rebecca? I'm safe!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca looked at him, feeling his wisdom and strength, and above all his
+      sympathy. Then she said hesitatingly: &ldquo;You remember I told you all about
+      the Simpsons that day on your aunt's porch when you bought the soap
+      because I told you how the family were always in trouble and how much they
+      needed a banquet lamp? Mr. Simpson, Clara Belle's father, has always been
+      very poor, and not always very good,&mdash;a little bit THIEVISH, you know&mdash;but
+      oh, so pleasant and nice to talk to! And now he's turning over a new leaf.
+      And everybody in Riverboro liked Mrs. Simpson when she came here a
+      stranger, because they were sorry for her and she was so patient, and such
+      a hard worker, and so kind to the children. But where she lives now,
+      though they used to know her when she was a girl, they're not polite to
+      her and don't give her scrubbing and washing; and Clara belle heard our
+      teacher say to Mrs. Fogg that the Acreville people were stiff, and
+      despised her because she didn't wear a wedding ring, like all the rest.
+      And Clara Belle and I thought if they were so mean as that, we'd love to
+      give her one, and then she'd be happier and have more work; and perhaps
+      Mr. Simpson if he gets along better will buy her a breast-pin and
+      earrings, and she'll be fitted out like the others. I know Mrs. Peter
+      Meserve is looked up to by everybody in Edgewood on account of her gold
+      bracelets and moss agate necklace.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Adam turned again to meet the luminous, innocent eyes that glowed under
+      the delicate brows and long lashes, feeling as he had more than once felt
+      before, as if his worldly-wise, grown-up thoughts had been bathed in some
+      purifying spring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How shall you send the ring to Mrs. Simpson?&rdquo; he asked, with interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We haven't settled yet; Clara Belle's afraid to do it, and thinks I could
+      manage better. Will the ring cost much? Because, of course, if it does, I
+      must ask Aunt Jane first. There are things I have to ask Aunt Miranda, and
+      others that belong to Aunt Jane.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It costs the merest trifle. I'll buy one and bring it to you, and we'll
+      consult about it; but I think as you're great friends with Mr. Simpson
+      you'd better send it to him in a letter, letters being your strong point!
+      It's a present a man ought to give his own wife, but it's worth trying,
+      Rebecca. You and Clara Belle can manage it between you, and I'll stay in
+      the background where nobody will see me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link2H_4_0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Ninth Chronicle. THE GREEN ISLE
+    </h2>
+<pre>
+     Many a green isle needs must be
+     In the deep sea of misery,
+     Or the mariner, worn and wan,
+     Never thus could voyage on
+     Day and night and night and day,
+     Drifting on his weary way.
+
+     &mdash;Shelley
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Meantime in these frosty autumn days life was crowded with events in the
+      lonely Simpson house at Acreville.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tumble-down dwelling stood on the edge of Pliney's Pond; so called
+      because old Colonel Richardson left his lands to be divided in five equal
+      parts, each share to be chosen in turn by one of his five sons, Pliny, the
+      eldest, having priority of choice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pliny Richardson, having little taste for farming, and being ardently fond
+      of fishing, rowing, and swimming, acted up to his reputation of being &ldquo;a
+      little mite odd,&rdquo; and took his whole twenty acres in water&mdash;hence
+      Pliny's Pond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The eldest Simpson boy had been working on a farm in Cumberland County for
+      two years. Samuel, generally dubbed &ldquo;see-saw,&rdquo; had lately found a humble
+      place in a shingle mill and was partially self-supporting. Clara Belle had
+      been adopted by the Foggs; thus there were only three mouths to fill, the
+      capacious ones of Elijah and Elisha, the twin boys, and of lisping,
+      nine-year-old Susan, the capable houseworker and mother's assistant, for
+      the baby had died during the summer; died of discouragement at having been
+      born into a family unprovided with food or money or love or care, or even
+      with desire for, or appreciation of, babies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no doubt that the erratic father of the house had turned over a
+      new leaf. Exactly when he began, or how, or why, or how long he would
+      continue the praiseworthy process,&mdash;in a word whether there would be
+      more leaves turned as the months went on,&mdash;Mrs. Simpson did not know,
+      and it is doubtful if any authority lower than that of Mr. Simpson's Maker
+      could have decided the matter. He had stolen articles for swapping
+      purposes for a long time, but had often avoided detection, and always
+      escaped punishment until the last few years. Three fines imposed for small
+      offenses were followed by several arrests and two imprisonments for brief
+      periods, and he found himself wholly out of sympathy with the wages of
+      sin. Sin itself he did not especially mind, but the wages thereof were
+      decidedly unpleasant and irksome to him. He also minded very much the
+      isolated position in the community which had lately become his; for he was
+      a social being and would ALMOST rather not steal from a neighbor than have
+      him find it out and cease intercourse! This feeling was working in him and
+      rendering him unaccountably irritable and depressed when he took his
+      daughter over to Riverboro at the time of the great flag-raising.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are seasons of refreshment, as well as seasons of drought, in the
+      spiritual, as in the natural world, and in some way or other dews and
+      rains of grace fell upon Abner Simpson's heart during that brief journey.
+      Perhaps the giving away of a child that he could not support had made the
+      soil of his heart a little softer and readier for planting than usual; but
+      when he stole the new flag off Mrs. Peter Meserve's doorsteps, under the
+      impression that the cotton-covered bundle contained freshly washed
+      clothes, he unconsciously set certain forces in operation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It will be remembered that Rebecca saw an inch of red bunting peeping from
+      the back of his wagon, and asked the pleasure of a drive with him. She was
+      no daughter of the regiment, but she proposed to follow the flag. When she
+      diplomatically requested the return of the sacred object which was to be
+      the glory of the &ldquo;raising&rdquo; next day, and he thus discovered his mistake,
+      he was furious with himself for having slipped into a disagreeable
+      predicament; and later, when he unexpectedly faced a detachment of
+      Riverboro society at the cross-roads, and met not only their wrath and
+      scorn, but the reproachful, disappointed glance of Rebecca's eyes, he felt
+      degraded as never before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The night at the Centre tavern did not help matters, nor the jolly
+      patriotic meeting of the three villages at the flag-raising next morning.
+      He would have enjoyed being at the head and front of the festive
+      preparations, but as he had cut himself off from all such friendly
+      gatherings, he intended at any rate to sit in his wagon on the very
+      outskirts of the assembled crowd and see some of the gayety; for, heaven
+      knows, he had little enough, he who loved talk, and song, and story, and
+      laughter, and excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The flag was raised, the crowd cheered, the little girl to whom he had
+      lied, the girl who was impersonating the State of Maine, was on the
+      platform &ldquo;speaking her piece,&rdquo; and he could just distinguish some of the
+      words she was saying:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For it's your star, my star, all the stars together, That makes our
+      country's flag so proud To float in the bright fall weather.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then suddenly there was a clarion voice cleaving the air, and he saw a
+      tall man standing in the centre of the stage and heard him crying: &ldquo;THREE
+      CHEERS FOR THE GIRL THAT SAVED THE FLAG FROM THE HANDS OF THE ENEMY!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was sore and bitter enough already; lonely, isolated enough; with no
+      lot nor share in the honest community life; no hand to shake, no
+      neighbor's meal to share; and this unexpected public arraignment smote him
+      between the eyes. With resentment newly kindled, pride wounded, vanity
+      bleeding, he flung a curse at the joyous throng and drove toward home, the
+      home where he would find his ragged children and meet the timid eyes of a
+      woman who had been the loyal partner of his poverty and disgraces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is probable that even then his (extremely light) hand was already on
+      the &ldquo;new leaf.&rdquo; The angels, doubtless, were not especially proud of the
+      matter and manner of his reformation, but I dare say they were glad to
+      count him theirs on any terms, so difficult is the reformation of this
+      blind and foolish world! They must have been; for they immediately flung
+      into his very lap a profitable, and what is more to the point, an
+      interesting and agreeable situation where money could be earned by doing
+      the very things his nature craved. There were feats of daring to be
+      performed in sight of admiring and applauding stable boys; the horses he
+      loved were his companions; he was OBLIGED to &ldquo;swap,&rdquo; for Daly, his
+      employer, counted on him to get rid of all undesirable stock; power and
+      responsibility of a sort were given him freely, for Daly was no Puritan,
+      and felt himself amply capable of managing any number of Simpsons; so here
+      were numberless advantages within the man's grasp, and wages besides!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abner positively felt no temptation to steal; his soul expanded with
+      pride, and the admiration and astonishment with which he regarded his
+      virtuous present was only equaled by the disgust with which he
+      contemplated his past; not so much a vicious past, in his own generous
+      estimation of it, as a &ldquo;thunderin' foolish&rdquo; one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Simpson took the same view of Abner's new leaf as the angels. She was
+      thankful for even a brief season of honesty coupled with the Saturday
+      night remittance; and if she still washed and cried and cried and washed,
+      as Clara Belle had always seen her, it was either because of some hidden
+      sorrow, or because her poor strength seemed all at once to have deserted
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just when employment and good fortune had come to the step-children, and
+      her own were better fed and clothed than ever before, the pain that had
+      always lurked, constant but dull, near her tired heart, grew fierce and
+      triumphantly strong; clutching her in its talons, biting, gnawing,
+      worrying, leaving her each week with slighter powers of resistance. Still
+      hope was in the air and a greater content than had ever been hers was in
+      her eyes; a content that came near to happiness when the doctor ordered
+      her to keep her bed and sent for Clara Belle. She could not wash any
+      longer, but there was the ever new miracle of the Saturday night
+      remittance for household expenses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is your pain bad today, mother,&rdquo; asked Clara Belle, who, only lately
+      given away, was merely borrowed from Mrs. Fogg for what was thought to be
+      a brief emergency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, there, I can't hardly tell, Clara Belle,&rdquo; Mrs. Simpson replied,
+      with a faint smile. &ldquo;I can't seem to remember the pain these days without
+      it's extra bad. The neighbors are so kind; Mrs. Little has sent me canned
+      mustard greens, and Mrs. Benson chocolate ice cream and mince pie; there's
+      the doctor's drops to make me sleep, and these blankets and that great box
+      of eatables from Mr. Ladd; and you here to keep me comp'ny! I declare I'm
+      kind o' dazed with comforts. I never expected to see sherry wine in this
+      house. I ain't never drawed the cork; it does me good enough jest to look
+      at Mr. Ladd's bottle settin' on the mantel-piece with the fire shinin' on
+      the brown glass.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Simpson had come to see his wife and had met the doctor just as he was
+      leaving the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She looks awful bad to me. Is she goin' to pull through all right, same
+      as the last time?&rdquo; he asked the doctor nervously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's going to pull right through into the other world,&rdquo; the doctor
+      answered bluntly; &ldquo;and as there don't seem to be anybody else to take the
+      bull by the horns, I'd advise you, having made the woman's life about as
+      hard and miserable as you could, to try and help her to die easy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Abner, surprised and crushed by the weight of this verbal chastisement,
+      sat down on the doorstep, his head in his hands, and thought a while
+      solemnly. Thought was not an operation he was wont to indulge in, and when
+      he opened the gate a few minutes later and walked slowly toward the barn
+      for his horse, he looked pale and unnerved. It is uncommonly startling,
+      first to see yourself in another man's scornful eyes, and then, clearly,
+      in your own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two days later he came again, and this time it was decreed that he should
+      find Parson Carll tying his piebald mare at the post.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Clara Belle's quick eye had observed the minister as he alighted from his
+      buggy, and, warning her mother, she hastily smoothed the bedclothes,
+      arranged the medicine bottles, and swept the hearth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! Don't let him in!&rdquo; wailed Mrs. Simpson, all of a flutter at the
+      prospect of such a visitor. &ldquo;Oh, dear! They must think over to the village
+      that I'm dreadful sick, or the minister wouldn't never think of callin'!
+      Don't let him in, Clara Belle! I'm afraid he will say hard words to me, or
+      pray to me; and I ain't never been prayed to since I was a child! Is his
+      wife with him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; he's alone; but father's just drove up and is hitching at the shed
+      door.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's worse than all!&rdquo; and Mrs. Simpson raised herself feebly on her
+      pillows and clasped her hands in despair. &ldquo;You mustn't let them two meet,
+      Clara Belle, and you must send Mr. Carll away; your father wouldn't have a
+      minister in the house, nor speak to one, for a thousand dollars!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be quiet, mother! Lie down! It'll be all right! You'll only fret yourself
+      into a spell! The minister's just a good man; he won't say anything to
+      frighten you. Father's talking with him real pleasant, and pointing the
+      way to the front door.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The parson knocked and was admitted by the excited Clara Belle, who
+      ushered him tremblingly into the sickroom, and then betook herself to the
+      kitchen with the children, as he gently requested her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abner Simpson, left alone in the shed, fumbled in his vest pocket and took
+      out an envelope which held a sheet of paper and a tiny packet wrapped in
+      tissue paper. The letter had been read once before and ran as follows:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dear Mr. Simpson:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is a secret letter. I heard that the Acreville people weren't nice to
+      Mrs. Simpson because she didn't have any wedding ring like all the others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I know you've always been poor, dear Mr. Simpson, and troubled with a
+      large family like ours at the farm; but you really ought to have given
+      Mrs. Simpson a ring when you were married to her, right at the very first;
+      for then it would have been over and done with, as they are solid gold and
+      last forever. And probably she wouldn't feel like asking you for one,
+      because ladies are just like girls, only grown up, and I know I'd be
+      ashamed to beg for jewelry when just board and clothes cost so much. So I
+      send you a nice, new wedding ring to save your buying, thinking you might
+      get Mrs. Simpson a bracelet or eardrops for Christmas. It did not cost me
+      anything, as it was a secret present from a friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I hear Mrs. Simpson is sick, and it would be a great comfort to her while
+      she is in bed and has so much time to look at it. When I had the measles
+      Emma Jane Perkins lent me her mother's garnet ring, and it helped me very
+      much to put my wasted hand outside the bedclothes and see the ring
+      sparkling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Please don't be angry with me, dear Mr. Simpson, because I like you so
+      much and am so glad you are happy with the horses and colts; and I believe
+      now perhaps you DID think the flag was a bundle of washing when you took
+      it that day; so no more from your Trusted friend, Rebecca Rowena Randall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Simpson tore the letter slowly and quietly into fragments and scattered
+      the bits on the woodpile, took off his hat, and smoothed his hair; pulled
+      his mustaches thoughtfully, straightened his shoulders, and then, holding
+      the tiny packet in the palm of his hand, he went round to the front door,
+      and having entered the house stood outside the sickroom for an instant,
+      turned the knob and walked softly in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then at last the angels might have enjoyed a moment of unmixed joy, for in
+      that brief walk from shed to house Abner Simpson's conscience waked to
+      life and attained sufficient strength to prick and sting, to provoke
+      remorse, to incite penitence, to do all sorts of divine and beautiful
+      things it was meant for, but had never been allowed to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Clara Belle went about the kitchen quietly, making preparations for the
+      children's supper. She had left Riverboro in haste, as the change for the
+      worse in Mrs. Simpson had been very sudden, but since she had come she had
+      thought more than once of the wedding ring. She had wondered whether Mr.
+      Ladd had bought it for Rebecca, and whether Rebecca would find means to
+      send it to Acreville; but her cares had been so many and varied that the
+      subject had now finally retired to the background of her mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hands of the clock crept on and she kept hushing the strident tones of
+      Elijah and Elisha, opening and shutting the oven door to look at the corn
+      bread, advising Susan as to her dishes, and marveling that the minister
+      stayed so long.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last she heard a door open and close and saw the old parson come out,
+      wiping his spectacles, and step into the buggy for his drive to the
+      village.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then there was another period of suspense, during which the house was as
+      silent as the grave, and presently her father came into the kitchen,
+      greeted the twins and Susan, and said to Clara Belle: &ldquo;Don't go in there
+      yet!&rdquo; jerking his thumb towards Mrs. Simpson's room; &ldquo;she's all beat out
+      and she's just droppin' off to sleep. I'll send some groceries up from the
+      store as I go along. Is the doctor makin' a second call tonight?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; he'll be here pretty soon, now,&rdquo; Clara Belle answered, looking at
+      the clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right. I'll be here again tomorrow, soon as it's light, and if she
+      ain't picked up any I'll send word back to Daly, and stop here with you
+      for a spell till she's better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was true; Mrs. Simpson was &ldquo;all beat out.&rdquo; It had been a time of
+      excitement and stress, and the poor, fluttered creature was dropping off
+      into the strangest sleep&mdash;a sleep made up of waking dreams. The pain,
+      that had encompassed her heart like a band of steel, lessened its cruel
+      pressure, and finally left her so completely that she seemed to see it
+      floating above her head; only that it looked no longer like a band of
+      steel, but a golden circle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The frail bark in which she had sailed her life voyage had been rocking on
+      a rough and tossing ocean, and now it floated, floated slowly into
+      smoother waters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As long as she could remember, her boat had been flung about in storm and
+      tempest, lashed by angry winds, borne against rocks, beaten, torn,
+      buffeted. Now the waves had subsided; the sky was clear; the sea was warm
+      and tranquil; the sunshine dried the tattered sails; the air was soft and
+      balmy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now, for sleep plays strange tricks, the bark disappeared from the
+      dream, and it was she, herself, who was floating, floating farther and
+      farther away; whither she neither knew nor cared; it was enough to be at
+      rest, lulled by the lapping of the cool waves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then there appeared a green isle rising from the sea; an isle so radiant
+      and fairy-like that her famished eyes could hardly believe its reality;
+      but it was real, for she sailed nearer and nearer to its shores, and at
+      last her feet skimmed the shining sands and she floated through the air as
+      disembodied spirits float, till she sank softly at the foot of a spreading
+      tree.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she saw the green isle was a flowering isle. Every shrub and bush was
+      blooming; the trees were hung with rosy garlands, and even the earth was
+      carpeted with tiny flowers. The rare fragrances, the bird songs, soft and
+      musical, the ravishment of color, all bore down upon her swimming senses
+      at once, taking them captive so completely that she remembered no past,
+      was conscious of no present, looked forward to no future. She seemed to
+      leave the body and the sad, heavy things of the body. The humming in her
+      ears ceased, the light faded, the birds songs grew fainter and more
+      distant, the golden circle of pain receded farther and farther until it
+      was lost to view; even the flowering island gently drifted away, and all
+      was peace and silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was time for the doctor now, and Clara Belle, too anxious to wait
+      longer, softly turned the knob of her mother's door and entered the room.
+      The glow of the open fire illumined the darkest side of the poor chamber.
+      There were no trees near the house, and a full November moon streamed in
+      at the unblinded, uncurtained windows, lighting up the bare interior&mdash;the
+      unpainted floor, the gray plastered walls, and the white counterpane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her mother lay quite still, her head turned and drooping a little on the
+      pillow. Her left hand was folded softly up against her breast, the fingers
+      of the right partly covering it, as if protecting something precious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Was it the moonlight that made the patient brow so white, and where were
+      the lines of anxiety and pain? The face of the mother who had washed and
+      cried and cried and washed was as radiant as if the closed eye were
+      beholding heavenly visions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Something must have cured her!&rdquo; thought Clara Belle, awed and almost
+      frightened by the whiteness and the silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She tiptoed across the floor to look more closely at the still, smiling
+      shape, and bending over it saw, under the shadow of the caressing right
+      hand, a narrow gold band gleaming on the work-stained finger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, the ring came, after all!&rdquo; she said in a glad whisper, &ldquo;and perhaps
+      it was that that made her better!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She put her hand on her mother's gently. A terrified shiver, a warning
+      shudder, shook the girl from head to foot at the chilling touch. A dread
+      presence she had never met before suddenly took shape. It filled the room;
+      stifled the cry on her lips; froze her steps to the floor, stopped the
+      beating of her heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just then the door opened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, doctor! Come quick!&rdquo; she sobbed, stretching out her hand for help,
+      and then covering her eyes. &ldquo;Come close! Look at mother! Is she better&mdash;or
+      is she dead?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor put one hand on the shoulder of the shrinking child, and
+      touched the woman with the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is better!&rdquo; he said gently, &ldquo;and she is dead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link2H_4_0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Tenth Chronicle. REBECCA'S REMINISCENCES
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca was sitting by the window in her room at the Wareham Female
+      Seminary. She was alone, as her roommate, Emma Jane Perkins, was reciting
+      Latin down below in some academic vault of the old brick building.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A new and most ardent passion for the classics had been born in Emma
+      Jane's hitherto unfertile brain, for Abijah Flagg, who was carrying off
+      all the prizes at Limerick Academy, had written her a letter in Latin, a
+      letter which she had been unable to translate for herself, even with the
+      aid of a dictionary, and which she had been apparently unwilling that
+      Rebecca, her bosom friend, confidant, and roommate, should render into
+      English.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An old-fashioned Female Seminary, with its allotment of one medium-sized
+      room to two medium sized young females, gave small opportunities for
+      privacy by night or day, for neither the double washstand, nor the thus
+      far unimagined bathroom, nor even indeed the humble and serviceable
+      screen, had been realized, in these dark ages of which I write.
+      Accordingly, like the irrational ostrich, which defends itself by the
+      simple process of not looking at its pursuers, Emma Jane had kept her
+      Latin letter in her closed hand, in her pocket, or in her open book,
+      flattering herself that no one had noticed her pleased bewilderment at its
+      only half-imagined contents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All the fairies were not present at Rebecca's cradle. A goodly number of
+      them telegraphed that they were previously engaged or unavoidably absent
+      from town. The village of Temperance, Maine, where Rebecca first saw the
+      light, was hardly a place on its own merits to attract large throngs of
+      fairies. But one dear old personage who keeps her pocket full of Merry
+      Leaves from the Laughing Tree, took a fancy to come to the little birthday
+      party; and seeing so few of her sister-fairies present, she dowered the
+      sleeping baby more richly than was her wont, because of its apparent lack
+      of wealth in other directions. So the child grew, and the Merry Leaves
+      from the Laughing Tree rustled where they hung from the hood of her
+      cradle, and, being fairy leaves, when the cradle was given up they
+      festooned themselves on the cribside, and later on blew themselves up to
+      the ceilings at Sunnybrook Farm and dangled there, making fun for
+      everybody. They never withered, even at the brick house in Riverboro,
+      where the air was particularly inimical to fairies, for Miss Miranda
+      Sawyer would have scared any ordinary elf out of her seventeen senses.
+      They followed Rebecca to Wareham, and during Abijah Flagg's Latin
+      correspondence with Emma Jane they fluttered about that young person's
+      head in such a manner that Rebecca was almost afraid that she would
+      discover them herself, although this is something, as a matter of fact,
+      that never does happen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A week had gone by since the Latin missive had been taken from the
+      post-office by Emma Jane, and now, by means of much midnight oil-burning,
+      by much cautious questioning of Miss Maxwell, by such scrutiny of the
+      moods and tenses of Latin verbs as wellnigh destroyed her brain tissue,
+      she had mastered its romantic message. If it was conventional in style,
+      Emma Jane never suspected it. If some of the similes seemed to have been
+      culled from the Latin poets, and some of the phrases built up from Latin
+      exercises, Emma Jane was neither scholar nor critic; the similes, the
+      phrases, the sentiments, when finally translated and written down in
+      black-and-white English, made, in her opinion, the most convincing and
+      heart-melting document ever sent through the mails:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mea cara Emma:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cur audeo scribere ad te epistulam? Es mihi dea! Semper es in mea anima.
+      Iterum et iterum es cum me in somnis. Saepe video tuas capillos auri, tuos
+      pulchros oculos similes caelo, tuas genas, quasi rubentes rosas in nive.
+      Tua vox est dulcior quam cantus avium aut murmur rivuli in montibus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cur sum ego tam miser et pauper et indignus, et tu tam dulcis et bona et
+      nobilis?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Si cogitabis de me ero beatus. Tu es sola puella quam amo, et semper eris.
+      Alias puellas non amavi. Forte olim amabis me, sed sum indignus. Sine te
+      sum miser, cum tu es prope mea vita omni est goddamn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vale, carissima, carissima puella!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      De tuo fideli servo A.F.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My dear Emma:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Why dare I write to you a letter? You are to me a goddess! Always you are
+      in my heart. Again and again you are with me in dreams. Often I see your
+      locks of gold, your beautiful eyes like the sky, your cheeks, as red roses
+      in snow. Your voice is sweeter than the singing of birds or the murmur of
+      the stream in the mountains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Why am I so wretched and poor and unworthy, and you so sweet and good and
+      noble?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If you will think of me I shall be happy. You are the only girl that I
+      love and always will be. Other girls I have not loved. Perhaps sometime
+      you will love me, but I am unworthy. Without you, I am wretched, when you
+      are near my life is all joy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Farewell, dearest, dearest girl!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From your faithful slave A.F.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane knew the letter by heart in English. She even knew it in Latin,
+      only a few days before a dead language to her, but now one filled with
+      life and meaning. From beginning to end the epistle had the effect upon
+      her as of an intoxicating elixir. Often, at morning prayers, or while
+      eating her rice pudding at the noon dinner, or when sinking off to sleep
+      at night, she heard a voice murmuring in her ear, &ldquo;Vale, carissima,
+      carissima puella!&rdquo; As to the effect on her modest, countrified little
+      heart of the phrases in which Abijah stated she was a goddess and he her
+      faithful slave, that quite baffles description; for it lifted her bodily
+      out of the scenes in which she moved, into a new, rosy, ethereal
+      atmosphere in which even Rebecca had no place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca did not know this, fortunately; she only suspected, and waited for
+      the day when Emma Jane would pour out her confidences, as she always did,
+      and always would until the end of time. At the present moment she was
+      busily employed in thinking about her own affairs. A shabby composition
+      book with mottled board covers lay open on the table before her, and
+      sometimes she wrote in it with feverish haste and absorption, and
+      sometimes she rested her chin in the cup of her palm, and with the pencil
+      poised in the other hand looked dreamily out on the village, its huddle of
+      roofs and steeples all blurred into positive beauty by the fast-falling
+      snowflakes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the middle of December and the friendly sky was softly dropping a
+      great white mantle of peace and good-will over the little town, making all
+      ready within and without for the Feast o' the Babe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The main street, that in summer was made dignified by its splendid avenue
+      of shade trees, now ran quiet and white between rows of stalwart trunks,
+      whose leafless branches were all hanging heavy under their dazzling
+      burden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The path leading straight up the hill to the Academy was broken only by
+      the feet of the hurrying, breathless boys and girls who ran up and down,
+      carrying piles of books under their arms; books which they remembered so
+      long as they were within the four walls of the recitation room, and which
+      they eagerly forgot as soon as they met one another in the living,
+      laughing world, going up and down the hill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's very becoming to the universe, snow is!&rdquo; thought Rebecca, looking
+      out of the window dreamily. &ldquo;Really there's little to choose between the
+      world and heaven when a snowstorm is going on. I feel as if I ought to
+      look at it every minute. I wish I could get over being greedy, but it
+      still seems to me at sixteen as if there weren't waking hours enough in
+      the day, and as if somehow I were pressed for time and continually losing
+      something. How well I remember mother's story about me when I was four. It
+      was at early breakfast on the farm, but I called all meals dinner' then,
+      and when I had finished I folded up my bib and sighed: O, dear! Only two
+      more dinners, play a while and go to bed!' This was at six in the morning&mdash;lamplight
+      in the kitchen, snowlight outside!
+    </p>
+<pre>
+     Powdery, powdery, powdery snow,
+     Making things lovely wherever you go!
+     Merciful, merciful, merciful snow,
+     Masking the ugliness hidden below.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Herbert made me promise to do a poem for the January 'Pilot,' but I
+      mustn't take the snow as a subject; there has been too great competition
+      among the older poets!&rdquo; And with that she turned in her chair and began
+      writing again in the shabby book, which was already three quarters filled
+      with childish scribblings, sometimes in pencil, and sometimes in violet
+      ink with carefully shaded capital letters.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      Squire Bean has had a sharp attack of rheumatism and Abijah Flagg came
+      back from Limerick for a few days to nurse him. One morning the Burnham
+      sisters from North Riverboro came over to spend the day with Aunt Miranda,
+      and Abijah went down to put up their horse. (&ldquo;'Commodatin' 'Bijah&rdquo; was his
+      pet name when we were all young.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He scaled the ladder to the barn chamber&mdash;the dear old ladder that
+      used to be my safety valve!&mdash;and pitched down the last forkful of
+      grandfather's hay that will ever be eaten by any visiting horse. They WILL
+      be delighted to hear that it is all gone; they have grumbled at it for
+      years and years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What should Abijah find at the bottom of the heap but my Thought Book,
+      hidden there two or three years ago and forgotten!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I think of what it was to me, the place it filled in my life, the
+      affection I lavished on it, I wonder that I could forget it, even in all
+      the excitement of coming to Wareham to school. And that gives me &ldquo;an
+      uncommon thought&rdquo; as I used to say! It is this: that when we finish
+      building an air castle we seldom live in it after all; we sometimes even
+      forget that we ever longed to! Perhaps we have gone so far as to begin
+      another castle on a higher hilltop, and this is so beautiful,&mdash;especially
+      while we are building, and before we live in it!&mdash;that the first one
+      has quite vanished from sight and mind, like the outgrown shell of the
+      nautilus that he casts off on the shore and never looks at again. (At
+      least I suppose he doesn't; but perhaps he takes one backward glance,
+      half-smiling, half-serious, just as I am doing at my old Thought Book, and
+      says, &ldquo;WAS THAT MY SHELL! GOODNESS GRACIOUS! HOW DID I EVER SQUEEZE MYSELF
+      INTO IT!&rdquo;)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That bit about the nautilus sounds like an extract from a school theme, or
+      a &ldquo;Pilot&rdquo; editorial, or a fragment of one of dear Miss Maxwell's lectures,
+      but I think girls of sixteen are principally imitations of the people and
+      things they love and admire; and between editing the &ldquo;Pilot,&rdquo; writing out
+      Virgil translations, searching for composition subjects, and studying
+      rhetorical models, there is very little of the original Rebecca Rowena
+      about me at the present moment; I am just a member of the graduating class
+      in good and regular standing. We do our hair alike, dress alike as much as
+      possible, eat and drink alike, talk alike,&mdash;I am not even sure that
+      we do not think alike; and what will become of the poor world when we are
+      all let loose upon it on the same day of June? Will life, real life, bring
+      our true selves back to us? Will love and duty and sorrow and trouble and
+      work finally wear off the &ldquo;school stamp&rdquo; that has been pressed upon all of
+      us until we look like rows of shining copper cents fresh from the mint?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet there must be a little difference between us somewhere, or why does
+      Abijah Flagg write Latin letters to Emma Jane, instead of to me? There is
+      one example on the other side of the argument,&mdash;Abijah Flagg. He
+      stands out from all the rest of the boys like the Rock of Gibraltar in the
+      geography pictures. Is it because he never went to school until he was
+      sixteen? He almost died of longing to go, and the longing seemed to teach
+      him more than going. He knew his letters, and could read simple things,
+      but it was I who taught him what books really meant when I was eleven and
+      he thirteen. We studied while he was husking corn or cutting potatoes for
+      seed, or shelling beans in the Squire's barn. His beloved Emma Jane didn't
+      teach him; her father would not have let her be friends with a chore-boy!
+      It was I who found him after milking-time, summer nights, suffering, yes
+      dying, of Least Common Multiple and Greatest Common Divisor; I who struck
+      the shackles from the slave and told him to skip it all and go on to
+      something easier, like Fractions, Percentage, and Compound Interest, as I
+      did myself. Oh! How he used to smell of the cows when I was correcting his
+      sums on warm evenings, but I don't regret it, for he is now the joy of
+      Limerick and the pride of Riverboro, and I suppose has forgotten the
+      proper side on which to approach a cow if you wish to milk her. This now
+      unserviceable knowledge is neatly inclosed in the outgrown shell he threw
+      off two or three years ago. His gratitude to me knows no bounds, but&mdash;he
+      writes Latin letters to Emma Jane! But as Mr. Perkins said about drowning
+      the kittens (I now quote from myself at thirteen), &ldquo;It is the way of the
+      world and how things have to be!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, I have read the Thought Book all through, and when I want to make
+      Mr. Aladdin laugh, I shall show him my composition on the relative values
+      of punishment and reward as builders of character.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am not at all the same Rebecca today at sixteen that I was then, at
+      twelve and thirteen. I hope, in getting rid of my failings, that I haven't
+      scrubbed and rubbed so hard that I have taken the gloss off the poor
+      little virtues that lay just alongside of the faults; for as I read the
+      foolish doggerel and the funny, funny &ldquo;Remerniscences,&rdquo; I see on the whole
+      a nice, well-meaning, trusting, loving heedless little creature, that
+      after all I'd rather build on than outgrow altogether, because she is Me;
+      the Me that was made and born just a little different from all the rest of
+      the babies in my birthday year.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One thing is alike in the child and the girl. They both love to set
+      thoughts down in black and white; to see how they look, how they sound,
+      and how they make one feel when one reads them over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They both love the sound of beautiful sentences and the tinkle of rhyming
+      words, and in fact, of the three great R's of life, they adore Reading and
+      Riting, as much as they abhor 'Rithmetic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little girl in the old book is always thinking of what she is &ldquo;going
+      to be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Uncle Jerry Cobb spoiled me a good deal in this direction. I remember he
+      said to everybody when I wrote my verses for the flag-raising: &ldquo;Nary rung
+      on the ladder o' fame but that child'll climb if you give her time!&rdquo;&mdash;poor
+      Uncle Jerry! He will be so disappointed in me as time goes on. And still
+      he would think I have already climbed two rungs on the ladder, although it
+      is only a little Wareham ladder, for I am one of the &ldquo;Pilot&rdquo; editors, the
+      first &ldquo;girl editor&rdquo;&mdash;and I have taken a fifty dollar prize in
+      composition and paid off the interest on a twelve hundred dollar mortgage
+      with it.
+    </p>
+<pre>
+     &ldquo;High is the rank we now possess,
+     But higher we shall rise;
+     Though what we shall hereafter be
+     Is hid from mortal eyes.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      This hymn was sung in meeting the Sunday after my election, and Mr.
+      Aladdin was there that day and looked across the aisle and smiled at me.
+      Then he sent me a sheet of paper from Boston the next morning with just
+      one verse in the middle of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She made the cleverest people quite ashamed; And ev'n the good with
+      inward envy groan, Finding themselves so very much exceeded, In their own
+      way by all the things that she did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Maxwell says it is Byron, and I wish I had thought of the last rhyme
+      before Byron did; my rhymes are always so common.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am too busy doing, nowadays, to give very much thought to being. Mr.
+      Aladdin was teasing me one day about what he calls my &ldquo;cast-off careers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What makes you aim at any mark in particular, Rebecca?&rdquo; he asked, looking
+      at Miss Maxwell and laughing. &ldquo;Women never hit what they aim at, anyway;
+      but if they shut their eyes and shoot in the air they generally find
+      themselves in the bull's eye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I think one reason that I have always dreamed of what I should be, when I
+      grew up, was, that even before father died mother worried about the
+      mortgage on the farm, and what would become of us if it were foreclosed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was hard on children to be brought up on a mortgage that way, but oh!
+      it was harder still on poor dear mother, who had seven of us then to think
+      of, and still has three at home to feed and clothe out of the farm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aunt Jane says I am young for my age, Aunt Miranda is afraid that I will
+      never really &ldquo;grow up,&rdquo; Mr. Aladdin says that I don't know the world any
+      better than the pearl inside of the oyster. They none of them know the
+      old, old thoughts I have, some of them going back years and years; for
+      they are never ones that I can speak about.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I remember how we children used to admire father, he was so handsome and
+      graceful and amusing, never cross like mother, or too busy to play with
+      us. He never did any work at home because he had to keep his hands nice
+      for playing the church melodeon, or the violin or piano for dances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mother used to say: &ldquo;Hannah and Rebecca, you must hull the strawberries,
+      your father cannot help.&rdquo; &ldquo;John, you must milk next year for I haven't the
+      time and it would spoil your father's hands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All the other men in Temperance village wore calico, or flannel shirts,
+      except on Sundays, but Father never wore any but white ones with starched
+      bosoms. He was very particular about them and mother used to stitch and
+      stitch on the pleats, and press and press the bosoms and collar and cuffs,
+      sometimes late at night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she was tired and thin and gray, with no time to sew on new dresses
+      for herself, and no time to wear them, because she was always taking care
+      of the babies; and father was happy and well and handsome. But we children
+      never thought much about it until once, after father had mortgaged the
+      farm, there was going to be a sociable in Temperance village. Mother could
+      not go as Jenny had whooping-cough and Mark had just broken his arm, and
+      when she was tying father's necktie, the last thing before he started, he
+      said: &ldquo;I wish, Aurelia, that you cared a little about YOUR appearance and
+      YOUR dress; it goes a long way with a man like me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mother had finished the tie, and her hands dropped suddenly. I looked at
+      her eyes and mouth while she looked at father and in a minute I was ever
+      so old, with a grown-up ache in my heart. It has always stayed there,
+      although I admired my handsome father and was proud of him because he was
+      so talented; but now that I am older and have thought about things, my
+      love for mother is different from what it used to be. Father was always
+      the favorite when we were little, he was so interesting, and I wonder
+      sometimes if we don't remember interesting people longer and better than
+      we do those who are just good and patient. If so it seems very cruel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As I look back I see that Miss Ross, the artist who brought me my pink
+      parasol from Paris, sowed the first seeds in me of ambition to do
+      something special. Her life seemed so beautiful and so easy to a child. I
+      had not been to school then, or read George Macdonald, so I did not know
+      that &ldquo;Ease is the lovely result of forgotten toil.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Ross sat out of doors and painted lovely things, and everybody said
+      how wonderful they were, and bought them straight away; and she took care
+      of a blind father and two brothers, and traveled wherever she wished. It
+      comes back to me now, that summer when I was ten and Miss Ross painted me
+      sitting by the mill-wheel while she talked to me of foreign countries!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other day Miss Maxwell read something from Browning's poems to the
+      girls of her literature class. It was about David the shepherd boy who
+      used to lie in his hollow watching one eagle &ldquo;wheeling slow as in sleep.&rdquo;
+       He used to wonder about the wide world that the eagle beheld, the eagle
+      that was stretching his wings so far up in the blue, while he, the poor
+      shepherd boy, could see only the &ldquo;strip twixt the hill and the sky;&rdquo; for
+      he lay in a hollow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I told Mr. Baxter about it the next day, which was the Saturday before I
+      joined the church. I asked him if it was wicked to long to see as much as
+      the eagle saw?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was never anybody quite like Mr. Baxter. &ldquo;Rebecca dear,&rdquo; he said,
+      &ldquo;it may be that you need not always lie in a hollow, as the shepherd boy
+      did; but wherever you lie, that little strip you see 'twixt the hill and
+      the sky' is able to hold all of earth and all of heaven, if only you have
+      the right sort of vision.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was a long, long time about &ldquo;experiencing religion.&rdquo; I remember Sunday
+      afternoons at the brick house the first winter after I went there; when I
+      used to sit in the middle of the dining-room as I was bid, silent and
+      still, with the big family Bible on my knees. Aunt Miranda had Baxter's
+      &ldquo;Saints' Rest,&rdquo; but her seat was by the window, and she at least could
+      give a glance into the street now and then without being positively
+      wicked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aunt Jane used to read the &ldquo;Pilgrim's Progress.&rdquo; The fire burned low; the
+      tall clock ticked, ticked, so slowly and steadily, that the pictures swam
+      before my eyes and I almost fell asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They thought by shutting everything else out that I should see God; but I
+      didn't, not once. I was so homesick for Sunnybrook and John that I could
+      hardly learn my weekly hymns, especially the sad, long one beginning:
+    </p>
+<pre>
+     &ldquo;My thoughts on awful subjects roll,
+     Damnation and the dead.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      It was brother John for whom I was chiefly homesick on Sunday afternoons,
+      because at Sunnybrook Farm father was dead and mother was always busy, and
+      Hannah never liked to talk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the next year the missionaries from Syria came to Riverboro; and at
+      the meeting Mr. Burch saw me playing the melodeon, and thought I was grown
+      up and a church member, and so he asked me to lead in prayer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I didn't dare to refuse, and when I prayed, which was just like thinking
+      out loud, I found I could talk to God a great deal easier than to Aunt
+      Miranda or even to Uncle Jerry Cobb. There were things I could say to Him
+      that I could never say to anybody else, and saying them always made me
+      happy and contented.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Mr. Baxter asked me last year about joining the church, I told him I
+      was afraid I did not understand God quite well enough to be a real member.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you don't quite understand God, Rebecca?&rdquo; he asked, smiling. &ldquo;Well,
+      there is something else much more important, which is, that He understands
+      you! He understands your feeble love, your longings, desires, hopes,
+      faults, ambitions, crosses; and that, after all, is what counts! Of course
+      you don't understand Him! You are overshadowed by His love, His power, His
+      benignity, His wisdom; that is as it should be! Why, Rebecca, dear, if you
+      could stand erect and unabashed in God's presence, as one who perfectly
+      comprehended His nature or His purposes, it would be sacrilege! Don't be
+      puzzled out of your blessed inheritance of faith, my child; accept God
+      easily and naturally, just as He accepts you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God never puzzled me, Mr. Baxter; it isn't that,&rdquo; I said; &ldquo;but the
+      doctrines do worry me dreadfully.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let them alone for the present,&rdquo; Mr Baxter said. &ldquo;Anyway, Rebecca, you
+      can never prove God; you can only find Him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then do you think I have really experienced religion, Mr. Baxter?&rdquo; I
+      asked. &ldquo;Am I the beginnings of a Christian?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are a dear child of the understanding God!&rdquo; Mr. Baxter said; &ldquo;and I
+      say it over to myself night and morning so that I can never forget it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      The year is nearly over and the next few months will be lived in the rush
+      and whirlwind of work that comes before graduation. The bell for
+      philosophy class will ring in ten minutes, and as I have been writing for
+      nearly two hours, I must learn my lesson going up the Academy hill. It
+      will not be the first time; it is a grand hill for learning! I suppose
+      after fifty years or so the very ground has become soaked with knowledge,
+      and every particle of air in the vicinity is crammed with useful
+      information.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I will put my book into my trunk (having no blessed haymow hereabouts) and
+      take it out again,&mdash;when shall I take it out again?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After graduation perhaps I shall be too grown up and too busy to write in
+      a Thought Book; but oh, if only something would happen worth putting down;
+      something strange; something unusual; something different from the things
+      that happen every day in Riverboro and Edgewood!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graduation will surely take me a little out of &ldquo;the hollow,&rdquo;&mdash;make me
+      a little more like the soaring eagle, gazing at the whole wide world
+      beneath him while he wheels &ldquo;slow as in sleep.&rdquo; But whether or not, I'll
+      try not to be a discontented shepherd, but remember what Mr. Baxter said,
+      that the little strip that I see &ldquo;twixt the hill and the sky&rdquo; is able to
+      hold all of earth and all of heaven, if only I have the eyes to see it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca Rowena Randall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wareham Female Seminary, December 187&mdash;.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link2H_4_0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Eleventh Chronicle. ABIJAH THE BRAVE AND THE FAIR EMMAJANE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I
+    </p>
+<pre>
+     &ldquo;A warrior so bold and a maiden so bright
+     Conversed as they sat on the green.
+     They gazed at each other in tender delight.
+     Alonzo the brave was the name of the knight,
+     And the maid was the fair Imogene.
+
+     &ldquo;Alas!' said the youth, 'since tomorrow I go
+     To fight in a far distant land,
+     Your tears for my absence soon ceasing to flow,
+     Some other will court you, and you will bestow
+     On a wealthier suitor your hand.'
+
+     'Oh, hush these suspicions!' Fair Imogene said,
+     &ldquo;So hurtful to love and to me!
+     For if you be living, or if you be dead,
+     I swear by the Virgin that none in your stead
+     Shall the husband of Imogene be!'
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Ever since she was eight years old Rebecca had wished to be eighteen, but
+      now that she was within a month of that awe-inspiring and long-desired age
+      she wondered if, after all, it was destined to be a turning point in her
+      quiet existence. Her eleventh year, for instance, had been a real
+      turning-point, since it was then that she had left Sunnybrook Farm and
+      come to her maiden aunts in Riverboro. Aurelia Randall may have been
+      doubtful as to the effect upon her spinster sisters of the irrepressible
+      child, but she was hopeful from the first that the larger opportunities of
+      Riverboro would be the &ldquo;making&rdquo; of Rebecca herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next turning-point was her fourteenth year, when she left the district
+      school for the Wareham Female Seminary, then in the hey-day of its local
+      fame. Graduation (next to marriage, perhaps, the most thrilling episode in
+      the life of a little country girl) happened at seventeen, and not long
+      afterward her Aunt Miranda's death, sudden and unexpected, changed not
+      only all the outward activities and conditions of her life, but played its
+      own part in her development.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The brick house looked very homelike and pleasant on a June morning
+      nowadays with children's faces smiling at the windows and youthful
+      footsteps sounding through the halls; and the brass knocker on the
+      red-painted front door might have remembered Rebecca's prayer of a year
+      before, when she leaned against its sun-warmed brightness and whispered:
+      &ldquo;God bless Aunt Miranda; God bless the brick house that was; God bless the
+      brick house that's going to be!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All the doors and blinds were open to the sun and air as they had never
+      been in Miss Miranda Sawyer's time. The hollyhock bed that had been her
+      chief pride was never neglected, and Rebecca liked to hear the neighbors
+      say that there was no such row of beautiful plants and no such variety of
+      beautiful colors in Riverboro as those that climbed up and peeped in at
+      the kitchen windows where old Miss Miranda used to sit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now that the place was her very own Rebecca felt a passion of pride in its
+      smoothly mown fields, its carefully thinned-out woods, its blooming garden
+      spots, and its well-weeded vegetable patch; felt, too whenever she looked
+      at any part of it, a passion of gratitude to the stern old aunt who had
+      looked upon her as the future head of the family, as well as a passion of
+      desire to be worthy of that trust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It had been a very difficult year for a girl fresh from school: the death
+      of her aunt, the nursing of Miss Jane, prematurely enfeebled by the shock,
+      the removal of her own invalid mother and the rest of the little family
+      from Sunnybrook Farm. But all had gone smoothly; and when once the Randall
+      fortunes had taken an upward turn nothing seemed able to stop their
+      intrepid ascent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aurelia Randall renewed her youth in the companionship of her sister Jane
+      and the comforts by which her children were surrounded; the mortgage was
+      no longer a daily terror, for Sunnybrook had been sold to the new
+      railroad; Hannah, now Mrs. Will Melville, was happily situated; John, at
+      last, was studying medicine; Mark, the boisterous and unlucky brother, had
+      broken no bones for several months; while Jenny and Fanny were doing well
+      at the district school under Miss Libby Moses, Miss Dearborn's successor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't feel very safe,&rdquo; thought Rebecca, remembering all these
+      unaccustomed mercies as she sat on the front doorsteps, with her tatting
+      shuttle flying in and out of the fine cotton like a hummingbird. &ldquo;It's
+      just like one of those too beautiful July days that winds up with a
+      thundershower before night! Still, when you remember that the Randalls
+      never had anything but thunder and lightning, rain, snow, and hail, in
+      their family history for twelve or fifteen years, perhaps it is only
+      natural that they should enjoy a little spell of settled weather. If it
+      really turns out to BE settled, now that Aunt Jane and mother are strong
+      again I must be looking up one of what Mr. Aladdin calls my cast-off
+      careers.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;There comes Emma Jane Perkins through her front gate; she
+      will be here in a minute, and I'll tease her!&rdquo; and Rebecca ran in the door
+      and seated herself at the old piano that stood between the open windows in
+      the parlor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Peeping from behind the muslin curtains, she waited until Emma Jane was on
+      the very threshold and then began singing her version of an old ballad,
+      made that morning while she was dressing. The ballad was a great favorite
+      of hers, and she counted on doing telling execution with it in the present
+      instance by the simple subterfuge of removing the original hero and
+      heroine, Alonzo and Imogene, and substituting Abijah the Brave and the
+      Fair Emmajane, leaving the circumstances in the first three verses
+      unaltered, because in truth they seemed to require no alteration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her high, clear voice, quivering with merriment, floated through the
+      windows into the still summer air:
+    </p>
+<pre>
+     &ldquo;'A warrior so bold and a maiden so bright
+     Conversed as they sat on the green.
+     They gazed at each other in tender delight.
+     Abijah the Brave was the name of the knight,
+     And the maid was the Fair Emmajane.'&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rebecca Randall, stop! Somebody'll hear you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, they won't&mdash;they're making jelly in the kitchen, miles away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<pre>
+     &ldquo;'Alas!' said the youth, since tomorrow I go
+     To fight in a far distant land,
+     Your tears for my absence soon ceasing to flow,
+     Some other will court you, and you will bestow
+     On a wealthier suitor your hand.'&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rebecca, you can't THINK how your voice carries! I believe mother can
+      hear it over to my house!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, if she can, I must sing the third verse, just to clear your
+      reputation from the cloud cast upon it in the second,&rdquo; laughed her
+      tormentor, going on with the song:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Oh, hush these suspicions!' Fair Emmajane said, 'So hurtful to love and
+      to me! For if you be living, or if you be dead, I swear, my Abijah, that
+      none in your stead, Shall the husband of Emmajane be!'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After ending the third verse Rebecca wheeled around on the piano stool and
+      confronted her friend, who was carefully closing the parlor windows:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Emma Jane Perkins, it is an ordinary Thursday afternoon at four o'clock
+      and you have on your new blue barege, although there is not even a church
+      sociable in prospect this evening. What does this mean? Is Abijah the
+      Brave coming at last?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know certainly, but it will be some time this week.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And of course you'd rather be dressed up and not seen, than seen when not
+      dressed up. Right, my Fair Emmajane; so would I. Not that it makes any
+      difference to poor me, wearing my fourth best black and white calico and
+      expecting nobody.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, well, YOU! There's something inside of you that does instead of
+      pretty dresses,&rdquo; cried Emma Jane, whose adoration of her friend had never
+      altered nor lessened since they met at the age of eleven. &ldquo;You know you
+      are as different from anybody else in Riverboro as a princess in a fairy
+      story. Libby Moses says they would notice you in Lowell, Massachusetts!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would they? I wonder,&rdquo; speculated Rebecca, rendered almost speechless by
+      this tribute to her charms. &ldquo;Well, if Lowell, Massachusetts, could see me,
+      or if you could see me, in my new lavender muslin with the violet sash, it
+      would die of envy, and so would you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I had been going to be envious of you, Rebecca, I should have died
+      years ago. Come, let's go out on the steps where it's shady and cool.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And where we can see the Perkins front gate and the road running both
+      ways,&rdquo; teased Rebecca, and then, softening her tone, she said: &ldquo;How is it
+      getting on, Emmy? Tell me what's happened since I've been in Brunswick.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing much,&rdquo; confessed Emma Jane. &ldquo;He writes to me, but I don't write
+      to him, you know. I don't dare to, till he comes to the house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are his letters still in Latin?&rdquo; asked Rebecca, with a twinkling eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no! Not now, because&mdash;well, because there are things you can't
+      seem to write in Latin. I saw him at the Masonic picnic in the grove, but
+      he won't say anything REAL to me till he gets more pay and dares to speak
+      to mother and father. He IS brave in all other ways, but I ain't sure
+      he'll ever have the courage for that, he's so afraid of them and always
+      has been. Just remember what's in his mind all the time, Rebecca, that my
+      folks know all about what his mother was, and how he was born on the
+      poor-farm. Not that I care; look how he's educated and worked himself up!
+      I think he's perfectly elegant, and I shouldn't mind if he had been born
+      in the bulrushes, like Moses.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane's every-day vocabulary was pretty much what it had been before
+      she went to the expensive Wareham Female Seminary. She had acquired a
+      certain amount of information concerning the art of speech, but in moments
+      of strong feeling she lapsed into the vernacular. She grew slowly in all
+      directions, did Emma Jane, and, to use Rebecca's favorite nautilus figure,
+      she had left comparatively few outgrown shells on the shores of &ldquo;life's
+      unresting sea.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Moses wasn't born in the bulrushes, Emmy dear,&rdquo; corrected Rebecca
+      laughingly. &ldquo;Pharaoh's daughter found him there. It wasn't quite as
+      romantic a scene&mdash;Squire Bean's wife taking little Abijah Flagg from
+      the poorhouse when his girl-mother died, but, oh, I think Abijah's
+      splendid! Mr. Ladd says Riverboro'll be proud of him yet, and I shouldn't
+      wonder, Emmy dear, if you had a three-story house with a cupola on it,
+      some day; and sitting down at your mahogany desk inlaid with garnets, you
+      will write notes stating that Mrs. Abijah Flagg requests the pleasure of
+      Miss Rebecca Randall's company to tea, and that the Hon. Abijah Flagg,
+      M.C., will call for her on his way from the station with a span of horses
+      and the turquoise carryall!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane laughed at the ridiculous prophecy, and answered: &ldquo;If I ever
+      write the invitation I shan't be addressing it to Miss Randall, I'm sure
+      of that; it'll be to Mrs.&mdash;&mdash;-&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't!&rdquo; cried Rebecca impetuously, changing color and putting her hand
+      over Emma Jane's lips. &ldquo;If you won't I'll stop teasing. I couldn't bear a
+      name put to anything, I couldn't, Emmy dear! I wouldn't tease you, either,
+      if it weren't something we've both known ever so long&mdash;something that
+      you have always consulted me about of your own accord, and Abijah too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't get excited,&rdquo; replied Emma Jane, &ldquo;I was only going to say you were
+      sure to be Mrs. Somebody in course of time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said Rebecca with a relieved sigh, her color coming back; &ldquo;if that's
+      all you meant, just nonsense; but I thought, I thought&mdash;I don't
+      really know just what I thought!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you thought something you didn't want me to think you thought,&rdquo;
+       said Emma Jane with unusual felicity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, it's not that; but somehow, today, I have been remembering things.
+      Perhaps it was because at breakfast Aunt Jane and mother reminded me of my
+      coming birthday and said that Squire Bean would give me the deed of the
+      brick house. That made me feel very old and responsible; and when I came
+      out on the steps this afternoon it was just as if pictures of the old
+      years were moving up and down the road. Everything is so beautiful today!
+      Doesn't the sky look as if it had been dyed blue and the fields painted
+      pink and green and yellow this very minute?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a perfectly elegant day!&rdquo; responded Emma Jane with a sigh. &ldquo;If only
+      my mind was at rest! That's the difference between being young and
+      grown-up. We never used to think and worry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed we didn't! Look, Emmy, there's the very spot where Uncle Jerry
+      Cobb stopped the stage and I stepped out with my pink parasol and my
+      bouquet of purple lilacs, and you were watching me from your bedroom
+      window and wondering what I had in mother's little hair trunk strapped on
+      behind. Poor Aunt Miranda didn't love me at first sight, and oh, how cross
+      she was the first two years! But now every hard thought I ever had comes
+      back to me and cuts like a knife!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was dreadful hard to get along with, and I used to hate her like
+      poison,&rdquo; confessed Emma Jane; &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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!'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lumps rose suddenly in Emma Jane's throat, and she put her arm around
+      Rebecca's waist as they sat together side by side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I do remember,&rdquo; she said in a choking voice. &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I remember you,&rdquo; continued Rebecca, &ldquo;being chased down the hill by
+      Jacob Moody, when we were being Daughters of Zion and you had been chosen
+      to convert him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I remember you, getting the flag back from Mr. Simpson; and how you
+      looked when you spoke your verses at the flag-raising.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I always thought that was an elegant composition of yours&mdash;that
+      farewell to the class,&rdquo; said Emma Jane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The strong tide bears us on, out of the little harbor of childhood into
+      the unknown seas,&rdquo; recalled Rebecca. &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane grew a deeper pink and her button-hole of a mouth quivered with
+      delicious excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was last year at the seminary, when he wrote me his first Latin letter
+      from Limerick Academy,&rdquo; she said in a half whisper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I remember,&rdquo; laughed Rebecca. &ldquo;You suddenly began the study of the dead
+      languages, and the Latin dictionary took the place of the crochet needle
+      in your affections. It was cruel of you never to show me that letter,
+      Emmy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know every word of it by heart,&rdquo; said the blushing Emma Jane, &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It depends upon Abijah's Latin and your pronunciation,&rdquo; teased Rebecca.
+      &ldquo;Go on; I will turn my eyes toward the orchard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Fair Emmajane, looking none too old still for the &ldquo;little harbor,&rdquo; but
+      almost too young for the &ldquo;unknown seas,&rdquo; gathered up her courage and
+      recited like a tremulous parrot the boyish love letter that had so fired
+      her youthful imagination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Vale, carissima, carissima puella!&rdquo; repeated Rebecca in her musical
+      voice. &ldquo;Oh, how beautiful it sounds! I don't wonder it altered your
+      feeling for Abijah! Upon my word, Emma Jane,&rdquo; she cried with a sudden
+      change of tone, &ldquo;if I had suspected for an instant that Abijah the Brave
+      had that Latin letter in him I should have tried to get him to write it to
+      me; and then it would be I who would sit down at my mahogany desk and ask
+      Miss Perkins to come to tea with Mrs. Flagg.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane paled and shuddered openly. &ldquo;I speak as a church member,
+      Rebecca,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;when I tell you I've always thanked the Lord that you
+      never looked at Abijah Flagg and he never looked at you. If either of you
+      ever had, there never would have been a chance for me, and I've always
+      known it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      II
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The romance alluded to in the foregoing chapter had been going on, so far
+      as Abijah Flagg's part of it was concerned, for many years, his affection
+      dating back in his own mind to the first moment that he saw Emma Jane
+      Perkins at the age of nine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane had shown no sign of reciprocating his attachment until the last
+      three years, when the evolution of the chore-boy into the budding scholar
+      and man of affairs had inflamed even her somewhat dull imagination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Squire Bean's wife had taken Abijah away from the poorhouse, thinking that
+      she could make him of some little use in her home. Abbie Flagg, the
+      mother, was neither wise nor beautiful; it is to be feared that she was
+      not even good, and her lack of all these desirable qualities, particularly
+      the last one, had been impressed upon the child ever since he could
+      remember. People seemed to blame him for being in the world at all; this
+      world that had not expected him nor desired him, nor made any provision
+      for him. The great battle-axe of poorhouse opinion was forever leveled at
+      the mere little atom of innocent transgression, until he grew sad and shy,
+      clumsy, stiff, and self-conscious. He had an indomitable craving for love
+      in his heart and had never received a caress in his life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was more contented when he came to Squire Bean's house. The first year
+      he could only pick up chips, carry pine wood into the kitchen, go to the
+      post-office, run errands, drive the cows, and feed the hens, but every day
+      he grew more and more useful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His only friend was little Jim Watson, the storekeeper's son, and they
+      were inseparable companions whenever Abijah had time for play.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One never-to-be-forgotten July day a new family moved into the white
+      cottage between Squire Bean's house and the Sawyers'. Mr. Perkins had sold
+      his farm beyond North Riverboro and had established a blacksmith's shop in
+      the village, at the Edgewood end of the bridge. This fact was of no
+      special interest to the nine-year-old Abijah, but what really was of
+      importance, was the appearance of a pretty little girl of seven in the
+      front yard; a pretty little fat doll of a girl, with bright fuzzy hair,
+      pink cheeks, blue eyes, and a smile of almost bewildering continuity.
+      Another might have criticised it as having the air of being glued on, but
+      Abijah was already in the toils and never wished it to move.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day being the glorious Fourth and a holiday, Jimmy Watson came
+      over like David, to visit his favorite Jonathan. His Jonathan met him at
+      the top of the hill, pleaded a pressing engagement, curtly sent him home,
+      and then went back to play with his new idol, with whom he had already
+      scraped acquaintance, her parents being exceedingly busy settling the new
+      house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the noon dinner Jimmy again yearned to resume friendly relations,
+      and, forgetting his rebuff, again toiled up the hill and appeared
+      unexpectedly at no great distance from the Perkins premises, wearing the
+      broad and beaming smile of one who is confident of welcome.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His morning call had been officious and unpleasant and unsolicited, but
+      his afternoon visit could only be regarded as impudent, audacious, and
+      positively dangerous; for Abijah and Emma Jane were cosily playing house,
+      the game of all others in which it is particularly desirable to have two
+      and not three participants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that moment the nature of Abijah changed, at once and forever. Without
+      a pang of conscience he flew over the intervening patch of ground between
+      himself and his dreaded rival, and seizing small stones and larger ones,
+      as haste and fury demanded, flung them at Jimmy Watson, and flung and
+      flung, till the bewildered boy ran down the hill howling. Then he made a
+      &ldquo;stickin'&rdquo; door to the play-house, put the awed Emma Jane inside and
+      strode up and down in front of the edifice like an Indian brave. At such
+      an early age does woman become a distracting and disturbing influence in
+      man's career!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Time went on, and so did the rivalry between the poorhouse boy and the son
+      of wealth, but Abijah's chances of friendship with Emma Jane grew fewer
+      and fewer as they both grew older. He did not go to school, so there was
+      no meeting-ground there, but sometimes, when he saw the knot of boys and
+      girls returning in the afternoon, he would invite Elijah and Elisha, the
+      Simpson twins, to visit him, and take pains to be in Squire Bean's front
+      yard, doing something that might impress his inamorata as she passed the
+      premises.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Jimmy Watson was particularly small and fragile, Abijah generally chose
+      feats of strength and skill for these prearranged performances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes he would throw his hat up into the elm trees as far as he could
+      and, when it came down, catch it on his head. Sometimes he would walk on
+      his hands, with his legs wriggling in the air, or turn a double
+      somersault, or jump incredible distances across the extended arms of the
+      Simpson twins; and his bosom swelled with pride when the girls exclaimed,
+      &ldquo;Isn't he splendid!&rdquo; although he often heard his rival murmur scornfully,
+      &ldquo;SMARTY ALECK!&rdquo;&mdash;a scathing allusion of unknown origin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Squire Bean, although he did not send the boy to school (thinking, as he
+      was of no possible importance in the universe, it was not worth while
+      bothering about his education), finally became impressed with his ability,
+      lent him books, and gave him more time to study. These were all he needed,
+      books and time, and when there was an especially hard knot to untie,
+      Rebecca, as the star scholar of the neighborhood, helped him to untie it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he was sixteen he longed to go away from Riverboro and be something
+      better than a chore boy. Squire Bean had been giving him small wages for
+      three or four years, and when the time of parting came presented him with
+      a ten-dollar bill and a silver watch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Many a time had he discussed his future with Rebecca and asked her
+      opinion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was not strange, for there was nothing in human form that she could
+      not and did not converse with, easily and delightedly. She had ideas on
+      every conceivable subject, and would have cheerfully advised the minister
+      if he had asked her. The fishman consulted her when he couldn't endure his
+      mother-in-law another minute in the house; Uncle Jerry Cobb didn't part
+      with his river field until he had talked it over with Rebecca; and as for
+      Aunt Jane, she couldn't decide whether to wear her black merino or her
+      gray thibet unless Rebecca cast the final vote.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abijah wanted to go far away from Riverboro, as far as Limerick Academy,
+      which was at least fifteen miles; but although this seemed extreme,
+      Rebecca agreed, saying pensively: &ldquo;There IS a kind of magicness about
+      going far away and then coming back all changed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was precisely Abijah's unspoken thought. Limerick knew nothing of
+      Abbie Flagg's worthlessness, birth, and training, and the awful stigma of
+      his poorhouse birth, so that he would start fair. He could have gone to
+      Wareham and thus remained within daily sight of the beloved Emma Jane; but
+      no, he was not going to permit her to watch him in the process of
+      &ldquo;becoming,&rdquo; but after he had &ldquo;become&rdquo; something. He did not propose to
+      take any risks after all these years of silence and patience. Not he! He
+      proposed to disappear, like the moon on a dark night, and as he was, at
+      present, something that Mr. Perkins would by no means have in the family
+      nor Mrs. Perkins allow in the house, he would neither return to Riverboro
+      nor ask any favors of them until he had something to offer. Yes, sir. He
+      was going to be crammed to the eyebrows with learning for one thing,&mdash;useless
+      kinds and all,&mdash;going to have good clothes, and a good income.
+      Everything that was in his power should be right, because there would
+      always be lurking in the background the things he never could help&mdash;the
+      mother and the poorhouse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So he went away, and, although at Squire Bean's invitation he came back
+      the first year for two brief visits at Christmas and Easter, he was little
+      seen in Riverboro, for Mr. Ladd finally found him a place where he could
+      make his vacations profitable and learn bookkeeping at the same time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The visits in Riverboro were tantalizing rather than pleasant. He was
+      invited to two parties, but he was all the time conscious of his
+      shirt-collar, and he was sure that his &ldquo;pants&rdquo; were not the proper thing,
+      for by this time his ideals of dress had attained an almost unrealizable
+      height. As for his shoes, he felt that he walked on carpets as if they
+      were furrows and he were propelling a plow or a harrow before him. They
+      played Drop the Handkerchief and Copenhagen at the parties, but he had not
+      had the audacity to kiss Emma Jane, which was bad enough, but Jimmy had
+      and did, which was infinitely worse! The sight of James Watson's unworthy
+      and over-ambitious lips on Emma Jane's pink cheek almost destroyed his
+      faith in an overruling Providence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the parties were over he went back to his old room in Squire Bean's
+      shed chamber. As he lay in bed his thoughts fluttered about Emma Jane as
+      swallows circle around the eaves. The terrible sickness of hopeless
+      handicapped love kept him awake. Once he crawled out of bed in the night,
+      lighted the lamp, and looked for his mustache, remembering that he had
+      seen a suspicion of down on his rival's upper lip. He rose again half an
+      hour later, again lighted the lamp, put a few drops of oil on his hair,
+      and brushed it violently for several minutes. Then he went back to bed,
+      and after making up his mind that he would buy a dulcimer and learn to
+      play on it so that he would be more attractive at parties, and outshine
+      his rival in society as he had aforetime in athletics, he finally sank
+      into a troubled slumber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Those days, so full of hope and doubt and torture, seemed mercifully
+      unreal now, they lay so far back in the past&mdash;six or eight years, in
+      fact, which is a lifetime to the lad of twenty&mdash;and meantime he had
+      conquered many of the adverse circumstances that had threatened to cloud
+      his career.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abijah Flagg was a true child of his native State. Something of the same
+      timber that Maine puts into her forests, something of the same strength
+      and resisting power that she works into her rocks, goes into her sons and
+      daughters; and at twenty Abijah was going to take his fate in his hand and
+      ask Mr. Perkins, the rich blacksmith, if, after a suitable period of
+      probation (during which he would further prepare himself for his exalted
+      destiny), he might marry the fair Emma Jane, sole heiress of the Perkins
+      house and fortunes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      III
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was boy and girl love, calf love, perhaps, though even that may
+      develop into something larger, truer, and finer; but not so far away were
+      other and very different hearts growing and budding, each in its own way.
+      There was little Miss Dearborn, the pretty school teacher, drifting into a
+      foolish alliance because she did not agree with her stepmother at home;
+      there was Herbert Dunn, valedictorian of his class, dazzled by Huldah
+      Meserve, who like a glowworm &ldquo;shone afar off bright, but looked at near,
+      had neither heat nor light.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was sweet Emily Maxwell, less than thirty still, with most of her
+      heart bestowed in the wrong quarter. She was toiling on at the Wareham
+      school, living as unselfish a life as a nun in a convent; lavishing the
+      mind and soul of her, the heart and body of her, on her chosen work. How
+      many women give themselves thus, consciously and unconsciously; and,
+      though they themselves miss the joys and compensations of mothering their
+      own little twos and threes, God must be grateful to them for their
+      mothering of the hundreds which make them so precious in His regenerating
+      purposes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then there was Adam Ladd, waiting at thirty-five for a girl to grow a
+      little older, simply because he could not find one already grown who
+      suited his somewhat fastidious and exacting tastes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll not call Rebecca perfection,&rdquo; he quoted once, in a letter to Emily
+      Maxwell,&mdash;&ldquo;I'll not call her perfection, for that's a post, afraid to
+      move. But she's a dancing sprig of the tree next it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When first she appeared on his aunt's piazza in North Riverboro and
+      insisted on selling him a large quantity of very inferior soap in order
+      that her friends, the Simpsons, might possess a premium in the shape of a
+      greatly needed banquet lamp, she had riveted his attention. He thought all
+      the time that he enjoyed talking with her more than with any woman alive,
+      and he had never changed his opinion. She always caught what he said as if
+      it were a ball tossed to her, and sometimes her mind, as through it his
+      thoughts came back to him, seemed like a prism which had dyed them with
+      deeper colors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Adam Ladd always called Rebecca in his heart his little Spring. His
+      boyhood had been lonely and unhappy. That was the part of life he had
+      missed, and although it was the full summer of success and prosperity with
+      him now, he found his lost youth only in her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was to him&mdash;how shall I describe it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Do you remember an early day in May with budding leaf, warm earth,
+      tremulous air, and changing, willful sky&mdash;how new it seemed? How
+      fresh and joyous beyond all explaining?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Have you lain with half-closed eyes where the flickering of sunlight
+      through young leaves, the song of birds and brook and the fragrance of
+      wild flowers combined to charm your senses, and you felt the sweetness and
+      grace of nature as never before?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca was springtide to Adam's thirsty heart. She was blithe youth
+      incarnate; she was music&mdash;an Aeolian harp that every passing breeze
+      woke to some whispering little tune; she was a changing, iridescent
+      joy-bubble; she was the shadow of a leaf dancing across a dusty floor. No
+      bough of his thought could be so bare but she somehow built a nest in it
+      and evoked life where none was before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Rebecca herself?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had been quite unconscious of all this until very lately, and even now
+      she was but half awakened; searching among her childish instincts and her
+      girlish dreams for some Ariadne thread that should guide her safely
+      through the labyrinth of her new sensations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the moment she was absorbed, or thought she was, in the little love
+      story of Abijah and Emma Jane, but in reality, had she realized it, that
+      love story served chiefly as a basis of comparison for a possible one of
+      her own, later on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She liked and respected Abijah Flagg, and loving Emma Jane was a habit
+      contracted early in life; but everything that they did or said, or thought
+      or wrote, or hoped or feared, seemed so inadequate, so painfully short of
+      what might be done or said, or thought or written, or hoped or feared,
+      under easily conceivable circumstances, that she almost felt a disposition
+      to smile gently at the fancy of the ignorant young couple that they had
+      caught a glimpse of the great vision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was sitting under the sweet apple tree at twilight. Supper was over;
+      Mark's restless feet were quiet, Fanny and Jenny were tucked safely in
+      bed; her aunt and her mother were stemming currants on the side porch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A blue spot at one of the Perkins windows showed that in one vestal bosom
+      hope was not dead yet, although it was seven o'clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly there was the sound of a horse's feet coming up the quiet road;
+      plainly a steed hired from some metropolis like Milltown or Wareham, as
+      Riverboro horses when through with their day's work never disported
+      themselves so gayly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A little open vehicle came in sight, and in it sat Abijah Flagg. The wagon
+      was so freshly painted and so shiny that Rebecca thought that he must have
+      alighted at the bridge and given it a last polish. The creases in his
+      trousers, too, had an air of having been pressed in only a few minutes
+      before. The whip was new and had a yellow ribbon on it; the gray suit of
+      clothes was new, and the coat flourished a flower in its button-hole. The
+      hat was the latest thing in hats, and the intrepid swain wore a seal-ring
+      on the little finger of his right hand. As Rebecca remembered that she had
+      guided it in making capital G's in his copy-book, she felt positively
+      maternal, although she was two years younger than Abijah the Brave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He drove up to the Perkins gate and was so long about hitching the horse
+      that Rebecca's heart beat tumultuously at the thought of Emma Jane's heart
+      waiting under the blue barege. Then he brushed an imaginary speck off his
+      sleeve, then he drew on a pair of buff kid gloves, then he went up the
+      path, rapped at the knocker, and went in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not all the heroes go to the wars,&rdquo; thought Rebecca. &ldquo;Abijah has laid the
+      ghost of his father and redeemed the memory of his mother, for no one will
+      dare say again that Abbie Flagg's son could never amount to anything!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The minutes went by, and more minutes, and more. The tranquil dusk settled
+      down over the little village street and the young moon came out just
+      behind the top of the Perkins pine tree.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Perkins front door opened and Abijah the Brave came out hand in hand
+      with his Fair Emma Jane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They walked through the orchard, the eyes of the old couple following them
+      from the window, and just as they disappeared down the green slope that
+      led to the riverside the gray coat sleeve encircled the blue barege waist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca, quivering with instant sympathy and comprehension, hid her face
+      in her hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Emmy has sailed away and I am all alone in the little harbor,&rdquo; she
+      thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was as if childhood, like a thing real and visible, were slipping down
+      the grassy river banks, after Abijah and Emma Jane, and disappearing like
+      them into the moon-lit shadows of the summer night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am all alone in the little harbor,&rdquo; she repeated; &ldquo;and oh, I wonder, I
+      wonder, shall I be afraid to leave it, if anybody ever comes to carry me
+      out to sea!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1375 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
+
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+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #1375 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1375)
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+Project Gutenberg's New Chronicles of Rebecca, by Kate Douglas Wiggin
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: New Chronicles of Rebecca
+
+Author: Kate Douglas Wiggin
+
+Release Date: July, 1998  [Etext #1375]
+Last Updated: March 10, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NEW CHRONICLES OF REBECCA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Theresa Armao
+
+
+
+
+
+NEW CHRONICLES OF REBECCA
+
+By Kate Douglas Wiggin
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+     First Chronicle
+     Jack O'Lantern
+
+     Second Chronicle
+     Daughters of Zion
+
+     Third Chronicle
+     Rebecca's Thought Book
+
+     Fourth Chronicle
+     A Tragedy in Millinery
+
+     Fifth Chronicle
+     The Saving of the Colors
+
+     Sixth Chronicle
+     The State of Maine Girl
+
+     Seventh Chronicle
+     The Little Prophet
+
+     Eighth Chronicle
+     Abner Simpson's New Leaf
+
+     Ninth Chronicle
+     The Green Isle
+
+     Tenth Chronicle
+     Rebecca's Reminiscences
+
+     Eleventh Chronicle
+     Abijah the Brave and the Fair Emma Jane
+
+
+
+
+First Chronicle. JACK O'LANTERN
+
+
+I
+
+Miss Miranda Sawyer's old-fashioned garden was the pleasantest spot in
+Riverboro on a sunny July morning. The rich color of the brick house
+gleamed and glowed through the shade of the elms and maples. Luxuriant
+hop-vines clambered up the lightning rods and water spouts, hanging
+their delicate clusters here and there in graceful profusion. Woodbine
+transformed the old shed and tool house to things of beauty, and the
+flower beds themselves were the prettiest and most fragrant in all
+the countryside. A row of dahlias ran directly around the garden
+spot,--dahlias scarlet, gold, and variegated. In the very centre was a
+round plot where the upturned faces of a thousand pansies smiled amid
+their leaves, and in the four corners were triangular blocks of sweet
+phlox over which the butterflies fluttered unceasingly. In the spaces
+between ran a riot of portulaca and nasturtiums, while in the more
+regular, shell-bordered beds grew spirea and gillyflowers, mignonette,
+marigolds, and clove pinks.
+
+Back of the barn and encroaching on the edge of the hay field was a
+grove of sweet clover whose white feathery tips fairly bent under the
+assaults of the bees, while banks of aromatic mint and thyme drank
+in the sunshine and sent it out again into the summer air, warm, and
+deliciously odorous.
+
+The hollyhocks were Miss Sawyer's pride, and they grew in a stately line
+beneath the four kitchen windows, their tapering tips set thickly with
+gay satin circlets of pink or lavender or crimson.
+
+“They grow something like steeples,” thought little Rebecca Randall, who
+was weeding the bed, “and the flat, round flowers are like rosettes; but
+steeples wouldn't be studded with rosettes, so if you were writing about
+them in a composition you'd have to give up one or the other, and I
+think I'll give up the steeples:--
+
+     Gay little hollyhock
+     Lifting your head,
+     Sweetly rosetted
+     Out from your bed.
+
+It's a pity the hollyhock isn't really little, instead of steepling up
+to the window top, but I can't say, 'Gay TALL hollyhock.'... I might
+have it 'Lines to a Hollyhock in May,' for then it would be small; but
+oh, no! I forgot; in May it wouldn't be blooming, and it's so pretty
+to say that its head is 'sweetly rosetted'... I wish the teacher wasn't
+away; she would like 'sweetly rosetted,' and she would like to hear me
+recite 'Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!' that I learned
+out of Aunt Jane's Byron; the rolls come booming out of it just like the
+waves at the beach.... I could make nice compositions now, everything
+is blooming so, and it's so warm and sunny and happy outdoors. Miss
+Dearborn told me to write something in my thought book every single day,
+and I'll begin this very night when I go to bed.”
+
+Rebecca Rowena Randall, the little niece of the brick-house ladies, and
+at present sojourning there for purposes of board, lodging, education,
+and incidentally such discipline and chastening as might ultimately
+produce moral excellence,--Rebecca Randall had a passion for the rhyme
+and rhythm of poetry. From her earliest childhood words had always been
+to her what dolls and toys are to other children, and now at twelve she
+amused herself with phrases and sentences and images as her schoolmates
+played with the pieces of their dissected puzzles. If the heroine of
+a story took a “cursory glance” about her “apartment,” Rebecca would
+shortly ask her Aunt Jane to take a “cursory glance” at her oversewing
+or hemming; if the villain “aided and abetted” someone in committing
+a crime, she would before long request the pleasure of “aiding and
+abetting” in dishwashing or bedmaking. Sometimes she used the borrowed
+phrases unconsciously; sometimes she brought them into the conversation
+with an intense sense of pleasure in their harmony or appropriateness;
+for a beautiful word or sentence had the same effect upon her
+imagination as a fragrant nosegay, a strain of music, or a brilliant
+sunset.
+
+“How are you gettin' on, Rebecca Rowena?” called a peremptory voice from
+within.
+
+“Pretty good, Aunt Miranda; only I wish flowers would ever come up as
+thick as this pigweed and plantain and sorrel. What MAKES weeds be thick
+and flowers be thin?--I just happened to be stopping to think a minute
+when you looked out.”
+
+“You think considerable more than you weed, I guess, by appearances. How
+many times have you peeked into that humming bird's nest? Why don't you
+work all to once and play all to once, like other folks?”
+
+“I don't know,” the child answered, confounded by the question, and
+still more by the apparent logic back of it. “I don't know, Aunt
+Miranda, but when I'm working outdoors such a Saturday morning as this,
+the whole creation just screams to me to stop it and come and play.”
+
+“Well, you needn't go if it does!” responded her aunt sharply. “It don't
+scream to me when I'm rollin' out these doughnuts, and it wouldn't to
+you if your mind was on your duty.”
+
+Rebecca's little brown hands flew in and out among the weeds as she
+thought rebelliously: “Creation WOULDN'T scream to Aunt Miranda; it
+would know she wouldn't come.”
+
+     Scream on, thou bright and gay creation, scream!
+     'Tis not Miranda that will hear thy cry!
+
+Oh, such funny, nice things come into my head out here by myself, I do
+wish I could run up and put them down in my thought book before I forget
+them, but Aunt Miranda wouldn't like me to leave off weeding:--
+
+     Rebecca was weeding the hollyhock bed
+     When wonderful thoughts came into her head.
+     Her aunt was occupied with the rolling pin
+     And the thoughts of her mind were common and thin.
+
+That wouldn't do because it's mean to Aunt Miranda, and anyway it isn't
+good. I MUST crawl under the syringa shade a minute, it's so hot, and
+anybody has to stop working once in a while, just to get their breath,
+even if they weren't making poetry.
+
+Rebecca was weeding the hollyhock bed When marvelous thoughts came into
+her head. Miranda was wielding the rolling pin And thoughts at such
+times seemed to her as a sin.
+
+How pretty the hollyhock rosettes look from down here on the sweet,
+smelly ground!
+
+“Let me see what would go with rosetting. AIDING AND ABETTING, PETTING,
+HEN-SETTING, FRETTING,--there's nothing very nice, but I can make
+fretting' do.
+
+     Cheered by Rowena's petting,
+     The flowers are rosetting,
+     But Aunt Miranda's fretting
+     Doth somewhat cloud the day.”
+
+Suddenly the sound of wagon wheels broke the silence and then a voice
+called out--a voice that could not wait until the feet that belonged to
+it reached the spot: “Miss Saw-YER! Father's got to drive over to North
+Riverboro on an errand, and please can Rebecca go, too, as it's Saturday
+morning and vacation besides?”
+
+Rebecca sprang out from under the syringa bush, eyes flashing with
+delight as only Rebecca's eyes COULD flash, her face one luminous circle
+of joyous anticipation. She clapped her grubby hands, and dancing up
+and down, cried: “May I, Aunt Miranda--can I, Aunt Jane--can I, Aunt
+Miranda-Jane? I'm more than half through the bed.”
+
+“If you finish your weeding tonight before sundown I s'pose you can go,
+so long as Mr. Perkins has been good enough to ask you,” responded Miss
+Sawyer reluctantly. “Take off that gingham apron and wash your hands
+clean at the pump. You ain't be'n out o' bed but two hours an' your head
+looks as rough as if you'd slep' in it. That comes from layin' on the
+ground same as a caterpillar. Smooth your hair down with your hands an'
+p'r'aps Emma Jane can braid it as you go along the road. Run up and get
+your second-best hair ribbon out o' your upper drawer and put on
+your shade hat. No, you can't wear your coral chain--jewelry ain't
+appropriate in the morning. How long do you cal'late to be gone, Emma
+Jane?”
+
+“I don't know. Father's just been sent for to see about a sick woman
+over to North Riverboro. She's got to go to the poor farm.”
+
+This fragment of news speedily brought Miss Sawyer, and her sister Jane
+as well, to the door, which commanded a view of Mr. Perkins and his
+wagon. Mr. Perkins, the father of Rebecca's bosom friend, was primarily
+a blacksmith, and secondarily a selectman and an overseer of the poor, a
+man therefore possessed of wide and varied information.
+
+“Who is it that's sick?” inquired Miranda.
+
+“A woman over to North Riverboro.”
+
+“What's the trouble?”
+
+“Can't say.”
+
+“Stranger?'
+
+“Yes, and no; she's that wild daughter of old Nate Perry that used to
+live up towards Moderation. You remember she ran away to work in the
+factory at Milltown and married a do--nothin' fellow by the name o' John
+Winslow?”
+
+“Yes; well, where is he? Why don't he take care of her?”
+
+“They ain't worked well in double harness. They've been rovin' round the
+country, livin' a month here and a month there wherever they could get
+work and house-room. They quarreled a couple o' weeks ago and he left
+her. She and the little boy kind o' camped out in an old loggin' cabin
+back in the woods and she took in washin' for a spell; then she got
+terrible sick and ain't expected to live.”
+
+“Who's been nursing her?” inquired Miss Jane.
+
+“Lizy Ann Dennett, that lives nearest neighbor to the cabin; but I
+guess she's tired out bein' good Samaritan. Anyways, she sent word this
+mornin' that nobody can't seem to find John Winslow; that there ain't
+no relations, and the town's got to be responsible, so I'm goin' over to
+see how the land lays. Climb in, Rebecca. You an' Emmy Jane crowd back
+on the cushion an' I'll set forrard. That's the trick! Now we're off!”
+
+“Dear, dear!” sighed Jane Sawyer as the sisters walked back into the
+brick house. “I remember once seeing Sally Perry at meeting. She was a
+handsome girl, and I'm sorry she's come to grief.”
+
+“If she'd kep' on goin' to meetin' an' hadn't looked at the men folks
+she might a' be'n earnin' an honest livin' this minute,” said Miranda.
+“Men folks are at the bottom of everything wrong in this world,” she
+continued, unconsciously reversing the verdict of history.
+
+“Then we ought to be a happy and contented community here in Riverboro,”
+ replied Jane, “as there's six women to one man.”
+
+“If 't was sixteen to one we'd be all the safer,” responded Miranda
+grimly, putting the doughnuts in a brown crock in the cellar-way and
+slamming the door.
+
+
+II
+
+The Perkins horse and wagon rumbled along over the dusty country road,
+and after a discreet silence, maintained as long as human flesh could
+endure, Rebecca remarked sedately:
+
+“It's a sad errand for such a shiny morning, isn't it, Mr. Perkins?”
+
+“Plenty o' trouble in the world, Rebecky, shiny mornin's an' all,” that
+good man replied. “If you want a bed to lay on, a roof over your head,
+an' food to eat, you've got to work for em. If I hadn't a' labored early
+an' late, learned my trade, an' denied myself when I was young, I might
+a' be'n a pauper layin' sick in a loggin' cabin, stead o' bein' an
+overseer o' the poor an' selectman drivin' along to take the pauper to
+the poor farm.”
+
+“People that are mortgaged don't have to go to the poor farm, do they,
+Mr. Perkins?” asked Rebecca, with a shiver of fear as she remembered her
+home farm at Sunnybrook and the debt upon it; a debt which had lain like
+a shadow over her childhood.
+
+“Bless your soul, no; not unless they fail to pay up; but Sal Perry an'
+her husband hadn't got fur enough along in life to BE mortgaged. You
+have to own something before you can mortgage it.”
+
+Rebecca's heart bounded as she learned that a mortgage represented a
+certain stage in worldly prosperity.
+
+“Well,” she said, sniffing in the fragrance of the new-mown hay and
+growing hopeful as she did so; “maybe the sick woman will be better such
+a beautiful day, and maybe the husband will come back to make it up and
+say he's sorry, and sweet content will reign in the humble habitation
+that was once the scene of poverty, grief, and despair. That's how it
+came out in a story I'm reading.”
+
+“I hain't noticed that life comes out like stories very much,” responded
+the pessimistic blacksmith, who, as Rebecca privately thought, had read
+less than half a dozen books in his long and prosperous career.
+
+A drive of three or four miles brought the party to a patch of woodland
+where many of the tall pines had been hewn the previous winter. The roof
+of a ramshackle hut was outlined against a background of young birches,
+and a rough path made in hauling the logs to the main road led directly
+to its door.
+
+As they drew near the figure of a woman approached--Mrs. Lizy Ann
+Dennett, in a gingham dress, with a calico apron over her head.
+
+“Good morning, Mr. Perkins,” said the woman, who looked tired and
+irritable. “I'm real glad you come right over, for she took worse after
+I sent you word, and she's dead.”
+
+Dead! The word struck heavily and mysteriously on the children's ears.
+Dead! And their young lives, just begun, stretched on and on, all
+decked, like hope, in living green. Dead! And all the rest of the world
+reveling in strength. Dead! With all the daisies and buttercups waving
+in the fields and the men heaping the mown grass into fragrant cocks
+or tossing it into heavily laden carts. Dead! With the brooks tinkling
+after the summer showers, with the potatoes and corn blossoming, the
+birds singing for joy, and every little insect humming and chirping,
+adding its note to the blithe chorus of warm, throbbing life.
+
+“I was all alone with her. She passed away suddenly jest about break o'
+day,” said Lizy Ann Dennett.
+
+“Her soul passed upward to its God Just at the break of day.”
+
+These words came suddenly into Rebecca's mind from a tiny chamber where
+such things were wont to lie quietly until something brought them to the
+surface. She could not remember whether she had heard them at a funeral
+or read them in the hymn book or made them up “out of her own head,” but
+she was so thrilled with the idea of dying just as the dawn was breaking
+that she scarcely heard Mrs. Dennett's conversation.
+
+“I sent for Aunt Beulah Day, an' she's be'n here an' laid her out,”
+ continued the long suffering Lizy Ann. “She ain't got any folks, an'
+John Winslow ain't never had any as far back as I can remember. She
+belongs to your town and you'll have to bury her and take care of
+Jacky--that's the boy. He's seventeen months old, a bright little
+feller, the image o' John, but I can't keep him another day. I'm all
+wore out; my own baby's sick, mother's rheumatiz is extry bad, and my
+husband's comin' home tonight from his week's work. If he finds a child
+o' John Winslow's under his roof I can't say what would happen; you'll
+have to take him back with you to the poor farm.”
+
+“I can't take him up there this afternoon,” objected Mr. Perkins.
+
+“Well, then, keep him over Sunday yourself; he's good as a kitten. John
+Winslow'll hear o' Sal's death sooner or later, unless he's gone out of
+the state altogether, an' when he knows the boy's at the poor farm, I
+kind o' think he'll come and claim him. Could you drive me over to the
+village to see about the coffin, and would you children be afraid to
+stay here alone for a spell?” she asked, turning to the girls.
+
+“Afraid?” they both echoed uncomprehendingly.
+
+Lizy Ann and Mr. Perkins, perceiving that the fear of a dead presence
+had not entered the minds of Rebecca or Emma Jane, said nothing, but
+drove off together, counseling them not to stray far away from the cabin
+and promising to be back in an hour.
+
+There was not a house within sight, either looking up or down the shady
+road, and the two girls stood hand in hand, watching the wagon out of
+sight; then they sat down quietly under a tree, feeling all at once a
+nameless depression hanging over their gay summer-morning spirits.
+
+It was very still in the woods; just the chirp of a grasshopper now
+and then, or the note of a bird, or the click of a far-distant mowing
+machine.
+
+“We're WATCHING!” whispered Emma Jane. “They watched with Gran'pa
+Perkins, and there was a great funeral and two ministers. He left two
+thousand dollars in the bank and a store full of goods, and a paper
+thing you could cut tickets off of twice a year, and they were just like
+money.”
+
+“They watched with my little sister Mira, too,” said Rebecca. “You
+remember when she died, and I went home to Sunnybrook Farm? It was
+winter time, but she was covered with evergreen and white pinks, and
+there was singing.”
+
+“There won't be any funeral or ministers or singing here, will there?
+Isn't that awful?”
+
+“I s'pose not; and oh, Emma Jane, no flowers either. We might get those
+for her if there's nobody else to do it.”
+
+“Would you dare put them on to her?” asked Emma Jane, in a hushed voice.
+
+“I don't know; I can't tell; it makes me shiver, but, of course, we
+COULD do it if we were the only friends she had. Let's look into
+the cabin first and be perfectly sure that there aren't any. Are you
+afraid?”
+
+“N-no; I guess not. I looked at Gran'pa Perkins, and he was just the
+same as ever.”
+
+At the door of the hut Emma Jane's courage suddenly departed. She
+held back shuddering and refused either to enter or look in. Rebecca
+shuddered too, but kept on, drawn by an insatiable curiosity about life
+and death, an overmastering desire to know and feel and understand the
+mysteries of existence, a hunger for knowledge and experience at all
+hazards and at any cost.
+
+Emma Jane hurried softly away from the felt terrors of the cabin, and
+after two or three minutes of utter silence Rebecca issued from the
+open door, her sensitive face pale and woe-begone, the ever-ready tears
+raining down her cheeks. She ran toward the edge of the wood, sinking
+down by Emma Jane's side, and covering her eyes, sobbed with excitement:
+
+“Oh, Emma Jane, she hasn't got a flower, and she's so tired and
+sad-looking, as if she'd been hurt and hurt and never had any good
+times, and there's a weeny, weeny baby side of her. Oh, I wish I hadn't
+gone in!”
+
+Emma Jane blenched for an instant. “Mrs. Dennett never said THERE WAS
+TWO DEAD ONES! ISN'T THAT DREADFUL? But,” she continued, her practical
+common sense coming to the rescue, “you've been in once and it's all
+over; it won't be so bad when you take in the flowers because you'll
+be used to it. The goldenrod hasn't begun to bud, so there's nothing
+to pick but daisies. Shall I make a long rope of them, as I did for the
+schoolroom?”
+
+“Yes,” said Rebecca, wiping her eyes and still sobbing. “Yes, that's the
+prettiest, and if we put it all round her like a frame, the undertaker
+couldn't be so cruel as to throw it away, even if she is a pauper,
+because it will look so beautiful. From what the Sunday school lessons
+say, she's only asleep now, and when she wakes up she'll be in heaven.”
+
+“THERE'S ANOTHER PLACE,” said Emma Jane, in an orthodox and sepulchral
+whisper, as she took her ever-present ball of crochet cotton from her
+pocket and began to twine the whiteweed blossoms into a rope.
+
+“Oh, well!” Rebecca replied with the easy theology that belonged to her
+temperament. “They simply couldn't send her DOWN THERE with that little
+weeny baby. Who'd take care of it? You know page six of the catechism
+says the only companions of the wicked after death are their father the
+devil and all the other evil angels; it wouldn't be any place to bring
+up a baby.”
+
+“Whenever and wherever she wakes up, I hope she won't know that the big
+baby is going to the poor farm. I wonder where he is?”
+
+“Perhaps over to Mrs. Dennett's house. She didn't seem sorry a bit, did
+she?”
+
+“No, but I suppose she's tired sitting up and nursing a stranger. Mother
+wasn't sorry when Gran'pa Perkins died; she couldn't be, for he was
+cross all the time and had to be fed like a child. Why ARE you crying
+again, Rebecca?”
+
+“Oh, I don't know, I can't tell, Emma Jane! Only I don't want to die and
+have no funeral or singing and nobody sorry for me! I just couldn't bear
+it!”
+
+“Neither could I,” Emma Jane responded sympathetically; “but p'r'aps
+if we're real good and die young before we have to be fed, they will
+be sorry. I do wish you could write some poetry for her as you did for
+Alice Robinson's canary bird, only still better, of course, like that
+you read me out of your thought book.”
+
+“I could, easy enough,” exclaimed Rebecca, somewhat consoled by the
+idea that her rhyming faculty could be of any use in such an emergency.
+“Though I don't know but it would be kind of bold to do it. I'm all
+puzzled about how people get to heaven after they're buried. I can't
+understand it a bit; but if the poetry is on her, what if that should
+go, too? And how could I write anything good enough to be read out loud
+in heaven?”
+
+“A little piece of paper couldn't get to heaven; it just couldn't,”
+ asserted Emma Jane decisively. “It would be all blown to pieces and
+dried up. And nobody knows that the angels can read writing, anyway.”
+
+“They must be as educated as we are, and more so, too,” agreed Rebecca.
+“They must be more than just dead people, or else why should they have
+wings? But I'll go off and write something while you finish the rope;
+it's lucky you brought your crochet cotton and I my lead pencil.”
+
+In fifteen or twenty minutes she returned with some lines written on a
+scrap of brown wrapping paper. Standing soberly by Emma Jane, she said,
+preparing to read them aloud: “They're not good; I was afraid your
+father'd come back before I finished, and the first verse sounds exactly
+like the funeral hymns in the church book. I couldn't call her Sally
+Winslow; it didn't seem nice when I didn't know her and she is dead, so
+I thought if I said friend' it would show she had somebody to be sorry.
+
+     “This friend of ours has died and gone
+     From us to heaven to live.
+     If she has sinned against Thee, Lord,
+     We pray Thee, Lord, forgive.
+
+     “Her husband runneth far away
+     And knoweth not she's dead.
+     Oh, bring him back--ere tis too late--
+     To mourn beside her bed.
+
+     “And if perchance it can't be so,
+     Be to the children kind;
+     The weeny one that goes with her,
+     The other left behind.”
+
+“I think that's perfectly elegant!” exclaimed Emma Jane, kissing Rebecca
+fervently. “You are the smartest girl in the whole State of Maine, and
+it sounds like a minister's prayer. I wish we could save up and buy a
+printing machine. Then I could learn to print what you write and we'd
+be partners like father and Bill Moses. Shall you sign it with your name
+like we do our school compositions?”
+
+“No,” said Rebecca soberly. “I certainly shan't sign it, not knowing
+where it's going or who'll read it. I shall just hide it in the flowers,
+and whoever finds it will guess that there wasn't any minister or
+singing, or gravestone, or anything, so somebody just did the best they
+could.”
+
+
+III
+
+The tired mother with the “weeny baby” on her arm lay on a long
+carpenter's bench, her earthly journey over, and when Rebecca stole
+in and placed the flowery garland all along the edge of the rude bier,
+death suddenly took on a more gracious and benign aspect. It was only
+a child's sympathy and intuition that softened the rigors of the sad
+moment, but poor, wild Sal Winslow, in her frame of daisies, looked
+as if she were missed a little by an unfriendly world; while the weeny
+baby, whose heart had fallen asleep almost as soon as it had learned to
+beat, the weeny baby, with Emma Jane's nosegay of buttercups in its tiny
+wrinkled hand, smiled as if it might have been loved and longed for and
+mourned.
+
+“We've done all we can now without a minister,” whispered Rebecca. “We
+could sing, God is ever good' out of the Sunday school song book, but
+I'm afraid somebody would hear us and think we were gay and happy.
+What's that?”
+
+A strange sound broke the stillness; a gurgle, a yawn, a merry little
+call. The two girls ran in the direction from which it came, and there,
+on an old coat, in a clump of goldenrod bushes, lay a child just waking
+from a refreshing nap.
+
+“It's the other baby that Lizy Ann Dennett told about!” cried Emma Jane.
+
+“Isn't he beautiful!” exclaimed Rebecca. “Come straight to me!” and she
+stretched out her arms.
+
+The child struggled to its feet, and tottered, wavering, toward the warm
+welcome of the voice and eyes. Rebecca was all mother, and her maternal
+instincts had been well developed in the large family in which she was
+next to the eldest. She had always confessed that there were perhaps a
+trifle too many babies at Sunnybrook Farm, but, nevertheless, had she
+ever heard it, she would have stood loyally by the Japanese proverb:
+“Whether brought forth upon the mountain or in the field, it matters
+nothing; more than a treasure of one thousand ryo a baby precious is.”
+
+“You darling thing!” she crooned, as she caught and lifted the child.
+“You look just like a Jack-o'-lantern.”
+
+The boy was clad in a yellow cotton dress, very full and stiff. His hair
+was of such a bright gold, and so sleek and shiny, that he looked like
+a fair, smooth little pumpkin. He had wide blue eyes full of laughter,
+a neat little vertical nose, a neat little horizontal mouth with his
+few neat little teeth showing very plainly, and on the whole Rebecca's
+figure of speech was not so wide of the mark.
+
+“Oh, Emma Jane! Isn't he too lovely to go to the poor farm? If only we
+were married we could keep him and say nothing and nobody would know the
+difference! Now that the Simpsons have gone away there isn't a single
+baby in Riverboro, and only one in Edgewood. It's a perfect shame, but
+I can't do anything; you remember Aunt Miranda wouldn't let me have the
+Simpson baby when I wanted to borrow her just for one rainy Sunday.”
+
+“My mother won't keep him, so it's no use to ask her; she says most
+every day she's glad we're grown up, and she thanks the Lord there
+wasn't but two of us.”
+
+“And Mrs. Peter Meserve is too nervous,” Rebecca went on, taking the
+village houses in turn; “and Mrs. Robinson is too neat.”
+
+“People don't seem to like any but their own babies,” observed Emma
+Jane.
+
+“Well, I can't understand it,” Rebecca answered. “A baby's a baby, I
+should think, whose ever it is! Miss Dearborn is coming back Monday;
+I wonder if she'd like it? She has nothing to do out of school, and we
+could borrow it all the time!”
+
+“I don't think it would seem very genteel for a young lady like Miss
+Dearborn, who 'boards round,' to take a baby from place to place,”
+ objected Emma Jane.
+
+“Perhaps not,” agreed Rebecca despondently, “but I think if we haven't
+got any--any--PRIVATE babies in Riverboro we ought to have one for the
+town, and all have a share in it. We've got a town hall and a town lamp
+post and a town watering trough. Things are so uneven! One house like
+mine at Sunnybrook, brimful of children, and the very next one empty!
+The only way to fix them right would be to let all the babies that ever
+are belong to all the grown-up people that ever are,--just divide
+them up, you know, if they'd go round. Oh, I have a thought! Don't
+you believe Aunt Sarah Cobb would keep him? She carries flowers to the
+graveyard every little while, and once she took me with her. There's a
+marble cross, and it says: SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF SARAH ELLEN, BELOVED
+CHILD OF SARAH AND JEREMIAH COBB, AGED 17 MONTHS. Why, that's another
+reason; Mrs. Dennett says this one is seventeen months. There's five of
+us left at the farm without me, but if we were only nearer to Riverboro,
+how quick mother would let in one more!”
+
+“We might see what father thinks, and that would settle it,” said Emma
+Jane. “Father doesn't think very sudden, but he thinks awful strong. If
+we don't bother him, and find a place ourselves for the baby, perhaps
+he'll be willing. He's coming now; I hear the wheels.”
+
+Lizy Ann Dennett volunteered to stay and perform the last rites with
+the undertaker, and Jack-o'-lantern, with his slender wardrobe tied in
+a bandanna handkerchief, was lifted into the wagon by the reluctant Mr.
+Perkins, and jubilantly held by Rebecca in her lap. Mr. Perkins drove
+off as speedily as possible, being heartily sick of the whole affair,
+and thinking wisely that the little girls had already seen and heard
+more than enough of the seamy side of life that morning.
+
+Discussion concerning Jack-o'-lantern's future was prudently deferred
+for a quarter of an hour, and then Mr. Perkins was mercilessly pelted
+with arguments against the choice of the poor farm as a place of
+residence for a baby.
+
+“His father is sure to come back some time, Mr. Perkins,” urged Rebecca.
+“He couldn't leave this beautiful thing forever; and if Emma Jane and I
+can persuade Mrs. Cobb to keep him a little while, would you care?”
+
+No; on reflection Mr. Perkins did not care. He merely wanted a quiet
+life and enough time left over from the public service to attend to his
+blacksmith's shop; so instead of going home over the same road by which
+they came he crossed the bridge into Edgewood and dropped the children
+at the long lane which led to the Cobb house.
+
+Mrs. Cobb, “Aunt Sarah” to the whole village, sat by the window looking
+for Uncle Jerry, who would soon be seen driving the noon stage to the
+post office over the hill. She always had an eye out for Rebecca, too,
+for ever since the child had been a passenger on Mr. Cobb's stagecoach,
+making the eventful trip from her home farm to the brick house in
+Riverboro in his company, she had been a constant visitor and the joy
+of the quiet household. Emma Jane, too, was a well-known figure in the
+lane, but the strange baby was in the nature of a surprise--a surprise
+somewhat modified by the fact that Rebecca was a dramatic personage and
+more liable to appear in conjunction with curious outriders, comrades,
+and retainers than the ordinary Riverboro child. She had run away from
+the too stern discipline of the brick house on one occasion, and had
+been persuaded to return by Uncle Jerry. She had escorted a wandering
+organ grinder to their door and begged a lodging for him on a rainy
+night; so on the whole there was nothing amazing about the coming
+procession.
+
+The little party toiled up to the hospitable door, and Mrs. Cobb came
+out to meet them.
+
+Rebecca was spokesman. Emma Jane's talent did not lie in eloquent
+speech, but it would have been a valiant and a fluent child indeed
+who could have usurped Rebecca's privileges and tendencies in this
+direction, language being her native element, and words of assorted
+sizes springing spontaneously to her lips.
+
+“Aunt Sarah, dear,” she said, plumping Jack-o'-lantern down on the grass
+as she pulled his dress over his feet and smoothed his hair becomingly,
+“will you please not say a word till I get through--as it's very
+important you should know everything before you answer yes or no?
+This is a baby named Jacky Winslow, and I think he looks like a
+Jack-o'-lantern. His mother has just died over to North Riverboro, all
+alone, excepting for Mrs. Lizy Ann Dennett, and there was another little
+weeny baby that died with her, and Emma Jane and I put flowers
+around them and did the best we could. The father--that's John
+Winslow--quarreled with the mother--that was Sal Perry on the Moderation
+Road--and ran away and left her. So he doesn't know his wife and the
+weeny baby are dead. And the town has got to bury them because they
+can't find the father right off quick, and Jacky has got to go to the
+poor farm this afternoon. And it seems an awful shame to take him up to
+that lonesome place with those old people that can't amuse him, and
+if Emma Jane and Alice Robinson and I take most all the care of him we
+thought perhaps you and Uncle Jerry would keep him just for a little
+while. You've got a cow and a turn-up bedstead, you know,” she hurried
+on insinuatingly, “and there's hardly any pleasure as cheap as more
+babies where there's ever been any before, for baby carriages and
+trundle beds and cradles don't wear out, and there's always clothes
+left over from the old baby to begin the new one on. Of course, we can
+collect enough things to start Jacky, so he won't be much trouble or
+expense; and anyway, he's past the most troublesome age and you won't
+have to be up nights with him, and he isn't afraid of anybody or
+anything, as you can see by his just sitting there laughing and sucking
+his thumb, though he doesn't know what's going to become of him. And
+he's just seventeen months old like dear little Sarah Ellen in the
+graveyard, and we thought we ought to give you the refusal of him before
+he goes to the poor farm, and what do you think about it? Because it's
+near my dinner time and Aunt Miranda will keep me in the whole afternoon
+if I'm late, and I've got to finish weeding the hollyhock bed before
+sundown.”
+
+IV
+
+Mrs. Cobb had enjoyed a considerable period of reflection during this
+monologue, and Jacky had not used the time unwisely, offering several
+unconscious arguments and suggestions to the matter under discussion;
+lurching over on the greensward and righting himself with a chuckle,
+kicking his bare feet about in delight at the sunshine and groping for
+his toes with arms too short to reach them, the movement involving an
+entire upsetting of equilibrium followed by more chuckles.
+
+Coming down the last of the stone steps, Sarah Ellen's mother regarded
+the baby with interest and sympathy.
+
+“Poor little mite!” she said; “that doesn't know what he's lost and
+what's going to happen to him. Seems to me we might keep him a spell
+till we're sure his father's deserted him for good. Want to come to Aunt
+Sarah, baby?”
+
+Jack-o'-lantern turned from Rebecca and Emma Jane and regarded the kind
+face gravely; then he held out both his hands and Mrs. Cobb, stooping,
+gathered him like a harvest. Being lifted into her arms, he at once tore
+her spectacles from her nose and laughed aloud. Taking them from him
+gently, she put them on again, and set him in the cushioned rocking
+chair under the lilac bushes beside the steps. Then she took one of his
+soft hands in hers and patted it, and fluttered her fingers like birds
+before his eyes, and snapped them like castanets, remembering all the
+arts she had lavished upon “Sarah Ellen, aged seventeen months,” years
+and years ago.
+
+     Motherless baby and babyless mother,
+     Bring them together to love one another.
+
+Rebecca knew nothing of this couplet, but she saw clearly enough that
+her case was won.
+
+“The boy must be hungry; when was he fed last?” asked Mrs. Cobb. “Just
+stay a second longer while I get him some morning's milk; then you
+run home to your dinners and I'll speak to Mr. Cobb this afternoon. Of
+course, we can keep the baby for a week or two till we see what happens.
+Land! He ain't goin' to be any more trouble than a wax doll! I guess he
+ain't been used to much attention, and that kind's always the easiest to
+take care of.”
+
+At six o'clock that evening Rebecca and Emma Jane flew up the hill and
+down the lane again, waving their hands to the dear old couple who were
+waiting for them in the usual place, the back piazza where they had sat
+so many summers in a blessed companionship never marred by an unloving
+word.
+
+“Where's Jacky?” called Rebecca breathlessly, her voice always
+outrunning her feet.
+
+“Go up to my chamber, both of you, if you want to see,” smiled Mrs.
+Cobb, “only don't wake him up.”
+
+The girls went softly up the stairs into Aunt Sarah's room. There, in
+the turn-up bedstead that had been so long empty, slept Jack-o'-lantern,
+in blissful unconsciousness of the doom he had so lately escaped. His
+nightgown and pillow case were clean and fragrant with lavender, but
+they were both as yellow as saffron, for they had belonged to Sarah
+Ellen.
+
+“I wish his mother could see him!” whispered Emma Jane.
+
+“You can't tell; it's all puzzly about heaven, and perhaps she does,”
+ said Rebecca, as they turned reluctantly from the fascinating scene and
+stole down to the piazza.
+
+It was a beautiful and a happy summer that year, and every day it was
+filled with blissful plays and still more blissful duties. On the
+Monday after Jack-o'-lantern's arrival in Edgewood Rebecca founded the
+Riverboro Aunts Association. The Aunts were Rebecca, Emma Jane, Alice
+Robinson, and Minnie Smellie, and each of the first three promised
+to labor for and amuse the visiting baby for two days a week, Minnie
+Smellie, who lived at some distance from the Cobbs, making herself
+responsible for Saturday afternoons.
+
+Minnie Smellie was not a general favorite among the Riverboro girls, and
+it was only in an unprecedented burst of magnanimity that they admitted
+her into the rites of fellowship, Rebecca hugging herself secretly at
+the thought, that as Minnie gave only the leisure time of one day a
+week, she could not be called a “full” Aunt. There had been long and
+bitter feuds between the two children during Rebecca's first summer in
+Riverboro, but since Mrs. Smellie had told her daughter that one more
+quarrel would invite a punishment so terrible that it could only be
+hinted at vaguely, and Miss Miranda Sawyer had remarked that any niece
+of hers who couldn't get along peaceable with the neighbors had better
+go back to the seclusion of a farm where there weren't any, hostilities
+had been veiled, and a suave and diplomatic relationship had replaced
+the former one, which had been wholly primitive, direct, and barbaric.
+Still, whenever Minnie Smellie, flaxen-haired, pink-nosed, and
+ferret-eyed, indulged in fluent conversation, Rebecca, remembering the
+old fairy story, could always see toads hopping out of her mouth. It was
+really very unpleasant, because Minnie could never see them herself; and
+what was more amazing, Emma Jane perceived nothing of the sort, being
+almost as blind, too, to the diamonds that fell continually from
+Rebecca's lips; but Emma Jane's strong point was not her imagination.
+
+A shaky perambulator was found in Mrs. Perkins's wonderful attic; shoes
+and stockings were furnished by Mrs. Robinson; Miss Jane Sawyer knitted
+a blanket and some shirts; Thirza Meserve, though too young for an aunt,
+coaxed from her mother some dresses and nightgowns, and was presented
+with a green paper certificate allowing her to wheel Jacky up and down
+the road for an hour under the superintendence of a full Aunt. Each
+girl, under the constitution of the association, could call Jacky “hers”
+ for two days in the week, and great, though friendly, was the rivalry
+between them, as they washed, ironed, and sewed for their adored nephew.
+
+If Mrs. Cobb had not been the most amiable woman in the world she might
+have had difficulty in managing the aunts, but she always had Jacky to
+herself the earlier part of the day and after dusk at night.
+
+Meanwhile Jack-o'-lantern grew healthier and heartier and jollier as the
+weeks slipped away. Uncle Jerry joined the little company of worshipers
+and slaves, and one fear alone stirred in all their hearts; not, as a
+sensible and practical person might imagine, the fear that the recreant
+father might never return to claim his child, but, on the contrary, that
+he MIGHT do so!
+
+October came at length with its cheery days and frosty nights, its glory
+of crimson leaves and its golden harvest of pumpkins and ripened corn.
+Rebecca had been down by the Edgewood side of the river and had come
+up across the pastures for a good-night play with Jacky. Her literary
+labors had been somewhat interrupted by the joys and responsibilities of
+vice-motherhood, and the thought book was less frequently drawn from its
+hiding place under the old haymow in the barn chamber.
+
+Mrs. Cobb stood behind the screen door with her face pressed against the
+wire netting, and Rebecca could see that she was wiping her eyes.
+
+All at once the child's heart gave one prophetic throb and then stood
+still. She was like a harp that vibrated with every wind of emotion,
+whether from another's grief or her own.
+
+She looked down the lane, around the curve of the stone wall, red with
+woodbine, the lane that would meet the stage road to the station. There,
+just mounting the crown of the hill and about to disappear on the other
+side, strode a stranger man, big and tall, with a crop of reddish curly
+hair showing from under his straw hat. A woman walked by his side, and
+perched on his shoulder, wearing his most radiant and triumphant mien,
+as joyous in leaving Edgewood as he had been during every hour of his
+sojourn there--rode Jack-o'-lantern!
+
+Rebecca gave a cry in which maternal longing and helpless, hopeless
+jealousy strove for supremacy. Then, with an impetuous movement she
+started to run after the disappearing trio.
+
+Mrs. Cobb opened the door hastily, calling after her, “Rebecca, Rebecca,
+come back here! You mustn't follow where you haven't any right to go. If
+there'd been anything to say or do, I'd a' done it.”
+
+“He's mine! He's mine!” stormed Rebecca. “At least he's yours and mine!”
+
+“He's his father's first of all,” faltered Mrs. Cobb; “don't let's
+forget that; and we'd ought to be glad and grateful that John Winslow's
+come to his senses an' remembers he's brought a child into the world and
+ought to take care of it. Our loss is his gain and it may make a man of
+him. Come in, and we'll put things away all neat before your Uncle Jerry
+gets home.”
+
+Rebecca sank in a pitiful little heap on Mrs. Cobb's bedroom floor
+and sobbed her heart out. “Oh, Aunt Sarah, where shall we get another
+Jack-o'-lantern, and how shall I break it to Emma Jane? What if his
+father doesn't love him, and what if he forgets to strain the milk or
+lets him go without his nap? That's the worst of babies that aren't
+private--you have to part with them sooner or later!”
+
+“Sometimes you have to part with your own, too,” said Mrs. Cobb sadly;
+and though there were lines of sadness in her face there was neither
+rebellion nor repining, as she folded up the sides of the turn-up
+bedstead preparatory to banishing it a second time to the attic. “I
+shall miss Sarah Ellen now more'n ever. Still, Rebecca, we mustn't feel
+to complain. It's the Lord that giveth and the Lord that taketh away:
+Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
+
+
+
+
+Second Chronicle. DAUGHTERS OF ZION
+
+
+I
+
+Abijah Flagg was driving over to Wareham on an errand for old Squire
+Winship, whose general chore-boy and farmer's assistant he had been for
+some years.
+
+He passed Emma Jane Perkins's house slowly, as he always did. She was
+only a little girl of thirteen and he a boy of fifteen or sixteen, but
+somehow, for no particular reason, he liked to see the sun shine on her
+thick braids of reddish-brown hair. He admired her china-blue eyes too,
+and her amiable, friendly expression. He was quite alone in the world,
+and he always thought that if he had anybody belonging to him he would
+rather have a sister like Emma Jane Perkins than anything else within
+the power of Providence to bestow. When she herself suggested this
+relationship a few years later he cast it aside with scorn, having
+changed his mind in the interval--but that story belongs to another time
+and place.
+
+Emma Jane was not to be seen in garden, field, or at the window, and
+Abijah turned his gaze to the large brick house that came next on the
+other side of the quiet village street. It might have been closed for
+a funeral. Neither Miss Miranda nor Miss Jane Sawyer sat at their
+respective windows knitting, nor was Rebecca Randall's gypsy face to be
+discerned. Ordinarily that will-o'-the wispish little person could be
+seen, heard, or felt wherever she was.
+
+“The village must be abed, I guess,” mused Abijah, as he neared the
+Robinsons' yellow cottage, where all the blinds were closed and no sign
+of life showed on porch or in shed. “No, 't aint, neither,” he thought
+again, as his horse crept cautiously down the hill, for from the
+direction of the Robinsons' barn chamber there floated out into the air
+certain burning sentiments set to the tune of “Antioch.” The words, to a
+lad brought up in the orthodox faith, were quite distinguishable:
+
+“Daughter of Zion, from the dust, Exalt thy fallen head!”
+
+Even the most religious youth is stronger on first lines than others,
+but Abijah pulled up his horse and waited till he caught another
+familiar verse, beginning:
+
+“Rebuild thy walls, thy bounds enlarge, And send thy heralds forth.”
+
+“That's Rebecca carrying the air, and I can hear Emma Jane's alto.”
+
+     “Say to the North,
+     Give up thy charge,
+     And hold not back, O South,
+     And hold not back, O South,” etc.
+
+“Land! ain't they smart, seesawin' up and down in that part they learnt
+in singin' school! I wonder what they're actin' out, singin' hymn-tunes
+up in the barn chamber? Some o' Rebecca's doins, I'll be bound! Git dap,
+Aleck!”
+
+Aleck pursued his serene and steady trot up the hills on the Edgewood
+side of the river, till at length he approached the green Common where
+the old Tory Hill meeting-house stood, its white paint and green blinds
+showing fair and pleasant in the afternoon sun. Both doors were open,
+and as Abijah turned into the Wareham road the church melodeon pealed
+out the opening bars of the Missionary Hymn, and presently a score of
+voices sent the good old tune from the choir-loft out to the dusty road:
+
+     “Shall we whose souls are lighted
+     With Wisdom from on high,
+     Shall we to men benighted
+     The lamp of life deny?”
+
+“Land!” exclaimed Abijah under his breath. “They're at it up here, too!
+That explains it all. There's a missionary meeting at the church, and
+the girls wa'n't allowed to come so they held one of their own, and I
+bate ye it's the liveliest of the two.”
+
+Abijah Flagg's shrewd Yankee guesses were not far from the truth, though
+he was not in possession of all the facts. It will be remembered by
+those who have been in the way of hearing Rebecca's experiences in
+Riverboro, that the Rev. and Mrs. Burch, returned missionaries from the
+Far East, together with some of their children, “all born under Syrian
+skies,” as they always explained to interested inquirers, spent a day or
+two at the brick house, and gave parlor meetings in native costume.
+
+These visitors, coming straight from foreign lands to the little Maine
+village, brought with them a nameless enchantment to the children, and
+especially to Rebecca, whose imagination always kindled easily. The
+romance of that visit had never died in her heart, and among the many
+careers that dazzled her youthful vision was that of converting such
+Syrian heathen as might continue in idol worship after the Burches'
+efforts in their behalf had ceased. She thought at the age of eighteen
+she might be suitably equipped for storming some minor citadel of
+Mohammedanism; and Mrs. Burch had encouraged her in the idea, not, it is
+to be feared, because Rebecca showed any surplus of virtue or Christian
+grace, but because her gift of language, her tact and sympathy, and her
+musical talent seemed to fit her for the work.
+
+It chanced that the quarterly meeting of the Maine Missionary Society
+had been appointed just at the time when a letter from Mrs. Burch to
+Miss Jane Sawyer suggested that Rebecca should form a children's branch
+in Riverboro. Mrs. Burch's real idea was that the young people should
+save their pennies and divert a gentle stream of financial aid into
+the parent fund, thus learning early in life to be useful in such work,
+either at home or abroad.
+
+The girls themselves, however, read into her letter no such modest
+participation in the conversion of the world, and wishing to effect an
+organization without delay, they chose an afternoon when every house in
+the village was vacant, and seized upon the Robinsons' barn chamber as
+the place of meeting.
+
+Rebecca, Alice Robinson, Emma Jane Perkins, Candace Milliken, and Persis
+Watson, each with her hymn book, had climbed the ladder leading to
+the haymow a half hour before Abijah Flagg had heard the strains
+of “Daughters of Zion” floating out to the road. Rebecca, being an
+executive person, had carried, besides her hymn book, a silver call-bell
+and pencil and paper. An animated discussion regarding one of two
+names for the society, The Junior Heralds or The Daughters of Zion,
+had resulted in a unanimous vote for the latter, and Rebecca had been
+elected president at an early stage of the meeting. She had modestly
+suggested that Alice Robinson, as the granddaughter of a missionary to
+China, would be much more eligible.
+
+“No,” said Alice, with entire good nature, “whoever is ELECTED
+president, you WILL be, Rebecca--you're that kind--so you might as well
+have the honor; I'd just as lieves be secretary, anyway.”
+
+“If you should want me to be treasurer, I could be, as well as not,”
+ said Persis Watson suggestively; “for you know my father keeps china
+banks at his store--ones that will hold as much as two dollars if you
+will let them. I think he'd give us one if I happen to be treasurer.”
+
+The three principal officers were thus elected at one fell swoop
+and with an entire absence of that red tape which commonly renders
+organization so tiresome, Candace Milliken suggesting that perhaps she'd
+better be vice-president, as Emma Jane Perkins was always so bashful.
+
+“We ought to have more members,” she reminded the other girls, “but if
+we had invited them the first day they'd have all wanted to be officers,
+especially Minnie Smellie, so it's just as well not to ask them till
+another time. Is Thirza Meserve too little to join?”
+
+“I can't think why anybody named Meserve should have called a baby
+Thirza,” said Rebecca, somewhat out of order, though the meeting was
+carried on with small recognition of parliamentary laws. “It always
+makes me want to say:
+
+     Thirza Meserver
+     Heaven preserve her!
+     Thirza Meserver
+     Do we deserve her?
+
+She's little, but she's sweet, and absolutely without guile. I think we
+ought to have her.”
+
+“Is 'guile' the same as 'guilt?” inquired Emma Jane Perkins.
+
+“Yes,” the president answered; “exactly the same, except one is written
+and the other spoken language.” (Rebecca was rather good at imbibing
+information, and a master hand at imparting it!) “Written language is
+for poems and graduations and occasions like this--kind of like a best
+Sunday-go-to-meeting dress that you wouldn't like to go blueberrying in
+for fear of getting it spotted.”
+
+“I'd just as 'lieves get 'guile' spotted as not,” affirmed the
+unimaginative Emma Jane. “I think it's an awful foolish word; but now
+we're all named and our officers elected, what do we do first? It's
+easy enough for Mary and Martha Burch; they just play at missionarying
+because their folks work at it, same as Living and I used to make
+believe be blacksmiths when we were little.”
+
+“It must be nicer missionarying in those foreign places,” said Persis,
+“because on 'Afric's shores and India's plains and other spots where
+Satan reigns' (that's father's favorite hymn) there's always a heathen
+bowing down to wood and stone. You can take away his idols if he'll let
+you and give him a bible and the beginning's all made. But who'll we
+begin on? Jethro Small?”
+
+“Oh, he's entirely too dirty, and foolish besides!” exclaimed Candace.
+“Why not Ethan Hunt? He swears dreadfully.”
+
+“He lives on nuts and is a hermit, and it's a mile to his camp through
+the thick woods; my mother'll never let me go there,” objected Alice.
+“There's Uncle Tut Judson.”
+
+“He's too old; he's most a hundred and deaf as a post,” complained Emma
+Jane. “Besides, his married daughter is a Sabbath-school teacher--why
+doesn't she teach him to behave? I can't think of anybody just right to
+start on!”
+
+“Don't talk like that, Emma Jane,” and Rebecca's tone had a tinge of
+reproof in it. “We are a copperated body named the Daughters of Zion,
+and, of course, we've got to find something to do. Foreigners are the
+easiest; there's a Scotch family at North Riverboro, an English one in
+Edgewood, and one Cuban man at Millkin's Mills.”
+
+“Haven't foreigners got any religion of their own?” inquired Persis
+curiously.
+
+“Ye-es, I s'pose so; kind of a one; but foreigners' religions are never
+right--ours is the only good one.” This was from Candace, the deacon's
+daughter.
+
+“I do think it must be dreadful, being born with a religion and growing
+up with it, and then finding out it's no use and all your time wasted!”
+ Here Rebecca sighed, chewed a straw, and looked troubled.
+
+“Well, that's your punishment for being a heathen,” retorted Candace,
+who had been brought up strictly.
+
+“But I can't for the life of me see how you can help being a heathen if
+you're born in Africa,” persisted Persis, who was well named.
+
+“You can't.” Rebecca was clear on this point. “I had that all out with
+Mrs. Burch when she was visiting Aunt Miranda. She says they can't help
+being heathen, but if there's a single mission station in the whole of
+Africa, they're accountable if they don't go there and get saved.”
+
+“Are there plenty of stages and railroads?” asked Alice; “because there
+must be dreadfully long distances, and what if they couldn't pay the
+fare?”
+
+“That part of it is so dreadfully puzzly we mustn't talk about it,
+please,” said Rebecca, her sensitive face quivering with the force of
+the problem. Poor little soul! She did not realize that her superiors
+in age and intellect had spent many a sleepless night over that same
+“accountability of the heathen.”
+
+“It's too bad the Simpsons have moved away,” said Candace. “It's so
+seldom you can find a real big wicked family like that to save, with
+only Clara Belle and Susan good in it.”
+
+“And numbers count for so much,” continued Alice. “My grandmother says
+if missionaries can't convert about so many in a year the Board advises
+them to come back to America and take up some other work.”
+
+“I know,” Rebecca corroborated; “and it's the same with revivalists. At
+the Centennial picnic at North Riverboro, a revivalist sat opposite to
+Mr. Ladd and Aunt Jane and me, and he was telling about his wonderful
+success in Bangor last winter. He'd converted a hundred and thirty in
+a month, he said, or about four and a third a day. I had just finished
+fractions, so I asked Mr. Ladd how the third of a man could be
+converted. He laughed and said it was just the other way; that the man
+was a third converted. Then he explained that if you were trying to
+convince a person of his sin on a Monday, and couldn't quite finish by
+sundown, perhaps you wouldn't want to sit up all night with him, and
+perhaps he wouldn't want you to; so you'd begin again on Tuesday, and
+you couldn't say just which day he was converted, because it would be
+two thirds on Monday and one third on Tuesday.”
+
+“Mr. Ladd is always making fun, and the Board couldn't expect any great
+things of us girls, new beginners,” suggested Emma Jane, who was being
+constantly warned against tautology by her teacher. “I think it's awful
+rude, anyway, to go right out and try to convert your neighbors; but if
+you borrow a horse and go to Edgewood Lower Corner, or Milliken's Mills,
+I s'pose that makes it Foreign Missions.”
+
+“Would we each go alone or wait upon them with a committee, as they did
+when they asked Deacon Tuttle for a contribution for the new hearse?”
+ asked Persis.
+
+“Oh! We must go alone,” decided Rebecca; “it would be much more refined
+and delicate. Aunt Miranda says that one man alone could never get
+a subscription from Deacon Tuttle, and that's the reason they sent a
+committee. But it seems to me Mrs. Burch couldn't mean for us to try
+and convert people when we're none of us even church members, except
+Candace. I think all we can do is to persuade them to go to meeting and
+Sabbath school, or give money for the hearse, or the new horse sheds.
+Now let's all think quietly for a minute or two who's the very most
+heathenish and reperrehensiblest person in Riverboro.”
+
+After a very brief period of silence the words “Jacob Moody” fell from
+all lips with entire accord.
+
+“You are right,” said the president tersely; “and after singing hymn
+number two hundred seventy four, to be found on the sixty-sixth page,
+we will take up the question of persuading Mr. Moody to attend divine
+service or the minister's Bible class, he not having been in the
+meeting-house for lo! these many years.
+
+     'Daughter of Zion, the power that hath saved thee
+     Extolled with the harp and the timbrel should be.'
+
+“Sing without reading, if you please, omitting the second stanza. Hymn
+two seventy four, to be found on the sixty-sixth page of the new hymn
+book or on page thirty two of Emma Jane Perkins's old one.”
+
+II
+
+It is doubtful if the Rev. Mr. Burch had ever found in Syria a person
+more difficult to persuade than the already “gospel-hardened” Jacob
+Moody of Riverboro.
+
+Tall, gaunt, swarthy, black-bearded--his masses of grizzled, uncombed
+hair and the red scar across his nose and cheek added to his sinister
+appearance. His tumble-down house stood on a rocky bit of land back of
+the Sawyer pasture, and the acres of his farm stretched out on all sides
+of it. He lived alone, ate alone, plowed, planted, sowed, harvested
+alone, and was more than willing to die alone, “unwept, unhonored, and
+unsung.” The road that bordered upon his fields was comparatively little
+used by any one, and notwithstanding the fact that it was thickly set
+with chokecherry trees and blackberry bushes it had been for years
+practically deserted by the children. Jacob's Red Astrakhan and Granny
+Garland trees hung thick with apples, but no Riverboro or Edgewood boy
+stole them; for terrifying accounts of the fate that had overtaken one
+urchin in times agone had been handed along from boy to boy, protecting
+the Moody fruit far better than any police patrol.
+
+Perhaps no circumstances could have extenuated the old man's surly
+manners or his lack of all citizenly graces and virtues; but his
+neighbors commonly rebuked his present way of living and forgot the
+troubled past that had brought it about: the sharp-tongued wife, the
+unloving and disloyal sons, the daughter's hapless fate, and all the
+other sorry tricks that fortune had played upon him--at least that was
+the way in which he had always regarded his disappointments and griefs.
+
+This, then, was the personage whose moral rehabilitation was to be
+accomplished by the Daughters of Zion. But how?
+
+“Who will volunteer to visit Mr. Moody?” blandly asked the president.
+
+VISIT MR. MOODY! It was a wonder the roof of the barn chamber did not
+fall; it did, indeed echo the words and in some way make them sound more
+grim and satirical.
+
+“Nobody'll volunteer, Rebecca Rowena Randall, and you know it,” said
+Emma Jane.
+
+“Why don't we draw lots, when none of us wants to speak to him and yet
+one of us must?”
+
+This suggestion fell from Persis Watson, who had been pale and
+thoughtful ever since the first mention of Jacob Moody. (She was fond of
+Granny Garlands; she had once met Jacob; and, as to what befell, well,
+we all have our secret tragedies!)
+
+“Wouldn't it be wicked to settle it that way?”
+
+“It's gamblers that draw lots.”
+
+“People did it in the Bible ever so often.”
+
+“It doesn't seem nice for a missionary meeting.”
+
+These remarks fell all together upon the president's bewildered ear the
+while (as she always said in compositions)--“the while” she was trying
+to adjust the ethics of this unexpected and difficult dilemma.
+
+“It is a very puzzly question,” she said thoughtfully. “I could ask Aunt
+Jane if we had time, but I suppose we haven't. It doesn't seem nice to
+draw lots, and yet how can we settle it without? We know we mean right,
+and perhaps it will be. Alice, take this paper and tear off five narrow
+pieces, all different lengths.”
+
+At this moment a voice from a distance floated up to the haymow--a voice
+saying plaintively: “Will you let me play with you, girls? Huldah has
+gone to ride, and I'm all alone.”
+
+It was the voice of the absolutely-without-guile Thirza Meserve, and it
+came at an opportune moment.
+
+“If she is going to be a member,” said Persis, “why not let her come up
+and hold the lots? She'd be real honest and not favor anybody.”
+
+It seemed an excellent idea, and was followed up so quickly that
+scarcely three minutes ensued before the guileless one was holding the
+five scraps in her hot little palm, laboriously changing their places
+again and again until they looked exactly alike and all rather soiled
+and wilted.
+
+“Come, girls, draw!” commanded the president. “Thirza, you mustn't chew
+gum at a missionary meeting, it isn't polite nor holy. Take it out and
+stick it somewhere till the exercises are over.”
+
+The five Daughters of Zion approached the spot so charged with fate, and
+extended their trembling hands one by one. Then after a moment's silent
+clutch of their papers they drew nearer to one another and compared
+them.
+
+Emma Jane Perkins had drawn the short one, becoming thus the destined
+instrument for Jacob Moody's conversion to a more seemly manner of life!
+
+She looked about her despairingly, as if to seek some painless and
+respectable method of self-destruction.
+
+“Do let's draw over again,” she pleaded. “I'm the worst of all of us.
+I'm sure to make a mess of it till I kind o' get trained in.”
+
+Rebecca's heart sank at this frank confession, which only corroborated
+her own fears.
+
+“I'm sorry, Emmy, dear,” she said, “but our only excuse for drawing lots
+at all would be to have it sacred. We must think of it as a kind of a
+sign, almost like God speaking to Moses in the burning bush.”
+
+“Oh, I WISH there was a burning bush right here!” cried the distracted
+and recalcitrant missionary. “How quick I'd step into it without even
+stopping to take off my garnet ring!”
+
+“Don't be such a scare-cat, Emma Jane!” exclaimed Candace bracingly.
+“Jacob Moody can't kill you, even if he has an awful temper. Trot right
+along now before you get more frightened. Shall we go cross lots with
+her, Rebecca, and wait at the pasture gate? Then whatever happens Alice
+can put it down in the minutes of the meeting.”
+
+In these terrible crises of life time gallops with such incredible
+velocity that it seemed to Emma Jane only a breath before she was being
+dragged through the fields by the other Daughters of Zion, the guileless
+little Thirza panting in the rear.
+
+At the entrance to the pasture Rebecca gave her an impassioned embrace,
+and whispering, “WHATEVER YOU DO, BE CAREFUL HOW YOU LEAD UP,” lifted
+off the top rail and pushed her through the bars. Then the girls turned
+their backs reluctantly on the pathetic figure, and each sought a tree
+under whose friendly shade she could watch, and perhaps pray, until the
+missionary should return from her field of labor.
+
+Alice Robinson, whose compositions were always marked 96 or 97,--100
+symbolizing such perfection as could be attained in the mortal world of
+Riverboro,--Alice, not only Daughter, but Scribe of Zion, sharpened her
+pencil and wrote a few well-chosen words of introduction, to be used
+when the records of the afternoon had been made by Emma Jane Perkins and
+Jacob Moody.
+
+Rebecca's heart beat tumultuously under her gingham dress. She felt
+that a drama was being enacted, and though unfortunately she was not the
+central figure, she had at least a modest part in it. The short lot had
+not fallen to the properest Daughter, that she quite realized; yet would
+any one of them succeed in winning Jacob Moody's attention, in
+engaging him in pleasant conversation, and finally in bringing him to
+a realization of his mistaken way of life? She doubted, but at the same
+moment her spirits rose at the thought of the difficulties involved in
+the undertaking.
+
+Difficulties always spurred Rebecca on, but they daunted poor Emma Jane,
+who had no little thrills of excitement and wonder and fear and longing
+to sustain her lagging soul. That her interview was to be entered as
+“minutes” by a secretary seemed to her the last straw. Her blue eyes
+looked lighter than usual and had the glaze of china saucers; her
+usually pink cheeks were pale, but she pressed on, determined to be
+a faithful Daughter of Zion, and above all to be worthy of Rebecca's
+admiration and respect.
+
+“Rebecca can do anything,” she thought, with enthusiastic loyalty, “and
+I mustn't be any stupider than I can help, or she'll choose one of
+the other girls for her most intimate friend.” So, mustering all her
+courage, she turned into Jacob Moody's dooryard, where he was chopping
+wood.
+
+“It's a pleasant afternoon, Mr. Moody,” she said in a polite but hoarse
+whisper, Rebecca's words, “LEAD UP! LEAD UP!” ringing in clarion tones
+through her brain.
+
+Jacob Moody looked at her curiously. “Good enough, I guess,” he growled;
+“but I don't never have time to look at afternoons.”
+
+Emma Jane seated herself timorously on the end of a large log near the
+chopping block, supposing that Jacob, like other hosts, would pause in
+his tasks and chat.
+
+“The block is kind of like an idol,” she thought; “I wish I could take
+it away from him, and then perhaps he'd talk.”
+
+At this moment Jacob raised his axe and came down on the block with such
+a stunning blow that Emma Jane fairly leaped into the air.
+
+“You'd better look out, Sissy, or you'll git chips in the eye!” said
+Moody, grimly going on with his work.
+
+The Daughter of Zion sent up a silent prayer for inspiration, but none
+came, and she sat silent, giving nervous jumps in spite of herself
+whenever the axe fell upon the log Jacob was cutting.
+
+Finally, the host became tired of his dumb visitor, and leaning on
+his axe he said, “Look here, Sis, what have you come for? What's your
+errant? Do you want apples? Or cider? Or what? Speak out, or GIT out,
+one or t'other.”
+
+Emma Jane, who had wrung her handkerchief into a clammy ball, gave it
+a last despairing wrench, and faltered: “Wouldn't you like--hadn't you
+better--don't you think you'd ought to be more constant at meeting and
+Sabbath school?”
+
+Jacob's axe almost dropped from his nerveless hand, and he regarded
+the Daughter of Zion with unspeakable rage and disdain. Then, the blood
+mounting in his face, he gathered himself together, and shouted: “You
+take yourself off that log and out o' this dooryard double-quick, you
+imperdent sanct'omus young one! You just let me ketch Bill Perkins'
+child trying to teach me where I shall go, at my age! Scuttle, I tell
+ye! And if I see your pious cantin' little mug inside my fence ag'in on
+sech a business I'll chase ye down the hill or set the dog on ye! SCOOT,
+I TELL YE!”
+
+Emma Jane obeyed orders summarily, taking herself off the log, out the
+dooryard, and otherwise scuttling and scooting down the hill at a pace
+never contemplated even by Jacob Moody, who stood regarding her flying
+heels with a sardonic grin.
+
+Down she stumbled, the tears coursing over her cheeks and mingling with
+the dust of her flight; blighted hope, shame, fear, rage, all tearing
+her bosom in turn, till with a hysterical shriek she fell over the bars
+and into Rebecca's arms outstretched to receive her. The other Daughters
+wiped her eyes and supported her almost fainting form, while Thirza,
+thoroughly frightened, burst into sympathetic tears, and refused to be
+comforted.
+
+No questions were asked, for it was felt by all parties that Emma Jane's
+demeanor was answering them before they could be framed.
+
+“He threatened to set the dog on me!” she wailed presently, when, as
+they neared the Sawyer pasture, she was able to control her voice. “He
+called me a pious, cantin' young one, and said he'd chase me out o' the
+dooryard if I ever came again! And he'll tell my father--I know he will,
+for he hates him like poison.”
+
+All at once the adult point of view dawned upon Rebecca. She never
+saw it until it was too obvious to be ignored. Had they done wrong in
+interviewing Jacob Moody? Would Aunt Miranda be angry, as well as Mr.
+Perkins?
+
+“Why was he so dreadful, Emmy?” she questioned tenderly. “What did you
+say first? How did you lead up to it?”
+
+Emma Jane sobbed more convulsively, and wiped her nose and eyes
+impartially as she tried to think.
+
+“I guess I never led up at all; not a mite. I didn't know what you
+meant. I was sent on an errant, and I went and done it the best I could!
+(Emma Jane's grammar always lapsed in moments of excitement.) And then
+Jake roared at me like Squire Winship's bull.... And he called my face
+a mug.... You shut up that secretary book, Alice Robinson! If you write
+down a single word I'll never speak to you again.... And I don't want to
+be a member' another minute for fear of drawing another short lot. I've
+got enough of the Daughters or Zion to last me the rest o' my life! I
+don't care who goes to meetin' and who don't.”
+
+The girls were at the Perkins's gate by this time, and Emma Jane went
+sadly into the empty house to remove all traces of the tragedy from her
+person before her mother should come home from the church.
+
+The others wended their way slowly down the street, feeling that their
+promising missionary branch had died almost as soon as it had budded.
+
+“Goodby,” said Rebecca, swallowing lumps of disappointment and chagrin
+as she saw the whole inspiring plan break and vanish into thin air like
+an iridescent bubble. “It's all over and we won't ever try it again.
+I'm going in to do overcasting as hard as I can, because I hate that the
+worst. Aunt Jane must write to Mrs. Burch that we don't want to be
+home missionaries. Perhaps we're not big enough, anyway. I'm perfectly
+certain it's nicer to convert people when they're yellow or brown or
+any color but white; and I believe it must be easier to save their souls
+than it is to make them go to meeting.”
+
+
+
+
+Third Chronicle. REBECCA'S THOUGHT BOOK
+
+
+I
+
+The “Sawyer girls'” barn still had its haymow in Rebecca's time,
+although the hay was a dozen years old or more, and, in the opinion of
+the occasional visiting horse, sadly juiceless and wanting in flavor.
+It still sheltered, too, old Deacon Israel Sawyer's carryall and
+mowing-machine, with his pung, his sleigh, and a dozen other survivals
+of an earlier era, when the broad acres of the brick house went to make
+one of the finest farms in Riverboro.
+
+There were no horses or cows in the stalls nowadays; no pig grunting
+comfortably of future spare ribs in the sty; no hens to peck the plants
+in the cherished garden patch. The Sawyer girls were getting on in
+years, and, mindful that care once killed a cat, they ordered their
+lives with the view of escaping that particular doom, at least, and
+succeeded fairly well until Rebecca's advent made existence a trifle
+more sensational.
+
+Once a month for years upon years, Miss Miranda and Miss Jane had put
+towels over their heads and made a solemn visit to the barn, taking off
+the enameled cloth coverings (occasionally called “emmanuel covers” in
+Riverboro), dusting the ancient implements, and sometimes sweeping
+the heaviest of the cobwebs from the corners, or giving a brush to the
+floor.
+
+Deacon Israel's tottering ladder still stood in its accustomed place,
+propped against the haymow, and the heavenly stairway leading to eternal
+glory scarcely looked fairer to Jacob of old than this to Rebecca. By
+means of its dusty rounds she mounted, mounted, mounted far away
+from time and care and maiden aunts, far away from childish tasks
+and childish troubles, to the barn chamber, a place so full of golden
+dreams, happy reveries, and vague longings, that, as her little brown
+hands clung to the sides of the ladder and her feet trod the rounds
+cautiously in her ascent, her heart almost stopped beating in the sheer
+joy of anticipation.
+
+Once having gained the heights, the next thing was to unlatch the heavy
+doors and give them a gentle swing outward. Then, oh, ever new Paradise!
+Then, oh, ever lovely green and growing world! For Rebecca had that
+something in her soul that
+
+“Gives to seas and sunset skies The unspent beauty of surprise.”
+
+At the top of Guide Board hill she could see Alice Robinson's barn with
+its shining weather vane, a huge burnished fish that swam with the wind
+and foretold the day to all Riverboro. The meadow, with its sunny
+slopes stretching up to the pine woods, was sometimes a flowing sheet
+of shimmering grass, sometimes--when daisies and buttercups were
+blooming--a vision of white and gold. Sometimes the shorn stubble would
+be dotted with “the happy hills of hay,” and a little later the rock
+maple on the edge of the pines would stand out like a golden ball
+against the green; its neighbor, the sugar maple, glowing beside it,
+brave in scarlet.
+
+It was on one of these autumn days with a wintry nip in the air that
+Adam Ladd (Rebecca's favorite “Mr. Aladdin”), after searching for her in
+field and garden, suddenly noticed the open doors of the barn chamber,
+and called to her. At the sound of his vice she dropped her precious
+diary, and flew to the edge of the haymow. He never forgot the vision
+of the startled little poetess, book in one mittened hand, pencil in
+the other, dark hair all ruffled, with the picturesque addition of an
+occasional glade of straw, her cheeks crimson, her eyes shining.
+
+“A Sappho in mittens!” he cried laughingly, and at her eager question
+told her to look up the unknown lady in the school encyclopedia, when
+she was admitted to the Female Seminary at Wareham.
+
+Now, all being ready, Rebecca went to a corner of the haymow, and
+withdrew a thick blank-book with mottled covers. Out of her gingham
+apron pocket came a pencil, a bit of rubber, and some pieces of brown
+paper; then she seated herself gravely on the floor, and drew an
+inverted soapbox nearer to her for a table.
+
+The book was reverently opened, and there was a serious reading of the
+extracts already carefully copied therein. Most of them were apparently
+to the writer's liking, for dimples of pleasure showed themselves now
+and then, and smiles of obvious delight played about her face; but
+once in a while there was a knitting of the brows and a sigh of
+discouragement, showing that the artist in the child was not wholly
+satisfied.
+
+Then came the crucial moment when the budding author was supposedly to
+be racked with the throes of composition; but seemingly there were
+no throes. Other girls could wield the darning or crochet or knitting
+needle, and send the tatting shuttle through loops of the finest cotton;
+hemstitch, oversew, braid hair in thirteen strands, but the pencil was
+never obedient in their fingers, and the pen and ink-pot were a horror
+from early childhood to the end of time.
+
+Not so with Rebecca; her pencil moved as easily as her tongue, and no
+more striking simile could possibly be used. Her handwriting was not
+Spencerian; she had neither time, nor patience, it is to be feared,
+for copybook methods, and her unformed characters were frequently the
+despair of her teachers; but write she could, write she would, write she
+must and did, in season and out; from the time she made pothooks at six,
+till now, writing was the easiest of all possible tasks; to be indulged
+in as solace and balm when the terrors of examples in least common
+multiple threatened to dethrone the reason, or the rules of grammar
+loomed huge and unconquerable in the near horizon.
+
+As to spelling, it came to her in the main by free grace, and not by
+training, and though she slipped at times from the beaten path, her
+extraordinary ear and good visual memory kept her from many or flagrant
+mistakes. It was her intention, especially when saying her prayers at
+night, to look up all doubtful words in her small dictionary, before
+copying her Thoughts into the sacred book for the inspiration
+of posterity; but when genius burned with a brilliant flame, and
+particularly when she was in the barn and the dictionary in the house,
+impulse as usual carried the day.
+
+There sits Rebecca, then, in the open door of the Sawyers barn
+chamber--the sunset door. How many a time had her grandfather, the good
+deacon, sat just underneath in his tipped-back chair, when Mrs. Israel's
+temper was uncertain, and the serenity of the barn was in comforting
+contrast to his own fireside!
+
+The open doors swinging out to the peaceful landscape, the solace of the
+pipe, not allowed in the “settin'-room”--how beautifully these simple
+agents have ministered to the family peace in days agone! “If I hadn't
+had my barn and my store BOTH, I couldn't never have lived in holy
+matrimony with Maryliza!” once said Mr. Watson feelingly.
+
+But the deacon, looking on his waving grass fields, his tasseling corn
+and his timber lands, bright and honest as were his eyes, never saw
+such visions as Rebecca. The child, transplanted from her home farm at
+Sunnybrook, from the care of the overworked but easy-going mother, and
+the companionship of the scantily fed, scantily clothed, happy-go-lucky
+brothers and sisters--she had indeed fallen on shady days in Riverboro.
+The blinds were closed in every room of the house but two, and the same
+might have been said of Miss Miranda's mind and heart, though Miss
+Jane had a few windows opening to the sun, and Rebecca already had her
+unconscious hand on several others. Brickhouse rules were rigid and many
+for a little creature so full of life, but Rebecca's gay spirit could
+not be pinioned in a strait jacket for long at a time; it escaped
+somehow and winged its merry way into the sunshine and free air; if she
+were not allowed to sing in the orchard, like the wild bird she was, she
+could still sing in the cage, like the canary.
+
+II
+
+If you had opened the carefully guarded volume with the mottled covers,
+you would first have seen a wonderful title page, constructed apparently
+on the same lines as an obituary, or the inscription on a tombstone,
+save for the quantity and variety of information contained in it. Much
+of the matter would seem to the captious critic better adapted to the
+body of the book than to the title page, but Rebecca was apparently
+anxious that the principal personages in her chronicle should be well
+described at the outset.
+
+She seems to have had a conviction that heredity plays its part in the
+evolution of genius, and her belief that the world will be inspired
+by the possession of her Thoughts is too artless to be offensive. She
+evidently has respect for rich material confided to her teacher, and
+one can imagine Miss Dearborn's woe had she been confronted by Rebecca's
+chosen literary executor and bidden to deliver certain “Valuable Poetry
+and Thoughts,” the property of posterity “unless carelessly destroyed.”
+
+THOUGHT BOOK of Rebecca Rowena Randall Really of Sunnybrook Farm But
+temporily of The Brick House Riverboro. Own niece of Miss Miranda and
+Jane Sawyer Second of seven children of her father, Mr. L. D. M. Randall
+(Now at rest in Temperance cemmetary and there will be a monument as
+soon as we pay off the mortgage on the farm) Also of her mother Mrs.
+Aurelia Randall
+
+     In case of Death the best of these Thoughts
+     May be printed in my Remerniscences
+     For the Sunday School Library at Temperance, Maine
+     Which needs more books fearfully
+     And I hereby
+     Will and Testament them to Mr. Adam Ladd
+     Who bought 300 cakes of soap from me
+     And thus secured a premium
+     A Greatly Needed Banquet Lamp
+     For my friends the Simpsons.
+     He is the only one that incourages
+     My writing Remerniscences and
+     My teacher Miss Dearborn will
+     Have much valuable Poetry and Thoughts
+     To give him unless carelessly destroyed.
+
+     The pictures are by the same hand that
+     Wrote the Thoughts.
+
+IT IS NOT NOW DECIDED WHETHER REBECCA ROWENA RANDALL WILL BE A PAINTER
+OR AN AUTHOR, BUT AFTER HER DEATH IT WILL BE KNOWN WHICH SHE HAS BEEN,
+IF ANY.
+
+FINIS
+
+From the title page, with its wealth of detail, and its unnecessary and
+irrelevant information, the book ripples on like a brook, and to the
+weary reader of problem novels it may have something of the brook's
+refreshing quality.
+
+OUR DIARIES May, 187--
+
+All the girls are keeping a diary because Miss Dearborn was very much
+ashamed when the school trustees told her that most of the girls' and
+all of the boys' compositions were disgraceful, and must be improved
+upon next term. She asked the boys to write letters to her once a week
+instead of keeping a diary, which they thought was girlish like playing
+with dolls. The boys thought it was dreadful to have to write letters
+every seven days, but she told them it was not half as bad for them as
+it was for her who had to read them.
+
+To make my diary a little different I am going to call it a THOUGHT Book
+(written just like that, with capitals). I have thoughts that I never
+can use unless I write them down, for Aunt Miranda always says, Keep
+your thoughts to yourself. Aunt Jane lets me tell her some, but does not
+like my queer ones and my true thoughts are mostly queer. Emma Jane does
+not mind hearing them now and then, and that is my only chance.
+
+If Miss Dearborn does not like the name Thought Book I will call it
+Remerniscences (written just like that with a capital R). Remerniscences
+are things you remember about yourself and write down in case you should
+die. Aunt Jane doesn't like to read any other kind of books but just
+lives of interesting dead people and she says that is what Longfellow
+(who was born in the state of Maine and we should be very proud of it
+and try to write like him) meant in his poem:
+
+     “Lives of great men all remind us
+     We should make our lives sublime,
+     And departing, leave behind us
+     Footprints on the sands of time.”
+
+I know what this means because when Emma Jane and I went to the beach
+with Uncle Jerry Cobb we ran along the wet sand and looked at the shapes
+our boots made, just as if they were stamped in wax. Emma Jane turns in
+her left foot (splayfoot the boys call it, which is not polite) and Seth
+Strout had just patched one of my shoes and it all came out in the sand
+pictures. When I learned The Psalm of Life for Friday afternoon speaking
+I thought I shouldn't like to leave a patched footprint, nor have Emma
+Jane's look crooked on the sands of time, and right away I thought Oh!
+What a splendid thought for my Thought Book when Aunt Jane buys me a
+fifteen-cent one over to Watson's store.
+
+* * * * *
+
+
+REMERNISCENCES
+
+June, 187--
+
+I told Aunt Jane I was going to begin my Remerniscences, and she says
+I am full young, but I reminded her that Candace Milliken's sister died
+when she was ten, leaving no footprints whatever, and if I should die
+suddenly who would write down my Remerniscences? Aunt Miranda says the
+sun and moon would rise and set just the same, and it was no matter if
+they didn't get written down, and to go up attic and find her piece-bag;
+but I said it would, as there was only one of everybody in the world,
+and nobody else could do their remerniscensing for them. If I should die
+tonight I know now who would describe me right. Miss Dearborn would
+say one thing and brother John another. Emma Jane would try to do me
+justice, but has no words; and I am glad Aunt Miranda never takes the
+pen in hand.
+
+My dictionary is so small it has not many genteel words in it, and I
+cannot find how to spell Remerniscences, but I remember from the cover
+of Aunt Jane's book that there was an “s” and a “c” close together in
+the middle of it, which I thought foolish and not needful.
+
+All the girls like their dairies very much, but Minnie Smellie got Alice
+Robinson's where she had hid it under the school wood pile and read
+it all through. She said it was no worse than reading anybody's
+composition, but we told her it was just like peeking through a keyhole,
+or listening at a window, or opening a bureau drawer. She said she
+didn't look at it that way, and I told her that unless her eyes got
+unscealed she would never leave any kind of a sublime footprint on
+the sands of time. I told her a diary was very sacred as you generally
+poured your deepest feelings into it expecting nobody to look at it but
+yourself and your indulgent heavenly Father who seeeth all things.
+
+Of course it would not hurt Persis Watson to show her diary because she
+has not a sacred plan and this is the way it goes, for she reads it out
+loud to us:
+
+“Arose at six this morning--(you always arise in a diary but you say
+get up when you talk about it). Ate breakfast at half past six. Had soda
+biscuits, coffee, fish hash and doughnuts. Wiped the dishes, fed the
+hens and made my bed before school. Had a good arithmetic lesson, but
+went down two in spelling. At half past four played hide and coop in the
+Sawyer pasture. Fed hens and went to bed at eight.”
+
+She says she can't put in what doesn't happen, but as I don't think her
+diary is interesting she will ask her mother to have meat hash instead
+of fish, with pie when the doughnuts give out, and she will feed the
+hens before breakfast to make a change. We are all going now to try and
+make something happen every single day so the diaries won't be so dull
+and the footprints so common.
+
+* * * * *
+
+
+AN UNCOMMON THOUGHT
+
+July 187--
+
+We dug up our rosecakes today, and that gave me a good Remerniscence.
+The way you make rose cakes is, you take the leaves of full blown roses
+and mix them with a little cinnamon and as much brown sugar as they
+will give you, which is never half enough except Persis Watson, whose
+affectionate parents let her go to the barrel in their store. Then you
+do up little bits like sedlitz powders, first in soft paper and then
+in brown, and bury them in the ground and let them stay as long as you
+possibly can hold out; then dig them up and eat them. Emma Jane and
+I stick up little signs over the holes in the ground with the date we
+buried them and when they'll be done enough to dig up, but we can never
+wait. When Aunt Jane saw us she said it was the first thing for children
+to learn,--not to be impatient,--so when I went to the barn chamber I
+made a poem.
+
+IMPATIENCE
+
+We dug our rose cakes up oh! all too soon. Twas in the orchard just at
+noon. Twas in a bright July forenoon. Twas in the sunny afternoon. Twas
+underneath the harvest moon.
+
+It was not that way at all; it was a foggy morning before school, and I
+should think poets could never possibly get to heaven, for it is so hard
+to stick to the truth when you are writing poetry. Emma Jane thinks it
+is nobody's business when we dug the rosecakes up. I like the line about
+the harvest moon best, but it would give a wrong idea of our lives and
+characters to the people that read my Thoughts, for they would think we
+were up late nights, so I have fixed it like this:
+
+                    IMPATIENCE
+
+     We dug our rose cakes up oh! all too soon,
+     We thought their sweetness would be such a boon.
+     We ne'er suspicioned they would not be done
+     After three days of autumn wind and sun.
+     Why did we from the earth our treasures draw?
+     Twas not for fear that rat or mole might naw,
+     An aged aunt doth say impatience was the reason,
+     She says that youth is ever out of season.
+
+That is just as Aunt Jane said it, and it gave me the thought for the
+poem which is rather uncommon.
+
+* * * * *
+
+
+A DREADFUL QUESTION
+
+September, 187--
+
+WHICH HAS BEEN THE MOST BENEFERCENT INFLUENCE ON CHARACTER--PUNISHMENT
+OR REWARD?
+
+This truly dreadful question was given us by Dr. Moses when he visited
+school today. He is a School Committee; not a whole one but I do not
+know the singular number of him. He told us we could ask our families
+what they thought, though he would rather we wouldn't, but we must write
+our own words and he would hear them next week.
+
+After he went out and shut the door the scholars were all plunged in
+gloom and you could have heard a pin drop. Alice Robinson cried and
+borrowed my handkerchief, and the boys looked as if the schoolhouse had
+been struck by lightning. The worst of all was poor Miss Dearborn, who
+will lose her place if she does not make us better scholars soon, for
+Dr. Moses has a daughter all ready to put right in to the school and she
+can board at home and save all her wages. Libby Moses is her name.
+
+Miss Dearborn stared out the window, and her mouth and chin shook like
+Alice Robinson's, for she knew, ah! all to well, what the coming week
+would bring forth.
+
+Then I raised my hand for permission to speak, and stood up and said:
+“Miss Dearborn, don't you mind! Just explain to us what benefercent'
+means and we'll write something real interesting; for all of us know
+what punishment is, and have seen others get rewards, and it is not so
+bad a subject as some.” And Dick Carter whispered, “GOOD ON YOUR HEAD,
+REBECCA!” which mean he was sorry for her too, and would try his best,
+but has no words.
+
+Then teacher smiled and said benefercent meant good or healthy for
+anybody, and would all rise who thought punishment made the best
+scholars and men and women; and everybody sat stock still.
+
+And then she asked all to stand who believed that rewards produced the
+finest results, and there was a mighty sound like unto the rushing of
+waters, but really was our feet scraping the floor, and the scholars
+stood up, and it looked like an army, though it was only nineteen,
+because of the strong belief that was in them. Then Miss Dearborn
+laughed and said she was thankful for every whipping she had when
+she was a child, and Living Perkins said perhaps we hadn't got to the
+thankful age, or perhaps her father hadn't used a strap, and she said
+oh! no, it was her mother with the open hand; and Dick Carter said he
+wouldn't call that punishment, and Sam Simpson said so too.
+
+I am going to write about the subject in my Thought Book first, and when
+I make it into a composition, I can leave out anything about the family
+or not genteel, as there is much to relate about punishment not pleasant
+or nice and hardly polite.
+
+* * * * * * * * * * * * *
+
+PUNISHMENT
+
+Punishment is a very puzzly thing, but I believe in it when really
+deserved, only when I punish myself it does not always turn out well.
+When I leaned over the new bridge, and got my dress all paint, and Aunt
+Sarah Cobb couldn't get it out, I had to wear it spotted for six
+months which hurt my pride, but was right. I stayed at home from Alice
+Robinson's birthday party for a punishment, and went to the circus
+next day instead, but Alice's parties are very cold and stiff, as Mrs.
+Robinson makes the boys stand on newspapers if they come inside the
+door, and the blinds are always shut, and Mrs. Robinson tells me how bad
+her liver complaint is this year. So I thought, to pay for the circus
+and a few other things, I ought to get more punishment, and I threw my
+pink parasol down the well, as the mothers in the missionary books throw
+their infants to the crocodiles in the Ganges river. But it got stuck
+in the chain that holds the bucket, and Aunt Miranda had to get Abijah
+Flagg to take out all the broken bits before we could ring up water.
+
+I punished myself this way because Aunt Miranda said that unless I
+improved I would be nothing but a Burden and a Blight.
+
+There was an old man used to go by our farm carrying a lot of broken
+chairs to bottom, and mother used to say--“Poor man! His back is too
+weak for such a burden!” and I used to take him out a doughnut, and this
+is the part I want to go into the Remerniscences. Once I told him we
+were sorry the chairs were so heavy, and he said THEY DIDN'T SEEM SO
+HEAVY WHEN HE HAD ET THE DOUGHNUT. This does not mean that the doughnut
+was heavier than the chairs which is what brother John said, but it is a
+beautiful thought and shows how the human race should have sympathy, and
+help bear burdens.
+
+I know about a Blight, for there was a dreadful east wind over at our
+farm that destroyed all the little young crops just out of the ground,
+and the farmers called it the Blight. And I would rather be hail, sleet,
+frost, or snow than a Blight, which is mean and secret, and which is the
+reason I threw away the dearest thing on earth to me, the pink parasol
+that Miss Ross brought me from Paris, France. I have also wrapped up my
+bead purse in three papers and put it away marked not to be opened till
+after my death unless needed for a party.
+
+I must not be Burden, I must not be Blight, The angels in heaven would
+weep at the sight.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+REWARDS
+
+A good way to find out which has the most benefercent effect would be to
+try rewards on myself this next week and write my composition the very
+last day, when I see how my character is. It is hard to find rewards for
+yourself, but perhaps Aunt Jane and some of the girls would each give
+me one to help out. I could carry my bead purse to school every day,
+or wear my coral chain a little while before I go to sleep at night. I
+could read Cora or the Sorrows of a Doctor's Wife a little oftener, but
+that's all the rewards I can think of. I fear Aunt Miranda would say
+they are wicked but oh! if they should turn out benefercent how glad and
+joyful life would be to me! A sweet and beautiful character, beloved
+by my teacher and schoolmates, admired and petted by my aunts and
+neighbors, yet carrying my bead purse constantly, with perhaps my best
+hat on Wednesday afternoons, as well as Sundays!
+
+* * * * *
+
+A GREAT SHOCK
+
+The reason why Alice Robinson could not play was, she was being punished
+for breaking her mother's blue platter. Just before supper my story
+being finished I went up Guide Board hill to see how she was bearing
+up and she spoke to me from her window. She said she did not mind being
+punished because she hadn't been for a long time, and she hoped it would
+help her with her composition. She thought it would give her thoughts,
+and tomorrow's the last day for her to have any. This gave me a good
+idea and I told her to call her father up and beg him to beat her
+violently. It would hurt, I said, but perhaps none of the other girls
+would have a punishment like that, and her composition would be all
+different and splendid. I would borrow Aunt Miranda's witchhayzel and
+pour it on her wounds like the Samaritan in the Bible.
+
+I went up again after supper with Dick Carter to see how it turned out.
+Alice came to the window and Dick threw up a note tied to a stick. I
+had written: “DEMAND YOUR PUNISHMENT TO THE FULL. BE BRAVE LIKE DOLORES'
+MOTHER IN THE Martyrs of Spain.”
+
+She threw down an answer, and it was: “YOU JUST BE LIKE DOLORES' MOTHER
+YOURSELF IF YOU'RE SO SMART!” Then she stamped away from the window and
+my feelings were hurt, but Dick said perhaps she was hungry, and that
+made her cross. And as Dick and I turned to go out of the yard we looked
+back and I saw something I can never forget. (The Great Shock) Mrs.
+Robinson was out behind the barn feeding the turkies. Mr. Robinson
+came softly out of the side door in the orchard and looking everywheres
+around he stepped to the wire closet and took out a saucer of cold beans
+with a pickled beet on top, and a big piece of blueberry pie. Then he
+crept up the back stairs and we could see Alice open her door and take
+in the supper.
+
+Oh! What will become of her composition, and how can she tell anything
+of the benefercent effects of punishment, when she is locked up by
+one parent, and fed by the other? I have forgiven her for the way she
+snapped me up for, of course, you couldn't beg your father to beat you
+when he was bringing you blueberry pie. Mrs. Robinson makes a kind that
+leaks out a thick purple juice into the plate and needs a spoon and
+blacks your mouth, but is heavenly.
+
+* * * * *
+
+A DREAM
+
+The week is almost up and very soon Dr. Moses will drive up to the
+school house like Elijah in the chariot and come in to hear us read.
+There is a good deal of sickness among us. Some of the boys are not able
+to come to school just now, but hope to be about again by Monday, when
+Dr. Moses goes away to a convention. It is a very hard composition to
+write, somehow. Last night I dreamed that the river was ink and I kept
+dipping into it and writing with a penstalk made of a young pine tree. I
+sliced great slabs of marble off the side of one of the White Mountains,
+the one you see when going to meeting, and wrote on those. Then I threw
+them all into the falls, not being good enough for Dr. Moses.
+
+Dick Carter had a splendid boy to stay over Sunday. He makes the real
+newspaper named The Pilot published by the boys at Wareham Academy. He
+says when he talks about himself in writing he calls himself “we,” and
+it sounds much more like print, besides conscealing him more.
+
+Example: Our hair was measured this morning and has grown two inches
+since last time.... We have a loose tooth that troubles us very much...
+Our inkspot that we made by negligence on our only white petticoat we
+have been able to remove with lemon and milk. Some of our petticoat came
+out with the spot.
+
+I shall try it in my composition sometime, for of course I shall write
+for the Pilot when I go to Wareham Seminary. Uncle Jerry Cobb says that
+I shall, and thinks that in four years I might rise to be editor if they
+ever have girls.
+
+I have never been more good than since I have been rewarding myself
+steady, even to asking Aunt Miranda kindly to offer me a company jelly
+tart, not because I was hungry, but for an experement I was trying, and
+would explain to her sometime.
+
+She said she never thought it was wise to experement with your stomach,
+and I said, with a queer thrilling look, it was not my stomach but my
+soul, that was being tried. Then she gave me the tart and walked away
+all puzzled and nervous.
+
+The new minister has asked me to come and see him any Saturday afternoon
+as he writes poetry himself, but I would rather not ask him about this
+composition.
+
+Ministers never believe in rewards, and it is useless to hope that they
+will. We had the wrath of God four times in sermons this last summer,
+but God cannot be angry all the time,--nobody could, especially in
+summer; Mr. Baxter is different and calls his wife dear which is lovely
+and the first time I ever heard it in Riverboro. Mrs. Baxter is another
+kind of people too, from those that live in Temperance. I like to
+watch her in meeting and see her listen to her husband who is young and
+handsome for a minister; it gives me very queer and uncommon feelings,
+when they look at each other, which they always do when not otherwise
+engaged.
+
+She has different clothes from anybody else. Aunt Miranda says you must
+think only of two things: will your dress keep you warm and will it wear
+well and there is nobody in the world to know how I love pink and red
+and how I hate drab and green and how I never wear my hat with the
+black and yellow porkupine quills without wishing it would blow into the
+river.
+
+Whene'er I take my walks abroad How many quills I see. But as they are
+not porkupines They never come to me.
+
+
+COMPOSITION
+
+WHICH HAS THE MOST BENEFERCENT EFFECT ON THE CHARACTER, PUNISHMENT OR
+REWARD?
+
+By Rebecca Rowena Randall
+
+(This copy not corrected by Miss Dearborn yet.)
+
+We find ourselves very puzzled in approaching this truly great and
+national question though we have tried very ernestly to understand it,
+so as to show how wisely and wonderfully our dear teacher guides the
+youthful mind, it being her wish that our composition class shall long
+be remembered in Riverboro Centre.
+
+We would say first of all that punishment seems more benefercently
+needed by boys than girls. Boys' sins are very violent, like stealing
+fruit, profane language, playing truant, fighting, breaking windows, and
+killing innocent little flies and bugs. If these were not taken out of
+them early in life it would be impossible for them to become like our
+martyred president, Abraham Lincoln.
+
+Although we have asked everybody on our street, they think boys' sins
+can only be whipped out of them with a switch or strap, which makes
+us feel very sad, as boys when not sinning the dreadful sins mentioned
+above seem just as good as girls, and never cry when switched, and say
+it does not hurt much.
+
+We now approach girls, which we know better, being one. Girls seem
+better than boys because their sins are not so noisy and showy. They
+can disobey their parents and aunts, whisper in silent hour, cheat in
+lessons, say angry things to their schoolmates, tell lies, be sulky and
+lazy, but all these can be conducted quite ladylike and genteel, and
+nobody wants to strap girls because their skins are tender and get black
+and blue very easily.
+
+Punishments make one very unhappy and rewards very happy, and one would
+think when one is happy one would behave the best. We were acquainted
+with a girl who gave herself rewards every day for a week, and it seemed
+to make her as lovely a character as one could wish; but perhaps if one
+went on for years giving rewards to onesself one would become selfish.
+One cannot tell, one can only fear.
+
+If a dog kills a sheep we should whip him straight away, and on the very
+spot where he can see the sheep, or he will not know what we mean, and
+may forget and kill another. The same is true of the human race. We must
+be firm and patient in punishing, no matter how much we love the one who
+has done wrong, and how hungry she is. It does no good to whip a person
+with one hand and offer her a pickled beet with the other. This confuses
+her mind, and she may grow up not knowing right from wrong. (The
+striking example of the pickled beet was removed from the essay by the
+refined but ruthless Miss Dearborn, who strove patiently, but vainly, to
+keep such vulgar images out of her pupils' literary efforts.)
+
+We now respectfully approach the Holy Bible and the people in the Bible
+were punished the whole time, and that would seem to make it right.
+Everybody says Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth; but we think ourself,
+that the Lord is a better punisher than we are, and knows better how and
+when to do it having attended to it ever since the year B.C. while
+the human race could not know about it till 1492 A.D., which is when
+Columbus discovered America.
+
+We do not believe we can find out all about this truly great and
+national subject till we get to heaven, where the human race, strapped
+and unstrapped, if any, can meet together and laying down their harps
+discuss how they got there.
+
+And we would gently advise boys to be more quiet and genteel in conduct
+and try rewards to see how they would work. Rewards are not all like
+the little rosebud merit cards we receive on Fridays, and which boys
+sometimes tear up and fling scornfully to the breeze when they get
+outside, but girls preserve carefully in an envelope.
+
+Some rewards are great and glorious, for boys can get to be governor or
+school trustee or road commissioner or president, while girls can only
+be wife and mother. But all of us can have the ornament of a meek and
+lowly spirit, especially girls, who have more use for it than boys.
+
+R.R.R.
+
+* * * * *
+
+
+STORIES AND PEOPLE
+
+October, 187--
+
+There are people in books and people in Riverboro, and they are not the
+same kind. They never talk of chargers and palfreys in the village, nor
+say How oft and Methinks, and if a Scotchman out of Rob Roy should come
+to Riverboro and want to marry one of us girls we could not understand
+him unless he made motions; though Huldah Meserve says if a nobleman of
+high degree should ask her to be his,--one of vast estates with serfs at
+his bidding,--she would be able to guess his meaning in any language.
+
+Uncle Jerry Cobb thinks that Riverboro people would not make a story,
+but I know that some of them would.
+
+Jack-o'-lantern, though only a baby, was just like a real story if
+anybody had written a piece about him: How his mother was dead and his
+father ran away and Emma Jane and I got Aunt Sarah Cobb to keep him so
+Mr. Perkins wouldn't take him to the poor farm; and about our lovely
+times with him that summer, and our dreadful loss when his father
+remembered him in the fall and came to take him away; and how Aunt Sarah
+carried the trundle bed up attic again and Emma Jane and I heard her
+crying and stole away.
+
+Mrs. Peter Meserve says Grandpa Sawyer was a wonderful hand at stories
+before his spirit was broken by grandmother. She says he was the life
+of the store and tavern when he was a young man, though generally sober,
+and she thinks I take after him, because I like compositions better than
+all the other lessons; but mother says I take after father, who always
+could say everything nicely whether he had anything to say or not; so
+methinks I should be grateful to both of them. They are what is called
+ancestors and much depends upon whether you have them or not. The
+Simpsons have not any at all. Aunt Miranda says the reason everybody
+is so prosperous around here is because their ancestors were all first
+settlers and raised on burnt ground. This should make us very proud.
+
+Methinks and methought are splendid words for compositions. Miss
+Dearborn likes them very much, but Alice and I never bring them in to
+suit her. Methought means the same as I thought, but sounds better.
+Example: If you are telling a dream you had about your aged aunt:
+
+     Methought I heard her say
+     My child you have so useful been
+     You need not sew today.
+
+This is a good example one way, but too unlikely, woe is me!
+
+This afternoon I was walking over to the store to buy molasses, and as
+I came off the bridge and turned up the hill, I saw lots and lots of
+heelprints in the side of the road, heelprints with little spike holes
+in them.
+
+“Oh! The river drivers have come from up country,” I thought, “and
+they'll be breaking the jam at our falls tomorrow.” I looked everywhere
+about and not a man did I see, but still I knew I was not mistaken for
+the heelprints could not lie. All the way over and back I thought about
+it, though unfortunately forgetting the molasses, and Alice Robinson
+not being able to come out, I took playtime to write a story. It is
+the first grown-up one I ever did, and is intended to be like Cora the
+Doctor's Wife, not like a school composition. It is written for Mr. Adam
+Ladd, and people like him who live in Boston, and is the printed kind
+you get money for, to pay off a mortgage.
+
+* * * * *
+
+LANCELOT OR THE PARTED LOVERS
+
+A beautiful village maiden was betrothed to a stallwart river driver,
+but they had high and bitter words and parted, he to weep into the
+crystal stream as he drove his logs, and she to sigh and moan as she
+went about her round of household tasks.
+
+At eventide the maiden was wont to lean over the bridge and her tears
+also fell into the foaming stream; so, though the two unhappy lovers did
+not know it, the river was their friend, the only one to whom they told
+their secrets and wept into.
+
+The months crept on and it was the next July when the maiden was passing
+over the bridge and up the hill. Suddenly she spied footprints on the
+sands of time.
+
+“The river drivers have come again!” she cried, putting her hand to
+her side for she had a slight heart trouble like Cora and Mrs. Peter
+Meserve, that doesn't kill.
+
+“They HAVE come indeed; ESPECIALLY ONE YOU KNOW,” said a voice, and
+out from the alder bushes sprung Lancelot Littlefield, for that was the
+lover's name and it was none other than he. His hair was curly and like
+living gold. His shirt, white of flannel, was new and dry, and of a
+handsome color, and as the maiden looked at him she could think of
+nought but a fairy prince.
+
+“Forgive,” she mermered, stretching out her waisted hands.
+
+“Nay, sweet,” he replied. “'Tis I should say that to you,” and bending
+gracefully on one knee he kissed the hem of her dress. It was a rich
+pink gingham check, ellaborately ornamented with white tape trimming.
+
+Clasping each other to the heart like Cora and the Doctor, they stood
+there for a long while, till they heard the rumble of wheels on the
+bridge and knew they must disentangle.
+
+The wheels came nearer and verily! it was the maiden's father.
+
+“Can I wed with your fair daughter this very moon,” asked Lancelot, who
+will not be called his whole name again in this story.
+
+“You may,” said the father, “for lo! she has been ready and waiting for
+many months.” This he said not noting how he was shaming the maiden,
+whose name was Linda Rowenetta.
+
+Then and there the nuptial day was appointed and when it came, the
+marriage knot was tied upon the river bank where first they met; the
+river bank where they had parted in anger, and where they had again
+scealeld their vows and clasped each other to the heart. And it was very
+low water that summer, and the river always thought it was because no
+tears dropped into it but so many smiles that like sunshine they dried
+it up.
+
+R.R.R.
+
+Finis
+
+* * * * *
+
+
+CAREERS
+
+November, 187--
+
+Long ago when I used to watch Miss Ross painting the old mill at
+Sunnybrook I thought I would be a painter, for Miss Ross went to Paris
+France where she bought my bead purse and pink parasol and I thought
+I would like to see a street with beautiful bright-colored things
+sparkling and hanging in the store windows.
+
+Then when the missionaries from Syria came to stay at the brick house
+Mrs. Burch said that after I had experienced religion I must learn music
+and train my voice and go out to heathen lands and save souls, so I
+thought that would be my career. But we girls tried to have a branch and
+be home missionaries and it did not work well. Emma Jane's father would
+not let her have her birthday party when he found out what she had done
+and Aunt Jane sent me up to Jake Moody's to tell him we did not mean
+to be rude when we asked him to go to meeting more often. He said all
+right, but just let him catch that little dough-faced Perkins young one
+in his yard once more and she'd have reason to remember the call, which
+was just as rude and impolite as our trying to lead him to a purer and a
+better life.
+
+Then Uncle Jerry and Mr. Aladdin and Miss Dearborn liked my
+compositions, and I thought I'd better be a writer, for I must be
+something the minute I'm seventeen, or how shall we ever get the
+mortgage off the farm? But even that hope is taken away from me now,
+for Uncle Jerry made fun of my story Lancelot Or The Parted Lovers and I
+have decided to be a teacher like Miss Dearborn.
+
+The pathetic announcement of a change in the career and life purposes of
+Rebecca was brought about by her reading the grown-up story to Mr. and
+Mrs. Jeremiah Cobb after supper in the orchard. Uncle Jerry was the
+person who had maintained all along that Riverboro people would not make
+a story; and Lancelot or The Parted Lovers was intended to refute that
+assertion at once and forever; an assertion which Rebecca regarded
+(quite truly) as untenable, though why she certainly never could have
+explained. Unfortunately Lancelot was a poor missionary, quite unfitted
+for the high achievements to which he was destined by the youthful
+novelist, and Uncle Jerry, though a stage-driver and no reading man, at
+once perceived the flabbiness and transparency of the Parted Lovers the
+moment they were held up to his inspection.
+
+“You see Riverboro people WILL make a story!” asserted Rebecca
+triumphantly as she finished her reading and folded the paper. “And it
+all came from my noticing the river drivers' tracks by the roadside, and
+wondering about them; and wondering always makes stories; the minister
+says so.”
+
+“Ye-es,” allowed Uncle Jerry reflectively, tipping his chair back
+against the apple tree and forcing his slow mind to violent and
+instantaneous action, for Rebecca was his pride and joy; a person, in
+his opinion, of superhuman talent, one therefore to be “whittled into
+shape” if occasion demanded.
+
+“It's a Riverboro story, sure enough, because you've got the river
+and the bridge and the hill and the drivers all right there in it; but
+there's something awful queer bout it; the folks don't act Riverboro,
+and don't talk Riverboro, cordin' to my notions. I call it a reg'lar
+book story.”
+
+“But,” objected Rebecca, “the people in Cinderella didn't act like us,
+and you thought that was a beautiful story when I told it to you.”
+
+“I know,” replied Uncle Jerry, gaining eloquence in the heat of
+argument. “They didn't act like us, but 't any rate they acted like
+'emselves! Somehow they was all of a piece. Cinderella was a little too
+good, mebbe, and the sisters was most too thunderin' bad to live on the
+face o' the earth, and that fayry old lady that kep' the punkin' coach
+up her sleeve--well, anyhow, you jest believe that punkin' coach, rats,
+mice, and all, when you're hearin' bout it, fore ever you stop to think
+it ain't so.
+
+“I don' know how tis, but the folks in that Cinderella story seem to
+match together somehow; they're all pow'ful onlikely--the prince feller
+with the glass slipper, and the hull bunch; but jest the same you kind
+o' gulp em all down in a lump. But land, Rebecky, nobody'd swaller that
+there village maiden o' your'n, and as for what's-his-name Littlefield,
+that come out o' them bushes, such a feller never 'd a' be'n IN bushes!
+No, Rebecky, you're the smartest little critter there is in this
+township, and you beat your Uncle Jerry all holler when it comes to
+usin' a lead pencil, but I say that ain't no true Riverboro story! Look
+at the way they talk! What was that' bout being BETROTHED'?”
+
+“Betrothed is a genteel word for engaged to be married,” explained the
+crushed and chastened author; and it was fortunate the doting old man
+did not notice her eyes in the twilight, or he might have known that
+tears were not far away.
+
+“Well, that's all right, then; I'm as ignorant as Cooper's cow when
+it comes to the dictionary. How about what's-his-name callin' the girl
+'Naysweet'?”
+
+“I thought myself that sounded foolish,:” confessed Rebecca; “but it's
+what the Doctor calls Cora when he tries to persuade her not to quarrel
+with his mother who comes to live with them. I know they don't say it in
+Riverboro or Temperance, but I thought perhaps it was Boston talk.”
+
+“Well, it ain't!” asserted Mr. Cobb decisively. “I've druv Boston men
+up in the stage from Milltown many's the time, and none of em ever
+said Naysweet to me, nor nothin'like it. They talked like folks, every
+mother's son of em! If I'd a' had that what's-his-name on the harricane
+deck' o' the stage and he tried any naysweetin' on me, I'd a' pitched
+him into the cornfield, side o' the road. I guess you ain't growed up
+enough for that kind of a story, Rebecky, for your poetry can't be beat
+in York County, that's sure, and your compositions are good enough to
+read out loud in town meetin' any day!”
+
+Rebecca brightened up a little and bade the old couple her usual
+affectionate good night, but she descended the hill in a saddened mood.
+When she reached the bridge the sun, a ball of red fire, was setting
+behind Squire Bean's woods. As she looked, it shone full on the broad,
+still bosom of the river, and for one perfect instant the trees on the
+shores were reflected, all swimming in a sea of pink. Leaning over the
+rail, she watched the light fade from crimson to carmine, from carmine
+to rose, from rose to amber, and from amber to gray. Then withdrawing
+Lancelot or the Parted Lovers from her apron pocket, she tore the pages
+into bits and dropped them into the water below with a sigh.
+
+“Uncle Jerry never said a word about the ending!” she thought; “and that
+was so nice!”
+
+And she was right; but while Uncle Jerry was an illuminating critic when
+it came to the actions and language of his Riverboro neighbors, he had
+no power to direct the young mariner when she “followed the gleam,” and
+used her imagination.
+
+OUR SECRET SOCIETY
+
+November, 187--
+
+Our Secret society has just had a splendid picnic in Candace Milliken's
+barn.
+
+Our name is the B.O.S.S., and not a single boy in the village has been
+able to guess it. It means Braid Over Shoulder Society, and that is the
+sign. All the members wear one of their braids over the right shoulder
+in front; the president's tied with red ribbon (I am the president) and
+all the rest tied with blue.
+
+To attract the attention of another member when in company or at a
+public place we take the braid between the thumb and little finger and
+stand carelessly on one leg. This is the Secret Signal and the password
+is Sobb (B.O.S.S. spelled backwards) which was my idea and is thought
+rather uncommon.
+
+One of the rules of the B.O.S.S. is that any member may be required to
+tell her besetting sin at any meeting, if asked to do so by a majority
+of the members.
+
+This was Candace Milliken's idea and much opposed by everybody, but when
+it came to a vote so many of the girls were afraid of offending Candace
+that they agreed because there was nobody else's father and mother
+who would let us picnic in their barn and use their plow, harrow,
+grindstone, sleigh, carryall, pung, sled, and wheelbarrow, which we did
+and injured hardly anything.
+
+They asked me to tell my besetting sin at the very first meeting, and it
+nearly killed me to do it because it is such a common greedy one. It is
+that I can't bear to call the other girls when I have found a thick spot
+when we are out berrying in the summer time.
+
+After I confessed, which made me dreadfully ashamed, every one of the
+girls seemed surprised and said they had never noticed that one but had
+each thought of something very different that I would be sure to think
+was my besetting sin. Then Emma Jane said that rather than tell hers she
+would resign from the Society and miss the picnic. So it made so
+much trouble that Candace gave up. We struck out the rule from the
+constitution and I had told my sin for nothing.
+
+The reason we named ourselves the B.O.S.S. is that Minnie Smellie has
+had her head shaved after scarlet fever and has no braid, so she can't
+be a member.
+
+I don't want her for a member but I can't be happy thinking she will
+feel slighted, and it takes away half the pleasure of belonging to the
+Society myself and being president.
+
+That, I think, is the principal trouble about doing mean and unkind
+things; that you can't do wrong and feel right, or be bad and feel good.
+If you only could you could do anything that came into your mind yet
+always be happy.
+
+Minnie Smellie spoils everything she comes into but I suppose we
+other girls must either have our hair shaved and call ourselves The
+Baldheadians or let her be some kind of a special officer in the
+B.O.S.S.
+
+She might be the B.I.T.U.D. member (Braid in the Upper Drawer), for
+there is where Mrs. Smellie keeps it now that it is cut off.
+
+WINTER THOUGHTS
+
+March, 187--
+
+It is not such a cold day for March and I am up in the barn chamber with
+my coat and hood on and Aunt Jane's waterproof and my mittens.
+
+After I do three pages I am going to hide away this book in the haymow
+till spring.
+
+Perhaps they get made into icicles on the way but I do not seem to have
+any thoughts in the winter time. The barn chamber is full of thoughts in
+warm weather. The sky gives them to me, and the trees and flowers, and
+the birds, and the river; but now it is always gray and nipping, the
+branches are bare and the river is frozen.
+
+It is too cold to write in my bedroom but while we still kept an open
+fire I had a few thoughts, but now there is an air-tight stove in the
+dining room where we sit, and we seem so close together, Aunt Miranda,
+Aunt Jane and I that I don't like to write in my book for fear they will
+ask me to read out loud my secret thoughts.
+
+I have just read over the first part of my Thought Book and I have
+outgrown it all, just exactly as I have outgrown my last year's drab
+cashmere.
+
+It is very queer how anybody can change so fast in a few months, but I
+remember that Emma Jane's cat had kittens the day my book was bought at
+Watson's store. Mrs. Perkins kept the prettiest white one, Abijah Flagg
+drowning all the others.
+
+It seems strange to me that cats will go on having kittens when they
+know what becomes of them! We were very sad about it, but Mrs. Perkins
+said it was the way of the world and how things had to be.
+
+I cannot help being glad that they do not do the same with children, or
+John and Jenny Mira Mark and me would all have had stones tied to our
+necks and been dropped into the deepest part of Sunny Brook, for Hannah
+and Fanny are the only truly handsome ones in the family.
+
+Mrs. Perkins says I dress up well, but never being dressed up it does
+not matter much. At least they didn't wait to dress up the kittens to
+see how they would improve, before drowning them, but decided right
+away.
+
+Emma Jane's kitten that was born the same day this book was is now quite
+an old cat who knows the way of the world herself, and how things have
+to be, for she has had one batch of kittens drowned already.
+
+So perhaps it is not strange that my Thought Book seems so babyish and
+foolish to me when I think of all I have gone through and the millions
+of things I have learned, and how much better I spell than I did ten
+months ago.
+
+My fingers are cold through the mittens, so good-bye dear Thought Book,
+friend of my childhood, now so far far behind me!
+
+I will hide you in the haymow where you'll be warm and cosy all the long
+winter and where nobody can find you again in the summer time but your
+affectionate author,
+
+Rebecca Rowena Randall.
+
+
+
+
+Fourth Chronicle. A TRAGEDY IN MILLINERY
+
+
+I
+
+Emma Jane Perkins's new winter dress was a blue and green Scotch plaid
+poplin, trimmed with narrow green velvet-ribbon and steel nail-heads.
+She had a gray jacket of thick furry cloth with large steel buttons
+up the front, a pair of green kid gloves, and a gray felt hat with an
+encircling band of bright green feathers. The band began in front with
+a bird's head and ended behind with a bird's tail, and angels could have
+desired no more beautiful toilette. That was her opinion, and it was
+shared to the full by Rebecca.
+
+But Emma Jane, as Rebecca had once described her to Mr. Adam Ladd, was
+a rich blacksmith's daughter, and she, Rebecca, was a little half-orphan
+from a mortgaged farm “up Temperance way,” dependent upon her spinster
+aunts for board, clothes, and schooling. Scotch plaid poplins were
+manifestly not for her, but dark-colored woolen stuffs were, and
+mittens, and last winter's coats and furs.
+
+And how about hats? Was there hope in store for her there? she wondered,
+as she walked home from the Perkins house, full of admiration for Emma
+Jane's winter outfit, and loyally trying to keep that admiration free
+from wicked envy. Her red-winged black hat was her second best, and
+although it was shabby she still liked it, but it would never do for
+church, even in Aunt Miranda's strange and never-to-be-comprehended
+views of suitable raiment.
+
+There was a brown felt turban in existence, if one could call it
+existence when it had been rained on, snowed on, and hailed on for two
+seasons; but the trimmings had at any rate perished quite off the face
+of the earth, that was one comfort!
+
+Emma Jane had said, rather indiscreetly, that at the village milliner's
+at Milliken's Mills there was a perfectly elegant pink breast to be had,
+a breast that began in a perfectly elegant solferino and terminated in a
+perfectly elegant magenta; two colors much in vogue at that time. If
+the old brown hat was to be her portion yet another winter, would Aunt
+Miranda conceal its deficiencies from a carping world beneath the shaded
+solferino breast? WOULD she, that was the question?
+
+Filled with these perplexing thoughts, Rebecca entered the brick house,
+hung up her hood in the entry, and went into the dining-room.
+
+Miss Jane was not there, but Aunt Miranda sat by the window with her lap
+full of sewing things, and a chair piled with pasteboard boxes by her
+side. In one hand was the ancient, battered, brown felt turban, and in
+the other were the orange and black porcupine 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 hateful porcupine 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 breath freely 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 the plume of Henry
+of Navarre.
+
+Rebecca was resigned, if not greatly comforted, but she had grace enough
+to conceal her feelings, now that she knew economy was at the root
+of some of her aunt's decrees in matters of dress; and she managed to
+forget the solferino breast, save in sleep, where a vision of it had a
+way of appearing to her, dangling from the ceiling, and dazzling her
+so with its rich color that she used to hope the milliner would sell it
+that she might never be tempted with it when she passed the shop window.
+
+One day, not long afterward, Miss Miranda borrowed Mr. Perkins's horse
+and wagon and took Rebecca with her on a drive to Union, to see about
+some sausage meat and head cheese. She intended to call on Mrs. Cobb,
+order a load of pine wood from Mr. Strout on the way, and leave some
+rags for a rug with old Mrs. Pease, so that the journey could be made
+as profitable as possible, consistent with the loss of time and the wear
+and tear on her second-best black dress.
+
+The red-winged black hat was forcibly removed from Rebecca's head just
+before starting, and the nightmare turban substituted.
+
+“You might as well begin to wear it first as last,” remarked Miranda,
+while Jane stood in the side door and sympathized secretly with Rebecca.
+
+“I will!” said Rebecca, ramming the stiff turban down on her head with a
+vindictive grimace, and snapping the elastic under her long braids; “but
+it makes me think of what Mr. Robinson said when the minister told him
+his mother-in-law would ride in the same buggy with him at his wife's
+funeral.”
+
+“I can't see how any speech of Mr. Robinson's, made years an' years ago,
+can have anything to do with wearin' your turban down to Union,” said
+Miranda, settling the lap robe over her knees.
+
+“Well, it can; because he said: Have it that way, then, but it'll spile
+the hull blamed trip for me!'”
+
+Jane closed the door suddenly, partly because she experienced a desire
+to smile (a desire she had not felt for years before Rebecca came to
+the brick house to live), and partly because she had no wish to overhear
+what her sister would say when she took in the full significance of
+Rebecca's anecdote, which was a favorite one with Mr. Perkins.
+
+It was a cold blustering day with a high wind that promised to bring an
+early fall of snow. The trees were stripped bare of leaves, the
+ground was hard, and the wagon wheels rattled noisily over the
+thank-you-ma'ams.
+
+“I'm glad I wore my Paisley shawl over my cloak,” said Miranda. “Be you
+warm enough, Rebecca? Tie that white rigolette tighter round your neck.
+The wind fairly blows through my bones. I most wish t we'd waited till
+a pleasanter day, for this Union road is all up hill or down, and we
+shan't get over the ground fast, it's so rough. Don't forget, when you
+go into Scott's, to say I want all the trimmin's when they send me the
+pork, for mebbe I can try out a little mite o' lard. The last load o'
+pine's gone turrible quick; I must see if “Bijah Flagg can't get us some
+cut-rounds at the mills, when he hauls for Squire Bean next time. Keep
+your mind on your drivin', Rebecca, and don't look at the trees and the
+sky so much. It's the same sky and same trees that have been here right
+along. Go awful slow down this hill and walk the hoss over Cook's Brook
+bridge, for I always suspicion it's goin' to break down under me, an' I
+shouldn't want to be dropped into that fast runnin' water this cold day.
+It'll be froze stiff by this time next week. Hadn't you better get out
+and lead”--
+
+The rest of the sentence was very possibly not vital, but at any rate
+it was never completed, for in the middle of the bridge a fierce gale
+of wind took Miss Miranda's Paisley shawl and blew it over her head. The
+long heavy ends whirled in opposite directions and wrapped themselves
+tightly about her wavering bonnet. Rebecca had the whip and the reins,
+and in trying to rescue her struggling aunt could not steady her own
+hat, which was suddenly torn from her head and tossed against the bridge
+rail, where it trembled and flapped for an instant.
+
+“My hat! Oh! Aunt Miranda, my hateful hat!” cried Rebecca, never
+remembering at the instant how often she had prayed that the “fretful
+porcupine” might some time vanish in this violent manner, since it
+refused to die a natural death.
+
+She had already stopped the horse, so, giving her aunt's shawl one last
+desperate twitch, she slipped out between the wagon wheels, and darted
+in the direction of the hated object, the loss of which had dignified it
+with a temporary value and importance.
+
+The stiff brown turban rose in the air, then dropped and flew along the
+bridge; Rebecca pursued; it danced along and stuck between two of the
+railings; Rebecca flew after it, her long braids floating in the wind.
+
+“Come back! Come back! Don't leave me alone with the team. I won't have
+it! Come back, and leave your hat!”
+
+Miranda had at length extricated herself from the submerging shawl, but
+she was so blinded by the wind, and so confused that she did not measure
+the financial loss involved in her commands.
+
+Rebecca heard, but her spirit being in arms, she made one more mad
+scramble for the vagrant hat, which now seemed possessed with an evil
+spirit, for it flew back and forth, and bounded here and there, like
+a living thing, finally distinguishing itself by blowing between the
+horse's front and hind legs, Rebecca trying to circumvent it by going
+around the wagon, and meeting it on the other side.
+
+It was no use; as she darted from behind the wheels the wind gave the
+hat an extra whirl, and scurrying in the opposite direction it soared
+above the bridge rail and disappeared into the rapid water below.
+
+“Get in again!” cried Miranda, holding on her bonnet. “You done your
+best and it can't be helped, I only wish't I'd let you wear your black
+hat as you wanted to; and I wish't we'd never come such a day! The shawl
+has broke the stems of the velvet geraniums in my bonnet, and the wind
+has blowed away my shawl pin and my back comb. I'd like to give up and
+turn right back this minute, but I don't like to borrer Perkins's hoss
+again this month. When we get up in the woods you can smooth your hair
+down and tie the rigolette over your head and settle what's left of my
+bonnet; it'll be an expensive errant, this will!”
+
+ * * * * *
+
+II
+
+It was not till next morning that Rebecca's heart really began its song
+of thanksgiving. Her Aunt Miranda announced at breakfast, that as Mrs.
+Perkins was going to Milliken's Mills, Rebecca might go too, and buy a
+serviceable hat.
+
+“You mustn't pay over two dollars and a half, and you mustn't get the
+pink bird without Mrs. Perkins says, and the milliner says, that it
+won't fade nor moult. Don't buy a light-colored felt because you'll get
+sick of it in two or three years same as you did the brown one. I always
+liked the shape of the brown one, and you'll never get another trimmin'
+that'll wear like them quills.”
+
+“I hope not!” thought Rebecca.
+
+“If you had put your elastic under your chin, same as you used to, and
+not worn it behind because you think it's more grown-up an' fash'onable,
+the wind never'd a' took the hat off your head, and you wouldn't a' lost
+it; but the mischief's done and you can go right over to Mis' Perkins
+now, so you won't miss her nor keep her waitin'. The two dollars and a
+half is in an envelope side o' the clock.”
+
+Rebecca swallowed the last spoonful of picked-up codfish on her plate,
+wiped her lips, and rose from her chair happier than the seraphs in
+Paradise.
+
+The porcupine quills had disappeared from her life, and without any
+fault or violence on her part. She was wholly innocent and virtuous, but
+nevertheless she was going to have a new hat with the solferino breast,
+should the adored object prove, under rigorous examination, to be
+practically indestructible.
+
+“Whene'er I take my walks abroad, How many hats I'll see; But if they're
+trimmed with hedgehog quills They'll not belong to me!”
+
+So she improvised, secretly and ecstatically, as she went towards the
+side entry.
+
+“There's 'Bijah Flagg drivin' in,” said Miss Miranda, going to the
+window. “Step out and see what he's got, Jane; some passel from the
+Squire, I guess. It's a paper bag and it may be a punkin, though he
+wouldn't wrop up a punkin, come to think of it! Shet the dinin' room
+door, Jane; it's turrible drafty. Make haste, for the Squire's hoss
+never stan's still a minute cept when he's goin'!”
+
+Abijah Flagg alighted and approached the side door with a grin.
+
+“Guess what I've got for ye, Rebecky?”
+
+No throb of prophetic soul warned Rebecca of her approaching doom.
+
+“Nodhead apples?” she sparkled, looking as bright and rosy and
+satin-skinned as an apple herself.
+
+“No; guess again.”
+
+“A flowering geranium?”
+
+“Guess again!”
+
+“Nuts? Oh! I can't, Bijah; I'm just going to Milliken's Mills on an
+errand, and I'm afraid of missing Mrs. Perkins. Show me quick! Is it
+really for me, or for Aunt Miranda?”
+
+“Reely for you, I guess!” and he opened the large brown paper bag and
+drew from it the remains of a water-soaked hat!
+
+They WERE remains, but there was no doubt of their nature and substance.
+They had clearly been a hat in the past, and one could even suppose
+that, when resuscitated, they might again assume their original form in
+some near and happy future.
+
+Miss Miranda, full of curiosity, joined the group in the side entry at
+this dramatic moment.
+
+“Well, I never!” she exclaimed. “Where, and how under the canopy, did
+you ever?”
+
+“I was working on the dam at Union Falls yesterday,” chuckled Abijah,
+with a pleased glance at each of the trio in turn, “an' I seen this
+little bunnit skippin' over the water jest as Becky does over the road.
+It's shaped kind o' like a boat, an' gorry, ef it wa'nt sailin' jest
+like a boat! Where hev I seen that kind of a bristlin' plume?' thinks
+I.”
+
+(“Where indeed!” thought Rebecca stormily.)
+
+“Then it come to me that I'd drove that plume to school and drove it to
+meetin' and drove it to the Fair an'drove it most everywheres on Becky.
+So I reached out a pole an' ketched it fore it got in amongst the logs
+an' come to any damage, an' here it is! The hat's passed in its checks,
+I guess; looks kind as if a wet elephant had stepped on it; but the
+plume's bout's good as new! I reely fetched the hat beck for the sake o'
+the plume.”
+
+“It was real good of you, 'Bijah, an' we're all of us obliged to you,”
+ said Miranda, as she poised the hat on one hand and turned it slowly
+with the other.
+
+“Well, I do say,” she exclaimed, “and I guess I've said it before, that
+of all the wearing' plumes that ever I see, that one's the wearin'est!
+Seems though it just wouldn't give up. Look at the way it's held Mis'
+Cobb's dye; it's about as brown's when it went int' the water.”
+
+“Dyed, but not a mite dead,” grinned Abijah, who was somewhat celebrated
+for his puns.
+
+“And I declare,” Miranda continued, “when you think o' the fuss they
+make about ostriches, killin' em off by hundreds for the sake o' their
+feathers that'll string out and spoil in one hard rainstorm,--an' all
+the time lettin' useful porcupines run round with their quills on, why
+I can't hardly understand it, without milliners have found out jest
+how good they do last, an' so they won't use em for trimmin'. 'Bijah's
+right; the hat ain't no more use, Rebecca, but you can buy you another
+this mornin'--any color or shape you fancy--an' have Miss Morton sew
+these brown quills on to it with some kind of a buckle or a bow, jest
+to hide the roots. Then you'll be fixed for another season, thanks to
+'Bijah.”
+
+Uncle Jerry and Aunt Sarah Cobb were made acquainted before very long
+with the part that destiny, or Abijah Flagg, had played in Rebecca's
+affairs, for, accompanied by the teacher, she walked to the old stage
+driver's that same afternoon. Taking off her new hat with the venerable
+trimming, she laid it somewhat ostentatiously upside down on the kitchen
+table and left the room, dimpling a little more than usual.
+
+Uncle Jerry rose from his seat, and, crossing the room, looked curiously
+into the hat and found that a circular paper lining was neatly pinned
+in the crown, and that it bore these lines, which were read aloud with
+great effect by Miss Dearborn, and with her approval were copied in the
+Thought Book for the benefit of posterity:
+
+“It was the bristling porcupine, As he stood on his native heath, He
+said, 'I'll pluck me some immortelles And make me up a wreath. For tho'
+I may not live myself To more than a hundred and ten, My quills will
+last till crack of doom, And maybe after then. They can be colored blue
+or green Or orange, brown, or red, But often as they may be dyed They
+never will be dead.' And so the bristling porcupine As he stood on his
+native heath, Said, I think I'll pluck me some immmortelles And make me
+up a wreath.'
+
+“R.R.R.”
+
+
+
+
+Fifth Chronicle. THE SAVING OF THE COLORS
+
+
+I
+
+Even when Rebecca had left school, having attained the great age of
+seventeen and therefore able to look back over a past incredibly long
+and full, she still reckoned time not by years, but by certain important
+occurrences.
+
+There was the year her father died; the year she left Sunnybrook Farm to
+come to her aunts in Riverboro; the year Sister Hannah became engaged;
+the year little Mira died; the year Abijah Flagg ceased to be Squire
+Bean's chore-boy, and astounded Riverboro by departing for Limerick
+Academy in search of an education; and finally the year of her
+graduation, which, to the mind of seventeen, seems rather the
+culmination than the beginning of existence.
+
+Between these epoch-making events certain other happenings stood out in
+bold relief against the gray of dull daily life.
+
+There was the day she first met her friend of friends, “Mr. Aladdin,”
+ and the later, even more radiant one when he gave her the coral
+necklace. There was the day the Simpson family moved away from Riverboro
+under a cloud, and she kissed Clara Belle fervently at the cross-roads,
+telling her that she would always be faithful. There was the visit of
+the Syrian missionaries to the brick house. That was a bright, romantic
+memory, as strange and brilliant as the wonderful little birds' wings
+and breasts that the strangers brought from the Far East. She remembered
+the moment they asked her to choose some for herself, and the rapture
+with which she stroked the beautiful things as they lay on the black
+haircloth sofa. Then there was the coming of the new minister, for
+though many were tried only one was chosen; and finally there was the
+flag-raising, a festivity that thrilled Riverboro and Edgewood society
+from centre to circumference, a festivity that took place just before
+she entered the Female Seminary at Wareham and said good-by to kind Miss
+Dearborn and the village school.
+
+There must have been other flag-raisings in history,--even the persons
+most interested in this particular one would grudgingly have allowed
+that much,--but it would have seemed to them improbable that any such
+flag-raising as theirs, either in magnitude of conception or brilliancy
+of actual performance, could twice glorify the same century. Of some
+pageants it is tacitly admitted that there can be no duplicates, and the
+flag-raising at Riverboro Centre was one of these; so that it is small
+wonder if Rebecca chose it as one of the important dates in her personal
+almanac.
+
+The new minister's wife was the being, under Providence, who had
+conceived the germinal idea of the flag.
+
+At this time the parish had almost settled down to the trembling belief
+that they were united on a pastor. In the earlier time a minister was
+chosen for life, and if he had faults, which was a probably enough
+contingency, and if his congregation had any, which is within the bounds
+of possibility, each bore with the other (not quite without friction),
+as old-fashioned husbands and wives once did, before the easy way out of
+the difficulty was discovered, or at least before it was popularized.
+
+The faithful old parson had died after thirty years' preaching,
+and perhaps the newer methods had begun to creep in, for it seemed
+impossible to suit the two communities most interested in the choice.
+
+The Rev. Mr. Davis, for example, was a spirited preacher, but persisted
+in keeping two horses in the parsonage stable, and in exchanging
+them whenever he could get faster ones. As a parochial visitor he was
+incomparable, dashing from house to house with such speed that he could
+cover the parish in a single afternoon. This sporting tendency, which
+would never have been remarked in a British parson, was frowned upon in
+a New England village, and Deacon Milliken told Mr. Davis, when giving
+him what he alluded to as his “walking papers,” that they didn't want
+the Edgewood church run by hoss power!
+
+The next candidate pleased Edgewood, where morning preaching was held,
+but the other parish, which had afternoon service, declined to accept
+him because he wore a wig--an ill-matched, crookedly applied wig.
+
+Number three was eloquent but given to gesticulation, and Mrs. Jere
+Burbank, the president of the Dorcas Society, who sat in a front pew,
+said she couldn't bear to see a preacher scramble round the pulpit hot
+Sundays.
+
+Number four, a genial, handsome man, gifted in prayer, was found to be
+a Democrat. The congregation was overwhelmingly Republican in its
+politics, and perceived something ludicrous, if not positively
+blasphemous, in a Democrat preaching the gospel. (“Ananias and
+Beelzebub'll be candidatin' here, first thing we know!” exclaimed the
+outraged Republican nominee for district attorney.)
+
+Number five had a feeble-minded child, which the hiring committee
+prophesied, would always be standing in the parsonage front yard, making
+talk for the other denominations.
+
+Number six was the Rev. Judson Baxter, the present incumbent; and he
+was voted to be as near perfection as a minister can be in this finite
+world. His young wife had a small income of her own, a distinct and
+unusual advantage, and the subscription committee hoped that they might
+not be eternally driving over the country to get somebody's fifty cents
+that had been over-due for eight months, but might take their onerous
+duties a little more easily.
+
+“It does seem as if our ministers were the poorest lot!” complained Mrs.
+Robinson. “If their salary is two months behindhand they begin to be
+nervous! Seems as though they might lay up a little before they come
+here, and not live from hand to mouth so! The Baxters seem quite
+different, and I only hope they won't get wasteful and run into debt.
+They say she keeps the parlor blinds open bout half the time, and the
+room is lit up so often evenin's that the neighbors think her and Mr.
+Baxter must set in there. It don't seem hardly as if it could be so, but
+Mrs. Buzzell says tis, and she says we might as well say good-by to the
+parlor carpet, which is church property, for the Baxters are living all
+over it!”
+
+This criticism was the only discordant note in the chorus of praise, and
+the people gradually grew accustomed to the open blinds and the overused
+parlor carpet, which was just completing its twenty-fifth year of honest
+service.
+
+Mrs. Baxter communicated her patriotic idea of a new flag to the Dorcas
+Society, proposing that the women should cut and make it themselves.
+
+“It may not be quite as good as those manufactured in the large cities,”
+ she said, “but we shall be proud to see our home-made flag flying in the
+breeze, and it will mean all the more to the young voters growing up, to
+remember that their mothers made it with their own hands.”
+
+“How would it do to let some of the girls help?” modestly asked Miss
+Dearborn, the Riverboro teacher. “We might choose the best sewers and
+let them put in at least a few stitches, so that they can feel they have
+a share in it.”
+
+“Just the thing!” exclaimed Mrs. Baxter. “We can cut the stripes and sew
+them together, and after we have basted on the white stars the girls can
+apply them to the blue ground. We must have it ready for the campaign
+rally, and we couldn't christen it at a better time than in this
+presidential year.”
+
+II
+
+In this way the great enterprise was started, and day by day the
+preparations went forward in the two villages.
+
+The boys, as future voters and fighters, demanded an active share in
+the proceedings, and were organized by Squire Bean into a fife and drum
+corps, so that by day and night martial but most inharmonious music woke
+the echoes, and deafened mothers felt their patriotism oozing out at the
+soles of their shoes.
+
+Dick Carter was made captain, for his grandfather had a gold medal
+given him by Queen Victoria for rescuing three hundred and twenty-six
+passengers from a sinking British vessel. Riverboro thought it high time
+to pay some graceful tribute to Great Britain in return for her handsome
+conduct to Captain Nahum Carter, and human imagination could contrive
+nothing more impressive than a vicarious share in the flag raising.
+
+Living Perkins tried to be happy in the ranks, for he was offered no
+official position, principally, Mrs. Smellie observed, because “his
+father's war record wa'nt clean.” “Oh, yes! Jim Perkins went to the
+war,” she continued. “He hid out behind the hencoop when they was
+draftin', but they found him and took him along. He got into one battle,
+too, somehow or nother, but he run away from it. He was allers cautious,
+Jim was; if he ever see trouble of any kind comin' towards him, he was
+out o' sight fore it got a chance to light. He said eight dollars a
+month, without bounty, wouldn't pay HIM to stop bullets for. He wouldn't
+fight a skeeter, Jim wouldn't, but land! we ain't to war all the time,
+and he's a good neighbor and a good blacksmith.”
+
+Miss Dearborn was to be Columbia and the older girls of the two schools
+were to be the States. Such trade in muslins and red, white, and blue
+ribbons had never been known since “Watson kep' store,” and the number
+of brief white petticoats hanging out to bleach would have caused the
+passing stranger to imagine Riverboro a continual dancing school.
+
+Juvenile virtue, both male and female, reached an almost impossible
+height, for parents had only to lift a finger and say, “you shan't go
+to the flag raising!” and the refractory spirit at once armed itself for
+new struggles toward the perfect life.
+
+Mr. Jeremiah Cobb had consented to impersonate Uncle Sam, and was to
+drive Columbia and the States to the “raising” on the top of his own
+stage. Meantime the boys were drilling, the ladies were cutting and
+basting and stitching, and the girls were sewing on stars; for the
+starry part of the spangled banner was to remain with each of them in
+turn until she had performed her share of the work.
+
+It was felt by one and all a fine and splendid service indeed to help
+in the making of the flag, and if Rebecca was proud to be of the chosen
+ones, so was her Aunt Jane Sawyer, who had taught her all her delicate
+stitches.
+
+On a long-looked-for afternoon in August the minister's wife drove up
+to the brick house door, and handed out the great piece of bunting to
+Rebecca, who received it in her arms with as much solemnity as if it had
+been a child awaiting baptismal rites.
+
+“I'm so glad!” she sighed happily. “I thought it would never come my
+turn!”
+
+“You should have had it a week ago, but Huldah Meserve upset the ink
+bottle over her star, and we had to baste on another one. You are the
+last, though, and then we shall sew the stars and stripes together, and
+Seth Strout will get the top ready for hanging. Just think, it won't
+be many days before you children will be pulling the rope with all your
+strength, the band will be playing, the men will be cheering, and the
+new flag will go higher and higher, till the red, white, and blue shows
+against the sky!”
+
+Rebecca's eyes fairly blazed. “Shall I fell on' my star, or buttonhole
+it?” she asked.
+
+“Look at all the others and make the most beautiful stitches you can,
+that's all. It is your star, you know, and you can even imagine it is
+your state, and try and have it the best of all. If everybody else
+is trying to do the same thing with her state, that will make a great
+country, won't it?”
+
+Rebecca's eyes spoke glad confirmation of the idea. “My star, my state!”
+ she repeated joyously. “Oh, Mrs. Baxter, I'll make such fine stitches
+you'll think the white grew out of the blue!”
+
+The new minister's wife looked pleased to see her spark kindle a flame
+in the young heart. “You can sew so much of yourself into your star,”
+ she went on in the glad voice that made her so winsome, “that when you
+are an old lady you can put on your specs and find it among all the
+others. Good-by! Come up to the parsonage Saturday afternoon; Mr. Baxter
+wants to see you.”
+
+“Judson, help that dear little genius of a Rebecca all you can!” she
+said that night, when they were cosily talking in their parlor and
+living “all over” the parish carpet. “I don't know what she may, or may
+not, come to, some day; I only wish she were ours! If you could have
+seen her clasp the flag tight in her arms and put her cheek against it,
+and watched the tears of feeling start in her eyes when I told her
+that her star was her state! I kept whispering to myself, Covet not thy
+neighbor's child!'”
+
+Daily at four o'clock Rebecca scrubbed her hands almost to the bone,
+brushed her hair, and otherwise prepared herself in body, mind, and
+spirit for the consecrated labor of sewing on her star. All the time
+that her needle cautiously, conscientiously formed the tiny stitches she
+was making rhymes “in her head,” her favorite achievement being this:
+
+“Your star, my star, all our stars together, They make the dear old
+banner proud To float in the bright fall weather.”
+
+There was much discussion as to which of the girls should impersonate
+the State of Maine, for that was felt to be the highest honor in the
+gift of the committee.
+
+Alice Robinson was the prettiest child in the village, but she was very
+shy and by no means a general favorite.
+
+Minnie Smellie possessed the handsomest dress and a pair of white
+slippers and open-work stockings that nearly carried the day. Still, as
+Miss Delia Weeks well said, she was so stupid that if she should
+suck her thumb in the very middle of the exercises nobody'd be a dite
+surprised!
+
+Huldah Meserve was next voted upon, and the fact that if she were not
+chosen her father might withdraw his subscription to the brass band fund
+was a matter for grave consideration.
+
+“I kind o' hate to have such a giggler for the State of Maine; let her
+be the Goddess of Liberty,” proposed Mrs. Burbank, whose patriotism was
+more local than national.
+
+“How would Rebecca Randall do for Maine, and let her speak some of her
+verses?” suggested the new minister's wife, who, could she have had her
+way, would have given all the prominent parts to Rebecca, from Uncle Sam
+down.
+
+So, beauty, fashion, and wealth having been tried and found wanting, the
+committee discussed the claims of talent, and it transpired that to
+the awe-stricken Rebecca fell the chief plum in the pudding. It was a
+tribute to her gifts that there was no jealousy or envy among the other
+girls; they readily conceded her special fitness for the role.
+
+Her life had not been pressed down full to the brim of pleasures, and
+she had a sort of distrust of joy in the bud. Not until she saw it in
+full radiance of bloom did she dare embrace it. She had never read
+any verse but Byron, Felicia Hemans, bits of “Paradise Lost,” and the
+selections in the school readers, but she would have agreed heartily
+with the poet who said:
+
+“Not by appointment do we meet delight And joy; they heed not our
+expectancy; But round some corner in the streets of life They on a
+sudden clasp us with a smile.”
+
+For many nights before the raising, when she went to her bed she said to
+herself, after she had finished her prayers: “It can't be true that I'm
+chosen for the State of Maine! It just CAN'T be true! Nobody could be
+good ENOUGH, but oh, I'll try to be as good as I can! To be going to
+Wareham Seminary next week and to be the State of Maine too! Oh! I must
+pray HARD to God to keep me meek and humble!”
+
+III
+
+The flag was to be raised on a Tuesday, and on the previous Sunday it
+became known to the children that Clara Belle Simpson was coming back
+from Acreville, coming to live with Mrs. Fogg and take care of the
+baby, called by the neighborhood boys “the Fogg horn,” on account of his
+excellent voice production.
+
+Clara Belle was one of Miss Dearborn's original flock, and if she
+were left wholly out of the festivities she would be the only girl of
+suitable age to be thus slighted; it seemed clear to the juvenile mind,
+therefore, that neither she nor her descendants would ever recover from
+such a blow. But, under all the circumstances, would she be allowed to
+join in the procession? Even Rebecca, the optimistic, feared not,
+and the committee confirmed her fears by saying that Abner Simpson's
+daughter certainly could not take any prominent part in the ceremony,
+but they hoped that Mrs. Fogg would allow her to witness it.
+
+When Abner Simpson, urged by the town authorities, took his wife and
+seven children away from Riverboro to Acreville, just over the border in
+the next county, Riverboro went to bed leaving its barn and shed doors
+unfastened, and drew long breaths of gratitude to Providence.
+
+Of most winning disposition and genial manners, Mr. Simpson had not
+that instinctive comprehension of property rights which renders a man a
+valuable citizen.
+
+Squire Bean was his nearest neighbor, and he conceived the novel idea
+of paying Simpson five dollars a year not to steal from him, a method
+occasionally used in the Highlands in the early days.
+
+The bargain was struck, and adhered to religiously for a twelve-month,
+but on the second of January Mr. Simpson announced the verbal contract
+as formally broken.
+
+“I didn't know what I was doin' when I made it, Squire,” he urged.
+“In the first place, it's a slur on my reputation and an injury to my
+self-respect. Secondly, it's a nervous strain on me; and thirdly, five
+dollars don't pay me!”
+
+Squire Bean was so struck with the unique and convincing nature of
+these arguments that he could scarcely restrain his admiration, and he
+confessed to himself afterward, that unless Simpson's mental attitude
+could be changed he was perhaps a fitter subject for medical science
+than the state prison.
+
+Abner was a most unusual thief, and conducted his operations with a tact
+and neighborly consideration none too common in the profession. He would
+never steal a man's scythe in haying-time, nor his fur lap-robe in the
+coldest of the winter. The picking of a lock offered no attractions
+to him; “he wa'n't no burglar,” he would have scornfully asserted. A
+strange horse and wagon hitched by the roadside was the most flagrant
+of his thefts; but it was the small things--the hatchet or axe on the
+chopping-block, the tin pans sunning at the side door, a stray garment
+bleaching on the grass, a hoe, rake, shovel, or a bag of early potatoes,
+that tempted him most sorely; and these appealed to him not so much for
+their intrinsic value as because they were so excellently adapted to
+swapping. The swapping was really the enjoyable part of the procedure,
+the theft was only a sad but necessary preliminary; for if Abner
+himself had been a man of sufficient property to carry on his business
+operations independently, it is doubtful if he would have helped himself
+so freely to his neighbor's goods.
+
+Riverboro regretted the loss of Mrs. Simpson, who was useful in
+scrubbing, cleaning, and washing, and was thought to exercise some
+influence over her predatory spouse. There was a story of their early
+married life, when they had a farm; a story to the effect that Mrs.
+Simpson always rode on every load of hay that her husband took to
+Milltown, with the view of keeping him sober through the day. After he
+turned out of the country road and approached the metropolis, it was
+said that he used to bury the docile lady in the load. He would then
+drive on to the scales, have the weight of the hay entered in the
+buyer's book, take his horses to the stable for feed and water, and when
+a favorable opportunity offered he would assist the hot and panting Mrs.
+Simpson out of the side or back of the rack, and gallantly brush the
+straw from her person. For this reason it was always asserted that Abner
+Simpson sold his wife every time he went to Milltown, but the story was
+never fully substantiated, and at all events it was the only suspected
+blot on meek Mrs. Simpson's personal reputation.
+
+As for the Simpson children, they were missed chiefly as familiar
+figures by the roadside; but Rebecca honestly loved Clara Belle,
+notwithstanding her Aunt Miranda's opposition to the intimacy. Rebecca's
+“taste for low company” was a source of continual anxiety to her aunt.
+
+“Anything that's human flesh is good enough for her!” Miranda groaned to
+Jane. “She'll ride with the rag-sack-and-bottle peddler just as quick as
+she would with the minister; she always sets beside the St. Vitus' dance
+young one at Sabbath school; and she's forever riggin' and onriggin'
+that dirty Simpson baby! She reminds me of a puppy that'll always go to
+everybody that'll have him!”
+
+It was thought very creditable to Mrs. Fogg that she sent for Clara
+Belle to live with her and go to school part of the year.
+
+“She'll be useful” said Mrs. Fogg, “and she'll be out of her father's
+way, and so keep honest; though she's no awful hombly I've no fears for
+her. A girl with her red hair, freckles, and cross-eyes can't fall into
+no kind of sin, I don't believe.”
+
+Mrs. Fogg requested that Clara Belle should be started on her journey
+from Acreville by train and come the rest of the way by stage, and she
+was disturbed to receive word on Sunday that Mr. Simpson had borrowed a
+“good roader” from a new acquaintance, and would himself drive the girl
+from Acreville to Riverboro, a distance of thirty-five miles. That he
+would arrive in their vicinity on the very night before the flag-raising
+was thought by Riverboro to be a public misfortune, and several
+residents hastily determined to deny themselves a sight of the
+festivities and remain watchfully on their own premises.
+
+On Monday afternoon the children were rehearsing their songs at the
+meeting-house. As Rebecca came out on the broad wooden steps she watched
+Mrs. Peter Meserve's buggy out of sight, for in front, wrapped in a
+cotton sheet, lay the previous flag. After a few chattering good-bys
+and weather prophecies with the other girls, she started on her homeward
+walk, dropping in at the parsonage to read her verses to the minister.
+
+He welcomed her gladly as she removed her white cotton gloves (hastily
+slipped on outside the door, for ceremony) and pushed back the funny hat
+with the yellow and black porcupine quills--the hat with which she made
+her first appearance in Riverboro society.
+
+“You've heard the beginning, Mr. Baxter; now will you please tell me if
+you like the last verse?” she asked, taking out her paper. “I've only
+read it to Alice Robinson, and I think perhaps she can never be a poet,
+though she's a splendid writer. Last year when she was twelve she wrote
+a birthday poem to herself, and she made natal' rhyme with Milton,.'
+which, of course, it wouldn't. I remember every verse ended:
+
+     'This is my day so natal
+     And I will follow Milton.'
+
+Another one of hers was written just because she couldn't help it, she
+said. This was it:
+
+     'Let me to the hills away,
+     Give me pen and paper;
+     I'll write until the earth will sway
+     The story of my Maker.'”
+
+The minister could scarcely refrain from smiling, but he controlled
+himself that he might lose none of Rebecca's quaint observations.
+When she was perfectly at ease, unwatched and uncriticised, she was a
+marvelous companion.
+
+“The name of the poem is going to be My Star,'” she continued, “and Mrs.
+Baxter gave me all the ideas, but somehow there's a kind of magicness
+when they get into poetry, don't you think so?” (Rebecca always talked
+to grown people as if she were their age, or, a more subtle and truer
+distinction, as if they were hers.)
+
+“It has often been so remarked, in different words,” agreed the
+minister.
+
+“Mrs. Baxter said that each star was a state, and if each state did its
+best we should have a splendid country. Then once she said that we ought
+to be glad the war is over and the States are all at peace together; and
+I thought Columbia must be glad, too, for Miss Dearborn says she's
+the mother of all the States. So I'm going to have it end like this: I
+didn't write it, I just sewed it while I was working on my star:
+
+     For it's your star, my star, all the stars together,
+     That make our country's flag so proud
+     To float in the bright fall weather.
+     Northern stars, Southern stars, stars of the East and West,
+     Side by side they lie at peace
+     On the dear flag's mother-breast.”
+
+“'Oh! many are the poets that are sown by nature,'” thought the
+minister, quoting Wordsworth to himself. “And I wonder what becomes of
+them! That's a pretty idea, little Rebecca, and I don't know whether
+you or my wife ought to have the more praise. What made you think of the
+stars lying on the flag's mother-breast'? Where did you get that word?”
+
+“Why” (and the young poet looked rather puzzled), “that's the way it is;
+the flag is the whole country--the mother--and the stars are the states.
+The stars had to lie somewhere: 'LAP' nor 'ARMS' wouldn't sound well
+with West,' so, of course, I said 'BREAST,'” Rebecca answered, with some
+surprise at the question; and the minister put his hand under her chin
+and kissed her softly on the forehead when he said good-by at the door.
+
+IV
+
+Rebecca walked rapidly along in the gathering twilight, thinking of the
+eventful morrow.
+
+As she approached the turning on the left called the old Milltown
+road, she saw a white horse and wagon, driven by a man with a rakish,
+flapping, Panama hat, come rapidly around the turn and disappear over
+the long hills leading down to the falls. There was no mistaking him;
+there never was another Abner Simpson, with his lean height, his bushy
+reddish hair, the gay cock of his hat, and the long piratical, upturned
+mustaches, which the boys used to say were used as hat-racks by the
+Simpson children at night.. The old Milltown road ran past Mrs. Fogg's
+house, so he must have left Clara Belle there, and Rebecca's heart
+glowed to think that her poor little friend need not miss the raising.
+
+She began to run now, fearful of being late for supper, and covered the
+ground to the falls in a brief time. As she crossed the bridge she again
+saw Abner Simpson's team, drawn up at the watering trough.
+
+Coming a little nearer, with the view of inquiring for the family, her
+quick eye caught sight of something unexpected. A gust of wind blew up
+a corner of a linen lap-robe in the back of the wagon, and underneath
+it she distinctly saw the white-sheeted bundle that held the flag; the
+bundle with a tiny, tiny spot of red bunting peeping out at one corner.
+It is true she had eaten, slept, dreamed red, white, and blue for weeks,
+but there was no mistaking the evidence of her senses; the idolized
+flag, longed for, worked for, sewed for, that flag was in the back of
+Abner Simpson's wagon, and if so, what would become of the raising?
+
+Acting on blind impulse, she ran toward the watering-trough, calling out
+in her clear treble: “Mr. Simpson! Oh, Mr. Simpson, will you let me ride
+a piece with you and hear all about Clara Belle? I'm going part way over
+to the Centre on an errand.” (So she was; a most important errand,--to
+recover the flag of her country at present in the hands of the foe!)
+
+Mr. Simpson turned round in his seat and cried heartily, “Certain sure I
+will!” for he liked the fair sex, young and old, and Rebecca had always
+been a prime favorite with him. “Climb right in! How's everybody? Glad
+to see ye! The folks talk bout ye from sun-up to sun-down, and Clara
+Belle can't hardly wait for a sight of ye!”
+
+Rebecca scrambled up, trembling and pale with excitement. She did not in
+the least know what was going to happen, but she was sure that the flag,
+when in the enemy's country, must be at least a little safer with the
+State of Maine sitting on top of it!
+
+Mr. Simpson began a long monologue about Acreville, the house he lived
+in, the pond in front of it, Mrs. Simpson's health, and various items of
+news about the children, varied by reports of his personal misfortunes.
+He put no questions, and asked no replies, so this gave the
+inexperienced soldier a few seconds to plan a campaign. There were
+three houses to pass; the Browns' at the corner, the Millikens', and the
+Robinsons' on the brow of the hill. If Mr. Robinson were in the front
+yard she might tell Mr. Simpson she wanted to call there and ask Mr.
+Robinson to hold the horse's head while she got out of the wagon.
+Then she might fly to the back before Mr. Simpson could realize the
+situation, and dragging out the precious bundle, sit on it hard, while
+Mr. Robinson settled the matter of ownership with Mr. Simpson.
+
+This was feasible, but it meant a quarrel between the two men, who held
+an ancient grudge against each other, and Mr. Simpson was a valiant
+fighter as the various sheriffs who had attempted to arrest him could
+cordially testify. It also meant that everybody in the village would
+hear of the incident and poor Clara Belle be branded again as the child
+of a thief.
+
+Another idea danced into her excited brain; such a clever one she could
+hardly believe it hers. She might call Mr. Robinson to the wagon, and
+when he came close to the wheels she might say, “all of a sudden”:
+“Please take the flag out of the back of the wagon, Mr. Robinson. We
+have brought it here for you to keep overnight.” Mr. Simpson might be
+so surprised that he would give up his prize rather than be suspected of
+stealing.
+
+But as they neared the Robinsons' house there was not a sign of life
+to be seen; so the last plan, ingenious though it was, was perforce
+abandoned.
+
+The road now lay between thick pine woods with no dwelling in sight.
+It was growing dusk and Rebecca was driving along the lonely way with a
+person who was generally called Slippery Simpson.
+
+Not a thought of fear crossed her mind, save the fear of bungling in
+her diplomacy, and so losing the flag. She knew Mr. Simpson well, and a
+pleasanter man was seldom to be met. She recalled an afternoon when he
+came home and surprised the whole school playing the Revolutionary War
+in his helter-skelter dooryard, and the way in which he had joined the
+British forces and impersonated General Burgoyne had greatly endeared
+him to her. The only difficulty was to find proper words for her
+delicate mission, for, of course, if Mr. Simpson's anger were aroused,
+he would politely push her out of the wagon and drive away with the
+flag. Perhaps if she led the conversation in the right direction an
+opportunity would present itself. She well remembered how Emma Jane
+Perkins had failed to convert Jacob Moody, simply because she failed to
+“lead up” to the delicate question of his manner of life. Clearing her
+throat nervously, she began: “Is it likely to be fair tomorrow?”
+
+“Guess so; clear as a bell. What's on foot; a picnic?”
+
+“No; we're to have a grand flag-raising!” (“That is,” she thought, “if
+we have any flag to raise!”)
+
+“That so? Where?”
+
+“The three villages are to club together and have a rally, and raise
+the flag at the Centre. There'll be a brass band, and speakers, and the
+Mayor of Portland, and the man that will be governor if he's elected,
+and a dinner in the Grange Hall, and we girls are chosen to raise the
+flag.”
+
+“I want to know! That'll be grand, won't it?” (Still not a sign of
+consciousness on the part of Abner.)
+
+“I hope Mrs. Fogg will take Clara Belle, for it will be splendid to look
+at! Mr. Cobb is going to be Uncle Sam and drive us on the stage. Miss
+Dearborn--Clara Belle's old teacher, you know--is going to be Columbia;
+the girls will be the States of the Union, and oh, Mr. Simpson, I am the
+one to be the State of Maine!” (This was not altogether to the point,
+but a piece of information impossible to conceal.)
+
+Mr. Simpson flourished the whipstock and gave a loud, hearty laugh. Then
+he turned in his seat and regarded Rebecca curiously. “You're kind of
+small, hain't ye, for so big a state as this one?” he asked.
+
+“Any of us would be too small,” replied Rebecca with dignity, “but the
+committee asked me, and I am going to try hard to do well.”
+
+The tragic thought that there might be no occasion for anybody to do
+anything, well or ill, suddenly overcame her here, and putting her
+hand on Mr. Simpson's sleeve, she attacked the subject practically and
+courageously.
+
+“Oh, Mr. Simpson, dear Mr. Simpson, it's such a mortifying subject I
+can't bear to say anything about it, but please give us back our flag!
+Don't, DON'T take it over to Acreville, Mr. Simpson! We've worked so
+long to make it, and it was so hard getting the money for the bunting!
+Wait a minute, please; don't be angry, and don't say no just yet, till
+I explain more. It'll be so dreadful for everybody to get there tomorrow
+morning and find no flag to raise, and the band and the mayor all
+disappointed, and the children crying, with their muslin dresses all
+bought for nothing! O dear Mr. Simpson, please don't take our flag away
+from us!”
+
+The apparently astonished Abner pulled his mustaches and exclaimed: “But
+I don't know what you're drivin' at! Who's got yer flag? I hain't!”
+
+Could duplicity, deceit, and infamy go any further, Rebecca wondered,
+and her soul filling with righteous wrath, she cast discretion to the
+winds and spoke a little more plainly, bending her great swimming eyes
+on the now embarrassed Abner, who looked like an angle-worm, wriggling
+on a pin.
+
+“Mr. Simpson, how can you say that, when I saw the flag in the back of
+your wagon myself, when you stopped to water the horse? It's wicked of
+you to take it, and I cannot bear it!” (Her voice broke now, for a doubt
+of Mr. Simpson's yielding suddenly darkened her mind.) “If you keep it,
+you'll have to keep me, for I won't be parted from it! I can't fight
+like the boys, but I can pinch and scratch, and I WILL scratch, just
+like a panther--I'll lie right down on my star and not move, if I starve
+to death!”
+
+“Look here, hold your hosses n' don't cry till you git something to cry
+for!” grumbled the outraged Abner, to whom a clue had just come; and
+leaning over the wagon-back he caught hold of a corner of white sheet
+and dragged up the bundle, scooping off Rebecca's hat in the process,
+and almost burying her in bunting.
+
+She caught the treasure passionately to her heart and stifled her sobs
+in it, while Abner exclaimed: “I swan to man, if that hain't a flag!
+Well, in that case you're good n' welcome to it! Land! I seen that
+bundle lyin' in the middle o' the road and I says to myself, that's
+somebody's washin' and I'd better pick it up and leave it at the
+post-office to be claimed; n' all the time it was a flag!”
+
+This was a Simpsonian version of the matter, the fact being that a
+white-covered bundle lying on the Meserves' front steps had attracted
+his practiced eye, and slipping in at the open gate he had swiftly and
+deftly removed it to his wagon on general principles; thinking if it
+were clean clothes it would be extremely useful, and in any event there
+was no good in passing by something flung into your very arms, so to
+speak. He had had no leisure to examine the bundle, and indeed took
+little interest in it. Probably he stole it simply from force of habit,
+and because there was nothing else in sight to steal, everybody's
+premises being preternaturally tidy and empty, almost as if his visit
+had been expected!
+
+Rebecca was a practical child, and it seemed to her almost impossible
+that so heavy a bundle should fall out of Mrs. Meserve's buggy and not
+be noticed; but she hoped that Mr. Simpson was telling the truth, and
+she was too glad and grateful to doubt anyone at the moment.
+
+“Thank you, thank you ever so much, Mr. Simpson. You're the nicest,
+kindest, politest man I ever knew, and the girls will be so pleased you
+gave us back the flag, and so will the Dorcas Society; they'll be sure
+to write you a letter of thanks; they always do.”
+
+“Tell em not to bother bout any thanks,” said Simpson, beaming
+virtuously. “But land! I'm glad twas me that happened to see that bundle
+in the road and take the trouble to pick it up.” (“Jest to think of it's
+bein' a flag!” he thought; “if ever there was a pesky, wuthless thing to
+trade off, twould be a great, gormin' flag like that!”)
+
+“Can I get out now, please?” asked Rebecca. “I want to go back, for Mrs.
+Meserve will be dreadfully nervous when she finds out she dropped the
+flag, and she has heart trouble.”
+
+“No, you don't,” objected Mr. Simpson gallantly, turning the horse. “Do
+you think I'd let a little creeter like you lug that great heavy bundle?
+I hain't got time to go back to Meserve's, but I'll take you to the
+corner and dump you there, flag n' all, and you can get some o' the
+men-folks to carry it the rest o' the way. You'll wear it out, huggin'
+it so!”
+
+“I helped make it and I adore it!” said Rebecca, who was in a
+high-pitched and grandiloquent mood. “Why don't YOU like it? It's your
+country's flag.”
+
+Simpson smiled an indulgent smile and looked a trifle bored at these
+frequent appeals to his extremely rusty higher feelings.
+
+“I don' know's I've got any partic'lar int'rest in the country,” he
+remarked languidly. “I know I don't owe nothin' to it, nor own nothin'
+in it!”
+
+“You own a star on the flag, same as everybody,” argued Rebecca, who had
+been feeding on patriotism for a month; “and you own a state, too, like
+all of us!”
+
+“Land! I wish't I did! or even a quarter section!” sighed Mr. Simpson,
+feeling somehow a little more poverty-stricken and discouraged than
+usual.
+
+As they approached the corner and the watering-trough where four
+cross-roads met, the whole neighborhood seemed to be in evidence,
+and Mr. Simpson suddenly regretted his chivalrous escort of Rebecca;
+especially when, as he neared the group, an excited lady, wringing her
+hands, turned out to be Mrs. Peter Meserve, accompanied by Huldah, the
+Browns, Mrs. Milliken, Abijah Flagg, and Miss Dearborn.
+
+“Do you know anything about the new flag, Rebecca?” shrieked Mrs.
+Meserve, too agitated, at the moment, to notice the child's companion.
+
+“It's right here in my lap, all safe,” responded Rebecca joyously.
+
+“You careless, meddlesome young one, to take it off my steps where
+I left it just long enough to go round to the back and hunt up my
+door-key! You've given me a fit of sickness with my weak heart, and what
+business was it of yours? I believe you think you OWN the flag! Hand it
+over to me this minute!”
+
+Rebecca was climbing down during this torrent of language, but as she
+turned she flashed one look of knowledge at the false Simpson, a look
+that went through him from head to foot, as if it were carried by
+electricity.
+
+He had not deceived her after all, owing to the angry chatter of Mrs.
+Meserve. He had been handcuffed twice in his life, but no sheriff had
+ever discomfited him so thoroughly as this child. Fury mounted to his
+brain, and as soon as she was safely out from between the wheels he
+stood up in the wagon and flung the flag out in the road in the midst of
+the excited group.
+
+“Take it, you pious, passimonious, cheese-parin', hair-splittin',
+back-bitin', flag-raisin' crew!” he roared. “Rebecca never took the
+flag; I found it in the road, I say!”
+
+“You never, no such a thing!” exclaimed Mrs. Meserve. “You found it on
+the doorsteps in my garden!”
+
+“Mebbe twas your garden, but it was so chock full o' weeks I THOUGHT
+twas the road,” retorted Abner. “I vow I wouldn't a' given the old
+rag back to one o' YOU, not if you begged me on your bended knees! But
+Rebecca's a friend o' my folks and can do with her flag's she's a mind
+to, and the rest o' ye can go to thunder--n' stay there, for all I
+care!”
+
+So saying, he made a sharp turn, gave the gaunt white horse a lash and
+disappeared in a cloud of dust, before the astonished Mr. Brown, the
+only man in the party, had a thought of detaining him.
+
+“I'm sorry I spoke so quick, Rebecca,” said Mrs. Meserve, greatly
+mortified at the situation. “But don't you believe a word that lyin'
+critter said! He did steal it off my doorstep, and how did you come to
+be ridin' and consortin' with him! I believe it would kill your Aunt
+Miranda if she should hear about it!”
+
+The little school-teacher put a sheltering arm round Rebecca as Mr.
+Brown picked up the flag and dusted and folded it.
+
+“I'm willing she should hear about it,” Rebecca answered. “I didn't do
+anything to be ashamed of! I saw the flag in the back of Mr. Simpson's
+wagon and I just followed it. There weren't any men or any Dorcases to
+take care of it and so it fell to me! You wouldn't have had me let it
+out of my sight, would you, and we going to raise it tomorrow morning?”
+
+“Rebecca's perfectly right, Mrs. Meserve!” said Miss Dearborn proudly.
+“And it's lucky there was somebody quick-witted enough to ride and
+consort' with Mr. Simpson! I don't know what the village will think, but
+seems to me the town clerk might write down in his book, THIS DAY THE
+STATE OF MAINE SAVED THE FLAG!'”
+
+
+
+
+Sixth Chronicle. THE STATE O' MAINE GIRL
+
+
+I
+
+The foregoing episode, if narrated in a romance, would undoubtedly have
+been called “The Saving of the Colors,” but at the nightly conversazione
+in Watson's store it was alluded to as the way little Becky Randall got
+the flag away from Slippery Simpson.
+
+Dramatic as it was, it passed into the limbo of half-forgotten things
+in Rebecca's mind, its brief importance submerged in the glories of the
+next day.
+
+There was a painful prelude to these glories. Alice Robinson came to
+spend the night with Rebecca, and when the bedroom door closed upon the
+two girls, Alice announced here intention of “doing up” Rebecca's front
+hair in leads and rags, and braiding the back in six tight, wetted
+braids.
+
+Rebecca demurred. Alice persisted.
+
+“Your hair is so long and thick and dark and straight,” she said, “that
+you'll look like an Injun!”
+
+“I am the State of Maine; it all belonged to the Indians once,” Rebecca
+remarked gloomily, for she was curiously shy about discussing her
+personal appearance.
+
+“And your wreath of little pine-cones won't set decent without crimps,”
+ continued Alice.
+
+Rebecca glanced in the cracked looking-glass and met what she considered
+an accusing lack of beauty, a sight that always either saddened or
+enraged her according to circumstances; then she sat down resignedly
+and began to help Alice in the philanthropic work of making the State of
+Maine fit to be seen at the raising.
+
+Neither of the girls was an expert hairdresser, and at the end of an
+hour, when the sixth braid was tied, and Rebecca had given one last
+shuddering look in the mirror, both were ready to weep with fatigue.
+
+The candle was blown out and Alice soon went to sleep, but Rebecca
+tossed on her pillow, its goose-feathered softness all dented by the
+cruel lead knobs and the knots of twisted rags. She slipped out of bed
+and walked to and fro, holding her aching head with both hands. Finally
+she leaned on the window-sill, watching the still weather-vane on
+Alice's barn and breathing in the fragrance of the ripening apples,
+until her restlessness subsided under the clear starry beauty of the
+night.
+
+At six in the morning the girls were out of bed, for Alice could hardly
+wait until Rebecca's hair was taken down, she was so eager to see the
+result of her labors.
+
+The leads and rags were painfully removed, together with much hair, the
+operation being punctuated by a series of squeaks, squeals, and shrieks
+on the part of Rebecca and a series of warnings from Alice, who wished
+the preliminaries to be kept secret from the aunts, that they might the
+more fully appreciate the radiant result.
+
+Then came the unbraiding, and then--dramatic moment--the “combing out;”
+ a difficult, not to say impossible process, in which the hairs that had
+resisted the earlier stages almost gave up the ghost.
+
+The long front strands had been wound up from various angles and by
+various methods, so that, when released, they assumed the strangest,
+most obstinate, most unexpected attitudes. When the comb was dragged
+through the last braid, the wild, tortured, electric hairs following,
+and then rebounding from it in a bristling, snarling tangle.
+Massachusetts gave one encompassing glance at the State o' Maine's head,
+and announced her intention of going home to breakfast! She was deeply
+grieved at the result of her attempted beautifying, but she felt that
+meeting Miss Miranda Sawyer at the morning meal would not mend matters
+in the least, so slipping out of the side door, she ran up Guide Board
+hill as fast as her legs could carry her.
+
+The State o' Maine, deserted and somewhat unnerved, sat down before the
+glass and attacked her hair doggedly and with set lips, working over it
+until Miss Jane called her to breakfast; then, with a boldness born
+of despair, she entered the dining room, where her aunts were already
+seated at table. To “draw fire” she whistled, a forbidden joy, which
+only attracted more attention, instead of diverting it. There was a
+moment of silence after the grotesque figure was fully taken in; then
+came a moan from Jane and a groan from Miranda.
+
+“What have you done to yourself?” asked Miranda sternly.
+
+“Made an effort to be beautiful and failed!” jauntily replied Rebecca,
+but she was too miserable to keep up the fiction. “Oh, Aunt Miranda,
+don't scold. I'm so unhappy! Alice and I rolled up my hair to curl it
+for the raising. She said it was so straight I looked like an Indian!”
+
+“Mebbe you did,” vigorously agreed Miranda, “but 't any rate you looked
+like a Christian Injun, 'n' now you look like a heathen Injun; that's
+all the difference I can see. What can we do with her, Jane, between
+this and nine o'clock?”
+
+“We'll all go out to the pump just as soon as we're through breakfast,”
+ answered Jane soothingly. “We can accomplish consid'rable with water and
+force.”
+
+Rebecca nibbled her corn-cake, her tearful eyes cast on her plate and
+her chin quivering.
+
+“Don't you cry and red your eyes up,” chided Miranda quite kindly; “the
+minute you've eat enough run up and get your brush and comb and meet us
+at the back door.”
+
+“I wouldn't care myself how bad I looked,” said Rebecca, “but I can't
+bear to be so homely that I shame the State of Maine!”
+
+Oh, what an hour followed this plaint! Did any aspirant for literary
+or dramatic honors ever pass to fame through such an antechamber of
+horrors? Did poet of the day ever have his head so maltreated? To be
+dipped in the rain-water tub, soused again and again; to be held under
+the spout and pumped on; to be rubbed furiously with rough roller
+towels; to be dried with hot flannels! And is it not well-nigh
+incredible that at the close of such an hour the ends of the long hair
+should still stand out straight, the braids having been turned up two
+inches by Alice, and tied hard in that position with linen thread?
+
+“Get out the skirt-board, Jane,” cried Miranda, to whom opposition
+served as a tonic, “and move that flat-iron on to the front o' the
+stove. Rebecca, set down in that low chair beside the board, and Jane,
+you spread out her hair on it and cover it up with brown paper. Don't
+cringe, Rebecca; the worst's over, and you've borne up real good! I'll
+be careful not to pull your hair nor scorch you, and oh, HOW I'd like
+to have Alice Robinson acrost my knee and a good strip o' shingle in my
+right hand! There, you're all ironed out and your Aunt Jane can put on
+your white dress and braid your hair up again good and tight. Perhaps
+you won't be the hombliest of the states, after all; but when I see you
+comin' in to breakfast I said to myself: I guess if Maine looked like
+that, it wouldn't never a' been admitted into the Union!'”
+
+When Uncle Sam and the stagecoach drew up to the brick house with a
+grand swing and a flourish, the goddess of Liberty and most of the
+States were already in their places on the “harricane deck.”
+
+Words fail to describe the gallant bearing of the horses, their
+headstalls gayly trimmed and their harnesses dotted with little flags.
+The stage windows were hung in bunting, and from within beamed Columbia,
+looking out from the bright frame as if proud of her freight of loyal
+children. Patriotic streamers floated from whip, from dash-board and
+from rumble, and the effect of the whole was something to stimulate the
+most phlegmatic voter.
+
+Rebecca came out on the steps and Aunt Jane brought a chair to assist in
+the ascent. Miss Dearborn peeped from the window, and gave a despairing
+look at her favorite.
+
+What had happened to her? Who had dressed her? Had her head been put
+through a wringing-machine? Why were her eyes red and swollen? Miss
+Dearborn determined to take her behind the trees in the pine grove
+and give her some finishing touches; touches that her skillful fingers
+fairly itched to bestow.
+
+The stage started, and as the roadside pageant grew gayer and gayer,
+Rebecca began to brighten and look prettier, for most of her beautifying
+came from within. The people, walking, driving, or standing on
+their doorsteps, cheered Uncle Sam's coach with its freight of
+gossamer-muslined, fluttering-ribboned girls, and just behind, the
+gorgeously decorated haycart, driven by Abijah Flagg, bearing the jolly
+but inharmonious fife-and-drum corps.
+
+Was ever such a golden day! Such crystal air! Such mellow sunshine! Such
+a merry Uncle Sam!
+
+The stage drew up at an appointed spot near a pine grove, and while the
+crowd was gathering, the children waited for the hour to arrive when
+they should march to the platform; the hour toward which they seemed to
+have been moving since the dawn of creation.
+
+As soon as possible Miss Dearborn whispered to Rebecca: “Come behind the
+trees with me; I want to make you prettier!”
+
+Rebecca thought she had suffered enough from that process already during
+the last twelve hours, but she put out an obedient hand and the two
+withdrew.
+
+Now Miss Dearborn was, I fear, a very indifferent teacher. Dr. Moses
+always said so, and Libbie Moses, who wanted her school, said it was
+a pity she hadn't enjoyed more social advantages in her youth. Libbie
+herself had taken music lessons in Portland; and spent a night at the
+Profile House in the White Mountains, and had visited her sister in
+Lowell, Massachusetts. These experiences gave her, in her own mind, and
+in the mind of her intimate friends, a horizon so boundless that her
+view of smaller, humbler matters was a trifle distorted.
+
+Miss Dearborn's stock in trade was small, her principal virtues being
+devotion to children and ability to gain their love, and a power of
+evolving a schoolroom order so natural, cheery, serene, and peaceful
+that it gave the beholder a certain sense of being in a district heaven.
+She was poor in arithmetic and weak in geometry, but if you gave her a
+rose, a bit of ribbon, and a seven-by-nine looking-glass she could make
+herself as pretty as a pink in two minutes.
+
+Safely sheltered behind the pines, Miss Dearborn began to practice
+mysterious feminine arts. She flew at Rebecca's tight braids, opened
+the strands and rebraided them loosely; bit and tore the red, white,
+and blue ribbon in two and tied the braids separately. Then with nimble
+fingers she pulled out little tendrils of hair behind the ears and
+around the nape of the neck. After a glance of acute disapproval
+directed at the stiff balloon skirt she knelt on the ground and gave
+a strenuous embrace to Rebecca's knees, murmuring, between her hugs,
+“Starch must be cheap at the brick house!”
+
+This particular line of beauty attained, there ensued great pinchings of
+ruffles, her fingers that could never hold a ferrule nor snap children's
+ears being incomparable fluting-irons.
+
+Next the sash was scornfully untied and tightened to suggest something
+resembling a waist. The chastened bows that had been squat, dowdy,
+spiritless, were given tweaks, flirts, bracing little pokes and dabs,
+till, acknowledging a master hand, they stood up, piquant, pert, smart,
+alert!
+
+Pride of bearing was now infused into the flattened lace at the neck,
+and a pin (removed at some sacrifice from her own toilette) was darned
+in at the back to prevent any cowardly lapsing. The short white cotton
+gloves that called attention to the tanned wrist and arms were stripped
+off and put in her own pocket. Then the wreath of pine-cones was
+adjusted at a heretofore unimagined angle, the hair was pulled softly
+into a fluffy frame, and finally, as she met Rebecca's grateful eyes
+she gave her two approving, triumphant kisses. In a second the sensitive
+face lighted into happiness; pleased dimples appeared in the cheeks, the
+kissed mouth was as red as a rose, and the little fright that had walked
+behind the pine-tree stepped out on the other side Rebecca the lovely.
+
+As to the relative value of Miss Dearborn's accomplishments, the
+decision must be left to the gentle reader; but though it is certain
+that children should be properly grounded in mathematics, no heart of
+flesh could bear to hear Miss Dearborn's methods vilified who had seen
+her patting, pulling, squeezing Rebecca from ugliness into beauty.
+
+The young superintendent of district schools was a witness of the scene,
+and when later he noted the children surrounding Columbia as bees
+a honeysuckle, he observed to Dr. Moses: “She may not be much of a
+teacher, but I think she'd be considerable of a wife!” and subsequent
+events proved that he meant what he said!
+
+II
+
+Now all was ready; the moment of fate was absolutely at hand; the
+fife-and-drum corps led the way and the States followed; but what
+actually happened Rebecca never knew; she lived through the hours in a
+waking dream. Every little detail was a facet of light that reflected
+sparkles, and among them all she was fairly dazzled. The brass band
+played inspiring strains; the mayor spoke eloquently on great themes;
+the people cheered; then the rope on which so much depended was put into
+the children's hands, they applied superhuman strength to their task,
+and the flag mounted, mounted, smoothly and slowly, and slowly unwound
+and stretched itself until its splendid size and beauty were revealed
+against the maples and pines and blue New England sky.
+
+Then after cheers upon cheers and after a patriotic chorus by the church
+choirs, the State of Maine mounted the platform, vaguely conscious
+that she was to recite a poem, though for the life of her she could not
+remember a single word.
+
+“Speak up loud and clear, Rebecky,” whispered Uncle Sam in the front
+row, but she could scarcely hear her own voice when, tremblingly, she
+began her first line. After that she gathered strength and the poem
+“said itself,” while the dream went on.
+
+She saw Adam Ladd leaning against a tree; Aunt Jane and Aunt Miranda
+palpitating with nervousness; Clara Belle Simpson gazing cross-eyed but
+adoring from a seat on the side; and in the far, far distance, on the
+very outskirts of the crowd, a tall man standing in a wagon--a tall,
+loose-jointed man with red upturned mustaches, and a gaunt white horse
+headed toward the Acreville road.
+
+Loud applause greeted the state of Maine, the slender little white-clad
+figure standing on the mossy boulder that had been used as the centre of
+the platform. The sun came up from behind a great maple and shone full
+on the star-spangled banner, making it more dazzling than ever, so that
+its beauty drew all eyes upward.
+
+Abner Simpson lifted his vagrant shifting gaze to its softy fluttering
+folds and its splendid massing of colors, thinking:
+
+“I don't know's anybody'd ought to steal a flag--the thunderin' idjuts
+seem to set such store by it, and what is it, anyway? Nothin; but a
+sheet o' buntin!”
+
+Nothing but a sheet of bunting? He looked curiously at the rapt faces
+of the mothers, their babies asleep in their arms; the parted lips and
+shining eyes of the white-clad girls; at Cap'n Lord, who had been in
+Libby prison, and Nat Strout, who had left an arm at Bull Run; at the
+friendly, jostling crowd of farmers, happy, eager, absorbed, their
+throats ready to burst with cheers. Then the breeze served, and he heard
+Rebecca's clear voice saying:
+
+“For it's your star, my star, all the stars together, That make our
+country's flag so proud To float in the bright fall weather!”
+
+“Talk about stars! She's got a couple of em right in her head,” thought
+Simpson.... “If I ever seen a young one like that lyin; on anybody's
+doorstep I'd hook her quicker'n a wink, though I've got plenty to home,
+the Lord knows! And I wouldn't swap her off neither.... Spunky little
+creeter, too; settin; up in the wagon lookin' bout's big as a pint o'
+cider, but keepin' right after the goods!... I vow I'm bout sick o' my
+job! Never WITH the crowd, allers JEST on the outside, s if I wa'n't as
+good's they be! If it paid well, mebbe I wouldn't mind, but they're so
+thunderin' stingy round here, they don't leave anything decent out for
+you to take from em, yet you're reskin' your liberty n' reputation jest
+the same!... Countin' the poor pickin's n' the time I lose in jail I
+might most's well be done with it n' work out by the day, as the folks
+want me to; I'd make bout's much n' I don't know's it would be any
+harder!”
+
+He could see Rebecca stepping down from the platform, while his own
+red-headed little girl stood up on her bench, waving her hat with one
+hand, her handkerchief with the other, and stamping with both feet.
+
+Now a man sitting beside the mayor rose from his chair and Abner heard
+him call:
+
+“Three cheers for the women who made the flag!”
+
+“HIP, HIP, HURRAH!”
+
+“Three cheers for the State of Maine!”
+
+“HIP, HIP, HURRAH!”
+
+“Three cheers for the girl that saved the flag from the hands of the
+enemy!”
+
+“HIP, HIP, HURRAH! HIP, HIP, HURRAH!”
+
+It was the Edgewood minister, whose full, vibrant voice was of the sort
+to move a crowd. His words rang out into the clear air and were carried
+from lip to lip. Hands clapped, feet stamped, hats swung, while the loud
+huzzahs might almost have wakened the echoes on old Mount Ossipee.
+
+The tall, loose-jointed man sat down in the wagon suddenly and took up
+the reins.
+
+“They're gettin' a little mite personal, and I guess it's bout time for
+you to be goin', Simpson!”
+
+The tone was jocular, but the red mustaches drooped, and the
+half-hearted cut he gave to start the white mare on her homeward journey
+showed that he was not in his usual devil-may-care mood.
+
+“Durn his skin!” he burst out in a vindictive undertone, as the mare
+swung into her long gait. “It's a lie! I thought twas somebody's wash! I
+hain't an enemy!”
+
+While the crowd at the raising dispersed in happy family groups to their
+picnics in the woods; while the Goddess of Liberty, Uncle Sam,
+Columbia, and the proud States lunched grandly in the Grange hall with
+distinguished guests and scarred veterans of two wars, the lonely
+man drove, and drove, and drove through silent woods and dull, sleepy
+villages, never alighting to replenish his wardrobe or his stock of
+swapping material.
+
+At dusk he reached a miserable tumble-down house on the edge of a pond.
+
+The faithful wife with the sad mouth and the habitual look of anxiety in
+her faded eyes came to the door at the sound of wheels and went doggedly
+to the horse-shed to help him unharness.
+
+“You didn't expect to see me back tonight, did ye?” he asked
+satirically; “leastwise not with this same horse? Well, I'm here! You
+needn't be scairt to look under the wagon seat, there hain't nothin'
+there, not even my supper, so I hope you're suited for once! No, I guess
+I hain't goin' to be an angel right away, neither. There wa'n't nothin'
+but flags layin' roun' loose down Riverboro way, n' whatever they say, I
+hain't sech a hound as to steal a flag!”
+
+It was natural that young Riverboro should have red, white, and blue
+dreams on the night after the new flag was raised. A stranger thing,
+perhaps, is the fact that Abner Simpson should lie down on his hard bed
+with the flutter of bunting before his eyes, and a whirl of unaccustomed
+words in his mind.
+
+“For it's your star, my star, all our stars together.”
+
+“I'm sick of goin' it alone,” he thought; “I guess I'll try the other
+road for a spell;” and with that he fell asleep.
+
+
+
+
+Seventh Chronicle. THE LITTLE PROPHET
+
+
+I
+
+“I guess York County will never get red of that Simpson crew!” exclaimed
+Miranda Sawyer to Jane. “I thought when the family moved to Acreville
+we'd seen the last of em, but we ain't! The big, cross-eyed, stutterin'
+boy has got a place at the mills in Maplewood; that's near enough to
+come over to Riverboro once in a while of a Sunday mornin' and set in
+the meetin' house starin' at Rebecca same as he used to do, only it's
+reskier now both of em are older. Then Mrs. Fogg must go and bring back
+the biggest girl to help her take care of her baby,--as if there wa'n't
+plenty of help nearer home! Now I hear say that the youngest twin has
+come to stop the summer with the Cames up to Edgewood Lower Corner.”
+
+“I thought two twins were always the same age,” said Rebecca,
+reflectively, as she came into the kitchen with the milk pail.
+
+“So they be,” snapped Miranda, flushing and correcting herself. “But
+that pasty-faced Simpson twin looks younger and is smaller than the
+other one. He's meek as Moses and the other one is as bold as a brass
+kettle; I don't see how they come to be twins; they ain't a mite alike.”
+
+“Elijah was always called the fighting twin' at school,” said Rebecca,
+“and Elisha's other name was Nimbi-Pamby; but I think he's a nice little
+boy, and I'm glad he has come back. He won't like living with Mr. Came,
+but he'll be almost next door to the minister's, and Mrs. Baxter is sure
+to let him play in her garden.”
+
+“I wonder why the boy's stayin' with Cassius Came,” said Jane. “To be
+sure they haven't got any of their own, but the child's too young to be
+much use.”
+
+“I know why,” remarked Rebecca promptly, “for I heard all about it over
+to Watson's when I was getting the milk. Mr. Came traded something with
+Mr. Simpson two years ago and got the best of the bargain, and Uncle
+Jerry says he's the only man that ever did, and he ought to have a
+monument put up to him. So Mr. Came owes Mr. Simpson money and won't
+pay it, and Mr. Simpson said he'd send over a child and board part of it
+out, and take the rest in stock--a pig or a calf or something.”
+
+“That's all stuff and nonsense,” exclaimed Miranda; “nothin' in the
+world but store-talk. You git a clump o' men-folks settin' round
+Watson's stove, or out on the bench at the door, an' they'll make up
+stories as fast as their tongues can wag. The man don't live that's
+smart enough to cheat Abner Simpson in a trade, and who ever heard of
+anybody's owin' him money? Tain't supposable that a woman like Mrs. Came
+would allow her husband to be in debt to a man like Abner Simpson. It's
+a sight likelier that she heard that Mrs. Simpson was ailin' and sent
+for the boy so as to help the family along. She always had Mrs. Simpson
+to wash for her once a month, if you remember Jane?”
+
+There are some facts so shrouded in obscurity that the most skillful and
+patient investigator cannot drag them into the light of day. There are
+also (but only occasionally) certain motives, acts, speeches, lines of
+conduct, that can never be wholly and satisfactorily explained, even in
+a village post-office or on the loafers' bench outside the tavern door.
+
+Cassius Came was a close man, close of mouth and close of purse; and all
+that Riverboro ever knew as to the three months' visit of the Simpson
+twin was that it actually occurred. Elisha, otherwise Nimbi-Pamby, came;
+Nimbi-Pamby stayed; and Nimbi-Pamby, when he finally rejoined his own
+domestic circle, did not go empty-handed (so to speak), for he was
+accompanied on his homeward travels by a large, red, bony, somewhat
+truculent cow, who was tied on behind the wagon, and who made the
+journey a lively and eventful one by her total lack of desire to proceed
+over the road from Edgewood to Acreville. But that, the cow's tale,
+belongs to another time and place, and the coward's tale must come
+first; for Elisha Simpson was held to be sadly lacking in the manly
+quality of courage.
+
+It was the new minister's wife who called Nimbi-Pamby the Little
+Prophet. His full name was Elisha Jeremiah Simpson, but one seldom heard
+it at full length, since, if he escaped the ignominy of Nimbi-Pamby,
+Lishe was quite enough for an urchin just in his first trousers and
+those assumed somewhat prematurely. He was “Lishe,” therefore, to the
+village, but the Little Prophet to the young minister's wife.
+
+Rebecca could see the Cames' brown farmhouse from Mrs. Baxter's
+sitting-room window. The little-traveled road with strips of tufted
+green between the wheel tracks curled dustily up to the very doorstep,
+and inside the screen door of pink mosquito netting was a wonderful
+drawn-in rug, shaped like a half pie, with “Welcome” in saffron letters
+on a green ground.
+
+Rebecca liked Mrs. Cassius Came, who was a friend of her Aunt Miranda's
+and one of the few persons who exchanged calls with that somewhat
+unsociable lady. The Came farm was not a long walk from the brick house,
+for Rebecca could go across the fields when haying-time was over, and
+her delight at being sent on an errand in that direction could not be
+measured, now that the new minister and his wife had grown to be such a
+resource in her life. She liked to see Mrs. Came shake the Welcome rug,
+flinging the cheery word out into the summer sunshine like a bright
+greeting to the day. She liked to see her go to the screen door a dozen
+times in a morning, open it a crack and chase an imaginary fly from the
+sacred precincts within. She liked to see her come up the cellar steps
+into the side garden, appearing mysteriously as from the bowels of the
+earth, carrying a shining pan of milk in both hands, and disappearing
+through the beds of hollyhocks and sunflowers to the pig-pen or the
+hen-house.
+
+Rebecca was not fond of Mr. Came, and neither was Mrs. Baxter, nor
+Elisha, for that matter; in fact Mr. Came was rather a difficult person
+to grow fond of, with his fiery red beard, his freckled skin, and his
+gruff way of speaking; for there were no children in the brown house to
+smooth the creases from his forehead or the roughness from his voice.
+
+II
+
+The new minister's wife was sitting under the shade of her great maple
+early one morning, when she first saw the Little Prophet. A tiny figure
+came down the grass-grown road leading a cow by a rope. If it had been a
+small boy and a small cow, a middle-sized boy and an ordinary cow, or a
+grown man and a big cow, she might not have noticed them; but it was the
+combination of an infinitesimal boy and a huge cow that attracted her
+attention. She could not guess the child's years, she only knew that he
+was small for his age, whatever it was.
+
+The cow was a dark red beast with a crumpled horn, a white star on her
+forehead, and a large surprised sort of eye. She had, of course, two
+eyes, and both were surprised, but the left one had an added hint of
+amazement in it by virtue of a few white hairs lurking accidentally in
+the centre of the eyebrow.
+
+The boy had a thin sensitive face and curtly brown hair, short trousers
+patched on both knees, and a ragged straw hat on the back of his head.
+He pattered along behind the cow, sometimes holding the rope with both
+hands, and getting over the ground in a jerky way, as the animal left
+him no time to think of a smooth path for bare feet.
+
+The Came pasture was a good half-mile distant, and the cow seemed in no
+hurry to reach it; accordingly she forsook the road now and then,
+and rambled in the hollows, where the grass was sweeter to her way of
+thinking. She started on one of these exploring expeditions just as she
+passed the minister's great maple, and gave Mrs. Baxter time to call out
+to the little fellow, “Is that your cow?”
+
+Elisha blushed and smiled, and tried to speak modestly, but there was a
+quiver of pride in his voice as he answered suggestively:
+
+“It's--nearly my cow.”
+
+“How is that?” asked Mrs. Baxter.
+
+“Why, Mr. Came says when I drive her twenty-nine more times to pasture
+thout her gettin' her foot over the rope or thout my bein' afraid, she's
+goin' to be my truly cow. Are you fraid of cows?”
+
+“Ye-e-es,” Mrs. Baxter confessed, “I am, just a little. You see, I am
+nothing but a woman, and boys can't understand how we feel about cows.”
+
+“I can! They're awful big things, aren't they?”
+
+“Perfectly enormous! I've always thought a cow coming towards you one of
+the biggest things in the world.”
+
+“Yes; me, too. Don't let's think about it. Do they hook people so very
+often?”
+
+“No indeed, in fact one scarcely ever hears of such a case.”
+
+“If they stepped on your bare foot they'd scrunch it, wouldn't they?”
+
+“Yes, but you are the driver; you mustn't let them do that; you are a
+free-will boy, and they are nothing but cows.”
+
+“I know; but p'raps there is free-will cows, and if they just WOULD do
+it you couldn't help being scrunched, for you mustn't let go of the rope
+nor run, Mr. Came says.
+
+“No, of course that would never do.”
+
+“Where you used to live did all the cows go down into the boggy places
+when you drove em to pasture, or did some walk in the road?”
+
+“There weren't any cows or any pastures where I used to live; that's
+what makes me so foolish; why does your cow need a rope?”
+
+“She don't like to go to pasture, Mr. Came says. Sometimes she'd druther
+stay to home, and so when she gets part way she turns round and comes
+backwards.”
+
+“Dear me!” thought Mrs. Baxter, “what becomes of this boy-mite if the
+cow has a spell of going backwards?--Do you like to drive her?” she
+asked.
+
+“N-no, not erzackly; but you see, it'll be my cow if I drive her
+twenty-nine more times thout her gettin' her foot over the rope and
+thout my bein' afraid,” and a beaming smile gave a transient brightness
+to his harassed little face. “Will she feed in the ditch much longer?”
+ he asked. “Shall I say Hurrap'? That's what Mr. Came says--HURRAP!' like
+that, and it means to hurry up.”
+
+It was rather a feeble warning that he sounded and the cow fed
+on peacefully. The little fellow looked up at the minister's wife
+confidingly, and then glanced back at the farm to see if Cassius Came
+were watching the progress of events.
+
+“What shall we do next?” he asked.
+
+Mrs. Baxter delighted in that warm, cosy little 'WE;' it took her into
+the firm so pleasantly. She was a weak prop indeed when it came to cows,
+but all the courage in her soul rose to arms when Elisha said, “What
+shall WE do next?” She became alert, ingenious, strong, on the instant.
+
+“What is the cow's name?” she asked, sitting up straight in the
+swing-chair.
+
+“Buttercup; but she don't seem to know it very well. She ain't a mite
+like a buttercup.”
+
+“Never mind; you must shout 'Buttercup!' at the top of your voice, and
+twitch the rope HARD; then I'll call, 'Hurrap!' with all my might at
+the same moment. And if she starts quickly we mustn't run nor seem
+frightened!”
+
+They did this; it worked to a charm, and Mrs. Baxter looked
+affectionately after her Little Prophet as the cow pulled him down Tory
+Hill.
+
+The lovely August days wore on. Rebecca was often at the parsonage
+and saw Elisha frequently, but Buttercup was seldom present at their
+interviews, as the boy now drove her to the pasture very early in the
+morning, the journey thither being one of considerable length and her
+method of reaching the goal being exceedingly roundabout.
+
+Mr. Came had pointed out the necessity of getting her into the pasture
+at least a few minutes before she had to be taken out again at night,
+and though Rebecca didn't like Mr. Came, she saw the common sense of
+this remark. Sometimes Mrs. Baxter and Rebecca caught a glimpse of
+the two at sundown, as they returned from the pasture to the twilight
+milking, Buttercup chewing her peaceful cud, her soft white bag of milk
+hanging full, her surprised eye rolling in its accustomed “fine frenzy.”
+ The frenzied roll did not mean anything, they used to assure Elisha; but
+if it didn't, it was an awful pity she had to do it, Rebecca thought;
+and Mrs. Baxter agreed. To have an expression of eye that meant murder,
+and yet to be a perfectly virtuous and well-meaning animal, this was a
+calamity indeed.
+
+Mrs. Baxter was looking at the sun one evening as it dropped like a ball
+of red fire into Wilkins's woods, when the Little Prophet passed.
+
+“It's the twenty-ninth night,” he called joyously.
+
+“I am so glad,” she answered, for she had often feared some accident
+might prevent his claiming the promised reward. “Then tomorrow Buttercup
+will be your own cow?”
+
+“I guess so. That's what Mr. Came said. He's off to Acreville now, but
+he'll be home tonight, and father's going to send my new hat by him.
+When Buttercup's my own cow I wish I could change her name and call her
+Red Rover, but p'r'aps her mother wouldn't like it. When she b'longs to
+me, mebbe I won't be so fraid of gettin' hooked and scrunched, because
+she'll know she's mine, and she'll go better. I haven't let her get
+snarled up in the rope one single time, and I don't show I'm afraid, do
+I?”
+
+“I should never suspect it for an instant,” said Mrs. Baxter
+encouragingly. “I've often envied you your bold, brave look!”
+
+Elisha appeared distinctly pleased. “I haven't cried, either, when she's
+dragged me over the pasture bars and peeled my legs. Bill Petes's little
+brother Charlie says he ain't afraid of anything, not even bears. He
+says he would walk right up close and cuff em if they dared to yip;
+but I ain't like that! He ain't scared of elephants or tigers or lions
+either; he says they're all the same as frogs or chickens to him!”
+
+Rebecca told her Aunt Miranda that evening that it was the Prophet's
+twenty-ninth night, and that the big red cow was to be his on the
+morrow.
+
+“Well, I hope it'll turn out that way,” she said. “But I ain't a mite
+sure that Cassius Came will give up that cow when it comes to the point.
+It won't be the first time he's tried to crawl out of a bargain with
+folks a good deal bigger than Lisha, for he's terrible close, Cassius
+is. To be sure he's stiff in his joints and he's glad enough to have
+a boy to take the cow to the pasture in summer time, but he always has
+hired help when it comes harvestin'. So Lisha'll be no use from this
+on; and I dare say the cow is Abner Simpson's anyway. If you want a walk
+tonight, I wish you'd go up there and ask Mis' Came if she'll lend me
+an' your Aunt Jane half her yeast-cake. Tell her we'll pay it back when
+we get ours a Saturday. Don't you want to take Thirza Meserve with you?
+She's alone as usual while Huldy's entertainin' beaux on the side porch.
+Don't stay too long at the parsonage!”
+
+III
+
+Rebecca was used to this sort of errand, for the whole village of
+Riverboro would sometimes be rocked to the very centre of its being by
+simultaneous desire for a yeast-cake. As the nearest repository was a
+mile and a half distant, as the yeast-cake was valued at two cents and
+wouldn't keep, as the demand was uncertain, being dependent entirely on
+a fluctuating desire for “riz bread,” the storekeeper refused to order
+more than three yeast-cakes a day at his own risk. Sometimes they
+remained on his hands a dead loss; sometimes eight or ten persons would
+“hitch up” and drive from distant farms for the coveted article, only to
+be met with the flat, “No, I'm all out o' yeast-cake; Mis' Simmons
+took the last; mebbe you can borry half o' hern, she hain't much of a
+bread-eater.”
+
+So Rebecca climbed the hills to Mrs. Came's, knowing that her daily
+bread depended on the successful issue of the call.
+
+Thirza was barefooted, and tough as her little feet were, the long walk
+over the stubble fields tired her. When they came within sight of the
+Came barn, she coaxed Rebecca to take a short cut through the turnips
+growing in long, beautifully weeded rows.
+
+“You know Mr. Came is awfully cross, Thirza, and can't bear anybody to
+tread on his crops or touch a tree or a bush that belongs to him. I'm
+kind of afraid, but come along and mind you step softly in between the
+rows and hold up your petticoat, so you can't possibly touch the turnip
+plants. I'll do the same. Skip along fast, because then we won't leave
+any deep footprints.”
+
+The children passed safely and noiselessly along, their pleasure a
+trifle enhanced by the felt dangers of their progress. Rebecca knew that
+they were doing no harm, but that did not prevent her hoping to escape
+the gimlet eye of Mr. Came.
+
+As they neared the outer edge of the turnip patch they paused suddenly,
+petticoats in air.
+
+A great clump of elderberry bushes hid them from the barn, but from the
+other side of the clump came the sound of conversation: the timid voice
+of the Little Prophet and the gruff tones of Cassius Came.
+
+Rebecca was afraid to interrupt, and too honest to wish to overhear. She
+could only hope the man and the boy would pass on to the house as they
+talked, so she motioned to the paralyzed Thirza to take two more steps
+and stand with her behind the elderberry bushes. But no! In a moment
+they heard Mr. Came drag a stool over beside the grindstone as he said:
+
+“Well, now Elisha Jeremiah, we'll talk about the red cow. You say you've
+drove her a month, do ye? And the trade between us was that if you
+could drive her a month, without her getting the rope over her foot and
+without bein' afraid, you was to have her. That's straight, ain't it?”
+
+The Prophet's face burned with excitement, his gingham shirt rose and
+fell as if he were breathing hard, but he only nodded assent and said
+nothing.
+
+“Now,” continued Mr. Came, “have you made out to keep the rope from
+under her feet?”
+
+“She ain't got t-t-tangled up one s-single time,” said Elisha,
+stuttering in his excitement, but looking up with some courage from his
+bare toes, with which he was assiduously threading the grass.
+
+“So far, so good. Now bout bein' afraid. As you seem so certain of
+gettin' the cow, I suppose you hain't been a speck scared, hev you?
+Honor bright, now!”
+
+“I--I--not but just a little mite. I”--
+
+“Hold up a minute. Of course you didn't SAY you was afraid, and didn't
+SHOW you was afraid, and nobody knew you WAS afraid, but that ain't the
+way we fixed it up. You was to call the cow your'n if you could drive
+her to the pasture for a month without BEIN' afraid. Own up square now,
+hev you be'n afraid?”
+
+A long pause, then a faint, “Yes.”
+
+“Where's your manners?”
+
+“I mean yes, sir.”
+
+“How often? If it hain't be'n too many times mebbe I'll let ye off,
+though you're a reg'lar girl-boy, and'll be runnin' away from the cat
+bimeby. Has it be'n--twice?”
+
+“Yes,” and the Little Prophet's voice was very faint now, and had a
+decided tear in it.
+
+“Yes what?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Has it be'n four times?”
+
+“Y-es, sir.” More heaving of the gingham shirt.
+
+“Well, you AIR a thunderin' coward! How many times? Speak up now.”
+
+More digging of the bare toes in the earth, and one premonitory tear
+drop stealing from under the downcast lids, then,--
+
+“A little, most every day, and you can keep the cow,” wailed the
+Prophet, as he turned abruptly and fled behind the shed, where he flung
+himself into the green depths of a tansy bed, and gave himself up to
+unmanly sobs.
+
+Cassius Came gave a sort of shamefaced guffaw at the abrupt departure
+of the boy, and went on into the house, while Rebecca and Thirza made
+a stealthy circuit of the barn and a polite and circumspect entrance
+through the parsonage front gate.
+
+Rebecca told the minister's wife what she could remember of the
+interview between Cassius Came and Elisha Simpson, and tender-hearted
+Mrs. Baxter longed to seek and comfort her Little Prophet sobbing in the
+tansy bed, the brand of coward on his forehead, and what was much worse,
+the fear in his heart that he deserved it.
+
+Rebecca could hardly be prevented from bearding Mr. Came and openly
+espousing the cause of Elisha, for she was an impetuous, reckless,
+valiant creature when a weaker vessel was attacked or threatened
+unjustly.
+
+Mrs. Baxter acknowledged that Mr. Came had been true, in a way, to his
+word and bargain, but she confessed that she had never heard of so cruel
+and hard a bargain since the days of Shylock, and it was all the worse
+for being made with a child.
+
+Rebecca hurried home, her visit quite spoiled and her errand quite
+forgotten till she reached the brick house door, where she told her
+aunts, with her customary picturesqueness of speech, that she would
+rather eat buttermilk bread till she died than partake of food mixed
+with one of Mr. Came's yeast-cakes; that it would choke her, even in the
+shape of good raised bread.
+
+“That's all very fine, Rebecky,” said her Aunt Miranda, who had a
+pin-prick for almost every bubble; “but don't forget there's two other
+mouths to feed in this house, and you might at least give your aunt and
+me the privilege of chokin' if we feel to want to!”
+
+IV
+
+Mrs. Baxter finally heard from Mrs. Came, through whom all information
+was sure to filter if you gave it time, that her husband despised a
+coward, that he considered Elisha a regular mother's-apron-string boy,
+and that he was “learnin'” him to be brave.
+
+Bill Peters, the hired man, now drove Buttercup to pasture, though
+whenever Mr. Came went to Moderation or Bonnie Eagle, as he often did,
+Mrs. Baxter noticed that Elisha took the hired man's place. She often
+joined him on these anxious expeditions, and, a like terror in both
+their souls, they attempted to train the red cow and give her some idea
+of obedience.
+
+“If she only wouldn't look at us that way we would get along real nicely
+with her, wouldn't we?” prattled the Prophet, straggling along by her
+side; “and she is a splendid cow; she gives twenty-one quarts a day, and
+Mr. Came says it's more'n half cream.”
+
+The minister's wife assented to all this, thinking that if Buttercup
+would give up her habit of turning completely round in the road to roll
+her eyes and elevate her white-tipped eyebrow, she might indeed be an
+enjoyable companion; but in her present state of development her society
+was not agreeable, even did she give sixty-one quarts of milk a day.
+Furthermore, when Mrs. Baxter discovered that she never did any of these
+reprehensible things with Bill Peters, she began to believe cows more
+intelligent creatures than she had supposed them to be, and she was
+indignant to think Buttercup could count so confidently on the weakness
+of a small boy and a timid woman.
+
+One evening, when Buttercup was more than usually exasperating, Mrs.
+Baxter said to the Prophet, who was bracing himself to keep from being
+pulled into a wayside brook where Buttercup loved to dabble, “Elisha, do
+you know anything about the superiority of mind over matter?”
+
+No, he didn't, though it was not a fair time to ask the question, for he
+had sat down in the road to get a better purchase on the rope.
+
+“Well, it doesn't signify. What I mean is that we can die but once, and
+it is a glorious thing to die for a great principle. Give me that rope.
+I can pull like an ox in my present frame of mind. You run down on the
+opposite side of the brook, take that big stick wade right in--you
+are barefooted,--brandish the stick, and, if necessary, do more than
+brandish. I would go myself, but it is better she should recognize you
+as her master, and I am in as much danger as you are, anyway. She may
+try to hook you, of course, but you must keep waving the stick,--die
+brandishing, Prophet, that's the idea! She may turn and run for me, in
+which case I shall run too; but I shall die running, and the minister
+can bury us under our favorite sweet-apple tree!”
+
+The Prophet's soul was fired by the lovely lady's eloquence. Their
+spirits mounted simultaneously, and they were flushed with a splendid
+courage in which death looked a mean and paltry thing compared with
+vanquishing that cow. She had already stepped into the pool, but the
+Prophet waded in towards her, moving the alder branch menacingly. She
+looked up with the familiar roll of the eye that had done her such good
+service all summer, but she quailed beneath the stern justice and the
+new valor of the Prophet's gaze.
+
+In that moment perhaps she felt ashamed of the misery she had caused the
+helpless mite. At any rate, actuated by fear, surprise, or remorse,
+she turned and walked back into the road without a sign of passion or
+indignation, leaving the boy and the lady rather disappointed at their
+easy victory. To be prepared for a violent death and receive not even a
+scratch made them fear that they might possibly have overestimated the
+danger.
+
+They were better friends than ever after that, the young minister's wife
+and the forlorn little boy from Acreville, sent away from home he
+knew not why, unless it were that there was little to eat there and
+considerably more at the Cash Cames', as they were called in Edgewood.
+Cassius was familiarly known as Uncle Cash, partly because there was a
+disposition in Edgewood to abbreviate all Christian names, and partly
+because the old man paid cash, and expected to be paid cash, for
+everything.
+
+The late summer grew into autumn, and the minister's great maple flung
+a flaming bough of scarlet over Mrs. Baxter's swing-chair. Uncle Cash
+found Elisha very useful at picking up potatoes and apples, but the boy
+was going back to his family as soon as the harvesting was over.
+
+One Friday evening Mrs. Baxter and Rebecca, wrapped in shawls and
+“fascinators,” were sitting on Mrs. Came's front steps enjoying the
+sunset. Rebecca was in a tremulous state of happiness, for she had
+come directly from the Seminary at Wareham to the parsonage, and as the
+minister was absent at a church conference, she was to stay the night
+with Mrs. Baxter and go with her to Portland next day.
+
+They were to go to the Islands, have ice cream for luncheon, ride on
+a horse-car, and walk by the Longfellow house, a programme that so
+unsettled Rebecca's never very steady mind that she radiated flashes
+and sparkles of joy, making Mrs. Baxter wonder if flesh could be
+translucent, enabling the spirit-fires within to shine through?
+
+Buttercup was being milked on the grassy slope near the shed door. As
+she walked to the barn, after giving up her pailfuls of yellow milk,
+she bent her neck and snatched a hasty bite from a pile of turnips lying
+temptingly near. In her haste she took more of a mouthful than would be
+considered good manners even among cows, and as she disappeared in the
+barn door they could see a forest of green tops hanging from her mouth,
+while she painfully attempted to grind up the mass of stolen material
+without allowing a single turnip to escape.
+
+It grew dark soon afterward and they went into the house to see Mrs.
+Came's new lamp lighted for the first time, to examine her last drawn-in
+rug (a wonderful achievement produced entirely from dyed flannel
+petticoats), and to hear the doctor's wife play “Oft in the Still
+Night,” on the dulcimer.
+
+As they closed the sitting-room door opening on the piazza facing
+the barn, the women heard the cow coughing and said to one another:
+“Buttercup was too greedy, and now she has indigestion.”
+
+Elisha always went to bed at sundown, and Uncle Cash had gone to the
+doctor's to have his hand dressed, for he had hurt it is some way in
+the threshing-machine. Bill Peters, the hired man, came in presently and
+asked for him, saying that the cow coughed more and more, and it must
+be that something was wrong, but he could not get her to open her mouth
+wide enough for him to see anything. “She'd up an' die ruther 'n obleege
+anybody, that tarnal, ugly cow would!” he said.
+
+When Uncle Cash had driven into the yard, he came in for a lantern, and
+went directly out to the barn. After a half-hour or so, in which the
+little party had forgotten the whole occurrence, he came in again.
+
+“I'm blamed if we ain't goin' to lose that cow,” he said. “Come out,
+will ye, Hannah, and hold the lantern? I can't do anything with my right
+hand in a sling, and Bill is the stupidest critter in the country.”
+
+Everybody went out to the barn accordingly, except the doctor's wife,
+who ran over to her house to see if her brother Moses had come home from
+Milltown, and could come and take a hand in the exercises.
+
+Buttercup was in a bad way; there was no doubt of it. Something, one
+of the turnips, presumably, had lodged in her throat, and would move
+neither way, despite her attempts to dislodge it. Her breathing was
+labored, and her eyes bloodshot from straining and choking. Once or
+twice they succeeded in getting her mouth partly open, but before they
+could fairly discover the cause of trouble she had wrested her head
+away.
+
+“I can see a little tuft of green sticking straight up in the middle,”
+ said Uncle Cash, while Bill Peters and Moses held a lantern on each side
+of Buttercup's head; “but, land! It's so far down, and such a mite of a
+thing, I couldn't git it, even if I could use my right hand. S'pose you
+try, Bill.”
+
+Bill hemmed and hawed, and confessed he didn't care to try. Buttercup's
+grinders were of good size and excellent quality, and he had no fancy
+for leaving his hand within her jaws. He said he was no good at that
+kind of work, but that he would help Uncle Cash hold the cow's head;
+that was just as necessary, and considerable safer.
+
+Moses was more inclined to the service of humanity, and did his best,
+wrapping his wrist in a cloth, and making desperate but ineffectual dabs
+at the slippery green turnip-tops in the reluctantly opened throat. But
+the cow tossed her head and stamped her feet and switched her tail
+and wriggled from under Bill's hands, so that it seemed altogether
+impossible to reach the seat of the trouble.
+
+Uncle Cash was in despair, fuming and fretting the more because of his
+own crippled hand.
+
+“Hitch up, Bill,” he said, “and, Hannah, you drive over to Milliken's
+Mills for the horse-doctor. I know we can git out that turnip if we can
+hit on the right tools and somebody to manage em right; but we've got to
+be quick about it or the critter'll choke to death, sure! Your hand's so
+clumsy, Mose, she thinks her time's come when she feels it in her mouth,
+and your fingers are so big you can't ketch holt o' that green stuff
+thout its slippin'!”
+
+“Mine ain't big; let me try,” said a timid voice, and turning round,
+they saw little Elisha Simpson, his trousers pulled on over his
+night-shirt, his curly hair ruffled, his eyes vague with sleep.
+
+Uncle Cash gave a laugh of good-humored derision. “You--that's afraid
+to drive a cow to pasture? No, sir; you hain't got sand enough for this
+job, I guess!”
+
+Buttercup just then gave a worse cough than ever, and her eyes rolled in
+her head as if she were giving up the ghost.
+
+“I'd rather do it than see her choke to death!” cried the boy, in
+despair.
+
+“Then, by ginger, you can try it, sonny!” said Uncle Cash. “Now this
+time we'll tie her head up. Take it slow, and make a good job of it.”
+
+Accordingly they pried poor Buttercup's jaws open to put a wooden gag
+between them, tied her head up, and kept her as still as they could
+while the women held the lanterns.
+
+“Now, sonny, strip up your sleeve and reach as fur down's you can! Wind
+your little fingers in among that green stuff stickin' up there that
+ain't hardly big enough to call green stuff, give it a twist, and pull
+for all you're worth. Land! What a skinny little pipe stem!”
+
+The Little Prophet had stripped up his sleeve. It was a slender thing,
+his arm; but he had driven the red cow all summer, borne her tantrums,
+protected her from the consequences of her own obstinacy, taking (as he
+thought) a future owner's pride in her splendid flow of milk--grown fond
+of her, in a word, and now she was choking to death. A skinny little
+pipe stem is capable of a deal at such a time, and only a slender hand
+and arm could have done the work.
+
+Elisha trembled with nervousness, but he made a dexterous and dashing
+entrance into the awful cavern of Buttercup's mouth; descended upon the
+tiny clump of green spills or spikes, wound his little fingers in among
+them as firmly as he could, and then gave a long, steady, determined
+pull with all the strength in this body. That was not so much in itself,
+to be sure, but he borrowed a good deal more from some reserve quarter,
+the location of which nobody knows anything about, but upon which
+everybody draws in time of need.
+
+Such a valiant pull you would never have expected of the Little Prophet.
+Such a pull it was that, to his own utter amazement, he suddenly found
+himself lying flat on his back on the barn floor with a very slippery
+something in his hand, and a fair-sized but rather dilapidated turnip at
+the end of it.
+
+“That's the business!” cried Moses.
+
+“I could 'a' done it as easy as nothin' if my arm had been a leetle mite
+smaller,” said Bill Peters.
+
+“You're a trump, sonny!” exclaimed Uncle Cash, as he helped Moses untie
+Buttercup's head and took the gag out.
+
+“You're a trump, Lisha, and, by ginger, the cow's your'n; only don't you
+let your blessed pa drink none of her cream!”
+
+The welcome air rushed into Buttercup's lungs and cooled her parched,
+torn throat. She was pretty nearly spent, poor thing, and bent her head
+(rather gently for her) over the Little Prophet's shoulder as he threw
+his arms joyfully about her neck, and whispered, “You're my truly cow
+now, ain't you, Buttercup?”
+
+“Mrs. Baxter, dear,” said Rebecca, as they walked home to the parsonage
+together under the young harvest moon; “there are all sorts of cowards,
+aren't there, and don't you think Elisha is one of the best kind.”
+
+“I don't quite know what to think about cowards, Rebecca Rowena,” said
+the minister's wife hesitatingly. “The Little Prophet is the third
+coward I have known in my short life who turned out to be a hero when
+the real testing time came. Meanwhile the heroes themselves--or the ones
+that were taken for heroes--were always busy doing something, or being
+somewhere, else.”
+
+
+
+
+Eighth Chronicle. ABNER SIMPSON'S NEW LEAF
+
+
+Rebecca had now cut the bonds that bound her to the Riverboro district
+school, and had been for a week a full-fledged pupil at the Wareham
+Seminary, towards which goal she had been speeding ever since the
+memorable day when she rode into Riverboro on the top of Uncle Jerry
+Cobb's stagecoach, and told him that education was intended to be “the
+making of her.”
+
+She went to and fro, with Emma Jane and the other Riverboro boys and
+girls, on the morning and evening trains that ran between the academy
+town and Milliken's Mills.
+
+The six days had passed like a dream!--a dream in which she sat in
+corners with her eyes cast down; flushed whenever she was addressed;
+stammered whenever she answered a question, and nearly died of heart
+failure when subjected to an examination of any sort. She delighted
+the committee when reading at sight from “King Lear,” but somewhat
+discouraged them when she could not tell the capital of the United
+States. She admitted that her former teacher, Miss Dearborn, might have
+mentioned it, but if so she had not remembered it.
+
+In these first weeks among strangers she passed for nothing but an
+interesting-looking, timid, innocent, country child, never revealing,
+even to the far-seeing Emily Maxwell, a hint of her originality,
+facility, or power in any direction. Rebecca was fourteen, but so
+slight, and under the paralyzing new conditions so shy, that she
+would have been mistaken for twelve had it not been for her general
+advancement in the school curriculum.
+
+Growing up in the solitude of a remote farm house, transplanted to a
+tiny village where she lived with two elderly spinsters, she was still
+the veriest child in all but the practical duties and responsibilities
+of life; in those she had long been a woman.
+
+It was Saturday afternoon; her lessons for Monday were all learned and
+she burst into the brick house sitting-room with the flushed face and
+embarrassed mien that always foreshadowed a request. Requests were more
+commonly answered in the negative than in the affirmative at the brick
+house, a fact that accounted for the slight confusion in her demeanor.
+
+“Aunt Miranda,” she began, “the fishman says that Clara Belle Simpson
+wants to see me very much, but Mrs. Fogg can't spare her long at a time,
+you know, on account of the baby being no better; but Clara Belle could
+walk a mile up, and I a mile down the road, and we could meet at the
+pink house half way. Then we could rest and talk an hour or so, and both
+be back in time for our suppers. I've fed the cat; she had no appetite,
+as it's only two o'clock and she had her dinner at noon, but she'll go
+back to her saucer, and it's off my mind. I could go down cellar now
+and bring up the cookies and the pie and doughnuts for supper before I
+start. Aunt Jane saw no objection; but we thought I'd better ask you so
+as to run no risks.”
+
+Miranda Sawyer, who had been patiently waiting for the end of this
+speech, laid down her knitting and raised her eyes with a half-resigned
+expression that meant: Is there anything unusual in heaven or earth or
+the waters under the earth that this child does not want to do? Will she
+ever settle down to plain, comprehensible Sawyer ways, or will she to
+the end make these sudden and radical propositions, suggesting at every
+turn the irresponsible Randall ancestry?
+
+“You know well enough, Rebecca, that I don't like you to be intimate
+with Abner Simpson's young ones,” she said decisively. “They ain't fit
+company for anybody that's got Sawyer blood in their veins, if it's ever
+so little. I don't know, I'm sure, how you're goin' to turn out! The
+fish peddler seems to be your best friend, without it's Abijah Flagg
+that you're everlastingly talkin' to lately. I should think you'd
+rather read some improvin' book than to be chatterin' with Squire Bean's
+chore-boy!”
+
+“He isn't always going to be a chore-boy,” explained Rebecca, “and
+that's what we're considering. It's his career we talk about, and he
+hasn't got any father or mother to advise him. Besides, Clara Belle kind
+of belongs to the village now that she lives with Mrs. Fogg; and she
+was always the best behaved of all the girls, either in school or
+Sunday-school. Children can't help having fathers!”
+
+“Everybody says Abner is turning over a new leaf, and if so, the
+family'd ought to be encouraged every possible way,” said Miss Jane,
+entering the room with her mending basket in hand.
+
+“If Abner Simpson is turnin' over a leaf, or anythin' else in creation,
+it's only to see what's on the under side!” remarked Miss Miranda
+promptly. “Don't talk to me about new leaves! You can't change that kind
+of a man; he is what he is, and you can't make him no different!”
+
+“The grace of God can do consid'rable,” observed Jane piously.
+
+“I ain't sayin' but it can if it sets out, but it has to begin early and
+stay late on a man like Simpson.”
+
+“Now, Mirandy, Abner ain't more'n forty! I don't know what the average
+age for repentance is in men-folks, but when you think of what an awful
+sight of em leaves it to their deathbeds, forty seems real kind
+of young. Not that I've heard Abner has experienced religion, but
+everybody's surprised at the good way he's conductin' this fall.”
+
+“They'll be surprised the other way round when they come to miss their
+firewood and apples and potatoes again,” affirmed Miranda.
+
+“Clara Belle don't seem to have inherited from her father,” Jane
+ventured again timidly. “No wonder Mrs. Fogg sets such store by the
+girl. If it hadn't been for her, the baby would have been dead by now.”
+
+“Perhaps tryin' to save it was interferin' with the Lord's will,” was
+Miranda's retort.
+
+“Folks can't stop to figure out just what's the Lord's will when a child
+has upset a kettle of scalding water on to himself,” and as she spoke
+Jane darned more excitedly. “Mrs. Fogg knows well enough she hadn't
+ought to have left that baby alone in the kitchen with the stove, even
+if she did see Clara Belle comin' across lots. She'd ought to have
+waited before drivin' off; but of course she was afraid of missing the
+train, and she's too good a woman to be held accountable.”
+
+“The minister's wife says Clara Belle is a real--I can't think of the
+word!” chimed in Rebecca. “What's the female of hero? Whatever it is,
+that's what Mrs. Baxter called her!”
+
+“Clara Belle's the female of Simpson; that's what she is,” Miss Miranda
+asserted; “but she's been brought up to use her wits, and I ain't sayin'
+but she used em.”
+
+“I should say she did!” exclaimed Miss Jane; “to put that screaming,
+suffering child in the baby-carriage and run all the way to the doctor's
+when there wasn't a soul on hand to advise her! Two or three more such
+actions would make the Simpson name sound consid'rable sweeter in this
+neighborhood.”
+
+“Simpson will always sound like Simpson to me!” vouchsafed the elder
+sister, “but we've talked enough about em an' to spare. You can go
+along, Rebecca; but remember that a child is known by the company she
+keeps.”
+
+“All right, Aunt Miranda; thank you!” cried Rebecca, leaping from the
+chair on which she had been twisting nervously for five minutes. “And
+how does this strike you? Would you be in favor of my taking Clara Belle
+a company-tart?”
+
+“Don't Mrs. Fogg feed the young one, now she's taken her right into the
+family?”
+
+“Oh, yes,” Rebecca answered, “she has lovely things to eat, and Mrs.
+Fogg won't even let her drink skim milk; but I always feel that taking
+a present lets the person know you've been thinking about them and are
+extra glad to see them. Besides, unless we have company soon, those
+tarts will have to be eaten by the family, and a new batch made; you
+remember the one I had when I was rewarding myself last week? That was
+queer--but nice,” she added hastily.
+
+“Mebbe you could think of something of your own you could give away
+without taking my tarts!” responded Miranda tersely; the joints of her
+armor having been pierced by the fatally keen tongue of her niece, who
+had insinuated that company-tarts lasted a long time in the brick house.
+This was a fact; indeed, the company-tart was so named, not from any
+idea that it would ever be eaten by guests, but because it was too good
+for every-day use.
+
+Rebecca's face crimsoned with shame that she had drifted into an
+impolite and, what was worse, an apparently ungrateful speech.
+
+“I didn't mean to say anything not nice, Aunt Miranda,” she stammered.
+“Truly the tart was splendid, but not exactly like new, that's all. And
+oh! I know what I can take Clara Belle! A few chocolate drops out of the
+box Mr. Ladd gave me on my birthday.”
+
+“You go down cellar and get that tart, same as I told you,” commanded
+Miranda, “and when you fill it don't uncover a new tumbler of jelly;
+there's some dried-apple preserves open that'll do. Wear your rubbers
+and your thick jacket. After runnin' all the way down there--for your
+legs never seem to be rigged for walkin' like other girls'--you'll set
+down on some damp stone or other and ketch your death o' cold, an' your
+Aunt Jane n' I'll be kep' up nights nursin' you and luggin' your meals
+upstairs to you on a waiter.”
+
+ Here Miranda leaned her head against the back of her rocking
+chair, dropped her knitting and closed her eyes wearily, for when the
+immovable body is opposed by the irresistible force there is a certain
+amount of jar and disturbance involved in the operation.
+
+Rebecca moved toward the side door, shooting a questioning glance at
+Aunt Jane as she passed. The look was full of mysterious suggestion and
+was accompanied by an almost imperceptible gesture. Miss Jane knew that
+certain articles were kept in the entry closet, and by this time she had
+become sufficiently expert in telegraphy to know that Rebecca's unspoken
+query meant: “COULD YOU PERMIT THE HAT WITH THE RED WINGS, IT BEING
+SATURDAY, FINE SETTLED WEATHER, AND A PLEASURE EXCURSION?”
+
+These confidential requests, though fraught with embarrassment when
+Miranda was in the room, gave Jane much secret joy; there was something
+about them that stirred her spinster heart--they were so gay, so
+appealing, so un-Sawyer-, un-Riverboro-like. The longer Rebecca lived in
+the brick house the more her Aunt Jane marveled at the child. What made
+her so different from everybody else. Could it be that her graceless
+popinjay of a father, Lorenzo de Medici Randall, had bequeathed her some
+strange combination of gifts instead of fortune? Her eyes, her brows,
+the color of her lips, the shape of her face, as well as her ways and
+words, proclaimed her a changeling in the Sawyer tribe; but what an
+enchanting changeling; bringing wit and nonsense and color and delight
+into the gray monotony of the dragging years!
+
+There was frost in the air, but a bright cheery sun, as Rebecca walked
+decorously out of the brick house yard. Emma Jane Perkins was away over
+Sunday on a visit to a cousin in Moderation; Alice Robinson and Candace
+Milliken were having measles, and Riverboro was very quiet. Still, life
+was seldom anything but a gay adventure to Rebecca, and she started
+afresh every morning to its conquest. She was not exacting; the Asmodean
+feat of spinning a sand heap into twine was, poetically speaking, always
+in her power, so the mile walk to the pink-house gate, and the tryst
+with freckled, red-haired Clara Belle Simpson, whose face Miss Miranda
+said looked like a raw pie in a brick oven, these commonplace incidents
+were sufficiently exhilarating to brighten her eye and quicken her step.
+
+As the great bare horse-chestnut near the pink-house gate loomed into
+view, the red linsey-woolsey speck going down the road spied the
+blue linsey-woolsey speck coming up, and both specks flew over the
+intervening distance and, meeting, embraced each other ardently,
+somewhat to the injury of the company-tart.
+
+“Didn't it come out splendidly?” exclaimed Rebecca. “I was so afraid
+the fishman wouldn't tell you to start exactly at two, or that one of us
+would walk faster than the other; but we met at the very spot! It was a
+very uncommon idea, wasn't it? Almost romantic!”
+
+“And what do you think?” asked Clara Belle proudly. “Look at this! Mrs.
+Fogg lent me her watch to come home by!”
+
+“Oh, Clara Belle, how wonderful! Mrs. Fogg gets kinder and kinder to
+you, doesn't she? You're not homesick any more, are you?”
+
+“No-o; not really; only when I remember there's only little Susan to
+manage the twins; though they're getting on real well without me. But I
+kind of think, Rebecca, that I'm going to be given away to the Foggs for
+good.”
+
+“Do you mean adopted?”
+
+“Yes; I think father's going to sign papers. You see we can't tell how
+many years it'll be before the poor baby outgrows its burns, and Mrs.
+Fogg'll never be the same again, and she must have somebody to help
+her.”
+
+“You'll be their real daughter, then, won't you, Clara Belle? And
+Mr. Fogg is a deacon, and a selectman, and a road commissioner, and
+everything splendid.”
+
+“Yes; I'll have board, and clothes, and school, and be named Fogg, and”
+ (here her voice sank to an awed whisper) “the upper farm if I should
+ever get married; Miss Dearborn told me that herself, when she was
+persuading me not to mind being given away.”
+
+“Clara Belle Simpson!” exclaimed Rebecca in a transport. “Who'd have
+thought you'd be a female hero and an heiress besides? It's just like
+a book story, and it happened in Riverboro. I'll make Uncle Jerry Cobb
+allow there CAN be Riverboro stories, you see if I don't.”
+
+“Of course I know it's all right,” Clara Belle replied soberly. “I'll
+have a good home and father can't keep us all; but it's kind of dreadful
+to be given away, like a piano or a horse and carriage!”
+
+Rebecca's hand went out sympathetically to Clara Belle's freckled paw.
+Suddenly her own face clouded and she whispered:
+
+“I'm not sure, Clara Belle, but I'm given away too--do you s'pose I
+am? Poor father left us in debt, you see. I thought I came away from
+Sunnybrook to get an education and then help pay off the mortgage; but
+mother doesn't say anything about my coming back, and our family's one
+of those too-big ones, you know, just like yours.”
+
+“Did your mother sign papers to your aunts?'
+
+“If she did I never heard anything about it; but there's something
+pinned on to the mortgage that mother keeps in the drawer of the
+bookcase.”
+
+“You'd know it if twas adoption papers; I guess you're just lent,” Clara
+Belle said cheeringly. “I don't believe anybody'd ever give YOU away!
+And, oh! Rebecca, father's getting on so well! He works on Daly's farm
+where they raise lots of horses and cattle, too, and he breaks all the
+young colts and trains them, and swaps off the poor ones, and drives
+all over the country. Daly told Mr. Fogg he was splendid with stock,
+and father says it's just like play. He's sent home money three Saturday
+nights.”
+
+“I'm so glad!” exclaimed Rebecca sympathetically. “Now your mother'll
+have a good time and a black silk dress, won't she?”
+
+“I don't know,” sighed Clara Belle, and her voice was grave. “Ever since
+I can remember she's just washed and cried and cried and washed. Miss
+Dearborn has been spending her vacation up to Acreville, you know,
+and she came yesterday to board next door to Mrs. Fogg's. I heard them
+talking last night when I was getting the baby to sleep--I couldn't
+help it, they were so close--and Miss Dearborn said mother doesn't like
+Acreville; she says nobody takes any notice of her, and they don't give
+her any more work. Mrs. Fogg said, well, they were dreadful stiff and
+particular up that way and they liked women to have wedding rings.”
+
+“Hasn't your mother got a wedding ring?” asked Rebecca, astonished.
+“Why, I thought everybody HAD to have them, just as they do sofas and a
+kitchen stove!”
+
+“I never noticed she didn't have one, but when they spoke I remembered
+mother's hands washing and wringing, and she doesn't wear one, I know.
+She hasn't got any jewelry, not even a breast-pin.”
+
+Rebecca's tone was somewhat censorious, “your father's been so poor
+perhaps he couldn't afford breast-pins, but I should have thought he'd
+have given your mother a wedding ring when they were married; that's the
+time to do it, right at the very first.”
+
+“They didn't have any real church dress-up wedding,” explained Clara
+Belle extenuatingly. “You see the first mother, mine, had the big boys
+and me, and then she died when we were little. Then after a while this
+mother came to housekeep, and she stayed, and by and by she was Mrs.
+Simpson, and Susan and the twins and the baby are hers, and she and
+father didn't have time for a regular wedding in church. They don't have
+veils and bridesmaids and refreshments round here like Miss Dearborn's
+sister did.”
+
+“Do they cost a great deal--wedding rings?” asked Rebecca thoughtfully.
+“They're solid gold, so I s'pose they do. If they were cheap we might
+buy one. I've got seventy-four cents saved up; how much have you?”
+
+“Fifty-three,” Clara Belle responded, in a depressing tone; “and anyway
+there are no stores nearer than Milltown. We'd have to buy it secretly,
+for I wouldn't make father angry, or shame his pride, now he's got
+steady work; and mother would know I had spent all my savings.”
+
+Rebecca looked nonplussed. “I declare,” she said, “I think the Acreville
+people must be perfectly horrid not to call on your mother only because
+she hasn't got any jewelry. You wouldn't dare tell your father what Miss
+Dearborn heard, so he'd save up and buy the ring?”
+
+“No; I certainly would not!” and Clara Belle's lips closed tightly and
+decisively.
+
+Rebecca sat quietly for a few moments, then she exclaimed jubilantly:
+“I know where we could get it! From Mr. Aladdin, and then I needn't tell
+him who it's for! He's coming to stay over tomorrow with his aunt, and
+I'll ask him to buy a ring for us in Boston. I won't explain anything,
+you know; I'll just say I need a wedding ring.”
+
+“That would be perfectly lovely,” replied Clara Belle, a look of hope
+dawning in her eyes; “and we can think afterwards how to get it over to
+mother. Perhaps you could send it to father instead, but I wouldn't dare
+to do it myself. You won't tell anybody, Rebecca?”
+
+“Cross my heart!” Rebecca exclaimed dramatically; and then with a
+reproachful look, “you know I couldn't repeat a sacred secret like
+that! Shall we meet next Saturday afternoon, and I tell you what's
+happened?--Why, Clara Belle, isn't that Mr. Ladd watering his horse at
+the foot of the hill this very minute? It is; and he's driven up from
+Milltown stead of coming on the train from Boston to Edgewood. He's all
+alone, and I can ride home with him and ask him about the ring right
+away!”
+
+Clara Belle kissed Rebecca fervently, and started on her homeward
+walk, while Rebecca waited at the top of the long hill, fluttering her
+handkerchief as a signal.
+
+“Mr. Aladdin! Mr. Aladdin!” she cried, as the horse and wagon came
+nearer.
+
+Adam Ladd drew up quickly at the sound of the eager young voice.
+
+“Well, well; here is Rebecca Rowena fluttering along the highroad like a
+red-winged blackbird! Are you going to fly home, or drive with me?”
+
+Rebecca clambered into the carriage, laughing and blushing with delight
+at his nonsense and with joy at seeing him again.
+
+“Clara Belle and I were just talking about you this minute, and I'm so
+glad you came this way, for there's something very important to ask you
+about,” she began, rather breathlessly.
+
+“No doubt,” laughed Adam Ladd, who had become, in the course of his
+acquaintance with Rebecca, a sort of high court of appeals; “I hope the
+premium banquet lamp doesn't smoke as it grows older?”
+
+“Now, Mr. Aladdin, you WILL not remember nicely. Mr. Simpson swapped off
+the banquet lamp when he was moving the family to Acreville; it's not
+the lamp at all, but once, when you were here last time, you said you'd
+make up your mind what you were going to give me for Christmas.”
+
+“Well,” and “I do remember that much quite nicely.”
+
+“Well, is it bought?”
+
+“No, I never buy Christmas presents before Thanksgiving.”
+
+“Then, DEAR Mr. Aladdin, would you buy me something different, something
+that I want to give away, and buy it a little sooner than Christmas?”
+
+“That depends. I don't relish having my Christmas presents given away.
+I like to have them kept forever in little girls' bureau drawers, all
+wrapped in pink tissue paper; but explain the matter and perhaps I'll
+change my mind. What is it you want?”
+
+“I need a wedding ring dreadfully,” said Rebecca, “but it's a sacred
+secret.”
+
+Adam Ladd's eyes flashed with surprise and he smiled to himself with
+pleasure. Had he on his list of acquaintances, he asked himself, a
+person of any age or sex so altogether irresistible and unique as this
+child? Then he turned to face her with the merry teasing look that made
+him so delightful to young people.
+
+“I thought it was perfectly understood between us,” he said, “that if
+you could ever contrive to grow up and I were willing to wait, that I
+was to ride up to the brick house on my snow white”--
+
+“Coal black,” corrected Rebecca, with a sparkling eye and a warning
+finger.
+
+“Coal black charger; put a golden circlet on your lily white finger,
+draw you up behind me on my pillion”--
+
+“And Emma Jane, too,” Rebecca interrupted.
+
+“I think I didn't mention Emma Jane,” argued Mr. Aladdin. “Three on a
+pillion is very uncomfortable. I think Emma Jane leaps on the back of a
+prancing chestnut, and we all go off to my castle in the forest.”
+
+“Emma Jane never leaps, and she'd be afraid of a prancing chestnut,”
+ objected Rebecca.
+
+“Then she shall have a gentle cream-colored pony; but now, without any
+explanation, you ask me to buy you a wedding ring, which shows
+plainly that you are planning to ride off on a snow white--I mean coal
+black--charger with somebody else.”
+
+Rebecca dimpled and laughed with joy at the nonsense. In her prosaic
+world no one but Adam Ladd played the game and answered the fool
+according to his folly. Nobody else talked delicious fairy-story twaddle
+but Mr. Aladdin.
+
+“The ring isn't for ME!” she explained carefully. “You know very well
+that Emma Jane nor I can't be married till we're through Quackenbos's
+Grammar, Greenleaf's Arithmetic, and big enough to wear long trails and
+run a sewing machine. The ring is for a friend.”
+
+“Why doesn't the groom give it to his bride himself?”
+
+“Because he's poor and kind of thoughtless, and anyway she isn't a bride
+any more; she has three step and three other kind of children.”
+
+Adam Ladd put the whip back in the socket thoughtfully, and then stooped
+to tuck in the rug over Rebecca's feet and his own. When he raised his
+head again he asked: “Why not tell me a little more, Rebecca? I'm safe!”
+
+Rebecca looked at him, feeling his wisdom and strength, and above all
+his sympathy. Then she said hesitatingly: “You remember I told you all
+about the Simpsons that day on your aunt's porch when you bought the
+soap because I told you how the family were always in trouble and how
+much they needed a banquet lamp? Mr. Simpson, Clara Belle's father, has
+always been very poor, and not always very good,--a little bit THIEVISH,
+you know--but oh, so pleasant and nice to talk to! And now he's turning
+over a new leaf. And everybody in Riverboro liked Mrs. Simpson when she
+came here a stranger, because they were sorry for her and she was so
+patient, and such a hard worker, and so kind to the children. But where
+she lives now, though they used to know her when she was a girl, they're
+not polite to her and don't give her scrubbing and washing; and Clara
+belle heard our teacher say to Mrs. Fogg that the Acreville people were
+stiff, and despised her because she didn't wear a wedding ring, like all
+the rest. And Clara Belle and I thought if they were so mean as that,
+we'd love to give her one, and then she'd be happier and have more
+work; and perhaps Mr. Simpson if he gets along better will buy her a
+breast-pin and earrings, and she'll be fitted out like the others. I
+know Mrs. Peter Meserve is looked up to by everybody in Edgewood on
+account of her gold bracelets and moss agate necklace.”
+
+Adam turned again to meet the luminous, innocent eyes that glowed under
+the delicate brows and long lashes, feeling as he had more than once
+felt before, as if his worldly-wise, grown-up thoughts had been bathed
+in some purifying spring.
+
+“How shall you send the ring to Mrs. Simpson?” he asked, with interest.
+
+“We haven't settled yet; Clara Belle's afraid to do it, and thinks I
+could manage better. Will the ring cost much? Because, of course, if it
+does, I must ask Aunt Jane first. There are things I have to ask Aunt
+Miranda, and others that belong to Aunt Jane.”
+
+“It costs the merest trifle. I'll buy one and bring it to you, and we'll
+consult about it; but I think as you're great friends with Mr. Simpson
+you'd better send it to him in a letter, letters being your strong
+point! It's a present a man ought to give his own wife, but it's worth
+trying, Rebecca. You and Clara Belle can manage it between you, and I'll
+stay in the background where nobody will see me.”
+
+
+
+
+Ninth Chronicle. THE GREEN ISLE
+
+     Many a green isle needs must be
+     In the deep sea of misery,
+     Or the mariner, worn and wan,
+     Never thus could voyage on
+     Day and night and night and day,
+     Drifting on his weary way.
+
+     --Shelley
+
+
+Meantime in these frosty autumn days life was crowded with events in the
+lonely Simpson house at Acreville.
+
+The tumble-down dwelling stood on the edge of Pliney's Pond; so called
+because old Colonel Richardson left his lands to be divided in five
+equal parts, each share to be chosen in turn by one of his five sons,
+Pliny, the eldest, having priority of choice.
+
+Pliny Richardson, having little taste for farming, and being ardently
+fond of fishing, rowing, and swimming, acted up to his reputation
+of being “a little mite odd,” and took his whole twenty acres in
+water--hence Pliny's Pond.
+
+The eldest Simpson boy had been working on a farm in Cumberland County
+for two years. Samuel, generally dubbed “see-saw,” had lately found a
+humble place in a shingle mill and was partially self-supporting. Clara
+Belle had been adopted by the Foggs; thus there were only three mouths
+to fill, the capacious ones of Elijah and Elisha, the twin boys, and
+of lisping, nine-year-old Susan, the capable houseworker and
+mother's assistant, for the baby had died during the summer; died of
+discouragement at having been born into a family unprovided with food
+or money or love or care, or even with desire for, or appreciation of,
+babies.
+
+There was no doubt that the erratic father of the house had turned over
+a new leaf. Exactly when he began, or how, or why, or how long he would
+continue the praiseworthy process,--in a word whether there would be
+more leaves turned as the months went on,--Mrs. Simpson did not know,
+and it is doubtful if any authority lower than that of Mr. Simpson's
+Maker could have decided the matter. He had stolen articles for swapping
+purposes for a long time, but had often avoided detection, and always
+escaped punishment until the last few years. Three fines imposed for
+small offenses were followed by several arrests and two imprisonments
+for brief periods, and he found himself wholly out of sympathy with
+the wages of sin. Sin itself he did not especially mind, but the wages
+thereof were decidedly unpleasant and irksome to him. He also minded
+very much the isolated position in the community which had lately become
+his; for he was a social being and would ALMOST rather not steal from a
+neighbor than have him find it out and cease intercourse! This feeling
+was working in him and rendering him unaccountably irritable and
+depressed when he took his daughter over to Riverboro at the time of the
+great flag-raising.
+
+There are seasons of refreshment, as well as seasons of drought, in the
+spiritual, as in the natural world, and in some way or other dews
+and rains of grace fell upon Abner Simpson's heart during that brief
+journey. Perhaps the giving away of a child that he could not support
+had made the soil of his heart a little softer and readier for planting
+than usual; but when he stole the new flag off Mrs. Peter Meserve's
+doorsteps, under the impression that the cotton-covered bundle
+contained freshly washed clothes, he unconsciously set certain forces in
+operation.
+
+It will be remembered that Rebecca saw an inch of red bunting peeping
+from the back of his wagon, and asked the pleasure of a drive with him.
+She was no daughter of the regiment, but she proposed to follow the
+flag. When she diplomatically requested the return of the sacred
+object which was to be the glory of the “raising” next day, and he thus
+discovered his mistake, he was furious with himself for having slipped
+into a disagreeable predicament; and later, when he unexpectedly faced
+a detachment of Riverboro society at the cross-roads, and met not only
+their wrath and scorn, but the reproachful, disappointed glance of
+Rebecca's eyes, he felt degraded as never before.
+
+The night at the Centre tavern did not help matters, nor the jolly
+patriotic meeting of the three villages at the flag-raising next
+morning. He would have enjoyed being at the head and front of the
+festive preparations, but as he had cut himself off from all such
+friendly gatherings, he intended at any rate to sit in his wagon on the
+very outskirts of the assembled crowd and see some of the gayety; for,
+heaven knows, he had little enough, he who loved talk, and song, and
+story, and laughter, and excitement.
+
+The flag was raised, the crowd cheered, the little girl to whom he had
+lied, the girl who was impersonating the State of Maine, was on the
+platform “speaking her piece,” and he could just distinguish some of the
+words she was saying:
+
+“For it's your star, my star, all the stars together, That makes our
+country's flag so proud To float in the bright fall weather.”
+
+Then suddenly there was a clarion voice cleaving the air, and he saw
+a tall man standing in the centre of the stage and heard him crying:
+“THREE CHEERS FOR THE GIRL THAT SAVED THE FLAG FROM THE HANDS OF THE
+ENEMY!”
+
+He was sore and bitter enough already; lonely, isolated enough; with
+no lot nor share in the honest community life; no hand to shake, no
+neighbor's meal to share; and this unexpected public arraignment smote
+him between the eyes. With resentment newly kindled, pride wounded,
+vanity bleeding, he flung a curse at the joyous throng and drove toward
+home, the home where he would find his ragged children and meet the
+timid eyes of a woman who had been the loyal partner of his poverty and
+disgraces.
+
+It is probable that even then his (extremely light) hand was already on
+the “new leaf.” The angels, doubtless, were not especially proud of the
+matter and manner of his reformation, but I dare say they were glad to
+count him theirs on any terms, so difficult is the reformation of this
+blind and foolish world! They must have been; for they immediately
+flung into his very lap a profitable, and what is more to the point, an
+interesting and agreeable situation where money could be earned by doing
+the very things his nature craved. There were feats of daring to be
+performed in sight of admiring and applauding stable boys; the horses
+he loved were his companions; he was OBLIGED to “swap,” for Daly, his
+employer, counted on him to get rid of all undesirable stock; power and
+responsibility of a sort were given him freely, for Daly was no Puritan,
+and felt himself amply capable of managing any number of Simpsons;
+so here were numberless advantages within the man's grasp, and wages
+besides!
+
+Abner positively felt no temptation to steal; his soul expanded with
+pride, and the admiration and astonishment with which he regarded
+his virtuous present was only equaled by the disgust with which he
+contemplated his past; not so much a vicious past, in his own generous
+estimation of it, as a “thunderin' foolish” one.
+
+Mrs. Simpson took the same view of Abner's new leaf as the angels.
+She was thankful for even a brief season of honesty coupled with the
+Saturday night remittance; and if she still washed and cried and cried
+and washed, as Clara Belle had always seen her, it was either because of
+some hidden sorrow, or because her poor strength seemed all at once to
+have deserted her.
+
+Just when employment and good fortune had come to the step-children, and
+her own were better fed and clothed than ever before, the pain that had
+always lurked, constant but dull, near her tired heart, grew fierce
+and triumphantly strong; clutching her in its talons, biting, gnawing,
+worrying, leaving her each week with slighter powers of resistance.
+Still hope was in the air and a greater content than had ever been hers
+was in her eyes; a content that came near to happiness when the doctor
+ordered her to keep her bed and sent for Clara Belle. She could not wash
+any longer, but there was the ever new miracle of the Saturday night
+remittance for household expenses.
+
+“Is your pain bad today, mother,” asked Clara Belle, who, only lately
+given away, was merely borrowed from Mrs. Fogg for what was thought to
+be a brief emergency.
+
+“Well, there, I can't hardly tell, Clara Belle,” Mrs. Simpson replied,
+with a faint smile. “I can't seem to remember the pain these days
+without it's extra bad. The neighbors are so kind; Mrs. Little has sent
+me canned mustard greens, and Mrs. Benson chocolate ice cream and mince
+pie; there's the doctor's drops to make me sleep, and these blankets
+and that great box of eatables from Mr. Ladd; and you here to keep me
+comp'ny! I declare I'm kind o' dazed with comforts. I never expected to
+see sherry wine in this house. I ain't never drawed the cork; it does
+me good enough jest to look at Mr. Ladd's bottle settin' on the
+mantel-piece with the fire shinin' on the brown glass.”
+
+Mr. Simpson had come to see his wife and had met the doctor just as he
+was leaving the house.
+
+“She looks awful bad to me. Is she goin' to pull through all right, same
+as the last time?” he asked the doctor nervously.
+
+“She's going to pull right through into the other world,” the doctor
+answered bluntly; “and as there don't seem to be anybody else to take
+the bull by the horns, I'd advise you, having made the woman's life
+about as hard and miserable as you could, to try and help her to die
+easy!”
+
+Abner, surprised and crushed by the weight of this verbal chastisement,
+sat down on the doorstep, his head in his hands, and thought a while
+solemnly. Thought was not an operation he was wont to indulge in, and
+when he opened the gate a few minutes later and walked slowly toward
+the barn for his horse, he looked pale and unnerved. It is uncommonly
+startling, first to see yourself in another man's scornful eyes, and
+then, clearly, in your own.
+
+Two days later he came again, and this time it was decreed that he
+should find Parson Carll tying his piebald mare at the post.
+
+Clara Belle's quick eye had observed the minister as he alighted from
+his buggy, and, warning her mother, she hastily smoothed the bedclothes,
+arranged the medicine bottles, and swept the hearth.
+
+“Oh! Don't let him in!” wailed Mrs. Simpson, all of a flutter at the
+prospect of such a visitor. “Oh, dear! They must think over to the
+village that I'm dreadful sick, or the minister wouldn't never think
+of callin'! Don't let him in, Clara Belle! I'm afraid he will say hard
+words to me, or pray to me; and I ain't never been prayed to since I was
+a child! Is his wife with him?”
+
+“No; he's alone; but father's just drove up and is hitching at the shed
+door.”
+
+“That's worse than all!” and Mrs. Simpson raised herself feebly on her
+pillows and clasped her hands in despair. “You mustn't let them two
+meet, Clara Belle, and you must send Mr. Carll away; your father
+wouldn't have a minister in the house, nor speak to one, for a thousand
+dollars!”
+
+“Be quiet, mother! Lie down! It'll be all right! You'll only fret
+yourself into a spell! The minister's just a good man; he won't say
+anything to frighten you. Father's talking with him real pleasant, and
+pointing the way to the front door.”
+
+The parson knocked and was admitted by the excited Clara Belle, who
+ushered him tremblingly into the sickroom, and then betook herself to
+the kitchen with the children, as he gently requested her.
+
+Abner Simpson, left alone in the shed, fumbled in his vest pocket and
+took out an envelope which held a sheet of paper and a tiny packet
+wrapped in tissue paper. The letter had been read once before and ran as
+follows:
+
+Dear Mr. Simpson:
+
+This is a secret letter. I heard that the Acreville people weren't nice
+to Mrs. Simpson because she didn't have any wedding ring like all the
+others.
+
+I know you've always been poor, dear Mr. Simpson, and troubled with a
+large family like ours at the farm; but you really ought to have given
+Mrs. Simpson a ring when you were married to her, right at the very
+first; for then it would have been over and done with, as they are solid
+gold and last forever. And probably she wouldn't feel like asking you
+for one, because ladies are just like girls, only grown up, and I know
+I'd be ashamed to beg for jewelry when just board and clothes cost
+so much. So I send you a nice, new wedding ring to save your buying,
+thinking you might get Mrs. Simpson a bracelet or eardrops for
+Christmas. It did not cost me anything, as it was a secret present from
+a friend.
+
+I hear Mrs. Simpson is sick, and it would be a great comfort to her
+while she is in bed and has so much time to look at it. When I had
+the measles Emma Jane Perkins lent me her mother's garnet ring, and it
+helped me very much to put my wasted hand outside the bedclothes and see
+the ring sparkling.
+
+Please don't be angry with me, dear Mr. Simpson, because I like you
+so much and am so glad you are happy with the horses and colts; and I
+believe now perhaps you DID think the flag was a bundle of washing
+when you took it that day; so no more from your Trusted friend, Rebecca
+Rowena Randall.
+
+Simpson tore the letter slowly and quietly into fragments and scattered
+the bits on the woodpile, took off his hat, and smoothed his hair;
+pulled his mustaches thoughtfully, straightened his shoulders, and then,
+holding the tiny packet in the palm of his hand, he went round to the
+front door, and having entered the house stood outside the sickroom for
+an instant, turned the knob and walked softly in.
+
+Then at last the angels might have enjoyed a moment of unmixed joy, for
+in that brief walk from shed to house Abner Simpson's conscience waked
+to life and attained sufficient strength to prick and sting, to provoke
+remorse, to incite penitence, to do all sorts of divine and beautiful
+things it was meant for, but had never been allowed to do.
+
+Clara Belle went about the kitchen quietly, making preparations for the
+children's supper. She had left Riverboro in haste, as the change for
+the worse in Mrs. Simpson had been very sudden, but since she had come
+she had thought more than once of the wedding ring. She had wondered
+whether Mr. Ladd had bought it for Rebecca, and whether Rebecca would
+find means to send it to Acreville; but her cares had been so many and
+varied that the subject had now finally retired to the background of her
+mind.
+
+The hands of the clock crept on and she kept hushing the strident tones
+of Elijah and Elisha, opening and shutting the oven door to look at
+the corn bread, advising Susan as to her dishes, and marveling that the
+minister stayed so long.
+
+At last she heard a door open and close and saw the old parson come
+out, wiping his spectacles, and step into the buggy for his drive to the
+village.
+
+Then there was another period of suspense, during which the house was
+as silent as the grave, and presently her father came into the kitchen,
+greeted the twins and Susan, and said to Clara Belle: “Don't go in there
+yet!” jerking his thumb towards Mrs. Simpson's room; “she's all beat out
+and she's just droppin' off to sleep. I'll send some groceries up from
+the store as I go along. Is the doctor makin' a second call tonight?”
+
+“Yes; he'll be here pretty soon, now,” Clara Belle answered, looking at
+the clock.
+
+“All right. I'll be here again tomorrow, soon as it's light, and if she
+ain't picked up any I'll send word back to Daly, and stop here with you
+for a spell till she's better.”
+
+It was true; Mrs. Simpson was “all beat out.” It had been a time of
+excitement and stress, and the poor, fluttered creature was dropping off
+into the strangest sleep--a sleep made up of waking dreams. The pain,
+that had encompassed her heart like a band of steel, lessened its cruel
+pressure, and finally left her so completely that she seemed to see it
+floating above her head; only that it looked no longer like a band of
+steel, but a golden circle.
+
+The frail bark in which she had sailed her life voyage had been rocking
+on a rough and tossing ocean, and now it floated, floated slowly into
+smoother waters.
+
+As long as she could remember, her boat had been flung about in storm
+and tempest, lashed by angry winds, borne against rocks, beaten, torn,
+buffeted. Now the waves had subsided; the sky was clear; the sea was
+warm and tranquil; the sunshine dried the tattered sails; the air was
+soft and balmy.
+
+And now, for sleep plays strange tricks, the bark disappeared from the
+dream, and it was she, herself, who was floating, floating farther and
+farther away; whither she neither knew nor cared; it was enough to be at
+rest, lulled by the lapping of the cool waves.
+
+Then there appeared a green isle rising from the sea; an isle so radiant
+and fairy-like that her famished eyes could hardly believe its reality;
+but it was real, for she sailed nearer and nearer to its shores, and at
+last her feet skimmed the shining sands and she floated through the
+air as disembodied spirits float, till she sank softly at the foot of a
+spreading tree.
+
+Then she saw the green isle was a flowering isle. Every shrub and bush
+was blooming; the trees were hung with rosy garlands, and even the earth
+was carpeted with tiny flowers. The rare fragrances, the bird songs,
+soft and musical, the ravishment of color, all bore down upon her
+swimming senses at once, taking them captive so completely that she
+remembered no past, was conscious of no present, looked forward to no
+future. She seemed to leave the body and the sad, heavy things of the
+body. The humming in her ears ceased, the light faded, the birds songs
+grew fainter and more distant, the golden circle of pain receded farther
+and farther until it was lost to view; even the flowering island gently
+drifted away, and all was peace and silence.
+
+It was time for the doctor now, and Clara Belle, too anxious to wait
+longer, softly turned the knob of her mother's door and entered the
+room. The glow of the open fire illumined the darkest side of the poor
+chamber. There were no trees near the house, and a full November moon
+streamed in at the unblinded, uncurtained windows, lighting up the bare
+interior--the unpainted floor, the gray plastered walls, and the white
+counterpane.
+
+Her mother lay quite still, her head turned and drooping a little on
+the pillow. Her left hand was folded softly up against her breast, the
+fingers of the right partly covering it, as if protecting something
+precious.
+
+Was it the moonlight that made the patient brow so white, and where were
+the lines of anxiety and pain? The face of the mother who had washed
+and cried and cried and washed was as radiant as if the closed eye were
+beholding heavenly visions.
+
+“Something must have cured her!” thought Clara Belle, awed and almost
+frightened by the whiteness and the silence.
+
+She tiptoed across the floor to look more closely at the still, smiling
+shape, and bending over it saw, under the shadow of the caressing right
+hand, a narrow gold band gleaming on the work-stained finger.
+
+“Oh, the ring came, after all!” she said in a glad whisper, “and perhaps
+it was that that made her better!”
+
+She put her hand on her mother's gently. A terrified shiver, a warning
+shudder, shook the girl from head to foot at the chilling touch. A dread
+presence she had never met before suddenly took shape. It filled the
+room; stifled the cry on her lips; froze her steps to the floor, stopped
+the beating of her heart.
+
+Just then the door opened.
+
+“Oh, doctor! Come quick!” she sobbed, stretching out her hand for
+help, and then covering her eyes. “Come close! Look at mother! Is she
+better--or is she dead?”
+
+The doctor put one hand on the shoulder of the shrinking child, and
+touched the woman with the other.
+
+“She is better!” he said gently, “and she is dead.”
+
+
+
+
+Tenth Chronicle. REBECCA'S REMINISCENCES
+
+
+Rebecca was sitting by the window in her room at the Wareham Female
+Seminary. She was alone, as her roommate, Emma Jane Perkins, was
+reciting Latin down below in some academic vault of the old brick
+building.
+
+A new and most ardent passion for the classics had been born in Emma
+Jane's hitherto unfertile brain, for Abijah Flagg, who was carrying off
+all the prizes at Limerick Academy, had written her a letter in Latin, a
+letter which she had been unable to translate for herself, even with the
+aid of a dictionary, and which she had been apparently unwilling that
+Rebecca, her bosom friend, confidant, and roommate, should render into
+English.
+
+An old-fashioned Female Seminary, with its allotment of one medium-sized
+room to two medium sized young females, gave small opportunities for
+privacy by night or day, for neither the double washstand, nor the thus
+far unimagined bathroom, nor even indeed the humble and serviceable
+screen, had been realized, in these dark ages of which I write.
+Accordingly, like the irrational ostrich, which defends itself by the
+simple process of not looking at its pursuers, Emma Jane had kept her
+Latin letter in her closed hand, in her pocket, or in her open book,
+flattering herself that no one had noticed her pleased bewilderment at
+its only half-imagined contents.
+
+All the fairies were not present at Rebecca's cradle. A goodly number of
+them telegraphed that they were previously engaged or unavoidably absent
+from town. The village of Temperance, Maine, where Rebecca first saw the
+light, was hardly a place on its own merits to attract large throngs of
+fairies. But one dear old personage who keeps her pocket full of Merry
+Leaves from the Laughing Tree, took a fancy to come to the little
+birthday party; and seeing so few of her sister-fairies present, she
+dowered the sleeping baby more richly than was her wont, because of its
+apparent lack of wealth in other directions. So the child grew, and the
+Merry Leaves from the Laughing Tree rustled where they hung from the
+hood of her cradle, and, being fairy leaves, when the cradle was
+given up they festooned themselves on the cribside, and later on blew
+themselves up to the ceilings at Sunnybook Farm and dangled there,
+making fun for everybody. They never withered, even at the brick house
+in Riverboro, where the air was particularly inimical to fairies,
+for Miss Miranda Sawyer would have scared any ordinary elf out of her
+seventeen senses. They followed Rebecca to Wareham, and during Abijah
+Flagg's Latin correspondence with Emma Jane they fluttered about that
+young person's head in such a manner that Rebecca was almost afraid that
+she would discover them herself, although this is something, as a matter
+of fact, that never does happen.
+
+A week had gone by since the Latin missive had been taken from
+the post-office by Emma Jane, and now, by means of much midnight
+oil-burning, by much cautious questioning of Miss Maxwell, by such
+scrutiny of the moods and tenses of Latin verbs as wellnigh destroyed
+her brain tissue, she had mastered its romantic message. If it was
+conventional in style, Emma Jane never suspected it. If some of the
+similes seemed to have been culled from the Latin poets, and some of the
+phrases built up from Latin exercises, Emma Jane was neither scholar
+nor critic; the similes, the phrases, the sentiments, when finally
+translated and written down in black-and-white English, made, in her
+opinion, the most convincing and heart-melting document ever sent
+through the mails:
+
+Mea cara Emma:
+
+Cur audeo scribere ad te epistulam? Es mihi dea! Semper es in mea anima.
+Iterum et iterum es cum me in somnis. Saepe video tuas capillos auri,
+tuos pulchros oculos similes caelo, tuas genas, quasi rubentes rosas
+in nive. Tua vox est dulcior quam cantus avium aut murmur rivuli in
+montibus.
+
+Cur sum ego tam miser et pauper et indignus, et tu tam dulcis et bona et
+nobilis?
+
+Si cogitabis de me ero beatus. Tu es sola puella quam amo, et semper
+eris. Alias puellas non amavi. Forte olim amabis me, sed sum indignus.
+Sine te sum miser, cum tu es prope mea vita omni est goddamn.
+
+Vale, carissima, carissima puella!
+
+De tuo fideli servo A.F.
+
+My dear Emma:
+
+Why dare I write to you a letter? You are to me a goddess! Always you
+are in my heart. Again and again you are with me in dreams. Often I see
+your locks of gold, your beautiful eyes like the sky, your cheeks, as
+red roses in snow. Your voice is sweeter than the singing of birds or
+the murmur of the stream in the mountains.
+
+Why am I so wretched and poor and unworthy, and you so sweet and good
+and noble?
+
+If you will think of me I shall be happy. You are the only girl that I
+love and always will be. Other girls I have not loved. Perhaps sometime
+you will love me, but I am unworthy. Without you, I am wretched, when
+you are near my life is all joy.
+
+Farewell, dearest, dearest girl!
+
+From your faithful slave A.F.
+
+Emma Jane knew the letter by heart in English. She even knew it in
+Latin, only a few days before a dead language to her, but now one filled
+with life and meaning. From beginning to end the epistle had the effect
+upon her as of an intoxicating elixir. Often, at morning prayers, or
+while eating her rice pudding at the noon dinner, or when sinking off
+to sleep at night, she heard a voice murmuring in her ear, “Vale,
+carissima, carissima puella!” As to the effect on her modest,
+countrified little heart of the phrases in which Abijah stated she was
+a goddess and he her faithful slave, that quite baffles description; for
+it lifted her bodily out of the scenes in which she moved, into a new,
+rosy, ethereal atmosphere in which even Rebecca had no place.
+
+Rebecca did not know this, fortunately; she only suspected, and waited
+for the day when Emma Jane would pour out her confidences, as she always
+did, and always would until the end of time. At the present moment
+she was busily employed in thinking about her own affairs. A shabby
+composition book with mottled board covers lay open on the table before
+her, and sometimes she wrote in it with feverish haste and absorption,
+and sometimes she rested her chin in the cup of her palm, and with the
+pencil poised in the other hand looked dreamily out on the village, its
+huddle of roofs and steeples all blurred into positive beauty by the
+fast-falling snowflakes.
+
+It was the middle of December and the friendly sky was softly dropping
+a great white mantle of peace and good-will over the little town, making
+all ready within and without for the Feast o' the Babe.
+
+The main street, that in summer was made dignified by its splendid
+avenue of shade trees, now ran quiet and white between rows of stalwart
+trunks, whose leafless branches were all hanging heavy under their
+dazzling burden.
+
+The path leading straight up the hill to the Academy was broken only by
+the feet of the hurrying, breathless boys and girls who ran up and down,
+carrying piles of books under their arms; books which they remembered
+so long as they were within the four walls of the recitation room, and
+which they eagerly forgot as soon as they met one another in the living,
+laughing world, going up and down the hill.
+
+“It's very becoming to the universe, snow is!” thought Rebecca, looking
+out of the window dreamily. “Really there's little to choose between the
+world and heaven when a snowstorm is going on. I feel as if I ought to
+look at it every minute. I wish I could get over being greedy, but it
+still seems to me at sixteen as if there weren't waking hours enough
+in the day, and as if somehow I were pressed for time and continually
+losing something. How well I remember mother's story about me when I
+was four. It was at early breakfast on the farm, but I called all meals
+dinner' then, and when I had finished I folded up my bib and sighed: O,
+dear! Only two more dinners, play a while and go to bed!' This was at
+six in the morning--lamplight in the kitchen, snowlight outside!
+
+     Powdery, powdery, powdery snow,
+     Making things lovely wherever you go!
+     Merciful, merciful, merciful snow,
+     Masking the ugliness hidden below.
+
+Herbert made me promise to do a poem for the January 'Pilot,' but I
+mustn't take the snow as a subject; there has been too great competition
+among the older poets!” And with that she turned in her chair and began
+writing again in the shabby book, which was already three quarters
+filled with childish scribblings, sometimes in pencil, and sometimes in
+violet ink with carefully shaded capital letters.”
+
+* * * * *
+
+Squire Bean has had a sharp attack of rheumatism and Abijah Flagg came
+back from Limerick for a few days to nurse him. One morning the Burnham
+sisters from North Riverboro came over to spend the day with Aunt
+Miranda, and Abijah went down to put up their horse. (“'Commodatin'
+'Bijah” was his pet name when we were all young.)
+
+He scaled the ladder to the barn chamber--the dear old ladder that
+used to be my safety valve!--and pitched down the last forkful of
+grandfather's hay that will ever be eaten by any visiting horse. They
+WILL be delighted to hear that it is all gone; they have grumbled at it
+for years and years.
+
+What should Abijah find at the bottom of the heap but my Thought Book,
+hidden there two or three years ago and forgotten!
+
+When I think of what it was to me, the place it filled in my life, the
+affection I lavished on it, I wonder that I could forget it, even in
+all the excitement of coming to Wareham to school. And that gives me
+“an uncommon thought” as I used to say! It is this: that when we finish
+building an air castle we seldom live in it after all; we sometimes even
+forget that we ever longed to! Perhaps we have gone so far as to
+begin another castle on a higher hilltop, and this is so
+beautiful,--especially while we are building, and before we live in
+it!--that the first one has quite vanished from sight and mind, like the
+outgrown shell of the nautilus that he casts off on the shore and never
+looks at again. (At least I suppose he doesn't; but perhaps he takes one
+backward glance, half-smiling, half-serious, just as I am doing at my
+old Thought Book, and says, “WAS THAT MY SHELL! GOODNESS GRACIOUS! HOW
+DID I EVER SQUEEZE MYSELF INTO IT!”)
+
+That bit about the nautilus sounds like an extract from a school theme,
+or a “Pilot” editorial, or a fragment of one of dear Miss Maxwell's
+lectures, but I think girls of sixteen are principally imitations of the
+people and things they love and admire; and between editing the “Pilot,”
+ writing out Virgil translations, searching for composition subjects, and
+studying rhetorical models, there is very little of the original
+Rebecca Rowena about me at the present moment; I am just a member of
+the graduating class in good and regular standing. We do our hair alike,
+dress alike as much as possible, eat and drink alike, talk alike,--I am
+not even sure that we do not think alike; and what will become of the
+poor world when we are all let loose upon it on the same day of June?
+Will life, real life, bring our true selves back to us? Will love and
+duty and sorrow and trouble and work finally wear off the “school stamp”
+ that has been pressed upon all of us until we look like rows of shining
+copper cents fresh from the mint?
+
+Yet there must be a little difference between us somewhere, or why does
+Abijah Flagg write Latin letters to Emma Jane, instead of to me? There
+is one example on the other side of the argument,--Abijah Flagg. He
+stands out from all the rest of the boys like the Rock of Gibraltar in
+the geography pictures. Is it because he never went to school until he
+was sixteen? He almost died of longing to go, and the longing seemed to
+teach him more than going. He knew his letters, and could read simple
+things, but it was I who taught him what books really meant when I was
+eleven and he thirteen. We studied while he was husking corn or cutting
+potatoes for seed, or shelling beans in the Squire's barn. His beloved
+Emma Jane didn't teach him; her father wold not have let her be friends
+with a chore-boy! It was I who found him after milking-time, summer
+nights, suffering, yes dying, of Least Common Multiple and Greatest
+Common Divisor; I who struck the shackles from the slave and told him to
+skip it all and go on to something easier, like Fractions, Percentage,
+and Compound Interest, as I did myself. Oh! How he used to smell of the
+cows when I was correcting his sums on warm evenings, but I don't regret
+it, for he is now the joy of Limerick and the pride of Riverboro, and I
+suppose has forgotten the proper side on which to approach a cow if you
+wish to milk her. This now unserviceable knowledge is neatly inclosed in
+the outgrown shell he threw off two or three years ago. His gratitude
+to me knows no bounds, but--he writes Latin letters to Emma Jane! But as
+Mr. Perkins said about drowning the kittens (I now quote from myself at
+thirteen), “It is the way of the world and how things have to be!”
+
+Well, I have read the Thought Book all through, and when I want to
+make Mr. Aladdin laugh, I shall show him my composition on the relative
+values of punishment and reward as builders of character.
+
+I am not at all the same Rebecca today at sixteen that I was then,
+at twelve and thirteen. I hope, in getting rid of my failings, that I
+haven't scrubbed and rubbed so hard that I have taken the gloss off the
+poor little virtues that lay just alongside of the faults; for as I read
+the foolish doggerel and the funny, funny “Remerniscences,” I see on the
+whole a nice, well-meaning, trusting, loving heedless little creature,
+that after all I'd rather build on than outgrow altogether, because she
+is Me; the Me that was made and born just a little different from all
+the rest of the babies in my birthday year.
+
+One thing is alike in the child and the girl. They both love to set
+thoughts down in black and white; to see how they look, how they sound,
+and how they make one feel when one reads them over.
+
+They both love the sound of beautiful sentences and the tinkle of
+rhyming words, and in fact, of the three great R's of life, they adore
+Reading and Riting, as much as they abhor 'Rithmetic.
+
+The little girl in the old book is always thinking of what she is “going
+to be.”
+
+Uncle Jerry Cobb spoiled me a good deal in this direction. I remember
+he said to everybody when I wrote my verses for the flag-raising: “Nary
+rung on the ladder o' fame but that child'll climb if you give her
+time!”--poor Uncle Jerry! He will be so disappointed in me as time goes
+on. And still he would think I have already climbed two rungs on the
+ladder, although it is only a little Wareham ladder, for I am one of
+the “Pilot” editors, the first “girl editor”--and I have taken a fifty
+dollar prize in composition and paid off the interest on a twelve
+hundred dollar mortgage with it.
+
+     “High is the rank we now possess,
+     But higher we shall rise;
+     Though what we shall hereafter be
+     Is hid from mortal eyes.”
+
+This hymn was sung in meeting the Sunday after my election, and Mr.
+Aladdin was there that day and looked across the aisle and smiled at me.
+Then he sent me a sheet of paper from Boston the next morning with just
+one verse in the middle of it.
+
+“She made the cleverest people quite ashamed; And ev'n the good with
+inward envy groan, Finding themselves so very much exceeded, In their
+own way by all the things that she did.”
+
+Miss Maxwell says it is Byron, and I wish I had thought of the last
+rhyme before Byron did; my rhymes are always so common.
+
+I am too busy doing, nowadays, to give very much thought to being.
+Mr. Aladdin was teasing me one day about what he calls my “cast-off
+careers.”
+
+“What makes you aim at any mark in particular, Rebecca?” he asked,
+looking at Miss Maxwell and laughing. “Women never hit what they aim at,
+anyway; but if they shut their eyes and shoot in the air they generally
+find themselves in the bull's eye.”
+
+I think one reason that I have always dreamed of what I should be, when
+I grew up, was, that even before father died mother worried about the
+mortgage on the farm, and what would become of us if it were foreclosed.
+
+It was hard on children to be brought up on a mortgage that way, but
+oh! it was harder still on poor dear mother, who had seven of us then
+to think of, and still has three at home to feed and clothe out of the
+farm.
+
+Aunt Jane says I am young for my age, Aunt Miranda is afraid that I will
+never really “grow up,” Mr. Aladdin says that I don't know the world any
+better than the pearl inside of the oyster. They none of them know the
+old, old thoughts I have, some of them going back years and years; for
+they are never ones that I can speak about.
+
+I remember how we children used to admire father, he was so handsome and
+graceful and amusing, never cross like mother, or too busy to play with
+us. He never did any work at home because he had to keep his hands nice
+for playing the church melodeon, or the violin or piano for dances.
+
+Mother used to say: “Hannah and Rebecca, you must hull the strawberries,
+your father cannot help.” “John, you must milk next year for I haven't
+the time and it would spoil your father's hands.”
+
+All the other men in Temperance village wore calico, or flannel shirts,
+except on Sundays, but Father never wore any but white ones with
+starched bosoms. He was very particular about them and mother used to
+stitch and stitch on the pleats, and press and press the bosoms and
+collar and cuffs, sometimes late at night.
+
+Then she was tired and thin and gray, with no time to sew on new dresses
+for herself, and no time to wear them, because she was always taking
+care of the babies; and father was happy and well and handsome. But
+we children never thought much about it until once, after father had
+mortgaged the farm, there was going to be a sociable in Temperance
+village. Mother could not go as Jenny had whooping-cough and Mark had
+just broken his arm, and when she was tying father's necktie, the last
+thing before he started, he said: “I wish, Aurelia, that you cared a
+little about YOUR appearance and YOUR dress; it goes a long way with a
+man like me.”
+
+Mother had finished the tie, and her hands dropped suddenly. I looked at
+her eyes and mouth while she looked at father and in a minute I was ever
+so old, with a grown-up ache in my heart. It has always stayed there,
+although I admired my handsome father and was proud of him because he
+was so talented; but now that I am older and have thought about things,
+my love for mother is different from what it used to be. Father was
+always the favorite when we were little, he was so interesting, and
+I wonder sometimes if we don't remember interesting people longer and
+better than we do those who are just good and patient. If so it seems
+very cruel.
+
+As I look back I see that Miss Ross, the artist who brought me my
+pink parasol from Paris, sowed the first seeds in me of ambition to do
+something special. Her life seemed so beautiful and so easy to a child.
+I had not been to school then, or read George Macdonald, so I did not
+know that “Ease is the lovely result of forgotten toil.”
+
+Miss Ross sat out of doors and painted lovely things, and everybody said
+how wonderful they were, and bought them straight away; and she took
+care of a blind father and two brothers, and traveled wherever she
+wished. It comes back to me now, that summer when I was ten and Miss
+Ross painted me sitting by the mill-wheel while she talked to me of
+foreign countries!
+
+The other day Miss Maxwell read something from Browning's poems to the
+girls of her literature class. It was about David the shepherd boy
+who used to lie in his hollow watching one eagle “wheeling slow as in
+sleep.” He used to wonder about the wide world that the eagle beheld,
+the eagle that was stretching his wings so far up in the blue, while he,
+the poor shepherd boy, could see only the “strip twixt the hill and the
+sky;” for he lay in a hollow.
+
+I told Mr. Baxter about it the next day, which was the Saturday before
+I joined the church. I asked him if it was wicked to long to see as much
+as the eagle saw?
+
+There was never anybody quite like Mr. Baxter. “Rebecca dear,” he said,
+“it may be that you need not always lie in a hollow, as the shepherd boy
+did; but wherever you lie, that little strip you see 'twixt the hill
+and the sky' is able to hold all of earth and all of heaven, if only you
+have the right sort of vision.”
+
+I was a long, long time about “experiencing religion.” I remember Sunday
+afternoons at the brick house the first winter after I went there; when
+I used to sit in the middle of the dining-room as I was bid, silent and
+still, with the big family Bible on my knees. Aunt Miranda had Baxter's
+“Saints' Rest,” but her seat was by the window, and she at least could
+give a glance into the street now and then without being positively
+wicked.
+
+Aunt Jane used to read the “Pilgrim's Progress.” The fire burned low;
+the tall clock ticked, ticked, so slowly and steadily, that the pictures
+swam before my eyes and I almost fell asleep.
+
+They thought by shutting everything else out that I should see God;
+but I didn't, not once. I was so homesick for Sunnybook and John that
+I could hardly learn my weekly hymns, especially the sad, long one
+beginning:
+
+     “My thoughts on awful subjects roll,
+     Damnation and the dead.”
+
+It was brother John for whom I was chiefly homesick on Sunday
+afternoons, because at Sunnybrook Farm father was dead and mother was
+always busy, and Hannah never liked to talk.
+
+Then the next year the missionaries from Syria came to Riverboro; and
+at the meeting Mr. Burch saw me playing the melodeon, and thought I was
+grown up and a church member, and so he asked me to lead in prayer.
+
+I didn't dare to refuse, and when I prayed, which was just like thinking
+out loud, I found I could talk to God a great deal easier than to Aunt
+Miranda or even to Uncle Jerry Cobb. There were things I could say to
+Him that I could never say to anybody else, and saying them always made
+me happy and contented.
+
+When Mr. Baxter asked me last year about joining the church, I told him
+I was afraid I did not understand God quite well enough to be a real
+member.
+
+“So you don't quite understand God, Rebecca?” he asked, smiling.
+“Well, there is something else much more important, which is, that
+He understands you! He understands your feeble love, your longings,
+desires, hopes, faults, ambitions, crosses; and that, after all, is what
+counts! Of course you don't understand Him! You are overshadowed by His
+love, His power, His benignity, His wisdom; that is as it should be!
+Why, Rebecca, dear, if you could stand erect and unabashed in God's
+presence, as one who perfectly comprehended His nature or His purposes,
+it would be sacrilege! Don't be puzzled out of your blessed inheritance
+of faith, my child; accept God easily and naturally, just as He accepts
+you!”
+
+“God never puzzled me, Mr. Baxter; it isn't that,” I said; “but the
+doctrines do worry me dreadfully.”
+
+“Let them alone for the present,” Mr Baxter said. “Anyway, Rebecca, you
+can never prove God; you can only find Him!”
+
+“Then do you think I have really experienced religion, Mr. Baxter?” I
+asked. “Am I the beginnings of a Christian?”
+
+“You are a dear child of the understanding God!” Mr. Baxter said; “and I
+say it over to myself night and morning so that I can never forget it.”
+
+* * * * *
+
+The year is nearly over and the next few months will be lived in the
+rush and whirlwind of work that comes before graduation. The bell for
+philosophy class will ring in ten minutes, and as I have been writing
+for nearly two hours, I must learn my lesson going up the Academy
+hill. It will not be the first time; it is a grand hill for learning! I
+suppose after fifty years or so the very ground has become soaked with
+knowledge, and every particle of air in the vicinity is crammed with
+useful information.
+
+I will put my book into my trunk (having no blessed haymow hereabouts)
+and take it out again,--when shall I take it out again?
+
+After graduation perhaps I shall be too grown up and too busy to write
+in a Thought Book; but oh, if only something would happen worth putting
+down; something strange; something unusual; something different from the
+things that happen every day in Riverboro and Edgewood!
+
+Graduation will surely take me a little out of “the hollow,”--make me
+a little more like the soaring eagle, gazing at the whole wide world
+beneath him while he wheels “slow as in sleep.” But whether or not,
+I'll try not to be a discontented shepherd, but remember what Mr. Baxter
+said, that the little strip that I see “twixt the hill and the sky” is
+able to hold all of earth and all of heaven, if only I have the eyes to
+see it.
+
+Rebecca Rowena Randall.
+
+Wareham Female Seminary, December 187--.
+
+
+
+
+Eleventh Chronicle. ABIJAH THE BRAVE AND THE FAIR EMMAJANE
+
+
+I
+
+     “A warrior so bold and a maiden so bright
+     Conversed as they sat on the green.
+     They gazed at each other in tender delight.
+     Alonzo the brave was the name of the knight,
+     And the maid was the fair Imogene.
+
+     “Alas!' said the youth, 'since tomorrow I go
+     To fight in a far distant land,
+     Your tears for my absence soon ceasing to flow,
+     Some other will court you, and you will bestow
+     On a wealthier suitor your hand.'
+
+     'Oh, hush these suspicions!' Fair Imogene said,
+     “So hurtful to love and to me!
+     For if you be living, or if you be dead,
+     I swear by the Virgin that none in your stead
+     Shall the husband of Imogene be!'
+
+Ever since she was eight years old Rebecca had wished to be eighteen,
+but now that she was within a month of that awe-inspiring and
+long-desired age she wondered if, after all, it was destined to be a
+turning point in her quiet existence. Her eleventh year, for instance,
+had been a real turning-point, since it was then that she had left
+Sunnybrook Farm and come to her maiden aunts in Riverboro. Aurelia
+Randall may have been doubtful as to the effect upon her spinster
+sisters of the irrepressible child, but she was hopeful from the first
+that the larger opportunities of Riverboro would be the “making” of
+Rebecca herself.
+
+The next turning-point was her fourteenth year, when she left the
+district school for the Wareham Female Seminary, then in the hey-day
+of its local fame. Graduation (next to marriage, perhaps, the most
+thrilling episode in the life of a little country girl) happened at
+seventeen, and not long afterward her Aunt Miranda's death, sudden and
+unexpected, changed not only all the outward activities and conditions
+of her life, but played its own part in her development.
+
+The brick house looked very homelike and pleasant on a June morning
+nowadays with children's faces smiling at the windows and youthful
+footsteps sounding through the halls; and the brass knocker on the
+red-painted front door might have remembered Rebecca's prayer of a year
+before, when she leaned against its sun-warmed brightness and whispered:
+“God bless Aunt Miranda; God bless the brick house that was; God bless
+the brick house that's going to be!”
+
+All the doors and blinds were open to the sun and air as they had never
+been in Miss Miranda Sawyer's time. The hollyhock bed that had been her
+chief pride was never neglected, and Rebecca liked to hear the neighbors
+say that there was no such row of beautiful plants and no such variety
+of beautiful colors in Riverboro as those that climbed up and peeped in
+at the kitchen windows where old Miss Miranda used to sit.
+
+Now that the place was her very own Rebecca felt a passion of pride in
+its smoothly mown fields, its carefully thinned-out woods, its blooming
+garden spots, and its well-weeded vegetable patch; felt, too whenever
+she looked at any part of it, a passion of gratitude to the stern old
+aunt who had looked upon her as the future head of the family, as well
+as a passion of desire to be worthy of that trust.
+
+It had been a very difficult year for a girl fresh from school: the
+death of her aunt, the nursing of Miss Jane, prematurely enfeebled by
+the shock, the removal of her own invalid mother and the rest of the
+little family from Sunnybrook Farm. But all had gone smoothly; and when
+once the Randall fortunes had taken an upward turn nothing seemed able
+to stop their intrepid ascent.
+
+Aurelia Randall renewed her youth in the companionship of her sister
+Jane and the comforts by which her children were surrounded; the
+mortgage was no longer a daily terror, for Sunnybrook had been sold to
+the new railroad; Hannah, now Mrs. Will Melville, was happily situated;
+John, at last, was studying medicine; Mark, the boisterous and unlucky
+brother, had broken no bones for several months; while Jenny and Fanny
+were doing well at the district school under Miss Libby Moses, Miss
+Dearborn's successor.
+
+“I don't feel very safe,” thought Rebecca, remembering all these
+unaccustomed mercies as she sat on the front doorsteps, with her tatting
+shuttle flying in and out of the fine cotton like a hummingbird. “It's
+just like one of those too beautiful July days that winds up with a
+thundershower before night! Still, when you remember that the Randalls
+never had anything but thunder and lightning, rain, snow, and hail, in
+their family history for twelve or fifteen years, perhaps it is only
+natural that they should enjoy a little spell of settled weather. If it
+really turns out to BE settled, now that Aunt Jane and mother are strong
+again I must be looking up one of what Mr. Aladdin calls my cast-off
+careers.”--“There comes Emma Jane Perkins through her front gate; she
+will be here in a minute, and I'll tease her!” and Rebecca ran in the
+door and seated herself at the old piano that stood between the open
+windows in the parlor.
+
+Peeping from behind the muslin curtains, she waited until Emma Jane
+was on the very threshold and then began singing her version of an old
+ballad, made that morning while she was dressing. The ballad was a great
+favorite of hers, and she counted on doing telling execution with it in
+the present instance by the simple subterfuge of removing the original
+hero and heroine, Alonzo and Imogene, and substituting Abijah the Brave
+and the Fair Emmajane, leaving the circumstances in the first three
+verses unaltered, because in truth they seemed to require no alteration.
+
+Her high, clear voice, quivering with merriment, floated through the
+windows into the still summer air:
+
+     “'A warrior so bold and a maiden so bright
+     Conversed as they sat on the green.
+     They gazed at each other in tender delight.
+     Abijah the Brave was the name of the knight,
+     And the maid was the Fair Emmajane.'”
+
+“Rebecca Randall, stop! Somebody'll hear you!”
+
+“No, they won't--they're making jelly in the kitchen, miles away.”
+
+     “'Alas!' said the youth, since tomorrow I go
+     To fight in a far distant land,
+     Your tears for my absence soon ceasing to flow,
+     Some other will court you, and you will bestow
+     On a wealthier suitor your hand.'”
+
+“Rebecca, you can't THINK how your voice carries! I believe mother can
+hear it over to my house!”
+
+“Then, if she can, I must sing the third verse, just to clear your
+reputation from the cloud cast upon it in the second,” laughed her
+tormentor, going on with the song:
+
+“'Oh, hush these suspicions!' Fair Emmajane said, 'So hurtful to love
+and to me! For if you be living, or if you be dead, I swear, my Abijah,
+that none in your stead, Shall the husband of Emmajane be!'”
+
+After ending the third verse Rebecca wheeled around on the piano
+stool and confronted her friend, who was carefully closing the parlor
+windows:--
+
+“Emma Jane Perkins, it is an ordinary Thursday afternoon at four o'clock
+and you have on your new blue barege, although there is not even a
+church sociable in prospect this evening. What does this mean? Is Abijah
+the Brave coming at last?”
+
+“I don't know certainly, but it will be some time this week.”
+
+“And of course you'd rather be dressed up and not seen, than seen when
+not dressed up. Right, my Fair Emmajane; so would I. Not that it makes
+any difference to poor me, wearing my fourth best black and white calico
+and expecting nobody.
+
+“Oh, well, YOU! There's something inside of you that does instead of
+pretty dresses,” cried Emma Jane, whose adoration of her friend had
+never altered nor lessened since they met at the age of eleven. “You
+know you are as different from anybody else in Riverboro as a princess
+in a fairy story. Libby Moses says they would notice you in Lowell,
+Massachusetts!”
+
+“Would they? I wonder,” speculated Rebecca, rendered almost speechless
+by this tribute to her charms. “Well, if Lowell, Massachusetts, could
+see me, or if you could see me, in my new lavender muslin with the
+violet sash, it would die of envy, and so would you!”
+
+“If I had been going to be envious of you, Rebecca, I should have died
+years ago. Come, let's go out on the steps where it's shady and cool.”
+
+“And where we can see the Perkins front gate and the road running both
+ways,” teased Rebecca, and then, softening her tone, she said: “How
+is it getting on, Emmy? Tell me what's happened since I've been in
+Brunswick.”
+
+“Nothing much,” confessed Emma Jane. “He writes to me, but I don't write
+to him, you know. I don't dare to, till he comes to the house.”
+
+“Are his letters still in Latin?” asked Rebecca, with a twinkling eye.
+
+“Oh, no! Not now, because--well, because there are things you can't seem
+to write in Latin. I saw him at the Masonic picnic in the grove, but he
+won't say anything REAL to me till he gets more pay and dares to speak
+to mother and father. He IS brave in all other ways, but I ain't sure
+he'll ever have the courage for that, he's so afraid of them and always
+has been. Just remember what's in his mind all the time, Rebecca, that
+my folks know all about what his mother was, and how he was born on the
+poor-farm. Not that I care; look how he's educated and worked himself
+up! I think he's perfectly elegant, and I shouldn't mind if he had been
+born in the bulrushes, like Moses.”
+
+Emma Jane's every-day vocabulary was pretty much what it had been before
+she went to the expensive Wareham Female Seminary. She had acquired
+a certain amount of information concerning the art of speech, but in
+moments of strong feeling she lapsed into the vernacular. She grew
+slowly in all directions, did Emma Jane, and, to use Rebecca's favorite
+nautilus figure, she had left comparatively few outgrown shells on the
+shores of “life's unresting sea.”
+
+“Moses wasn't born in the bulrushes, Emmy dear,” corrected Rebecca
+laughingly. “Pharaoh's daughter found him there. It wasn't quite as
+romantic a scene--Squire Bean's wife taking little Abijah Flagg from the
+poorhouse when his girl-mother died, but, oh, I think Abijah's splendid!
+Mr. Ladd says Riverboro'll be proud of him yet, and I shouldn't wonder,
+Emmy dear, if you had a three-story house with a cupola on it, some day;
+and sitting down at your mahogany desk inlaid with garnets, you will
+write notes stating that Mrs. Abijah Flagg requests the pleasure of Miss
+Rebecca Randall's company to tea, and that the Hon. Abijah Flagg, M.C.,
+will call for her on his way from the station with a span of horses and
+the turquoise carryall!”
+
+Emma Jane laughed at the ridiculous prophecy, and answered: “If I ever
+write the invitation I shan't be addressing it to Miss Randall, I'm sure
+of that; it'll be to Mrs.-----”
+
+“Don't!” cried Rebecca impetuously, changing color and putting her hand
+over Emma Jane's lips. “If you won't I'll stop teasing. I couldn't bear
+a name put to anything, I couldn't, Emmy dear! I wouldn't tease you,
+either, if it weren't something we've both known ever so long--something
+that you have always consulted me about of your own accord, and Abijah
+too.”
+
+“Don't get excited,” replied Emma Jane, “I was only going to say you
+were sure to be Mrs. Somebody in course of time.”
+
+“Oh,” said Rebecca with a relieved sigh, her color coming back; “if
+that's all you meant, just nonsense; but I thought, I thought--I don't
+really know just what I thought!”
+
+“I think you thought something you didn't want me to think you thought,”
+ said Emma Jane with unusual felicity.
+
+“No, it's not that; but somehow, today, I have been remembering things.
+Perhaps it was because at breakfast Aunt Jane and mother reminded me of
+my coming birthday and said that Squire Bean would give me the deed of
+the brick house. That made me feel very old and responsible; and when I
+came out on the steps this afternoon it was just as if pictures of the
+old years were moving up and down the road. Everything is so beautiful
+today! Doesn't the sky look as if it had been dyed blue and the fields
+painted pink and green and yellow this very minute?”
+
+“It's a perfectly elegant day!” responded Emma Jane with a sigh. “If
+only my mind was at rest! That's the difference between being young and
+grown-up. We never used to think and worry.”
+
+“Indeed we didn't! Look, Emmy, there's the very spot where Uncle Jerry
+Cobb stopped the stage and I stepped out with my pink parasol and my
+bouquet of purple lilacs, and you were watching me from your bedroom
+window and wondering what I had in mother's little hair trunk strapped
+on behind. Poor Aunt Miranda didn't love me at first sight, and oh, how
+cross she was the first two years! But now every hard thought I ever had
+comes back to me and cuts like a knife!”
+
+“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 excitement.
+
+“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 crochet needle
+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 love letter 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
+feeling for Abijah! Upon my word, Emma Jane,” she cried with a sudden
+change of tone, “if I had suspected for an instant that Abijah the Brave
+had that Latin letter in him I should have tried to get him to write it
+to me; and then it would be I who would sit down at my mahogany desk and
+ask Miss Perkins to come to tea with Mrs. Flagg.”
+
+Emma Jane paled and shuddered openly. “I speak as a church member,
+Rebecca,” she said, “when I tell you I've always thanked the Lord that
+you never looked at Abijah Flagg and he never looked at you. If either
+of you ever had, there never would have been a chance for me, and I've
+always known it!”
+
+II
+
+The romance alluded to in the foregoing chapter had been going on, so
+far as Abijah Flagg's part of it was concerned, for many years, his
+affection dating back in his own mind to the first moment that he saw
+Emma Jane Perkins at the age of nine.
+
+Emma Jane had shown no sign of reciprocating his attachment until the
+last three years, when the evolution of the chore-boy into the
+budding scholar and man of affairs had inflamed even her somewhat dull
+imagination.
+
+Squire Bean's wife had taken Abijah away from the poorhouse, thinking
+that she could make him of some little use in her home. Abbie Flagg, the
+mother, was neither wise nor beautiful; it is to be feared that she
+was not even good, and her lack of all these desirable qualities,
+particularly the last one, had been impressed upon the child ever since
+he could remember. People seemed to blame him for being in the world at
+all; this world that had not expected him nor desired him, nor made any
+provision for him. The great battle-axe of poorhouse opinion was forever
+leveled at the mere little atom of innocent transgression, until he grew
+sad and shy, clumsy, stiff, and self-conscious. He had an indomitable
+craving for love in his heart and had never received a caress in his
+life.
+
+He was more contented when he came to Squire Bean's house. The first
+year he could only pick up chips, carry pine wood into the kitchen, go
+to the post-office, run errands, drive the cows, and feed the hens, but
+every day he grew more and more useful.
+
+His only friend was little Jim Watson, the storekeeper's son, and they
+were inseparable companions whenever Abijah had time for play.
+
+One never-to-be-forgotten July day a new family moved into the white
+cottage between Squire Bean's house and the Sawyers'. Mr. Perkins had
+sold his farm beyond North Riverboro and had established a blacksmith's
+shop in the village, at the Edgewood end of the bridge. This fact was of
+no special interest to the nine-year-old Abijah, but what really was of
+importance, was the appearance of a pretty little girl of seven in the
+front yard; a pretty little fat doll of a girl, with bright fuzzy hair,
+pink cheeks, blue eyes, and a smile of almost bewildering continuity.
+Another might have criticised it as having the air of being glued on,
+but Abijah was already in the toils and never wished it to move.
+
+The next day being the glorious Fourth and a holiday, Jimmy Watson came
+over like David, to visit his favorite Jonathan. His Jonathan met him
+at the top of the hill, pleaded a pressing engagement, curtly sent him
+home, and then went back to play with his new idol, with whom he
+had already scraped acquaintance, her parents being exceedingly busy
+settling the new house.
+
+After the noon dinner Jimmy again yearned to resume friendly relations,
+and, forgetting his rebuff, again toiled up the hill and appeared
+unexpectedly at no great distance from the Perkins premises, wearing the
+broad and beaming smile of one who is confident of welcome.
+
+His morning call had been officious and unpleasant and unsolicited, but
+his afternoon visit could only be regarded as impudent, audacious,
+and positively dangerous; for Abijah and Emma Jane were cosily playing
+house, the game of all others in which it is particularly desirable to
+have two and not three participants.
+
+At that moment the nature of Abijah changed, at once and forever.
+Without a pang of conscience he flew over the intervening patch of
+ground between himself and his dreaded rival, and seizing small stones
+and larger ones, as haste and fury demanded, flung them at Jimmy Watson,
+and flung and flung, till the bewildered boy ran down the hill howling.
+Then he made a “stickin'” door to the play-house, put the awed Emma Jane
+inside and strode up and down in front of the edifice like an Indian
+brave. At such an early age does woman become a distracting and
+disturbing influence in man's career!
+
+Time went on, and so did the rivalry between the poorhouse boy and the
+son of wealth, but Abijah's chances of friendship with Emma Jane grew
+fewer and fewer as they both grew older. He did not go to school, so
+there was no meeting-ground there, but sometimes, when he saw the knot
+of boys and girls returning in the afternoon, he would invite Elijah and
+Elisha, the Simpson twins, to visit him, and take pains to be in Squire
+Bean's front yard, doing something that might impress his inamorata as
+she passed the premises.
+
+As Jimmy Watson was particularly small and fragile, Abijah generally
+chose feats of strength and skill for these prearranged performances.
+
+Sometimes he would throw his hat up into the elm trees as far as he
+could and, when it came down, catch it on his head. Sometimes he would
+walk on his hands, with his legs wriggling in the air, or turn a double
+somersault, or jump incredible distances across the extended arms of
+the Simpson twins; and his bosom swelled with pride when the girls
+exclaimed, “Isn't he splendid!” although he often heard his rival murmur
+scornfully, “SMARTY ALECK!”--a scathing allusion of unknown origin.
+
+Squire Bean, although he did not send the boy to school (thinking, as
+he was of no possible importance in the universe, it was not worth
+while bothering about his education), finally became impressed with his
+ability, lent him books, and gave him more time to study. These were all
+he needed, books and time, and when there was an especially hard knot to
+untie, Rebecca, as the star scholar of the neighborhood, helped him to
+untie it.
+
+When he was sixteen he longed to go away from Riverboro and be something
+better than a chore boy. Squire Bean had been giving him small wages
+for three or four years, and when the time of parting came presented him
+with a ten-dollar bill and a silver watch.
+
+Many a time had he discussed his future with Rebecca and asked her
+opinion.
+
+This was not strange, for there was nothing in human form that she could
+not and did not converse with, easily and delightedly. She had ideas
+on every conceivable subject, and would have cheerfully advised the
+minister if he had asked her. The fishman consulted her when he couldn't
+endure his mother-in-law another minute in the house; Uncle Jerry
+Cobb didn't part with his river field until he had talked it over with
+Rebecca; and as for Aunt Jane, she couldn't decide whether to wear her
+black merino or her gray thibet unless Rebecca cast the final vote.
+
+Abijah wanted to go far away from Riverboro, as far as Limerick Academy,
+which was at least fifteen miles; but although this seemed extreme,
+Rebecca agreed, saying pensively: “There IS a kind of magicness about
+going far away and then coming back all changed.”
+
+This was precisely Abijah's unspoken thought. Limerick knew nothing of
+Abbie Flagg's worthlessness, birth, and training, and the awful stigma
+of his poorhouse birth, so that he would start fair. He could have gone
+to Wareham and thus remained within daily sight of the beloved Emma
+Jane; but no, he was not going to permit her to watch him in the process
+of “becoming,” but after he had “become” something. He did not propose
+to take any risks after all these years of silence and patience. Not he!
+He proposed to disappear, like the moon on a dark night, and as he was,
+at present, something that Mr. Perkins would by no means have in the
+family nor Mrs. Perkins allow in the house, he would neither return to
+Riverboro nor ask any favors of them until he had something to offer.
+Yes, sir. He was going to be crammed to the eyebrows with learning for
+one thing,--useless kinds and all,--going to have good clothes, and a
+good income. Everything that was in his power should be right, because
+there would always be lurking in the background the things he never
+could help--the mother and the poorhouse.
+
+So he went away, and, although at Squire Bean's invitation he came back
+the first year for two brief visits at Christmas and Easter, he was
+little seen in Riverboro, for Mr. Ladd finally found him a place where
+he could make his vacations profitable and learn bookkeeping at the same
+time.
+
+The visits in Riverboro were tantalizing rather than pleasant. He
+was invited to two parties, but he was all the time conscious of his
+shirt-collar, and he was sure that his “pants” were not the proper
+thing, for by this time his ideals of dress had attained an almost
+unrealizable height. As for his shoes, he felt that he walked on carpets
+as if they were furrows and he were propelling a plow or a harrow before
+him. They played Drop the Handkerchief and Copenhagen at the parties,
+but he had not had the audacity to kiss Emma Jane, which was bad enough,
+but Jimmy had and did, which was infinitely worse! The sight of James
+Watson's unworthy and over-ambitious lips on Emma Jane's pink cheek
+almost destroyed his faith in an overruling Providence.
+
+After the parties were over he went back to his old room in Squire
+Bean's shed chamber. As he lay in bed his thoughts fluttered about
+Emma Jane as swallows circle around the eaves. The terrible sickness of
+hopeless handicapped love kept him awake. Once he crawled out of bed in
+the night, lighted the lamp, and looked for his mustache, remembering
+that he had seen a suspicion of down on his rival's upper lip. He rose
+again half an hour later, again lighted the lamp, put a few drops of oil
+on his hair, and brushed it violently for several minutes. Then he went
+back to bed, and after making up his mind that he would buy a dulcimer
+and learn to play on it so that he would be more attractive at parties,
+and outshine his rival in society as he had aforetime in athletics, he
+finally sank into a troubled slumber.
+
+Those days, so full of hope and doubt and torture, seemed mercifully
+unreal now, they lay so far back in the past--six or eight years, in
+fact, which is a lifetime to the lad of twenty--and meantime he had
+conquered many of the adverse circumstances that had threatened to cloud
+his career.
+
+Abijah Flagg was a true child of his native State. Something of the same
+timber that Maine puts into her forests, something of the same strength
+and resisting power that she works into her rocks, goes into her sons
+and daughters; and at twenty Abijah was going to take his fate in his
+hand and ask Mr. Perkins, the rich blacksmith, if, after a suitable
+period of probation (during which he would further prepare himself for
+his exalted destiny), he might marry the fair Emma Jane, sole heiress of
+the Perkins house and fortunes.
+
+III
+
+This was boy and girl love, calf love, perhaps, though even that may
+develop into something larger, truer, and finer; but not so far away
+were other and very different hearts growing and budding, each in its
+own way. There was little Miss Dearborn, the pretty school teacher,
+drifting into a foolish alliance because she did not agree with her
+stepmother at home; there was Herbert Dunn, valedictorian of his class,
+dazzled by Huldah Meserve, who like a glowworm “shone afar off bright,
+but looked at near, had neither heat nor light.”
+
+There was sweet Emily Maxwell, less than thirty still, with most of her
+heart bestowed in the wrong quarter. She was toiling on at the Wareham
+school, living as unselfish a life as a nun in a convent; lavishing the
+mind and soul of her, the heart and body of her, on her chosen work.
+How many women give themselves thus, consciously and unconsciously;
+and, though they themselves miss the joys and compensations of mothering
+their own little twos and threes, God must be grateful to them for
+their mothering of the hundreds which make them so precious in His
+regenerating purposes.
+
+Then there was Adam Ladd, waiting at thirty-five for a girl to grow a
+little older, simply because he could not find one already grown who
+suited his somewhat fastidious and exacting tastes.
+
+“I'll not call Rebecca perfection,” he quoted once, in a letter to Emily
+Maxwell,--“I'll not call her perfection, for that's a post, afraid to
+move. But she's a dancing sprig of the tree next it.”
+
+When first she appeared on his aunt's piazza in North Riverboro and
+insisted on selling him a large quantity of very inferior soap in order
+that her friends, the Simpsons, might possess a premium in the shape of
+a greatly needed banquet lamp, she had riveted his attention. He thought
+all the time that he enjoyed talking with her more than with any woman
+alive, and he had never changed his opinion. She always caught what
+he said as if it were a ball tossed to her, and sometimes her mind, as
+through it his thoughts came back to him, seemed like a prism which had
+dyed them with deeper colors.
+
+Adam Ladd always called Rebecca in his heart his little Spring. His
+boyhood had been lonely and unhappy. That was the part of life he had
+missed, and although it was the full summer of success and prosperity
+with him now, he found his lost youth only in her.
+
+She was to him--how shall I describe it?
+
+Do you remember an early day in May with budding leaf, warm earth,
+tremulous air, and changing, willful sky--how new it seemed? How fresh
+and joyous beyond all explaining?
+
+Have you lain with half-closed eyes where the flickering of sunlight
+through young leaves, the song of birds and brook and the fragrance of
+wild flowers combined to charm your senses, and you felt the sweetness
+and grace of nature as never before?
+
+Rebecca was springtide to Adam's thirsty heart. She was blithe youth
+incarnate; she was music--an Aeolian harp that every passing breeze
+woke to some whispering little tune; she was a changing, iridescent
+joy-bubble; she was the shadow of a leaf dancing across a dusty floor.
+No bough of his thought could be so bare but she somehow built a nest in
+it and evoked life where none was before.
+
+And Rebecca herself?
+
+She had been quite unconscious of all this until very lately, and even
+now she was but half awakened; searching among her childish instincts
+and her girlish dreams for some Ariadne thread that should guide her
+safely through the labyrinth of her new sensations.
+
+For the moment she was absorbed, or thought she was, in the little love
+story of Abijah and Emma Jane, but in reality, had she realized it, that
+love story served chiefly as a basis of comparison for a possible one of
+her own, later on.
+
+She liked and respected Abijah Flagg, and loving Emma Jane was a habit
+contracted early in life; but everything that they did or said, or
+thought or wrote, or hoped or feared, seemed so inadequate, so painfully
+short of what might be done or said, or thought or written, or hoped or
+feared, under easily conceivable circumstances, that she almost felt a
+disposition to smile gently at the fancy of the ignorant young couple
+that they had caught a glimpse of the great vision.
+
+She was sitting under the sweet apple tree at twilight. Supper was over;
+Mark's restless feet were quiet, Fanny and Jenny were tucked safely in
+bed; her aunt and her mother were stemming currants on the side porch.
+
+A blue spot at one of the Perkins windows showed that in one vestal
+bosom hope was not dead yet, although it was seven o'clock.
+
+Suddenly there was the sound of a horse's feet coming up the quiet road;
+plainly a steed hired from some metropolis like Milltown or Wareham,
+as Riverboro horses when through with their day's work never disported
+themselves so gayly.
+
+A little open vehicle came in sight, and in it sat Abijah Flagg. The
+wagon was so freshly painted and so shiny that Rebecca thought that he
+must have alighted at the bridge and given it a last polish. The creases
+in his trousers, too, had an air of having been pressed in only a few
+minutes before. The whip was new and had a yellow ribbon on it; the
+gray suit of clothes was new, and the coat flourished a flower in its
+button-hole. The hat was the latest thing in hats, and the intrepid
+swain wore a seal-ring on the little finger of his right hand. As
+Rebecca remembered that she had guided it in making capital G's in his
+copy-book, she felt positively maternal, although she was two years
+younger than Abijah the Brave.
+
+He drove up to the Perkins gate and was so long about hitching the horse
+that Rebecca's heart beat tumultuously at the thought of Emma Jane's
+heart waiting under the blue barege. Then he brushed an imaginary speck
+off his sleeve, then he drew on a pair of buff kid gloves, then he went
+up the path, rapped at the knocker, and went in.
+
+“Not all the heroes go to the wars,” thought Rebecca. “Abijah has laid
+the ghost of his father and redeemed the memory of his mother, for no
+one will dare say again that Abbie Flagg's son could never amount to
+anything!”
+
+The minutes went by, and more minutes, and more. The tranquil dusk
+settled down over the little village street and the young moon came out
+just behind the top of the Perkins pine tree.
+
+The Perkins front door opened and Abijah the Brave came out hand in hand
+with his Fair Emma Jane.
+
+They walked through the orchard, the eyes of the old couple following
+them from the window, and just as they disappeared down the green slope
+that led to the riverside the gray coat sleeve encircled the blue barege
+waist.
+
+Rebecca, quivering with instant sympathy and comprehension, hid her face
+in her hands.
+
+“Emmy has sailed away and I am all alone in the little harbor,” she
+thought.
+
+It was as if childhood, like a thing real and visible, were slipping
+down the grassy river banks, after Abijah and Emma Jane, and
+disappearing like them into the moon-lit shadows of the summer night.
+
+“I am all alone in the little harbor,” she repeated; “and oh, I wonder,
+I wonder, shall I be afraid to leave it, if anybody ever comes to carry
+me out to sea!”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's New Chronicles of Rebecca, by Kate Douglas Wiggin
+
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+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      New Chronicles of Rebecca, by Kate Douglas Wiggin
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+Project Gutenberg's New Chronicles of Rebecca, by Kate Douglas Wiggin
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: New Chronicles of Rebecca
+
+Author: Kate Douglas Wiggin
+
+Release Date: November 9, 2009 [EBook #1375]
+Last Updated: March 10, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NEW CHRONICLES OF REBECCA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Theresa Armao, and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      NEW CHRONICLES OF REBECCA
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Kate Douglas Wiggin
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      Contents
+    </h2>
+    <table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto">
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> First Chronicle. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          JACK O'LANTERN
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> Second Chronicle. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          DAUGHTERS OF ZION
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> Third Chronicle. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          REBECCA'S THOUGHT BOOK
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> Fourth Chronicle. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          A TRAGEDY IN MILLINERY
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> Fifth Chronicle. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          THE SAVING OF THE COLORS
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> Sixth Chronicle. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          THE STATE O' MAINE GIRL
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> Seventh Chronicle. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          THE LITTLE PROPHET
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> Eighth Chronicle. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          ABNER SIMPSON'S NEW LEAF
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> Ninth Chronicle. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          THE GREEN ISLE
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> Tenth Chronicle. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          REBECCA'S REMINISCENCES
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> Eleventh Chronicle. &nbsp;&nbsp;</a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          ABIJAH THE BRAVE AND THE FAIR EMMAJANE
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+    </table>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      First Chronicle. JACK O'LANTERN
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Miranda Sawyer's old-fashioned garden was the pleasantest spot in
+      Riverboro on a sunny July morning. The rich color of the brick house
+      gleamed and glowed through the shade of the elms and maples. Luxuriant
+      hop-vines clambered up the lightning rods and water spouts, hanging their
+      delicate clusters here and there in graceful profusion. Woodbine
+      transformed the old shed and tool house to things of beauty, and the
+      flower beds themselves were the prettiest and most fragrant in all the
+      countryside. A row of dahlias ran directly around the garden spot,&mdash;dahlias
+      scarlet, gold, and variegated. In the very centre was a round plot where
+      the upturned faces of a thousand pansies smiled amid their leaves, and in
+      the four corners were triangular blocks of sweet phlox over which the
+      butterflies fluttered unceasingly. In the spaces between ran a riot of
+      portulaca and nasturtiums, while in the more regular, shell-bordered beds
+      grew spirea and gillyflowers, mignonette, marigolds, and clove pinks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Back of the barn and encroaching on the edge of the hay field was a grove
+      of sweet clover whose white feathery tips fairly bent under the assaults
+      of the bees, while banks of aromatic mint and thyme drank in the sunshine
+      and sent it out again into the summer air, warm, and deliciously odorous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hollyhocks were Miss Sawyer's pride, and they grew in a stately line
+      beneath the four kitchen windows, their tapering tips set thickly with gay
+      satin circlets of pink or lavender or crimson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They grow something like steeples,&rdquo; thought little Rebecca Randall, who
+      was weeding the bed, &ldquo;and the flat, round flowers are like rosettes; but
+      steeples wouldn't be studded with rosettes, so if you were writing about
+      them in a composition you'd have to give up one or the other, and I think
+      I'll give up the steeples:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Gay little hollyhock
+     Lifting your head,
+     Sweetly rosetted
+     Out from your bed.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      It's a pity the hollyhock isn't really little, instead of steepling up to
+      the window top, but I can't say, 'Gay TALL hollyhock.'... I might have it
+      'Lines to a Hollyhock in May,' for then it would be small; but oh, no! I
+      forgot; in May it wouldn't be blooming, and it's so pretty to say that its
+      head is 'sweetly rosetted'... I wish the teacher wasn't away; she would
+      like 'sweetly rosetted,' and she would like to hear me recite 'Roll on,
+      thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!' that I learned out of Aunt Jane's
+      Byron; the rolls come booming out of it just like the waves at the
+      beach.... I could make nice compositions now, everything is blooming so,
+      and it's so warm and sunny and happy outdoors. Miss Dearborn told me to
+      write something in my thought book every single day, and I'll begin this
+      very night when I go to bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca Rowena Randall, the little niece of the brick-house ladies, and at
+      present sojourning there for purposes of board, lodging, education, and
+      incidentally such discipline and chastening as might ultimately produce
+      moral excellence,&mdash;Rebecca Randall had a passion for the rhyme and
+      rhythm of poetry. From her earliest childhood words had always been to her
+      what dolls and toys are to other children, and now at twelve she amused
+      herself with phrases and sentences and images as her schoolmates played
+      with the pieces of their dissected puzzles. If the heroine of a story took
+      a &ldquo;cursory glance&rdquo; about her &ldquo;apartment,&rdquo; Rebecca would shortly ask her
+      Aunt Jane to take a &ldquo;cursory glance&rdquo; at her oversewing or hemming; if the
+      villain &ldquo;aided and abetted&rdquo; someone in committing a crime, she would
+      before long request the pleasure of &ldquo;aiding and abetting&rdquo; in dishwashing
+      or bedmaking. Sometimes she used the borrowed phrases unconsciously;
+      sometimes she brought them into the conversation with an intense sense of
+      pleasure in their harmony or appropriateness; for a beautiful word or
+      sentence had the same effect upon her imagination as a fragrant nosegay, a
+      strain of music, or a brilliant sunset.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How are you gettin' on, Rebecca Rowena?&rdquo; called a peremptory voice from
+      within.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pretty good, Aunt Miranda; only I wish flowers would ever come up as
+      thick as this pigweed and plantain and sorrel. What MAKES weeds be thick
+      and flowers be thin?&mdash;I just happened to be stopping to think a
+      minute when you looked out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think considerable more than you weed, I guess, by appearances. How
+      many times have you peeked into that humming bird's nest? Why don't you
+      work all to once and play all to once, like other folks?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know,&rdquo; the child answered, confounded by the question, and still
+      more by the apparent logic back of it. &ldquo;I don't know, Aunt Miranda, but
+      when I'm working outdoors such a Saturday morning as this, the whole
+      creation just screams to me to stop it and come and play.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you needn't go if it does!&rdquo; responded her aunt sharply. &ldquo;It don't
+      scream to me when I'm rollin' out these doughnuts, and it wouldn't to you
+      if your mind was on your duty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+Rebecca's little brown hands flew in and out among the weeds as she
+thought rebelliously: &ldquo;Creation WOULDN'T scream to Aunt Miranda; it
+would know she wouldn't come.&rdquo;
+
+     Scream on, thou bright and gay creation, scream!
+     'Tis not Miranda that will hear thy cry!
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+Oh, such funny, nice things come into my head out here by myself, I do
+wish I could run up and put them down in my thought book before I forget
+them, but Aunt Miranda wouldn't like me to leave off weeding:&mdash;
+
+     Rebecca was weeding the hollyhock bed
+     When wonderful thoughts came into her head.
+     Her aunt was occupied with the rolling pin
+     And the thoughts of her mind were common and thin.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      That wouldn't do because it's mean to Aunt Miranda, and anyway it isn't
+      good. I MUST crawl under the syringa shade a minute, it's so hot, and
+      anybody has to stop working once in a while, just to get their breath,
+      even if they weren't making poetry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca was weeding the hollyhock bed When marvelous thoughts came into
+      her head. Miranda was wielding the rolling pin And thoughts at such times
+      seemed to her as a sin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How pretty the hollyhock rosettes look from down here on the sweet, smelly
+      ground!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me see what would go with rosetting. AIDING AND ABETTING, PETTING,
+      HEN-SETTING, FRETTING,&mdash;there's nothing very nice, but I can make
+      fretting' do.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Cheered by Rowena's petting,
+     The flowers are rosetting,
+     But Aunt Miranda's fretting
+     Doth somewhat cloud the day.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly the sound of wagon wheels broke the silence and then a voice
+      called out&mdash;a voice that could not wait until the feet that belonged
+      to it reached the spot: &ldquo;Miss Saw-YER! Father's got to drive over to North
+      Riverboro on an errand, and please can Rebecca go, too, as it's Saturday
+      morning and vacation besides?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca sprang out from under the syringa bush, eyes flashing with delight
+      as only Rebecca's eyes COULD flash, her face one luminous circle of joyous
+      anticipation. She clapped her grubby hands, and dancing up and down,
+      cried: &ldquo;May I, Aunt Miranda&mdash;can I, Aunt Jane&mdash;can I, Aunt
+      Miranda-Jane? I'm more than half through the bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you finish your weeding tonight before sundown I s'pose you can go, so
+      long as Mr. Perkins has been good enough to ask you,&rdquo; responded Miss
+      Sawyer reluctantly. &ldquo;Take off that gingham apron and wash your hands clean
+      at the pump. You ain't be'n out o' bed but two hours an' your head looks
+      as rough as if you'd slep' in it. That comes from layin' on the ground
+      same as a caterpillar. Smooth your hair down with your hands an' p'r'aps
+      Emma Jane can braid it as you go along the road. Run up and get your
+      second-best hair ribbon out o' your upper drawer and put on your shade
+      hat. No, you can't wear your coral chain&mdash;jewelry ain't appropriate
+      in the morning. How long do you cal'late to be gone, Emma Jane?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know. Father's just been sent for to see about a sick woman over
+      to North Riverboro. She's got to go to the poor farm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This fragment of news speedily brought Miss Sawyer, and her sister Jane as
+      well, to the door, which commanded a view of Mr. Perkins and his wagon.
+      Mr. Perkins, the father of Rebecca's bosom friend, was primarily a
+      blacksmith, and secondarily a selectman and an overseer of the poor, a man
+      therefore possessed of wide and varied information.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is it that's sick?&rdquo; inquired Miranda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A woman over to North Riverboro.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the trouble?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stranger?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and no; she's that wild daughter of old Nate Perry that used to live
+      up towards Moderation. You remember she ran away to work in the factory at
+      Milltown and married a do&mdash;nothin' fellow by the name o' John
+      Winslow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; well, where is he? Why don't he take care of her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They ain't worked well in double harness. They've been rovin' round the
+      country, livin' a month here and a month there wherever they could get
+      work and house-room. They quarreled a couple o' weeks ago and he left her.
+      She and the little boy kind o' camped out in an old loggin' cabin back in
+      the woods and she took in washin' for a spell; then she got terrible sick
+      and ain't expected to live.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who's been nursing her?&rdquo; inquired Miss Jane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lizy Ann Dennett, that lives nearest neighbor to the cabin; but I guess
+      she's tired out bein' good Samaritan. Anyways, she sent word this mornin'
+      that nobody can't seem to find John Winslow; that there ain't no
+      relations, and the town's got to be responsible, so I'm goin' over to see
+      how the land lays. Climb in, Rebecca. You an' Emmy Jane crowd back on the
+      cushion an' I'll set forrard. That's the trick! Now we're off!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear, dear!&rdquo; sighed Jane Sawyer as the sisters walked back into the brick
+      house. &ldquo;I remember once seeing Sally Perry at meeting. She was a handsome
+      girl, and I'm sorry she's come to grief.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If she'd kep' on goin' to meetin' an' hadn't looked at the men folks she
+      might a' be'n earnin' an honest livin' this minute,&rdquo; said Miranda. &ldquo;Men
+      folks are at the bottom of everything wrong in this world,&rdquo; she continued,
+      unconsciously reversing the verdict of history.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then we ought to be a happy and contented community here in Riverboro,&rdquo;
+       replied Jane, &ldquo;as there's six women to one man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If 't was sixteen to one we'd be all the safer,&rdquo; responded Miranda
+      grimly, putting the doughnuts in a brown crock in the cellar-way and
+      slamming the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      II
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Perkins horse and wagon rumbled along over the dusty country road, and
+      after a discreet silence, maintained as long as human flesh could endure,
+      Rebecca remarked sedately:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a sad errand for such a shiny morning, isn't it, Mr. Perkins?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Plenty o' trouble in the world, Rebecky, shiny mornin's an' all,&rdquo; that
+      good man replied. &ldquo;If you want a bed to lay on, a roof over your head, an'
+      food to eat, you've got to work for em. If I hadn't a' labored early an'
+      late, learned my trade, an' denied myself when I was young, I might a'
+      be'n a pauper layin' sick in a loggin' cabin, stead o' bein' an overseer
+      o' the poor an' selectman drivin' along to take the pauper to the poor
+      farm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;People that are mortgaged don't have to go to the poor farm, do they, Mr.
+      Perkins?&rdquo; asked Rebecca, with a shiver of fear as she remembered her home
+      farm at Sunnybrook and the debt upon it; a debt which had lain like a
+      shadow over her childhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bless your soul, no; not unless they fail to pay up; but Sal Perry an'
+      her husband hadn't got fur enough along in life to BE mortgaged. You have
+      to own something before you can mortgage it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca's heart bounded as she learned that a mortgage represented a
+      certain stage in worldly prosperity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she said, sniffing in the fragrance of the new-mown hay and
+      growing hopeful as she did so; &ldquo;maybe the sick woman will be better such a
+      beautiful day, and maybe the husband will come back to make it up and say
+      he's sorry, and sweet content will reign in the humble habitation that was
+      once the scene of poverty, grief, and despair. That's how it came out in a
+      story I'm reading.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hain't noticed that life comes out like stories very much,&rdquo; responded
+      the pessimistic blacksmith, who, as Rebecca privately thought, had read
+      less than half a dozen books in his long and prosperous career.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A drive of three or four miles brought the party to a patch of woodland
+      where many of the tall pines had been hewn the previous winter. The roof
+      of a ramshackle hut was outlined against a background of young birches,
+      and a rough path made in hauling the logs to the main road led directly to
+      its door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they drew near the figure of a woman approached&mdash;Mrs. Lizy Ann
+      Dennett, in a gingham dress, with a calico apron over her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good morning, Mr. Perkins,&rdquo; said the woman, who looked tired and
+      irritable. &ldquo;I'm real glad you come right over, for she took worse after I
+      sent you word, and she's dead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dead! The word struck heavily and mysteriously on the children's ears.
+      Dead! And their young lives, just begun, stretched on and on, all decked,
+      like hope, in living green. Dead! And all the rest of the world reveling
+      in strength. Dead! With all the daisies and buttercups waving in the
+      fields and the men heaping the mown grass into fragrant cocks or tossing
+      it into heavily laden carts. Dead! With the brooks tinkling after the
+      summer showers, with the potatoes and corn blossoming, the birds singing
+      for joy, and every little insect humming and chirping, adding its note to
+      the blithe chorus of warm, throbbing life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was all alone with her. She passed away suddenly jest about break o'
+      day,&rdquo; said Lizy Ann Dennett.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her soul passed upward to its God Just at the break of day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      These words came suddenly into Rebecca's mind from a tiny chamber where
+      such things were wont to lie quietly until something brought them to the
+      surface. She could not remember whether she had heard them at a funeral or
+      read them in the hymn book or made them up &ldquo;out of her own head,&rdquo; but she
+      was so thrilled with the idea of dying just as the dawn was breaking that
+      she scarcely heard Mrs. Dennett's conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I sent for Aunt Beulah Day, an' she's be'n here an' laid her out,&rdquo;
+       continued the long suffering Lizy Ann. &ldquo;She ain't got any folks, an' John
+      Winslow ain't never had any as far back as I can remember. She belongs to
+      your town and you'll have to bury her and take care of Jacky&mdash;that's
+      the boy. He's seventeen months old, a bright little feller, the image o'
+      John, but I can't keep him another day. I'm all wore out; my own baby's
+      sick, mother's rheumatiz is extry bad, and my husband's comin' home
+      tonight from his week's work. If he finds a child o' John Winslow's under
+      his roof I can't say what would happen; you'll have to take him back with
+      you to the poor farm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't take him up there this afternoon,&rdquo; objected Mr. Perkins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, keep him over Sunday yourself; he's good as a kitten. John
+      Winslow'll hear o' Sal's death sooner or later, unless he's gone out of
+      the state altogether, an' when he knows the boy's at the poor farm, I kind
+      o' think he'll come and claim him. Could you drive me over to the village
+      to see about the coffin, and would you children be afraid to stay here
+      alone for a spell?&rdquo; she asked, turning to the girls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Afraid?&rdquo; they both echoed uncomprehendingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lizy Ann and Mr. Perkins, perceiving that the fear of a dead presence had
+      not entered the minds of Rebecca or Emma Jane, said nothing, but drove off
+      together, counseling them not to stray far away from the cabin and
+      promising to be back in an hour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was not a house within sight, either looking up or down the shady
+      road, and the two girls stood hand in hand, watching the wagon out of
+      sight; then they sat down quietly under a tree, feeling all at once a
+      nameless depression hanging over their gay summer-morning spirits.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was very still in the woods; just the chirp of a grasshopper now and
+      then, or the note of a bird, or the click of a far-distant mowing machine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We're WATCHING!&rdquo; whispered Emma Jane. &ldquo;They watched with Gran'pa Perkins,
+      and there was a great funeral and two ministers. He left two thousand
+      dollars in the bank and a store full of goods, and a paper thing you could
+      cut tickets off of twice a year, and they were just like money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They watched with my little sister Mira, too,&rdquo; said Rebecca. &ldquo;You
+      remember when she died, and I went home to Sunnybrook Farm? It was winter
+      time, but she was covered with evergreen and white pinks, and there was
+      singing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There won't be any funeral or ministers or singing here, will there?
+      Isn't that awful?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I s'pose not; and oh, Emma Jane, no flowers either. We might get those
+      for her if there's nobody else to do it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you dare put them on to her?&rdquo; asked Emma Jane, in a hushed voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know; I can't tell; it makes me shiver, but, of course, we COULD
+      do it if we were the only friends she had. Let's look into the cabin first
+      and be perfectly sure that there aren't any. Are you afraid?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;N-no; I guess not. I looked at Gran'pa Perkins, and he was just the same
+      as ever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the door of the hut Emma Jane's courage suddenly departed. She held
+      back shuddering and refused either to enter or look in. Rebecca shuddered
+      too, but kept on, drawn by an insatiable curiosity about life and death,
+      an overmastering desire to know and feel and understand the mysteries of
+      existence, a hunger for knowledge and experience at all hazards and at any
+      cost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane hurried softly away from the felt terrors of the cabin, and
+      after two or three minutes of utter silence Rebecca issued from the open
+      door, her sensitive face pale and woe-begone, the ever-ready tears raining
+      down her cheeks. She ran toward the edge of the wood, sinking down by Emma
+      Jane's side, and covering her eyes, sobbed with excitement:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Emma Jane, she hasn't got a flower, and she's so tired and
+      sad-looking, as if she'd been hurt and hurt and never had any good times,
+      and there's a weeny, weeny baby side of her. Oh, I wish I hadn't gone in!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane blenched for an instant. &ldquo;Mrs. Dennett never said THERE WAS TWO
+      DEAD ONES! ISN'T THAT DREADFUL? But,&rdquo; she continued, her practical common
+      sense coming to the rescue, &ldquo;you've been in once and it's all over; it
+      won't be so bad when you take in the flowers because you'll be used to it.
+      The goldenrod hasn't begun to bud, so there's nothing to pick but daisies.
+      Shall I make a long rope of them, as I did for the schoolroom?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Rebecca, wiping her eyes and still sobbing. &ldquo;Yes, that's the
+      prettiest, and if we put it all round her like a frame, the undertaker
+      couldn't be so cruel as to throw it away, even if she is a pauper, because
+      it will look so beautiful. From what the Sunday school lessons say, she's
+      only asleep now, and when she wakes up she'll be in heaven.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;THERE'S ANOTHER PLACE,&rdquo; said Emma Jane, in an orthodox and sepulchral
+      whisper, as she took her ever-present ball of crochet cotton from her
+      pocket and began to twine the whiteweed blossoms into a rope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, well!&rdquo; Rebecca replied with the easy theology that belonged to her
+      temperament. &ldquo;They simply couldn't send her DOWN THERE with that little
+      weeny baby. Who'd take care of it? You know page six of the catechism says
+      the only companions of the wicked after death are their father the devil
+      and all the other evil angels; it wouldn't be any place to bring up a
+      baby.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whenever and wherever she wakes up, I hope she won't know that the big
+      baby is going to the poor farm. I wonder where he is?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps over to Mrs. Dennett's house. She didn't seem sorry a bit, did
+      she?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, but I suppose she's tired sitting up and nursing a stranger. Mother
+      wasn't sorry when Gran'pa Perkins died; she couldn't be, for he was cross
+      all the time and had to be fed like a child. Why ARE you crying again,
+      Rebecca?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I don't know, I can't tell, Emma Jane! Only I don't want to die and
+      have no funeral or singing and nobody sorry for me! I just couldn't bear
+      it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Neither could I,&rdquo; Emma Jane responded sympathetically; &ldquo;but p'r'aps if
+      we're real good and die young before we have to be fed, they will be
+      sorry. I do wish you could write some poetry for her as you did for Alice
+      Robinson's canary bird, only still better, of course, like that you read
+      me out of your thought book.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could, easy enough,&rdquo; exclaimed Rebecca, somewhat consoled by the idea
+      that her rhyming faculty could be of any use in such an emergency. &ldquo;Though
+      I don't know but it would be kind of bold to do it. I'm all puzzled about
+      how people get to heaven after they're buried. I can't understand it a
+      bit; but if the poetry is on her, what if that should go, too? And how
+      could I write anything good enough to be read out loud in heaven?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A little piece of paper couldn't get to heaven; it just couldn't,&rdquo;
+       asserted Emma Jane decisively. &ldquo;It would be all blown to pieces and dried
+      up. And nobody knows that the angels can read writing, anyway.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They must be as educated as we are, and more so, too,&rdquo; agreed Rebecca.
+      &ldquo;They must be more than just dead people, or else why should they have
+      wings? But I'll go off and write something while you finish the rope; it's
+      lucky you brought your crochet cotton and I my lead pencil.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In fifteen or twenty minutes she returned with some lines written on a
+      scrap of brown wrapping paper. Standing soberly by Emma Jane, she said,
+      preparing to read them aloud: &ldquo;They're not good; I was afraid your
+      father'd come back before I finished, and the first verse sounds exactly
+      like the funeral hymns in the church book. I couldn't call her Sally
+      Winslow; it didn't seem nice when I didn't know her and she is dead, so I
+      thought if I said friend' it would show she had somebody to be sorry.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;This friend of ours has died and gone
+     From us to heaven to live.
+     If she has sinned against Thee, Lord,
+     We pray Thee, Lord, forgive.
+
+     &ldquo;Her husband runneth far away
+     And knoweth not she's dead.
+     Oh, bring him back&mdash;ere tis too late&mdash;
+     To mourn beside her bed.
+
+     &ldquo;And if perchance it can't be so,
+     Be to the children kind;
+     The weeny one that goes with her,
+     The other left behind.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think that's perfectly elegant!&rdquo; exclaimed Emma Jane, kissing Rebecca
+      fervently. &ldquo;You are the smartest girl in the whole State of Maine, and it
+      sounds like a minister's prayer. I wish we could save up and buy a
+      printing machine. Then I could learn to print what you write and we'd be
+      partners like father and Bill Moses. Shall you sign it with your name like
+      we do our school compositions?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Rebecca soberly. &ldquo;I certainly shan't sign it, not knowing where
+      it's going or who'll read it. I shall just hide it in the flowers, and
+      whoever finds it will guess that there wasn't any minister or singing, or
+      gravestone, or anything, so somebody just did the best they could.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      III
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tired mother with the &ldquo;weeny baby&rdquo; on her arm lay on a long
+      carpenter's bench, her earthly journey over, and when Rebecca stole in and
+      placed the flowery garland all along the edge of the rude bier, death
+      suddenly took on a more gracious and benign aspect. It was only a child's
+      sympathy and intuition that softened the rigors of the sad moment, but
+      poor, wild Sal Winslow, in her frame of daisies, looked as if she were
+      missed a little by an unfriendly world; while the weeny baby, whose heart
+      had fallen asleep almost as soon as it had learned to beat, the weeny
+      baby, with Emma Jane's nosegay of buttercups in its tiny wrinkled hand,
+      smiled as if it might have been loved and longed for and mourned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We've done all we can now without a minister,&rdquo; whispered Rebecca. &ldquo;We
+      could sing, God is ever good' out of the Sunday school song book, but I'm
+      afraid somebody would hear us and think we were gay and happy. What's
+      that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A strange sound broke the stillness; a gurgle, a yawn, a merry little
+      call. The two girls ran in the direction from which it came, and there, on
+      an old coat, in a clump of goldenrod bushes, lay a child just waking from
+      a refreshing nap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's the other baby that Lizy Ann Dennett told about!&rdquo; cried Emma Jane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn't he beautiful!&rdquo; exclaimed Rebecca. &ldquo;Come straight to me!&rdquo; and she
+      stretched out her arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The child struggled to its feet, and tottered, wavering, toward the warm
+      welcome of the voice and eyes. Rebecca was all mother, and her maternal
+      instincts had been well developed in the large family in which she was
+      next to the eldest. She had always confessed that there were perhaps a
+      trifle too many babies at Sunnybrook Farm, but, nevertheless, had she ever
+      heard it, she would have stood loyally by the Japanese proverb: &ldquo;Whether
+      brought forth upon the mountain or in the field, it matters nothing; more
+      than a treasure of one thousand ryo a baby precious is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You darling thing!&rdquo; she crooned, as she caught and lifted the child. &ldquo;You
+      look just like a Jack-o'-lantern.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy was clad in a yellow cotton dress, very full and stiff. His hair
+      was of such a bright gold, and so sleek and shiny, that he looked like a
+      fair, smooth little pumpkin. He had wide blue eyes full of laughter, a
+      neat little vertical nose, a neat little horizontal mouth with his few
+      neat little teeth showing very plainly, and on the whole Rebecca's figure
+      of speech was not so wide of the mark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Emma Jane! Isn't he too lovely to go to the poor farm? If only we
+      were married we could keep him and say nothing and nobody would know the
+      difference! Now that the Simpsons have gone away there isn't a single baby
+      in Riverboro, and only one in Edgewood. It's a perfect shame, but I can't
+      do anything; you remember Aunt Miranda wouldn't let me have the Simpson
+      baby when I wanted to borrow her just for one rainy Sunday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My mother won't keep him, so it's no use to ask her; she says most every
+      day she's glad we're grown up, and she thanks the Lord there wasn't but
+      two of us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Mrs. Peter Meserve is too nervous,&rdquo; Rebecca went on, taking the
+      village houses in turn; &ldquo;and Mrs. Robinson is too neat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;People don't seem to like any but their own babies,&rdquo; observed Emma Jane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I can't understand it,&rdquo; Rebecca answered. &ldquo;A baby's a baby, I
+      should think, whose ever it is! Miss Dearborn is coming back Monday; I
+      wonder if she'd like it? She has nothing to do out of school, and we could
+      borrow it all the time!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't think it would seem very genteel for a young lady like Miss
+      Dearborn, who 'boards round,' to take a baby from place to place,&rdquo;
+       objected Emma Jane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps not,&rdquo; agreed Rebecca despondently, &ldquo;but I think if we haven't got
+      any&mdash;any&mdash;PRIVATE babies in Riverboro we ought to have one for
+      the town, and all have a share in it. We've got a town hall and a town
+      lamp post and a town watering trough. Things are so uneven! One house like
+      mine at Sunnybrook, brimful of children, and the very next one empty! The
+      only way to fix them right would be to let all the babies that ever are
+      belong to all the grown-up people that ever are,&mdash;just divide them
+      up, you know, if they'd go round. Oh, I have a thought! Don't you believe
+      Aunt Sarah Cobb would keep him? She carries flowers to the graveyard every
+      little while, and once she took me with her. There's a marble cross, and
+      it says: SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF SARAH ELLEN, BELOVED CHILD OF SARAH AND
+      JEREMIAH COBB, AGED 17 MONTHS. Why, that's another reason; Mrs. Dennett
+      says this one is seventeen months. There's five of us left at the farm
+      without me, but if we were only nearer to Riverboro, how quick mother
+      would let in one more!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We might see what father thinks, and that would settle it,&rdquo; said Emma
+      Jane. &ldquo;Father doesn't think very sudden, but he thinks awful strong. If we
+      don't bother him, and find a place ourselves for the baby, perhaps he'll
+      be willing. He's coming now; I hear the wheels.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lizy Ann Dennett volunteered to stay and perform the last rites with the
+      undertaker, and Jack-o'-lantern, with his slender wardrobe tied in a
+      bandanna handkerchief, was lifted into the wagon by the reluctant Mr.
+      Perkins, and jubilantly held by Rebecca in her lap. Mr. Perkins drove off
+      as speedily as possible, being heartily sick of the whole affair, and
+      thinking wisely that the little girls had already seen and heard more than
+      enough of the seamy side of life that morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Discussion concerning Jack-o'-lantern's future was prudently deferred for
+      a quarter of an hour, and then Mr. Perkins was mercilessly pelted with
+      arguments against the choice of the poor farm as a place of residence for
+      a baby.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His father is sure to come back some time, Mr. Perkins,&rdquo; urged Rebecca.
+      &ldquo;He couldn't leave this beautiful thing forever; and if Emma Jane and I
+      can persuade Mrs. Cobb to keep him a little while, would you care?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      No; on reflection Mr. Perkins did not care. He merely wanted a quiet life
+      and enough time left over from the public service to attend to his
+      blacksmith's shop; so instead of going home over the same road by which
+      they came he crossed the bridge into Edgewood and dropped the children at
+      the long lane which led to the Cobb house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Cobb, &ldquo;Aunt Sarah&rdquo; to the whole village, sat by the window looking
+      for Uncle Jerry, who would soon be seen driving the noon stage to the post
+      office over the hill. She always had an eye out for Rebecca, too, for ever
+      since the child had been a passenger on Mr. Cobb's stagecoach, making the
+      eventful trip from her home farm to the brick house in Riverboro in his
+      company, she had been a constant visitor and the joy of the quiet
+      household. Emma Jane, too, was a well-known figure in the lane, but the
+      strange baby was in the nature of a surprise&mdash;a surprise somewhat
+      modified by the fact that Rebecca was a dramatic personage and more liable
+      to appear in conjunction with curious outriders, comrades, and retainers
+      than the ordinary Riverboro child. She had run away from the too stern
+      discipline of the brick house on one occasion, and had been persuaded to
+      return by Uncle Jerry. She had escorted a wandering organ grinder to their
+      door and begged a lodging for him on a rainy night; so on the whole there
+      was nothing amazing about the coming procession.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little party toiled up to the hospitable door, and Mrs. Cobb came out
+      to meet them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca was spokesman. Emma Jane's talent did not lie in eloquent speech,
+      but it would have been a valiant and a fluent child indeed who could have
+      usurped Rebecca's privileges and tendencies in this direction, language
+      being her native element, and words of assorted sizes springing
+      spontaneously to her lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aunt Sarah, dear,&rdquo; she said, plumping Jack-o'-lantern down on the grass
+      as she pulled his dress over his feet and smoothed his hair becomingly,
+      &ldquo;will you please not say a word till I get through&mdash;as it's very
+      important you should know everything before you answer yes or no? This is
+      a baby named Jacky Winslow, and I think he looks like a Jack-o'-lantern.
+      His mother has just died over to North Riverboro, all alone, excepting for
+      Mrs. Lizy Ann Dennett, and there was another little weeny baby that died
+      with her, and Emma Jane and I put flowers around them and did the best we
+      could. The father&mdash;that's John Winslow&mdash;quarreled with the
+      mother&mdash;that was Sal Perry on the Moderation Road&mdash;and ran away
+      and left her. So he doesn't know his wife and the weeny baby are dead. And
+      the town has got to bury them because they can't find the father right off
+      quick, and Jacky has got to go to the poor farm this afternoon. And it
+      seems an awful shame to take him up to that lonesome place with those old
+      people that can't amuse him, and if Emma Jane and Alice Robinson and I
+      take most all the care of him we thought perhaps you and Uncle Jerry would
+      keep him just for a little while. You've got a cow and a turn-up bedstead,
+      you know,&rdquo; she hurried on insinuatingly, &ldquo;and there's hardly any pleasure
+      as cheap as more babies where there's ever been any before, for baby
+      carriages and trundle beds and cradles don't wear out, and there's always
+      clothes left over from the old baby to begin the new one on. Of course, we
+      can collect enough things to start Jacky, so he won't be much trouble or
+      expense; and anyway, he's past the most troublesome age and you won't have
+      to be up nights with him, and he isn't afraid of anybody or anything, as
+      you can see by his just sitting there laughing and sucking his thumb,
+      though he doesn't know what's going to become of him. And he's just
+      seventeen months old like dear little Sarah Ellen in the graveyard, and we
+      thought we ought to give you the refusal of him before he goes to the poor
+      farm, and what do you think about it? Because it's near my dinner time and
+      Aunt Miranda will keep me in the whole afternoon if I'm late, and I've got
+      to finish weeding the hollyhock bed before sundown.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      IV
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Cobb had enjoyed a considerable period of reflection during this
+      monologue, and Jacky had not used the time unwisely, offering several
+      unconscious arguments and suggestions to the matter under discussion;
+      lurching over on the greensward and righting himself with a chuckle,
+      kicking his bare feet about in delight at the sunshine and groping for his
+      toes with arms too short to reach them, the movement involving an entire
+      upsetting of equilibrium followed by more chuckles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Coming down the last of the stone steps, Sarah Ellen's mother regarded the
+      baby with interest and sympathy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor little mite!&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;that doesn't know what he's lost and what's
+      going to happen to him. Seems to me we might keep him a spell till we're
+      sure his father's deserted him for good. Want to come to Aunt Sarah,
+      baby?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jack-o'-lantern turned from Rebecca and Emma Jane and regarded the kind
+      face gravely; then he held out both his hands and Mrs. Cobb, stooping,
+      gathered him like a harvest. Being lifted into her arms, he at once tore
+      her spectacles from her nose and laughed aloud. Taking them from him
+      gently, she put them on again, and set him in the cushioned rocking chair
+      under the lilac bushes beside the steps. Then she took one of his soft
+      hands in hers and patted it, and fluttered her fingers like birds before
+      his eyes, and snapped them like castanets, remembering all the arts she
+      had lavished upon &ldquo;Sarah Ellen, aged seventeen months,&rdquo; years and years
+      ago.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Motherless baby and babyless mother,
+     Bring them together to love one another.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca knew nothing of this couplet, but she saw clearly enough that her
+      case was won.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The boy must be hungry; when was he fed last?&rdquo; asked Mrs. Cobb. &ldquo;Just
+      stay a second longer while I get him some morning's milk; then you run
+      home to your dinners and I'll speak to Mr. Cobb this afternoon. Of course,
+      we can keep the baby for a week or two till we see what happens. Land! He
+      ain't goin' to be any more trouble than a wax doll! I guess he ain't been
+      used to much attention, and that kind's always the easiest to take care
+      of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At six o'clock that evening Rebecca and Emma Jane flew up the hill and
+      down the lane again, waving their hands to the dear old couple who were
+      waiting for them in the usual place, the back piazza where they had sat so
+      many summers in a blessed companionship never marred by an unloving word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where's Jacky?&rdquo; called Rebecca breathlessly, her voice always outrunning
+      her feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go up to my chamber, both of you, if you want to see,&rdquo; smiled Mrs. Cobb,
+      &ldquo;only don't wake him up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girls went softly up the stairs into Aunt Sarah's room. There, in the
+      turn-up bedstead that had been so long empty, slept Jack-o'-lantern, in
+      blissful unconsciousness of the doom he had so lately escaped. His
+      nightgown and pillow case were clean and fragrant with lavender, but they
+      were both as yellow as saffron, for they had belonged to Sarah Ellen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish his mother could see him!&rdquo; whispered Emma Jane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can't tell; it's all puzzly about heaven, and perhaps she does,&rdquo; said
+      Rebecca, as they turned reluctantly from the fascinating scene and stole
+      down to the piazza.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a beautiful and a happy summer that year, and every day it was
+      filled with blissful plays and still more blissful duties. On the Monday
+      after Jack-o'-lantern's arrival in Edgewood Rebecca founded the Riverboro
+      Aunts Association. The Aunts were Rebecca, Emma Jane, Alice Robinson, and
+      Minnie Smellie, and each of the first three promised to labor for and
+      amuse the visiting baby for two days a week, Minnie Smellie, who lived at
+      some distance from the Cobbs, making herself responsible for Saturday
+      afternoons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Minnie Smellie was not a general favorite among the Riverboro girls, and
+      it was only in an unprecedented burst of magnanimity that they admitted
+      her into the rites of fellowship, Rebecca hugging herself secretly at the
+      thought, that as Minnie gave only the leisure time of one day a week, she
+      could not be called a &ldquo;full&rdquo; Aunt. There had been long and bitter feuds
+      between the two children during Rebecca's first summer in Riverboro, but
+      since Mrs. Smellie had told her daughter that one more quarrel would
+      invite a punishment so terrible that it could only be hinted at vaguely,
+      and Miss Miranda Sawyer had remarked that any niece of hers who couldn't
+      get along peaceable with the neighbors had better go back to the seclusion
+      of a farm where there weren't any, hostilities had been veiled, and a
+      suave and diplomatic relationship had replaced the former one, which had
+      been wholly primitive, direct, and barbaric. Still, whenever Minnie
+      Smellie, flaxen-haired, pink-nosed, and ferret-eyed, indulged in fluent
+      conversation, Rebecca, remembering the old fairy story, could always see
+      toads hopping out of her mouth. It was really very unpleasant, because
+      Minnie could never see them herself; and what was more amazing, Emma Jane
+      perceived nothing of the sort, being almost as blind, too, to the diamonds
+      that fell continually from Rebecca's lips; but Emma Jane's strong point
+      was not her imagination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A shaky perambulator was found in Mrs. Perkins's wonderful attic; shoes
+      and stockings were furnished by Mrs. Robinson; Miss Jane Sawyer knitted a
+      blanket and some shirts; Thirza Meserve, though too young for an aunt,
+      coaxed from her mother some dresses and nightgowns, and was presented with
+      a green paper certificate allowing her to wheel Jacky up and down the road
+      for an hour under the superintendence of a full Aunt. Each girl, under the
+      constitution of the association, could call Jacky &ldquo;hers&rdquo; for two days in
+      the week, and great, though friendly, was the rivalry between them, as
+      they washed, ironed, and sewed for their adored nephew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If Mrs. Cobb had not been the most amiable woman in the world she might
+      have had difficulty in managing the aunts, but she always had Jacky to
+      herself the earlier part of the day and after dusk at night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile Jack-o'-lantern grew healthier and heartier and jollier as the
+      weeks slipped away. Uncle Jerry joined the little company of worshipers
+      and slaves, and one fear alone stirred in all their hearts; not, as a
+      sensible and practical person might imagine, the fear that the recreant
+      father might never return to claim his child, but, on the contrary, that
+      he MIGHT do so!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      October came at length with its cheery days and frosty nights, its glory
+      of crimson leaves and its golden harvest of pumpkins and ripened corn.
+      Rebecca had been down by the Edgewood side of the river and had come up
+      across the pastures for a good-night play with Jacky. Her literary labors
+      had been somewhat interrupted by the joys and responsibilities of
+      vice-motherhood, and the thought book was less frequently drawn from its
+      hiding place under the old haymow in the barn chamber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Cobb stood behind the screen door with her face pressed against the
+      wire netting, and Rebecca could see that she was wiping her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All at once the child's heart gave one prophetic throb and then stood
+      still. She was like a harp that vibrated with every wind of emotion,
+      whether from another's grief or her own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked down the lane, around the curve of the stone wall, red with
+      woodbine, the lane that would meet the stage road to the station. There,
+      just mounting the crown of the hill and about to disappear on the other
+      side, strode a stranger man, big and tall, with a crop of reddish curly
+      hair showing from under his straw hat. A woman walked by his side, and
+      perched on his shoulder, wearing his most radiant and triumphant mien, as
+      joyous in leaving Edgewood as he had been during every hour of his sojourn
+      there&mdash;rode Jack-o'-lantern!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca gave a cry in which maternal longing and helpless, hopeless
+      jealousy strove for supremacy. Then, with an impetuous movement she
+      started to run after the disappearing trio.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Cobb opened the door hastily, calling after her, &ldquo;Rebecca, Rebecca,
+      come back here! You mustn't follow where you haven't any right to go. If
+      there'd been anything to say or do, I'd a' done it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's mine! He's mine!&rdquo; stormed Rebecca. &ldquo;At least he's yours and mine!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's his father's first of all,&rdquo; faltered Mrs. Cobb; &ldquo;don't let's forget
+      that; and we'd ought to be glad and grateful that John Winslow's come to
+      his senses an' remembers he's brought a child into the world and ought to
+      take care of it. Our loss is his gain and it may make a man of him. Come
+      in, and we'll put things away all neat before your Uncle Jerry gets home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca sank in a pitiful little heap on Mrs. Cobb's bedroom floor and
+      sobbed her heart out. &ldquo;Oh, Aunt Sarah, where shall we get another
+      Jack-o'-lantern, and how shall I break it to Emma Jane? What if his father
+      doesn't love him, and what if he forgets to strain the milk or lets him go
+      without his nap? That's the worst of babies that aren't private&mdash;you
+      have to part with them sooner or later!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sometimes you have to part with your own, too,&rdquo; said Mrs. Cobb sadly; and
+      though there were lines of sadness in her face there was neither rebellion
+      nor repining, as she folded up the sides of the turn-up bedstead
+      preparatory to banishing it a second time to the attic. &ldquo;I shall miss
+      Sarah Ellen now more'n ever. Still, Rebecca, we mustn't feel to complain.
+      It's the Lord that giveth and the Lord that taketh away: Blessed be the
+      name of the Lord.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Second Chronicle. DAUGHTERS OF ZION
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abijah Flagg was driving over to Wareham on an errand for old Squire
+      Winship, whose general chore-boy and farmer's assistant he had been for
+      some years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He passed Emma Jane Perkins's house slowly, as he always did. She was only
+      a little girl of thirteen and he a boy of fifteen or sixteen, but somehow,
+      for no particular reason, he liked to see the sun shine on her thick
+      braids of reddish-brown hair. He admired her china-blue eyes too, and her
+      amiable, friendly expression. He was quite alone in the world, and he
+      always thought that if he had anybody belonging to him he would rather
+      have a sister like Emma Jane Perkins than anything else within the power
+      of Providence to bestow. When she herself suggested this relationship a
+      few years later he cast it aside with scorn, having changed his mind in
+      the interval&mdash;but that story belongs to another time and place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane was not to be seen in garden, field, or at the window, and
+      Abijah turned his gaze to the large brick house that came next on the
+      other side of the quiet village street. It might have been closed for a
+      funeral. Neither Miss Miranda nor Miss Jane Sawyer sat at their respective
+      windows knitting, nor was Rebecca Randall's gypsy face to be discerned.
+      Ordinarily that will-o'-the wispish little person could be seen, heard, or
+      felt wherever she was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The village must be abed, I guess,&rdquo; mused Abijah, as he neared the
+      Robinsons' yellow cottage, where all the blinds were closed and no sign of
+      life showed on porch or in shed. &ldquo;No, 't aint, neither,&rdquo; he thought again,
+      as his horse crept cautiously down the hill, for from the direction of the
+      Robinsons' barn chamber there floated out into the air certain burning
+      sentiments set to the tune of &ldquo;Antioch.&rdquo; The words, to a lad brought up in
+      the orthodox faith, were quite distinguishable:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Daughter of Zion, from the dust, Exalt thy fallen head!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Even the most religious youth is stronger on first lines than others, but
+      Abijah pulled up his horse and waited till he caught another familiar
+      verse, beginning:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rebuild thy walls, thy bounds enlarge, And send thy heralds forth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's Rebecca carrying the air, and I can hear Emma Jane's alto.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Say to the North,
+     Give up thy charge,
+     And hold not back, O South,
+     And hold not back, O South,&rdquo; etc.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Land! ain't they smart, seesawin' up and down in that part they learnt in
+      singin' school! I wonder what they're actin' out, singin' hymn-tunes up in
+      the barn chamber? Some o' Rebecca's doins, I'll be bound! Git dap, Aleck!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Aleck pursued his serene and steady trot up the hills on the Edgewood side
+      of the river, till at length he approached the green Common where the old
+      Tory Hill meeting-house stood, its white paint and green blinds showing
+      fair and pleasant in the afternoon sun. Both doors were open, and as
+      Abijah turned into the Wareham road the church melodeon pealed out the
+      opening bars of the Missionary Hymn, and presently a score of voices sent
+      the good old tune from the choir-loft out to the dusty road:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Shall we whose souls are lighted
+     With Wisdom from on high,
+     Shall we to men benighted
+     The lamp of life deny?&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Land!&rdquo; exclaimed Abijah under his breath. &ldquo;They're at it up here, too!
+      That explains it all. There's a missionary meeting at the church, and the
+      girls wa'n't allowed to come so they held one of their own, and I bate ye
+      it's the liveliest of the two.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Abijah Flagg's shrewd Yankee guesses were not far from the truth, though
+      he was not in possession of all the facts. It will be remembered by those
+      who have been in the way of hearing Rebecca's experiences in Riverboro,
+      that the Rev. and Mrs. Burch, returned missionaries from the Far East,
+      together with some of their children, &ldquo;all born under Syrian skies,&rdquo; as
+      they always explained to interested inquirers, spent a day or two at the
+      brick house, and gave parlor meetings in native costume.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These visitors, coming straight from foreign lands to the little Maine
+      village, brought with them a nameless enchantment to the children, and
+      especially to Rebecca, whose imagination always kindled easily. The
+      romance of that visit had never died in her heart, and among the many
+      careers that dazzled her youthful vision was that of converting such
+      Syrian heathen as might continue in idol worship after the Burches'
+      efforts in their behalf had ceased. She thought at the age of eighteen she
+      might be suitably equipped for storming some minor citadel of
+      Mohammedanism; and Mrs. Burch had encouraged her in the idea, not, it is
+      to be feared, because Rebecca showed any surplus of virtue or Christian
+      grace, but because her gift of language, her tact and sympathy, and her
+      musical talent seemed to fit her for the work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It chanced that the quarterly meeting of the Maine Missionary Society had
+      been appointed just at the time when a letter from Mrs. Burch to Miss Jane
+      Sawyer suggested that Rebecca should form a children's branch in
+      Riverboro. Mrs. Burch's real idea was that the young people should save
+      their pennies and divert a gentle stream of financial aid into the parent
+      fund, thus learning early in life to be useful in such work, either at
+      home or abroad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girls themselves, however, read into her letter no such modest
+      participation in the conversion of the world, and wishing to effect an
+      organization without delay, they chose an afternoon when every house in
+      the village was vacant, and seized upon the Robinsons' barn chamber as the
+      place of meeting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca, Alice Robinson, Emma Jane Perkins, Candace Milliken, and Persis
+      Watson, each with her hymn book, had climbed the ladder leading to the
+      haymow a half hour before Abijah Flagg had heard the strains of &ldquo;Daughters
+      of Zion&rdquo; floating out to the road. Rebecca, being an executive person, had
+      carried, besides her hymn book, a silver call-bell and pencil and paper.
+      An animated discussion regarding one of two names for the society, The
+      Junior Heralds or The Daughters of Zion, had resulted in a unanimous vote
+      for the latter, and Rebecca had been elected president at an early stage
+      of the meeting. She had modestly suggested that Alice Robinson, as the
+      granddaughter of a missionary to China, would be much more eligible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Alice, with entire good nature, &ldquo;whoever is ELECTED president,
+      you WILL be, Rebecca&mdash;you're that kind&mdash;so you might as well
+      have the honor; I'd just as lieves be secretary, anyway.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you should want me to be treasurer, I could be, as well as not,&rdquo; said
+      Persis Watson suggestively; &ldquo;for you know my father keeps china banks at
+      his store&mdash;ones that will hold as much as two dollars if you will let
+      them. I think he'd give us one if I happen to be treasurer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The three principal officers were thus elected at one fell swoop and with
+      an entire absence of that red tape which commonly renders organization so
+      tiresome, Candace Milliken suggesting that perhaps she'd better be
+      vice-president, as Emma Jane Perkins was always so bashful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We ought to have more members,&rdquo; she reminded the other girls, &ldquo;but if we
+      had invited them the first day they'd have all wanted to be officers,
+      especially Minnie Smellie, so it's just as well not to ask them till
+      another time. Is Thirza Meserve too little to join?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't think why anybody named Meserve should have called a baby
+      Thirza,&rdquo; said Rebecca, somewhat out of order, though the meeting was
+      carried on with small recognition of parliamentary laws. &ldquo;It always makes
+      me want to say:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Thirza Meserver
+     Heaven preserve her!
+     Thirza Meserver
+     Do we deserve her?
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      She's little, but she's sweet, and absolutely without guile. I think we
+      ought to have her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is 'guile' the same as 'guilt?&rdquo; inquired Emma Jane Perkins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; the president answered; &ldquo;exactly the same, except one is written
+      and the other spoken language.&rdquo; (Rebecca was rather good at imbibing
+      information, and a master hand at imparting it!) &ldquo;Written language is for
+      poems and graduations and occasions like this&mdash;kind of like a best
+      Sunday-go-to-meeting dress that you wouldn't like to go blueberrying in
+      for fear of getting it spotted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd just as 'lieves get 'guile' spotted as not,&rdquo; affirmed the
+      unimaginative Emma Jane. &ldquo;I think it's an awful foolish word; but now
+      we're all named and our officers elected, what do we do first? It's easy
+      enough for Mary and Martha Burch; they just play at missionarying because
+      their folks work at it, same as Living and I used to make believe be
+      blacksmiths when we were little.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It must be nicer missionarying in those foreign places,&rdquo; said Persis,
+      &ldquo;because on 'Afric's shores and India's plains and other spots where Satan
+      reigns' (that's father's favorite hymn) there's always a heathen bowing
+      down to wood and stone. You can take away his idols if he'll let you and
+      give him a bible and the beginning's all made. But who'll we begin on?
+      Jethro Small?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, he's entirely too dirty, and foolish besides!&rdquo; exclaimed Candace.
+      &ldquo;Why not Ethan Hunt? He swears dreadfully.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He lives on nuts and is a hermit, and it's a mile to his camp through the
+      thick woods; my mother'll never let me go there,&rdquo; objected Alice. &ldquo;There's
+      Uncle Tut Judson.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's too old; he's most a hundred and deaf as a post,&rdquo; complained Emma
+      Jane. &ldquo;Besides, his married daughter is a Sabbath-school teacher&mdash;why
+      doesn't she teach him to behave? I can't think of anybody just right to
+      start on!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't talk like that, Emma Jane,&rdquo; and Rebecca's tone had a tinge of
+      reproof in it. &ldquo;We are a copperated body named the Daughters of Zion, and,
+      of course, we've got to find something to do. Foreigners are the easiest;
+      there's a Scotch family at North Riverboro, an English one in Edgewood,
+      and one Cuban man at Millkin's Mills.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Haven't foreigners got any religion of their own?&rdquo; inquired Persis
+      curiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye-es, I s'pose so; kind of a one; but foreigners' religions are never
+      right&mdash;ours is the only good one.&rdquo; This was from Candace, the
+      deacon's daughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do think it must be dreadful, being born with a religion and growing up
+      with it, and then finding out it's no use and all your time wasted!&rdquo; Here
+      Rebecca sighed, chewed a straw, and looked troubled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that's your punishment for being a heathen,&rdquo; retorted Candace, who
+      had been brought up strictly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I can't for the life of me see how you can help being a heathen if
+      you're born in Africa,&rdquo; persisted Persis, who was well named.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can't.&rdquo; Rebecca was clear on this point. &ldquo;I had that all out with
+      Mrs. Burch when she was visiting Aunt Miranda. She says they can't help
+      being heathen, but if there's a single mission station in the whole of
+      Africa, they're accountable if they don't go there and get saved.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are there plenty of stages and railroads?&rdquo; asked Alice; &ldquo;because there
+      must be dreadfully long distances, and what if they couldn't pay the
+      fare?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That part of it is so dreadfully puzzly we mustn't talk about it,
+      please,&rdquo; said Rebecca, her sensitive face quivering with the force of the
+      problem. Poor little soul! She did not realize that her superiors in age
+      and intellect had spent many a sleepless night over that same
+      &ldquo;accountability of the heathen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's too bad the Simpsons have moved away,&rdquo; said Candace. &ldquo;It's so seldom
+      you can find a real big wicked family like that to save, with only Clara
+      Belle and Susan good in it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And numbers count for so much,&rdquo; continued Alice. &ldquo;My grandmother says if
+      missionaries can't convert about so many in a year the Board advises them
+      to come back to America and take up some other work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; Rebecca corroborated; &ldquo;and it's the same with revivalists. At
+      the Centennial picnic at North Riverboro, a revivalist sat opposite to Mr.
+      Ladd and Aunt Jane and me, and he was telling about his wonderful success
+      in Bangor last winter. He'd converted a hundred and thirty in a month, he
+      said, or about four and a third a day. I had just finished fractions, so I
+      asked Mr. Ladd how the third of a man could be converted. He laughed and
+      said it was just the other way; that the man was a third converted. Then
+      he explained that if you were trying to convince a person of his sin on a
+      Monday, and couldn't quite finish by sundown, perhaps you wouldn't want to
+      sit up all night with him, and perhaps he wouldn't want you to; so you'd
+      begin again on Tuesday, and you couldn't say just which day he was
+      converted, because it would be two thirds on Monday and one third on
+      Tuesday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Ladd is always making fun, and the Board couldn't expect any great
+      things of us girls, new beginners,&rdquo; suggested Emma Jane, who was being
+      constantly warned against tautology by her teacher. &ldquo;I think it's awful
+      rude, anyway, to go right out and try to convert your neighbors; but if
+      you borrow a horse and go to Edgewood Lower Corner, or Milliken's Mills, I
+      s'pose that makes it Foreign Missions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would we each go alone or wait upon them with a committee, as they did
+      when they asked Deacon Tuttle for a contribution for the new hearse?&rdquo;
+       asked Persis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! We must go alone,&rdquo; decided Rebecca; &ldquo;it would be much more refined
+      and delicate. Aunt Miranda says that one man alone could never get a
+      subscription from Deacon Tuttle, and that's the reason they sent a
+      committee. But it seems to me Mrs. Burch couldn't mean for us to try and
+      convert people when we're none of us even church members, except Candace.
+      I think all we can do is to persuade them to go to meeting and Sabbath
+      school, or give money for the hearse, or the new horse sheds. Now let's
+      all think quietly for a minute or two who's the very most heathenish and
+      reperrehensiblest person in Riverboro.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After a very brief period of silence the words &ldquo;Jacob Moody&rdquo; fell from all
+      lips with entire accord.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+&ldquo;You are right,&rdquo; said the president tersely; &ldquo;and after singing hymn
+number two hundred seventy four, to be found on the sixty-sixth page,
+we will take up the question of persuading Mr. Moody to attend divine
+service or the minister's Bible class, he not having been in the
+meeting-house for lo! these many years.
+
+     'Daughter of Zion, the power that hath saved thee
+     Extolled with the harp and the timbrel should be.'
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sing without reading, if you please, omitting the second stanza. Hymn two
+      seventy four, to be found on the sixty-sixth page of the new hymn book or
+      on page thirty two of Emma Jane Perkins's old one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      II
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is doubtful if the Rev. Mr. Burch had ever found in Syria a person more
+      difficult to persuade than the already &ldquo;gospel-hardened&rdquo; Jacob Moody of
+      Riverboro.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tall, gaunt, swarthy, black-bearded&mdash;his masses of grizzled, uncombed
+      hair and the red scar across his nose and cheek added to his sinister
+      appearance. His tumble-down house stood on a rocky bit of land back of the
+      Sawyer pasture, and the acres of his farm stretched out on all sides of
+      it. He lived alone, ate alone, plowed, planted, sowed, harvested alone,
+      and was more than willing to die alone, &ldquo;unwept, unhonored, and unsung.&rdquo;
+       The road that bordered upon his fields was comparatively little used by
+      any one, and notwithstanding the fact that it was thickly set with
+      chokecherry trees and blackberry bushes it had been for years practically
+      deserted by the children. Jacob's Red Astrakhan and Granny Garland trees
+      hung thick with apples, but no Riverboro or Edgewood boy stole them; for
+      terrifying accounts of the fate that had overtaken one urchin in times
+      agone had been handed along from boy to boy, protecting the Moody fruit
+      far better than any police patrol.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps no circumstances could have extenuated the old man's surly manners
+      or his lack of all citizenly graces and virtues; but his neighbors
+      commonly rebuked his present way of living and forgot the troubled past
+      that had brought it about: the sharp-tongued wife, the unloving and
+      disloyal sons, the daughter's hapless fate, and all the other sorry tricks
+      that fortune had played upon him&mdash;at least that was the way in which
+      he had always regarded his disappointments and griefs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This, then, was the personage whose moral rehabilitation was to be
+      accomplished by the Daughters of Zion. But how?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who will volunteer to visit Mr. Moody?&rdquo; blandly asked the president.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VISIT MR. MOODY! It was a wonder the roof of the barn chamber did not
+      fall; it did, indeed echo the words and in some way make them sound more
+      grim and satirical.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nobody'll volunteer, Rebecca Rowena Randall, and you know it,&rdquo; said Emma
+      Jane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why don't we draw lots, when none of us wants to speak to him and yet one
+      of us must?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This suggestion fell from Persis Watson, who had been pale and thoughtful
+      ever since the first mention of Jacob Moody. (She was fond of Granny
+      Garlands; she had once met Jacob; and, as to what befell, well, we all
+      have our secret tragedies!)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wouldn't it be wicked to settle it that way?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's gamblers that draw lots.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;People did it in the Bible ever so often.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It doesn't seem nice for a missionary meeting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      These remarks fell all together upon the president's bewildered ear the
+      while (as she always said in compositions)&mdash;&ldquo;the while&rdquo; she was
+      trying to adjust the ethics of this unexpected and difficult dilemma.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a very puzzly question,&rdquo; she said thoughtfully. &ldquo;I could ask Aunt
+      Jane if we had time, but I suppose we haven't. It doesn't seem nice to
+      draw lots, and yet how can we settle it without? We know we mean right,
+      and perhaps it will be. Alice, take this paper and tear off five narrow
+      pieces, all different lengths.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment a voice from a distance floated up to the haymow&mdash;a
+      voice saying plaintively: &ldquo;Will you let me play with you, girls? Huldah
+      has gone to ride, and I'm all alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the voice of the absolutely-without-guile Thirza Meserve, and it
+      came at an opportune moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If she is going to be a member,&rdquo; said Persis, &ldquo;why not let her come up
+      and hold the lots? She'd be real honest and not favor anybody.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed an excellent idea, and was followed up so quickly that scarcely
+      three minutes ensued before the guileless one was holding the five scraps
+      in her hot little palm, laboriously changing their places again and again
+      until they looked exactly alike and all rather soiled and wilted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, girls, draw!&rdquo; commanded the president. &ldquo;Thirza, you mustn't chew
+      gum at a missionary meeting, it isn't polite nor holy. Take it out and
+      stick it somewhere till the exercises are over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The five Daughters of Zion approached the spot so charged with fate, and
+      extended their trembling hands one by one. Then after a moment's silent
+      clutch of their papers they drew nearer to one another and compared them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane Perkins had drawn the short one, becoming thus the destined
+      instrument for Jacob Moody's conversion to a more seemly manner of life!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked about her despairingly, as if to seek some painless and
+      respectable method of self-destruction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do let's draw over again,&rdquo; she pleaded. &ldquo;I'm the worst of all of us. I'm
+      sure to make a mess of it till I kind o' get trained in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca's heart sank at this frank confession, which only corroborated her
+      own fears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sorry, Emmy, dear,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;but our only excuse for drawing lots
+      at all would be to have it sacred. We must think of it as a kind of a
+      sign, almost like God speaking to Moses in the burning bush.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I WISH there was a burning bush right here!&rdquo; cried the distracted and
+      recalcitrant missionary. &ldquo;How quick I'd step into it without even stopping
+      to take off my garnet ring!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't be such a scare-cat, Emma Jane!&rdquo; exclaimed Candace bracingly.
+      &ldquo;Jacob Moody can't kill you, even if he has an awful temper. Trot right
+      along now before you get more frightened. Shall we go cross lots with her,
+      Rebecca, and wait at the pasture gate? Then whatever happens Alice can put
+      it down in the minutes of the meeting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In these terrible crises of life time gallops with such incredible
+      velocity that it seemed to Emma Jane only a breath before she was being
+      dragged through the fields by the other Daughters of Zion, the guileless
+      little Thirza panting in the rear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the entrance to the pasture Rebecca gave her an impassioned embrace,
+      and whispering, &ldquo;WHATEVER YOU DO, BE CAREFUL HOW YOU LEAD UP,&rdquo; lifted off
+      the top rail and pushed her through the bars. Then the girls turned their
+      backs reluctantly on the pathetic figure, and each sought a tree under
+      whose friendly shade she could watch, and perhaps pray, until the
+      missionary should return from her field of labor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Alice Robinson, whose compositions were always marked 96 or 97,&mdash;100
+      symbolizing such perfection as could be attained in the mortal world of
+      Riverboro,&mdash;Alice, not only Daughter, but Scribe of Zion, sharpened
+      her pencil and wrote a few well-chosen words of introduction, to be used
+      when the records of the afternoon had been made by Emma Jane Perkins and
+      Jacob Moody.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca's heart beat tumultuously under her gingham dress. She felt that a
+      drama was being enacted, and though unfortunately she was not the central
+      figure, she had at least a modest part in it. The short lot had not fallen
+      to the properest Daughter, that she quite realized; yet would any one of
+      them succeed in winning Jacob Moody's attention, in engaging him in
+      pleasant conversation, and finally in bringing him to a realization of his
+      mistaken way of life? She doubted, but at the same moment her spirits rose
+      at the thought of the difficulties involved in the undertaking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Difficulties always spurred Rebecca on, but they daunted poor Emma Jane,
+      who had no little thrills of excitement and wonder and fear and longing to
+      sustain her lagging soul. That her interview was to be entered as
+      &ldquo;minutes&rdquo; by a secretary seemed to her the last straw. Her blue eyes
+      looked lighter than usual and had the glaze of china saucers; her usually
+      pink cheeks were pale, but she pressed on, determined to be a faithful
+      Daughter of Zion, and above all to be worthy of Rebecca's admiration and
+      respect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rebecca can do anything,&rdquo; she thought, with enthusiastic loyalty, &ldquo;and I
+      mustn't be any stupider than I can help, or she'll choose one of the other
+      girls for her most intimate friend.&rdquo; So, mustering all her courage, she
+      turned into Jacob Moody's dooryard, where he was chopping wood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a pleasant afternoon, Mr. Moody,&rdquo; she said in a polite but hoarse
+      whisper, Rebecca's words, &ldquo;LEAD UP! LEAD UP!&rdquo; ringing in clarion tones
+      through her brain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jacob Moody looked at her curiously. &ldquo;Good enough, I guess,&rdquo; he growled;
+      &ldquo;but I don't never have time to look at afternoons.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane seated herself timorously on the end of a large log near the
+      chopping block, supposing that Jacob, like other hosts, would pause in his
+      tasks and chat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The block is kind of like an idol,&rdquo; she thought; &ldquo;I wish I could take it
+      away from him, and then perhaps he'd talk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment Jacob raised his axe and came down on the block with such a
+      stunning blow that Emma Jane fairly leaped into the air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'd better look out, Sissy, or you'll git chips in the eye!&rdquo; said
+      Moody, grimly going on with his work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Daughter of Zion sent up a silent prayer for inspiration, but none
+      came, and she sat silent, giving nervous jumps in spite of herself
+      whenever the axe fell upon the log Jacob was cutting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Finally, the host became tired of his dumb visitor, and leaning on his axe
+      he said, &ldquo;Look here, Sis, what have you come for? What's your errant? Do
+      you want apples? Or cider? Or what? Speak out, or GIT out, one or
+      t'other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane, who had wrung her handkerchief into a clammy ball, gave it a
+      last despairing wrench, and faltered: &ldquo;Wouldn't you like&mdash;hadn't you
+      better&mdash;don't you think you'd ought to be more constant at meeting
+      and Sabbath school?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jacob's axe almost dropped from his nerveless hand, and he regarded the
+      Daughter of Zion with unspeakable rage and disdain. Then, the blood
+      mounting in his face, he gathered himself together, and shouted: &ldquo;You take
+      yourself off that log and out o' this dooryard double-quick, you imperdent
+      sanct'omus young one! You just let me ketch Bill Perkins' child trying to
+      teach me where I shall go, at my age! Scuttle, I tell ye! And if I see
+      your pious cantin' little mug inside my fence ag'in on sech a business
+      I'll chase ye down the hill or set the dog on ye! SCOOT, I TELL YE!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane obeyed orders summarily, taking herself off the log, out the
+      dooryard, and otherwise scuttling and scooting down the hill at a pace
+      never contemplated even by Jacob Moody, who stood regarding her flying
+      heels with a sardonic grin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Down she stumbled, the tears coursing over her cheeks and mingling with
+      the dust of her flight; blighted hope, shame, fear, rage, all tearing her
+      bosom in turn, till with a hysterical shriek she fell over the bars and
+      into Rebecca's arms outstretched to receive her. The other Daughters wiped
+      her eyes and supported her almost fainting form, while Thirza, thoroughly
+      frightened, burst into sympathetic tears, and refused to be comforted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No questions were asked, for it was felt by all parties that Emma Jane's
+      demeanor was answering them before they could be framed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He threatened to set the dog on me!&rdquo; she wailed presently, when, as they
+      neared the Sawyer pasture, she was able to control her voice. &ldquo;He called
+      me a pious, cantin' young one, and said he'd chase me out o' the dooryard
+      if I ever came again! And he'll tell my father&mdash;I know he will, for
+      he hates him like poison.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All at once the adult point of view dawned upon Rebecca. She never saw it
+      until it was too obvious to be ignored. Had they done wrong in
+      interviewing Jacob Moody? Would Aunt Miranda be angry, as well as Mr.
+      Perkins?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why was he so dreadful, Emmy?&rdquo; she questioned tenderly. &ldquo;What did you say
+      first? How did you lead up to it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane sobbed more convulsively, and wiped her nose and eyes
+      impartially as she tried to think.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess I never led up at all; not a mite. I didn't know what you meant.
+      I was sent on an errant, and I went and done it the best I could! (Emma
+      Jane's grammar always lapsed in moments of excitement.) And then Jake
+      roared at me like Squire Winship's bull.... And he called my face a
+      mug.... You shut up that secretary book, Alice Robinson! If you write down
+      a single word I'll never speak to you again.... And I don't want to be a
+      member' another minute for fear of drawing another short lot. I've got
+      enough of the Daughters or Zion to last me the rest o' my life! I don't
+      care who goes to meetin' and who don't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girls were at the Perkins's gate by this time, and Emma Jane went
+      sadly into the empty house to remove all traces of the tragedy from her
+      person before her mother should come home from the church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The others wended their way slowly down the street, feeling that their
+      promising missionary branch had died almost as soon as it had budded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Goodby,&rdquo; said Rebecca, swallowing lumps of disappointment and chagrin as
+      she saw the whole inspiring plan break and vanish into thin air like an
+      iridescent bubble. &ldquo;It's all over and we won't ever try it again. I'm
+      going in to do overcasting as hard as I can, because I hate that the
+      worst. Aunt Jane must write to Mrs. Burch that we don't want to be home
+      missionaries. Perhaps we're not big enough, anyway. I'm perfectly certain
+      it's nicer to convert people when they're yellow or brown or any color but
+      white; and I believe it must be easier to save their souls than it is to
+      make them go to meeting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Third Chronicle. REBECCA'S THOUGHT BOOK
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The &ldquo;Sawyer girls'&rdquo; barn still had its haymow in Rebecca's time, although
+      the hay was a dozen years old or more, and, in the opinion of the
+      occasional visiting horse, sadly juiceless and wanting in flavor. It still
+      sheltered, too, old Deacon Israel Sawyer's carryall and mowing-machine,
+      with his pung, his sleigh, and a dozen other survivals of an earlier era,
+      when the broad acres of the brick house went to make one of the finest
+      farms in Riverboro.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were no horses or cows in the stalls nowadays; no pig grunting
+      comfortably of future spare ribs in the sty; no hens to peck the plants in
+      the cherished garden patch. The Sawyer girls were getting on in years,
+      and, mindful that care once killed a cat, they ordered their lives with
+      the view of escaping that particular doom, at least, and succeeded fairly
+      well until Rebecca's advent made existence a trifle more sensational.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once a month for years upon years, Miss Miranda and Miss Jane had put
+      towels over their heads and made a solemn visit to the barn, taking off
+      the enameled cloth coverings (occasionally called &ldquo;emmanuel covers&rdquo; in
+      Riverboro), dusting the ancient implements, and sometimes sweeping the
+      heaviest of the cobwebs from the corners, or giving a brush to the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deacon Israel's tottering ladder still stood in its accustomed place,
+      propped against the haymow, and the heavenly stairway leading to eternal
+      glory scarcely looked fairer to Jacob of old than this to Rebecca. By
+      means of its dusty rounds she mounted, mounted, mounted far away from time
+      and care and maiden aunts, far away from childish tasks and childish
+      troubles, to the barn chamber, a place so full of golden dreams, happy
+      reveries, and vague longings, that, as her little brown hands clung to the
+      sides of the ladder and her feet trod the rounds cautiously in her ascent,
+      her heart almost stopped beating in the sheer joy of anticipation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once having gained the heights, the next thing was to unlatch the heavy
+      doors and give them a gentle swing outward. Then, oh, ever new Paradise!
+      Then, oh, ever lovely green and growing world! For Rebecca had that
+      something in her soul that
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gives to seas and sunset skies The unspent beauty of surprise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the top of Guide Board hill she could see Alice Robinson's barn with
+      its shining weather vane, a huge burnished fish that swam with the wind
+      and foretold the day to all Riverboro. The meadow, with its sunny slopes
+      stretching up to the pine woods, was sometimes a flowing sheet of
+      shimmering grass, sometimes&mdash;when daisies and buttercups were
+      blooming&mdash;a vision of white and gold. Sometimes the shorn stubble
+      would be dotted with &ldquo;the happy hills of hay,&rdquo; and a little later the rock
+      maple on the edge of the pines would stand out like a golden ball against
+      the green; its neighbor, the sugar maple, glowing beside it, brave in
+      scarlet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was on one of these autumn days with a wintry nip in the air that Adam
+      Ladd (Rebecca's favorite &ldquo;Mr. Aladdin&rdquo;), after searching for her in field
+      and garden, suddenly noticed the open doors of the barn chamber, and
+      called to her. At the sound of his vice she dropped her precious diary,
+      and flew to the edge of the haymow. He never forgot the vision of the
+      startled little poetess, book in one mittened hand, pencil in the other,
+      dark hair all ruffled, with the picturesque addition of an occasional
+      glade of straw, her cheeks crimson, her eyes shining.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A Sappho in mittens!&rdquo; he cried laughingly, and at her eager question told
+      her to look up the unknown lady in the school encyclopedia, when she was
+      admitted to the Female Seminary at Wareham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, all being ready, Rebecca went to a corner of the haymow, and withdrew
+      a thick blank-book with mottled covers. Out of her gingham apron pocket
+      came a pencil, a bit of rubber, and some pieces of brown paper; then she
+      seated herself gravely on the floor, and drew an inverted soapbox nearer
+      to her for a table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The book was reverently opened, and there was a serious reading of the
+      extracts already carefully copied therein. Most of them were apparently to
+      the writer's liking, for dimples of pleasure showed themselves now and
+      then, and smiles of obvious delight played about her face; but once in a
+      while there was a knitting of the brows and a sigh of discouragement,
+      showing that the artist in the child was not wholly satisfied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then came the crucial moment when the budding author was supposedly to be
+      racked with the throes of composition; but seemingly there were no throes.
+      Other girls could wield the darning or crochet or knitting needle, and
+      send the tatting shuttle through loops of the finest cotton; hemstitch,
+      oversew, braid hair in thirteen strands, but the pencil was never obedient
+      in their fingers, and the pen and ink-pot were a horror from early
+      childhood to the end of time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not so with Rebecca; her pencil moved as easily as her tongue, and no more
+      striking simile could possibly be used. Her handwriting was not
+      Spencerian; she had neither time, nor patience, it is to be feared, for
+      copybook methods, and her unformed characters were frequently the despair
+      of her teachers; but write she could, write she would, write she must and
+      did, in season and out; from the time she made pothooks at six, till now,
+      writing was the easiest of all possible tasks; to be indulged in as solace
+      and balm when the terrors of examples in least common multiple threatened
+      to dethrone the reason, or the rules of grammar loomed huge and
+      unconquerable in the near horizon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As to spelling, it came to her in the main by free grace, and not by
+      training, and though she slipped at times from the beaten path, her
+      extraordinary ear and good visual memory kept her from many or flagrant
+      mistakes. It was her intention, especially when saying her prayers at
+      night, to look up all doubtful words in her small dictionary, before
+      copying her Thoughts into the sacred book for the inspiration of
+      posterity; but when genius burned with a brilliant flame, and particularly
+      when she was in the barn and the dictionary in the house, impulse as usual
+      carried the day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There sits Rebecca, then, in the open door of the Sawyers barn chamber&mdash;the
+      sunset door. How many a time had her grandfather, the good deacon, sat
+      just underneath in his tipped-back chair, when Mrs. Israel's temper was
+      uncertain, and the serenity of the barn was in comforting contrast to his
+      own fireside!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The open doors swinging out to the peaceful landscape, the solace of the
+      pipe, not allowed in the &ldquo;settin'-room&rdquo;&mdash;how beautifully these simple
+      agents have ministered to the family peace in days agone! &ldquo;If I hadn't had
+      my barn and my store BOTH, I couldn't never have lived in holy matrimony
+      with Maryliza!&rdquo; once said Mr. Watson feelingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the deacon, looking on his waving grass fields, his tasseling corn and
+      his timber lands, bright and honest as were his eyes, never saw such
+      visions as Rebecca. The child, transplanted from her home farm at
+      Sunnybrook, from the care of the overworked but easy-going mother, and the
+      companionship of the scantily fed, scantily clothed, happy-go-lucky
+      brothers and sisters&mdash;she had indeed fallen on shady days in
+      Riverboro. The blinds were closed in every room of the house but two, and
+      the same might have been said of Miss Miranda's mind and heart, though
+      Miss Jane had a few windows opening to the sun, and Rebecca already had
+      her unconscious hand on several others. Brickhouse rules were rigid and
+      many for a little creature so full of life, but Rebecca's gay spirit could
+      not be pinioned in a strait jacket for long at a time; it escaped somehow
+      and winged its merry way into the sunshine and free air; if she were not
+      allowed to sing in the orchard, like the wild bird she was, she could
+      still sing in the cage, like the canary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      II
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If you had opened the carefully guarded volume with the mottled covers,
+      you would first have seen a wonderful title page, constructed apparently
+      on the same lines as an obituary, or the inscription on a tombstone, save
+      for the quantity and variety of information contained in it. Much of the
+      matter would seem to the captious critic better adapted to the body of the
+      book than to the title page, but Rebecca was apparently anxious that the
+      principal personages in her chronicle should be well described at the
+      outset.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She seems to have had a conviction that heredity plays its part in the
+      evolution of genius, and her belief that the world will be inspired by the
+      possession of her Thoughts is too artless to be offensive. She evidently
+      has respect for rich material confided to her teacher, and one can imagine
+      Miss Dearborn's woe had she been confronted by Rebecca's chosen literary
+      executor and bidden to deliver certain &ldquo;Valuable Poetry and Thoughts,&rdquo; the
+      property of posterity &ldquo;unless carelessly destroyed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      THOUGHT BOOK of Rebecca Rowena Randall Really of Sunnybrook Farm But
+      temporily of The Brick House Riverboro. Own niece of Miss Miranda and Jane
+      Sawyer Second of seven children of her father, Mr. L. D. M. Randall (Now
+      at rest in Temperance cemmetary and there will be a monument as soon as we
+      pay off the mortgage on the farm) Also of her mother Mrs. Aurelia Randall
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     In case of Death the best of these Thoughts
+     May be printed in my Remerniscences
+     For the Sunday School Library at Temperance, Maine
+     Which needs more books fearfully
+     And I hereby
+     Will and Testament them to Mr. Adam Ladd
+     Who bought 300 cakes of soap from me
+     And thus secured a premium
+     A Greatly Needed Banquet Lamp
+     For my friends the Simpsons.
+     He is the only one that incourages
+     My writing Remerniscences and
+     My teacher Miss Dearborn will
+     Have much valuable Poetry and Thoughts
+     To give him unless carelessly destroyed.
+
+     The pictures are by the same hand that
+     Wrote the Thoughts.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      IT IS NOT NOW DECIDED WHETHER REBECCA ROWENA RANDALL WILL BE A PAINTER OR
+      AN AUTHOR, BUT AFTER HER DEATH IT WILL BE KNOWN WHICH SHE HAS BEEN, IF
+      ANY.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FINIS
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the title page, with its wealth of detail, and its unnecessary and
+      irrelevant information, the book ripples on like a brook, and to the weary
+      reader of problem novels it may have something of the brook's refreshing
+      quality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      OUR DIARIES May, 187&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All the girls are keeping a diary because Miss Dearborn was very much
+      ashamed when the school trustees told her that most of the girls' and all
+      of the boys' compositions were disgraceful, and must be improved upon next
+      term. She asked the boys to write letters to her once a week instead of
+      keeping a diary, which they thought was girlish like playing with dolls.
+      The boys thought it was dreadful to have to write letters every seven
+      days, but she told them it was not half as bad for them as it was for her
+      who had to read them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To make my diary a little different I am going to call it a THOUGHT Book
+      (written just like that, with capitals). I have thoughts that I never can
+      use unless I write them down, for Aunt Miranda always says, Keep your
+      thoughts to yourself. Aunt Jane lets me tell her some, but does not like
+      my queer ones and my true thoughts are mostly queer. Emma Jane does not
+      mind hearing them now and then, and that is my only chance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If Miss Dearborn does not like the name Thought Book I will call it
+      Remerniscences (written just like that with a capital R). Remerniscences
+      are things you remember about yourself and write down in case you should
+      die. Aunt Jane doesn't like to read any other kind of books but just lives
+      of interesting dead people and she says that is what Longfellow (who was
+      born in the state of Maine and we should be very proud of it and try to
+      write like him) meant in his poem:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Lives of great men all remind us
+     We should make our lives sublime,
+     And departing, leave behind us
+     Footprints on the sands of time.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      I know what this means because when Emma Jane and I went to the beach with
+      Uncle Jerry Cobb we ran along the wet sand and looked at the shapes our
+      boots made, just as if they were stamped in wax. Emma Jane turns in her
+      left foot (splayfoot the boys call it, which is not polite) and Seth
+      Strout had just patched one of my shoes and it all came out in the sand
+      pictures. When I learned The Psalm of Life for Friday afternoon speaking I
+      thought I shouldn't like to leave a patched footprint, nor have Emma
+      Jane's look crooked on the sands of time, and right away I thought Oh!
+      What a splendid thought for my Thought Book when Aunt Jane buys me a
+      fifteen-cent one over to Watson's store.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      REMERNISCENCES
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      June, 187&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I told Aunt Jane I was going to begin my Remerniscences, and she says I am
+      full young, but I reminded her that Candace Milliken's sister died when
+      she was ten, leaving no footprints whatever, and if I should die suddenly
+      who would write down my Remerniscences? Aunt Miranda says the sun and moon
+      would rise and set just the same, and it was no matter if they didn't get
+      written down, and to go up attic and find her piece-bag; but I said it
+      would, as there was only one of everybody in the world, and nobody else
+      could do their remerniscensing for them. If I should die tonight I know
+      now who would describe me right. Miss Dearborn would say one thing and
+      brother John another. Emma Jane would try to do me justice, but has no
+      words; and I am glad Aunt Miranda never takes the pen in hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My dictionary is so small it has not many genteel words in it, and I
+      cannot find how to spell Remerniscences, but I remember from the cover of
+      Aunt Jane's book that there was an &ldquo;s&rdquo; and a &ldquo;c&rdquo; close together in the
+      middle of it, which I thought foolish and not needful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All the girls like their dairies very much, but Minnie Smellie got Alice
+      Robinson's where she had hid it under the school wood pile and read it all
+      through. She said it was no worse than reading anybody's composition, but
+      we told her it was just like peeking through a keyhole, or listening at a
+      window, or opening a bureau drawer. She said she didn't look at it that
+      way, and I told her that unless her eyes got unscealed she would never
+      leave any kind of a sublime footprint on the sands of time. I told her a
+      diary was very sacred as you generally poured your deepest feelings into
+      it expecting nobody to look at it but yourself and your indulgent heavenly
+      Father who seeeth all things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course it would not hurt Persis Watson to show her diary because she
+      has not a sacred plan and this is the way it goes, for she reads it out
+      loud to us:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Arose at six this morning&mdash;(you always arise in a diary but you say
+      get up when you talk about it). Ate breakfast at half past six. Had soda
+      biscuits, coffee, fish hash and doughnuts. Wiped the dishes, fed the hens
+      and made my bed before school. Had a good arithmetic lesson, but went down
+      two in spelling. At half past four played hide and coop in the Sawyer
+      pasture. Fed hens and went to bed at eight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She says she can't put in what doesn't happen, but as I don't think her
+      diary is interesting she will ask her mother to have meat hash instead of
+      fish, with pie when the doughnuts give out, and she will feed the hens
+      before breakfast to make a change. We are all going now to try and make
+      something happen every single day so the diaries won't be so dull and the
+      footprints so common.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      AN UNCOMMON THOUGHT
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      July 187&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We dug up our rosecakes today, and that gave me a good Remerniscence. The
+      way you make rose cakes is, you take the leaves of full blown roses and
+      mix them with a little cinnamon and as much brown sugar as they will give
+      you, which is never half enough except Persis Watson, whose affectionate
+      parents let her go to the barrel in their store. Then you do up little
+      bits like sedlitz powders, first in soft paper and then in brown, and bury
+      them in the ground and let them stay as long as you possibly can hold out;
+      then dig them up and eat them. Emma Jane and I stick up little signs over
+      the holes in the ground with the date we buried them and when they'll be
+      done enough to dig up, but we can never wait. When Aunt Jane saw us she
+      said it was the first thing for children to learn,&mdash;not to be
+      impatient,&mdash;so when I went to the barn chamber I made a poem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IMPATIENCE
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We dug our rose cakes up oh! all too soon. Twas in the orchard just at
+      noon. Twas in a bright July forenoon. Twas in the sunny afternoon. Twas
+      underneath the harvest moon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not that way at all; it was a foggy morning before school, and I
+      should think poets could never possibly get to heaven, for it is so hard
+      to stick to the truth when you are writing poetry. Emma Jane thinks it is
+      nobody's business when we dug the rosecakes up. I like the line about the
+      harvest moon best, but it would give a wrong idea of our lives and
+      characters to the people that read my Thoughts, for they would think we
+      were up late nights, so I have fixed it like this:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                    IMPATIENCE
+
+     We dug our rose cakes up oh! all too soon,
+     We thought their sweetness would be such a boon.
+     We ne'er suspicioned they would not be done
+     After three days of autumn wind and sun.
+     Why did we from the earth our treasures draw?
+     Twas not for fear that rat or mole might naw,
+     An aged aunt doth say impatience was the reason,
+     She says that youth is ever out of season.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      That is just as Aunt Jane said it, and it gave me the thought for the poem
+      which is rather uncommon.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      A DREADFUL QUESTION
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      September, 187&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      WHICH HAS BEEN THE MOST BENEFERCENT INFLUENCE ON CHARACTER&mdash;PUNISHMENT
+      OR REWARD?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This truly dreadful question was given us by Dr. Moses when he visited
+      school today. He is a School Committee; not a whole one but I do not know
+      the singular number of him. He told us we could ask our families what they
+      thought, though he would rather we wouldn't, but we must write our own
+      words and he would hear them next week.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After he went out and shut the door the scholars were all plunged in gloom
+      and you could have heard a pin drop. Alice Robinson cried and borrowed my
+      handkerchief, and the boys looked as if the schoolhouse had been struck by
+      lightning. The worst of all was poor Miss Dearborn, who will lose her
+      place if she does not make us better scholars soon, for Dr. Moses has a
+      daughter all ready to put right in to the school and she can board at home
+      and save all her wages. Libby Moses is her name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Dearborn stared out the window, and her mouth and chin shook like
+      Alice Robinson's, for she knew, ah! all to well, what the coming week
+      would bring forth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then I raised my hand for permission to speak, and stood up and said:
+      &ldquo;Miss Dearborn, don't you mind! Just explain to us what benefercent' means
+      and we'll write something real interesting; for all of us know what
+      punishment is, and have seen others get rewards, and it is not so bad a
+      subject as some.&rdquo; And Dick Carter whispered, &ldquo;GOOD ON YOUR HEAD, REBECCA!&rdquo;
+       which mean he was sorry for her too, and would try his best, but has no
+      words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then teacher smiled and said benefercent meant good or healthy for
+      anybody, and would all rise who thought punishment made the best scholars
+      and men and women; and everybody sat stock still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then she asked all to stand who believed that rewards produced the
+      finest results, and there was a mighty sound like unto the rushing of
+      waters, but really was our feet scraping the floor, and the scholars stood
+      up, and it looked like an army, though it was only nineteen, because of
+      the strong belief that was in them. Then Miss Dearborn laughed and said
+      she was thankful for every whipping she had when she was a child, and
+      Living Perkins said perhaps we hadn't got to the thankful age, or perhaps
+      her father hadn't used a strap, and she said oh! no, it was her mother
+      with the open hand; and Dick Carter said he wouldn't call that punishment,
+      and Sam Simpson said so too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am going to write about the subject in my Thought Book first, and when I
+      make it into a composition, I can leave out anything about the family or
+      not genteel, as there is much to relate about punishment not pleasant or
+      nice and hardly polite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      * * * * * * * * * * * * * PUNISHMENT
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Punishment is a very puzzly thing, but I believe in it when really
+      deserved, only when I punish myself it does not always turn out well. When
+      I leaned over the new bridge, and got my dress all paint, and Aunt Sarah
+      Cobb couldn't get it out, I had to wear it spotted for six months which
+      hurt my pride, but was right. I stayed at home from Alice Robinson's
+      birthday party for a punishment, and went to the circus next day instead,
+      but Alice's parties are very cold and stiff, as Mrs. Robinson makes the
+      boys stand on newspapers if they come inside the door, and the blinds are
+      always shut, and Mrs. Robinson tells me how bad her liver complaint is
+      this year. So I thought, to pay for the circus and a few other things, I
+      ought to get more punishment, and I threw my pink parasol down the well,
+      as the mothers in the missionary books throw their infants to the
+      crocodiles in the Ganges river. But it got stuck in the chain that holds
+      the bucket, and Aunt Miranda had to get Abijah Flagg to take out all the
+      broken bits before we could ring up water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I punished myself this way because Aunt Miranda said that unless I
+      improved I would be nothing but a Burden and a Blight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an old man used to go by our farm carrying a lot of broken
+      chairs to bottom, and mother used to say&mdash;&ldquo;Poor man! His back is too
+      weak for such a burden!&rdquo; and I used to take him out a doughnut, and this
+      is the part I want to go into the Remerniscences. Once I told him we were
+      sorry the chairs were so heavy, and he said THEY DIDN'T SEEM SO HEAVY WHEN
+      HE HAD ET THE DOUGHNUT. This does not mean that the doughnut was heavier
+      than the chairs which is what brother John said, but it is a beautiful
+      thought and shows how the human race should have sympathy, and help bear
+      burdens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I know about a Blight, for there was a dreadful east wind over at our farm
+      that destroyed all the little young crops just out of the ground, and the
+      farmers called it the Blight. And I would rather be hail, sleet, frost, or
+      snow than a Blight, which is mean and secret, and which is the reason I
+      threw away the dearest thing on earth to me, the pink parasol that Miss
+      Ross brought me from Paris, France. I have also wrapped up my bead purse
+      in three papers and put it away marked not to be opened till after my
+      death unless needed for a party.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I must not be Burden, I must not be Blight, The angels in heaven would
+      weep at the sight.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      REWARDS
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A good way to find out which has the most benefercent effect would be to
+      try rewards on myself this next week and write my composition the very
+      last day, when I see how my character is. It is hard to find rewards for
+      yourself, but perhaps Aunt Jane and some of the girls would each give me
+      one to help out. I could carry my bead purse to school every day, or wear
+      my coral chain a little while before I go to sleep at night. I could read
+      Cora or the Sorrows of a Doctor's Wife a little oftener, but that's all
+      the rewards I can think of. I fear Aunt Miranda would say they are wicked
+      but oh! if they should turn out benefercent how glad and joyful life would
+      be to me! A sweet and beautiful character, beloved by my teacher and
+      schoolmates, admired and petted by my aunts and neighbors, yet carrying my
+      bead purse constantly, with perhaps my best hat on Wednesday afternoons,
+      as well as Sundays!
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      A GREAT SHOCK
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reason why Alice Robinson could not play was, she was being punished
+      for breaking her mother's blue platter. Just before supper my story being
+      finished I went up Guide Board hill to see how she was bearing up and she
+      spoke to me from her window. She said she did not mind being punished
+      because she hadn't been for a long time, and she hoped it would help her
+      with her composition. She thought it would give her thoughts, and
+      tomorrow's the last day for her to have any. This gave me a good idea and
+      I told her to call her father up and beg him to beat her violently. It
+      would hurt, I said, but perhaps none of the other girls would have a
+      punishment like that, and her composition would be all different and
+      splendid. I would borrow Aunt Miranda's witchhayzel and pour it on her
+      wounds like the Samaritan in the Bible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I went up again after supper with Dick Carter to see how it turned out.
+      Alice came to the window and Dick threw up a note tied to a stick. I had
+      written: &ldquo;DEMAND YOUR PUNISHMENT TO THE FULL. BE BRAVE LIKE DOLORES'
+      MOTHER IN THE Martyrs of Spain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She threw down an answer, and it was: &ldquo;YOU JUST BE LIKE DOLORES' MOTHER
+      YOURSELF IF YOU'RE SO SMART!&rdquo; Then she stamped away from the window and my
+      feelings were hurt, but Dick said perhaps she was hungry, and that made
+      her cross. And as Dick and I turned to go out of the yard we looked back
+      and I saw something I can never forget. (The Great Shock) Mrs. Robinson
+      was out behind the barn feeding the turkies. Mr. Robinson came softly out
+      of the side door in the orchard and looking everywheres around he stepped
+      to the wire closet and took out a saucer of cold beans with a pickled beet
+      on top, and a big piece of blueberry pie. Then he crept up the back stairs
+      and we could see Alice open her door and take in the supper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh! What will become of her composition, and how can she tell anything of
+      the benefercent effects of punishment, when she is locked up by one
+      parent, and fed by the other? I have forgiven her for the way she snapped
+      me up for, of course, you couldn't beg your father to beat you when he was
+      bringing you blueberry pie. Mrs. Robinson makes a kind that leaks out a
+      thick purple juice into the plate and needs a spoon and blacks your mouth,
+      but is heavenly.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      A DREAM
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The week is almost up and very soon Dr. Moses will drive up to the school
+      house like Elijah in the chariot and come in to hear us read. There is a
+      good deal of sickness among us. Some of the boys are not able to come to
+      school just now, but hope to be about again by Monday, when Dr. Moses goes
+      away to a convention. It is a very hard composition to write, somehow.
+      Last night I dreamed that the river was ink and I kept dipping into it and
+      writing with a penstalk made of a young pine tree. I sliced great slabs of
+      marble off the side of one of the White Mountains, the one you see when
+      going to meeting, and wrote on those. Then I threw them all into the
+      falls, not being good enough for Dr. Moses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dick Carter had a splendid boy to stay over Sunday. He makes the real
+      newspaper named The Pilot published by the boys at Wareham Academy. He
+      says when he talks about himself in writing he calls himself &ldquo;we,&rdquo; and it
+      sounds much more like print, besides conscealing him more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Example: Our hair was measured this morning and has grown two inches since
+      last time.... We have a loose tooth that troubles us very much... Our
+      inkspot that we made by negligence on our only white petticoat we have
+      been able to remove with lemon and milk. Some of our petticoat came out
+      with the spot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I shall try it in my composition sometime, for of course I shall write for
+      the Pilot when I go to Wareham Seminary. Uncle Jerry Cobb says that I
+      shall, and thinks that in four years I might rise to be editor if they
+      ever have girls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have never been more good than since I have been rewarding myself
+      steady, even to asking Aunt Miranda kindly to offer me a company jelly
+      tart, not because I was hungry, but for an experement I was trying, and
+      would explain to her sometime.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She said she never thought it was wise to experement with your stomach,
+      and I said, with a queer thrilling look, it was not my stomach but my
+      soul, that was being tried. Then she gave me the tart and walked away all
+      puzzled and nervous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The new minister has asked me to come and see him any Saturday afternoon
+      as he writes poetry himself, but I would rather not ask him about this
+      composition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ministers never believe in rewards, and it is useless to hope that they
+      will. We had the wrath of God four times in sermons this last summer, but
+      God cannot be angry all the time,&mdash;nobody could, especially in
+      summer; Mr. Baxter is different and calls his wife dear which is lovely
+      and the first time I ever heard it in Riverboro. Mrs. Baxter is another
+      kind of people too, from those that live in Temperance. I like to watch
+      her in meeting and see her listen to her husband who is young and handsome
+      for a minister; it gives me very queer and uncommon feelings, when they
+      look at each other, which they always do when not otherwise engaged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She has different clothes from anybody else. Aunt Miranda says you must
+      think only of two things: will your dress keep you warm and will it wear
+      well and there is nobody in the world to know how I love pink and red and
+      how I hate drab and green and how I never wear my hat with the black and
+      yellow porkupine quills without wishing it would blow into the river.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whene'er I take my walks abroad How many quills I see. But as they are not
+      porkupines They never come to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      COMPOSITION
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      WHICH HAS THE MOST BENEFERCENT EFFECT ON THE CHARACTER, PUNISHMENT OR
+      REWARD?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By Rebecca Rowena Randall
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (This copy not corrected by Miss Dearborn yet.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We find ourselves very puzzled in approaching this truly great and
+      national question though we have tried very ernestly to understand it, so
+      as to show how wisely and wonderfully our dear teacher guides the youthful
+      mind, it being her wish that our composition class shall long be
+      remembered in Riverboro Centre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We would say first of all that punishment seems more benefercently needed
+      by boys than girls. Boys' sins are very violent, like stealing fruit,
+      profane language, playing truant, fighting, breaking windows, and killing
+      innocent little flies and bugs. If these were not taken out of them early
+      in life it would be impossible for them to become like our martyred
+      president, Abraham Lincoln.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Although we have asked everybody on our street, they think boys' sins can
+      only be whipped out of them with a switch or strap, which makes us feel
+      very sad, as boys when not sinning the dreadful sins mentioned above seem
+      just as good as girls, and never cry when switched, and say it does not
+      hurt much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We now approach girls, which we know better, being one. Girls seem better
+      than boys because their sins are not so noisy and showy. They can disobey
+      their parents and aunts, whisper in silent hour, cheat in lessons, say
+      angry things to their schoolmates, tell lies, be sulky and lazy, but all
+      these can be conducted quite ladylike and genteel, and nobody wants to
+      strap girls because their skins are tender and get black and blue very
+      easily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Punishments make one very unhappy and rewards very happy, and one would
+      think when one is happy one would behave the best. We were acquainted with
+      a girl who gave herself rewards every day for a week, and it seemed to
+      make her as lovely a character as one could wish; but perhaps if one went
+      on for years giving rewards to onesself one would become selfish. One
+      cannot tell, one can only fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If a dog kills a sheep we should whip him straight away, and on the very
+      spot where he can see the sheep, or he will not know what we mean, and may
+      forget and kill another. The same is true of the human race. We must be
+      firm and patient in punishing, no matter how much we love the one who has
+      done wrong, and how hungry she is. It does no good to whip a person with
+      one hand and offer her a pickled beet with the other. This confuses her
+      mind, and she may grow up not knowing right from wrong. (The striking
+      example of the pickled beet was removed from the essay by the refined but
+      ruthless Miss Dearborn, who strove patiently, but vainly, to keep such
+      vulgar images out of her pupils' literary efforts.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We now respectfully approach the Holy Bible and the people in the Bible
+      were punished the whole time, and that would seem to make it right.
+      Everybody says Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth; but we think ourself,
+      that the Lord is a better punisher than we are, and knows better how and
+      when to do it having attended to it ever since the year B.C. while the
+      human race could not know about it till 1492 A.D., which is when Columbus
+      discovered America.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We do not believe we can find out all about this truly great and national
+      subject till we get to heaven, where the human race, strapped and
+      unstrapped, if any, can meet together and laying down their harps discuss
+      how they got there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And we would gently advise boys to be more quiet and genteel in conduct
+      and try rewards to see how they would work. Rewards are not all like the
+      little rosebud merit cards we receive on Fridays, and which boys sometimes
+      tear up and fling scornfully to the breeze when they get outside, but
+      girls preserve carefully in an envelope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some rewards are great and glorious, for boys can get to be governor or
+      school trustee or road commissioner or president, while girls can only be
+      wife and mother. But all of us can have the ornament of a meek and lowly
+      spirit, especially girls, who have more use for it than boys.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      R.R.R.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      STORIES AND PEOPLE
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      October, 187&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are people in books and people in Riverboro, and they are not the
+      same kind. They never talk of chargers and palfreys in the village, nor
+      say How oft and Methinks, and if a Scotchman out of Rob Roy should come to
+      Riverboro and want to marry one of us girls we could not understand him
+      unless he made motions; though Huldah Meserve says if a nobleman of high
+      degree should ask her to be his,&mdash;one of vast estates with serfs at
+      his bidding,&mdash;she would be able to guess his meaning in any language.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Uncle Jerry Cobb thinks that Riverboro people would not make a story, but
+      I know that some of them would.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jack-o'-lantern, though only a baby, was just like a real story if anybody
+      had written a piece about him: How his mother was dead and his father ran
+      away and Emma Jane and I got Aunt Sarah Cobb to keep him so Mr. Perkins
+      wouldn't take him to the poor farm; and about our lovely times with him
+      that summer, and our dreadful loss when his father remembered him in the
+      fall and came to take him away; and how Aunt Sarah carried the trundle bed
+      up attic again and Emma Jane and I heard her crying and stole away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peter Meserve says Grandpa Sawyer was a wonderful hand at stories
+      before his spirit was broken by grandmother. She says he was the life of
+      the store and tavern when he was a young man, though generally sober, and
+      she thinks I take after him, because I like compositions better than all
+      the other lessons; but mother says I take after father, who always could
+      say everything nicely whether he had anything to say or not; so methinks I
+      should be grateful to both of them. They are what is called ancestors and
+      much depends upon whether you have them or not. The Simpsons have not any
+      at all. Aunt Miranda says the reason everybody is so prosperous around
+      here is because their ancestors were all first settlers and raised on
+      burnt ground. This should make us very proud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Methinks and methought are splendid words for compositions. Miss Dearborn
+      likes them very much, but Alice and I never bring them in to suit her.
+      Methought means the same as I thought, but sounds better. Example: If you
+      are telling a dream you had about your aged aunt:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Methought I heard her say
+     My child you have so useful been
+     You need not sew today.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      This is a good example one way, but too unlikely, woe is me!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This afternoon I was walking over to the store to buy molasses, and as I
+      came off the bridge and turned up the hill, I saw lots and lots of
+      heelprints in the side of the road, heelprints with little spike holes in
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! The river drivers have come from up country,&rdquo; I thought, &ldquo;and they'll
+      be breaking the jam at our falls tomorrow.&rdquo; I looked everywhere about and
+      not a man did I see, but still I knew I was not mistaken for the
+      heelprints could not lie. All the way over and back I thought about it,
+      though unfortunately forgetting the molasses, and Alice Robinson not being
+      able to come out, I took playtime to write a story. It is the first
+      grown-up one I ever did, and is intended to be like Cora the Doctor's
+      Wife, not like a school composition. It is written for Mr. Adam Ladd, and
+      people like him who live in Boston, and is the printed kind you get money
+      for, to pay off a mortgage.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      LANCELOT OR THE PARTED LOVERS
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A beautiful village maiden was betrothed to a stallwart river driver, but
+      they had high and bitter words and parted, he to weep into the crystal
+      stream as he drove his logs, and she to sigh and moan as she went about
+      her round of household tasks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At eventide the maiden was wont to lean over the bridge and her tears also
+      fell into the foaming stream; so, though the two unhappy lovers did not
+      know it, the river was their friend, the only one to whom they told their
+      secrets and wept into.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The months crept on and it was the next July when the maiden was passing
+      over the bridge and up the hill. Suddenly she spied footprints on the
+      sands of time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The river drivers have come again!&rdquo; she cried, putting her hand to her
+      side for she had a slight heart trouble like Cora and Mrs. Peter Meserve,
+      that doesn't kill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They HAVE come indeed; ESPECIALLY ONE YOU KNOW,&rdquo; said a voice, and out
+      from the alder bushes sprung Lancelot Littlefield, for that was the
+      lover's name and it was none other than he. His hair was curly and like
+      living gold. His shirt, white of flannel, was new and dry, and of a
+      handsome color, and as the maiden looked at him she could think of nought
+      but a fairy prince.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Forgive,&rdquo; she mermered, stretching out her waisted hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay, sweet,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;'Tis I should say that to you,&rdquo; and bending
+      gracefully on one knee he kissed the hem of her dress. It was a rich pink
+      gingham check, ellaborately ornamented with white tape trimming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Clasping each other to the heart like Cora and the Doctor, they stood
+      there for a long while, till they heard the rumble of wheels on the bridge
+      and knew they must disentangle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wheels came nearer and verily! it was the maiden's father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can I wed with your fair daughter this very moon,&rdquo; asked Lancelot, who
+      will not be called his whole name again in this story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may,&rdquo; said the father, &ldquo;for lo! she has been ready and waiting for
+      many months.&rdquo; This he said not noting how he was shaming the maiden, whose
+      name was Linda Rowenetta.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then and there the nuptial day was appointed and when it came, the
+      marriage knot was tied upon the river bank where first they met; the river
+      bank where they had parted in anger, and where they had again scealeld
+      their vows and clasped each other to the heart. And it was very low water
+      that summer, and the river always thought it was because no tears dropped
+      into it but so many smiles that like sunshine they dried it up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      R.R.R.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Finis
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      CAREERS
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      November, 187&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Long ago when I used to watch Miss Ross painting the old mill at
+      Sunnybrook I thought I would be a painter, for Miss Ross went to Paris
+      France where she bought my bead purse and pink parasol and I thought I
+      would like to see a street with beautiful bright-colored things sparkling
+      and hanging in the store windows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then when the missionaries from Syria came to stay at the brick house Mrs.
+      Burch said that after I had experienced religion I must learn music and
+      train my voice and go out to heathen lands and save souls, so I thought
+      that would be my career. But we girls tried to have a branch and be home
+      missionaries and it did not work well. Emma Jane's father would not let
+      her have her birthday party when he found out what she had done and Aunt
+      Jane sent me up to Jake Moody's to tell him we did not mean to be rude
+      when we asked him to go to meeting more often. He said all right, but just
+      let him catch that little dough-faced Perkins young one in his yard once
+      more and she'd have reason to remember the call, which was just as rude
+      and impolite as our trying to lead him to a purer and a better life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Uncle Jerry and Mr. Aladdin and Miss Dearborn liked my compositions,
+      and I thought I'd better be a writer, for I must be something the minute
+      I'm seventeen, or how shall we ever get the mortgage off the farm? But
+      even that hope is taken away from me now, for Uncle Jerry made fun of my
+      story Lancelot Or The Parted Lovers and I have decided to be a teacher
+      like Miss Dearborn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pathetic announcement of a change in the career and life purposes of
+      Rebecca was brought about by her reading the grown-up story to Mr. and
+      Mrs. Jeremiah Cobb after supper in the orchard. Uncle Jerry was the person
+      who had maintained all along that Riverboro people would not make a story;
+      and Lancelot or The Parted Lovers was intended to refute that assertion at
+      once and forever; an assertion which Rebecca regarded (quite truly) as
+      untenable, though why she certainly never could have explained.
+      Unfortunately Lancelot was a poor missionary, quite unfitted for the high
+      achievements to which he was destined by the youthful novelist, and Uncle
+      Jerry, though a stage-driver and no reading man, at once perceived the
+      flabbiness and transparency of the Parted Lovers the moment they were held
+      up to his inspection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see Riverboro people WILL make a story!&rdquo; asserted Rebecca
+      triumphantly as she finished her reading and folded the paper. &ldquo;And it all
+      came from my noticing the river drivers' tracks by the roadside, and
+      wondering about them; and wondering always makes stories; the minister
+      says so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye-es,&rdquo; allowed Uncle Jerry reflectively, tipping his chair back against
+      the apple tree and forcing his slow mind to violent and instantaneous
+      action, for Rebecca was his pride and joy; a person, in his opinion, of
+      superhuman talent, one therefore to be &ldquo;whittled into shape&rdquo; if occasion
+      demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a Riverboro story, sure enough, because you've got the river and the
+      bridge and the hill and the drivers all right there in it; but there's
+      something awful queer bout it; the folks don't act Riverboro, and don't
+      talk Riverboro, cordin' to my notions. I call it a reg'lar book story.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; objected Rebecca, &ldquo;the people in Cinderella didn't act like us, and
+      you thought that was a beautiful story when I told it to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; replied Uncle Jerry, gaining eloquence in the heat of argument.
+      &ldquo;They didn't act like us, but 't any rate they acted like 'emselves!
+      Somehow they was all of a piece. Cinderella was a little too good, mebbe,
+      and the sisters was most too thunderin' bad to live on the face o' the
+      earth, and that fayry old lady that kep' the punkin' coach up her sleeve&mdash;well,
+      anyhow, you jest believe that punkin' coach, rats, mice, and all, when
+      you're hearin' bout it, fore ever you stop to think it ain't so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don' know how tis, but the folks in that Cinderella story seem to match
+      together somehow; they're all pow'ful onlikely&mdash;the prince feller
+      with the glass slipper, and the hull bunch; but jest the same you kind o'
+      gulp em all down in a lump. But land, Rebecky, nobody'd swaller that there
+      village maiden o' your'n, and as for what's-his-name Littlefield, that
+      come out o' them bushes, such a feller never 'd a' be'n IN bushes! No,
+      Rebecky, you're the smartest little critter there is in this township, and
+      you beat your Uncle Jerry all holler when it comes to usin' a lead pencil,
+      but I say that ain't no true Riverboro story! Look at the way they talk!
+      What was that' bout being BETROTHED'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Betrothed is a genteel word for engaged to be married,&rdquo; explained the
+      crushed and chastened author; and it was fortunate the doting old man did
+      not notice her eyes in the twilight, or he might have known that tears
+      were not far away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that's all right, then; I'm as ignorant as Cooper's cow when it
+      comes to the dictionary. How about what's-his-name callin' the girl
+      'Naysweet'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought myself that sounded foolish,:&rdquo; confessed Rebecca; &ldquo;but it's
+      what the Doctor calls Cora when he tries to persuade her not to quarrel
+      with his mother who comes to live with them. I know they don't say it in
+      Riverboro or Temperance, but I thought perhaps it was Boston talk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it ain't!&rdquo; asserted Mr. Cobb decisively. &ldquo;I've druv Boston men up
+      in the stage from Milltown many's the time, and none of em ever said
+      Naysweet to me, nor nothin'like it. They talked like folks, every mother's
+      son of em! If I'd a' had that what's-his-name on the harricane deck' o'
+      the stage and he tried any naysweetin' on me, I'd a' pitched him into the
+      cornfield, side o' the road. I guess you ain't growed up enough for that
+      kind of a story, Rebecky, for your poetry can't be beat in York County,
+      that's sure, and your compositions are good enough to read out loud in
+      town meetin' any day!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca brightened up a little and bade the old couple her usual
+      affectionate good night, but she descended the hill in a saddened mood.
+      When she reached the bridge the sun, a ball of red fire, was setting
+      behind Squire Bean's woods. As she looked, it shone full on the broad,
+      still bosom of the river, and for one perfect instant the trees on the
+      shores were reflected, all swimming in a sea of pink. Leaning over the
+      rail, she watched the light fade from crimson to carmine, from carmine to
+      rose, from rose to amber, and from amber to gray. Then withdrawing
+      Lancelot or the Parted Lovers from her apron pocket, she tore the pages
+      into bits and dropped them into the water below with a sigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Uncle Jerry never said a word about the ending!&rdquo; she thought; &ldquo;and that
+      was so nice!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And she was right; but while Uncle Jerry was an illuminating critic when
+      it came to the actions and language of his Riverboro neighbors, he had no
+      power to direct the young mariner when she &ldquo;followed the gleam,&rdquo; and used
+      her imagination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      OUR SECRET SOCIETY
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      November, 187&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our Secret society has just had a splendid picnic in Candace Milliken's
+      barn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our name is the B.O.S.S., and not a single boy in the village has been
+      able to guess it. It means Braid Over Shoulder Society, and that is the
+      sign. All the members wear one of their braids over the right shoulder in
+      front; the president's tied with red ribbon (I am the president) and all
+      the rest tied with blue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To attract the attention of another member when in company or at a public
+      place we take the braid between the thumb and little finger and stand
+      carelessly on one leg. This is the Secret Signal and the password is Sobb
+      (B.O.S.S. spelled backwards) which was my idea and is thought rather
+      uncommon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the rules of the B.O.S.S. is that any member may be required to
+      tell her besetting sin at any meeting, if asked to do so by a majority of
+      the members.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was Candace Milliken's idea and much opposed by everybody, but when
+      it came to a vote so many of the girls were afraid of offending Candace
+      that they agreed because there was nobody else's father and mother who
+      would let us picnic in their barn and use their plow, harrow, grindstone,
+      sleigh, carryall, pung, sled, and wheelbarrow, which we did and injured
+      hardly anything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They asked me to tell my besetting sin at the very first meeting, and it
+      nearly killed me to do it because it is such a common greedy one. It is
+      that I can't bear to call the other girls when I have found a thick spot
+      when we are out berrying in the summer time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After I confessed, which made me dreadfully ashamed, every one of the
+      girls seemed surprised and said they had never noticed that one but had
+      each thought of something very different that I would be sure to think was
+      my besetting sin. Then Emma Jane said that rather than tell hers she would
+      resign from the Society and miss the picnic. So it made so much trouble
+      that Candace gave up. We struck out the rule from the constitution and I
+      had told my sin for nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reason we named ourselves the B.O.S.S. is that Minnie Smellie has had
+      her head shaved after scarlet fever and has no braid, so she can't be a
+      member.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I don't want her for a member but I can't be happy thinking she will feel
+      slighted, and it takes away half the pleasure of belonging to the Society
+      myself and being president.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That, I think, is the principal trouble about doing mean and unkind
+      things; that you can't do wrong and feel right, or be bad and feel good.
+      If you only could you could do anything that came into your mind yet
+      always be happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Minnie Smellie spoils everything she comes into but I suppose we other
+      girls must either have our hair shaved and call ourselves The Baldheadians
+      or let her be some kind of a special officer in the B.O.S.S.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She might be the B.I.T.U.D. member (Braid in the Upper Drawer), for there
+      is where Mrs. Smellie keeps it now that it is cut off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      WINTER THOUGHTS
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      March, 187&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is not such a cold day for March and I am up in the barn chamber with
+      my coat and hood on and Aunt Jane's waterproof and my mittens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After I do three pages I am going to hide away this book in the haymow
+      till spring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps they get made into icicles on the way but I do not seem to have
+      any thoughts in the winter time. The barn chamber is full of thoughts in
+      warm weather. The sky gives them to me, and the trees and flowers, and the
+      birds, and the river; but now it is always gray and nipping, the branches
+      are bare and the river is frozen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is too cold to write in my bedroom but while we still kept an open fire
+      I had a few thoughts, but now there is an air-tight stove in the dining
+      room where we sit, and we seem so close together, Aunt Miranda, Aunt Jane
+      and I that I don't like to write in my book for fear they will ask me to
+      read out loud my secret thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have just read over the first part of my Thought Book and I have
+      outgrown it all, just exactly as I have outgrown my last year's drab
+      cashmere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is very queer how anybody can change so fast in a few months, but I
+      remember that Emma Jane's cat had kittens the day my book was bought at
+      Watson's store. Mrs. Perkins kept the prettiest white one, Abijah Flagg
+      drowning all the others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seems strange to me that cats will go on having kittens when they know
+      what becomes of them! We were very sad about it, but Mrs. Perkins said it
+      was the way of the world and how things had to be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I cannot help being glad that they do not do the same with children, or
+      John and Jenny Mira Mark and me would all have had stones tied to our
+      necks and been dropped into the deepest part of Sunny Brook, for Hannah
+      and Fanny are the only truly handsome ones in the family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Perkins says I dress up well, but never being dressed up it does not
+      matter much. At least they didn't wait to dress up the kittens to see how
+      they would improve, before drowning them, but decided right away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane's kitten that was born the same day this book was is now quite
+      an old cat who knows the way of the world herself, and how things have to
+      be, for she has had one batch of kittens drowned already.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So perhaps it is not strange that my Thought Book seems so babyish and
+      foolish to me when I think of all I have gone through and the millions of
+      things I have learned, and how much better I spell than I did ten months
+      ago.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My fingers are cold through the mittens, so good-bye dear Thought Book,
+      friend of my childhood, now so far far behind me!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I will hide you in the haymow where you'll be warm and cosy all the long
+      winter and where nobody can find you again in the summer time but your
+      affectionate author,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca Rowena Randall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Fourth Chronicle. A TRAGEDY IN MILLINERY
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane Perkins's new winter dress was a blue and green Scotch plaid
+      poplin, trimmed with narrow green velvet-ribbon and steel nail-heads. She
+      had a gray jacket of thick furry cloth with large steel buttons up the
+      front, a pair of green kid gloves, and a gray felt hat with an encircling
+      band of bright green feathers. The band began in front with a bird's head
+      and ended behind with a bird's tail, and angels could have desired no more
+      beautiful toilette. That was her opinion, and it was shared to the full by
+      Rebecca.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Emma Jane, as Rebecca had once described her to Mr. Adam Ladd, was a
+      rich blacksmith's daughter, and she, Rebecca, was a little half-orphan
+      from a mortgaged farm &ldquo;up Temperance way,&rdquo; dependent upon her spinster
+      aunts for board, clothes, and schooling. Scotch plaid poplins were
+      manifestly not for her, but dark-colored woolen stuffs were, and mittens,
+      and last winter's coats and furs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And how about hats? Was there hope in store for her there? she wondered,
+      as she walked home from the Perkins house, full of admiration for Emma
+      Jane's winter outfit, and loyally trying to keep that admiration free from
+      wicked envy. Her red-winged black hat was her second best, and although it
+      was shabby she still liked it, but it would never do for church, even in
+      Aunt Miranda's strange and never-to-be-comprehended views of suitable
+      raiment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a brown felt turban in existence, if one could call it existence
+      when it had been rained on, snowed on, and hailed on for two seasons; but
+      the trimmings had at any rate perished quite off the face of the earth,
+      that was one comfort!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane had said, rather indiscreetly, that at the village milliner's at
+      Milliken's Mills there was a perfectly elegant pink breast to be had, a
+      breast that began in a perfectly elegant solferino and terminated in a
+      perfectly elegant magenta; two colors much in vogue at that time. If the
+      old brown hat was to be her portion yet another winter, would Aunt Miranda
+      conceal its deficiencies from a carping world beneath the shaded solferino
+      breast? WOULD she, that was the question?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Filled with these perplexing thoughts, Rebecca entered the brick house,
+      hung up her hood in the entry, and went into the dining-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Jane was not there, but Aunt Miranda sat by the window with her lap
+      full of sewing things, and a chair piled with pasteboard boxes by her
+      side. In one hand was the ancient, battered, brown felt turban, and in the
+      other were the orange and black porcupine 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!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Sawyer glanced up for a second with a satisfied expression and then
+      bent her eyes again upon her work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I was going to buy a hat trimming,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;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,&mdash;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?&rdquo; she asked,
+      inclining her head in a discriminating attitude and poising them awkwardly
+      on the hat with her work-stained hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How did she like them on the brown felt indeed?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will NOT wear those hateful porcupine 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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miranda Sawyer had learned a few lessons in the last two years, lessons
+      which were making her (at least on her &ldquo;good days&rdquo;) 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 breath freely and enjoy the sunshine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she said finally, after staring first at Rebecca and then at the
+      porcupine quills, as if to gain some insight into the situation, &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca wiped her eyes and laughed aloud. &ldquo;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,&mdash;cover them up quick before
+      I begin again! I'm all right! Shower's over, sun's out!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Miranda looked at her searchingly and uncomprehendingly. Rebecca's
+      state of mind came perilously near to disease, she thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you seen me buyin' any new bunnits, or your Aunt Jane?&rdquo; she asked
+      cuttingly. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh-h!&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 the plume of Henry of Navarre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca was resigned, if not greatly comforted, but she had grace enough
+      to conceal her feelings, now that she knew economy was at the root of some
+      of her aunt's decrees in matters of dress; and she managed to forget the
+      solferino breast, save in sleep, where a vision of it had a way of
+      appearing to her, dangling from the ceiling, and dazzling her so with its
+      rich color that she used to hope the milliner would sell it that she might
+      never be tempted with it when she passed the shop window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day, not long afterward, Miss Miranda borrowed Mr. Perkins's horse and
+      wagon and took Rebecca with her on a drive to Union, to see about some
+      sausage meat and head cheese. She intended to call on Mrs. Cobb, order a
+      load of pine wood from Mr. Strout on the way, and leave some rags for a
+      rug with old Mrs. Pease, so that the journey could be made as profitable
+      as possible, consistent with the loss of time and the wear and tear on her
+      second-best black dress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The red-winged black hat was forcibly removed from Rebecca's head just
+      before starting, and the nightmare turban substituted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You might as well begin to wear it first as last,&rdquo; remarked Miranda,
+      while Jane stood in the side door and sympathized secretly with Rebecca.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will!&rdquo; said Rebecca, ramming the stiff turban down on her head with a
+      vindictive grimace, and snapping the elastic under her long braids; &ldquo;but
+      it makes me think of what Mr. Robinson said when the minister told him his
+      mother-in-law would ride in the same buggy with him at his wife's
+      funeral.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't see how any speech of Mr. Robinson's, made years an' years ago,
+      can have anything to do with wearin' your turban down to Union,&rdquo; said
+      Miranda, settling the lap robe over her knees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it can; because he said: Have it that way, then, but it'll spile
+      the hull blamed trip for me!'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jane closed the door suddenly, partly because she experienced a desire to
+      smile (a desire she had not felt for years before Rebecca came to the
+      brick house to live), and partly because she had no wish to overhear what
+      her sister would say when she took in the full significance of Rebecca's
+      anecdote, which was a favorite one with Mr. Perkins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a cold blustering day with a high wind that promised to bring an
+      early fall of snow. The trees were stripped bare of leaves, the ground was
+      hard, and the wagon wheels rattled noisily over the thank-you-ma'ams.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm glad I wore my Paisley shawl over my cloak,&rdquo; said Miranda. &ldquo;Be you
+      warm enough, Rebecca? Tie that white rigolette tighter round your neck.
+      The wind fairly blows through my bones. I most wish t we'd waited till a
+      pleasanter day, for this Union road is all up hill or down, and we shan't
+      get over the ground fast, it's so rough. Don't forget, when you go into
+      Scott's, to say I want all the trimmin's when they send me the pork, for
+      mebbe I can try out a little mite o' lard. The last load o' pine's gone
+      turrible quick; I must see if &ldquo;Bijah Flagg can't get us some cut-rounds at
+      the mills, when he hauls for Squire Bean next time. Keep your mind on your
+      drivin', Rebecca, and don't look at the trees and the sky so much. It's
+      the same sky and same trees that have been here right along. Go awful slow
+      down this hill and walk the hoss over Cook's Brook bridge, for I always
+      suspicion it's goin' to break down under me, an' I shouldn't want to be
+      dropped into that fast runnin' water this cold day. It'll be froze stiff
+      by this time next week. Hadn't you better get out and lead&rdquo;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rest of the sentence was very possibly not vital, but at any rate it
+      was never completed, for in the middle of the bridge a fierce gale of wind
+      took Miss Miranda's Paisley shawl and blew it over her head. The long
+      heavy ends whirled in opposite directions and wrapped themselves tightly
+      about her wavering bonnet. Rebecca had the whip and the reins, and in
+      trying to rescue her struggling aunt could not steady her own hat, which
+      was suddenly torn from her head and tossed against the bridge rail, where
+      it trembled and flapped for an instant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My hat! Oh! Aunt Miranda, my hateful hat!&rdquo; cried Rebecca, never
+      remembering at the instant how often she had prayed that the &ldquo;fretful
+      porcupine&rdquo; might some time vanish in this violent manner, since it refused
+      to die a natural death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had already stopped the horse, so, giving her aunt's shawl one last
+      desperate twitch, she slipped out between the wagon wheels, and darted in
+      the direction of the hated object, the loss of which had dignified it with
+      a temporary value and importance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stiff brown turban rose in the air, then dropped and flew along the
+      bridge; Rebecca pursued; it danced along and stuck between two of the
+      railings; Rebecca flew after it, her long braids floating in the wind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come back! Come back! Don't leave me alone with the team. I won't have
+      it! Come back, and leave your hat!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miranda had at length extricated herself from the submerging shawl, but
+      she was so blinded by the wind, and so confused that she did not measure
+      the financial loss involved in her commands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca heard, but her spirit being in arms, she made one more mad
+      scramble for the vagrant hat, which now seemed possessed with an evil
+      spirit, for it flew back and forth, and bounded here and there, like a
+      living thing, finally distinguishing itself by blowing between the horse's
+      front and hind legs, Rebecca trying to circumvent it by going around the
+      wagon, and meeting it on the other side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was no use; as she darted from behind the wheels the wind gave the hat
+      an extra whirl, and scurrying in the opposite direction it soared above
+      the bridge rail and disappeared into the rapid water below.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get in again!&rdquo; cried Miranda, holding on her bonnet. &ldquo;You done your best
+      and it can't be helped, I only wish't I'd let you wear your black hat as
+      you wanted to; and I wish't we'd never come such a day! The shawl has
+      broke the stems of the velvet geraniums in my bonnet, and the wind has
+      blowed away my shawl pin and my back comb. I'd like to give up and turn
+      right back this minute, but I don't like to borrer Perkins's hoss again
+      this month. When we get up in the woods you can smooth your hair down and
+      tie the rigolette over your head and settle what's left of my bonnet;
+      it'll be an expensive errant, this will!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      II
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not till next morning that Rebecca's heart really began its song of
+      thanksgiving. Her Aunt Miranda announced at breakfast, that as Mrs.
+      Perkins was going to Milliken's Mills, Rebecca might go too, and buy a
+      serviceable hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mustn't pay over two dollars and a half, and you mustn't get the pink
+      bird without Mrs. Perkins says, and the milliner says, that it won't fade
+      nor moult. Don't buy a light-colored felt because you'll get sick of it in
+      two or three years same as you did the brown one. I always liked the shape
+      of the brown one, and you'll never get another trimmin' that'll wear like
+      them quills.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope not!&rdquo; thought Rebecca.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you had put your elastic under your chin, same as you used to, and not
+      worn it behind because you think it's more grown-up an' fash'onable, the
+      wind never'd a' took the hat off your head, and you wouldn't a' lost it;
+      but the mischief's done and you can go right over to Mis' Perkins now, so
+      you won't miss her nor keep her waitin'. The two dollars and a half is in
+      an envelope side o' the clock.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca swallowed the last spoonful of picked-up codfish on her plate,
+      wiped her lips, and rose from her chair happier than the seraphs in
+      Paradise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The porcupine quills had disappeared from her life, and without any fault
+      or violence on her part. She was wholly innocent and virtuous, but
+      nevertheless she was going to have a new hat with the solferino breast,
+      should the adored object prove, under rigorous examination, to be
+      practically indestructible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whene'er I take my walks abroad, How many hats I'll see; But if they're
+      trimmed with hedgehog quills They'll not belong to me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So she improvised, secretly and ecstatically, as she went towards the side
+      entry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's 'Bijah Flagg drivin' in,&rdquo; said Miss Miranda, going to the window.
+      &ldquo;Step out and see what he's got, Jane; some passel from the Squire, I
+      guess. It's a paper bag and it may be a punkin, though he wouldn't wrop up
+      a punkin, come to think of it! Shet the dinin' room door, Jane; it's
+      turrible drafty. Make haste, for the Squire's hoss never stan's still a
+      minute cept when he's goin'!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Abijah Flagg alighted and approached the side door with a grin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Guess what I've got for ye, Rebecky?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      No throb of prophetic soul warned Rebecca of her approaching doom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nodhead apples?&rdquo; she sparkled, looking as bright and rosy and
+      satin-skinned as an apple herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; guess again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A flowering geranium?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Guess again!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nuts? Oh! I can't, Bijah; I'm just going to Milliken's Mills on an
+      errand, and I'm afraid of missing Mrs. Perkins. Show me quick! Is it
+      really for me, or for Aunt Miranda?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Reely for you, I guess!&rdquo; and he opened the large brown paper bag and drew
+      from it the remains of a water-soaked hat!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They WERE remains, but there was no doubt of their nature and substance.
+      They had clearly been a hat in the past, and one could even suppose that,
+      when resuscitated, they might again assume their original form in some
+      near and happy future.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Miranda, full of curiosity, joined the group in the side entry at
+      this dramatic moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I never!&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;Where, and how under the canopy, did you
+      ever?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was working on the dam at Union Falls yesterday,&rdquo; chuckled Abijah, with
+      a pleased glance at each of the trio in turn, &ldquo;an' I seen this little
+      bunnit skippin' over the water jest as Becky does over the road. It's
+      shaped kind o' like a boat, an' gorry, ef it wa'nt sailin' jest like a
+      boat! Where hev I seen that kind of a bristlin' plume?' thinks I.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      (&ldquo;Where indeed!&rdquo; thought Rebecca stormily.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then it come to me that I'd drove that plume to school and drove it to
+      meetin' and drove it to the Fair an'drove it most everywheres on Becky. So
+      I reached out a pole an' ketched it fore it got in amongst the logs an'
+      come to any damage, an' here it is! The hat's passed in its checks, I
+      guess; looks kind as if a wet elephant had stepped on it; but the plume's
+      bout's good as new! I reely fetched the hat beck for the sake o' the
+      plume.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was real good of you, 'Bijah, an' we're all of us obliged to you,&rdquo;
+       said Miranda, as she poised the hat on one hand and turned it slowly with
+      the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I do say,&rdquo; she exclaimed, &ldquo;and I guess I've said it before, that of
+      all the wearing' plumes that ever I see, that one's the wearin'est! Seems
+      though it just wouldn't give up. Look at the way it's held Mis' Cobb's
+      dye; it's about as brown's when it went int' the water.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dyed, but not a mite dead,&rdquo; grinned Abijah, who was somewhat celebrated
+      for his puns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I declare,&rdquo; Miranda continued, &ldquo;when you think o' the fuss they make
+      about ostriches, killin' em off by hundreds for the sake o' their feathers
+      that'll string out and spoil in one hard rainstorm,&mdash;an' all the time
+      lettin' useful porcupines run round with their quills on, why I can't
+      hardly understand it, without milliners have found out jest how good they
+      do last, an' so they won't use em for trimmin'. 'Bijah's right; the hat
+      ain't no more use, Rebecca, but you can buy you another this mornin'&mdash;any
+      color or shape you fancy&mdash;an' have Miss Morton sew these brown quills
+      on to it with some kind of a buckle or a bow, jest to hide the roots. Then
+      you'll be fixed for another season, thanks to 'Bijah.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Uncle Jerry and Aunt Sarah Cobb were made acquainted before very long with
+      the part that destiny, or Abijah Flagg, had played in Rebecca's affairs,
+      for, accompanied by the teacher, she walked to the old stage driver's that
+      same afternoon. Taking off her new hat with the venerable trimming, she
+      laid it somewhat ostentatiously upside down on the kitchen table and left
+      the room, dimpling a little more than usual.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Uncle Jerry rose from his seat, and, crossing the room, looked curiously
+      into the hat and found that a circular paper lining was neatly pinned in
+      the crown, and that it bore these lines, which were read aloud with great
+      effect by Miss Dearborn, and with her approval were copied in the Thought
+      Book for the benefit of posterity:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was the bristling porcupine, As he stood on his native heath, He said,
+      'I'll pluck me some immortelles And make me up a wreath. For tho' I may
+      not live myself To more than a hundred and ten, My quills will last till
+      crack of doom, And maybe after then. They can be colored blue or green Or
+      orange, brown, or red, But often as they may be dyed They never will be
+      dead.' And so the bristling porcupine As he stood on his native heath,
+      Said, I think I'll pluck me some immmortelles And make me up a wreath.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;R.R.R.&rdquo; <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Fifth Chronicle. THE SAVING OF THE COLORS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even when Rebecca had left school, having attained the great age of
+      seventeen and therefore able to look back over a past incredibly long and
+      full, she still reckoned time not by years, but by certain important
+      occurrences.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was the year her father died; the year she left Sunnybrook Farm to
+      come to her aunts in Riverboro; the year Sister Hannah became engaged; the
+      year little Mira died; the year Abijah Flagg ceased to be Squire Bean's
+      chore-boy, and astounded Riverboro by departing for Limerick Academy in
+      search of an education; and finally the year of her graduation, which, to
+      the mind of seventeen, seems rather the culmination than the beginning of
+      existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Between these epoch-making events certain other happenings stood out in
+      bold relief against the gray of dull daily life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was the day she first met her friend of friends, &ldquo;Mr. Aladdin,&rdquo; and
+      the later, even more radiant one when he gave her the coral necklace.
+      There was the day the Simpson family moved away from Riverboro under a
+      cloud, and she kissed Clara Belle fervently at the cross-roads, telling
+      her that she would always be faithful. There was the visit of the Syrian
+      missionaries to the brick house. That was a bright, romantic memory, as
+      strange and brilliant as the wonderful little birds' wings and breasts
+      that the strangers brought from the Far East. She remembered the moment
+      they asked her to choose some for herself, and the rapture with which she
+      stroked the beautiful things as they lay on the black haircloth sofa. Then
+      there was the coming of the new minister, for though many were tried only
+      one was chosen; and finally there was the flag-raising, a festivity that
+      thrilled Riverboro and Edgewood society from centre to circumference, a
+      festivity that took place just before she entered the Female Seminary at
+      Wareham and said good-by to kind Miss Dearborn and the village school.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There must have been other flag-raisings in history,&mdash;even the
+      persons most interested in this particular one would grudgingly have
+      allowed that much,&mdash;but it would have seemed to them improbable that
+      any such flag-raising as theirs, either in magnitude of conception or
+      brilliancy of actual performance, could twice glorify the same century. Of
+      some pageants it is tacitly admitted that there can be no duplicates, and
+      the flag-raising at Riverboro Centre was one of these; so that it is small
+      wonder if Rebecca chose it as one of the important dates in her personal
+      almanac.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The new minister's wife was the being, under Providence, who had conceived
+      the germinal idea of the flag.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this time the parish had almost settled down to the trembling belief
+      that they were united on a pastor. In the earlier time a minister was
+      chosen for life, and if he had faults, which was a probably enough
+      contingency, and if his congregation had any, which is within the bounds
+      of possibility, each bore with the other (not quite without friction), as
+      old-fashioned husbands and wives once did, before the easy way out of the
+      difficulty was discovered, or at least before it was popularized.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The faithful old parson had died after thirty years' preaching, and
+      perhaps the newer methods had begun to creep in, for it seemed impossible
+      to suit the two communities most interested in the choice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Rev. Mr. Davis, for example, was a spirited preacher, but persisted in
+      keeping two horses in the parsonage stable, and in exchanging them
+      whenever he could get faster ones. As a parochial visitor he was
+      incomparable, dashing from house to house with such speed that he could
+      cover the parish in a single afternoon. This sporting tendency, which
+      would never have been remarked in a British parson, was frowned upon in a
+      New England village, and Deacon Milliken told Mr. Davis, when giving him
+      what he alluded to as his &ldquo;walking papers,&rdquo; that they didn't want the
+      Edgewood church run by hoss power!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next candidate pleased Edgewood, where morning preaching was held, but
+      the other parish, which had afternoon service, declined to accept him
+      because he wore a wig&mdash;an ill-matched, crookedly applied wig.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Number three was eloquent but given to gesticulation, and Mrs. Jere
+      Burbank, the president of the Dorcas Society, who sat in a front pew, said
+      she couldn't bear to see a preacher scramble round the pulpit hot Sundays.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Number four, a genial, handsome man, gifted in prayer, was found to be a
+      Democrat. The congregation was overwhelmingly Republican in its politics,
+      and perceived something ludicrous, if not positively blasphemous, in a
+      Democrat preaching the gospel. (&ldquo;Ananias and Beelzebub'll be candidatin'
+      here, first thing we know!&rdquo; exclaimed the outraged Republican nominee for
+      district attorney.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Number five had a feeble-minded child, which the hiring committee
+      prophesied, would always be standing in the parsonage front yard, making
+      talk for the other denominations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Number six was the Rev. Judson Baxter, the present incumbent; and he was
+      voted to be as near perfection as a minister can be in this finite world.
+      His young wife had a small income of her own, a distinct and unusual
+      advantage, and the subscription committee hoped that they might not be
+      eternally driving over the country to get somebody's fifty cents that had
+      been over-due for eight months, but might take their onerous duties a
+      little more easily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It does seem as if our ministers were the poorest lot!&rdquo; complained Mrs.
+      Robinson. &ldquo;If their salary is two months behindhand they begin to be
+      nervous! Seems as though they might lay up a little before they come here,
+      and not live from hand to mouth so! The Baxters seem quite different, and
+      I only hope they won't get wasteful and run into debt. They say she keeps
+      the parlor blinds open bout half the time, and the room is lit up so often
+      evenin's that the neighbors think her and Mr. Baxter must set in there. It
+      don't seem hardly as if it could be so, but Mrs. Buzzell says tis, and she
+      says we might as well say good-by to the parlor carpet, which is church
+      property, for the Baxters are living all over it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This criticism was the only discordant note in the chorus of praise, and
+      the people gradually grew accustomed to the open blinds and the overused
+      parlor carpet, which was just completing its twenty-fifth year of honest
+      service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Baxter communicated her patriotic idea of a new flag to the Dorcas
+      Society, proposing that the women should cut and make it themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It may not be quite as good as those manufactured in the large cities,&rdquo;
+       she said, &ldquo;but we shall be proud to see our home-made flag flying in the
+      breeze, and it will mean all the more to the young voters growing up, to
+      remember that their mothers made it with their own hands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How would it do to let some of the girls help?&rdquo; modestly asked Miss
+      Dearborn, the Riverboro teacher. &ldquo;We might choose the best sewers and let
+      them put in at least a few stitches, so that they can feel they have a
+      share in it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just the thing!&rdquo; exclaimed Mrs. Baxter. &ldquo;We can cut the stripes and sew
+      them together, and after we have basted on the white stars the girls can
+      apply them to the blue ground. We must have it ready for the campaign
+      rally, and we couldn't christen it at a better time than in this
+      presidential year.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      II
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this way the great enterprise was started, and day by day the
+      preparations went forward in the two villages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boys, as future voters and fighters, demanded an active share in the
+      proceedings, and were organized by Squire Bean into a fife and drum corps,
+      so that by day and night martial but most inharmonious music woke the
+      echoes, and deafened mothers felt their patriotism oozing out at the soles
+      of their shoes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dick Carter was made captain, for his grandfather had a gold medal given
+      him by Queen Victoria for rescuing three hundred and twenty-six passengers
+      from a sinking British vessel. Riverboro thought it high time to pay some
+      graceful tribute to Great Britain in return for her handsome conduct to
+      Captain Nahum Carter, and human imagination could contrive nothing more
+      impressive than a vicarious share in the flag raising.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Living Perkins tried to be happy in the ranks, for he was offered no
+      official position, principally, Mrs. Smellie observed, because &ldquo;his
+      father's war record wa'nt clean.&rdquo; &ldquo;Oh, yes! Jim Perkins went to the war,&rdquo;
+       she continued. &ldquo;He hid out behind the hencoop when they was draftin', but
+      they found him and took him along. He got into one battle, too, somehow or
+      nother, but he run away from it. He was allers cautious, Jim was; if he
+      ever see trouble of any kind comin' towards him, he was out o' sight fore
+      it got a chance to light. He said eight dollars a month, without bounty,
+      wouldn't pay HIM to stop bullets for. He wouldn't fight a skeeter, Jim
+      wouldn't, but land! we ain't to war all the time, and he's a good neighbor
+      and a good blacksmith.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Dearborn was to be Columbia and the older girls of the two schools
+      were to be the States. Such trade in muslins and red, white, and blue
+      ribbons had never been known since &ldquo;Watson kep' store,&rdquo; and the number of
+      brief white petticoats hanging out to bleach would have caused the passing
+      stranger to imagine Riverboro a continual dancing school.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Juvenile virtue, both male and female, reached an almost impossible
+      height, for parents had only to lift a finger and say, &ldquo;you shan't go to
+      the flag raising!&rdquo; and the refractory spirit at once armed itself for new
+      struggles toward the perfect life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Jeremiah Cobb had consented to impersonate Uncle Sam, and was to drive
+      Columbia and the States to the &ldquo;raising&rdquo; on the top of his own stage.
+      Meantime the boys were drilling, the ladies were cutting and basting and
+      stitching, and the girls were sewing on stars; for the starry part of the
+      spangled banner was to remain with each of them in turn until she had
+      performed her share of the work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was felt by one and all a fine and splendid service indeed to help in
+      the making of the flag, and if Rebecca was proud to be of the chosen ones,
+      so was her Aunt Jane Sawyer, who had taught her all her delicate stitches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On a long-looked-for afternoon in August the minister's wife drove up to
+      the brick house door, and handed out the great piece of bunting to
+      Rebecca, who received it in her arms with as much solemnity as if it had
+      been a child awaiting baptismal rites.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm so glad!&rdquo; she sighed happily. &ldquo;I thought it would never come my
+      turn!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You should have had it a week ago, but Huldah Meserve upset the ink
+      bottle over her star, and we had to baste on another one. You are the
+      last, though, and then we shall sew the stars and stripes together, and
+      Seth Strout will get the top ready for hanging. Just think, it won't be
+      many days before you children will be pulling the rope with all your
+      strength, the band will be playing, the men will be cheering, and the new
+      flag will go higher and higher, till the red, white, and blue shows
+      against the sky!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca's eyes fairly blazed. &ldquo;Shall I fell on' my star, or buttonhole
+      it?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look at all the others and make the most beautiful stitches you can,
+      that's all. It is your star, you know, and you can even imagine it is your
+      state, and try and have it the best of all. If everybody else is trying to
+      do the same thing with her state, that will make a great country, won't
+      it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca's eyes spoke glad confirmation of the idea. &ldquo;My star, my state!&rdquo;
+       she repeated joyously. &ldquo;Oh, Mrs. Baxter, I'll make such fine stitches
+      you'll think the white grew out of the blue!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The new minister's wife looked pleased to see her spark kindle a flame in
+      the young heart. &ldquo;You can sew so much of yourself into your star,&rdquo; she
+      went on in the glad voice that made her so winsome, &ldquo;that when you are an
+      old lady you can put on your specs and find it among all the others.
+      Good-by! Come up to the parsonage Saturday afternoon; Mr. Baxter wants to
+      see you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Judson, help that dear little genius of a Rebecca all you can!&rdquo; she said
+      that night, when they were cosily talking in their parlor and living &ldquo;all
+      over&rdquo; the parish carpet. &ldquo;I don't know what she may, or may not, come to,
+      some day; I only wish she were ours! If you could have seen her clasp the
+      flag tight in her arms and put her cheek against it, and watched the tears
+      of feeling start in her eyes when I told her that her star was her state!
+      I kept whispering to myself, Covet not thy neighbor's child!'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Daily at four o'clock Rebecca scrubbed her hands almost to the bone,
+      brushed her hair, and otherwise prepared herself in body, mind, and spirit
+      for the consecrated labor of sewing on her star. All the time that her
+      needle cautiously, conscientiously formed the tiny stitches she was making
+      rhymes &ldquo;in her head,&rdquo; her favorite achievement being this:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your star, my star, all our stars together, They make the dear old banner
+      proud To float in the bright fall weather.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was much discussion as to which of the girls should impersonate the
+      State of Maine, for that was felt to be the highest honor in the gift of
+      the committee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Alice Robinson was the prettiest child in the village, but she was very
+      shy and by no means a general favorite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Minnie Smellie possessed the handsomest dress and a pair of white slippers
+      and open-work stockings that nearly carried the day. Still, as Miss Delia
+      Weeks well said, she was so stupid that if she should suck her thumb in
+      the very middle of the exercises nobody'd be a dite surprised!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Huldah Meserve was next voted upon, and the fact that if she were not
+      chosen her father might withdraw his subscription to the brass band fund
+      was a matter for grave consideration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I kind o' hate to have such a giggler for the State of Maine; let her be
+      the Goddess of Liberty,&rdquo; proposed Mrs. Burbank, whose patriotism was more
+      local than national.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How would Rebecca Randall do for Maine, and let her speak some of her
+      verses?&rdquo; suggested the new minister's wife, who, could she have had her
+      way, would have given all the prominent parts to Rebecca, from Uncle Sam
+      down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So, beauty, fashion, and wealth having been tried and found wanting, the
+      committee discussed the claims of talent, and it transpired that to the
+      awe-stricken Rebecca fell the chief plum in the pudding. It was a tribute
+      to her gifts that there was no jealousy or envy among the other girls;
+      they readily conceded her special fitness for the role.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her life had not been pressed down full to the brim of pleasures, and she
+      had a sort of distrust of joy in the bud. Not until she saw it in full
+      radiance of bloom did she dare embrace it. She had never read any verse
+      but Byron, Felicia Hemans, bits of &ldquo;Paradise Lost,&rdquo; and the selections in
+      the school readers, but she would have agreed heartily with the poet who
+      said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not by appointment do we meet delight And joy; they heed not our
+      expectancy; But round some corner in the streets of life They on a sudden
+      clasp us with a smile.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For many nights before the raising, when she went to her bed she said to
+      herself, after she had finished her prayers: &ldquo;It can't be true that I'm
+      chosen for the State of Maine! It just CAN'T be true! Nobody could be good
+      ENOUGH, but oh, I'll try to be as good as I can! To be going to Wareham
+      Seminary next week and to be the State of Maine too! Oh! I must pray HARD
+      to God to keep me meek and humble!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      III
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The flag was to be raised on a Tuesday, and on the previous Sunday it
+      became known to the children that Clara Belle Simpson was coming back from
+      Acreville, coming to live with Mrs. Fogg and take care of the baby, called
+      by the neighborhood boys &ldquo;the Fogg horn,&rdquo; on account of his excellent
+      voice production.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Clara Belle was one of Miss Dearborn's original flock, and if she were
+      left wholly out of the festivities she would be the only girl of suitable
+      age to be thus slighted; it seemed clear to the juvenile mind, therefore,
+      that neither she nor her descendants would ever recover from such a blow.
+      But, under all the circumstances, would she be allowed to join in the
+      procession? Even Rebecca, the optimistic, feared not, and the committee
+      confirmed her fears by saying that Abner Simpson's daughter certainly
+      could not take any prominent part in the ceremony, but they hoped that
+      Mrs. Fogg would allow her to witness it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Abner Simpson, urged by the town authorities, took his wife and seven
+      children away from Riverboro to Acreville, just over the border in the
+      next county, Riverboro went to bed leaving its barn and shed doors
+      unfastened, and drew long breaths of gratitude to Providence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of most winning disposition and genial manners, Mr. Simpson had not that
+      instinctive comprehension of property rights which renders a man a
+      valuable citizen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Squire Bean was his nearest neighbor, and he conceived the novel idea of
+      paying Simpson five dollars a year not to steal from him, a method
+      occasionally used in the Highlands in the early days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bargain was struck, and adhered to religiously for a twelve-month, but
+      on the second of January Mr. Simpson announced the verbal contract as
+      formally broken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't know what I was doin' when I made it, Squire,&rdquo; he urged. &ldquo;In the
+      first place, it's a slur on my reputation and an injury to my
+      self-respect. Secondly, it's a nervous strain on me; and thirdly, five
+      dollars don't pay me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Squire Bean was so struck with the unique and convincing nature of these
+      arguments that he could scarcely restrain his admiration, and he confessed
+      to himself afterward, that unless Simpson's mental attitude could be
+      changed he was perhaps a fitter subject for medical science than the state
+      prison.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abner was a most unusual thief, and conducted his operations with a tact
+      and neighborly consideration none too common in the profession. He would
+      never steal a man's scythe in haying-time, nor his fur lap-robe in the
+      coldest of the winter. The picking of a lock offered no attractions to
+      him; &ldquo;he wa'n't no burglar,&rdquo; he would have scornfully asserted. A strange
+      horse and wagon hitched by the roadside was the most flagrant of his
+      thefts; but it was the small things&mdash;the hatchet or axe on the
+      chopping-block, the tin pans sunning at the side door, a stray garment
+      bleaching on the grass, a hoe, rake, shovel, or a bag of early potatoes,
+      that tempted him most sorely; and these appealed to him not so much for
+      their intrinsic value as because they were so excellently adapted to
+      swapping. The swapping was really the enjoyable part of the procedure, the
+      theft was only a sad but necessary preliminary; for if Abner himself had
+      been a man of sufficient property to carry on his business operations
+      independently, it is doubtful if he would have helped himself so freely to
+      his neighbor's goods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Riverboro regretted the loss of Mrs. Simpson, who was useful in scrubbing,
+      cleaning, and washing, and was thought to exercise some influence over her
+      predatory spouse. There was a story of their early married life, when they
+      had a farm; a story to the effect that Mrs. Simpson always rode on every
+      load of hay that her husband took to Milltown, with the view of keeping
+      him sober through the day. After he turned out of the country road and
+      approached the metropolis, it was said that he used to bury the docile
+      lady in the load. He would then drive on to the scales, have the weight of
+      the hay entered in the buyer's book, take his horses to the stable for
+      feed and water, and when a favorable opportunity offered he would assist
+      the hot and panting Mrs. Simpson out of the side or back of the rack, and
+      gallantly brush the straw from her person. For this reason it was always
+      asserted that Abner Simpson sold his wife every time he went to Milltown,
+      but the story was never fully substantiated, and at all events it was the
+      only suspected blot on meek Mrs. Simpson's personal reputation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for the Simpson children, they were missed chiefly as familiar figures
+      by the roadside; but Rebecca honestly loved Clara Belle, notwithstanding
+      her Aunt Miranda's opposition to the intimacy. Rebecca's &ldquo;taste for low
+      company&rdquo; was a source of continual anxiety to her aunt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anything that's human flesh is good enough for her!&rdquo; Miranda groaned to
+      Jane. &ldquo;She'll ride with the rag-sack-and-bottle peddler just as quick as
+      she would with the minister; she always sets beside the St. Vitus' dance
+      young one at Sabbath school; and she's forever riggin' and onriggin' that
+      dirty Simpson baby! She reminds me of a puppy that'll always go to
+      everybody that'll have him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was thought very creditable to Mrs. Fogg that she sent for Clara Belle
+      to live with her and go to school part of the year.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She'll be useful&rdquo; said Mrs. Fogg, &ldquo;and she'll be out of her father's way,
+      and so keep honest; though she's no awful hombly I've no fears for her. A
+      girl with her red hair, freckles, and cross-eyes can't fall into no kind
+      of sin, I don't believe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Fogg requested that Clara Belle should be started on her journey from
+      Acreville by train and come the rest of the way by stage, and she was
+      disturbed to receive word on Sunday that Mr. Simpson had borrowed a &ldquo;good
+      roader&rdquo; from a new acquaintance, and would himself drive the girl from
+      Acreville to Riverboro, a distance of thirty-five miles. That he would
+      arrive in their vicinity on the very night before the flag-raising was
+      thought by Riverboro to be a public misfortune, and several residents
+      hastily determined to deny themselves a sight of the festivities and
+      remain watchfully on their own premises.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On Monday afternoon the children were rehearsing their songs at the
+      meeting-house. As Rebecca came out on the broad wooden steps she watched
+      Mrs. Peter Meserve's buggy out of sight, for in front, wrapped in a cotton
+      sheet, lay the previous flag. After a few chattering good-bys and weather
+      prophecies with the other girls, she started on her homeward walk,
+      dropping in at the parsonage to read her verses to the minister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He welcomed her gladly as she removed her white cotton gloves (hastily
+      slipped on outside the door, for ceremony) and pushed back the funny hat
+      with the yellow and black porcupine quills&mdash;the hat with which she
+      made her first appearance in Riverboro society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've heard the beginning, Mr. Baxter; now will you please tell me if
+      you like the last verse?&rdquo; she asked, taking out her paper. &ldquo;I've only read
+      it to Alice Robinson, and I think perhaps she can never be a poet, though
+      she's a splendid writer. Last year when she was twelve she wrote a
+      birthday poem to herself, and she made natal' rhyme with Milton,.' which,
+      of course, it wouldn't. I remember every verse ended:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     'This is my day so natal
+     And I will follow Milton.'
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Another one of hers was written just because she couldn't help it, she
+      said. This was it:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     'Let me to the hills away,
+     Give me pen and paper;
+     I'll write until the earth will sway
+     The story of my Maker.'&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      The minister could scarcely refrain from smiling, but he controlled
+      himself that he might lose none of Rebecca's quaint observations. When she
+      was perfectly at ease, unwatched and uncriticised, she was a marvelous
+      companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The name of the poem is going to be My Star,'&rdquo; she continued, &ldquo;and Mrs.
+      Baxter gave me all the ideas, but somehow there's a kind of magicness when
+      they get into poetry, don't you think so?&rdquo; (Rebecca always talked to grown
+      people as if she were their age, or, a more subtle and truer distinction,
+      as if they were hers.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It has often been so remarked, in different words,&rdquo; agreed the minister.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+&ldquo;Mrs. Baxter said that each star was a state, and if each state did its
+best we should have a splendid country. Then once she said that we ought
+to be glad the war is over and the States are all at peace together; and
+I thought Columbia must be glad, too, for Miss Dearborn says she's
+the mother of all the States. So I'm going to have it end like this: I
+didn't write it, I just sewed it while I was working on my star:
+
+     For it's your star, my star, all the stars together,
+     That make our country's flag so proud
+     To float in the bright fall weather.
+     Northern stars, Southern stars, stars of the East and West,
+     Side by side they lie at peace
+     On the dear flag's mother-breast.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Oh! many are the poets that are sown by nature,'&rdquo; thought the minister,
+      quoting Wordsworth to himself. &ldquo;And I wonder what becomes of them! That's
+      a pretty idea, little Rebecca, and I don't know whether you or my wife
+      ought to have the more praise. What made you think of the stars lying on
+      the flag's mother-breast'? Where did you get that word?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why&rdquo; (and the young poet looked rather puzzled), &ldquo;that's the way it is;
+      the flag is the whole country&mdash;the mother&mdash;and the stars are the
+      states. The stars had to lie somewhere: 'LAP' nor 'ARMS' wouldn't sound
+      well with West,' so, of course, I said 'BREAST,'&rdquo; Rebecca answered, with
+      some surprise at the question; and the minister put his hand under her
+      chin and kissed her softly on the forehead when he said good-by at the
+      door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IV
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca walked rapidly along in the gathering twilight, thinking of the
+      eventful morrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As she approached the turning on the left called the old Milltown road,
+      she saw a white horse and wagon, driven by a man with a rakish, flapping,
+      Panama hat, come rapidly around the turn and disappear over the long hills
+      leading down to the falls. There was no mistaking him; there never was
+      another Abner Simpson, with his lean height, his bushy reddish hair, the
+      gay cock of his hat, and the long piratical, upturned mustaches, which the
+      boys used to say were used as hat-racks by the Simpson children at night..
+      The old Milltown road ran past Mrs. Fogg's house, so he must have left
+      Clara Belle there, and Rebecca's heart glowed to think that her poor
+      little friend need not miss the raising.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She began to run now, fearful of being late for supper, and covered the
+      ground to the falls in a brief time. As she crossed the bridge she again
+      saw Abner Simpson's team, drawn up at the watering trough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Coming a little nearer, with the view of inquiring for the family, her
+      quick eye caught sight of something unexpected. A gust of wind blew up a
+      corner of a linen lap-robe in the back of the wagon, and underneath it she
+      distinctly saw the white-sheeted bundle that held the flag; the bundle
+      with a tiny, tiny spot of red bunting peeping out at one corner. It is
+      true she had eaten, slept, dreamed red, white, and blue for weeks, but
+      there was no mistaking the evidence of her senses; the idolized flag,
+      longed for, worked for, sewed for, that flag was in the back of Abner
+      Simpson's wagon, and if so, what would become of the raising?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Acting on blind impulse, she ran toward the watering-trough, calling out
+      in her clear treble: &ldquo;Mr. Simpson! Oh, Mr. Simpson, will you let me ride a
+      piece with you and hear all about Clara Belle? I'm going part way over to
+      the Centre on an errand.&rdquo; (So she was; a most important errand,&mdash;to
+      recover the flag of her country at present in the hands of the foe!)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Simpson turned round in his seat and cried heartily, &ldquo;Certain sure I
+      will!&rdquo; for he liked the fair sex, young and old, and Rebecca had always
+      been a prime favorite with him. &ldquo;Climb right in! How's everybody? Glad to
+      see ye! The folks talk bout ye from sun-up to sun-down, and Clara Belle
+      can't hardly wait for a sight of ye!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca scrambled up, trembling and pale with excitement. She did not in
+      the least know what was going to happen, but she was sure that the flag,
+      when in the enemy's country, must be at least a little safer with the
+      State of Maine sitting on top of it!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Simpson began a long monologue about Acreville, the house he lived in,
+      the pond in front of it, Mrs. Simpson's health, and various items of news
+      about the children, varied by reports of his personal misfortunes. He put
+      no questions, and asked no replies, so this gave the inexperienced soldier
+      a few seconds to plan a campaign. There were three houses to pass; the
+      Browns' at the corner, the Millikens', and the Robinsons' on the brow of
+      the hill. If Mr. Robinson were in the front yard she might tell Mr.
+      Simpson she wanted to call there and ask Mr. Robinson to hold the horse's
+      head while she got out of the wagon. Then she might fly to the back before
+      Mr. Simpson could realize the situation, and dragging out the precious
+      bundle, sit on it hard, while Mr. Robinson settled the matter of ownership
+      with Mr. Simpson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was feasible, but it meant a quarrel between the two men, who held an
+      ancient grudge against each other, and Mr. Simpson was a valiant fighter
+      as the various sheriffs who had attempted to arrest him could cordially
+      testify. It also meant that everybody in the village would hear of the
+      incident and poor Clara Belle be branded again as the child of a thief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another idea danced into her excited brain; such a clever one she could
+      hardly believe it hers. She might call Mr. Robinson to the wagon, and when
+      he came close to the wheels she might say, &ldquo;all of a sudden&rdquo;: &ldquo;Please take
+      the flag out of the back of the wagon, Mr. Robinson. We have brought it
+      here for you to keep overnight.&rdquo; Mr. Simpson might be so surprised that he
+      would give up his prize rather than be suspected of stealing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But as they neared the Robinsons' house there was not a sign of life to be
+      seen; so the last plan, ingenious though it was, was perforce abandoned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The road now lay between thick pine woods with no dwelling in sight. It
+      was growing dusk and Rebecca was driving along the lonely way with a
+      person who was generally called Slippery Simpson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not a thought of fear crossed her mind, save the fear of bungling in her
+      diplomacy, and so losing the flag. She knew Mr. Simpson well, and a
+      pleasanter man was seldom to be met. She recalled an afternoon when he
+      came home and surprised the whole school playing the Revolutionary War in
+      his helter-skelter dooryard, and the way in which he had joined the
+      British forces and impersonated General Burgoyne had greatly endeared him
+      to her. The only difficulty was to find proper words for her delicate
+      mission, for, of course, if Mr. Simpson's anger were aroused, he would
+      politely push her out of the wagon and drive away with the flag. Perhaps
+      if she led the conversation in the right direction an opportunity would
+      present itself. She well remembered how Emma Jane Perkins had failed to
+      convert Jacob Moody, simply because she failed to &ldquo;lead up&rdquo; to the
+      delicate question of his manner of life. Clearing her throat nervously,
+      she began: &ldquo;Is it likely to be fair tomorrow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Guess so; clear as a bell. What's on foot; a picnic?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; we're to have a grand flag-raising!&rdquo; (&ldquo;That is,&rdquo; she thought, &ldquo;if we
+      have any flag to raise!&rdquo;)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That so? Where?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The three villages are to club together and have a rally, and raise the
+      flag at the Centre. There'll be a brass band, and speakers, and the Mayor
+      of Portland, and the man that will be governor if he's elected, and a
+      dinner in the Grange Hall, and we girls are chosen to raise the flag.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to know! That'll be grand, won't it?&rdquo; (Still not a sign of
+      consciousness on the part of Abner.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope Mrs. Fogg will take Clara Belle, for it will be splendid to look
+      at! Mr. Cobb is going to be Uncle Sam and drive us on the stage. Miss
+      Dearborn&mdash;Clara Belle's old teacher, you know&mdash;is going to be
+      Columbia; the girls will be the States of the Union, and oh, Mr. Simpson,
+      I am the one to be the State of Maine!&rdquo; (This was not altogether to the
+      point, but a piece of information impossible to conceal.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Simpson flourished the whipstock and gave a loud, hearty laugh. Then
+      he turned in his seat and regarded Rebecca curiously. &ldquo;You're kind of
+      small, hain't ye, for so big a state as this one?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Any of us would be too small,&rdquo; replied Rebecca with dignity, &ldquo;but the
+      committee asked me, and I am going to try hard to do well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tragic thought that there might be no occasion for anybody to do
+      anything, well or ill, suddenly overcame her here, and putting her hand on
+      Mr. Simpson's sleeve, she attacked the subject practically and
+      courageously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Mr. Simpson, dear Mr. Simpson, it's such a mortifying subject I can't
+      bear to say anything about it, but please give us back our flag! Don't,
+      DON'T take it over to Acreville, Mr. Simpson! We've worked so long to make
+      it, and it was so hard getting the money for the bunting! Wait a minute,
+      please; don't be angry, and don't say no just yet, till I explain more.
+      It'll be so dreadful for everybody to get there tomorrow morning and find
+      no flag to raise, and the band and the mayor all disappointed, and the
+      children crying, with their muslin dresses all bought for nothing! O dear
+      Mr. Simpson, please don't take our flag away from us!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The apparently astonished Abner pulled his mustaches and exclaimed: &ldquo;But I
+      don't know what you're drivin' at! Who's got yer flag? I hain't!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Could duplicity, deceit, and infamy go any further, Rebecca wondered, and
+      her soul filling with righteous wrath, she cast discretion to the winds
+      and spoke a little more plainly, bending her great swimming eyes on the
+      now embarrassed Abner, who looked like an angle-worm, wriggling on a pin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Simpson, how can you say that, when I saw the flag in the back of
+      your wagon myself, when you stopped to water the horse? It's wicked of you
+      to take it, and I cannot bear it!&rdquo; (Her voice broke now, for a doubt of
+      Mr. Simpson's yielding suddenly darkened her mind.) &ldquo;If you keep it,
+      you'll have to keep me, for I won't be parted from it! I can't fight like
+      the boys, but I can pinch and scratch, and I WILL scratch, just like a
+      panther&mdash;I'll lie right down on my star and not move, if I starve to
+      death!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here, hold your hosses n' don't cry till you git something to cry
+      for!&rdquo; grumbled the outraged Abner, to whom a clue had just come; and
+      leaning over the wagon-back he caught hold of a corner of white sheet and
+      dragged up the bundle, scooping off Rebecca's hat in the process, and
+      almost burying her in bunting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She caught the treasure passionately to her heart and stifled her sobs in
+      it, while Abner exclaimed: &ldquo;I swan to man, if that hain't a flag! Well, in
+      that case you're good n' welcome to it! Land! I seen that bundle lyin' in
+      the middle o' the road and I says to myself, that's somebody's washin' and
+      I'd better pick it up and leave it at the post-office to be claimed; n'
+      all the time it was a flag!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was a Simpsonian version of the matter, the fact being that a
+      white-covered bundle lying on the Meserves' front steps had attracted his
+      practiced eye, and slipping in at the open gate he had swiftly and deftly
+      removed it to his wagon on general principles; thinking if it were clean
+      clothes it would be extremely useful, and in any event there was no good
+      in passing by something flung into your very arms, so to speak. He had had
+      no leisure to examine the bundle, and indeed took little interest in it.
+      Probably he stole it simply from force of habit, and because there was
+      nothing else in sight to steal, everybody's premises being preternaturally
+      tidy and empty, almost as if his visit had been expected!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca was a practical child, and it seemed to her almost impossible that
+      so heavy a bundle should fall out of Mrs. Meserve's buggy and not be
+      noticed; but she hoped that Mr. Simpson was telling the truth, and she was
+      too glad and grateful to doubt anyone at the moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, thank you ever so much, Mr. Simpson. You're the nicest,
+      kindest, politest man I ever knew, and the girls will be so pleased you
+      gave us back the flag, and so will the Dorcas Society; they'll be sure to
+      write you a letter of thanks; they always do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell em not to bother bout any thanks,&rdquo; said Simpson, beaming virtuously.
+      &ldquo;But land! I'm glad twas me that happened to see that bundle in the road
+      and take the trouble to pick it up.&rdquo; (&ldquo;Jest to think of it's bein' a
+      flag!&rdquo; he thought; &ldquo;if ever there was a pesky, wuthless thing to trade
+      off, twould be a great, gormin' flag like that!&rdquo;)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can I get out now, please?&rdquo; asked Rebecca. &ldquo;I want to go back, for Mrs.
+      Meserve will be dreadfully nervous when she finds out she dropped the
+      flag, and she has heart trouble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, you don't,&rdquo; objected Mr. Simpson gallantly, turning the horse. &ldquo;Do
+      you think I'd let a little creeter like you lug that great heavy bundle? I
+      hain't got time to go back to Meserve's, but I'll take you to the corner
+      and dump you there, flag n' all, and you can get some o' the men-folks to
+      carry it the rest o' the way. You'll wear it out, huggin' it so!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I helped make it and I adore it!&rdquo; said Rebecca, who was in a high-pitched
+      and grandiloquent mood. &ldquo;Why don't YOU like it? It's your country's flag.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Simpson smiled an indulgent smile and looked a trifle bored at these
+      frequent appeals to his extremely rusty higher feelings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don' know's I've got any partic'lar int'rest in the country,&rdquo; he
+      remarked languidly. &ldquo;I know I don't owe nothin' to it, nor own nothin' in
+      it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You own a star on the flag, same as everybody,&rdquo; argued Rebecca, who had
+      been feeding on patriotism for a month; &ldquo;and you own a state, too, like
+      all of us!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Land! I wish't I did! or even a quarter section!&rdquo; sighed Mr. Simpson,
+      feeling somehow a little more poverty-stricken and discouraged than usual.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they approached the corner and the watering-trough where four
+      cross-roads met, the whole neighborhood seemed to be in evidence, and Mr.
+      Simpson suddenly regretted his chivalrous escort of Rebecca; especially
+      when, as he neared the group, an excited lady, wringing her hands, turned
+      out to be Mrs. Peter Meserve, accompanied by Huldah, the Browns, Mrs.
+      Milliken, Abijah Flagg, and Miss Dearborn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know anything about the new flag, Rebecca?&rdquo; shrieked Mrs. Meserve,
+      too agitated, at the moment, to notice the child's companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's right here in my lap, all safe,&rdquo; responded Rebecca joyously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You careless, meddlesome young one, to take it off my steps where I left
+      it just long enough to go round to the back and hunt up my door-key!
+      You've given me a fit of sickness with my weak heart, and what business
+      was it of yours? I believe you think you OWN the flag! Hand it over to me
+      this minute!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca was climbing down during this torrent of language, but as she
+      turned she flashed one look of knowledge at the false Simpson, a look that
+      went through him from head to foot, as if it were carried by electricity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had not deceived her after all, owing to the angry chatter of Mrs.
+      Meserve. He had been handcuffed twice in his life, but no sheriff had ever
+      discomfited him so thoroughly as this child. Fury mounted to his brain,
+      and as soon as she was safely out from between the wheels he stood up in
+      the wagon and flung the flag out in the road in the midst of the excited
+      group.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take it, you pious, passimonious, cheese-parin', hair-splittin',
+      back-bitin', flag-raisin' crew!&rdquo; he roared. &ldquo;Rebecca never took the flag;
+      I found it in the road, I say!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You never, no such a thing!&rdquo; exclaimed Mrs. Meserve. &ldquo;You found it on the
+      doorsteps in my garden!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mebbe twas your garden, but it was so chock full o' weeks I THOUGHT twas
+      the road,&rdquo; retorted Abner. &ldquo;I vow I wouldn't a' given the old rag back to
+      one o' YOU, not if you begged me on your bended knees! But Rebecca's a
+      friend o' my folks and can do with her flag's she's a mind to, and the
+      rest o' ye can go to thunder&mdash;n' stay there, for all I care!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So saying, he made a sharp turn, gave the gaunt white horse a lash and
+      disappeared in a cloud of dust, before the astonished Mr. Brown, the only
+      man in the party, had a thought of detaining him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sorry I spoke so quick, Rebecca,&rdquo; said Mrs. Meserve, greatly
+      mortified at the situation. &ldquo;But don't you believe a word that lyin'
+      critter said! He did steal it off my doorstep, and how did you come to be
+      ridin' and consortin' with him! I believe it would kill your Aunt Miranda
+      if she should hear about it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The little school-teacher put a sheltering arm round Rebecca as Mr. Brown
+      picked up the flag and dusted and folded it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm willing she should hear about it,&rdquo; Rebecca answered. &ldquo;I didn't do
+      anything to be ashamed of! I saw the flag in the back of Mr. Simpson's
+      wagon and I just followed it. There weren't any men or any Dorcases to
+      take care of it and so it fell to me! You wouldn't have had me let it out
+      of my sight, would you, and we going to raise it tomorrow morning?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rebecca's perfectly right, Mrs. Meserve!&rdquo; said Miss Dearborn proudly.
+      &ldquo;And it's lucky there was somebody quick-witted enough to ride and
+      consort' with Mr. Simpson! I don't know what the village will think, but
+      seems to me the town clerk might write down in his book, THIS DAY THE
+      STATE OF MAINE SAVED THE FLAG!'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Sixth Chronicle. THE STATE O' MAINE GIRL
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The foregoing episode, if narrated in a romance, would undoubtedly have
+      been called &ldquo;The Saving of the Colors,&rdquo; but at the nightly conversazione
+      in Watson's store it was alluded to as the way little Becky Randall got
+      the flag away from Slippery Simpson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dramatic as it was, it passed into the limbo of half-forgotten things in
+      Rebecca's mind, its brief importance submerged in the glories of the next
+      day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a painful prelude to these glories. Alice Robinson came to spend
+      the night with Rebecca, and when the bedroom door closed upon the two
+      girls, Alice announced here intention of &ldquo;doing up&rdquo; Rebecca's front hair
+      in leads and rags, and braiding the back in six tight, wetted braids.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca demurred. Alice persisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your hair is so long and thick and dark and straight,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that
+      you'll look like an Injun!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am the State of Maine; it all belonged to the Indians once,&rdquo; Rebecca
+      remarked gloomily, for she was curiously shy about discussing her personal
+      appearance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And your wreath of little pine-cones won't set decent without crimps,&rdquo;
+       continued Alice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca glanced in the cracked looking-glass and met what she considered
+      an accusing lack of beauty, a sight that always either saddened or enraged
+      her according to circumstances; then she sat down resignedly and began to
+      help Alice in the philanthropic work of making the State of Maine fit to
+      be seen at the raising.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Neither of the girls was an expert hairdresser, and at the end of an hour,
+      when the sixth braid was tied, and Rebecca had given one last shuddering
+      look in the mirror, both were ready to weep with fatigue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The candle was blown out and Alice soon went to sleep, but Rebecca tossed
+      on her pillow, its goose-feathered softness all dented by the cruel lead
+      knobs and the knots of twisted rags. She slipped out of bed and walked to
+      and fro, holding her aching head with both hands. Finally she leaned on
+      the window-sill, watching the still weather-vane on Alice's barn and
+      breathing in the fragrance of the ripening apples, until her restlessness
+      subsided under the clear starry beauty of the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At six in the morning the girls were out of bed, for Alice could hardly
+      wait until Rebecca's hair was taken down, she was so eager to see the
+      result of her labors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The leads and rags were painfully removed, together with much hair, the
+      operation being punctuated by a series of squeaks, squeals, and shrieks on
+      the part of Rebecca and a series of warnings from Alice, who wished the
+      preliminaries to be kept secret from the aunts, that they might the more
+      fully appreciate the radiant result.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then came the unbraiding, and then&mdash;dramatic moment&mdash;the
+      &ldquo;combing out;&rdquo; a difficult, not to say impossible process, in which the
+      hairs that had resisted the earlier stages almost gave up the ghost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The long front strands had been wound up from various angles and by
+      various methods, so that, when released, they assumed the strangest, most
+      obstinate, most unexpected attitudes. When the comb was dragged through
+      the last braid, the wild, tortured, electric hairs following, and then
+      rebounding from it in a bristling, snarling tangle. Massachusetts gave one
+      encompassing glance at the State o' Maine's head, and announced her
+      intention of going home to breakfast! She was deeply grieved at the result
+      of her attempted beautifying, but she felt that meeting Miss Miranda
+      Sawyer at the morning meal would not mend matters in the least, so
+      slipping out of the side door, she ran up Guide Board hill as fast as her
+      legs could carry her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The State o' Maine, deserted and somewhat unnerved, sat down before the
+      glass and attacked her hair doggedly and with set lips, working over it
+      until Miss Jane called her to breakfast; then, with a boldness born of
+      despair, she entered the dining room, where her aunts were already seated
+      at table. To &ldquo;draw fire&rdquo; she whistled, a forbidden joy, which only
+      attracted more attention, instead of diverting it. There was a moment of
+      silence after the grotesque figure was fully taken in; then came a moan
+      from Jane and a groan from Miranda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What have you done to yourself?&rdquo; asked Miranda sternly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Made an effort to be beautiful and failed!&rdquo; jauntily replied Rebecca, but
+      she was too miserable to keep up the fiction. &ldquo;Oh, Aunt Miranda, don't
+      scold. I'm so unhappy! Alice and I rolled up my hair to curl it for the
+      raising. She said it was so straight I looked like an Indian!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mebbe you did,&rdquo; vigorously agreed Miranda, &ldquo;but 't any rate you looked
+      like a Christian Injun, 'n' now you look like a heathen Injun; that's all
+      the difference I can see. What can we do with her, Jane, between this and
+      nine o'clock?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll all go out to the pump just as soon as we're through breakfast,&rdquo;
+       answered Jane soothingly. &ldquo;We can accomplish consid'rable with water and
+      force.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca nibbled her corn-cake, her tearful eyes cast on her plate and her
+      chin quivering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you cry and red your eyes up,&rdquo; chided Miranda quite kindly; &ldquo;the
+      minute you've eat enough run up and get your brush and comb and meet us at
+      the back door.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wouldn't care myself how bad I looked,&rdquo; said Rebecca, &ldquo;but I can't bear
+      to be so homely that I shame the State of Maine!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh, what an hour followed this plaint! Did any aspirant for literary or
+      dramatic honors ever pass to fame through such an antechamber of horrors?
+      Did poet of the day ever have his head so maltreated? To be dipped in the
+      rain-water tub, soused again and again; to be held under the spout and
+      pumped on; to be rubbed furiously with rough roller towels; to be dried
+      with hot flannels! And is it not well-nigh incredible that at the close of
+      such an hour the ends of the long hair should still stand out straight,
+      the braids having been turned up two inches by Alice, and tied hard in
+      that position with linen thread?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get out the skirt-board, Jane,&rdquo; cried Miranda, to whom opposition served
+      as a tonic, &ldquo;and move that flat-iron on to the front o' the stove.
+      Rebecca, set down in that low chair beside the board, and Jane, you spread
+      out her hair on it and cover it up with brown paper. Don't cringe,
+      Rebecca; the worst's over, and you've borne up real good! I'll be careful
+      not to pull your hair nor scorch you, and oh, HOW I'd like to have Alice
+      Robinson acrost my knee and a good strip o' shingle in my right hand!
+      There, you're all ironed out and your Aunt Jane can put on your white
+      dress and braid your hair up again good and tight. Perhaps you won't be
+      the hombliest of the states, after all; but when I see you comin' in to
+      breakfast I said to myself: I guess if Maine looked like that, it wouldn't
+      never a' been admitted into the Union!'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When Uncle Sam and the stagecoach drew up to the brick house with a grand
+      swing and a flourish, the goddess of Liberty and most of the States were
+      already in their places on the &ldquo;harricane deck.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Words fail to describe the gallant bearing of the horses, their headstalls
+      gayly trimmed and their harnesses dotted with little flags. The stage
+      windows were hung in bunting, and from within beamed Columbia, looking out
+      from the bright frame as if proud of her freight of loyal children.
+      Patriotic streamers floated from whip, from dash-board and from rumble,
+      and the effect of the whole was something to stimulate the most phlegmatic
+      voter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca came out on the steps and Aunt Jane brought a chair to assist in
+      the ascent. Miss Dearborn peeped from the window, and gave a despairing
+      look at her favorite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What had happened to her? Who had dressed her? Had her head been put
+      through a wringing-machine? Why were her eyes red and swollen? Miss
+      Dearborn determined to take her behind the trees in the pine grove and
+      give her some finishing touches; touches that her skillful fingers fairly
+      itched to bestow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stage started, and as the roadside pageant grew gayer and gayer,
+      Rebecca began to brighten and look prettier, for most of her beautifying
+      came from within. The people, walking, driving, or standing on their
+      doorsteps, cheered Uncle Sam's coach with its freight of
+      gossamer-muslined, fluttering-ribboned girls, and just behind, the
+      gorgeously decorated haycart, driven by Abijah Flagg, bearing the jolly
+      but inharmonious fife-and-drum corps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Was ever such a golden day! Such crystal air! Such mellow sunshine! Such a
+      merry Uncle Sam!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stage drew up at an appointed spot near a pine grove, and while the
+      crowd was gathering, the children waited for the hour to arrive when they
+      should march to the platform; the hour toward which they seemed to have
+      been moving since the dawn of creation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as possible Miss Dearborn whispered to Rebecca: &ldquo;Come behind the
+      trees with me; I want to make you prettier!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca thought she had suffered enough from that process already during
+      the last twelve hours, but she put out an obedient hand and the two
+      withdrew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now Miss Dearborn was, I fear, a very indifferent teacher. Dr. Moses
+      always said so, and Libbie Moses, who wanted her school, said it was a
+      pity she hadn't enjoyed more social advantages in her youth. Libbie
+      herself had taken music lessons in Portland; and spent a night at the
+      Profile House in the White Mountains, and had visited her sister in
+      Lowell, Massachusetts. These experiences gave her, in her own mind, and in
+      the mind of her intimate friends, a horizon so boundless that her view of
+      smaller, humbler matters was a trifle distorted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Dearborn's stock in trade was small, her principal virtues being
+      devotion to children and ability to gain their love, and a power of
+      evolving a schoolroom order so natural, cheery, serene, and peaceful that
+      it gave the beholder a certain sense of being in a district heaven. She
+      was poor in arithmetic and weak in geometry, but if you gave her a rose, a
+      bit of ribbon, and a seven-by-nine looking-glass she could make herself as
+      pretty as a pink in two minutes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Safely sheltered behind the pines, Miss Dearborn began to practice
+      mysterious feminine arts. She flew at Rebecca's tight braids, opened the
+      strands and rebraided them loosely; bit and tore the red, white, and blue
+      ribbon in two and tied the braids separately. Then with nimble fingers she
+      pulled out little tendrils of hair behind the ears and around the nape of
+      the neck. After a glance of acute disapproval directed at the stiff
+      balloon skirt she knelt on the ground and gave a strenuous embrace to
+      Rebecca's knees, murmuring, between her hugs, &ldquo;Starch must be cheap at the
+      brick house!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This particular line of beauty attained, there ensued great pinchings of
+      ruffles, her fingers that could never hold a ferrule nor snap children's
+      ears being incomparable fluting-irons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next the sash was scornfully untied and tightened to suggest something
+      resembling a waist. The chastened bows that had been squat, dowdy,
+      spiritless, were given tweaks, flirts, bracing little pokes and dabs,
+      till, acknowledging a master hand, they stood up, piquant, pert, smart,
+      alert!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pride of bearing was now infused into the flattened lace at the neck, and
+      a pin (removed at some sacrifice from her own toilette) was darned in at
+      the back to prevent any cowardly lapsing. The short white cotton gloves
+      that called attention to the tanned wrist and arms were stripped off and
+      put in her own pocket. Then the wreath of pine-cones was adjusted at a
+      heretofore unimagined angle, the hair was pulled softly into a fluffy
+      frame, and finally, as she met Rebecca's grateful eyes she gave her two
+      approving, triumphant kisses. In a second the sensitive face lighted into
+      happiness; pleased dimples appeared in the cheeks, the kissed mouth was as
+      red as a rose, and the little fright that had walked behind the pine-tree
+      stepped out on the other side Rebecca the lovely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As to the relative value of Miss Dearborn's accomplishments, the decision
+      must be left to the gentle reader; but though it is certain that children
+      should be properly grounded in mathematics, no heart of flesh could bear
+      to hear Miss Dearborn's methods vilified who had seen her patting,
+      pulling, squeezing Rebecca from ugliness into beauty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young superintendent of district schools was a witness of the scene,
+      and when later he noted the children surrounding Columbia as bees a
+      honeysuckle, he observed to Dr. Moses: &ldquo;She may not be much of a teacher,
+      but I think she'd be considerable of a wife!&rdquo; and subsequent events proved
+      that he meant what he said!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      II
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now all was ready; the moment of fate was absolutely at hand; the
+      fife-and-drum corps led the way and the States followed; but what actually
+      happened Rebecca never knew; she lived through the hours in a waking
+      dream. Every little detail was a facet of light that reflected sparkles,
+      and among them all she was fairly dazzled. The brass band played inspiring
+      strains; the mayor spoke eloquently on great themes; the people cheered;
+      then the rope on which so much depended was put into the children's hands,
+      they applied superhuman strength to their task, and the flag mounted,
+      mounted, smoothly and slowly, and slowly unwound and stretched itself
+      until its splendid size and beauty were revealed against the maples and
+      pines and blue New England sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then after cheers upon cheers and after a patriotic chorus by the church
+      choirs, the State of Maine mounted the platform, vaguely conscious that
+      she was to recite a poem, though for the life of her she could not
+      remember a single word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Speak up loud and clear, Rebecky,&rdquo; whispered Uncle Sam in the front row,
+      but she could scarcely hear her own voice when, tremblingly, she began her
+      first line. After that she gathered strength and the poem &ldquo;said itself,&rdquo;
+       while the dream went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She saw Adam Ladd leaning against a tree; Aunt Jane and Aunt Miranda
+      palpitating with nervousness; Clara Belle Simpson gazing cross-eyed but
+      adoring from a seat on the side; and in the far, far distance, on the very
+      outskirts of the crowd, a tall man standing in a wagon&mdash;a tall,
+      loose-jointed man with red upturned mustaches, and a gaunt white horse
+      headed toward the Acreville road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Loud applause greeted the state of Maine, the slender little white-clad
+      figure standing on the mossy boulder that had been used as the centre of
+      the platform. The sun came up from behind a great maple and shone full on
+      the star-spangled banner, making it more dazzling than ever, so that its
+      beauty drew all eyes upward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abner Simpson lifted his vagrant shifting gaze to its softy fluttering
+      folds and its splendid massing of colors, thinking:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know's anybody'd ought to steal a flag&mdash;the thunderin'
+      idjuts seem to set such store by it, and what is it, anyway? Nothin; but a
+      sheet o' buntin!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nothing but a sheet of bunting? He looked curiously at the rapt faces of
+      the mothers, their babies asleep in their arms; the parted lips and
+      shining eyes of the white-clad girls; at Cap'n Lord, who had been in Libby
+      prison, and Nat Strout, who had left an arm at Bull Run; at the friendly,
+      jostling crowd of farmers, happy, eager, absorbed, their throats ready to
+      burst with cheers. Then the breeze served, and he heard Rebecca's clear
+      voice saying:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For it's your star, my star, all the stars together, That make our
+      country's flag so proud To float in the bright fall weather!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Talk about stars! She's got a couple of em right in her head,&rdquo; thought
+      Simpson.... &ldquo;If I ever seen a young one like that lyin; on anybody's
+      doorstep I'd hook her quicker'n a wink, though I've got plenty to home,
+      the Lord knows! And I wouldn't swap her off neither.... Spunky little
+      creeter, too; settin; up in the wagon lookin' bout's big as a pint o'
+      cider, but keepin' right after the goods!... I vow I'm bout sick o' my
+      job! Never WITH the crowd, allers JEST on the outside, s if I wa'n't as
+      good's they be! If it paid well, mebbe I wouldn't mind, but they're so
+      thunderin' stingy round here, they don't leave anything decent out for you
+      to take from em, yet you're reskin' your liberty n' reputation jest the
+      same!... Countin' the poor pickin's n' the time I lose in jail I might
+      most's well be done with it n' work out by the day, as the folks want me
+      to; I'd make bout's much n' I don't know's it would be any harder!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He could see Rebecca stepping down from the platform, while his own
+      red-headed little girl stood up on her bench, waving her hat with one
+      hand, her handkerchief with the other, and stamping with both feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now a man sitting beside the mayor rose from his chair and Abner heard him
+      call:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Three cheers for the women who made the flag!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;HIP, HIP, HURRAH!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Three cheers for the State of Maine!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;HIP, HIP, HURRAH!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Three cheers for the girl that saved the flag from the hands of the
+      enemy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;HIP, HIP, HURRAH! HIP, HIP, HURRAH!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the Edgewood minister, whose full, vibrant voice was of the sort to
+      move a crowd. His words rang out into the clear air and were carried from
+      lip to lip. Hands clapped, feet stamped, hats swung, while the loud
+      huzzahs might almost have wakened the echoes on old Mount Ossipee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tall, loose-jointed man sat down in the wagon suddenly and took up the
+      reins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're gettin' a little mite personal, and I guess it's bout time for
+      you to be goin', Simpson!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tone was jocular, but the red mustaches drooped, and the half-hearted
+      cut he gave to start the white mare on her homeward journey showed that he
+      was not in his usual devil-may-care mood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Durn his skin!&rdquo; he burst out in a vindictive undertone, as the mare swung
+      into her long gait. &ldquo;It's a lie! I thought twas somebody's wash! I hain't
+      an enemy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While the crowd at the raising dispersed in happy family groups to their
+      picnics in the woods; while the Goddess of Liberty, Uncle Sam, Columbia,
+      and the proud States lunched grandly in the Grange hall with distinguished
+      guests and scarred veterans of two wars, the lonely man drove, and drove,
+      and drove through silent woods and dull, sleepy villages, never alighting
+      to replenish his wardrobe or his stock of swapping material.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At dusk he reached a miserable tumble-down house on the edge of a pond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The faithful wife with the sad mouth and the habitual look of anxiety in
+      her faded eyes came to the door at the sound of wheels and went doggedly
+      to the horse-shed to help him unharness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You didn't expect to see me back tonight, did ye?&rdquo; he asked satirically;
+      &ldquo;leastwise not with this same horse? Well, I'm here! You needn't be scairt
+      to look under the wagon seat, there hain't nothin' there, not even my
+      supper, so I hope you're suited for once! No, I guess I hain't goin' to be
+      an angel right away, neither. There wa'n't nothin' but flags layin' roun'
+      loose down Riverboro way, n' whatever they say, I hain't sech a hound as
+      to steal a flag!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was natural that young Riverboro should have red, white, and blue
+      dreams on the night after the new flag was raised. A stranger thing,
+      perhaps, is the fact that Abner Simpson should lie down on his hard bed
+      with the flutter of bunting before his eyes, and a whirl of unaccustomed
+      words in his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For it's your star, my star, all our stars together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sick of goin' it alone,&rdquo; he thought; &ldquo;I guess I'll try the other road
+      for a spell;&rdquo; and with that he fell asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Seventh Chronicle. THE LITTLE PROPHET
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess York County will never get red of that Simpson crew!&rdquo; exclaimed
+      Miranda Sawyer to Jane. &ldquo;I thought when the family moved to Acreville we'd
+      seen the last of em, but we ain't! The big, cross-eyed, stutterin' boy has
+      got a place at the mills in Maplewood; that's near enough to come over to
+      Riverboro once in a while of a Sunday mornin' and set in the meetin' house
+      starin' at Rebecca same as he used to do, only it's reskier now both of em
+      are older. Then Mrs. Fogg must go and bring back the biggest girl to help
+      her take care of her baby,&mdash;as if there wa'n't plenty of help nearer
+      home! Now I hear say that the youngest twin has come to stop the summer
+      with the Cames up to Edgewood Lower Corner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought two twins were always the same age,&rdquo; said Rebecca,
+      reflectively, as she came into the kitchen with the milk pail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So they be,&rdquo; snapped Miranda, flushing and correcting herself. &ldquo;But that
+      pasty-faced Simpson twin looks younger and is smaller than the other one.
+      He's meek as Moses and the other one is as bold as a brass kettle; I don't
+      see how they come to be twins; they ain't a mite alike.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Elijah was always called the fighting twin' at school,&rdquo; said Rebecca,
+      &ldquo;and Elisha's other name was Nimbi-Pamby; but I think he's a nice little
+      boy, and I'm glad he has come back. He won't like living with Mr. Came,
+      but he'll be almost next door to the minister's, and Mrs. Baxter is sure
+      to let him play in her garden.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder why the boy's stayin' with Cassius Came,&rdquo; said Jane. &ldquo;To be sure
+      they haven't got any of their own, but the child's too young to be much
+      use.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know why,&rdquo; remarked Rebecca promptly, &ldquo;for I heard all about it over to
+      Watson's when I was getting the milk. Mr. Came traded something with Mr.
+      Simpson two years ago and got the best of the bargain, and Uncle Jerry
+      says he's the only man that ever did, and he ought to have a monument put
+      up to him. So Mr. Came owes Mr. Simpson money and won't pay it, and Mr.
+      Simpson said he'd send over a child and board part of it out, and take the
+      rest in stock&mdash;a pig or a calf or something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's all stuff and nonsense,&rdquo; exclaimed Miranda; &ldquo;nothin' in the world
+      but store-talk. You git a clump o' men-folks settin' round Watson's stove,
+      or out on the bench at the door, an' they'll make up stories as fast as
+      their tongues can wag. The man don't live that's smart enough to cheat
+      Abner Simpson in a trade, and who ever heard of anybody's owin' him money?
+      Tain't supposable that a woman like Mrs. Came would allow her husband to
+      be in debt to a man like Abner Simpson. It's a sight likelier that she
+      heard that Mrs. Simpson was ailin' and sent for the boy so as to help the
+      family along. She always had Mrs. Simpson to wash for her once a month, if
+      you remember Jane?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There are some facts so shrouded in obscurity that the most skillful and
+      patient investigator cannot drag them into the light of day. There are
+      also (but only occasionally) certain motives, acts, speeches, lines of
+      conduct, that can never be wholly and satisfactorily explained, even in a
+      village post-office or on the loafers' bench outside the tavern door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cassius Came was a close man, close of mouth and close of purse; and all
+      that Riverboro ever knew as to the three months' visit of the Simpson twin
+      was that it actually occurred. Elisha, otherwise Nimbi-Pamby, came;
+      Nimbi-Pamby stayed; and Nimbi-Pamby, when he finally rejoined his own
+      domestic circle, did not go empty-handed (so to speak), for he was
+      accompanied on his homeward travels by a large, red, bony, somewhat
+      truculent cow, who was tied on behind the wagon, and who made the journey
+      a lively and eventful one by her total lack of desire to proceed over the
+      road from Edgewood to Acreville. But that, the cow's tale, belongs to
+      another time and place, and the coward's tale must come first; for Elisha
+      Simpson was held to be sadly lacking in the manly quality of courage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the new minister's wife who called Nimbi-Pamby the Little Prophet.
+      His full name was Elisha Jeremiah Simpson, but one seldom heard it at full
+      length, since, if he escaped the ignominy of Nimbi-Pamby, Lishe was quite
+      enough for an urchin just in his first trousers and those assumed somewhat
+      prematurely. He was &ldquo;Lishe,&rdquo; therefore, to the village, but the Little
+      Prophet to the young minister's wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca could see the Cames' brown farmhouse from Mrs. Baxter's
+      sitting-room window. The little-traveled road with strips of tufted green
+      between the wheel tracks curled dustily up to the very doorstep, and
+      inside the screen door of pink mosquito netting was a wonderful drawn-in
+      rug, shaped like a half pie, with &ldquo;Welcome&rdquo; in saffron letters on a green
+      ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca liked Mrs. Cassius Came, who was a friend of her Aunt Miranda's
+      and one of the few persons who exchanged calls with that somewhat
+      unsociable lady. The Came farm was not a long walk from the brick house,
+      for Rebecca could go across the fields when haying-time was over, and her
+      delight at being sent on an errand in that direction could not be
+      measured, now that the new minister and his wife had grown to be such a
+      resource in her life. She liked to see Mrs. Came shake the Welcome rug,
+      flinging the cheery word out into the summer sunshine like a bright
+      greeting to the day. She liked to see her go to the screen door a dozen
+      times in a morning, open it a crack and chase an imaginary fly from the
+      sacred precincts within. She liked to see her come up the cellar steps
+      into the side garden, appearing mysteriously as from the bowels of the
+      earth, carrying a shining pan of milk in both hands, and disappearing
+      through the beds of hollyhocks and sunflowers to the pig-pen or the
+      hen-house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca was not fond of Mr. Came, and neither was Mrs. Baxter, nor Elisha,
+      for that matter; in fact Mr. Came was rather a difficult person to grow
+      fond of, with his fiery red beard, his freckled skin, and his gruff way of
+      speaking; for there were no children in the brown house to smooth the
+      creases from his forehead or the roughness from his voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      II
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The new minister's wife was sitting under the shade of her great maple
+      early one morning, when she first saw the Little Prophet. A tiny figure
+      came down the grass-grown road leading a cow by a rope. If it had been a
+      small boy and a small cow, a middle-sized boy and an ordinary cow, or a
+      grown man and a big cow, she might not have noticed them; but it was the
+      combination of an infinitesimal boy and a huge cow that attracted her
+      attention. She could not guess the child's years, she only knew that he
+      was small for his age, whatever it was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cow was a dark red beast with a crumpled horn, a white star on her
+      forehead, and a large surprised sort of eye. She had, of course, two eyes,
+      and both were surprised, but the left one had an added hint of amazement
+      in it by virtue of a few white hairs lurking accidentally in the centre of
+      the eyebrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy had a thin sensitive face and curtly brown hair, short trousers
+      patched on both knees, and a ragged straw hat on the back of his head. He
+      pattered along behind the cow, sometimes holding the rope with both hands,
+      and getting over the ground in a jerky way, as the animal left him no time
+      to think of a smooth path for bare feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Came pasture was a good half-mile distant, and the cow seemed in no
+      hurry to reach it; accordingly she forsook the road now and then, and
+      rambled in the hollows, where the grass was sweeter to her way of
+      thinking. She started on one of these exploring expeditions just as she
+      passed the minister's great maple, and gave Mrs. Baxter time to call out
+      to the little fellow, &ldquo;Is that your cow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Elisha blushed and smiled, and tried to speak modestly, but there was a
+      quiver of pride in his voice as he answered suggestively:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's&mdash;nearly my cow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How is that?&rdquo; asked Mrs. Baxter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Mr. Came says when I drive her twenty-nine more times to pasture
+      thout her gettin' her foot over the rope or thout my bein' afraid, she's
+      goin' to be my truly cow. Are you fraid of cows?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye-e-es,&rdquo; Mrs. Baxter confessed, &ldquo;I am, just a little. You see, I am
+      nothing but a woman, and boys can't understand how we feel about cows.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can! They're awful big things, aren't they?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perfectly enormous! I've always thought a cow coming towards you one of
+      the biggest things in the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; me, too. Don't let's think about it. Do they hook people so very
+      often?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No indeed, in fact one scarcely ever hears of such a case.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If they stepped on your bare foot they'd scrunch it, wouldn't they?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but you are the driver; you mustn't let them do that; you are a
+      free-will boy, and they are nothing but cows.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know; but p'raps there is free-will cows, and if they just WOULD do it
+      you couldn't help being scrunched, for you mustn't let go of the rope nor
+      run, Mr. Came says.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, of course that would never do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where you used to live did all the cows go down into the boggy places
+      when you drove em to pasture, or did some walk in the road?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There weren't any cows or any pastures where I used to live; that's what
+      makes me so foolish; why does your cow need a rope?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She don't like to go to pasture, Mr. Came says. Sometimes she'd druther
+      stay to home, and so when she gets part way she turns round and comes
+      backwards.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear me!&rdquo; thought Mrs. Baxter, &ldquo;what becomes of this boy-mite if the cow
+      has a spell of going backwards?&mdash;Do you like to drive her?&rdquo; she
+      asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;N-no, not erzackly; but you see, it'll be my cow if I drive her
+      twenty-nine more times thout her gettin' her foot over the rope and thout
+      my bein' afraid,&rdquo; and a beaming smile gave a transient brightness to his
+      harassed little face. &ldquo;Will she feed in the ditch much longer?&rdquo; he asked.
+      &ldquo;Shall I say Hurrap'? That's what Mr. Came says&mdash;HURRAP!' like that,
+      and it means to hurry up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was rather a feeble warning that he sounded and the cow fed on
+      peacefully. The little fellow looked up at the minister's wife
+      confidingly, and then glanced back at the farm to see if Cassius Came were
+      watching the progress of events.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What shall we do next?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Baxter delighted in that warm, cosy little 'WE;' it took her into the
+      firm so pleasantly. She was a weak prop indeed when it came to cows, but
+      all the courage in her soul rose to arms when Elisha said, &ldquo;What shall WE
+      do next?&rdquo; She became alert, ingenious, strong, on the instant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the cow's name?&rdquo; she asked, sitting up straight in the
+      swing-chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Buttercup; but she don't seem to know it very well. She ain't a mite like
+      a buttercup.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind; you must shout 'Buttercup!' at the top of your voice, and
+      twitch the rope HARD; then I'll call, 'Hurrap!' with all my might at the
+      same moment. And if she starts quickly we mustn't run nor seem
+      frightened!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They did this; it worked to a charm, and Mrs. Baxter looked affectionately
+      after her Little Prophet as the cow pulled him down Tory Hill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lovely August days wore on. Rebecca was often at the parsonage and saw
+      Elisha frequently, but Buttercup was seldom present at their interviews,
+      as the boy now drove her to the pasture very early in the morning, the
+      journey thither being one of considerable length and her method of
+      reaching the goal being exceedingly roundabout.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Came had pointed out the necessity of getting her into the pasture at
+      least a few minutes before she had to be taken out again at night, and
+      though Rebecca didn't like Mr. Came, she saw the common sense of this
+      remark. Sometimes Mrs. Baxter and Rebecca caught a glimpse of the two at
+      sundown, as they returned from the pasture to the twilight milking,
+      Buttercup chewing her peaceful cud, her soft white bag of milk hanging
+      full, her surprised eye rolling in its accustomed &ldquo;fine frenzy.&rdquo; The
+      frenzied roll did not mean anything, they used to assure Elisha; but if it
+      didn't, it was an awful pity she had to do it, Rebecca thought; and Mrs.
+      Baxter agreed. To have an expression of eye that meant murder, and yet to
+      be a perfectly virtuous and well-meaning animal, this was a calamity
+      indeed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Baxter was looking at the sun one evening as it dropped like a ball
+      of red fire into Wilkins's woods, when the Little Prophet passed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's the twenty-ninth night,&rdquo; he called joyously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am so glad,&rdquo; she answered, for she had often feared some accident might
+      prevent his claiming the promised reward. &ldquo;Then tomorrow Buttercup will be
+      your own cow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess so. That's what Mr. Came said. He's off to Acreville now, but
+      he'll be home tonight, and father's going to send my new hat by him. When
+      Buttercup's my own cow I wish I could change her name and call her Red
+      Rover, but p'r'aps her mother wouldn't like it. When she b'longs to me,
+      mebbe I won't be so fraid of gettin' hooked and scrunched, because she'll
+      know she's mine, and she'll go better. I haven't let her get snarled up in
+      the rope one single time, and I don't show I'm afraid, do I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should never suspect it for an instant,&rdquo; said Mrs. Baxter
+      encouragingly. &ldquo;I've often envied you your bold, brave look!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Elisha appeared distinctly pleased. &ldquo;I haven't cried, either, when she's
+      dragged me over the pasture bars and peeled my legs. Bill Petes's little
+      brother Charlie says he ain't afraid of anything, not even bears. He says
+      he would walk right up close and cuff em if they dared to yip; but I ain't
+      like that! He ain't scared of elephants or tigers or lions either; he says
+      they're all the same as frogs or chickens to him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca told her Aunt Miranda that evening that it was the Prophet's
+      twenty-ninth night, and that the big red cow was to be his on the morrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I hope it'll turn out that way,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;But I ain't a mite sure
+      that Cassius Came will give up that cow when it comes to the point. It
+      won't be the first time he's tried to crawl out of a bargain with folks a
+      good deal bigger than Lisha, for he's terrible close, Cassius is. To be
+      sure he's stiff in his joints and he's glad enough to have a boy to take
+      the cow to the pasture in summer time, but he always has hired help when
+      it comes harvestin'. So Lisha'll be no use from this on; and I dare say
+      the cow is Abner Simpson's anyway. If you want a walk tonight, I wish
+      you'd go up there and ask Mis' Came if she'll lend me an' your Aunt Jane
+      half her yeast-cake. Tell her we'll pay it back when we get ours a
+      Saturday. Don't you want to take Thirza Meserve with you? She's alone as
+      usual while Huldy's entertainin' beaux on the side porch. Don't stay too
+      long at the parsonage!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      III
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca was used to this sort of errand, for the whole village of
+      Riverboro would sometimes be rocked to the very centre of its being by
+      simultaneous desire for a yeast-cake. As the nearest repository was a mile
+      and a half distant, as the yeast-cake was valued at two cents and wouldn't
+      keep, as the demand was uncertain, being dependent entirely on a
+      fluctuating desire for &ldquo;riz bread,&rdquo; the storekeeper refused to order more
+      than three yeast-cakes a day at his own risk. Sometimes they remained on
+      his hands a dead loss; sometimes eight or ten persons would &ldquo;hitch up&rdquo; and
+      drive from distant farms for the coveted article, only to be met with the
+      flat, &ldquo;No, I'm all out o' yeast-cake; Mis' Simmons took the last; mebbe
+      you can borry half o' hern, she hain't much of a bread-eater.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So Rebecca climbed the hills to Mrs. Came's, knowing that her daily bread
+      depended on the successful issue of the call.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thirza was barefooted, and tough as her little feet were, the long walk
+      over the stubble fields tired her. When they came within sight of the Came
+      barn, she coaxed Rebecca to take a short cut through the turnips growing
+      in long, beautifully weeded rows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know Mr. Came is awfully cross, Thirza, and can't bear anybody to
+      tread on his crops or touch a tree or a bush that belongs to him. I'm kind
+      of afraid, but come along and mind you step softly in between the rows and
+      hold up your petticoat, so you can't possibly touch the turnip plants.
+      I'll do the same. Skip along fast, because then we won't leave any deep
+      footprints.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The children passed safely and noiselessly along, their pleasure a trifle
+      enhanced by the felt dangers of their progress. Rebecca knew that they
+      were doing no harm, but that did not prevent her hoping to escape the
+      gimlet eye of Mr. Came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they neared the outer edge of the turnip patch they paused suddenly,
+      petticoats in air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A great clump of elderberry bushes hid them from the barn, but from the
+      other side of the clump came the sound of conversation: the timid voice of
+      the Little Prophet and the gruff tones of Cassius Came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca was afraid to interrupt, and too honest to wish to overhear. She
+      could only hope the man and the boy would pass on to the house as they
+      talked, so she motioned to the paralyzed Thirza to take two more steps and
+      stand with her behind the elderberry bushes. But no! In a moment they
+      heard Mr. Came drag a stool over beside the grindstone as he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, now Elisha Jeremiah, we'll talk about the red cow. You say you've
+      drove her a month, do ye? And the trade between us was that if you could
+      drive her a month, without her getting the rope over her foot and without
+      bein' afraid, you was to have her. That's straight, ain't it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Prophet's face burned with excitement, his gingham shirt rose and fell
+      as if he were breathing hard, but he only nodded assent and said nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now,&rdquo; continued Mr. Came, &ldquo;have you made out to keep the rope from under
+      her feet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She ain't got t-t-tangled up one s-single time,&rdquo; said Elisha, stuttering
+      in his excitement, but looking up with some courage from his bare toes,
+      with which he was assiduously threading the grass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So far, so good. Now bout bein' afraid. As you seem so certain of gettin'
+      the cow, I suppose you hain't been a speck scared, hev you? Honor bright,
+      now!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;I&mdash;not but just a little mite. I&rdquo;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hold up a minute. Of course you didn't SAY you was afraid, and didn't
+      SHOW you was afraid, and nobody knew you WAS afraid, but that ain't the
+      way we fixed it up. You was to call the cow your'n if you could drive her
+      to the pasture for a month without BEIN' afraid. Own up square now, hev
+      you be'n afraid?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A long pause, then a faint, &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where's your manners?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean yes, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How often? If it hain't be'n too many times mebbe I'll let ye off, though
+      you're a reg'lar girl-boy, and'll be runnin' away from the cat bimeby. Has
+      it be'n&mdash;twice?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; and the Little Prophet's voice was very faint now, and had a
+      decided tear in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has it be'n four times?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Y-es, sir.&rdquo; More heaving of the gingham shirt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you AIR a thunderin' coward! How many times? Speak up now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      More digging of the bare toes in the earth, and one premonitory tear drop
+      stealing from under the downcast lids, then,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A little, most every day, and you can keep the cow,&rdquo; wailed the Prophet,
+      as he turned abruptly and fled behind the shed, where he flung himself
+      into the green depths of a tansy bed, and gave himself up to unmanly sobs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cassius Came gave a sort of shamefaced guffaw at the abrupt departure of
+      the boy, and went on into the house, while Rebecca and Thirza made a
+      stealthy circuit of the barn and a polite and circumspect entrance through
+      the parsonage front gate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca told the minister's wife what she could remember of the interview
+      between Cassius Came and Elisha Simpson, and tender-hearted Mrs. Baxter
+      longed to seek and comfort her Little Prophet sobbing in the tansy bed,
+      the brand of coward on his forehead, and what was much worse, the fear in
+      his heart that he deserved it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca could hardly be prevented from bearding Mr. Came and openly
+      espousing the cause of Elisha, for she was an impetuous, reckless, valiant
+      creature when a weaker vessel was attacked or threatened unjustly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Baxter acknowledged that Mr. Came had been true, in a way, to his
+      word and bargain, but she confessed that she had never heard of so cruel
+      and hard a bargain since the days of Shylock, and it was all the worse for
+      being made with a child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca hurried home, her visit quite spoiled and her errand quite
+      forgotten till she reached the brick house door, where she told her aunts,
+      with her customary picturesqueness of speech, that she would rather eat
+      buttermilk bread till she died than partake of food mixed with one of Mr.
+      Came's yeast-cakes; that it would choke her, even in the shape of good
+      raised bread.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's all very fine, Rebecky,&rdquo; said her Aunt Miranda, who had a
+      pin-prick for almost every bubble; &ldquo;but don't forget there's two other
+      mouths to feed in this house, and you might at least give your aunt and me
+      the privilege of chokin' if we feel to want to!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      IV
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Baxter finally heard from Mrs. Came, through whom all information was
+      sure to filter if you gave it time, that her husband despised a coward,
+      that he considered Elisha a regular mother's-apron-string boy, and that he
+      was &ldquo;learnin'&rdquo; him to be brave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bill Peters, the hired man, now drove Buttercup to pasture, though
+      whenever Mr. Came went to Moderation or Bonnie Eagle, as he often did,
+      Mrs. Baxter noticed that Elisha took the hired man's place. She often
+      joined him on these anxious expeditions, and, a like terror in both their
+      souls, they attempted to train the red cow and give her some idea of
+      obedience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If she only wouldn't look at us that way we would get along real nicely
+      with her, wouldn't we?&rdquo; prattled the Prophet, straggling along by her
+      side; &ldquo;and she is a splendid cow; she gives twenty-one quarts a day, and
+      Mr. Came says it's more'n half cream.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The minister's wife assented to all this, thinking that if Buttercup would
+      give up her habit of turning completely round in the road to roll her eyes
+      and elevate her white-tipped eyebrow, she might indeed be an enjoyable
+      companion; but in her present state of development her society was not
+      agreeable, even did she give sixty-one quarts of milk a day. Furthermore,
+      when Mrs. Baxter discovered that she never did any of these reprehensible
+      things with Bill Peters, she began to believe cows more intelligent
+      creatures than she had supposed them to be, and she was indignant to think
+      Buttercup could count so confidently on the weakness of a small boy and a
+      timid woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One evening, when Buttercup was more than usually exasperating, Mrs.
+      Baxter said to the Prophet, who was bracing himself to keep from being
+      pulled into a wayside brook where Buttercup loved to dabble, &ldquo;Elisha, do
+      you know anything about the superiority of mind over matter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      No, he didn't, though it was not a fair time to ask the question, for he
+      had sat down in the road to get a better purchase on the rope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it doesn't signify. What I mean is that we can die but once, and it
+      is a glorious thing to die for a great principle. Give me that rope. I can
+      pull like an ox in my present frame of mind. You run down on the opposite
+      side of the brook, take that big stick wade right in&mdash;you are
+      barefooted,&mdash;brandish the stick, and, if necessary, do more than
+      brandish. I would go myself, but it is better she should recognize you as
+      her master, and I am in as much danger as you are, anyway. She may try to
+      hook you, of course, but you must keep waving the stick,&mdash;die
+      brandishing, Prophet, that's the idea! She may turn and run for me, in
+      which case I shall run too; but I shall die running, and the minister can
+      bury us under our favorite sweet-apple tree!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Prophet's soul was fired by the lovely lady's eloquence. Their spirits
+      mounted simultaneously, and they were flushed with a splendid courage in
+      which death looked a mean and paltry thing compared with vanquishing that
+      cow. She had already stepped into the pool, but the Prophet waded in
+      towards her, moving the alder branch menacingly. She looked up with the
+      familiar roll of the eye that had done her such good service all summer,
+      but she quailed beneath the stern justice and the new valor of the
+      Prophet's gaze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In that moment perhaps she felt ashamed of the misery she had caused the
+      helpless mite. At any rate, actuated by fear, surprise, or remorse, she
+      turned and walked back into the road without a sign of passion or
+      indignation, leaving the boy and the lady rather disappointed at their
+      easy victory. To be prepared for a violent death and receive not even a
+      scratch made them fear that they might possibly have overestimated the
+      danger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were better friends than ever after that, the young minister's wife
+      and the forlorn little boy from Acreville, sent away from home he knew not
+      why, unless it were that there was little to eat there and considerably
+      more at the Cash Cames', as they were called in Edgewood. Cassius was
+      familiarly known as Uncle Cash, partly because there was a disposition in
+      Edgewood to abbreviate all Christian names, and partly because the old man
+      paid cash, and expected to be paid cash, for everything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The late summer grew into autumn, and the minister's great maple flung a
+      flaming bough of scarlet over Mrs. Baxter's swing-chair. Uncle Cash found
+      Elisha very useful at picking up potatoes and apples, but the boy was
+      going back to his family as soon as the harvesting was over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One Friday evening Mrs. Baxter and Rebecca, wrapped in shawls and
+      &ldquo;fascinators,&rdquo; were sitting on Mrs. Came's front steps enjoying the
+      sunset. Rebecca was in a tremulous state of happiness, for she had come
+      directly from the Seminary at Wareham to the parsonage, and as the
+      minister was absent at a church conference, she was to stay the night with
+      Mrs. Baxter and go with her to Portland next day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were to go to the Islands, have ice cream for luncheon, ride on a
+      horse-car, and walk by the Longfellow house, a programme that so unsettled
+      Rebecca's never very steady mind that she radiated flashes and sparkles of
+      joy, making Mrs. Baxter wonder if flesh could be translucent, enabling the
+      spirit-fires within to shine through?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Buttercup was being milked on the grassy slope near the shed door. As she
+      walked to the barn, after giving up her pailfuls of yellow milk, she bent
+      her neck and snatched a hasty bite from a pile of turnips lying temptingly
+      near. In her haste she took more of a mouthful than would be considered
+      good manners even among cows, and as she disappeared in the barn door they
+      could see a forest of green tops hanging from her mouth, while she
+      painfully attempted to grind up the mass of stolen material without
+      allowing a single turnip to escape.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It grew dark soon afterward and they went into the house to see Mrs.
+      Came's new lamp lighted for the first time, to examine her last drawn-in
+      rug (a wonderful achievement produced entirely from dyed flannel
+      petticoats), and to hear the doctor's wife play &ldquo;Oft in the Still Night,&rdquo;
+       on the dulcimer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they closed the sitting-room door opening on the piazza facing the
+      barn, the women heard the cow coughing and said to one another: &ldquo;Buttercup
+      was too greedy, and now she has indigestion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Elisha always went to bed at sundown, and Uncle Cash had gone to the
+      doctor's to have his hand dressed, for he had hurt it is some way in the
+      threshing-machine. Bill Peters, the hired man, came in presently and asked
+      for him, saying that the cow coughed more and more, and it must be that
+      something was wrong, but he could not get her to open her mouth wide
+      enough for him to see anything. &ldquo;She'd up an' die ruther 'n obleege
+      anybody, that tarnal, ugly cow would!&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Uncle Cash had driven into the yard, he came in for a lantern, and
+      went directly out to the barn. After a half-hour or so, in which the
+      little party had forgotten the whole occurrence, he came in again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm blamed if we ain't goin' to lose that cow,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Come out, will
+      ye, Hannah, and hold the lantern? I can't do anything with my right hand
+      in a sling, and Bill is the stupidest critter in the country.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Everybody went out to the barn accordingly, except the doctor's wife, who
+      ran over to her house to see if her brother Moses had come home from
+      Milltown, and could come and take a hand in the exercises.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Buttercup was in a bad way; there was no doubt of it. Something, one of
+      the turnips, presumably, had lodged in her throat, and would move neither
+      way, despite her attempts to dislodge it. Her breathing was labored, and
+      her eyes bloodshot from straining and choking. Once or twice they
+      succeeded in getting her mouth partly open, but before they could fairly
+      discover the cause of trouble she had wrested her head away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can see a little tuft of green sticking straight up in the middle,&rdquo;
+       said Uncle Cash, while Bill Peters and Moses held a lantern on each side
+      of Buttercup's head; &ldquo;but, land! It's so far down, and such a mite of a
+      thing, I couldn't git it, even if I could use my right hand. S'pose you
+      try, Bill.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bill hemmed and hawed, and confessed he didn't care to try. Buttercup's
+      grinders were of good size and excellent quality, and he had no fancy for
+      leaving his hand within her jaws. He said he was no good at that kind of
+      work, but that he would help Uncle Cash hold the cow's head; that was just
+      as necessary, and considerable safer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moses was more inclined to the service of humanity, and did his best,
+      wrapping his wrist in a cloth, and making desperate but ineffectual dabs
+      at the slippery green turnip-tops in the reluctantly opened throat. But
+      the cow tossed her head and stamped her feet and switched her tail and
+      wriggled from under Bill's hands, so that it seemed altogether impossible
+      to reach the seat of the trouble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Uncle Cash was in despair, fuming and fretting the more because of his own
+      crippled hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hitch up, Bill,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and, Hannah, you drive over to Milliken's
+      Mills for the horse-doctor. I know we can git out that turnip if we can
+      hit on the right tools and somebody to manage em right; but we've got to
+      be quick about it or the critter'll choke to death, sure! Your hand's so
+      clumsy, Mose, she thinks her time's come when she feels it in her mouth,
+      and your fingers are so big you can't ketch holt o' that green stuff thout
+      its slippin'!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mine ain't big; let me try,&rdquo; said a timid voice, and turning round, they
+      saw little Elisha Simpson, his trousers pulled on over his night-shirt,
+      his curly hair ruffled, his eyes vague with sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Uncle Cash gave a laugh of good-humored derision. &ldquo;You&mdash;that's afraid
+      to drive a cow to pasture? No, sir; you hain't got sand enough for this
+      job, I guess!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Buttercup just then gave a worse cough than ever, and her eyes rolled in
+      her head as if she were giving up the ghost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd rather do it than see her choke to death!&rdquo; cried the boy, in despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, by ginger, you can try it, sonny!&rdquo; said Uncle Cash. &ldquo;Now this time
+      we'll tie her head up. Take it slow, and make a good job of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Accordingly they pried poor Buttercup's jaws open to put a wooden gag
+      between them, tied her head up, and kept her as still as they could while
+      the women held the lanterns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, sonny, strip up your sleeve and reach as fur down's you can! Wind
+      your little fingers in among that green stuff stickin' up there that ain't
+      hardly big enough to call green stuff, give it a twist, and pull for all
+      you're worth. Land! What a skinny little pipe stem!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Little Prophet had stripped up his sleeve. It was a slender thing, his
+      arm; but he had driven the red cow all summer, borne her tantrums,
+      protected her from the consequences of her own obstinacy, taking (as he
+      thought) a future owner's pride in her splendid flow of milk&mdash;grown
+      fond of her, in a word, and now she was choking to death. A skinny little
+      pipe stem is capable of a deal at such a time, and only a slender hand and
+      arm could have done the work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elisha trembled with nervousness, but he made a dexterous and dashing
+      entrance into the awful cavern of Buttercup's mouth; descended upon the
+      tiny clump of green spills or spikes, wound his little fingers in among
+      them as firmly as he could, and then gave a long, steady, determined pull
+      with all the strength in this body. That was not so much in itself, to be
+      sure, but he borrowed a good deal more from some reserve quarter, the
+      location of which nobody knows anything about, but upon which everybody
+      draws in time of need.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such a valiant pull you would never have expected of the Little Prophet.
+      Such a pull it was that, to his own utter amazement, he suddenly found
+      himself lying flat on his back on the barn floor with a very slippery
+      something in his hand, and a fair-sized but rather dilapidated turnip at
+      the end of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the business!&rdquo; cried Moses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could 'a' done it as easy as nothin' if my arm had been a leetle mite
+      smaller,&rdquo; said Bill Peters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're a trump, sonny!&rdquo; exclaimed Uncle Cash, as he helped Moses untie
+      Buttercup's head and took the gag out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're a trump, Lisha, and, by ginger, the cow's your'n; only don't you
+      let your blessed pa drink none of her cream!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The welcome air rushed into Buttercup's lungs and cooled her parched, torn
+      throat. She was pretty nearly spent, poor thing, and bent her head (rather
+      gently for her) over the Little Prophet's shoulder as he threw his arms
+      joyfully about her neck, and whispered, &ldquo;You're my truly cow now, ain't
+      you, Buttercup?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Baxter, dear,&rdquo; said Rebecca, as they walked home to the parsonage
+      together under the young harvest moon; &ldquo;there are all sorts of cowards,
+      aren't there, and don't you think Elisha is one of the best kind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't quite know what to think about cowards, Rebecca Rowena,&rdquo; said the
+      minister's wife hesitatingly. &ldquo;The Little Prophet is the third coward I
+      have known in my short life who turned out to be a hero when the real
+      testing time came. Meanwhile the heroes themselves&mdash;or the ones that
+      were taken for heroes&mdash;were always busy doing something, or being
+      somewhere, else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Eighth Chronicle. ABNER SIMPSON'S NEW LEAF
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca had now cut the bonds that bound her to the Riverboro district
+      school, and had been for a week a full-fledged pupil at the Wareham
+      Seminary, towards which goal she had been speeding ever since the
+      memorable day when she rode into Riverboro on the top of Uncle Jerry
+      Cobb's stagecoach, and told him that education was intended to be &ldquo;the
+      making of her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She went to and fro, with Emma Jane and the other Riverboro boys and
+      girls, on the morning and evening trains that ran between the academy town
+      and Milliken's Mills.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The six days had passed like a dream!&mdash;a dream in which she sat in
+      corners with her eyes cast down; flushed whenever she was addressed;
+      stammered whenever she answered a question, and nearly died of heart
+      failure when subjected to an examination of any sort. She delighted the
+      committee when reading at sight from &ldquo;King Lear,&rdquo; but somewhat discouraged
+      them when she could not tell the capital of the United States. She
+      admitted that her former teacher, Miss Dearborn, might have mentioned it,
+      but if so she had not remembered it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In these first weeks among strangers she passed for nothing but an
+      interesting-looking, timid, innocent, country child, never revealing, even
+      to the far-seeing Emily Maxwell, a hint of her originality, facility, or
+      power in any direction. Rebecca was fourteen, but so slight, and under the
+      paralyzing new conditions so shy, that she would have been mistaken for
+      twelve had it not been for her general advancement in the school
+      curriculum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Growing up in the solitude of a remote farm house, transplanted to a tiny
+      village where she lived with two elderly spinsters, she was still the
+      veriest child in all but the practical duties and responsibilities of
+      life; in those she had long been a woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Saturday afternoon; her lessons for Monday were all learned and she
+      burst into the brick house sitting-room with the flushed face and
+      embarrassed mien that always foreshadowed a request. Requests were more
+      commonly answered in the negative than in the affirmative at the brick
+      house, a fact that accounted for the slight confusion in her demeanor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aunt Miranda,&rdquo; she began, &ldquo;the fishman says that Clara Belle Simpson
+      wants to see me very much, but Mrs. Fogg can't spare her long at a time,
+      you know, on account of the baby being no better; but Clara Belle could
+      walk a mile up, and I a mile down the road, and we could meet at the pink
+      house half way. Then we could rest and talk an hour or so, and both be
+      back in time for our suppers. I've fed the cat; she had no appetite, as
+      it's only two o'clock and she had her dinner at noon, but she'll go back
+      to her saucer, and it's off my mind. I could go down cellar now and bring
+      up the cookies and the pie and doughnuts for supper before I start. Aunt
+      Jane saw no objection; but we thought I'd better ask you so as to run no
+      risks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miranda Sawyer, who had been patiently waiting for the end of this speech,
+      laid down her knitting and raised her eyes with a half-resigned expression
+      that meant: Is there anything unusual in heaven or earth or the waters
+      under the earth that this child does not want to do? Will she ever settle
+      down to plain, comprehensible Sawyer ways, or will she to the end make
+      these sudden and radical propositions, suggesting at every turn the
+      irresponsible Randall ancestry?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know well enough, Rebecca, that I don't like you to be intimate with
+      Abner Simpson's young ones,&rdquo; she said decisively. &ldquo;They ain't fit company
+      for anybody that's got Sawyer blood in their veins, if it's ever so
+      little. I don't know, I'm sure, how you're goin' to turn out! The fish
+      peddler seems to be your best friend, without it's Abijah Flagg that
+      you're everlastingly talkin' to lately. I should think you'd rather read
+      some improvin' book than to be chatterin' with Squire Bean's chore-boy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He isn't always going to be a chore-boy,&rdquo; explained Rebecca, &ldquo;and that's
+      what we're considering. It's his career we talk about, and he hasn't got
+      any father or mother to advise him. Besides, Clara Belle kind of belongs
+      to the village now that she lives with Mrs. Fogg; and she was always the
+      best behaved of all the girls, either in school or Sunday-school. Children
+      can't help having fathers!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everybody says Abner is turning over a new leaf, and if so, the family'd
+      ought to be encouraged every possible way,&rdquo; said Miss Jane, entering the
+      room with her mending basket in hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If Abner Simpson is turnin' over a leaf, or anythin' else in creation,
+      it's only to see what's on the under side!&rdquo; remarked Miss Miranda
+      promptly. &ldquo;Don't talk to me about new leaves! You can't change that kind
+      of a man; he is what he is, and you can't make him no different!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The grace of God can do consid'rable,&rdquo; observed Jane piously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ain't sayin' but it can if it sets out, but it has to begin early and
+      stay late on a man like Simpson.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Mirandy, Abner ain't more'n forty! I don't know what the average age
+      for repentance is in men-folks, but when you think of what an awful sight
+      of em leaves it to their deathbeds, forty seems real kind of young. Not
+      that I've heard Abner has experienced religion, but everybody's surprised
+      at the good way he's conductin' this fall.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They'll be surprised the other way round when they come to miss their
+      firewood and apples and potatoes again,&rdquo; affirmed Miranda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Clara Belle don't seem to have inherited from her father,&rdquo; Jane ventured
+      again timidly. &ldquo;No wonder Mrs. Fogg sets such store by the girl. If it
+      hadn't been for her, the baby would have been dead by now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps tryin' to save it was interferin' with the Lord's will,&rdquo; was
+      Miranda's retort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Folks can't stop to figure out just what's the Lord's will when a child
+      has upset a kettle of scalding water on to himself,&rdquo; and as she spoke Jane
+      darned more excitedly. &ldquo;Mrs. Fogg knows well enough she hadn't ought to
+      have left that baby alone in the kitchen with the stove, even if she did
+      see Clara Belle comin' across lots. She'd ought to have waited before
+      drivin' off; but of course she was afraid of missing the train, and she's
+      too good a woman to be held accountable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The minister's wife says Clara Belle is a real&mdash;I can't think of the
+      word!&rdquo; chimed in Rebecca. &ldquo;What's the female of hero? Whatever it is,
+      that's what Mrs. Baxter called her!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Clara Belle's the female of Simpson; that's what she is,&rdquo; Miss Miranda
+      asserted; &ldquo;but she's been brought up to use her wits, and I ain't sayin'
+      but she used em.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should say she did!&rdquo; exclaimed Miss Jane; &ldquo;to put that screaming,
+      suffering child in the baby-carriage and run all the way to the doctor's
+      when there wasn't a soul on hand to advise her! Two or three more such
+      actions would make the Simpson name sound consid'rable sweeter in this
+      neighborhood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Simpson will always sound like Simpson to me!&rdquo; vouchsafed the elder
+      sister, &ldquo;but we've talked enough about em an' to spare. You can go along,
+      Rebecca; but remember that a child is known by the company she keeps.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, Aunt Miranda; thank you!&rdquo; cried Rebecca, leaping from the
+      chair on which she had been twisting nervously for five minutes. &ldquo;And how
+      does this strike you? Would you be in favor of my taking Clara Belle a
+      company-tart?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't Mrs. Fogg feed the young one, now she's taken her right into the
+      family?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes,&rdquo; Rebecca answered, &ldquo;she has lovely things to eat, and Mrs. Fogg
+      won't even let her drink skim milk; but I always feel that taking a
+      present lets the person know you've been thinking about them and are extra
+      glad to see them. Besides, unless we have company soon, those tarts will
+      have to be eaten by the family, and a new batch made; you remember the one
+      I had when I was rewarding myself last week? That was queer&mdash;but
+      nice,&rdquo; she added hastily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mebbe you could think of something of your own you could give away
+      without taking my tarts!&rdquo; responded Miranda tersely; the joints of her
+      armor having been pierced by the fatally keen tongue of her niece, who had
+      insinuated that company-tarts lasted a long time in the brick house. This
+      was a fact; indeed, the company-tart was so named, not from any idea that
+      it would ever be eaten by guests, but because it was too good for
+      every-day use.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca's face crimsoned with shame that she had drifted into an impolite
+      and, what was worse, an apparently ungrateful speech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't mean to say anything not nice, Aunt Miranda,&rdquo; she stammered.
+      &ldquo;Truly the tart was splendid, but not exactly like new, that's all. And
+      oh! I know what I can take Clara Belle! A few chocolate drops out of the
+      box Mr. Ladd gave me on my birthday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+&ldquo;You go down cellar and get that tart, same as I told you,&rdquo; commanded
+Miranda, &ldquo;and when you fill it don't uncover a new tumbler of jelly;
+there's some dried-apple preserves open that'll do. Wear your rubbers
+and your thick jacket. After runnin' all the way down there&mdash;for your
+legs never seem to be rigged for walkin' like other girls'&mdash;you'll set
+down on some damp stone or other and ketch your death o' cold, an' your
+Aunt Jane n' I'll be kep' up nights nursin' you and luggin' your meals
+upstairs to you on a waiter.&rdquo;
+
+ Here Miranda leaned her head against the back of her rocking
+chair, dropped her knitting and closed her eyes wearily, for when the
+immovable body is opposed by the irresistible force there is a certain
+amount of jar and disturbance involved in the operation.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca moved toward the side door, shooting a questioning glance at Aunt
+      Jane as she passed. The look was full of mysterious suggestion and was
+      accompanied by an almost imperceptible gesture. Miss Jane knew that
+      certain articles were kept in the entry closet, and by this time she had
+      become sufficiently expert in telegraphy to know that Rebecca's unspoken
+      query meant: &ldquo;COULD YOU PERMIT THE HAT WITH THE RED WINGS, IT BEING
+      SATURDAY, FINE SETTLED WEATHER, AND A PLEASURE EXCURSION?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      These confidential requests, though fraught with embarrassment when
+      Miranda was in the room, gave Jane much secret joy; there was something
+      about them that stirred her spinster heart&mdash;they were so gay, so
+      appealing, so un-Sawyer-, un-Riverboro-like. The longer Rebecca lived in
+      the brick house the more her Aunt Jane marveled at the child. What made
+      her so different from everybody else. Could it be that her graceless
+      popinjay of a father, Lorenzo de Medici Randall, had bequeathed her some
+      strange combination of gifts instead of fortune? Her eyes, her brows, the
+      color of her lips, the shape of her face, as well as her ways and words,
+      proclaimed her a changeling in the Sawyer tribe; but what an enchanting
+      changeling; bringing wit and nonsense and color and delight into the gray
+      monotony of the dragging years!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was frost in the air, but a bright cheery sun, as Rebecca walked
+      decorously out of the brick house yard. Emma Jane Perkins was away over
+      Sunday on a visit to a cousin in Moderation; Alice Robinson and Candace
+      Milliken were having measles, and Riverboro was very quiet. Still, life
+      was seldom anything but a gay adventure to Rebecca, and she started afresh
+      every morning to its conquest. She was not exacting; the Asmodean feat of
+      spinning a sand heap into twine was, poetically speaking, always in her
+      power, so the mile walk to the pink-house gate, and the tryst with
+      freckled, red-haired Clara Belle Simpson, whose face Miss Miranda said
+      looked like a raw pie in a brick oven, these commonplace incidents were
+      sufficiently exhilarating to brighten her eye and quicken her step.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the great bare horse-chestnut near the pink-house gate loomed into
+      view, the red linsey-woolsey speck going down the road spied the blue
+      linsey-woolsey speck coming up, and both specks flew over the intervening
+      distance and, meeting, embraced each other ardently, somewhat to the
+      injury of the company-tart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn't it come out splendidly?&rdquo; exclaimed Rebecca. &ldquo;I was so afraid the
+      fishman wouldn't tell you to start exactly at two, or that one of us would
+      walk faster than the other; but we met at the very spot! It was a very
+      uncommon idea, wasn't it? Almost romantic!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what do you think?&rdquo; asked Clara Belle proudly. &ldquo;Look at this! Mrs.
+      Fogg lent me her watch to come home by!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Clara Belle, how wonderful! Mrs. Fogg gets kinder and kinder to you,
+      doesn't she? You're not homesick any more, are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No-o; not really; only when I remember there's only little Susan to
+      manage the twins; though they're getting on real well without me. But I
+      kind of think, Rebecca, that I'm going to be given away to the Foggs for
+      good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean adopted?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I think father's going to sign papers. You see we can't tell how
+      many years it'll be before the poor baby outgrows its burns, and Mrs.
+      Fogg'll never be the same again, and she must have somebody to help her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll be their real daughter, then, won't you, Clara Belle? And Mr. Fogg
+      is a deacon, and a selectman, and a road commissioner, and everything
+      splendid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I'll have board, and clothes, and school, and be named Fogg, and&rdquo;
+       (here her voice sank to an awed whisper) &ldquo;the upper farm if I should ever
+      get married; Miss Dearborn told me that herself, when she was persuading
+      me not to mind being given away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Clara Belle Simpson!&rdquo; exclaimed Rebecca in a transport. &ldquo;Who'd have
+      thought you'd be a female hero and an heiress besides? It's just like a
+      book story, and it happened in Riverboro. I'll make Uncle Jerry Cobb allow
+      there CAN be Riverboro stories, you see if I don't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I know it's all right,&rdquo; Clara Belle replied soberly. &ldquo;I'll have
+      a good home and father can't keep us all; but it's kind of dreadful to be
+      given away, like a piano or a horse and carriage!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca's hand went out sympathetically to Clara Belle's freckled paw.
+      Suddenly her own face clouded and she whispered:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not sure, Clara Belle, but I'm given away too&mdash;do you s'pose I
+      am? Poor father left us in debt, you see. I thought I came away from
+      Sunnybrook to get an education and then help pay off the mortgage; but
+      mother doesn't say anything about my coming back, and our family's one of
+      those too-big ones, you know, just like yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did your mother sign papers to your aunts?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If she did I never heard anything about it; but there's something pinned
+      on to the mortgage that mother keeps in the drawer of the bookcase.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'd know it if twas adoption papers; I guess you're just lent,&rdquo; Clara
+      Belle said cheeringly. &ldquo;I don't believe anybody'd ever give YOU away! And,
+      oh! Rebecca, father's getting on so well! He works on Daly's farm where
+      they raise lots of horses and cattle, too, and he breaks all the young
+      colts and trains them, and swaps off the poor ones, and drives all over
+      the country. Daly told Mr. Fogg he was splendid with stock, and father
+      says it's just like play. He's sent home money three Saturday nights.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm so glad!&rdquo; exclaimed Rebecca sympathetically. &ldquo;Now your mother'll have
+      a good time and a black silk dress, won't she?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know,&rdquo; sighed Clara Belle, and her voice was grave. &ldquo;Ever since I
+      can remember she's just washed and cried and cried and washed. Miss
+      Dearborn has been spending her vacation up to Acreville, you know, and she
+      came yesterday to board next door to Mrs. Fogg's. I heard them talking
+      last night when I was getting the baby to sleep&mdash;I couldn't help it,
+      they were so close&mdash;and Miss Dearborn said mother doesn't like
+      Acreville; she says nobody takes any notice of her, and they don't give
+      her any more work. Mrs. Fogg said, well, they were dreadful stiff and
+      particular up that way and they liked women to have wedding rings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hasn't your mother got a wedding ring?&rdquo; asked Rebecca, astonished. &ldquo;Why,
+      I thought everybody HAD to have them, just as they do sofas and a kitchen
+      stove!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never noticed she didn't have one, but when they spoke I remembered
+      mother's hands washing and wringing, and she doesn't wear one, I know. She
+      hasn't got any jewelry, not even a breast-pin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca's tone was somewhat censorious, &ldquo;your father's been so poor
+      perhaps he couldn't afford breast-pins, but I should have thought he'd
+      have given your mother a wedding ring when they were married; that's the
+      time to do it, right at the very first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They didn't have any real church dress-up wedding,&rdquo; explained Clara Belle
+      extenuatingly. &ldquo;You see the first mother, mine, had the big boys and me,
+      and then she died when we were little. Then after a while this mother came
+      to housekeep, and she stayed, and by and by she was Mrs. Simpson, and
+      Susan and the twins and the baby are hers, and she and father didn't have
+      time for a regular wedding in church. They don't have veils and
+      bridesmaids and refreshments round here like Miss Dearborn's sister did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do they cost a great deal&mdash;wedding rings?&rdquo; asked Rebecca
+      thoughtfully. &ldquo;They're solid gold, so I s'pose they do. If they were cheap
+      we might buy one. I've got seventy-four cents saved up; how much have
+      you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fifty-three,&rdquo; Clara Belle responded, in a depressing tone; &ldquo;and anyway
+      there are no stores nearer than Milltown. We'd have to buy it secretly,
+      for I wouldn't make father angry, or shame his pride, now he's got steady
+      work; and mother would know I had spent all my savings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca looked nonplussed. &ldquo;I declare,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I think the Acreville
+      people must be perfectly horrid not to call on your mother only because
+      she hasn't got any jewelry. You wouldn't dare tell your father what Miss
+      Dearborn heard, so he'd save up and buy the ring?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I certainly would not!&rdquo; and Clara Belle's lips closed tightly and
+      decisively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca sat quietly for a few moments, then she exclaimed jubilantly: &ldquo;I
+      know where we could get it! From Mr. Aladdin, and then I needn't tell him
+      who it's for! He's coming to stay over tomorrow with his aunt, and I'll
+      ask him to buy a ring for us in Boston. I won't explain anything, you
+      know; I'll just say I need a wedding ring.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That would be perfectly lovely,&rdquo; replied Clara Belle, a look of hope
+      dawning in her eyes; &ldquo;and we can think afterwards how to get it over to
+      mother. Perhaps you could send it to father instead, but I wouldn't dare
+      to do it myself. You won't tell anybody, Rebecca?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cross my heart!&rdquo; Rebecca exclaimed dramatically; and then with a
+      reproachful look, &ldquo;you know I couldn't repeat a sacred secret like that!
+      Shall we meet next Saturday afternoon, and I tell you what's happened?&mdash;Why,
+      Clara Belle, isn't that Mr. Ladd watering his horse at the foot of the
+      hill this very minute? It is; and he's driven up from Milltown stead of
+      coming on the train from Boston to Edgewood. He's all alone, and I can
+      ride home with him and ask him about the ring right away!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Clara Belle kissed Rebecca fervently, and started on her homeward walk,
+      while Rebecca waited at the top of the long hill, fluttering her
+      handkerchief as a signal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Aladdin! Mr. Aladdin!&rdquo; she cried, as the horse and wagon came nearer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Adam Ladd drew up quickly at the sound of the eager young voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, well; here is Rebecca Rowena fluttering along the highroad like a
+      red-winged blackbird! Are you going to fly home, or drive with me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca clambered into the carriage, laughing and blushing with delight at
+      his nonsense and with joy at seeing him again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Clara Belle and I were just talking about you this minute, and I'm so
+      glad you came this way, for there's something very important to ask you
+      about,&rdquo; she began, rather breathlessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No doubt,&rdquo; laughed Adam Ladd, who had become, in the course of his
+      acquaintance with Rebecca, a sort of high court of appeals; &ldquo;I hope the
+      premium banquet lamp doesn't smoke as it grows older?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Mr. Aladdin, you WILL not remember nicely. Mr. Simpson swapped off
+      the banquet lamp when he was moving the family to Acreville; it's not the
+      lamp at all, but once, when you were here last time, you said you'd make
+      up your mind what you were going to give me for Christmas.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; and &ldquo;I do remember that much quite nicely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, is it bought?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I never buy Christmas presents before Thanksgiving.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, DEAR Mr. Aladdin, would you buy me something different, something
+      that I want to give away, and buy it a little sooner than Christmas?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That depends. I don't relish having my Christmas presents given away. I
+      like to have them kept forever in little girls' bureau drawers, all
+      wrapped in pink tissue paper; but explain the matter and perhaps I'll
+      change my mind. What is it you want?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I need a wedding ring dreadfully,&rdquo; said Rebecca, &ldquo;but it's a sacred
+      secret.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Adam Ladd's eyes flashed with surprise and he smiled to himself with
+      pleasure. Had he on his list of acquaintances, he asked himself, a person
+      of any age or sex so altogether irresistible and unique as this child?
+      Then he turned to face her with the merry teasing look that made him so
+      delightful to young people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought it was perfectly understood between us,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that if you
+      could ever contrive to grow up and I were willing to wait, that I was to
+      ride up to the brick house on my snow white&rdquo;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Coal black,&rdquo; corrected Rebecca, with a sparkling eye and a warning
+      finger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Coal black charger; put a golden circlet on your lily white finger, draw
+      you up behind me on my pillion&rdquo;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Emma Jane, too,&rdquo; Rebecca interrupted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I didn't mention Emma Jane,&rdquo; argued Mr. Aladdin. &ldquo;Three on a
+      pillion is very uncomfortable. I think Emma Jane leaps on the back of a
+      prancing chestnut, and we all go off to my castle in the forest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Emma Jane never leaps, and she'd be afraid of a prancing chestnut,&rdquo;
+       objected Rebecca.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then she shall have a gentle cream-colored pony; but now, without any
+      explanation, you ask me to buy you a wedding ring, which shows plainly
+      that you are planning to ride off on a snow white&mdash;I mean coal black&mdash;charger
+      with somebody else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca dimpled and laughed with joy at the nonsense. In her prosaic world
+      no one but Adam Ladd played the game and answered the fool according to
+      his folly. Nobody else talked delicious fairy-story twaddle but Mr.
+      Aladdin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The ring isn't for ME!&rdquo; she explained carefully. &ldquo;You know very well that
+      Emma Jane nor I can't be married till we're through Quackenbos's Grammar,
+      Greenleaf's Arithmetic, and big enough to wear long trails and run a
+      sewing machine. The ring is for a friend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why doesn't the groom give it to his bride himself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because he's poor and kind of thoughtless, and anyway she isn't a bride
+      any more; she has three step and three other kind of children.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Adam Ladd put the whip back in the socket thoughtfully, and then stooped
+      to tuck in the rug over Rebecca's feet and his own. When he raised his
+      head again he asked: &ldquo;Why not tell me a little more, Rebecca? I'm safe!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca looked at him, feeling his wisdom and strength, and above all his
+      sympathy. Then she said hesitatingly: &ldquo;You remember I told you all about
+      the Simpsons that day on your aunt's porch when you bought the soap
+      because I told you how the family were always in trouble and how much they
+      needed a banquet lamp? Mr. Simpson, Clara Belle's father, has always been
+      very poor, and not always very good,&mdash;a little bit THIEVISH, you know&mdash;but
+      oh, so pleasant and nice to talk to! And now he's turning over a new leaf.
+      And everybody in Riverboro liked Mrs. Simpson when she came here a
+      stranger, because they were sorry for her and she was so patient, and such
+      a hard worker, and so kind to the children. But where she lives now,
+      though they used to know her when she was a girl, they're not polite to
+      her and don't give her scrubbing and washing; and Clara belle heard our
+      teacher say to Mrs. Fogg that the Acreville people were stiff, and
+      despised her because she didn't wear a wedding ring, like all the rest.
+      And Clara Belle and I thought if they were so mean as that, we'd love to
+      give her one, and then she'd be happier and have more work; and perhaps
+      Mr. Simpson if he gets along better will buy her a breast-pin and
+      earrings, and she'll be fitted out like the others. I know Mrs. Peter
+      Meserve is looked up to by everybody in Edgewood on account of her gold
+      bracelets and moss agate necklace.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Adam turned again to meet the luminous, innocent eyes that glowed under
+      the delicate brows and long lashes, feeling as he had more than once felt
+      before, as if his worldly-wise, grown-up thoughts had been bathed in some
+      purifying spring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How shall you send the ring to Mrs. Simpson?&rdquo; he asked, with interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We haven't settled yet; Clara Belle's afraid to do it, and thinks I could
+      manage better. Will the ring cost much? Because, of course, if it does, I
+      must ask Aunt Jane first. There are things I have to ask Aunt Miranda, and
+      others that belong to Aunt Jane.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It costs the merest trifle. I'll buy one and bring it to you, and we'll
+      consult about it; but I think as you're great friends with Mr. Simpson
+      you'd better send it to him in a letter, letters being your strong point!
+      It's a present a man ought to give his own wife, but it's worth trying,
+      Rebecca. You and Clara Belle can manage it between you, and I'll stay in
+      the background where nobody will see me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Ninth Chronicle. THE GREEN ISLE
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Many a green isle needs must be
+     In the deep sea of misery,
+     Or the mariner, worn and wan,
+     Never thus could voyage on
+     Day and night and night and day,
+     Drifting on his weary way.
+
+     &mdash;Shelley
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Meantime in these frosty autumn days life was crowded with events in the
+      lonely Simpson house at Acreville.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tumble-down dwelling stood on the edge of Pliney's Pond; so called
+      because old Colonel Richardson left his lands to be divided in five equal
+      parts, each share to be chosen in turn by one of his five sons, Pliny, the
+      eldest, having priority of choice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pliny Richardson, having little taste for farming, and being ardently fond
+      of fishing, rowing, and swimming, acted up to his reputation of being &ldquo;a
+      little mite odd,&rdquo; and took his whole twenty acres in water&mdash;hence
+      Pliny's Pond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The eldest Simpson boy had been working on a farm in Cumberland County for
+      two years. Samuel, generally dubbed &ldquo;see-saw,&rdquo; had lately found a humble
+      place in a shingle mill and was partially self-supporting. Clara Belle had
+      been adopted by the Foggs; thus there were only three mouths to fill, the
+      capacious ones of Elijah and Elisha, the twin boys, and of lisping,
+      nine-year-old Susan, the capable houseworker and mother's assistant, for
+      the baby had died during the summer; died of discouragement at having been
+      born into a family unprovided with food or money or love or care, or even
+      with desire for, or appreciation of, babies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no doubt that the erratic father of the house had turned over a
+      new leaf. Exactly when he began, or how, or why, or how long he would
+      continue the praiseworthy process,&mdash;in a word whether there would be
+      more leaves turned as the months went on,&mdash;Mrs. Simpson did not know,
+      and it is doubtful if any authority lower than that of Mr. Simpson's Maker
+      could have decided the matter. He had stolen articles for swapping
+      purposes for a long time, but had often avoided detection, and always
+      escaped punishment until the last few years. Three fines imposed for small
+      offenses were followed by several arrests and two imprisonments for brief
+      periods, and he found himself wholly out of sympathy with the wages of
+      sin. Sin itself he did not especially mind, but the wages thereof were
+      decidedly unpleasant and irksome to him. He also minded very much the
+      isolated position in the community which had lately become his; for he was
+      a social being and would ALMOST rather not steal from a neighbor than have
+      him find it out and cease intercourse! This feeling was working in him and
+      rendering him unaccountably irritable and depressed when he took his
+      daughter over to Riverboro at the time of the great flag-raising.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are seasons of refreshment, as well as seasons of drought, in the
+      spiritual, as in the natural world, and in some way or other dews and
+      rains of grace fell upon Abner Simpson's heart during that brief journey.
+      Perhaps the giving away of a child that he could not support had made the
+      soil of his heart a little softer and readier for planting than usual; but
+      when he stole the new flag off Mrs. Peter Meserve's doorsteps, under the
+      impression that the cotton-covered bundle contained freshly washed
+      clothes, he unconsciously set certain forces in operation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It will be remembered that Rebecca saw an inch of red bunting peeping from
+      the back of his wagon, and asked the pleasure of a drive with him. She was
+      no daughter of the regiment, but she proposed to follow the flag. When she
+      diplomatically requested the return of the sacred object which was to be
+      the glory of the &ldquo;raising&rdquo; next day, and he thus discovered his mistake,
+      he was furious with himself for having slipped into a disagreeable
+      predicament; and later, when he unexpectedly faced a detachment of
+      Riverboro society at the cross-roads, and met not only their wrath and
+      scorn, but the reproachful, disappointed glance of Rebecca's eyes, he felt
+      degraded as never before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The night at the Centre tavern did not help matters, nor the jolly
+      patriotic meeting of the three villages at the flag-raising next morning.
+      He would have enjoyed being at the head and front of the festive
+      preparations, but as he had cut himself off from all such friendly
+      gatherings, he intended at any rate to sit in his wagon on the very
+      outskirts of the assembled crowd and see some of the gayety; for, heaven
+      knows, he had little enough, he who loved talk, and song, and story, and
+      laughter, and excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The flag was raised, the crowd cheered, the little girl to whom he had
+      lied, the girl who was impersonating the State of Maine, was on the
+      platform &ldquo;speaking her piece,&rdquo; and he could just distinguish some of the
+      words she was saying:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For it's your star, my star, all the stars together, That makes our
+      country's flag so proud To float in the bright fall weather.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then suddenly there was a clarion voice cleaving the air, and he saw a
+      tall man standing in the centre of the stage and heard him crying: &ldquo;THREE
+      CHEERS FOR THE GIRL THAT SAVED THE FLAG FROM THE HANDS OF THE ENEMY!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was sore and bitter enough already; lonely, isolated enough; with no
+      lot nor share in the honest community life; no hand to shake, no
+      neighbor's meal to share; and this unexpected public arraignment smote him
+      between the eyes. With resentment newly kindled, pride wounded, vanity
+      bleeding, he flung a curse at the joyous throng and drove toward home, the
+      home where he would find his ragged children and meet the timid eyes of a
+      woman who had been the loyal partner of his poverty and disgraces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is probable that even then his (extremely light) hand was already on
+      the &ldquo;new leaf.&rdquo; The angels, doubtless, were not especially proud of the
+      matter and manner of his reformation, but I dare say they were glad to
+      count him theirs on any terms, so difficult is the reformation of this
+      blind and foolish world! They must have been; for they immediately flung
+      into his very lap a profitable, and what is more to the point, an
+      interesting and agreeable situation where money could be earned by doing
+      the very things his nature craved. There were feats of daring to be
+      performed in sight of admiring and applauding stable boys; the horses he
+      loved were his companions; he was OBLIGED to &ldquo;swap,&rdquo; for Daly, his
+      employer, counted on him to get rid of all undesirable stock; power and
+      responsibility of a sort were given him freely, for Daly was no Puritan,
+      and felt himself amply capable of managing any number of Simpsons; so here
+      were numberless advantages within the man's grasp, and wages besides!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abner positively felt no temptation to steal; his soul expanded with
+      pride, and the admiration and astonishment with which he regarded his
+      virtuous present was only equaled by the disgust with which he
+      contemplated his past; not so much a vicious past, in his own generous
+      estimation of it, as a &ldquo;thunderin' foolish&rdquo; one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Simpson took the same view of Abner's new leaf as the angels. She was
+      thankful for even a brief season of honesty coupled with the Saturday
+      night remittance; and if she still washed and cried and cried and washed,
+      as Clara Belle had always seen her, it was either because of some hidden
+      sorrow, or because her poor strength seemed all at once to have deserted
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just when employment and good fortune had come to the step-children, and
+      her own were better fed and clothed than ever before, the pain that had
+      always lurked, constant but dull, near her tired heart, grew fierce and
+      triumphantly strong; clutching her in its talons, biting, gnawing,
+      worrying, leaving her each week with slighter powers of resistance. Still
+      hope was in the air and a greater content than had ever been hers was in
+      her eyes; a content that came near to happiness when the doctor ordered
+      her to keep her bed and sent for Clara Belle. She could not wash any
+      longer, but there was the ever new miracle of the Saturday night
+      remittance for household expenses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is your pain bad today, mother,&rdquo; asked Clara Belle, who, only lately
+      given away, was merely borrowed from Mrs. Fogg for what was thought to be
+      a brief emergency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, there, I can't hardly tell, Clara Belle,&rdquo; Mrs. Simpson replied,
+      with a faint smile. &ldquo;I can't seem to remember the pain these days without
+      it's extra bad. The neighbors are so kind; Mrs. Little has sent me canned
+      mustard greens, and Mrs. Benson chocolate ice cream and mince pie; there's
+      the doctor's drops to make me sleep, and these blankets and that great box
+      of eatables from Mr. Ladd; and you here to keep me comp'ny! I declare I'm
+      kind o' dazed with comforts. I never expected to see sherry wine in this
+      house. I ain't never drawed the cork; it does me good enough jest to look
+      at Mr. Ladd's bottle settin' on the mantel-piece with the fire shinin' on
+      the brown glass.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Simpson had come to see his wife and had met the doctor just as he was
+      leaving the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She looks awful bad to me. Is she goin' to pull through all right, same
+      as the last time?&rdquo; he asked the doctor nervously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's going to pull right through into the other world,&rdquo; the doctor
+      answered bluntly; &ldquo;and as there don't seem to be anybody else to take the
+      bull by the horns, I'd advise you, having made the woman's life about as
+      hard and miserable as you could, to try and help her to die easy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Abner, surprised and crushed by the weight of this verbal chastisement,
+      sat down on the doorstep, his head in his hands, and thought a while
+      solemnly. Thought was not an operation he was wont to indulge in, and when
+      he opened the gate a few minutes later and walked slowly toward the barn
+      for his horse, he looked pale and unnerved. It is uncommonly startling,
+      first to see yourself in another man's scornful eyes, and then, clearly,
+      in your own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two days later he came again, and this time it was decreed that he should
+      find Parson Carll tying his piebald mare at the post.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Clara Belle's quick eye had observed the minister as he alighted from his
+      buggy, and, warning her mother, she hastily smoothed the bedclothes,
+      arranged the medicine bottles, and swept the hearth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! Don't let him in!&rdquo; wailed Mrs. Simpson, all of a flutter at the
+      prospect of such a visitor. &ldquo;Oh, dear! They must think over to the village
+      that I'm dreadful sick, or the minister wouldn't never think of callin'!
+      Don't let him in, Clara Belle! I'm afraid he will say hard words to me, or
+      pray to me; and I ain't never been prayed to since I was a child! Is his
+      wife with him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; he's alone; but father's just drove up and is hitching at the shed
+      door.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's worse than all!&rdquo; and Mrs. Simpson raised herself feebly on her
+      pillows and clasped her hands in despair. &ldquo;You mustn't let them two meet,
+      Clara Belle, and you must send Mr. Carll away; your father wouldn't have a
+      minister in the house, nor speak to one, for a thousand dollars!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be quiet, mother! Lie down! It'll be all right! You'll only fret yourself
+      into a spell! The minister's just a good man; he won't say anything to
+      frighten you. Father's talking with him real pleasant, and pointing the
+      way to the front door.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The parson knocked and was admitted by the excited Clara Belle, who
+      ushered him tremblingly into the sickroom, and then betook herself to the
+      kitchen with the children, as he gently requested her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abner Simpson, left alone in the shed, fumbled in his vest pocket and took
+      out an envelope which held a sheet of paper and a tiny packet wrapped in
+      tissue paper. The letter had been read once before and ran as follows:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dear Mr. Simpson:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is a secret letter. I heard that the Acreville people weren't nice to
+      Mrs. Simpson because she didn't have any wedding ring like all the others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I know you've always been poor, dear Mr. Simpson, and troubled with a
+      large family like ours at the farm; but you really ought to have given
+      Mrs. Simpson a ring when you were married to her, right at the very first;
+      for then it would have been over and done with, as they are solid gold and
+      last forever. And probably she wouldn't feel like asking you for one,
+      because ladies are just like girls, only grown up, and I know I'd be
+      ashamed to beg for jewelry when just board and clothes cost so much. So I
+      send you a nice, new wedding ring to save your buying, thinking you might
+      get Mrs. Simpson a bracelet or eardrops for Christmas. It did not cost me
+      anything, as it was a secret present from a friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I hear Mrs. Simpson is sick, and it would be a great comfort to her while
+      she is in bed and has so much time to look at it. When I had the measles
+      Emma Jane Perkins lent me her mother's garnet ring, and it helped me very
+      much to put my wasted hand outside the bedclothes and see the ring
+      sparkling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Please don't be angry with me, dear Mr. Simpson, because I like you so
+      much and am so glad you are happy with the horses and colts; and I believe
+      now perhaps you DID think the flag was a bundle of washing when you took
+      it that day; so no more from your Trusted friend, Rebecca Rowena Randall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Simpson tore the letter slowly and quietly into fragments and scattered
+      the bits on the woodpile, took off his hat, and smoothed his hair; pulled
+      his mustaches thoughtfully, straightened his shoulders, and then, holding
+      the tiny packet in the palm of his hand, he went round to the front door,
+      and having entered the house stood outside the sickroom for an instant,
+      turned the knob and walked softly in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then at last the angels might have enjoyed a moment of unmixed joy, for in
+      that brief walk from shed to house Abner Simpson's conscience waked to
+      life and attained sufficient strength to prick and sting, to provoke
+      remorse, to incite penitence, to do all sorts of divine and beautiful
+      things it was meant for, but had never been allowed to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Clara Belle went about the kitchen quietly, making preparations for the
+      children's supper. She had left Riverboro in haste, as the change for the
+      worse in Mrs. Simpson had been very sudden, but since she had come she had
+      thought more than once of the wedding ring. She had wondered whether Mr.
+      Ladd had bought it for Rebecca, and whether Rebecca would find means to
+      send it to Acreville; but her cares had been so many and varied that the
+      subject had now finally retired to the background of her mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hands of the clock crept on and she kept hushing the strident tones of
+      Elijah and Elisha, opening and shutting the oven door to look at the corn
+      bread, advising Susan as to her dishes, and marveling that the minister
+      stayed so long.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last she heard a door open and close and saw the old parson come out,
+      wiping his spectacles, and step into the buggy for his drive to the
+      village.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then there was another period of suspense, during which the house was as
+      silent as the grave, and presently her father came into the kitchen,
+      greeted the twins and Susan, and said to Clara Belle: &ldquo;Don't go in there
+      yet!&rdquo; jerking his thumb towards Mrs. Simpson's room; &ldquo;she's all beat out
+      and she's just droppin' off to sleep. I'll send some groceries up from the
+      store as I go along. Is the doctor makin' a second call tonight?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; he'll be here pretty soon, now,&rdquo; Clara Belle answered, looking at
+      the clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right. I'll be here again tomorrow, soon as it's light, and if she
+      ain't picked up any I'll send word back to Daly, and stop here with you
+      for a spell till she's better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was true; Mrs. Simpson was &ldquo;all beat out.&rdquo; It had been a time of
+      excitement and stress, and the poor, fluttered creature was dropping off
+      into the strangest sleep&mdash;a sleep made up of waking dreams. The pain,
+      that had encompassed her heart like a band of steel, lessened its cruel
+      pressure, and finally left her so completely that she seemed to see it
+      floating above her head; only that it looked no longer like a band of
+      steel, but a golden circle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The frail bark in which she had sailed her life voyage had been rocking on
+      a rough and tossing ocean, and now it floated, floated slowly into
+      smoother waters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As long as she could remember, her boat had been flung about in storm and
+      tempest, lashed by angry winds, borne against rocks, beaten, torn,
+      buffeted. Now the waves had subsided; the sky was clear; the sea was warm
+      and tranquil; the sunshine dried the tattered sails; the air was soft and
+      balmy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now, for sleep plays strange tricks, the bark disappeared from the
+      dream, and it was she, herself, who was floating, floating farther and
+      farther away; whither she neither knew nor cared; it was enough to be at
+      rest, lulled by the lapping of the cool waves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then there appeared a green isle rising from the sea; an isle so radiant
+      and fairy-like that her famished eyes could hardly believe its reality;
+      but it was real, for she sailed nearer and nearer to its shores, and at
+      last her feet skimmed the shining sands and she floated through the air as
+      disembodied spirits float, till she sank softly at the foot of a spreading
+      tree.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she saw the green isle was a flowering isle. Every shrub and bush was
+      blooming; the trees were hung with rosy garlands, and even the earth was
+      carpeted with tiny flowers. The rare fragrances, the bird songs, soft and
+      musical, the ravishment of color, all bore down upon her swimming senses
+      at once, taking them captive so completely that she remembered no past,
+      was conscious of no present, looked forward to no future. She seemed to
+      leave the body and the sad, heavy things of the body. The humming in her
+      ears ceased, the light faded, the birds songs grew fainter and more
+      distant, the golden circle of pain receded farther and farther until it
+      was lost to view; even the flowering island gently drifted away, and all
+      was peace and silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was time for the doctor now, and Clara Belle, too anxious to wait
+      longer, softly turned the knob of her mother's door and entered the room.
+      The glow of the open fire illumined the darkest side of the poor chamber.
+      There were no trees near the house, and a full November moon streamed in
+      at the unblinded, uncurtained windows, lighting up the bare interior&mdash;the
+      unpainted floor, the gray plastered walls, and the white counterpane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her mother lay quite still, her head turned and drooping a little on the
+      pillow. Her left hand was folded softly up against her breast, the fingers
+      of the right partly covering it, as if protecting something precious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Was it the moonlight that made the patient brow so white, and where were
+      the lines of anxiety and pain? The face of the mother who had washed and
+      cried and cried and washed was as radiant as if the closed eye were
+      beholding heavenly visions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Something must have cured her!&rdquo; thought Clara Belle, awed and almost
+      frightened by the whiteness and the silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She tiptoed across the floor to look more closely at the still, smiling
+      shape, and bending over it saw, under the shadow of the caressing right
+      hand, a narrow gold band gleaming on the work-stained finger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, the ring came, after all!&rdquo; she said in a glad whisper, &ldquo;and perhaps
+      it was that that made her better!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She put her hand on her mother's gently. A terrified shiver, a warning
+      shudder, shook the girl from head to foot at the chilling touch. A dread
+      presence she had never met before suddenly took shape. It filled the room;
+      stifled the cry on her lips; froze her steps to the floor, stopped the
+      beating of her heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just then the door opened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, doctor! Come quick!&rdquo; she sobbed, stretching out her hand for help,
+      and then covering her eyes. &ldquo;Come close! Look at mother! Is she better&mdash;or
+      is she dead?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor put one hand on the shoulder of the shrinking child, and
+      touched the woman with the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is better!&rdquo; he said gently, &ldquo;and she is dead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Tenth Chronicle. REBECCA'S REMINISCENCES
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca was sitting by the window in her room at the Wareham Female
+      Seminary. She was alone, as her roommate, Emma Jane Perkins, was reciting
+      Latin down below in some academic vault of the old brick building.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A new and most ardent passion for the classics had been born in Emma
+      Jane's hitherto unfertile brain, for Abijah Flagg, who was carrying off
+      all the prizes at Limerick Academy, had written her a letter in Latin, a
+      letter which she had been unable to translate for herself, even with the
+      aid of a dictionary, and which she had been apparently unwilling that
+      Rebecca, her bosom friend, confidant, and roommate, should render into
+      English.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An old-fashioned Female Seminary, with its allotment of one medium-sized
+      room to two medium sized young females, gave small opportunities for
+      privacy by night or day, for neither the double washstand, nor the thus
+      far unimagined bathroom, nor even indeed the humble and serviceable
+      screen, had been realized, in these dark ages of which I write.
+      Accordingly, like the irrational ostrich, which defends itself by the
+      simple process of not looking at its pursuers, Emma Jane had kept her
+      Latin letter in her closed hand, in her pocket, or in her open book,
+      flattering herself that no one had noticed her pleased bewilderment at its
+      only half-imagined contents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All the fairies were not present at Rebecca's cradle. A goodly number of
+      them telegraphed that they were previously engaged or unavoidably absent
+      from town. The village of Temperance, Maine, where Rebecca first saw the
+      light, was hardly a place on its own merits to attract large throngs of
+      fairies. But one dear old personage who keeps her pocket full of Merry
+      Leaves from the Laughing Tree, took a fancy to come to the little birthday
+      party; and seeing so few of her sister-fairies present, she dowered the
+      sleeping baby more richly than was her wont, because of its apparent lack
+      of wealth in other directions. So the child grew, and the Merry Leaves
+      from the Laughing Tree rustled where they hung from the hood of her
+      cradle, and, being fairy leaves, when the cradle was given up they
+      festooned themselves on the cribside, and later on blew themselves up to
+      the ceilings at Sunnybook Farm and dangled there, making fun for
+      everybody. They never withered, even at the brick house in Riverboro,
+      where the air was particularly inimical to fairies, for Miss Miranda
+      Sawyer would have scared any ordinary elf out of her seventeen senses.
+      They followed Rebecca to Wareham, and during Abijah Flagg's Latin
+      correspondence with Emma Jane they fluttered about that young person's
+      head in such a manner that Rebecca was almost afraid that she would
+      discover them herself, although this is something, as a matter of fact,
+      that never does happen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A week had gone by since the Latin missive had been taken from the
+      post-office by Emma Jane, and now, by means of much midnight oil-burning,
+      by much cautious questioning of Miss Maxwell, by such scrutiny of the
+      moods and tenses of Latin verbs as wellnigh destroyed her brain tissue,
+      she had mastered its romantic message. If it was conventional in style,
+      Emma Jane never suspected it. If some of the similes seemed to have been
+      culled from the Latin poets, and some of the phrases built up from Latin
+      exercises, Emma Jane was neither scholar nor critic; the similes, the
+      phrases, the sentiments, when finally translated and written down in
+      black-and-white English, made, in her opinion, the most convincing and
+      heart-melting document ever sent through the mails:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mea cara Emma:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cur audeo scribere ad te epistulam? Es mihi dea! Semper es in mea anima.
+      Iterum et iterum es cum me in somnis. Saepe video tuas capillos auri, tuos
+      pulchros oculos similes caelo, tuas genas, quasi rubentes rosas in nive.
+      Tua vox est dulcior quam cantus avium aut murmur rivuli in montibus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cur sum ego tam miser et pauper et indignus, et tu tam dulcis et bona et
+      nobilis?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Si cogitabis de me ero beatus. Tu es sola puella quam amo, et semper eris.
+      Alias puellas non amavi. Forte olim amabis me, sed sum indignus. Sine te
+      sum miser, cum tu es prope mea vita omni est goddamn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vale, carissima, carissima puella!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      De tuo fideli servo A.F.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My dear Emma:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Why dare I write to you a letter? You are to me a goddess! Always you are
+      in my heart. Again and again you are with me in dreams. Often I see your
+      locks of gold, your beautiful eyes like the sky, your cheeks, as red roses
+      in snow. Your voice is sweeter than the singing of birds or the murmur of
+      the stream in the mountains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Why am I so wretched and poor and unworthy, and you so sweet and good and
+      noble?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If you will think of me I shall be happy. You are the only girl that I
+      love and always will be. Other girls I have not loved. Perhaps sometime
+      you will love me, but I am unworthy. Without you, I am wretched, when you
+      are near my life is all joy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Farewell, dearest, dearest girl!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From your faithful slave A.F.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane knew the letter by heart in English. She even knew it in Latin,
+      only a few days before a dead language to her, but now one filled with
+      life and meaning. From beginning to end the epistle had the effect upon
+      her as of an intoxicating elixir. Often, at morning prayers, or while
+      eating her rice pudding at the noon dinner, or when sinking off to sleep
+      at night, she heard a voice murmuring in her ear, &ldquo;Vale, carissima,
+      carissima puella!&rdquo; As to the effect on her modest, countrified little
+      heart of the phrases in which Abijah stated she was a goddess and he her
+      faithful slave, that quite baffles description; for it lifted her bodily
+      out of the scenes in which she moved, into a new, rosy, ethereal
+      atmosphere in which even Rebecca had no place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca did not know this, fortunately; she only suspected, and waited for
+      the day when Emma Jane would pour out her confidences, as she always did,
+      and always would until the end of time. At the present moment she was
+      busily employed in thinking about her own affairs. A shabby composition
+      book with mottled board covers lay open on the table before her, and
+      sometimes she wrote in it with feverish haste and absorption, and
+      sometimes she rested her chin in the cup of her palm, and with the pencil
+      poised in the other hand looked dreamily out on the village, its huddle of
+      roofs and steeples all blurred into positive beauty by the fast-falling
+      snowflakes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the middle of December and the friendly sky was softly dropping a
+      great white mantle of peace and good-will over the little town, making all
+      ready within and without for the Feast o' the Babe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The main street, that in summer was made dignified by its splendid avenue
+      of shade trees, now ran quiet and white between rows of stalwart trunks,
+      whose leafless branches were all hanging heavy under their dazzling
+      burden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The path leading straight up the hill to the Academy was broken only by
+      the feet of the hurrying, breathless boys and girls who ran up and down,
+      carrying piles of books under their arms; books which they remembered so
+      long as they were within the four walls of the recitation room, and which
+      they eagerly forgot as soon as they met one another in the living,
+      laughing world, going up and down the hill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's very becoming to the universe, snow is!&rdquo; thought Rebecca, looking
+      out of the window dreamily. &ldquo;Really there's little to choose between the
+      world and heaven when a snowstorm is going on. I feel as if I ought to
+      look at it every minute. I wish I could get over being greedy, but it
+      still seems to me at sixteen as if there weren't waking hours enough in
+      the day, and as if somehow I were pressed for time and continually losing
+      something. How well I remember mother's story about me when I was four. It
+      was at early breakfast on the farm, but I called all meals dinner' then,
+      and when I had finished I folded up my bib and sighed: O, dear! Only two
+      more dinners, play a while and go to bed!' This was at six in the morning&mdash;lamplight
+      in the kitchen, snowlight outside!
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Powdery, powdery, powdery snow,
+     Making things lovely wherever you go!
+     Merciful, merciful, merciful snow,
+     Masking the ugliness hidden below.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Herbert made me promise to do a poem for the January 'Pilot,' but I
+      mustn't take the snow as a subject; there has been too great competition
+      among the older poets!&rdquo; And with that she turned in her chair and began
+      writing again in the shabby book, which was already three quarters filled
+      with childish scribblings, sometimes in pencil, and sometimes in violet
+      ink with carefully shaded capital letters.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      Squire Bean has had a sharp attack of rheumatism and Abijah Flagg came
+      back from Limerick for a few days to nurse him. One morning the Burnham
+      sisters from North Riverboro came over to spend the day with Aunt Miranda,
+      and Abijah went down to put up their horse. (&ldquo;'Commodatin' 'Bijah&rdquo; was his
+      pet name when we were all young.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He scaled the ladder to the barn chamber&mdash;the dear old ladder that
+      used to be my safety valve!&mdash;and pitched down the last forkful of
+      grandfather's hay that will ever be eaten by any visiting horse. They WILL
+      be delighted to hear that it is all gone; they have grumbled at it for
+      years and years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What should Abijah find at the bottom of the heap but my Thought Book,
+      hidden there two or three years ago and forgotten!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I think of what it was to me, the place it filled in my life, the
+      affection I lavished on it, I wonder that I could forget it, even in all
+      the excitement of coming to Wareham to school. And that gives me &ldquo;an
+      uncommon thought&rdquo; as I used to say! It is this: that when we finish
+      building an air castle we seldom live in it after all; we sometimes even
+      forget that we ever longed to! Perhaps we have gone so far as to begin
+      another castle on a higher hilltop, and this is so beautiful,&mdash;especially
+      while we are building, and before we live in it!&mdash;that the first one
+      has quite vanished from sight and mind, like the outgrown shell of the
+      nautilus that he casts off on the shore and never looks at again. (At
+      least I suppose he doesn't; but perhaps he takes one backward glance,
+      half-smiling, half-serious, just as I am doing at my old Thought Book, and
+      says, &ldquo;WAS THAT MY SHELL! GOODNESS GRACIOUS! HOW DID I EVER SQUEEZE MYSELF
+      INTO IT!&rdquo;)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That bit about the nautilus sounds like an extract from a school theme, or
+      a &ldquo;Pilot&rdquo; editorial, or a fragment of one of dear Miss Maxwell's lectures,
+      but I think girls of sixteen are principally imitations of the people and
+      things they love and admire; and between editing the &ldquo;Pilot,&rdquo; writing out
+      Virgil translations, searching for composition subjects, and studying
+      rhetorical models, there is very little of the original Rebecca Rowena
+      about me at the present moment; I am just a member of the graduating class
+      in good and regular standing. We do our hair alike, dress alike as much as
+      possible, eat and drink alike, talk alike,&mdash;I am not even sure that
+      we do not think alike; and what will become of the poor world when we are
+      all let loose upon it on the same day of June? Will life, real life, bring
+      our true selves back to us? Will love and duty and sorrow and trouble and
+      work finally wear off the &ldquo;school stamp&rdquo; that has been pressed upon all of
+      us until we look like rows of shining copper cents fresh from the mint?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet there must be a little difference between us somewhere, or why does
+      Abijah Flagg write Latin letters to Emma Jane, instead of to me? There is
+      one example on the other side of the argument,&mdash;Abijah Flagg. He
+      stands out from all the rest of the boys like the Rock of Gibraltar in the
+      geography pictures. Is it because he never went to school until he was
+      sixteen? He almost died of longing to go, and the longing seemed to teach
+      him more than going. He knew his letters, and could read simple things,
+      but it was I who taught him what books really meant when I was eleven and
+      he thirteen. We studied while he was husking corn or cutting potatoes for
+      seed, or shelling beans in the Squire's barn. His beloved Emma Jane didn't
+      teach him; her father wold not have let her be friends with a chore-boy!
+      It was I who found him after milking-time, summer nights, suffering, yes
+      dying, of Least Common Multiple and Greatest Common Divisor; I who struck
+      the shackles from the slave and told him to skip it all and go on to
+      something easier, like Fractions, Percentage, and Compound Interest, as I
+      did myself. Oh! How he used to smell of the cows when I was correcting his
+      sums on warm evenings, but I don't regret it, for he is now the joy of
+      Limerick and the pride of Riverboro, and I suppose has forgotten the
+      proper side on which to approach a cow if you wish to milk her. This now
+      unserviceable knowledge is neatly inclosed in the outgrown shell he threw
+      off two or three years ago. His gratitude to me knows no bounds, but&mdash;he
+      writes Latin letters to Emma Jane! But as Mr. Perkins said about drowning
+      the kittens (I now quote from myself at thirteen), &ldquo;It is the way of the
+      world and how things have to be!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, I have read the Thought Book all through, and when I want to make
+      Mr. Aladdin laugh, I shall show him my composition on the relative values
+      of punishment and reward as builders of character.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am not at all the same Rebecca today at sixteen that I was then, at
+      twelve and thirteen. I hope, in getting rid of my failings, that I haven't
+      scrubbed and rubbed so hard that I have taken the gloss off the poor
+      little virtues that lay just alongside of the faults; for as I read the
+      foolish doggerel and the funny, funny &ldquo;Remerniscences,&rdquo; I see on the whole
+      a nice, well-meaning, trusting, loving heedless little creature, that
+      after all I'd rather build on than outgrow altogether, because she is Me;
+      the Me that was made and born just a little different from all the rest of
+      the babies in my birthday year.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One thing is alike in the child and the girl. They both love to set
+      thoughts down in black and white; to see how they look, how they sound,
+      and how they make one feel when one reads them over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They both love the sound of beautiful sentences and the tinkle of rhyming
+      words, and in fact, of the three great R's of life, they adore Reading and
+      Riting, as much as they abhor 'Rithmetic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little girl in the old book is always thinking of what she is &ldquo;going
+      to be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Uncle Jerry Cobb spoiled me a good deal in this direction. I remember he
+      said to everybody when I wrote my verses for the flag-raising: &ldquo;Nary rung
+      on the ladder o' fame but that child'll climb if you give her time!&rdquo;&mdash;poor
+      Uncle Jerry! He will be so disappointed in me as time goes on. And still
+      he would think I have already climbed two rungs on the ladder, although it
+      is only a little Wareham ladder, for I am one of the &ldquo;Pilot&rdquo; editors, the
+      first &ldquo;girl editor&rdquo;&mdash;and I have taken a fifty dollar prize in
+      composition and paid off the interest on a twelve hundred dollar mortgage
+      with it.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;High is the rank we now possess,
+     But higher we shall rise;
+     Though what we shall hereafter be
+     Is hid from mortal eyes.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      This hymn was sung in meeting the Sunday after my election, and Mr.
+      Aladdin was there that day and looked across the aisle and smiled at me.
+      Then he sent me a sheet of paper from Boston the next morning with just
+      one verse in the middle of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She made the cleverest people quite ashamed; And ev'n the good with
+      inward envy groan, Finding themselves so very much exceeded, In their own
+      way by all the things that she did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Maxwell says it is Byron, and I wish I had thought of the last rhyme
+      before Byron did; my rhymes are always so common.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am too busy doing, nowadays, to give very much thought to being. Mr.
+      Aladdin was teasing me one day about what he calls my &ldquo;cast-off careers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What makes you aim at any mark in particular, Rebecca?&rdquo; he asked, looking
+      at Miss Maxwell and laughing. &ldquo;Women never hit what they aim at, anyway;
+      but if they shut their eyes and shoot in the air they generally find
+      themselves in the bull's eye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I think one reason that I have always dreamed of what I should be, when I
+      grew up, was, that even before father died mother worried about the
+      mortgage on the farm, and what would become of us if it were foreclosed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was hard on children to be brought up on a mortgage that way, but oh!
+      it was harder still on poor dear mother, who had seven of us then to think
+      of, and still has three at home to feed and clothe out of the farm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aunt Jane says I am young for my age, Aunt Miranda is afraid that I will
+      never really &ldquo;grow up,&rdquo; Mr. Aladdin says that I don't know the world any
+      better than the pearl inside of the oyster. They none of them know the
+      old, old thoughts I have, some of them going back years and years; for
+      they are never ones that I can speak about.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I remember how we children used to admire father, he was so handsome and
+      graceful and amusing, never cross like mother, or too busy to play with
+      us. He never did any work at home because he had to keep his hands nice
+      for playing the church melodeon, or the violin or piano for dances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mother used to say: &ldquo;Hannah and Rebecca, you must hull the strawberries,
+      your father cannot help.&rdquo; &ldquo;John, you must milk next year for I haven't the
+      time and it would spoil your father's hands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All the other men in Temperance village wore calico, or flannel shirts,
+      except on Sundays, but Father never wore any but white ones with starched
+      bosoms. He was very particular about them and mother used to stitch and
+      stitch on the pleats, and press and press the bosoms and collar and cuffs,
+      sometimes late at night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she was tired and thin and gray, with no time to sew on new dresses
+      for herself, and no time to wear them, because she was always taking care
+      of the babies; and father was happy and well and handsome. But we children
+      never thought much about it until once, after father had mortgaged the
+      farm, there was going to be a sociable in Temperance village. Mother could
+      not go as Jenny had whooping-cough and Mark had just broken his arm, and
+      when she was tying father's necktie, the last thing before he started, he
+      said: &ldquo;I wish, Aurelia, that you cared a little about YOUR appearance and
+      YOUR dress; it goes a long way with a man like me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mother had finished the tie, and her hands dropped suddenly. I looked at
+      her eyes and mouth while she looked at father and in a minute I was ever
+      so old, with a grown-up ache in my heart. It has always stayed there,
+      although I admired my handsome father and was proud of him because he was
+      so talented; but now that I am older and have thought about things, my
+      love for mother is different from what it used to be. Father was always
+      the favorite when we were little, he was so interesting, and I wonder
+      sometimes if we don't remember interesting people longer and better than
+      we do those who are just good and patient. If so it seems very cruel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As I look back I see that Miss Ross, the artist who brought me my pink
+      parasol from Paris, sowed the first seeds in me of ambition to do
+      something special. Her life seemed so beautiful and so easy to a child. I
+      had not been to school then, or read George Macdonald, so I did not know
+      that &ldquo;Ease is the lovely result of forgotten toil.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Ross sat out of doors and painted lovely things, and everybody said
+      how wonderful they were, and bought them straight away; and she took care
+      of a blind father and two brothers, and traveled wherever she wished. It
+      comes back to me now, that summer when I was ten and Miss Ross painted me
+      sitting by the mill-wheel while she talked to me of foreign countries!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other day Miss Maxwell read something from Browning's poems to the
+      girls of her literature class. It was about David the shepherd boy who
+      used to lie in his hollow watching one eagle &ldquo;wheeling slow as in sleep.&rdquo;
+       He used to wonder about the wide world that the eagle beheld, the eagle
+      that was stretching his wings so far up in the blue, while he, the poor
+      shepherd boy, could see only the &ldquo;strip twixt the hill and the sky;&rdquo; for
+      he lay in a hollow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I told Mr. Baxter about it the next day, which was the Saturday before I
+      joined the church. I asked him if it was wicked to long to see as much as
+      the eagle saw?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was never anybody quite like Mr. Baxter. &ldquo;Rebecca dear,&rdquo; he said,
+      &ldquo;it may be that you need not always lie in a hollow, as the shepherd boy
+      did; but wherever you lie, that little strip you see 'twixt the hill and
+      the sky' is able to hold all of earth and all of heaven, if only you have
+      the right sort of vision.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was a long, long time about &ldquo;experiencing religion.&rdquo; I remember Sunday
+      afternoons at the brick house the first winter after I went there; when I
+      used to sit in the middle of the dining-room as I was bid, silent and
+      still, with the big family Bible on my knees. Aunt Miranda had Baxter's
+      &ldquo;Saints' Rest,&rdquo; but her seat was by the window, and she at least could
+      give a glance into the street now and then without being positively
+      wicked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aunt Jane used to read the &ldquo;Pilgrim's Progress.&rdquo; The fire burned low; the
+      tall clock ticked, ticked, so slowly and steadily, that the pictures swam
+      before my eyes and I almost fell asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They thought by shutting everything else out that I should see God; but I
+      didn't, not once. I was so homesick for Sunnybook and John that I could
+      hardly learn my weekly hymns, especially the sad, long one beginning:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;My thoughts on awful subjects roll,
+     Damnation and the dead.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      It was brother John for whom I was chiefly homesick on Sunday afternoons,
+      because at Sunnybrook Farm father was dead and mother was always busy, and
+      Hannah never liked to talk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the next year the missionaries from Syria came to Riverboro; and at
+      the meeting Mr. Burch saw me playing the melodeon, and thought I was grown
+      up and a church member, and so he asked me to lead in prayer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I didn't dare to refuse, and when I prayed, which was just like thinking
+      out loud, I found I could talk to God a great deal easier than to Aunt
+      Miranda or even to Uncle Jerry Cobb. There were things I could say to Him
+      that I could never say to anybody else, and saying them always made me
+      happy and contented.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Mr. Baxter asked me last year about joining the church, I told him I
+      was afraid I did not understand God quite well enough to be a real member.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you don't quite understand God, Rebecca?&rdquo; he asked, smiling. &ldquo;Well,
+      there is something else much more important, which is, that He understands
+      you! He understands your feeble love, your longings, desires, hopes,
+      faults, ambitions, crosses; and that, after all, is what counts! Of course
+      you don't understand Him! You are overshadowed by His love, His power, His
+      benignity, His wisdom; that is as it should be! Why, Rebecca, dear, if you
+      could stand erect and unabashed in God's presence, as one who perfectly
+      comprehended His nature or His purposes, it would be sacrilege! Don't be
+      puzzled out of your blessed inheritance of faith, my child; accept God
+      easily and naturally, just as He accepts you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God never puzzled me, Mr. Baxter; it isn't that,&rdquo; I said; &ldquo;but the
+      doctrines do worry me dreadfully.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let them alone for the present,&rdquo; Mr Baxter said. &ldquo;Anyway, Rebecca, you
+      can never prove God; you can only find Him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then do you think I have really experienced religion, Mr. Baxter?&rdquo; I
+      asked. &ldquo;Am I the beginnings of a Christian?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are a dear child of the understanding God!&rdquo; Mr. Baxter said; &ldquo;and I
+      say it over to myself night and morning so that I can never forget it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      The year is nearly over and the next few months will be lived in the rush
+      and whirlwind of work that comes before graduation. The bell for
+      philosophy class will ring in ten minutes, and as I have been writing for
+      nearly two hours, I must learn my lesson going up the Academy hill. It
+      will not be the first time; it is a grand hill for learning! I suppose
+      after fifty years or so the very ground has become soaked with knowledge,
+      and every particle of air in the vicinity is crammed with useful
+      information.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I will put my book into my trunk (having no blessed haymow hereabouts) and
+      take it out again,&mdash;when shall I take it out again?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After graduation perhaps I shall be too grown up and too busy to write in
+      a Thought Book; but oh, if only something would happen worth putting down;
+      something strange; something unusual; something different from the things
+      that happen every day in Riverboro and Edgewood!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graduation will surely take me a little out of &ldquo;the hollow,&rdquo;&mdash;make me
+      a little more like the soaring eagle, gazing at the whole wide world
+      beneath him while he wheels &ldquo;slow as in sleep.&rdquo; But whether or not, I'll
+      try not to be a discontented shepherd, but remember what Mr. Baxter said,
+      that the little strip that I see &ldquo;twixt the hill and the sky&rdquo; is able to
+      hold all of earth and all of heaven, if only I have the eyes to see it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca Rowena Randall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wareham Female Seminary, December 187&mdash;.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Eleventh Chronicle. ABIJAH THE BRAVE AND THE FAIR EMMAJANE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;A warrior so bold and a maiden so bright
+     Conversed as they sat on the green.
+     They gazed at each other in tender delight.
+     Alonzo the brave was the name of the knight,
+     And the maid was the fair Imogene.
+
+     &ldquo;Alas!' said the youth, 'since tomorrow I go
+     To fight in a far distant land,
+     Your tears for my absence soon ceasing to flow,
+     Some other will court you, and you will bestow
+     On a wealthier suitor your hand.'
+
+     'Oh, hush these suspicions!' Fair Imogene said,
+     &ldquo;So hurtful to love and to me!
+     For if you be living, or if you be dead,
+     I swear by the Virgin that none in your stead
+     Shall the husband of Imogene be!'
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Ever since she was eight years old Rebecca had wished to be eighteen, but
+      now that she was within a month of that awe-inspiring and long-desired age
+      she wondered if, after all, it was destined to be a turning point in her
+      quiet existence. Her eleventh year, for instance, had been a real
+      turning-point, since it was then that she had left Sunnybrook Farm and
+      come to her maiden aunts in Riverboro. Aurelia Randall may have been
+      doubtful as to the effect upon her spinster sisters of the irrepressible
+      child, but she was hopeful from the first that the larger opportunities of
+      Riverboro would be the &ldquo;making&rdquo; of Rebecca herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next turning-point was her fourteenth year, when she left the district
+      school for the Wareham Female Seminary, then in the hey-day of its local
+      fame. Graduation (next to marriage, perhaps, the most thrilling episode in
+      the life of a little country girl) happened at seventeen, and not long
+      afterward her Aunt Miranda's death, sudden and unexpected, changed not
+      only all the outward activities and conditions of her life, but played its
+      own part in her development.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The brick house looked very homelike and pleasant on a June morning
+      nowadays with children's faces smiling at the windows and youthful
+      footsteps sounding through the halls; and the brass knocker on the
+      red-painted front door might have remembered Rebecca's prayer of a year
+      before, when she leaned against its sun-warmed brightness and whispered:
+      &ldquo;God bless Aunt Miranda; God bless the brick house that was; God bless the
+      brick house that's going to be!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All the doors and blinds were open to the sun and air as they had never
+      been in Miss Miranda Sawyer's time. The hollyhock bed that had been her
+      chief pride was never neglected, and Rebecca liked to hear the neighbors
+      say that there was no such row of beautiful plants and no such variety of
+      beautiful colors in Riverboro as those that climbed up and peeped in at
+      the kitchen windows where old Miss Miranda used to sit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now that the place was her very own Rebecca felt a passion of pride in its
+      smoothly mown fields, its carefully thinned-out woods, its blooming garden
+      spots, and its well-weeded vegetable patch; felt, too whenever she looked
+      at any part of it, a passion of gratitude to the stern old aunt who had
+      looked upon her as the future head of the family, as well as a passion of
+      desire to be worthy of that trust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It had been a very difficult year for a girl fresh from school: the death
+      of her aunt, the nursing of Miss Jane, prematurely enfeebled by the shock,
+      the removal of her own invalid mother and the rest of the little family
+      from Sunnybrook Farm. But all had gone smoothly; and when once the Randall
+      fortunes had taken an upward turn nothing seemed able to stop their
+      intrepid ascent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aurelia Randall renewed her youth in the companionship of her sister Jane
+      and the comforts by which her children were surrounded; the mortgage was
+      no longer a daily terror, for Sunnybrook had been sold to the new
+      railroad; Hannah, now Mrs. Will Melville, was happily situated; John, at
+      last, was studying medicine; Mark, the boisterous and unlucky brother, had
+      broken no bones for several months; while Jenny and Fanny were doing well
+      at the district school under Miss Libby Moses, Miss Dearborn's successor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't feel very safe,&rdquo; thought Rebecca, remembering all these
+      unaccustomed mercies as she sat on the front doorsteps, with her tatting
+      shuttle flying in and out of the fine cotton like a hummingbird. &ldquo;It's
+      just like one of those too beautiful July days that winds up with a
+      thundershower before night! Still, when you remember that the Randalls
+      never had anything but thunder and lightning, rain, snow, and hail, in
+      their family history for twelve or fifteen years, perhaps it is only
+      natural that they should enjoy a little spell of settled weather. If it
+      really turns out to BE settled, now that Aunt Jane and mother are strong
+      again I must be looking up one of what Mr. Aladdin calls my cast-off
+      careers.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;There comes Emma Jane Perkins through her front gate; she
+      will be here in a minute, and I'll tease her!&rdquo; and Rebecca ran in the door
+      and seated herself at the old piano that stood between the open windows in
+      the parlor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Peeping from behind the muslin curtains, she waited until Emma Jane was on
+      the very threshold and then began singing her version of an old ballad,
+      made that morning while she was dressing. The ballad was a great favorite
+      of hers, and she counted on doing telling execution with it in the present
+      instance by the simple subterfuge of removing the original hero and
+      heroine, Alonzo and Imogene, and substituting Abijah the Brave and the
+      Fair Emmajane, leaving the circumstances in the first three verses
+      unaltered, because in truth they seemed to require no alteration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her high, clear voice, quivering with merriment, floated through the
+      windows into the still summer air:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;'A warrior so bold and a maiden so bright
+     Conversed as they sat on the green.
+     They gazed at each other in tender delight.
+     Abijah the Brave was the name of the knight,
+     And the maid was the Fair Emmajane.'&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rebecca Randall, stop! Somebody'll hear you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, they won't&mdash;they're making jelly in the kitchen, miles away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;'Alas!' said the youth, since tomorrow I go
+     To fight in a far distant land,
+     Your tears for my absence soon ceasing to flow,
+     Some other will court you, and you will bestow
+     On a wealthier suitor your hand.'&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rebecca, you can't THINK how your voice carries! I believe mother can
+      hear it over to my house!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, if she can, I must sing the third verse, just to clear your
+      reputation from the cloud cast upon it in the second,&rdquo; laughed her
+      tormentor, going on with the song:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Oh, hush these suspicions!' Fair Emmajane said, 'So hurtful to love and
+      to me! For if you be living, or if you be dead, I swear, my Abijah, that
+      none in your stead, Shall the husband of Emmajane be!'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After ending the third verse Rebecca wheeled around on the piano stool and
+      confronted her friend, who was carefully closing the parlor windows:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Emma Jane Perkins, it is an ordinary Thursday afternoon at four o'clock
+      and you have on your new blue barege, although there is not even a church
+      sociable in prospect this evening. What does this mean? Is Abijah the
+      Brave coming at last?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know certainly, but it will be some time this week.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And of course you'd rather be dressed up and not seen, than seen when not
+      dressed up. Right, my Fair Emmajane; so would I. Not that it makes any
+      difference to poor me, wearing my fourth best black and white calico and
+      expecting nobody.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, well, YOU! There's something inside of you that does instead of
+      pretty dresses,&rdquo; cried Emma Jane, whose adoration of her friend had never
+      altered nor lessened since they met at the age of eleven. &ldquo;You know you
+      are as different from anybody else in Riverboro as a princess in a fairy
+      story. Libby Moses says they would notice you in Lowell, Massachusetts!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would they? I wonder,&rdquo; speculated Rebecca, rendered almost speechless by
+      this tribute to her charms. &ldquo;Well, if Lowell, Massachusetts, could see me,
+      or if you could see me, in my new lavender muslin with the violet sash, it
+      would die of envy, and so would you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I had been going to be envious of you, Rebecca, I should have died
+      years ago. Come, let's go out on the steps where it's shady and cool.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And where we can see the Perkins front gate and the road running both
+      ways,&rdquo; teased Rebecca, and then, softening her tone, she said: &ldquo;How is it
+      getting on, Emmy? Tell me what's happened since I've been in Brunswick.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing much,&rdquo; confessed Emma Jane. &ldquo;He writes to me, but I don't write
+      to him, you know. I don't dare to, till he comes to the house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are his letters still in Latin?&rdquo; asked Rebecca, with a twinkling eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no! Not now, because&mdash;well, because there are things you can't
+      seem to write in Latin. I saw him at the Masonic picnic in the grove, but
+      he won't say anything REAL to me till he gets more pay and dares to speak
+      to mother and father. He IS brave in all other ways, but I ain't sure
+      he'll ever have the courage for that, he's so afraid of them and always
+      has been. Just remember what's in his mind all the time, Rebecca, that my
+      folks know all about what his mother was, and how he was born on the
+      poor-farm. Not that I care; look how he's educated and worked himself up!
+      I think he's perfectly elegant, and I shouldn't mind if he had been born
+      in the bulrushes, like Moses.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane's every-day vocabulary was pretty much what it had been before
+      she went to the expensive Wareham Female Seminary. She had acquired a
+      certain amount of information concerning the art of speech, but in moments
+      of strong feeling she lapsed into the vernacular. She grew slowly in all
+      directions, did Emma Jane, and, to use Rebecca's favorite nautilus figure,
+      she had left comparatively few outgrown shells on the shores of &ldquo;life's
+      unresting sea.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Moses wasn't born in the bulrushes, Emmy dear,&rdquo; corrected Rebecca
+      laughingly. &ldquo;Pharaoh's daughter found him there. It wasn't quite as
+      romantic a scene&mdash;Squire Bean's wife taking little Abijah Flagg from
+      the poorhouse when his girl-mother died, but, oh, I think Abijah's
+      splendid! Mr. Ladd says Riverboro'll be proud of him yet, and I shouldn't
+      wonder, Emmy dear, if you had a three-story house with a cupola on it,
+      some day; and sitting down at your mahogany desk inlaid with garnets, you
+      will write notes stating that Mrs. Abijah Flagg requests the pleasure of
+      Miss Rebecca Randall's company to tea, and that the Hon. Abijah Flagg,
+      M.C., will call for her on his way from the station with a span of horses
+      and the turquoise carryall!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane laughed at the ridiculous prophecy, and answered: &ldquo;If I ever
+      write the invitation I shan't be addressing it to Miss Randall, I'm sure
+      of that; it'll be to Mrs.&mdash;&mdash;-&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't!&rdquo; cried Rebecca impetuously, changing color and putting her hand
+      over Emma Jane's lips. &ldquo;If you won't I'll stop teasing. I couldn't bear a
+      name put to anything, I couldn't, Emmy dear! I wouldn't tease you, either,
+      if it weren't something we've both known ever so long&mdash;something that
+      you have always consulted me about of your own accord, and Abijah too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't get excited,&rdquo; replied Emma Jane, &ldquo;I was only going to say you were
+      sure to be Mrs. Somebody in course of time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said Rebecca with a relieved sigh, her color coming back; &ldquo;if that's
+      all you meant, just nonsense; but I thought, I thought&mdash;I don't
+      really know just what I thought!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you thought something you didn't want me to think you thought,&rdquo;
+       said Emma Jane with unusual felicity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, it's not that; but somehow, today, I have been remembering things.
+      Perhaps it was because at breakfast Aunt Jane and mother reminded me of my
+      coming birthday and said that Squire Bean would give me the deed of the
+      brick house. That made me feel very old and responsible; and when I came
+      out on the steps this afternoon it was just as if pictures of the old
+      years were moving up and down the road. Everything is so beautiful today!
+      Doesn't the sky look as if it had been dyed blue and the fields painted
+      pink and green and yellow this very minute?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a perfectly elegant day!&rdquo; responded Emma Jane with a sigh. &ldquo;If only
+      my mind was at rest! That's the difference between being young and
+      grown-up. We never used to think and worry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed we didn't! Look, Emmy, there's the very spot where Uncle Jerry
+      Cobb stopped the stage and I stepped out with my pink parasol and my
+      bouquet of purple lilacs, and you were watching me from your bedroom
+      window and wondering what I had in mother's little hair trunk strapped on
+      behind. Poor Aunt Miranda didn't love me at first sight, and oh, how cross
+      she was the first two years! But now every hard thought I ever had comes
+      back to me and cuts like a knife!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was dreadful hard to get along with, and I used to hate her like
+      poison,&rdquo; confessed Emma Jane; &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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!'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lumps rose suddenly in Emma Jane's throat, and she put her arm around
+      Rebecca's waist as they sat together side by side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I do remember,&rdquo; she said in a choking voice. &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I remember you,&rdquo; continued Rebecca, &ldquo;being chased down the hill by
+      Jacob Moody, when we were being Daughters of Zion and you had been chosen
+      to convert him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I remember you, getting the flag back from Mr. Simpson; and how you
+      looked when you spoke your verses at the flag-raising.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I always thought that was an elegant composition of yours&mdash;that
+      farewell to the class,&rdquo; said Emma Jane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The strong tide bears us on, out of the little harbor of childhood into
+      the unknown seas,&rdquo; recalled Rebecca. &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane grew a deeper pink and her button-hole of a mouth quivered with
+      delicious excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was last year at the seminary, when he wrote me his first Latin letter
+      from Limerick Academy,&rdquo; she said in a half whisper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I remember,&rdquo; laughed Rebecca. &ldquo;You suddenly began the study of the dead
+      languages, and the Latin dictionary took the place of the crochet needle
+      in your affections. It was cruel of you never to show me that letter,
+      Emmy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know every word of it by heart,&rdquo; said the blushing Emma Jane, &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It depends upon Abijah's Latin and your pronunciation,&rdquo; teased Rebecca.
+      &ldquo;Go on; I will turn my eyes toward the orchard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Fair Emmajane, looking none too old still for the &ldquo;little harbor,&rdquo; but
+      almost too young for the &ldquo;unknown seas,&rdquo; gathered up her courage and
+      recited like a tremulous parrot the boyish love letter that had so fired
+      her youthful imagination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Vale, carissima, carissima puella!&rdquo; repeated Rebecca in her musical
+      voice. &ldquo;Oh, how beautiful it sounds! I don't wonder it altered your
+      feeling for Abijah! Upon my word, Emma Jane,&rdquo; she cried with a sudden
+      change of tone, &ldquo;if I had suspected for an instant that Abijah the Brave
+      had that Latin letter in him I should have tried to get him to write it to
+      me; and then it would be I who would sit down at my mahogany desk and ask
+      Miss Perkins to come to tea with Mrs. Flagg.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane paled and shuddered openly. &ldquo;I speak as a church member,
+      Rebecca,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;when I tell you I've always thanked the Lord that you
+      never looked at Abijah Flagg and he never looked at you. If either of you
+      ever had, there never would have been a chance for me, and I've always
+      known it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      II
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The romance alluded to in the foregoing chapter had been going on, so far
+      as Abijah Flagg's part of it was concerned, for many years, his affection
+      dating back in his own mind to the first moment that he saw Emma Jane
+      Perkins at the age of nine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane had shown no sign of reciprocating his attachment until the last
+      three years, when the evolution of the chore-boy into the budding scholar
+      and man of affairs had inflamed even her somewhat dull imagination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Squire Bean's wife had taken Abijah away from the poorhouse, thinking that
+      she could make him of some little use in her home. Abbie Flagg, the
+      mother, was neither wise nor beautiful; it is to be feared that she was
+      not even good, and her lack of all these desirable qualities, particularly
+      the last one, had been impressed upon the child ever since he could
+      remember. People seemed to blame him for being in the world at all; this
+      world that had not expected him nor desired him, nor made any provision
+      for him. The great battle-axe of poorhouse opinion was forever leveled at
+      the mere little atom of innocent transgression, until he grew sad and shy,
+      clumsy, stiff, and self-conscious. He had an indomitable craving for love
+      in his heart and had never received a caress in his life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was more contented when he came to Squire Bean's house. The first year
+      he could only pick up chips, carry pine wood into the kitchen, go to the
+      post-office, run errands, drive the cows, and feed the hens, but every day
+      he grew more and more useful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His only friend was little Jim Watson, the storekeeper's son, and they
+      were inseparable companions whenever Abijah had time for play.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One never-to-be-forgotten July day a new family moved into the white
+      cottage between Squire Bean's house and the Sawyers'. Mr. Perkins had sold
+      his farm beyond North Riverboro and had established a blacksmith's shop in
+      the village, at the Edgewood end of the bridge. This fact was of no
+      special interest to the nine-year-old Abijah, but what really was of
+      importance, was the appearance of a pretty little girl of seven in the
+      front yard; a pretty little fat doll of a girl, with bright fuzzy hair,
+      pink cheeks, blue eyes, and a smile of almost bewildering continuity.
+      Another might have criticised it as having the air of being glued on, but
+      Abijah was already in the toils and never wished it to move.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day being the glorious Fourth and a holiday, Jimmy Watson came
+      over like David, to visit his favorite Jonathan. His Jonathan met him at
+      the top of the hill, pleaded a pressing engagement, curtly sent him home,
+      and then went back to play with his new idol, with whom he had already
+      scraped acquaintance, her parents being exceedingly busy settling the new
+      house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the noon dinner Jimmy again yearned to resume friendly relations,
+      and, forgetting his rebuff, again toiled up the hill and appeared
+      unexpectedly at no great distance from the Perkins premises, wearing the
+      broad and beaming smile of one who is confident of welcome.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His morning call had been officious and unpleasant and unsolicited, but
+      his afternoon visit could only be regarded as impudent, audacious, and
+      positively dangerous; for Abijah and Emma Jane were cosily playing house,
+      the game of all others in which it is particularly desirable to have two
+      and not three participants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that moment the nature of Abijah changed, at once and forever. Without
+      a pang of conscience he flew over the intervening patch of ground between
+      himself and his dreaded rival, and seizing small stones and larger ones,
+      as haste and fury demanded, flung them at Jimmy Watson, and flung and
+      flung, till the bewildered boy ran down the hill howling. Then he made a
+      &ldquo;stickin'&rdquo; door to the play-house, put the awed Emma Jane inside and
+      strode up and down in front of the edifice like an Indian brave. At such
+      an early age does woman become a distracting and disturbing influence in
+      man's career!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Time went on, and so did the rivalry between the poorhouse boy and the son
+      of wealth, but Abijah's chances of friendship with Emma Jane grew fewer
+      and fewer as they both grew older. He did not go to school, so there was
+      no meeting-ground there, but sometimes, when he saw the knot of boys and
+      girls returning in the afternoon, he would invite Elijah and Elisha, the
+      Simpson twins, to visit him, and take pains to be in Squire Bean's front
+      yard, doing something that might impress his inamorata as she passed the
+      premises.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Jimmy Watson was particularly small and fragile, Abijah generally chose
+      feats of strength and skill for these prearranged performances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes he would throw his hat up into the elm trees as far as he could
+      and, when it came down, catch it on his head. Sometimes he would walk on
+      his hands, with his legs wriggling in the air, or turn a double
+      somersault, or jump incredible distances across the extended arms of the
+      Simpson twins; and his bosom swelled with pride when the girls exclaimed,
+      &ldquo;Isn't he splendid!&rdquo; although he often heard his rival murmur scornfully,
+      &ldquo;SMARTY ALECK!&rdquo;&mdash;a scathing allusion of unknown origin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Squire Bean, although he did not send the boy to school (thinking, as he
+      was of no possible importance in the universe, it was not worth while
+      bothering about his education), finally became impressed with his ability,
+      lent him books, and gave him more time to study. These were all he needed,
+      books and time, and when there was an especially hard knot to untie,
+      Rebecca, as the star scholar of the neighborhood, helped him to untie it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he was sixteen he longed to go away from Riverboro and be something
+      better than a chore boy. Squire Bean had been giving him small wages for
+      three or four years, and when the time of parting came presented him with
+      a ten-dollar bill and a silver watch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Many a time had he discussed his future with Rebecca and asked her
+      opinion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was not strange, for there was nothing in human form that she could
+      not and did not converse with, easily and delightedly. She had ideas on
+      every conceivable subject, and would have cheerfully advised the minister
+      if he had asked her. The fishman consulted her when he couldn't endure his
+      mother-in-law another minute in the house; Uncle Jerry Cobb didn't part
+      with his river field until he had talked it over with Rebecca; and as for
+      Aunt Jane, she couldn't decide whether to wear her black merino or her
+      gray thibet unless Rebecca cast the final vote.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abijah wanted to go far away from Riverboro, as far as Limerick Academy,
+      which was at least fifteen miles; but although this seemed extreme,
+      Rebecca agreed, saying pensively: &ldquo;There IS a kind of magicness about
+      going far away and then coming back all changed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was precisely Abijah's unspoken thought. Limerick knew nothing of
+      Abbie Flagg's worthlessness, birth, and training, and the awful stigma of
+      his poorhouse birth, so that he would start fair. He could have gone to
+      Wareham and thus remained within daily sight of the beloved Emma Jane; but
+      no, he was not going to permit her to watch him in the process of
+      &ldquo;becoming,&rdquo; but after he had &ldquo;become&rdquo; something. He did not propose to
+      take any risks after all these years of silence and patience. Not he! He
+      proposed to disappear, like the moon on a dark night, and as he was, at
+      present, something that Mr. Perkins would by no means have in the family
+      nor Mrs. Perkins allow in the house, he would neither return to Riverboro
+      nor ask any favors of them until he had something to offer. Yes, sir. He
+      was going to be crammed to the eyebrows with learning for one thing,&mdash;useless
+      kinds and all,&mdash;going to have good clothes, and a good income.
+      Everything that was in his power should be right, because there would
+      always be lurking in the background the things he never could help&mdash;the
+      mother and the poorhouse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So he went away, and, although at Squire Bean's invitation he came back
+      the first year for two brief visits at Christmas and Easter, he was little
+      seen in Riverboro, for Mr. Ladd finally found him a place where he could
+      make his vacations profitable and learn bookkeeping at the same time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The visits in Riverboro were tantalizing rather than pleasant. He was
+      invited to two parties, but he was all the time conscious of his
+      shirt-collar, and he was sure that his &ldquo;pants&rdquo; were not the proper thing,
+      for by this time his ideals of dress had attained an almost unrealizable
+      height. As for his shoes, he felt that he walked on carpets as if they
+      were furrows and he were propelling a plow or a harrow before him. They
+      played Drop the Handkerchief and Copenhagen at the parties, but he had not
+      had the audacity to kiss Emma Jane, which was bad enough, but Jimmy had
+      and did, which was infinitely worse! The sight of James Watson's unworthy
+      and over-ambitious lips on Emma Jane's pink cheek almost destroyed his
+      faith in an overruling Providence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the parties were over he went back to his old room in Squire Bean's
+      shed chamber. As he lay in bed his thoughts fluttered about Emma Jane as
+      swallows circle around the eaves. The terrible sickness of hopeless
+      handicapped love kept him awake. Once he crawled out of bed in the night,
+      lighted the lamp, and looked for his mustache, remembering that he had
+      seen a suspicion of down on his rival's upper lip. He rose again half an
+      hour later, again lighted the lamp, put a few drops of oil on his hair,
+      and brushed it violently for several minutes. Then he went back to bed,
+      and after making up his mind that he would buy a dulcimer and learn to
+      play on it so that he would be more attractive at parties, and outshine
+      his rival in society as he had aforetime in athletics, he finally sank
+      into a troubled slumber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Those days, so full of hope and doubt and torture, seemed mercifully
+      unreal now, they lay so far back in the past&mdash;six or eight years, in
+      fact, which is a lifetime to the lad of twenty&mdash;and meantime he had
+      conquered many of the adverse circumstances that had threatened to cloud
+      his career.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abijah Flagg was a true child of his native State. Something of the same
+      timber that Maine puts into her forests, something of the same strength
+      and resisting power that she works into her rocks, goes into her sons and
+      daughters; and at twenty Abijah was going to take his fate in his hand and
+      ask Mr. Perkins, the rich blacksmith, if, after a suitable period of
+      probation (during which he would further prepare himself for his exalted
+      destiny), he might marry the fair Emma Jane, sole heiress of the Perkins
+      house and fortunes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      III
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was boy and girl love, calf love, perhaps, though even that may
+      develop into something larger, truer, and finer; but not so far away were
+      other and very different hearts growing and budding, each in its own way.
+      There was little Miss Dearborn, the pretty school teacher, drifting into a
+      foolish alliance because she did not agree with her stepmother at home;
+      there was Herbert Dunn, valedictorian of his class, dazzled by Huldah
+      Meserve, who like a glowworm &ldquo;shone afar off bright, but looked at near,
+      had neither heat nor light.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was sweet Emily Maxwell, less than thirty still, with most of her
+      heart bestowed in the wrong quarter. She was toiling on at the Wareham
+      school, living as unselfish a life as a nun in a convent; lavishing the
+      mind and soul of her, the heart and body of her, on her chosen work. How
+      many women give themselves thus, consciously and unconsciously; and,
+      though they themselves miss the joys and compensations of mothering their
+      own little twos and threes, God must be grateful to them for their
+      mothering of the hundreds which make them so precious in His regenerating
+      purposes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then there was Adam Ladd, waiting at thirty-five for a girl to grow a
+      little older, simply because he could not find one already grown who
+      suited his somewhat fastidious and exacting tastes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll not call Rebecca perfection,&rdquo; he quoted once, in a letter to Emily
+      Maxwell,&mdash;&ldquo;I'll not call her perfection, for that's a post, afraid to
+      move. But she's a dancing sprig of the tree next it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When first she appeared on his aunt's piazza in North Riverboro and
+      insisted on selling him a large quantity of very inferior soap in order
+      that her friends, the Simpsons, might possess a premium in the shape of a
+      greatly needed banquet lamp, she had riveted his attention. He thought all
+      the time that he enjoyed talking with her more than with any woman alive,
+      and he had never changed his opinion. She always caught what he said as if
+      it were a ball tossed to her, and sometimes her mind, as through it his
+      thoughts came back to him, seemed like a prism which had dyed them with
+      deeper colors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Adam Ladd always called Rebecca in his heart his little Spring. His
+      boyhood had been lonely and unhappy. That was the part of life he had
+      missed, and although it was the full summer of success and prosperity with
+      him now, he found his lost youth only in her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was to him&mdash;how shall I describe it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Do you remember an early day in May with budding leaf, warm earth,
+      tremulous air, and changing, willful sky&mdash;how new it seemed? How
+      fresh and joyous beyond all explaining?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Have you lain with half-closed eyes where the flickering of sunlight
+      through young leaves, the song of birds and brook and the fragrance of
+      wild flowers combined to charm your senses, and you felt the sweetness and
+      grace of nature as never before?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca was springtide to Adam's thirsty heart. She was blithe youth
+      incarnate; she was music&mdash;an Aeolian harp that every passing breeze
+      woke to some whispering little tune; she was a changing, iridescent
+      joy-bubble; she was the shadow of a leaf dancing across a dusty floor. No
+      bough of his thought could be so bare but she somehow built a nest in it
+      and evoked life where none was before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Rebecca herself?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had been quite unconscious of all this until very lately, and even now
+      she was but half awakened; searching among her childish instincts and her
+      girlish dreams for some Ariadne thread that should guide her safely
+      through the labyrinth of her new sensations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the moment she was absorbed, or thought she was, in the little love
+      story of Abijah and Emma Jane, but in reality, had she realized it, that
+      love story served chiefly as a basis of comparison for a possible one of
+      her own, later on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She liked and respected Abijah Flagg, and loving Emma Jane was a habit
+      contracted early in life; but everything that they did or said, or thought
+      or wrote, or hoped or feared, seemed so inadequate, so painfully short of
+      what might be done or said, or thought or written, or hoped or feared,
+      under easily conceivable circumstances, that she almost felt a disposition
+      to smile gently at the fancy of the ignorant young couple that they had
+      caught a glimpse of the great vision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was sitting under the sweet apple tree at twilight. Supper was over;
+      Mark's restless feet were quiet, Fanny and Jenny were tucked safely in
+      bed; her aunt and her mother were stemming currants on the side porch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A blue spot at one of the Perkins windows showed that in one vestal bosom
+      hope was not dead yet, although it was seven o'clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly there was the sound of a horse's feet coming up the quiet road;
+      plainly a steed hired from some metropolis like Milltown or Wareham, as
+      Riverboro horses when through with their day's work never disported
+      themselves so gayly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A little open vehicle came in sight, and in it sat Abijah Flagg. The wagon
+      was so freshly painted and so shiny that Rebecca thought that he must have
+      alighted at the bridge and given it a last polish. The creases in his
+      trousers, too, had an air of having been pressed in only a few minutes
+      before. The whip was new and had a yellow ribbon on it; the gray suit of
+      clothes was new, and the coat flourished a flower in its button-hole. The
+      hat was the latest thing in hats, and the intrepid swain wore a seal-ring
+      on the little finger of his right hand. As Rebecca remembered that she had
+      guided it in making capital G's in his copy-book, she felt positively
+      maternal, although she was two years younger than Abijah the Brave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He drove up to the Perkins gate and was so long about hitching the horse
+      that Rebecca's heart beat tumultuously at the thought of Emma Jane's heart
+      waiting under the blue barege. Then he brushed an imaginary speck off his
+      sleeve, then he drew on a pair of buff kid gloves, then he went up the
+      path, rapped at the knocker, and went in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not all the heroes go to the wars,&rdquo; thought Rebecca. &ldquo;Abijah has laid the
+      ghost of his father and redeemed the memory of his mother, for no one will
+      dare say again that Abbie Flagg's son could never amount to anything!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The minutes went by, and more minutes, and more. The tranquil dusk settled
+      down over the little village street and the young moon came out just
+      behind the top of the Perkins pine tree.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Perkins front door opened and Abijah the Brave came out hand in hand
+      with his Fair Emma Jane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They walked through the orchard, the eyes of the old couple following them
+      from the window, and just as they disappeared down the green slope that
+      led to the riverside the gray coat sleeve encircled the blue barege waist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca, quivering with instant sympathy and comprehension, hid her face
+      in her hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Emmy has sailed away and I am all alone in the little harbor,&rdquo; she
+      thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was as if childhood, like a thing real and visible, were slipping down
+      the grassy river banks, after Abijah and Emma Jane, and disappearing like
+      them into the moon-lit shadows of the summer night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am all alone in the little harbor,&rdquo; she repeated; &ldquo;and oh, I wonder, I
+      wonder, shall I be afraid to leave it, if anybody ever comes to carry me
+      out to sea!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's New Chronicles of Rebecca, by Kate Douglas Wiggin
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+</pre>
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+</html>
diff --git a/old/1375.txt b/old/1375.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..310bdbb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/1375.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,7163 @@
+Project Gutenberg's New Chronicles of Rebecca, by Kate Douglas Wiggin
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: New Chronicles of Rebecca
+
+Author: Kate Douglas Wiggin
+
+Release Date: July, 1998  [Etext #1375]
+Posting Date: November 9, 2009
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NEW CHRONICLES OF REBECCA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Theresa Armao
+
+
+
+
+
+NEW CHRONICLES OF REBECCA
+
+By Kate Douglas Wiggin
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+     First Chronicle
+     Jack O'Lantern
+
+     Second Chronicle
+     Daughters of Zion
+
+     Third Chronicle
+     Rebecca's Thought Book
+
+     Fourth Chronicle
+     A Tragedy in Millinery
+
+     Fifth Chronicle
+     The Saving of the Colors
+
+     Sixth Chronicle
+     The State of Maine Girl
+
+     Seventh Chronicle
+     The Little Prophet
+
+     Eighth Chronicle
+     Abner Simpson's New Leaf
+
+     Ninth Chronicle
+     The Green Isle
+
+     Tenth Chronicle
+     Rebecca's Reminiscences
+
+     Eleventh Chronicle
+     Abijah the Brave and the Fair Emma Jane
+
+
+
+
+First Chronicle. JACK O'LANTERN
+
+
+I
+
+Miss Miranda Sawyer's old-fashioned garden was the pleasantest spot in
+Riverboro on a sunny July morning. The rich color of the brick house
+gleamed and glowed through the shade of the elms and maples. Luxuriant
+hop-vines clambered up the lightning rods and water spouts, hanging
+their delicate clusters here and there in graceful profusion. Woodbine
+transformed the old shed and tool house to things of beauty, and the
+flower beds themselves were the prettiest and most fragrant in all
+the countryside. A row of dahlias ran directly around the garden
+spot,--dahlias scarlet, gold, and variegated. In the very centre was a
+round plot where the upturned faces of a thousand pansies smiled amid
+their leaves, and in the four corners were triangular blocks of sweet
+phlox over which the butterflies fluttered unceasingly. In the spaces
+between ran a riot of portulaca and nasturtiums, while in the more
+regular, shell-bordered beds grew spirea and gillyflowers, mignonette,
+marigolds, and clove pinks.
+
+Back of the barn and encroaching on the edge of the hay field was a
+grove of sweet clover whose white feathery tips fairly bent under the
+assaults of the bees, while banks of aromatic mint and thyme drank
+in the sunshine and sent it out again into the summer air, warm, and
+deliciously odorous.
+
+The hollyhocks were Miss Sawyer's pride, and they grew in a stately line
+beneath the four kitchen windows, their tapering tips set thickly with
+gay satin circlets of pink or lavender or crimson.
+
+"They grow something like steeples," thought little Rebecca Randall, who
+was weeding the bed, "and the flat, round flowers are like rosettes; but
+steeples wouldn't be studded with rosettes, so if you were writing about
+them in a composition you'd have to give up one or the other, and I
+think I'll give up the steeples:--
+
+     Gay little hollyhock
+     Lifting your head,
+     Sweetly rosetted
+     Out from your bed.
+
+It's a pity the hollyhock isn't really little, instead of steepling up
+to the window top, but I can't say, 'Gay TALL hollyhock.'... I might
+have it 'Lines to a Hollyhock in May,' for then it would be small; but
+oh, no! I forgot; in May it wouldn't be blooming, and it's so pretty
+to say that its head is 'sweetly rosetted'... I wish the teacher wasn't
+away; she would like 'sweetly rosetted,' and she would like to hear me
+recite 'Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!' that I learned
+out of Aunt Jane's Byron; the rolls come booming out of it just like the
+waves at the beach.... I could make nice compositions now, everything
+is blooming so, and it's so warm and sunny and happy outdoors. Miss
+Dearborn told me to write something in my thought book every single day,
+and I'll begin this very night when I go to bed."
+
+Rebecca Rowena Randall, the little niece of the brick-house ladies, and
+at present sojourning there for purposes of board, lodging, education,
+and incidentally such discipline and chastening as might ultimately
+produce moral excellence,--Rebecca Randall had a passion for the rhyme
+and rhythm of poetry. From her earliest childhood words had always been
+to her what dolls and toys are to other children, and now at twelve she
+amused herself with phrases and sentences and images as her schoolmates
+played with the pieces of their dissected puzzles. If the heroine of
+a story took a "cursory glance" about her "apartment," Rebecca would
+shortly ask her Aunt Jane to take a "cursory glance" at her oversewing
+or hemming; if the villain "aided and abetted" someone in committing
+a crime, she would before long request the pleasure of "aiding and
+abetting" in dishwashing or bedmaking. Sometimes she used the borrowed
+phrases unconsciously; sometimes she brought them into the conversation
+with an intense sense of pleasure in their harmony or appropriateness;
+for a beautiful word or sentence had the same effect upon her
+imagination as a fragrant nosegay, a strain of music, or a brilliant
+sunset.
+
+"How are you gettin' on, Rebecca Rowena?" called a peremptory voice from
+within.
+
+"Pretty good, Aunt Miranda; only I wish flowers would ever come up as
+thick as this pigweed and plantain and sorrel. What MAKES weeds be thick
+and flowers be thin?--I just happened to be stopping to think a minute
+when you looked out."
+
+"You think considerable more than you weed, I guess, by appearances. How
+many times have you peeked into that humming bird's nest? Why don't you
+work all to once and play all to once, like other folks?"
+
+"I don't know," the child answered, confounded by the question, and
+still more by the apparent logic back of it. "I don't know, Aunt
+Miranda, but when I'm working outdoors such a Saturday morning as this,
+the whole creation just screams to me to stop it and come and play."
+
+"Well, you needn't go if it does!" responded her aunt sharply. "It don't
+scream to me when I'm rollin' out these doughnuts, and it wouldn't to
+you if your mind was on your duty."
+
+Rebecca's little brown hands flew in and out among the weeds as she
+thought rebelliously: "Creation WOULDN'T scream to Aunt Miranda; it
+would know she wouldn't come."
+
+     Scream on, thou bright and gay creation, scream!
+     'Tis not Miranda that will hear thy cry!
+
+Oh, such funny, nice things come into my head out here by myself, I do
+wish I could run up and put them down in my thought book before I forget
+them, but Aunt Miranda wouldn't like me to leave off weeding:--
+
+     Rebecca was weeding the hollyhock bed
+     When wonderful thoughts came into her head.
+     Her aunt was occupied with the rolling pin
+     And the thoughts of her mind were common and thin.
+
+That wouldn't do because it's mean to Aunt Miranda, and anyway it isn't
+good. I MUST crawl under the syringa shade a minute, it's so hot, and
+anybody has to stop working once in a while, just to get their breath,
+even if they weren't making poetry.
+
+Rebecca was weeding the hollyhock bed When marvelous thoughts came into
+her head. Miranda was wielding the rolling pin And thoughts at such
+times seemed to her as a sin.
+
+How pretty the hollyhock rosettes look from down here on the sweet,
+smelly ground!
+
+"Let me see what would go with rosetting. AIDING AND ABETTING, PETTING,
+HEN-SETTING, FRETTING,--there's nothing very nice, but I can make
+fretting' do.
+
+     Cheered by Rowena's petting,
+     The flowers are rosetting,
+     But Aunt Miranda's fretting
+     Doth somewhat cloud the day."
+
+Suddenly the sound of wagon wheels broke the silence and then a voice
+called out--a voice that could not wait until the feet that belonged to
+it reached the spot: "Miss Saw-YER! Father's got to drive over to North
+Riverboro on an errand, and please can Rebecca go, too, as it's Saturday
+morning and vacation besides?"
+
+Rebecca sprang out from under the syringa bush, eyes flashing with
+delight as only Rebecca's eyes COULD flash, her face one luminous circle
+of joyous anticipation. She clapped her grubby hands, and dancing up
+and down, cried: "May I, Aunt Miranda--can I, Aunt Jane--can I, Aunt
+Miranda-Jane? I'm more than half through the bed."
+
+"If you finish your weeding tonight before sundown I s'pose you can go,
+so long as Mr. Perkins has been good enough to ask you," responded Miss
+Sawyer reluctantly. "Take off that gingham apron and wash your hands
+clean at the pump. You ain't be'n out o' bed but two hours an' your head
+looks as rough as if you'd slep' in it. That comes from layin' on the
+ground same as a caterpillar. Smooth your hair down with your hands an'
+p'r'aps Emma Jane can braid it as you go along the road. Run up and get
+your second-best hair ribbon out o' your upper drawer and put on
+your shade hat. No, you can't wear your coral chain--jewelry ain't
+appropriate in the morning. How long do you cal'late to be gone, Emma
+Jane?"
+
+"I don't know. Father's just been sent for to see about a sick woman
+over to North Riverboro. She's got to go to the poor farm."
+
+This fragment of news speedily brought Miss Sawyer, and her sister Jane
+as well, to the door, which commanded a view of Mr. Perkins and his
+wagon. Mr. Perkins, the father of Rebecca's bosom friend, was primarily
+a blacksmith, and secondarily a selectman and an overseer of the poor, a
+man therefore possessed of wide and varied information.
+
+"Who is it that's sick?" inquired Miranda.
+
+"A woman over to North Riverboro."
+
+"What's the trouble?"
+
+"Can't say."
+
+"Stranger?'
+
+"Yes, and no; she's that wild daughter of old Nate Perry that used to
+live up towards Moderation. You remember she ran away to work in the
+factory at Milltown and married a do--nothin' fellow by the name o' John
+Winslow?"
+
+"Yes; well, where is he? Why don't he take care of her?"
+
+"They ain't worked well in double harness. They've been rovin' round the
+country, livin' a month here and a month there wherever they could get
+work and house-room. They quarreled a couple o' weeks ago and he left
+her. She and the little boy kind o' camped out in an old loggin' cabin
+back in the woods and she took in washin' for a spell; then she got
+terrible sick and ain't expected to live."
+
+"Who's been nursing her?" inquired Miss Jane.
+
+"Lizy Ann Dennett, that lives nearest neighbor to the cabin; but I
+guess she's tired out bein' good Samaritan. Anyways, she sent word this
+mornin' that nobody can't seem to find John Winslow; that there ain't
+no relations, and the town's got to be responsible, so I'm goin' over to
+see how the land lays. Climb in, Rebecca. You an' Emmy Jane crowd back
+on the cushion an' I'll set forrard. That's the trick! Now we're off!"
+
+"Dear, dear!" sighed Jane Sawyer as the sisters walked back into the
+brick house. "I remember once seeing Sally Perry at meeting. She was a
+handsome girl, and I'm sorry she's come to grief."
+
+"If she'd kep' on goin' to meetin' an' hadn't looked at the men folks
+she might a' be'n earnin' an honest livin' this minute," said Miranda.
+"Men folks are at the bottom of everything wrong in this world," she
+continued, unconsciously reversing the verdict of history.
+
+"Then we ought to be a happy and contented community here in Riverboro,"
+replied Jane, "as there's six women to one man."
+
+"If 't was sixteen to one we'd be all the safer," responded Miranda
+grimly, putting the doughnuts in a brown crock in the cellar-way and
+slamming the door.
+
+
+II
+
+The Perkins horse and wagon rumbled along over the dusty country road,
+and after a discreet silence, maintained as long as human flesh could
+endure, Rebecca remarked sedately:
+
+"It's a sad errand for such a shiny morning, isn't it, Mr. Perkins?"
+
+"Plenty o' trouble in the world, Rebecky, shiny mornin's an' all," that
+good man replied. "If you want a bed to lay on, a roof over your head,
+an' food to eat, you've got to work for em. If I hadn't a' labored early
+an' late, learned my trade, an' denied myself when I was young, I might
+a' be'n a pauper layin' sick in a loggin' cabin, stead o' bein' an
+overseer o' the poor an' selectman drivin' along to take the pauper to
+the poor farm."
+
+"People that are mortgaged don't have to go to the poor farm, do they,
+Mr. Perkins?" asked Rebecca, with a shiver of fear as she remembered her
+home farm at Sunnybrook and the debt upon it; a debt which had lain like
+a shadow over her childhood.
+
+"Bless your soul, no; not unless they fail to pay up; but Sal Perry an'
+her husband hadn't got fur enough along in life to BE mortgaged. You
+have to own something before you can mortgage it."
+
+Rebecca's heart bounded as she learned that a mortgage represented a
+certain stage in worldly prosperity.
+
+"Well," she said, sniffing in the fragrance of the new-mown hay and
+growing hopeful as she did so; "maybe the sick woman will be better such
+a beautiful day, and maybe the husband will come back to make it up and
+say he's sorry, and sweet content will reign in the humble habitation
+that was once the scene of poverty, grief, and despair. That's how it
+came out in a story I'm reading."
+
+"I hain't noticed that life comes out like stories very much," responded
+the pessimistic blacksmith, who, as Rebecca privately thought, had read
+less than half a dozen books in his long and prosperous career.
+
+A drive of three or four miles brought the party to a patch of woodland
+where many of the tall pines had been hewn the previous winter. The roof
+of a ramshackle hut was outlined against a background of young birches,
+and a rough path made in hauling the logs to the main road led directly
+to its door.
+
+As they drew near the figure of a woman approached--Mrs. Lizy Ann
+Dennett, in a gingham dress, with a calico apron over her head.
+
+"Good morning, Mr. Perkins," said the woman, who looked tired and
+irritable. "I'm real glad you come right over, for she took worse after
+I sent you word, and she's dead."
+
+Dead! The word struck heavily and mysteriously on the children's ears.
+Dead! And their young lives, just begun, stretched on and on, all
+decked, like hope, in living green. Dead! And all the rest of the world
+reveling in strength. Dead! With all the daisies and buttercups waving
+in the fields and the men heaping the mown grass into fragrant cocks
+or tossing it into heavily laden carts. Dead! With the brooks tinkling
+after the summer showers, with the potatoes and corn blossoming, the
+birds singing for joy, and every little insect humming and chirping,
+adding its note to the blithe chorus of warm, throbbing life.
+
+"I was all alone with her. She passed away suddenly jest about break o'
+day," said Lizy Ann Dennett.
+
+"Her soul passed upward to its God Just at the break of day."
+
+These words came suddenly into Rebecca's mind from a tiny chamber where
+such things were wont to lie quietly until something brought them to the
+surface. She could not remember whether she had heard them at a funeral
+or read them in the hymn book or made them up "out of her own head," but
+she was so thrilled with the idea of dying just as the dawn was breaking
+that she scarcely heard Mrs. Dennett's conversation.
+
+"I sent for Aunt Beulah Day, an' she's be'n here an' laid her out,"
+continued the long suffering Lizy Ann. "She ain't got any folks, an'
+John Winslow ain't never had any as far back as I can remember. She
+belongs to your town and you'll have to bury her and take care of
+Jacky--that's the boy. He's seventeen months old, a bright little
+feller, the image o' John, but I can't keep him another day. I'm all
+wore out; my own baby's sick, mother's rheumatiz is extry bad, and my
+husband's comin' home tonight from his week's work. If he finds a child
+o' John Winslow's under his roof I can't say what would happen; you'll
+have to take him back with you to the poor farm."
+
+"I can't take him up there this afternoon," objected Mr. Perkins.
+
+"Well, then, keep him over Sunday yourself; he's good as a kitten. John
+Winslow'll hear o' Sal's death sooner or later, unless he's gone out of
+the state altogether, an' when he knows the boy's at the poor farm, I
+kind o' think he'll come and claim him. Could you drive me over to the
+village to see about the coffin, and would you children be afraid to
+stay here alone for a spell?" she asked, turning to the girls.
+
+"Afraid?" they both echoed uncomprehendingly.
+
+Lizy Ann and Mr. Perkins, perceiving that the fear of a dead presence
+had not entered the minds of Rebecca or Emma Jane, said nothing, but
+drove off together, counseling them not to stray far away from the cabin
+and promising to be back in an hour.
+
+There was not a house within sight, either looking up or down the shady
+road, and the two girls stood hand in hand, watching the wagon out of
+sight; then they sat down quietly under a tree, feeling all at once a
+nameless depression hanging over their gay summer-morning spirits.
+
+It was very still in the woods; just the chirp of a grasshopper now
+and then, or the note of a bird, or the click of a far-distant mowing
+machine.
+
+"We're WATCHING!" whispered Emma Jane. "They watched with Gran'pa
+Perkins, and there was a great funeral and two ministers. He left two
+thousand dollars in the bank and a store full of goods, and a paper
+thing you could cut tickets off of twice a year, and they were just like
+money."
+
+"They watched with my little sister Mira, too," said Rebecca. "You
+remember when she died, and I went home to Sunnybrook Farm? It was
+winter time, but she was covered with evergreen and white pinks, and
+there was singing."
+
+"There won't be any funeral or ministers or singing here, will there?
+Isn't that awful?"
+
+"I s'pose not; and oh, Emma Jane, no flowers either. We might get those
+for her if there's nobody else to do it."
+
+"Would you dare put them on to her?" asked Emma Jane, in a hushed voice.
+
+"I don't know; I can't tell; it makes me shiver, but, of course, we
+COULD do it if we were the only friends she had. Let's look into
+the cabin first and be perfectly sure that there aren't any. Are you
+afraid?"
+
+"N-no; I guess not. I looked at Gran'pa Perkins, and he was just the
+same as ever."
+
+At the door of the hut Emma Jane's courage suddenly departed. She
+held back shuddering and refused either to enter or look in. Rebecca
+shuddered too, but kept on, drawn by an insatiable curiosity about life
+and death, an overmastering desire to know and feel and understand the
+mysteries of existence, a hunger for knowledge and experience at all
+hazards and at any cost.
+
+Emma Jane hurried softly away from the felt terrors of the cabin, and
+after two or three minutes of utter silence Rebecca issued from the
+open door, her sensitive face pale and woe-begone, the ever-ready tears
+raining down her cheeks. She ran toward the edge of the wood, sinking
+down by Emma Jane's side, and covering her eyes, sobbed with excitement:
+
+"Oh, Emma Jane, she hasn't got a flower, and she's so tired and
+sad-looking, as if she'd been hurt and hurt and never had any good
+times, and there's a weeny, weeny baby side of her. Oh, I wish I hadn't
+gone in!"
+
+Emma Jane blenched for an instant. "Mrs. Dennett never said THERE WAS
+TWO DEAD ONES! ISN'T THAT DREADFUL? But," she continued, her practical
+common sense coming to the rescue, "you've been in once and it's all
+over; it won't be so bad when you take in the flowers because you'll
+be used to it. The goldenrod hasn't begun to bud, so there's nothing
+to pick but daisies. Shall I make a long rope of them, as I did for the
+schoolroom?"
+
+"Yes," said Rebecca, wiping her eyes and still sobbing. "Yes, that's the
+prettiest, and if we put it all round her like a frame, the undertaker
+couldn't be so cruel as to throw it away, even if she is a pauper,
+because it will look so beautiful. From what the Sunday school lessons
+say, she's only asleep now, and when she wakes up she'll be in heaven."
+
+"THERE'S ANOTHER PLACE," said Emma Jane, in an orthodox and sepulchral
+whisper, as she took her ever-present ball of crochet cotton from her
+pocket and began to twine the whiteweed blossoms into a rope.
+
+"Oh, well!" Rebecca replied with the easy theology that belonged to her
+temperament. "They simply couldn't send her DOWN THERE with that little
+weeny baby. Who'd take care of it? You know page six of the catechism
+says the only companions of the wicked after death are their father the
+devil and all the other evil angels; it wouldn't be any place to bring
+up a baby."
+
+"Whenever and wherever she wakes up, I hope she won't know that the big
+baby is going to the poor farm. I wonder where he is?"
+
+"Perhaps over to Mrs. Dennett's house. She didn't seem sorry a bit, did
+she?"
+
+"No, but I suppose she's tired sitting up and nursing a stranger. Mother
+wasn't sorry when Gran'pa Perkins died; she couldn't be, for he was
+cross all the time and had to be fed like a child. Why ARE you crying
+again, Rebecca?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know, I can't tell, Emma Jane! Only I don't want to die and
+have no funeral or singing and nobody sorry for me! I just couldn't bear
+it!"
+
+"Neither could I," Emma Jane responded sympathetically; "but p'r'aps
+if we're real good and die young before we have to be fed, they will
+be sorry. I do wish you could write some poetry for her as you did for
+Alice Robinson's canary bird, only still better, of course, like that
+you read me out of your thought book."
+
+"I could, easy enough," exclaimed Rebecca, somewhat consoled by the
+idea that her rhyming faculty could be of any use in such an emergency.
+"Though I don't know but it would be kind of bold to do it. I'm all
+puzzled about how people get to heaven after they're buried. I can't
+understand it a bit; but if the poetry is on her, what if that should
+go, too? And how could I write anything good enough to be read out loud
+in heaven?"
+
+"A little piece of paper couldn't get to heaven; it just couldn't,"
+asserted Emma Jane decisively. "It would be all blown to pieces and
+dried up. And nobody knows that the angels can read writing, anyway."
+
+"They must be as educated as we are, and more so, too," agreed Rebecca.
+"They must be more than just dead people, or else why should they have
+wings? But I'll go off and write something while you finish the rope;
+it's lucky you brought your crochet cotton and I my lead pencil."
+
+In fifteen or twenty minutes she returned with some lines written on a
+scrap of brown wrapping paper. Standing soberly by Emma Jane, she said,
+preparing to read them aloud: "They're not good; I was afraid your
+father'd come back before I finished, and the first verse sounds exactly
+like the funeral hymns in the church book. I couldn't call her Sally
+Winslow; it didn't seem nice when I didn't know her and she is dead, so
+I thought if I said friend' it would show she had somebody to be sorry.
+
+     "This friend of ours has died and gone
+     From us to heaven to live.
+     If she has sinned against Thee, Lord,
+     We pray Thee, Lord, forgive.
+
+     "Her husband runneth far away
+     And knoweth not she's dead.
+     Oh, bring him back--ere tis too late--
+     To mourn beside her bed.
+
+     "And if perchance it can't be so,
+     Be to the children kind;
+     The weeny one that goes with her,
+     The other left behind."
+
+"I think that's perfectly elegant!" exclaimed Emma Jane, kissing Rebecca
+fervently. "You are the smartest girl in the whole State of Maine, and
+it sounds like a minister's prayer. I wish we could save up and buy a
+printing machine. Then I could learn to print what you write and we'd
+be partners like father and Bill Moses. Shall you sign it with your name
+like we do our school compositions?"
+
+"No," said Rebecca soberly. "I certainly shan't sign it, not knowing
+where it's going or who'll read it. I shall just hide it in the flowers,
+and whoever finds it will guess that there wasn't any minister or
+singing, or gravestone, or anything, so somebody just did the best they
+could."
+
+
+III
+
+The tired mother with the "weeny baby" on her arm lay on a long
+carpenter's bench, her earthly journey over, and when Rebecca stole
+in and placed the flowery garland all along the edge of the rude bier,
+death suddenly took on a more gracious and benign aspect. It was only
+a child's sympathy and intuition that softened the rigors of the sad
+moment, but poor, wild Sal Winslow, in her frame of daisies, looked
+as if she were missed a little by an unfriendly world; while the weeny
+baby, whose heart had fallen asleep almost as soon as it had learned to
+beat, the weeny baby, with Emma Jane's nosegay of buttercups in its tiny
+wrinkled hand, smiled as if it might have been loved and longed for and
+mourned.
+
+"We've done all we can now without a minister," whispered Rebecca. "We
+could sing, God is ever good' out of the Sunday school song book, but
+I'm afraid somebody would hear us and think we were gay and happy.
+What's that?"
+
+A strange sound broke the stillness; a gurgle, a yawn, a merry little
+call. The two girls ran in the direction from which it came, and there,
+on an old coat, in a clump of goldenrod bushes, lay a child just waking
+from a refreshing nap.
+
+"It's the other baby that Lizy Ann Dennett told about!" cried Emma Jane.
+
+"Isn't he beautiful!" exclaimed Rebecca. "Come straight to me!" and she
+stretched out her arms.
+
+The child struggled to its feet, and tottered, wavering, toward the warm
+welcome of the voice and eyes. Rebecca was all mother, and her maternal
+instincts had been well developed in the large family in which she was
+next to the eldest. She had always confessed that there were perhaps a
+trifle too many babies at Sunnybrook Farm, but, nevertheless, had she
+ever heard it, she would have stood loyally by the Japanese proverb:
+"Whether brought forth upon the mountain or in the field, it matters
+nothing; more than a treasure of one thousand ryo a baby precious is."
+
+"You darling thing!" she crooned, as she caught and lifted the child.
+"You look just like a Jack-o'-lantern."
+
+The boy was clad in a yellow cotton dress, very full and stiff. His hair
+was of such a bright gold, and so sleek and shiny, that he looked like
+a fair, smooth little pumpkin. He had wide blue eyes full of laughter,
+a neat little vertical nose, a neat little horizontal mouth with his
+few neat little teeth showing very plainly, and on the whole Rebecca's
+figure of speech was not so wide of the mark.
+
+"Oh, Emma Jane! Isn't he too lovely to go to the poor farm? If only we
+were married we could keep him and say nothing and nobody would know the
+difference! Now that the Simpsons have gone away there isn't a single
+baby in Riverboro, and only one in Edgewood. It's a perfect shame, but
+I can't do anything; you remember Aunt Miranda wouldn't let me have the
+Simpson baby when I wanted to borrow her just for one rainy Sunday."
+
+"My mother won't keep him, so it's no use to ask her; she says most
+every day she's glad we're grown up, and she thanks the Lord there
+wasn't but two of us."
+
+"And Mrs. Peter Meserve is too nervous," Rebecca went on, taking the
+village houses in turn; "and Mrs. Robinson is too neat."
+
+"People don't seem to like any but their own babies," observed Emma
+Jane.
+
+"Well, I can't understand it," Rebecca answered. "A baby's a baby, I
+should think, whose ever it is! Miss Dearborn is coming back Monday;
+I wonder if she'd like it? She has nothing to do out of school, and we
+could borrow it all the time!"
+
+"I don't think it would seem very genteel for a young lady like Miss
+Dearborn, who 'boards round,' to take a baby from place to place,"
+objected Emma Jane.
+
+"Perhaps not," agreed Rebecca despondently, "but I think if we haven't
+got any--any--PRIVATE babies in Riverboro we ought to have one for the
+town, and all have a share in it. We've got a town hall and a town lamp
+post and a town watering trough. Things are so uneven! One house like
+mine at Sunnybrook, brimful of children, and the very next one empty!
+The only way to fix them right would be to let all the babies that ever
+are belong to all the grown-up people that ever are,--just divide
+them up, you know, if they'd go round. Oh, I have a thought! Don't
+you believe Aunt Sarah Cobb would keep him? She carries flowers to the
+graveyard every little while, and once she took me with her. There's a
+marble cross, and it says: SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF SARAH ELLEN, BELOVED
+CHILD OF SARAH AND JEREMIAH COBB, AGED 17 MONTHS. Why, that's another
+reason; Mrs. Dennett says this one is seventeen months. There's five of
+us left at the farm without me, but if we were only nearer to Riverboro,
+how quick mother would let in one more!"
+
+"We might see what father thinks, and that would settle it," said Emma
+Jane. "Father doesn't think very sudden, but he thinks awful strong. If
+we don't bother him, and find a place ourselves for the baby, perhaps
+he'll be willing. He's coming now; I hear the wheels."
+
+Lizy Ann Dennett volunteered to stay and perform the last rites with
+the undertaker, and Jack-o'-lantern, with his slender wardrobe tied in
+a bandanna handkerchief, was lifted into the wagon by the reluctant Mr.
+Perkins, and jubilantly held by Rebecca in her lap. Mr. Perkins drove
+off as speedily as possible, being heartily sick of the whole affair,
+and thinking wisely that the little girls had already seen and heard
+more than enough of the seamy side of life that morning.
+
+Discussion concerning Jack-o'-lantern's future was prudently deferred
+for a quarter of an hour, and then Mr. Perkins was mercilessly pelted
+with arguments against the choice of the poor farm as a place of
+residence for a baby.
+
+"His father is sure to come back some time, Mr. Perkins," urged Rebecca.
+"He couldn't leave this beautiful thing forever; and if Emma Jane and I
+can persuade Mrs. Cobb to keep him a little while, would you care?"
+
+No; on reflection Mr. Perkins did not care. He merely wanted a quiet
+life and enough time left over from the public service to attend to his
+blacksmith's shop; so instead of going home over the same road by which
+they came he crossed the bridge into Edgewood and dropped the children
+at the long lane which led to the Cobb house.
+
+Mrs. Cobb, "Aunt Sarah" to the whole village, sat by the window looking
+for Uncle Jerry, who would soon be seen driving the noon stage to the
+post office over the hill. She always had an eye out for Rebecca, too,
+for ever since the child had been a passenger on Mr. Cobb's stagecoach,
+making the eventful trip from her home farm to the brick house in
+Riverboro in his company, she had been a constant visitor and the joy
+of the quiet household. Emma Jane, too, was a well-known figure in the
+lane, but the strange baby was in the nature of a surprise--a surprise
+somewhat modified by the fact that Rebecca was a dramatic personage and
+more liable to appear in conjunction with curious outriders, comrades,
+and retainers than the ordinary Riverboro child. She had run away from
+the too stern discipline of the brick house on one occasion, and had
+been persuaded to return by Uncle Jerry. She had escorted a wandering
+organ grinder to their door and begged a lodging for him on a rainy
+night; so on the whole there was nothing amazing about the coming
+procession.
+
+The little party toiled up to the hospitable door, and Mrs. Cobb came
+out to meet them.
+
+Rebecca was spokesman. Emma Jane's talent did not lie in eloquent
+speech, but it would have been a valiant and a fluent child indeed
+who could have usurped Rebecca's privileges and tendencies in this
+direction, language being her native element, and words of assorted
+sizes springing spontaneously to her lips.
+
+"Aunt Sarah, dear," she said, plumping Jack-o'-lantern down on the grass
+as she pulled his dress over his feet and smoothed his hair becomingly,
+"will you please not say a word till I get through--as it's very
+important you should know everything before you answer yes or no?
+This is a baby named Jacky Winslow, and I think he looks like a
+Jack-o'-lantern. His mother has just died over to North Riverboro, all
+alone, excepting for Mrs. Lizy Ann Dennett, and there was another little
+weeny baby that died with her, and Emma Jane and I put flowers
+around them and did the best we could. The father--that's John
+Winslow--quarreled with the mother--that was Sal Perry on the Moderation
+Road--and ran away and left her. So he doesn't know his wife and the
+weeny baby are dead. And the town has got to bury them because they
+can't find the father right off quick, and Jacky has got to go to the
+poor farm this afternoon. And it seems an awful shame to take him up to
+that lonesome place with those old people that can't amuse him, and
+if Emma Jane and Alice Robinson and I take most all the care of him we
+thought perhaps you and Uncle Jerry would keep him just for a little
+while. You've got a cow and a turn-up bedstead, you know," she hurried
+on insinuatingly, "and there's hardly any pleasure as cheap as more
+babies where there's ever been any before, for baby carriages and
+trundle beds and cradles don't wear out, and there's always clothes
+left over from the old baby to begin the new one on. Of course, we can
+collect enough things to start Jacky, so he won't be much trouble or
+expense; and anyway, he's past the most troublesome age and you won't
+have to be up nights with him, and he isn't afraid of anybody or
+anything, as you can see by his just sitting there laughing and sucking
+his thumb, though he doesn't know what's going to become of him. And
+he's just seventeen months old like dear little Sarah Ellen in the
+graveyard, and we thought we ought to give you the refusal of him before
+he goes to the poor farm, and what do you think about it? Because it's
+near my dinner time and Aunt Miranda will keep me in the whole afternoon
+if I'm late, and I've got to finish weeding the hollyhock bed before
+sundown."
+
+IV
+
+Mrs. Cobb had enjoyed a considerable period of reflection during this
+monologue, and Jacky had not used the time unwisely, offering several
+unconscious arguments and suggestions to the matter under discussion;
+lurching over on the greensward and righting himself with a chuckle,
+kicking his bare feet about in delight at the sunshine and groping for
+his toes with arms too short to reach them, the movement involving an
+entire upsetting of equilibrium followed by more chuckles.
+
+Coming down the last of the stone steps, Sarah Ellen's mother regarded
+the baby with interest and sympathy.
+
+"Poor little mite!" she said; "that doesn't know what he's lost and
+what's going to happen to him. Seems to me we might keep him a spell
+till we're sure his father's deserted him for good. Want to come to Aunt
+Sarah, baby?"
+
+Jack-o'-lantern turned from Rebecca and Emma Jane and regarded the kind
+face gravely; then he held out both his hands and Mrs. Cobb, stooping,
+gathered him like a harvest. Being lifted into her arms, he at once tore
+her spectacles from her nose and laughed aloud. Taking them from him
+gently, she put them on again, and set him in the cushioned rocking
+chair under the lilac bushes beside the steps. Then she took one of his
+soft hands in hers and patted it, and fluttered her fingers like birds
+before his eyes, and snapped them like castanets, remembering all the
+arts she had lavished upon "Sarah Ellen, aged seventeen months," years
+and years ago.
+
+     Motherless baby and babyless mother,
+     Bring them together to love one another.
+
+Rebecca knew nothing of this couplet, but she saw clearly enough that
+her case was won.
+
+"The boy must be hungry; when was he fed last?" asked Mrs. Cobb. "Just
+stay a second longer while I get him some morning's milk; then you
+run home to your dinners and I'll speak to Mr. Cobb this afternoon. Of
+course, we can keep the baby for a week or two till we see what happens.
+Land! He ain't goin' to be any more trouble than a wax doll! I guess he
+ain't been used to much attention, and that kind's always the easiest to
+take care of."
+
+At six o'clock that evening Rebecca and Emma Jane flew up the hill and
+down the lane again, waving their hands to the dear old couple who were
+waiting for them in the usual place, the back piazza where they had sat
+so many summers in a blessed companionship never marred by an unloving
+word.
+
+"Where's Jacky?" called Rebecca breathlessly, her voice always
+outrunning her feet.
+
+"Go up to my chamber, both of you, if you want to see," smiled Mrs.
+Cobb, "only don't wake him up."
+
+The girls went softly up the stairs into Aunt Sarah's room. There, in
+the turn-up bedstead that had been so long empty, slept Jack-o'-lantern,
+in blissful unconsciousness of the doom he had so lately escaped. His
+nightgown and pillow case were clean and fragrant with lavender, but
+they were both as yellow as saffron, for they had belonged to Sarah
+Ellen.
+
+"I wish his mother could see him!" whispered Emma Jane.
+
+"You can't tell; it's all puzzly about heaven, and perhaps she does,"
+said Rebecca, as they turned reluctantly from the fascinating scene and
+stole down to the piazza.
+
+It was a beautiful and a happy summer that year, and every day it was
+filled with blissful plays and still more blissful duties. On the
+Monday after Jack-o'-lantern's arrival in Edgewood Rebecca founded the
+Riverboro Aunts Association. The Aunts were Rebecca, Emma Jane, Alice
+Robinson, and Minnie Smellie, and each of the first three promised
+to labor for and amuse the visiting baby for two days a week, Minnie
+Smellie, who lived at some distance from the Cobbs, making herself
+responsible for Saturday afternoons.
+
+Minnie Smellie was not a general favorite among the Riverboro girls, and
+it was only in an unprecedented burst of magnanimity that they admitted
+her into the rites of fellowship, Rebecca hugging herself secretly at
+the thought, that as Minnie gave only the leisure time of one day a
+week, she could not be called a "full" Aunt. There had been long and
+bitter feuds between the two children during Rebecca's first summer in
+Riverboro, but since Mrs. Smellie had told her daughter that one more
+quarrel would invite a punishment so terrible that it could only be
+hinted at vaguely, and Miss Miranda Sawyer had remarked that any niece
+of hers who couldn't get along peaceable with the neighbors had better
+go back to the seclusion of a farm where there weren't any, hostilities
+had been veiled, and a suave and diplomatic relationship had replaced
+the former one, which had been wholly primitive, direct, and barbaric.
+Still, whenever Minnie Smellie, flaxen-haired, pink-nosed, and
+ferret-eyed, indulged in fluent conversation, Rebecca, remembering the
+old fairy story, could always see toads hopping out of her mouth. It was
+really very unpleasant, because Minnie could never see them herself; and
+what was more amazing, Emma Jane perceived nothing of the sort, being
+almost as blind, too, to the diamonds that fell continually from
+Rebecca's lips; but Emma Jane's strong point was not her imagination.
+
+A shaky perambulator was found in Mrs. Perkins's wonderful attic; shoes
+and stockings were furnished by Mrs. Robinson; Miss Jane Sawyer knitted
+a blanket and some shirts; Thirza Meserve, though too young for an aunt,
+coaxed from her mother some dresses and nightgowns, and was presented
+with a green paper certificate allowing her to wheel Jacky up and down
+the road for an hour under the superintendence of a full Aunt. Each
+girl, under the constitution of the association, could call Jacky "hers"
+for two days in the week, and great, though friendly, was the rivalry
+between them, as they washed, ironed, and sewed for their adored nephew.
+
+If Mrs. Cobb had not been the most amiable woman in the world she might
+have had difficulty in managing the aunts, but she always had Jacky to
+herself the earlier part of the day and after dusk at night.
+
+Meanwhile Jack-o'-lantern grew healthier and heartier and jollier as the
+weeks slipped away. Uncle Jerry joined the little company of worshipers
+and slaves, and one fear alone stirred in all their hearts; not, as a
+sensible and practical person might imagine, the fear that the recreant
+father might never return to claim his child, but, on the contrary, that
+he MIGHT do so!
+
+October came at length with its cheery days and frosty nights, its glory
+of crimson leaves and its golden harvest of pumpkins and ripened corn.
+Rebecca had been down by the Edgewood side of the river and had come
+up across the pastures for a good-night play with Jacky. Her literary
+labors had been somewhat interrupted by the joys and responsibilities of
+vice-motherhood, and the thought book was less frequently drawn from its
+hiding place under the old haymow in the barn chamber.
+
+Mrs. Cobb stood behind the screen door with her face pressed against the
+wire netting, and Rebecca could see that she was wiping her eyes.
+
+All at once the child's heart gave one prophetic throb and then stood
+still. She was like a harp that vibrated with every wind of emotion,
+whether from another's grief or her own.
+
+She looked down the lane, around the curve of the stone wall, red with
+woodbine, the lane that would meet the stage road to the station. There,
+just mounting the crown of the hill and about to disappear on the other
+side, strode a stranger man, big and tall, with a crop of reddish curly
+hair showing from under his straw hat. A woman walked by his side, and
+perched on his shoulder, wearing his most radiant and triumphant mien,
+as joyous in leaving Edgewood as he had been during every hour of his
+sojourn there--rode Jack-o'-lantern!
+
+Rebecca gave a cry in which maternal longing and helpless, hopeless
+jealousy strove for supremacy. Then, with an impetuous movement she
+started to run after the disappearing trio.
+
+Mrs. Cobb opened the door hastily, calling after her, "Rebecca, Rebecca,
+come back here! You mustn't follow where you haven't any right to go. If
+there'd been anything to say or do, I'd a' done it."
+
+"He's mine! He's mine!" stormed Rebecca. "At least he's yours and mine!"
+
+"He's his father's first of all," faltered Mrs. Cobb; "don't let's
+forget that; and we'd ought to be glad and grateful that John Winslow's
+come to his senses an' remembers he's brought a child into the world and
+ought to take care of it. Our loss is his gain and it may make a man of
+him. Come in, and we'll put things away all neat before your Uncle Jerry
+gets home."
+
+Rebecca sank in a pitiful little heap on Mrs. Cobb's bedroom floor
+and sobbed her heart out. "Oh, Aunt Sarah, where shall we get another
+Jack-o'-lantern, and how shall I break it to Emma Jane? What if his
+father doesn't love him, and what if he forgets to strain the milk or
+lets him go without his nap? That's the worst of babies that aren't
+private--you have to part with them sooner or later!"
+
+"Sometimes you have to part with your own, too," said Mrs. Cobb sadly;
+and though there were lines of sadness in her face there was neither
+rebellion nor repining, as she folded up the sides of the turn-up
+bedstead preparatory to banishing it a second time to the attic. "I
+shall miss Sarah Ellen now more'n ever. Still, Rebecca, we mustn't feel
+to complain. It's the Lord that giveth and the Lord that taketh away:
+Blessed be the name of the Lord."
+
+
+
+
+Second Chronicle. DAUGHTERS OF ZION
+
+
+I
+
+Abijah Flagg was driving over to Wareham on an errand for old Squire
+Winship, whose general chore-boy and farmer's assistant he had been for
+some years.
+
+He passed Emma Jane Perkins's house slowly, as he always did. She was
+only a little girl of thirteen and he a boy of fifteen or sixteen, but
+somehow, for no particular reason, he liked to see the sun shine on her
+thick braids of reddish-brown hair. He admired her china-blue eyes too,
+and her amiable, friendly expression. He was quite alone in the world,
+and he always thought that if he had anybody belonging to him he would
+rather have a sister like Emma Jane Perkins than anything else within
+the power of Providence to bestow. When she herself suggested this
+relationship a few years later he cast it aside with scorn, having
+changed his mind in the interval--but that story belongs to another time
+and place.
+
+Emma Jane was not to be seen in garden, field, or at the window, and
+Abijah turned his gaze to the large brick house that came next on the
+other side of the quiet village street. It might have been closed for
+a funeral. Neither Miss Miranda nor Miss Jane Sawyer sat at their
+respective windows knitting, nor was Rebecca Randall's gypsy face to be
+discerned. Ordinarily that will-o'-the wispish little person could be
+seen, heard, or felt wherever she was.
+
+"The village must be abed, I guess," mused Abijah, as he neared the
+Robinsons' yellow cottage, where all the blinds were closed and no sign
+of life showed on porch or in shed. "No, 't aint, neither," he thought
+again, as his horse crept cautiously down the hill, for from the
+direction of the Robinsons' barn chamber there floated out into the air
+certain burning sentiments set to the tune of "Antioch." The words, to a
+lad brought up in the orthodox faith, were quite distinguishable:
+
+"Daughter of Zion, from the dust, Exalt thy fallen head!"
+
+Even the most religious youth is stronger on first lines than others,
+but Abijah pulled up his horse and waited till he caught another
+familiar verse, beginning:
+
+"Rebuild thy walls, thy bounds enlarge, And send thy heralds forth."
+
+"That's Rebecca carrying the air, and I can hear Emma Jane's alto."
+
+     "Say to the North,
+     Give up thy charge,
+     And hold not back, O South,
+     And hold not back, O South," etc.
+
+"Land! ain't they smart, seesawin' up and down in that part they learnt
+in singin' school! I wonder what they're actin' out, singin' hymn-tunes
+up in the barn chamber? Some o' Rebecca's doins, I'll be bound! Git dap,
+Aleck!"
+
+Aleck pursued his serene and steady trot up the hills on the Edgewood
+side of the river, till at length he approached the green Common where
+the old Tory Hill meeting-house stood, its white paint and green blinds
+showing fair and pleasant in the afternoon sun. Both doors were open,
+and as Abijah turned into the Wareham road the church melodeon pealed
+out the opening bars of the Missionary Hymn, and presently a score of
+voices sent the good old tune from the choir-loft out to the dusty road:
+
+     "Shall we whose souls are lighted
+     With Wisdom from on high,
+     Shall we to men benighted
+     The lamp of life deny?"
+
+"Land!" exclaimed Abijah under his breath. "They're at it up here, too!
+That explains it all. There's a missionary meeting at the church, and
+the girls wa'n't allowed to come so they held one of their own, and I
+bate ye it's the liveliest of the two."
+
+Abijah Flagg's shrewd Yankee guesses were not far from the truth, though
+he was not in possession of all the facts. It will be remembered by
+those who have been in the way of hearing Rebecca's experiences in
+Riverboro, that the Rev. and Mrs. Burch, returned missionaries from the
+Far East, together with some of their children, "all born under Syrian
+skies," as they always explained to interested inquirers, spent a day or
+two at the brick house, and gave parlor meetings in native costume.
+
+These visitors, coming straight from foreign lands to the little Maine
+village, brought with them a nameless enchantment to the children, and
+especially to Rebecca, whose imagination always kindled easily. The
+romance of that visit had never died in her heart, and among the many
+careers that dazzled her youthful vision was that of converting such
+Syrian heathen as might continue in idol worship after the Burches'
+efforts in their behalf had ceased. She thought at the age of eighteen
+she might be suitably equipped for storming some minor citadel of
+Mohammedanism; and Mrs. Burch had encouraged her in the idea, not, it is
+to be feared, because Rebecca showed any surplus of virtue or Christian
+grace, but because her gift of language, her tact and sympathy, and her
+musical talent seemed to fit her for the work.
+
+It chanced that the quarterly meeting of the Maine Missionary Society
+had been appointed just at the time when a letter from Mrs. Burch to
+Miss Jane Sawyer suggested that Rebecca should form a children's branch
+in Riverboro. Mrs. Burch's real idea was that the young people should
+save their pennies and divert a gentle stream of financial aid into
+the parent fund, thus learning early in life to be useful in such work,
+either at home or abroad.
+
+The girls themselves, however, read into her letter no such modest
+participation in the conversion of the world, and wishing to effect an
+organization without delay, they chose an afternoon when every house in
+the village was vacant, and seized upon the Robinsons' barn chamber as
+the place of meeting.
+
+Rebecca, Alice Robinson, Emma Jane Perkins, Candace Milliken, and Persis
+Watson, each with her hymn book, had climbed the ladder leading to
+the haymow a half hour before Abijah Flagg had heard the strains
+of "Daughters of Zion" floating out to the road. Rebecca, being an
+executive person, had carried, besides her hymn book, a silver call-bell
+and pencil and paper. An animated discussion regarding one of two
+names for the society, The Junior Heralds or The Daughters of Zion,
+had resulted in a unanimous vote for the latter, and Rebecca had been
+elected president at an early stage of the meeting. She had modestly
+suggested that Alice Robinson, as the granddaughter of a missionary to
+China, would be much more eligible.
+
+"No," said Alice, with entire good nature, "whoever is ELECTED
+president, you WILL be, Rebecca--you're that kind--so you might as well
+have the honor; I'd just as lieves be secretary, anyway."
+
+"If you should want me to be treasurer, I could be, as well as not,"
+said Persis Watson suggestively; "for you know my father keeps china
+banks at his store--ones that will hold as much as two dollars if you
+will let them. I think he'd give us one if I happen to be treasurer."
+
+The three principal officers were thus elected at one fell swoop
+and with an entire absence of that red tape which commonly renders
+organization so tiresome, Candace Milliken suggesting that perhaps she'd
+better be vice-president, as Emma Jane Perkins was always so bashful.
+
+"We ought to have more members," she reminded the other girls, "but if
+we had invited them the first day they'd have all wanted to be officers,
+especially Minnie Smellie, so it's just as well not to ask them till
+another time. Is Thirza Meserve too little to join?"
+
+"I can't think why anybody named Meserve should have called a baby
+Thirza," said Rebecca, somewhat out of order, though the meeting was
+carried on with small recognition of parliamentary laws. "It always
+makes me want to say:
+
+     Thirza Meserver
+     Heaven preserve her!
+     Thirza Meserver
+     Do we deserve her?
+
+She's little, but she's sweet, and absolutely without guile. I think we
+ought to have her."
+
+"Is 'guile' the same as 'guilt?" inquired Emma Jane Perkins.
+
+"Yes," the president answered; "exactly the same, except one is written
+and the other spoken language." (Rebecca was rather good at imbibing
+information, and a master hand at imparting it!) "Written language is
+for poems and graduations and occasions like this--kind of like a best
+Sunday-go-to-meeting dress that you wouldn't like to go blueberrying in
+for fear of getting it spotted."
+
+"I'd just as 'lieves get 'guile' spotted as not," affirmed the
+unimaginative Emma Jane. "I think it's an awful foolish word; but now
+we're all named and our officers elected, what do we do first? It's
+easy enough for Mary and Martha Burch; they just play at missionarying
+because their folks work at it, same as Living and I used to make
+believe be blacksmiths when we were little."
+
+"It must be nicer missionarying in those foreign places," said Persis,
+"because on 'Afric's shores and India's plains and other spots where
+Satan reigns' (that's father's favorite hymn) there's always a heathen
+bowing down to wood and stone. You can take away his idols if he'll let
+you and give him a bible and the beginning's all made. But who'll we
+begin on? Jethro Small?"
+
+"Oh, he's entirely too dirty, and foolish besides!" exclaimed Candace.
+"Why not Ethan Hunt? He swears dreadfully."
+
+"He lives on nuts and is a hermit, and it's a mile to his camp through
+the thick woods; my mother'll never let me go there," objected Alice.
+"There's Uncle Tut Judson."
+
+"He's too old; he's most a hundred and deaf as a post," complained Emma
+Jane. "Besides, his married daughter is a Sabbath-school teacher--why
+doesn't she teach him to behave? I can't think of anybody just right to
+start on!"
+
+"Don't talk like that, Emma Jane," and Rebecca's tone had a tinge of
+reproof in it. "We are a copperated body named the Daughters of Zion,
+and, of course, we've got to find something to do. Foreigners are the
+easiest; there's a Scotch family at North Riverboro, an English one in
+Edgewood, and one Cuban man at Millkin's Mills."
+
+"Haven't foreigners got any religion of their own?" inquired Persis
+curiously.
+
+"Ye-es, I s'pose so; kind of a one; but foreigners' religions are never
+right--ours is the only good one." This was from Candace, the deacon's
+daughter.
+
+"I do think it must be dreadful, being born with a religion and growing
+up with it, and then finding out it's no use and all your time wasted!"
+Here Rebecca sighed, chewed a straw, and looked troubled.
+
+"Well, that's your punishment for being a heathen," retorted Candace,
+who had been brought up strictly.
+
+"But I can't for the life of me see how you can help being a heathen if
+you're born in Africa," persisted Persis, who was well named.
+
+"You can't." Rebecca was clear on this point. "I had that all out with
+Mrs. Burch when she was visiting Aunt Miranda. She says they can't help
+being heathen, but if there's a single mission station in the whole of
+Africa, they're accountable if they don't go there and get saved."
+
+"Are there plenty of stages and railroads?" asked Alice; "because there
+must be dreadfully long distances, and what if they couldn't pay the
+fare?"
+
+"That part of it is so dreadfully puzzly we mustn't talk about it,
+please," said Rebecca, her sensitive face quivering with the force of
+the problem. Poor little soul! She did not realize that her superiors
+in age and intellect had spent many a sleepless night over that same
+"accountability of the heathen."
+
+"It's too bad the Simpsons have moved away," said Candace. "It's so
+seldom you can find a real big wicked family like that to save, with
+only Clara Belle and Susan good in it."
+
+"And numbers count for so much," continued Alice. "My grandmother says
+if missionaries can't convert about so many in a year the Board advises
+them to come back to America and take up some other work."
+
+"I know," Rebecca corroborated; "and it's the same with revivalists. At
+the Centennial picnic at North Riverboro, a revivalist sat opposite to
+Mr. Ladd and Aunt Jane and me, and he was telling about his wonderful
+success in Bangor last winter. He'd converted a hundred and thirty in
+a month, he said, or about four and a third a day. I had just finished
+fractions, so I asked Mr. Ladd how the third of a man could be
+converted. He laughed and said it was just the other way; that the man
+was a third converted. Then he explained that if you were trying to
+convince a person of his sin on a Monday, and couldn't quite finish by
+sundown, perhaps you wouldn't want to sit up all night with him, and
+perhaps he wouldn't want you to; so you'd begin again on Tuesday, and
+you couldn't say just which day he was converted, because it would be
+two thirds on Monday and one third on Tuesday."
+
+"Mr. Ladd is always making fun, and the Board couldn't expect any great
+things of us girls, new beginners," suggested Emma Jane, who was being
+constantly warned against tautology by her teacher. "I think it's awful
+rude, anyway, to go right out and try to convert your neighbors; but if
+you borrow a horse and go to Edgewood Lower Corner, or Milliken's Mills,
+I s'pose that makes it Foreign Missions."
+
+"Would we each go alone or wait upon them with a committee, as they did
+when they asked Deacon Tuttle for a contribution for the new hearse?"
+asked Persis.
+
+"Oh! We must go alone," decided Rebecca; "it would be much more refined
+and delicate. Aunt Miranda says that one man alone could never get
+a subscription from Deacon Tuttle, and that's the reason they sent a
+committee. But it seems to me Mrs. Burch couldn't mean for us to try
+and convert people when we're none of us even church members, except
+Candace. I think all we can do is to persuade them to go to meeting and
+Sabbath school, or give money for the hearse, or the new horse sheds.
+Now let's all think quietly for a minute or two who's the very most
+heathenish and reperrehensiblest person in Riverboro."
+
+After a very brief period of silence the words "Jacob Moody" fell from
+all lips with entire accord.
+
+"You are right," said the president tersely; "and after singing hymn
+number two hundred seventy four, to be found on the sixty-sixth page,
+we will take up the question of persuading Mr. Moody to attend divine
+service or the minister's Bible class, he not having been in the
+meeting-house for lo! these many years.
+
+     'Daughter of Zion, the power that hath saved thee
+     Extolled with the harp and the timbrel should be.'
+
+"Sing without reading, if you please, omitting the second stanza. Hymn
+two seventy four, to be found on the sixty-sixth page of the new hymn
+book or on page thirty two of Emma Jane Perkins's old one."
+
+II
+
+It is doubtful if the Rev. Mr. Burch had ever found in Syria a person
+more difficult to persuade than the already "gospel-hardened" Jacob
+Moody of Riverboro.
+
+Tall, gaunt, swarthy, black-bearded--his masses of grizzled, uncombed
+hair and the red scar across his nose and cheek added to his sinister
+appearance. His tumble-down house stood on a rocky bit of land back of
+the Sawyer pasture, and the acres of his farm stretched out on all sides
+of it. He lived alone, ate alone, plowed, planted, sowed, harvested
+alone, and was more than willing to die alone, "unwept, unhonored, and
+unsung." The road that bordered upon his fields was comparatively little
+used by any one, and notwithstanding the fact that it was thickly set
+with chokecherry trees and blackberry bushes it had been for years
+practically deserted by the children. Jacob's Red Astrakhan and Granny
+Garland trees hung thick with apples, but no Riverboro or Edgewood boy
+stole them; for terrifying accounts of the fate that had overtaken one
+urchin in times agone had been handed along from boy to boy, protecting
+the Moody fruit far better than any police patrol.
+
+Perhaps no circumstances could have extenuated the old man's surly
+manners or his lack of all citizenly graces and virtues; but his
+neighbors commonly rebuked his present way of living and forgot the
+troubled past that had brought it about: the sharp-tongued wife, the
+unloving and disloyal sons, the daughter's hapless fate, and all the
+other sorry tricks that fortune had played upon him--at least that was
+the way in which he had always regarded his disappointments and griefs.
+
+This, then, was the personage whose moral rehabilitation was to be
+accomplished by the Daughters of Zion. But how?
+
+"Who will volunteer to visit Mr. Moody?" blandly asked the president.
+
+VISIT MR. MOODY! It was a wonder the roof of the barn chamber did not
+fall; it did, indeed echo the words and in some way make them sound more
+grim and satirical.
+
+"Nobody'll volunteer, Rebecca Rowena Randall, and you know it," said
+Emma Jane.
+
+"Why don't we draw lots, when none of us wants to speak to him and yet
+one of us must?"
+
+This suggestion fell from Persis Watson, who had been pale and
+thoughtful ever since the first mention of Jacob Moody. (She was fond of
+Granny Garlands; she had once met Jacob; and, as to what befell, well,
+we all have our secret tragedies!)
+
+"Wouldn't it be wicked to settle it that way?"
+
+"It's gamblers that draw lots."
+
+"People did it in the Bible ever so often."
+
+"It doesn't seem nice for a missionary meeting."
+
+These remarks fell all together upon the president's bewildered ear the
+while (as she always said in compositions)--"the while" she was trying
+to adjust the ethics of this unexpected and difficult dilemma.
+
+"It is a very puzzly question," she said thoughtfully. "I could ask Aunt
+Jane if we had time, but I suppose we haven't. It doesn't seem nice to
+draw lots, and yet how can we settle it without? We know we mean right,
+and perhaps it will be. Alice, take this paper and tear off five narrow
+pieces, all different lengths."
+
+At this moment a voice from a distance floated up to the haymow--a voice
+saying plaintively: "Will you let me play with you, girls? Huldah has
+gone to ride, and I'm all alone."
+
+It was the voice of the absolutely-without-guile Thirza Meserve, and it
+came at an opportune moment.
+
+"If she is going to be a member," said Persis, "why not let her come up
+and hold the lots? She'd be real honest and not favor anybody."
+
+It seemed an excellent idea, and was followed up so quickly that
+scarcely three minutes ensued before the guileless one was holding the
+five scraps in her hot little palm, laboriously changing their places
+again and again until they looked exactly alike and all rather soiled
+and wilted.
+
+"Come, girls, draw!" commanded the president. "Thirza, you mustn't chew
+gum at a missionary meeting, it isn't polite nor holy. Take it out and
+stick it somewhere till the exercises are over."
+
+The five Daughters of Zion approached the spot so charged with fate, and
+extended their trembling hands one by one. Then after a moment's silent
+clutch of their papers they drew nearer to one another and compared
+them.
+
+Emma Jane Perkins had drawn the short one, becoming thus the destined
+instrument for Jacob Moody's conversion to a more seemly manner of life!
+
+She looked about her despairingly, as if to seek some painless and
+respectable method of self-destruction.
+
+"Do let's draw over again," she pleaded. "I'm the worst of all of us.
+I'm sure to make a mess of it till I kind o' get trained in."
+
+Rebecca's heart sank at this frank confession, which only corroborated
+her own fears.
+
+"I'm sorry, Emmy, dear," she said, "but our only excuse for drawing lots
+at all would be to have it sacred. We must think of it as a kind of a
+sign, almost like God speaking to Moses in the burning bush."
+
+"Oh, I WISH there was a burning bush right here!" cried the distracted
+and recalcitrant missionary. "How quick I'd step into it without even
+stopping to take off my garnet ring!"
+
+"Don't be such a scare-cat, Emma Jane!" exclaimed Candace bracingly.
+"Jacob Moody can't kill you, even if he has an awful temper. Trot right
+along now before you get more frightened. Shall we go cross lots with
+her, Rebecca, and wait at the pasture gate? Then whatever happens Alice
+can put it down in the minutes of the meeting."
+
+In these terrible crises of life time gallops with such incredible
+velocity that it seemed to Emma Jane only a breath before she was being
+dragged through the fields by the other Daughters of Zion, the guileless
+little Thirza panting in the rear.
+
+At the entrance to the pasture Rebecca gave her an impassioned embrace,
+and whispering, "WHATEVER YOU DO, BE CAREFUL HOW YOU LEAD UP," lifted
+off the top rail and pushed her through the bars. Then the girls turned
+their backs reluctantly on the pathetic figure, and each sought a tree
+under whose friendly shade she could watch, and perhaps pray, until the
+missionary should return from her field of labor.
+
+Alice Robinson, whose compositions were always marked 96 or 97,--100
+symbolizing such perfection as could be attained in the mortal world of
+Riverboro,--Alice, not only Daughter, but Scribe of Zion, sharpened her
+pencil and wrote a few well-chosen words of introduction, to be used
+when the records of the afternoon had been made by Emma Jane Perkins and
+Jacob Moody.
+
+Rebecca's heart beat tumultuously under her gingham dress. She felt
+that a drama was being enacted, and though unfortunately she was not the
+central figure, she had at least a modest part in it. The short lot had
+not fallen to the properest Daughter, that she quite realized; yet would
+any one of them succeed in winning Jacob Moody's attention, in
+engaging him in pleasant conversation, and finally in bringing him to
+a realization of his mistaken way of life? She doubted, but at the same
+moment her spirits rose at the thought of the difficulties involved in
+the undertaking.
+
+Difficulties always spurred Rebecca on, but they daunted poor Emma Jane,
+who had no little thrills of excitement and wonder and fear and longing
+to sustain her lagging soul. That her interview was to be entered as
+"minutes" by a secretary seemed to her the last straw. Her blue eyes
+looked lighter than usual and had the glaze of china saucers; her
+usually pink cheeks were pale, but she pressed on, determined to be
+a faithful Daughter of Zion, and above all to be worthy of Rebecca's
+admiration and respect.
+
+"Rebecca can do anything," she thought, with enthusiastic loyalty, "and
+I mustn't be any stupider than I can help, or she'll choose one of
+the other girls for her most intimate friend." So, mustering all her
+courage, she turned into Jacob Moody's dooryard, where he was chopping
+wood.
+
+"It's a pleasant afternoon, Mr. Moody," she said in a polite but hoarse
+whisper, Rebecca's words, "LEAD UP! LEAD UP!" ringing in clarion tones
+through her brain.
+
+Jacob Moody looked at her curiously. "Good enough, I guess," he growled;
+"but I don't never have time to look at afternoons."
+
+Emma Jane seated herself timorously on the end of a large log near the
+chopping block, supposing that Jacob, like other hosts, would pause in
+his tasks and chat.
+
+"The block is kind of like an idol," she thought; "I wish I could take
+it away from him, and then perhaps he'd talk."
+
+At this moment Jacob raised his axe and came down on the block with such
+a stunning blow that Emma Jane fairly leaped into the air.
+
+"You'd better look out, Sissy, or you'll git chips in the eye!" said
+Moody, grimly going on with his work.
+
+The Daughter of Zion sent up a silent prayer for inspiration, but none
+came, and she sat silent, giving nervous jumps in spite of herself
+whenever the axe fell upon the log Jacob was cutting.
+
+Finally, the host became tired of his dumb visitor, and leaning on
+his axe he said, "Look here, Sis, what have you come for? What's your
+errant? Do you want apples? Or cider? Or what? Speak out, or GIT out,
+one or t'other."
+
+Emma Jane, who had wrung her handkerchief into a clammy ball, gave it
+a last despairing wrench, and faltered: "Wouldn't you like--hadn't you
+better--don't you think you'd ought to be more constant at meeting and
+Sabbath school?"
+
+Jacob's axe almost dropped from his nerveless hand, and he regarded
+the Daughter of Zion with unspeakable rage and disdain. Then, the blood
+mounting in his face, he gathered himself together, and shouted: "You
+take yourself off that log and out o' this dooryard double-quick, you
+imperdent sanct'omus young one! You just let me ketch Bill Perkins'
+child trying to teach me where I shall go, at my age! Scuttle, I tell
+ye! And if I see your pious cantin' little mug inside my fence ag'in on
+sech a business I'll chase ye down the hill or set the dog on ye! SCOOT,
+I TELL YE!"
+
+Emma Jane obeyed orders summarily, taking herself off the log, out the
+dooryard, and otherwise scuttling and scooting down the hill at a pace
+never contemplated even by Jacob Moody, who stood regarding her flying
+heels with a sardonic grin.
+
+Down she stumbled, the tears coursing over her cheeks and mingling with
+the dust of her flight; blighted hope, shame, fear, rage, all tearing
+her bosom in turn, till with a hysterical shriek she fell over the bars
+and into Rebecca's arms outstretched to receive her. The other Daughters
+wiped her eyes and supported her almost fainting form, while Thirza,
+thoroughly frightened, burst into sympathetic tears, and refused to be
+comforted.
+
+No questions were asked, for it was felt by all parties that Emma Jane's
+demeanor was answering them before they could be framed.
+
+"He threatened to set the dog on me!" she wailed presently, when, as
+they neared the Sawyer pasture, she was able to control her voice. "He
+called me a pious, cantin' young one, and said he'd chase me out o' the
+dooryard if I ever came again! And he'll tell my father--I know he will,
+for he hates him like poison."
+
+All at once the adult point of view dawned upon Rebecca. She never
+saw it until it was too obvious to be ignored. Had they done wrong in
+interviewing Jacob Moody? Would Aunt Miranda be angry, as well as Mr.
+Perkins?
+
+"Why was he so dreadful, Emmy?" she questioned tenderly. "What did you
+say first? How did you lead up to it?"
+
+Emma Jane sobbed more convulsively, and wiped her nose and eyes
+impartially as she tried to think.
+
+"I guess I never led up at all; not a mite. I didn't know what you
+meant. I was sent on an errant, and I went and done it the best I could!
+(Emma Jane's grammar always lapsed in moments of excitement.) And then
+Jake roared at me like Squire Winship's bull.... And he called my face
+a mug.... You shut up that secretary book, Alice Robinson! If you write
+down a single word I'll never speak to you again.... And I don't want to
+be a member' another minute for fear of drawing another short lot. I've
+got enough of the Daughters or Zion to last me the rest o' my life! I
+don't care who goes to meetin' and who don't."
+
+The girls were at the Perkins's gate by this time, and Emma Jane went
+sadly into the empty house to remove all traces of the tragedy from her
+person before her mother should come home from the church.
+
+The others wended their way slowly down the street, feeling that their
+promising missionary branch had died almost as soon as it had budded.
+
+"Goodby," said Rebecca, swallowing lumps of disappointment and chagrin
+as she saw the whole inspiring plan break and vanish into thin air like
+an iridescent bubble. "It's all over and we won't ever try it again.
+I'm going in to do overcasting as hard as I can, because I hate that the
+worst. Aunt Jane must write to Mrs. Burch that we don't want to be
+home missionaries. Perhaps we're not big enough, anyway. I'm perfectly
+certain it's nicer to convert people when they're yellow or brown or
+any color but white; and I believe it must be easier to save their souls
+than it is to make them go to meeting."
+
+
+
+
+Third Chronicle. REBECCA'S THOUGHT BOOK
+
+
+I
+
+The "Sawyer girls'" barn still had its haymow in Rebecca's time,
+although the hay was a dozen years old or more, and, in the opinion of
+the occasional visiting horse, sadly juiceless and wanting in flavor.
+It still sheltered, too, old Deacon Israel Sawyer's carryall and
+mowing-machine, with his pung, his sleigh, and a dozen other survivals
+of an earlier era, when the broad acres of the brick house went to make
+one of the finest farms in Riverboro.
+
+There were no horses or cows in the stalls nowadays; no pig grunting
+comfortably of future spare ribs in the sty; no hens to peck the plants
+in the cherished garden patch. The Sawyer girls were getting on in
+years, and, mindful that care once killed a cat, they ordered their
+lives with the view of escaping that particular doom, at least, and
+succeeded fairly well until Rebecca's advent made existence a trifle
+more sensational.
+
+Once a month for years upon years, Miss Miranda and Miss Jane had put
+towels over their heads and made a solemn visit to the barn, taking off
+the enameled cloth coverings (occasionally called "emmanuel covers" in
+Riverboro), dusting the ancient implements, and sometimes sweeping
+the heaviest of the cobwebs from the corners, or giving a brush to the
+floor.
+
+Deacon Israel's tottering ladder still stood in its accustomed place,
+propped against the haymow, and the heavenly stairway leading to eternal
+glory scarcely looked fairer to Jacob of old than this to Rebecca. By
+means of its dusty rounds she mounted, mounted, mounted far away
+from time and care and maiden aunts, far away from childish tasks
+and childish troubles, to the barn chamber, a place so full of golden
+dreams, happy reveries, and vague longings, that, as her little brown
+hands clung to the sides of the ladder and her feet trod the rounds
+cautiously in her ascent, her heart almost stopped beating in the sheer
+joy of anticipation.
+
+Once having gained the heights, the next thing was to unlatch the heavy
+doors and give them a gentle swing outward. Then, oh, ever new Paradise!
+Then, oh, ever lovely green and growing world! For Rebecca had that
+something in her soul that
+
+"Gives to seas and sunset skies The unspent beauty of surprise."
+
+At the top of Guide Board hill she could see Alice Robinson's barn with
+its shining weather vane, a huge burnished fish that swam with the wind
+and foretold the day to all Riverboro. The meadow, with its sunny
+slopes stretching up to the pine woods, was sometimes a flowing sheet
+of shimmering grass, sometimes--when daisies and buttercups were
+blooming--a vision of white and gold. Sometimes the shorn stubble would
+be dotted with "the happy hills of hay," and a little later the rock
+maple on the edge of the pines would stand out like a golden ball
+against the green; its neighbor, the sugar maple, glowing beside it,
+brave in scarlet.
+
+It was on one of these autumn days with a wintry nip in the air that
+Adam Ladd (Rebecca's favorite "Mr. Aladdin"), after searching for her in
+field and garden, suddenly noticed the open doors of the barn chamber,
+and called to her. At the sound of his vice she dropped her precious
+diary, and flew to the edge of the haymow. He never forgot the vision
+of the startled little poetess, book in one mittened hand, pencil in
+the other, dark hair all ruffled, with the picturesque addition of an
+occasional glade of straw, her cheeks crimson, her eyes shining.
+
+"A Sappho in mittens!" he cried laughingly, and at her eager question
+told her to look up the unknown lady in the school encyclopedia, when
+she was admitted to the Female Seminary at Wareham.
+
+Now, all being ready, Rebecca went to a corner of the haymow, and
+withdrew a thick blank-book with mottled covers. Out of her gingham
+apron pocket came a pencil, a bit of rubber, and some pieces of brown
+paper; then she seated herself gravely on the floor, and drew an
+inverted soapbox nearer to her for a table.
+
+The book was reverently opened, and there was a serious reading of the
+extracts already carefully copied therein. Most of them were apparently
+to the writer's liking, for dimples of pleasure showed themselves now
+and then, and smiles of obvious delight played about her face; but
+once in a while there was a knitting of the brows and a sigh of
+discouragement, showing that the artist in the child was not wholly
+satisfied.
+
+Then came the crucial moment when the budding author was supposedly to
+be racked with the throes of composition; but seemingly there were
+no throes. Other girls could wield the darning or crochet or knitting
+needle, and send the tatting shuttle through loops of the finest cotton;
+hemstitch, oversew, braid hair in thirteen strands, but the pencil was
+never obedient in their fingers, and the pen and ink-pot were a horror
+from early childhood to the end of time.
+
+Not so with Rebecca; her pencil moved as easily as her tongue, and no
+more striking simile could possibly be used. Her handwriting was not
+Spencerian; she had neither time, nor patience, it is to be feared,
+for copybook methods, and her unformed characters were frequently the
+despair of her teachers; but write she could, write she would, write she
+must and did, in season and out; from the time she made pothooks at six,
+till now, writing was the easiest of all possible tasks; to be indulged
+in as solace and balm when the terrors of examples in least common
+multiple threatened to dethrone the reason, or the rules of grammar
+loomed huge and unconquerable in the near horizon.
+
+As to spelling, it came to her in the main by free grace, and not by
+training, and though she slipped at times from the beaten path, her
+extraordinary ear and good visual memory kept her from many or flagrant
+mistakes. It was her intention, especially when saying her prayers at
+night, to look up all doubtful words in her small dictionary, before
+copying her Thoughts into the sacred book for the inspiration
+of posterity; but when genius burned with a brilliant flame, and
+particularly when she was in the barn and the dictionary in the house,
+impulse as usual carried the day.
+
+There sits Rebecca, then, in the open door of the Sawyers barn
+chamber--the sunset door. How many a time had her grandfather, the good
+deacon, sat just underneath in his tipped-back chair, when Mrs. Israel's
+temper was uncertain, and the serenity of the barn was in comforting
+contrast to his own fireside!
+
+The open doors swinging out to the peaceful landscape, the solace of the
+pipe, not allowed in the "settin'-room"--how beautifully these simple
+agents have ministered to the family peace in days agone! "If I hadn't
+had my barn and my store BOTH, I couldn't never have lived in holy
+matrimony with Maryliza!" once said Mr. Watson feelingly.
+
+But the deacon, looking on his waving grass fields, his tasseling corn
+and his timber lands, bright and honest as were his eyes, never saw
+such visions as Rebecca. The child, transplanted from her home farm at
+Sunnybrook, from the care of the overworked but easy-going mother, and
+the companionship of the scantily fed, scantily clothed, happy-go-lucky
+brothers and sisters--she had indeed fallen on shady days in Riverboro.
+The blinds were closed in every room of the house but two, and the same
+might have been said of Miss Miranda's mind and heart, though Miss
+Jane had a few windows opening to the sun, and Rebecca already had her
+unconscious hand on several others. Brickhouse rules were rigid and many
+for a little creature so full of life, but Rebecca's gay spirit could
+not be pinioned in a strait jacket for long at a time; it escaped
+somehow and winged its merry way into the sunshine and free air; if she
+were not allowed to sing in the orchard, like the wild bird she was, she
+could still sing in the cage, like the canary.
+
+II
+
+If you had opened the carefully guarded volume with the mottled covers,
+you would first have seen a wonderful title page, constructed apparently
+on the same lines as an obituary, or the inscription on a tombstone,
+save for the quantity and variety of information contained in it. Much
+of the matter would seem to the captious critic better adapted to the
+body of the book than to the title page, but Rebecca was apparently
+anxious that the principal personages in her chronicle should be well
+described at the outset.
+
+She seems to have had a conviction that heredity plays its part in the
+evolution of genius, and her belief that the world will be inspired
+by the possession of her Thoughts is too artless to be offensive. She
+evidently has respect for rich material confided to her teacher, and
+one can imagine Miss Dearborn's woe had she been confronted by Rebecca's
+chosen literary executor and bidden to deliver certain "Valuable Poetry
+and Thoughts," the property of posterity "unless carelessly destroyed."
+
+THOUGHT BOOK of Rebecca Rowena Randall Really of Sunnybrook Farm But
+temporily of The Brick House Riverboro. Own niece of Miss Miranda and
+Jane Sawyer Second of seven children of her father, Mr. L. D. M. Randall
+(Now at rest in Temperance cemmetary and there will be a monument as
+soon as we pay off the mortgage on the farm) Also of her mother Mrs.
+Aurelia Randall
+
+     In case of Death the best of these Thoughts
+     May be printed in my Remerniscences
+     For the Sunday School Library at Temperance, Maine
+     Which needs more books fearfully
+     And I hereby
+     Will and Testament them to Mr. Adam Ladd
+     Who bought 300 cakes of soap from me
+     And thus secured a premium
+     A Greatly Needed Banquet Lamp
+     For my friends the Simpsons.
+     He is the only one that incourages
+     My writing Remerniscences and
+     My teacher Miss Dearborn will
+     Have much valuable Poetry and Thoughts
+     To give him unless carelessly destroyed.
+
+     The pictures are by the same hand that
+     Wrote the Thoughts.
+
+IT IS NOT NOW DECIDED WHETHER REBECCA ROWENA RANDALL WILL BE A PAINTER
+OR AN AUTHOR, BUT AFTER HER DEATH IT WILL BE KNOWN WHICH SHE HAS BEEN,
+IF ANY.
+
+FINIS
+
+From the title page, with its wealth of detail, and its unnecessary and
+irrelevant information, the book ripples on like a brook, and to the
+weary reader of problem novels it may have something of the brook's
+refreshing quality.
+
+OUR DIARIES May, 187--
+
+All the girls are keeping a diary because Miss Dearborn was very much
+ashamed when the school trustees told her that most of the girls' and
+all of the boys' compositions were disgraceful, and must be improved
+upon next term. She asked the boys to write letters to her once a week
+instead of keeping a diary, which they thought was girlish like playing
+with dolls. The boys thought it was dreadful to have to write letters
+every seven days, but she told them it was not half as bad for them as
+it was for her who had to read them.
+
+To make my diary a little different I am going to call it a THOUGHT Book
+(written just like that, with capitals). I have thoughts that I never
+can use unless I write them down, for Aunt Miranda always says, Keep
+your thoughts to yourself. Aunt Jane lets me tell her some, but does not
+like my queer ones and my true thoughts are mostly queer. Emma Jane does
+not mind hearing them now and then, and that is my only chance.
+
+If Miss Dearborn does not like the name Thought Book I will call it
+Remerniscences (written just like that with a capital R). Remerniscences
+are things you remember about yourself and write down in case you should
+die. Aunt Jane doesn't like to read any other kind of books but just
+lives of interesting dead people and she says that is what Longfellow
+(who was born in the state of Maine and we should be very proud of it
+and try to write like him) meant in his poem:
+
+     "Lives of great men all remind us
+     We should make our lives sublime,
+     And departing, leave behind us
+     Footprints on the sands of time."
+
+I know what this means because when Emma Jane and I went to the beach
+with Uncle Jerry Cobb we ran along the wet sand and looked at the shapes
+our boots made, just as if they were stamped in wax. Emma Jane turns in
+her left foot (splayfoot the boys call it, which is not polite) and Seth
+Strout had just patched one of my shoes and it all came out in the sand
+pictures. When I learned The Psalm of Life for Friday afternoon speaking
+I thought I shouldn't like to leave a patched footprint, nor have Emma
+Jane's look crooked on the sands of time, and right away I thought Oh!
+What a splendid thought for my Thought Book when Aunt Jane buys me a
+fifteen-cent one over to Watson's store.
+
+* * * * *
+
+
+REMERNISCENCES
+
+June, 187--
+
+I told Aunt Jane I was going to begin my Remerniscences, and she says
+I am full young, but I reminded her that Candace Milliken's sister died
+when she was ten, leaving no footprints whatever, and if I should die
+suddenly who would write down my Remerniscences? Aunt Miranda says the
+sun and moon would rise and set just the same, and it was no matter if
+they didn't get written down, and to go up attic and find her piece-bag;
+but I said it would, as there was only one of everybody in the world,
+and nobody else could do their remerniscensing for them. If I should die
+tonight I know now who would describe me right. Miss Dearborn would
+say one thing and brother John another. Emma Jane would try to do me
+justice, but has no words; and I am glad Aunt Miranda never takes the
+pen in hand.
+
+My dictionary is so small it has not many genteel words in it, and I
+cannot find how to spell Remerniscences, but I remember from the cover
+of Aunt Jane's book that there was an "s" and a "c" close together in
+the middle of it, which I thought foolish and not needful.
+
+All the girls like their dairies very much, but Minnie Smellie got Alice
+Robinson's where she had hid it under the school wood pile and read
+it all through. She said it was no worse than reading anybody's
+composition, but we told her it was just like peeking through a keyhole,
+or listening at a window, or opening a bureau drawer. She said she
+didn't look at it that way, and I told her that unless her eyes got
+unscealed she would never leave any kind of a sublime footprint on
+the sands of time. I told her a diary was very sacred as you generally
+poured your deepest feelings into it expecting nobody to look at it but
+yourself and your indulgent heavenly Father who seeeth all things.
+
+Of course it would not hurt Persis Watson to show her diary because she
+has not a sacred plan and this is the way it goes, for she reads it out
+loud to us:
+
+"Arose at six this morning--(you always arise in a diary but you say
+get up when you talk about it). Ate breakfast at half past six. Had soda
+biscuits, coffee, fish hash and doughnuts. Wiped the dishes, fed the
+hens and made my bed before school. Had a good arithmetic lesson, but
+went down two in spelling. At half past four played hide and coop in the
+Sawyer pasture. Fed hens and went to bed at eight."
+
+She says she can't put in what doesn't happen, but as I don't think her
+diary is interesting she will ask her mother to have meat hash instead
+of fish, with pie when the doughnuts give out, and she will feed the
+hens before breakfast to make a change. We are all going now to try and
+make something happen every single day so the diaries won't be so dull
+and the footprints so common.
+
+* * * * *
+
+
+AN UNCOMMON THOUGHT
+
+July 187--
+
+We dug up our rosecakes today, and that gave me a good Remerniscence.
+The way you make rose cakes is, you take the leaves of full blown roses
+and mix them with a little cinnamon and as much brown sugar as they
+will give you, which is never half enough except Persis Watson, whose
+affectionate parents let her go to the barrel in their store. Then you
+do up little bits like sedlitz powders, first in soft paper and then
+in brown, and bury them in the ground and let them stay as long as you
+possibly can hold out; then dig them up and eat them. Emma Jane and
+I stick up little signs over the holes in the ground with the date we
+buried them and when they'll be done enough to dig up, but we can never
+wait. When Aunt Jane saw us she said it was the first thing for children
+to learn,--not to be impatient,--so when I went to the barn chamber I
+made a poem.
+
+IMPATIENCE
+
+We dug our rose cakes up oh! all too soon. Twas in the orchard just at
+noon. Twas in a bright July forenoon. Twas in the sunny afternoon. Twas
+underneath the harvest moon.
+
+It was not that way at all; it was a foggy morning before school, and I
+should think poets could never possibly get to heaven, for it is so hard
+to stick to the truth when you are writing poetry. Emma Jane thinks it
+is nobody's business when we dug the rosecakes up. I like the line about
+the harvest moon best, but it would give a wrong idea of our lives and
+characters to the people that read my Thoughts, for they would think we
+were up late nights, so I have fixed it like this:
+
+                    IMPATIENCE
+
+     We dug our rose cakes up oh! all too soon,
+     We thought their sweetness would be such a boon.
+     We ne'er suspicioned they would not be done
+     After three days of autumn wind and sun.
+     Why did we from the earth our treasures draw?
+     Twas not for fear that rat or mole might naw,
+     An aged aunt doth say impatience was the reason,
+     She says that youth is ever out of season.
+
+That is just as Aunt Jane said it, and it gave me the thought for the
+poem which is rather uncommon.
+
+* * * * *
+
+
+A DREADFUL QUESTION
+
+September, 187--
+
+WHICH HAS BEEN THE MOST BENEFERCENT INFLUENCE ON CHARACTER--PUNISHMENT
+OR REWARD?
+
+This truly dreadful question was given us by Dr. Moses when he visited
+school today. He is a School Committee; not a whole one but I do not
+know the singular number of him. He told us we could ask our families
+what they thought, though he would rather we wouldn't, but we must write
+our own words and he would hear them next week.
+
+After he went out and shut the door the scholars were all plunged in
+gloom and you could have heard a pin drop. Alice Robinson cried and
+borrowed my handkerchief, and the boys looked as if the schoolhouse had
+been struck by lightning. The worst of all was poor Miss Dearborn, who
+will lose her place if she does not make us better scholars soon, for
+Dr. Moses has a daughter all ready to put right in to the school and she
+can board at home and save all her wages. Libby Moses is her name.
+
+Miss Dearborn stared out the window, and her mouth and chin shook like
+Alice Robinson's, for she knew, ah! all to well, what the coming week
+would bring forth.
+
+Then I raised my hand for permission to speak, and stood up and said:
+"Miss Dearborn, don't you mind! Just explain to us what benefercent'
+means and we'll write something real interesting; for all of us know
+what punishment is, and have seen others get rewards, and it is not so
+bad a subject as some." And Dick Carter whispered, "GOOD ON YOUR HEAD,
+REBECCA!" which mean he was sorry for her too, and would try his best,
+but has no words.
+
+Then teacher smiled and said benefercent meant good or healthy for
+anybody, and would all rise who thought punishment made the best
+scholars and men and women; and everybody sat stock still.
+
+And then she asked all to stand who believed that rewards produced the
+finest results, and there was a mighty sound like unto the rushing of
+waters, but really was our feet scraping the floor, and the scholars
+stood up, and it looked like an army, though it was only nineteen,
+because of the strong belief that was in them. Then Miss Dearborn
+laughed and said she was thankful for every whipping she had when
+she was a child, and Living Perkins said perhaps we hadn't got to the
+thankful age, or perhaps her father hadn't used a strap, and she said
+oh! no, it was her mother with the open hand; and Dick Carter said he
+wouldn't call that punishment, and Sam Simpson said so too.
+
+I am going to write about the subject in my Thought Book first, and when
+I make it into a composition, I can leave out anything about the family
+or not genteel, as there is much to relate about punishment not pleasant
+or nice and hardly polite.
+
+* * * * * * * * * * * * *
+
+PUNISHMENT
+
+Punishment is a very puzzly thing, but I believe in it when really
+deserved, only when I punish myself it does not always turn out well.
+When I leaned over the new bridge, and got my dress all paint, and Aunt
+Sarah Cobb couldn't get it out, I had to wear it spotted for six
+months which hurt my pride, but was right. I stayed at home from Alice
+Robinson's birthday party for a punishment, and went to the circus
+next day instead, but Alice's parties are very cold and stiff, as Mrs.
+Robinson makes the boys stand on newspapers if they come inside the
+door, and the blinds are always shut, and Mrs. Robinson tells me how bad
+her liver complaint is this year. So I thought, to pay for the circus
+and a few other things, I ought to get more punishment, and I threw my
+pink parasol down the well, as the mothers in the missionary books throw
+their infants to the crocodiles in the Ganges river. But it got stuck
+in the chain that holds the bucket, and Aunt Miranda had to get Abijah
+Flagg to take out all the broken bits before we could ring up water.
+
+I punished myself this way because Aunt Miranda said that unless I
+improved I would be nothing but a Burden and a Blight.
+
+There was an old man used to go by our farm carrying a lot of broken
+chairs to bottom, and mother used to say--"Poor man! His back is too
+weak for such a burden!" and I used to take him out a doughnut, and this
+is the part I want to go into the Remerniscences. Once I told him we
+were sorry the chairs were so heavy, and he said THEY DIDN'T SEEM SO
+HEAVY WHEN HE HAD ET THE DOUGHNUT. This does not mean that the doughnut
+was heavier than the chairs which is what brother John said, but it is a
+beautiful thought and shows how the human race should have sympathy, and
+help bear burdens.
+
+I know about a Blight, for there was a dreadful east wind over at our
+farm that destroyed all the little young crops just out of the ground,
+and the farmers called it the Blight. And I would rather be hail, sleet,
+frost, or snow than a Blight, which is mean and secret, and which is the
+reason I threw away the dearest thing on earth to me, the pink parasol
+that Miss Ross brought me from Paris, France. I have also wrapped up my
+bead purse in three papers and put it away marked not to be opened till
+after my death unless needed for a party.
+
+I must not be Burden, I must not be Blight, The angels in heaven would
+weep at the sight.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+REWARDS
+
+A good way to find out which has the most benefercent effect would be to
+try rewards on myself this next week and write my composition the very
+last day, when I see how my character is. It is hard to find rewards for
+yourself, but perhaps Aunt Jane and some of the girls would each give
+me one to help out. I could carry my bead purse to school every day,
+or wear my coral chain a little while before I go to sleep at night. I
+could read Cora or the Sorrows of a Doctor's Wife a little oftener, but
+that's all the rewards I can think of. I fear Aunt Miranda would say
+they are wicked but oh! if they should turn out benefercent how glad and
+joyful life would be to me! A sweet and beautiful character, beloved
+by my teacher and schoolmates, admired and petted by my aunts and
+neighbors, yet carrying my bead purse constantly, with perhaps my best
+hat on Wednesday afternoons, as well as Sundays!
+
+* * * * *
+
+A GREAT SHOCK
+
+The reason why Alice Robinson could not play was, she was being punished
+for breaking her mother's blue platter. Just before supper my story
+being finished I went up Guide Board hill to see how she was bearing
+up and she spoke to me from her window. She said she did not mind being
+punished because she hadn't been for a long time, and she hoped it would
+help her with her composition. She thought it would give her thoughts,
+and tomorrow's the last day for her to have any. This gave me a good
+idea and I told her to call her father up and beg him to beat her
+violently. It would hurt, I said, but perhaps none of the other girls
+would have a punishment like that, and her composition would be all
+different and splendid. I would borrow Aunt Miranda's witchhayzel and
+pour it on her wounds like the Samaritan in the Bible.
+
+I went up again after supper with Dick Carter to see how it turned out.
+Alice came to the window and Dick threw up a note tied to a stick. I
+had written: "DEMAND YOUR PUNISHMENT TO THE FULL. BE BRAVE LIKE DOLORES'
+MOTHER IN THE Martyrs of Spain."
+
+She threw down an answer, and it was: "YOU JUST BE LIKE DOLORES' MOTHER
+YOURSELF IF YOU'RE SO SMART!" Then she stamped away from the window and
+my feelings were hurt, but Dick said perhaps she was hungry, and that
+made her cross. And as Dick and I turned to go out of the yard we looked
+back and I saw something I can never forget. (The Great Shock) Mrs.
+Robinson was out behind the barn feeding the turkies. Mr. Robinson
+came softly out of the side door in the orchard and looking everywheres
+around he stepped to the wire closet and took out a saucer of cold beans
+with a pickled beet on top, and a big piece of blueberry pie. Then he
+crept up the back stairs and we could see Alice open her door and take
+in the supper.
+
+Oh! What will become of her composition, and how can she tell anything
+of the benefercent effects of punishment, when she is locked up by
+one parent, and fed by the other? I have forgiven her for the way she
+snapped me up for, of course, you couldn't beg your father to beat you
+when he was bringing you blueberry pie. Mrs. Robinson makes a kind that
+leaks out a thick purple juice into the plate and needs a spoon and
+blacks your mouth, but is heavenly.
+
+* * * * *
+
+A DREAM
+
+The week is almost up and very soon Dr. Moses will drive up to the
+school house like Elijah in the chariot and come in to hear us read.
+There is a good deal of sickness among us. Some of the boys are not able
+to come to school just now, but hope to be about again by Monday, when
+Dr. Moses goes away to a convention. It is a very hard composition to
+write, somehow. Last night I dreamed that the river was ink and I kept
+dipping into it and writing with a penstalk made of a young pine tree. I
+sliced great slabs of marble off the side of one of the White Mountains,
+the one you see when going to meeting, and wrote on those. Then I threw
+them all into the falls, not being good enough for Dr. Moses.
+
+Dick Carter had a splendid boy to stay over Sunday. He makes the real
+newspaper named The Pilot published by the boys at Wareham Academy. He
+says when he talks about himself in writing he calls himself "we," and
+it sounds much more like print, besides conscealing him more.
+
+Example: Our hair was measured this morning and has grown two inches
+since last time.... We have a loose tooth that troubles us very much...
+Our inkspot that we made by negligence on our only white petticoat we
+have been able to remove with lemon and milk. Some of our petticoat came
+out with the spot.
+
+I shall try it in my composition sometime, for of course I shall write
+for the Pilot when I go to Wareham Seminary. Uncle Jerry Cobb says that
+I shall, and thinks that in four years I might rise to be editor if they
+ever have girls.
+
+I have never been more good than since I have been rewarding myself
+steady, even to asking Aunt Miranda kindly to offer me a company jelly
+tart, not because I was hungry, but for an experement I was trying, and
+would explain to her sometime.
+
+She said she never thought it was wise to experement with your stomach,
+and I said, with a queer thrilling look, it was not my stomach but my
+soul, that was being tried. Then she gave me the tart and walked away
+all puzzled and nervous.
+
+The new minister has asked me to come and see him any Saturday afternoon
+as he writes poetry himself, but I would rather not ask him about this
+composition.
+
+Ministers never believe in rewards, and it is useless to hope that they
+will. We had the wrath of God four times in sermons this last summer,
+but God cannot be angry all the time,--nobody could, especially in
+summer; Mr. Baxter is different and calls his wife dear which is lovely
+and the first time I ever heard it in Riverboro. Mrs. Baxter is another
+kind of people too, from those that live in Temperance. I like to
+watch her in meeting and see her listen to her husband who is young and
+handsome for a minister; it gives me very queer and uncommon feelings,
+when they look at each other, which they always do when not otherwise
+engaged.
+
+She has different clothes from anybody else. Aunt Miranda says you must
+think only of two things: will your dress keep you warm and will it wear
+well and there is nobody in the world to know how I love pink and red
+and how I hate drab and green and how I never wear my hat with the
+black and yellow porkupine quills without wishing it would blow into the
+river.
+
+Whene'er I take my walks abroad How many quills I see. But as they are
+not porkupines They never come to me.
+
+
+COMPOSITION
+
+WHICH HAS THE MOST BENEFERCENT EFFECT ON THE CHARACTER, PUNISHMENT OR
+REWARD?
+
+By Rebecca Rowena Randall
+
+(This copy not corrected by Miss Dearborn yet.)
+
+We find ourselves very puzzled in approaching this truly great and
+national question though we have tried very ernestly to understand it,
+so as to show how wisely and wonderfully our dear teacher guides the
+youthful mind, it being her wish that our composition class shall long
+be remembered in Riverboro Centre.
+
+We would say first of all that punishment seems more benefercently
+needed by boys than girls. Boys' sins are very violent, like stealing
+fruit, profane language, playing truant, fighting, breaking windows, and
+killing innocent little flies and bugs. If these were not taken out of
+them early in life it would be impossible for them to become like our
+martyred president, Abraham Lincoln.
+
+Although we have asked everybody on our street, they think boys' sins
+can only be whipped out of them with a switch or strap, which makes
+us feel very sad, as boys when not sinning the dreadful sins mentioned
+above seem just as good as girls, and never cry when switched, and say
+it does not hurt much.
+
+We now approach girls, which we know better, being one. Girls seem
+better than boys because their sins are not so noisy and showy. They
+can disobey their parents and aunts, whisper in silent hour, cheat in
+lessons, say angry things to their schoolmates, tell lies, be sulky and
+lazy, but all these can be conducted quite ladylike and genteel, and
+nobody wants to strap girls because their skins are tender and get black
+and blue very easily.
+
+Punishments make one very unhappy and rewards very happy, and one would
+think when one is happy one would behave the best. We were acquainted
+with a girl who gave herself rewards every day for a week, and it seemed
+to make her as lovely a character as one could wish; but perhaps if one
+went on for years giving rewards to onesself one would become selfish.
+One cannot tell, one can only fear.
+
+If a dog kills a sheep we should whip him straight away, and on the very
+spot where he can see the sheep, or he will not know what we mean, and
+may forget and kill another. The same is true of the human race. We must
+be firm and patient in punishing, no matter how much we love the one who
+has done wrong, and how hungry she is. It does no good to whip a person
+with one hand and offer her a pickled beet with the other. This confuses
+her mind, and she may grow up not knowing right from wrong. (The
+striking example of the pickled beet was removed from the essay by the
+refined but ruthless Miss Dearborn, who strove patiently, but vainly, to
+keep such vulgar images out of her pupils' literary efforts.)
+
+We now respectfully approach the Holy Bible and the people in the Bible
+were punished the whole time, and that would seem to make it right.
+Everybody says Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth; but we think ourself,
+that the Lord is a better punisher than we are, and knows better how and
+when to do it having attended to it ever since the year B.C. while
+the human race could not know about it till 1492 A.D., which is when
+Columbus discovered America.
+
+We do not believe we can find out all about this truly great and
+national subject till we get to heaven, where the human race, strapped
+and unstrapped, if any, can meet together and laying down their harps
+discuss how they got there.
+
+And we would gently advise boys to be more quiet and genteel in conduct
+and try rewards to see how they would work. Rewards are not all like
+the little rosebud merit cards we receive on Fridays, and which boys
+sometimes tear up and fling scornfully to the breeze when they get
+outside, but girls preserve carefully in an envelope.
+
+Some rewards are great and glorious, for boys can get to be governor or
+school trustee or road commissioner or president, while girls can only
+be wife and mother. But all of us can have the ornament of a meek and
+lowly spirit, especially girls, who have more use for it than boys.
+
+R.R.R.
+
+* * * * *
+
+
+STORIES AND PEOPLE
+
+October, 187--
+
+There are people in books and people in Riverboro, and they are not the
+same kind. They never talk of chargers and palfreys in the village, nor
+say How oft and Methinks, and if a Scotchman out of Rob Roy should come
+to Riverboro and want to marry one of us girls we could not understand
+him unless he made motions; though Huldah Meserve says if a nobleman of
+high degree should ask her to be his,--one of vast estates with serfs at
+his bidding,--she would be able to guess his meaning in any language.
+
+Uncle Jerry Cobb thinks that Riverboro people would not make a story,
+but I know that some of them would.
+
+Jack-o'-lantern, though only a baby, was just like a real story if
+anybody had written a piece about him: How his mother was dead and his
+father ran away and Emma Jane and I got Aunt Sarah Cobb to keep him so
+Mr. Perkins wouldn't take him to the poor farm; and about our lovely
+times with him that summer, and our dreadful loss when his father
+remembered him in the fall and came to take him away; and how Aunt Sarah
+carried the trundle bed up attic again and Emma Jane and I heard her
+crying and stole away.
+
+Mrs. Peter Meserve says Grandpa Sawyer was a wonderful hand at stories
+before his spirit was broken by grandmother. She says he was the life
+of the store and tavern when he was a young man, though generally sober,
+and she thinks I take after him, because I like compositions better than
+all the other lessons; but mother says I take after father, who always
+could say everything nicely whether he had anything to say or not; so
+methinks I should be grateful to both of them. They are what is called
+ancestors and much depends upon whether you have them or not. The
+Simpsons have not any at all. Aunt Miranda says the reason everybody
+is so prosperous around here is because their ancestors were all first
+settlers and raised on burnt ground. This should make us very proud.
+
+Methinks and methought are splendid words for compositions. Miss
+Dearborn likes them very much, but Alice and I never bring them in to
+suit her. Methought means the same as I thought, but sounds better.
+Example: If you are telling a dream you had about your aged aunt:
+
+     Methought I heard her say
+     My child you have so useful been
+     You need not sew today.
+
+This is a good example one way, but too unlikely, woe is me!
+
+This afternoon I was walking over to the store to buy molasses, and as
+I came off the bridge and turned up the hill, I saw lots and lots of
+heelprints in the side of the road, heelprints with little spike holes
+in them.
+
+"Oh! The river drivers have come from up country," I thought, "and
+they'll be breaking the jam at our falls tomorrow." I looked everywhere
+about and not a man did I see, but still I knew I was not mistaken for
+the heelprints could not lie. All the way over and back I thought about
+it, though unfortunately forgetting the molasses, and Alice Robinson
+not being able to come out, I took playtime to write a story. It is
+the first grown-up one I ever did, and is intended to be like Cora the
+Doctor's Wife, not like a school composition. It is written for Mr. Adam
+Ladd, and people like him who live in Boston, and is the printed kind
+you get money for, to pay off a mortgage.
+
+* * * * *
+
+LANCELOT OR THE PARTED LOVERS
+
+A beautiful village maiden was betrothed to a stallwart river driver,
+but they had high and bitter words and parted, he to weep into the
+crystal stream as he drove his logs, and she to sigh and moan as she
+went about her round of household tasks.
+
+At eventide the maiden was wont to lean over the bridge and her tears
+also fell into the foaming stream; so, though the two unhappy lovers did
+not know it, the river was their friend, the only one to whom they told
+their secrets and wept into.
+
+The months crept on and it was the next July when the maiden was passing
+over the bridge and up the hill. Suddenly she spied footprints on the
+sands of time.
+
+"The river drivers have come again!" she cried, putting her hand to
+her side for she had a slight heart trouble like Cora and Mrs. Peter
+Meserve, that doesn't kill.
+
+"They HAVE come indeed; ESPECIALLY ONE YOU KNOW," said a voice, and
+out from the alder bushes sprung Lancelot Littlefield, for that was the
+lover's name and it was none other than he. His hair was curly and like
+living gold. His shirt, white of flannel, was new and dry, and of a
+handsome color, and as the maiden looked at him she could think of
+nought but a fairy prince.
+
+"Forgive," she mermered, stretching out her waisted hands.
+
+"Nay, sweet," he replied. "'Tis I should say that to you," and bending
+gracefully on one knee he kissed the hem of her dress. It was a rich
+pink gingham check, ellaborately ornamented with white tape trimming.
+
+Clasping each other to the heart like Cora and the Doctor, they stood
+there for a long while, till they heard the rumble of wheels on the
+bridge and knew they must disentangle.
+
+The wheels came nearer and verily! it was the maiden's father.
+
+"Can I wed with your fair daughter this very moon," asked Lancelot, who
+will not be called his whole name again in this story.
+
+"You may," said the father, "for lo! she has been ready and waiting for
+many months." This he said not noting how he was shaming the maiden,
+whose name was Linda Rowenetta.
+
+Then and there the nuptial day was appointed and when it came, the
+marriage knot was tied upon the river bank where first they met; the
+river bank where they had parted in anger, and where they had again
+scealeld their vows and clasped each other to the heart. And it was very
+low water that summer, and the river always thought it was because no
+tears dropped into it but so many smiles that like sunshine they dried
+it up.
+
+R.R.R.
+
+Finis
+
+* * * * *
+
+
+CAREERS
+
+November, 187--
+
+Long ago when I used to watch Miss Ross painting the old mill at
+Sunnybrook I thought I would be a painter, for Miss Ross went to Paris
+France where she bought my bead purse and pink parasol and I thought
+I would like to see a street with beautiful bright-colored things
+sparkling and hanging in the store windows.
+
+Then when the missionaries from Syria came to stay at the brick house
+Mrs. Burch said that after I had experienced religion I must learn music
+and train my voice and go out to heathen lands and save souls, so I
+thought that would be my career. But we girls tried to have a branch and
+be home missionaries and it did not work well. Emma Jane's father would
+not let her have her birthday party when he found out what she had done
+and Aunt Jane sent me up to Jake Moody's to tell him we did not mean
+to be rude when we asked him to go to meeting more often. He said all
+right, but just let him catch that little dough-faced Perkins young one
+in his yard once more and she'd have reason to remember the call, which
+was just as rude and impolite as our trying to lead him to a purer and a
+better life.
+
+Then Uncle Jerry and Mr. Aladdin and Miss Dearborn liked my
+compositions, and I thought I'd better be a writer, for I must be
+something the minute I'm seventeen, or how shall we ever get the
+mortgage off the farm? But even that hope is taken away from me now,
+for Uncle Jerry made fun of my story Lancelot Or The Parted Lovers and I
+have decided to be a teacher like Miss Dearborn.
+
+The pathetic announcement of a change in the career and life purposes of
+Rebecca was brought about by her reading the grown-up story to Mr. and
+Mrs. Jeremiah Cobb after supper in the orchard. Uncle Jerry was the
+person who had maintained all along that Riverboro people would not make
+a story; and Lancelot or The Parted Lovers was intended to refute that
+assertion at once and forever; an assertion which Rebecca regarded
+(quite truly) as untenable, though why she certainly never could have
+explained. Unfortunately Lancelot was a poor missionary, quite unfitted
+for the high achievements to which he was destined by the youthful
+novelist, and Uncle Jerry, though a stage-driver and no reading man, at
+once perceived the flabbiness and transparency of the Parted Lovers the
+moment they were held up to his inspection.
+
+"You see Riverboro people WILL make a story!" asserted Rebecca
+triumphantly as she finished her reading and folded the paper. "And it
+all came from my noticing the river drivers' tracks by the roadside, and
+wondering about them; and wondering always makes stories; the minister
+says so."
+
+"Ye-es," allowed Uncle Jerry reflectively, tipping his chair back
+against the apple tree and forcing his slow mind to violent and
+instantaneous action, for Rebecca was his pride and joy; a person, in
+his opinion, of superhuman talent, one therefore to be "whittled into
+shape" if occasion demanded.
+
+"It's a Riverboro story, sure enough, because you've got the river
+and the bridge and the hill and the drivers all right there in it; but
+there's something awful queer bout it; the folks don't act Riverboro,
+and don't talk Riverboro, cordin' to my notions. I call it a reg'lar
+book story."
+
+"But," objected Rebecca, "the people in Cinderella didn't act like us,
+and you thought that was a beautiful story when I told it to you."
+
+"I know," replied Uncle Jerry, gaining eloquence in the heat of
+argument. "They didn't act like us, but 't any rate they acted like
+'emselves! Somehow they was all of a piece. Cinderella was a little too
+good, mebbe, and the sisters was most too thunderin' bad to live on the
+face o' the earth, and that fayry old lady that kep' the punkin' coach
+up her sleeve--well, anyhow, you jest believe that punkin' coach, rats,
+mice, and all, when you're hearin' bout it, fore ever you stop to think
+it ain't so.
+
+"I don' know how tis, but the folks in that Cinderella story seem to
+match together somehow; they're all pow'ful onlikely--the prince feller
+with the glass slipper, and the hull bunch; but jest the same you kind
+o' gulp em all down in a lump. But land, Rebecky, nobody'd swaller that
+there village maiden o' your'n, and as for what's-his-name Littlefield,
+that come out o' them bushes, such a feller never 'd a' be'n IN bushes!
+No, Rebecky, you're the smartest little critter there is in this
+township, and you beat your Uncle Jerry all holler when it comes to
+usin' a lead pencil, but I say that ain't no true Riverboro story! Look
+at the way they talk! What was that' bout being BETROTHED'?"
+
+"Betrothed is a genteel word for engaged to be married," explained the
+crushed and chastened author; and it was fortunate the doting old man
+did not notice her eyes in the twilight, or he might have known that
+tears were not far away.
+
+"Well, that's all right, then; I'm as ignorant as Cooper's cow when
+it comes to the dictionary. How about what's-his-name callin' the girl
+'Naysweet'?"
+
+"I thought myself that sounded foolish,:" confessed Rebecca; "but it's
+what the Doctor calls Cora when he tries to persuade her not to quarrel
+with his mother who comes to live with them. I know they don't say it in
+Riverboro or Temperance, but I thought perhaps it was Boston talk."
+
+"Well, it ain't!" asserted Mr. Cobb decisively. "I've druv Boston men
+up in the stage from Milltown many's the time, and none of em ever
+said Naysweet to me, nor nothin'like it. They talked like folks, every
+mother's son of em! If I'd a' had that what's-his-name on the harricane
+deck' o' the stage and he tried any naysweetin' on me, I'd a' pitched
+him into the cornfield, side o' the road. I guess you ain't growed up
+enough for that kind of a story, Rebecky, for your poetry can't be beat
+in York County, that's sure, and your compositions are good enough to
+read out loud in town meetin' any day!"
+
+Rebecca brightened up a little and bade the old couple her usual
+affectionate good night, but she descended the hill in a saddened mood.
+When she reached the bridge the sun, a ball of red fire, was setting
+behind Squire Bean's woods. As she looked, it shone full on the broad,
+still bosom of the river, and for one perfect instant the trees on the
+shores were reflected, all swimming in a sea of pink. Leaning over the
+rail, she watched the light fade from crimson to carmine, from carmine
+to rose, from rose to amber, and from amber to gray. Then withdrawing
+Lancelot or the Parted Lovers from her apron pocket, she tore the pages
+into bits and dropped them into the water below with a sigh.
+
+"Uncle Jerry never said a word about the ending!" she thought; "and that
+was so nice!"
+
+And she was right; but while Uncle Jerry was an illuminating critic when
+it came to the actions and language of his Riverboro neighbors, he had
+no power to direct the young mariner when she "followed the gleam," and
+used her imagination.
+
+OUR SECRET SOCIETY
+
+November, 187--
+
+Our Secret society has just had a splendid picnic in Candace Milliken's
+barn.
+
+Our name is the B.O.S.S., and not a single boy in the village has been
+able to guess it. It means Braid Over Shoulder Society, and that is the
+sign. All the members wear one of their braids over the right shoulder
+in front; the president's tied with red ribbon (I am the president) and
+all the rest tied with blue.
+
+To attract the attention of another member when in company or at a
+public place we take the braid between the thumb and little finger and
+stand carelessly on one leg. This is the Secret Signal and the password
+is Sobb (B.O.S.S. spelled backwards) which was my idea and is thought
+rather uncommon.
+
+One of the rules of the B.O.S.S. is that any member may be required to
+tell her besetting sin at any meeting, if asked to do so by a majority
+of the members.
+
+This was Candace Milliken's idea and much opposed by everybody, but when
+it came to a vote so many of the girls were afraid of offending Candace
+that they agreed because there was nobody else's father and mother
+who would let us picnic in their barn and use their plow, harrow,
+grindstone, sleigh, carryall, pung, sled, and wheelbarrow, which we did
+and injured hardly anything.
+
+They asked me to tell my besetting sin at the very first meeting, and it
+nearly killed me to do it because it is such a common greedy one. It is
+that I can't bear to call the other girls when I have found a thick spot
+when we are out berrying in the summer time.
+
+After I confessed, which made me dreadfully ashamed, every one of the
+girls seemed surprised and said they had never noticed that one but had
+each thought of something very different that I would be sure to think
+was my besetting sin. Then Emma Jane said that rather than tell hers she
+would resign from the Society and miss the picnic. So it made so
+much trouble that Candace gave up. We struck out the rule from the
+constitution and I had told my sin for nothing.
+
+The reason we named ourselves the B.O.S.S. is that Minnie Smellie has
+had her head shaved after scarlet fever and has no braid, so she can't
+be a member.
+
+I don't want her for a member but I can't be happy thinking she will
+feel slighted, and it takes away half the pleasure of belonging to the
+Society myself and being president.
+
+That, I think, is the principal trouble about doing mean and unkind
+things; that you can't do wrong and feel right, or be bad and feel good.
+If you only could you could do anything that came into your mind yet
+always be happy.
+
+Minnie Smellie spoils everything she comes into but I suppose we
+other girls must either have our hair shaved and call ourselves The
+Baldheadians or let her be some kind of a special officer in the
+B.O.S.S.
+
+She might be the B.I.T.U.D. member (Braid in the Upper Drawer), for
+there is where Mrs. Smellie keeps it now that it is cut off.
+
+WINTER THOUGHTS
+
+March, 187--
+
+It is not such a cold day for March and I am up in the barn chamber with
+my coat and hood on and Aunt Jane's waterproof and my mittens.
+
+After I do three pages I am going to hide away this book in the haymow
+till spring.
+
+Perhaps they get made into icicles on the way but I do not seem to have
+any thoughts in the winter time. The barn chamber is full of thoughts in
+warm weather. The sky gives them to me, and the trees and flowers, and
+the birds, and the river; but now it is always gray and nipping, the
+branches are bare and the river is frozen.
+
+It is too cold to write in my bedroom but while we still kept an open
+fire I had a few thoughts, but now there is an air-tight stove in the
+dining room where we sit, and we seem so close together, Aunt Miranda,
+Aunt Jane and I that I don't like to write in my book for fear they will
+ask me to read out loud my secret thoughts.
+
+I have just read over the first part of my Thought Book and I have
+outgrown it all, just exactly as I have outgrown my last year's drab
+cashmere.
+
+It is very queer how anybody can change so fast in a few months, but I
+remember that Emma Jane's cat had kittens the day my book was bought at
+Watson's store. Mrs. Perkins kept the prettiest white one, Abijah Flagg
+drowning all the others.
+
+It seems strange to me that cats will go on having kittens when they
+know what becomes of them! We were very sad about it, but Mrs. Perkins
+said it was the way of the world and how things had to be.
+
+I cannot help being glad that they do not do the same with children, or
+John and Jenny Mira Mark and me would all have had stones tied to our
+necks and been dropped into the deepest part of Sunny Brook, for Hannah
+and Fanny are the only truly handsome ones in the family.
+
+Mrs. Perkins says I dress up well, but never being dressed up it does
+not matter much. At least they didn't wait to dress up the kittens to
+see how they would improve, before drowning them, but decided right
+away.
+
+Emma Jane's kitten that was born the same day this book was is now quite
+an old cat who knows the way of the world herself, and how things have
+to be, for she has had one batch of kittens drowned already.
+
+So perhaps it is not strange that my Thought Book seems so babyish and
+foolish to me when I think of all I have gone through and the millions
+of things I have learned, and how much better I spell than I did ten
+months ago.
+
+My fingers are cold through the mittens, so good-bye dear Thought Book,
+friend of my childhood, now so far far behind me!
+
+I will hide you in the haymow where you'll be warm and cosy all the long
+winter and where nobody can find you again in the summer time but your
+affectionate author,
+
+Rebecca Rowena Randall.
+
+
+
+
+Fourth Chronicle. A TRAGEDY IN MILLINERY
+
+
+I
+
+Emma Jane Perkins's new winter dress was a blue and green Scotch plaid
+poplin, trimmed with narrow green velvet-ribbon and steel nail-heads.
+She had a gray jacket of thick furry cloth with large steel buttons
+up the front, a pair of green kid gloves, and a gray felt hat with an
+encircling band of bright green feathers. The band began in front with
+a bird's head and ended behind with a bird's tail, and angels could have
+desired no more beautiful toilette. That was her opinion, and it was
+shared to the full by Rebecca.
+
+But Emma Jane, as Rebecca had once described her to Mr. Adam Ladd, was
+a rich blacksmith's daughter, and she, Rebecca, was a little half-orphan
+from a mortgaged farm "up Temperance way," dependent upon her spinster
+aunts for board, clothes, and schooling. Scotch plaid poplins were
+manifestly not for her, but dark-colored woolen stuffs were, and
+mittens, and last winter's coats and furs.
+
+And how about hats? Was there hope in store for her there? she wondered,
+as she walked home from the Perkins house, full of admiration for Emma
+Jane's winter outfit, and loyally trying to keep that admiration free
+from wicked envy. Her red-winged black hat was her second best, and
+although it was shabby she still liked it, but it would never do for
+church, even in Aunt Miranda's strange and never-to-be-comprehended
+views of suitable raiment.
+
+There was a brown felt turban in existence, if one could call it
+existence when it had been rained on, snowed on, and hailed on for two
+seasons; but the trimmings had at any rate perished quite off the face
+of the earth, that was one comfort!
+
+Emma Jane had said, rather indiscreetly, that at the village milliner's
+at Milliken's Mills there was a perfectly elegant pink breast to be had,
+a breast that began in a perfectly elegant solferino and terminated in a
+perfectly elegant magenta; two colors much in vogue at that time. If
+the old brown hat was to be her portion yet another winter, would Aunt
+Miranda conceal its deficiencies from a carping world beneath the shaded
+solferino breast? WOULD she, that was the question?
+
+Filled with these perplexing thoughts, Rebecca entered the brick house,
+hung up her hood in the entry, and went into the dining-room.
+
+Miss Jane was not there, but Aunt Miranda sat by the window with her lap
+full of sewing things, and a chair piled with pasteboard boxes by her
+side. In one hand was the ancient, battered, brown felt turban, and in
+the other were the orange and black porcupine 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 hateful porcupine 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 breath freely 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 the plume of Henry
+of Navarre.
+
+Rebecca was resigned, if not greatly comforted, but she had grace enough
+to conceal her feelings, now that she knew economy was at the root
+of some of her aunt's decrees in matters of dress; and she managed to
+forget the solferino breast, save in sleep, where a vision of it had a
+way of appearing to her, dangling from the ceiling, and dazzling her
+so with its rich color that she used to hope the milliner would sell it
+that she might never be tempted with it when she passed the shop window.
+
+One day, not long afterward, Miss Miranda borrowed Mr. Perkins's horse
+and wagon and took Rebecca with her on a drive to Union, to see about
+some sausage meat and head cheese. She intended to call on Mrs. Cobb,
+order a load of pine wood from Mr. Strout on the way, and leave some
+rags for a rug with old Mrs. Pease, so that the journey could be made
+as profitable as possible, consistent with the loss of time and the wear
+and tear on her second-best black dress.
+
+The red-winged black hat was forcibly removed from Rebecca's head just
+before starting, and the nightmare turban substituted.
+
+"You might as well begin to wear it first as last," remarked Miranda,
+while Jane stood in the side door and sympathized secretly with Rebecca.
+
+"I will!" said Rebecca, ramming the stiff turban down on her head with a
+vindictive grimace, and snapping the elastic under her long braids; "but
+it makes me think of what Mr. Robinson said when the minister told him
+his mother-in-law would ride in the same buggy with him at his wife's
+funeral."
+
+"I can't see how any speech of Mr. Robinson's, made years an' years ago,
+can have anything to do with wearin' your turban down to Union," said
+Miranda, settling the lap robe over her knees.
+
+"Well, it can; because he said: Have it that way, then, but it'll spile
+the hull blamed trip for me!'"
+
+Jane closed the door suddenly, partly because she experienced a desire
+to smile (a desire she had not felt for years before Rebecca came to
+the brick house to live), and partly because she had no wish to overhear
+what her sister would say when she took in the full significance of
+Rebecca's anecdote, which was a favorite one with Mr. Perkins.
+
+It was a cold blustering day with a high wind that promised to bring an
+early fall of snow. The trees were stripped bare of leaves, the
+ground was hard, and the wagon wheels rattled noisily over the
+thank-you-ma'ams.
+
+"I'm glad I wore my Paisley shawl over my cloak," said Miranda. "Be you
+warm enough, Rebecca? Tie that white rigolette tighter round your neck.
+The wind fairly blows through my bones. I most wish t we'd waited till
+a pleasanter day, for this Union road is all up hill or down, and we
+shan't get over the ground fast, it's so rough. Don't forget, when you
+go into Scott's, to say I want all the trimmin's when they send me the
+pork, for mebbe I can try out a little mite o' lard. The last load o'
+pine's gone turrible quick; I must see if "Bijah Flagg can't get us some
+cut-rounds at the mills, when he hauls for Squire Bean next time. Keep
+your mind on your drivin', Rebecca, and don't look at the trees and the
+sky so much. It's the same sky and same trees that have been here right
+along. Go awful slow down this hill and walk the hoss over Cook's Brook
+bridge, for I always suspicion it's goin' to break down under me, an' I
+shouldn't want to be dropped into that fast runnin' water this cold day.
+It'll be froze stiff by this time next week. Hadn't you better get out
+and lead"--
+
+The rest of the sentence was very possibly not vital, but at any rate
+it was never completed, for in the middle of the bridge a fierce gale
+of wind took Miss Miranda's Paisley shawl and blew it over her head. The
+long heavy ends whirled in opposite directions and wrapped themselves
+tightly about her wavering bonnet. Rebecca had the whip and the reins,
+and in trying to rescue her struggling aunt could not steady her own
+hat, which was suddenly torn from her head and tossed against the bridge
+rail, where it trembled and flapped for an instant.
+
+"My hat! Oh! Aunt Miranda, my hateful hat!" cried Rebecca, never
+remembering at the instant how often she had prayed that the "fretful
+porcupine" might some time vanish in this violent manner, since it
+refused to die a natural death.
+
+She had already stopped the horse, so, giving her aunt's shawl one last
+desperate twitch, she slipped out between the wagon wheels, and darted
+in the direction of the hated object, the loss of which had dignified it
+with a temporary value and importance.
+
+The stiff brown turban rose in the air, then dropped and flew along the
+bridge; Rebecca pursued; it danced along and stuck between two of the
+railings; Rebecca flew after it, her long braids floating in the wind.
+
+"Come back! Come back! Don't leave me alone with the team. I won't have
+it! Come back, and leave your hat!"
+
+Miranda had at length extricated herself from the submerging shawl, but
+she was so blinded by the wind, and so confused that she did not measure
+the financial loss involved in her commands.
+
+Rebecca heard, but her spirit being in arms, she made one more mad
+scramble for the vagrant hat, which now seemed possessed with an evil
+spirit, for it flew back and forth, and bounded here and there, like
+a living thing, finally distinguishing itself by blowing between the
+horse's front and hind legs, Rebecca trying to circumvent it by going
+around the wagon, and meeting it on the other side.
+
+It was no use; as she darted from behind the wheels the wind gave the
+hat an extra whirl, and scurrying in the opposite direction it soared
+above the bridge rail and disappeared into the rapid water below.
+
+"Get in again!" cried Miranda, holding on her bonnet. "You done your
+best and it can't be helped, I only wish't I'd let you wear your black
+hat as you wanted to; and I wish't we'd never come such a day! The shawl
+has broke the stems of the velvet geraniums in my bonnet, and the wind
+has blowed away my shawl pin and my back comb. I'd like to give up and
+turn right back this minute, but I don't like to borrer Perkins's hoss
+again this month. When we get up in the woods you can smooth your hair
+down and tie the rigolette over your head and settle what's left of my
+bonnet; it'll be an expensive errant, this will!"
+
+ * * * * *
+
+II
+
+It was not till next morning that Rebecca's heart really began its song
+of thanksgiving. Her Aunt Miranda announced at breakfast, that as Mrs.
+Perkins was going to Milliken's Mills, Rebecca might go too, and buy a
+serviceable hat.
+
+"You mustn't pay over two dollars and a half, and you mustn't get the
+pink bird without Mrs. Perkins says, and the milliner says, that it
+won't fade nor moult. Don't buy a light-colored felt because you'll get
+sick of it in two or three years same as you did the brown one. I always
+liked the shape of the brown one, and you'll never get another trimmin'
+that'll wear like them quills."
+
+"I hope not!" thought Rebecca.
+
+"If you had put your elastic under your chin, same as you used to, and
+not worn it behind because you think it's more grown-up an' fash'onable,
+the wind never'd a' took the hat off your head, and you wouldn't a' lost
+it; but the mischief's done and you can go right over to Mis' Perkins
+now, so you won't miss her nor keep her waitin'. The two dollars and a
+half is in an envelope side o' the clock."
+
+Rebecca swallowed the last spoonful of picked-up codfish on her plate,
+wiped her lips, and rose from her chair happier than the seraphs in
+Paradise.
+
+The porcupine quills had disappeared from her life, and without any
+fault or violence on her part. She was wholly innocent and virtuous, but
+nevertheless she was going to have a new hat with the solferino breast,
+should the adored object prove, under rigorous examination, to be
+practically indestructible.
+
+"Whene'er I take my walks abroad, How many hats I'll see; But if they're
+trimmed with hedgehog quills They'll not belong to me!"
+
+So she improvised, secretly and ecstatically, as she went towards the
+side entry.
+
+"There's 'Bijah Flagg drivin' in," said Miss Miranda, going to the
+window. "Step out and see what he's got, Jane; some passel from the
+Squire, I guess. It's a paper bag and it may be a punkin, though he
+wouldn't wrop up a punkin, come to think of it! Shet the dinin' room
+door, Jane; it's turrible drafty. Make haste, for the Squire's hoss
+never stan's still a minute cept when he's goin'!"
+
+Abijah Flagg alighted and approached the side door with a grin.
+
+"Guess what I've got for ye, Rebecky?"
+
+No throb of prophetic soul warned Rebecca of her approaching doom.
+
+"Nodhead apples?" she sparkled, looking as bright and rosy and
+satin-skinned as an apple herself.
+
+"No; guess again."
+
+"A flowering geranium?"
+
+"Guess again!"
+
+"Nuts? Oh! I can't, Bijah; I'm just going to Milliken's Mills on an
+errand, and I'm afraid of missing Mrs. Perkins. Show me quick! Is it
+really for me, or for Aunt Miranda?"
+
+"Reely for you, I guess!" and he opened the large brown paper bag and
+drew from it the remains of a water-soaked hat!
+
+They WERE remains, but there was no doubt of their nature and substance.
+They had clearly been a hat in the past, and one could even suppose
+that, when resuscitated, they might again assume their original form in
+some near and happy future.
+
+Miss Miranda, full of curiosity, joined the group in the side entry at
+this dramatic moment.
+
+"Well, I never!" she exclaimed. "Where, and how under the canopy, did
+you ever?"
+
+"I was working on the dam at Union Falls yesterday," chuckled Abijah,
+with a pleased glance at each of the trio in turn, "an' I seen this
+little bunnit skippin' over the water jest as Becky does over the road.
+It's shaped kind o' like a boat, an' gorry, ef it wa'nt sailin' jest
+like a boat! Where hev I seen that kind of a bristlin' plume?' thinks
+I."
+
+("Where indeed!" thought Rebecca stormily.)
+
+"Then it come to me that I'd drove that plume to school and drove it to
+meetin' and drove it to the Fair an'drove it most everywheres on Becky.
+So I reached out a pole an' ketched it fore it got in amongst the logs
+an' come to any damage, an' here it is! The hat's passed in its checks,
+I guess; looks kind as if a wet elephant had stepped on it; but the
+plume's bout's good as new! I reely fetched the hat beck for the sake o'
+the plume."
+
+"It was real good of you, 'Bijah, an' we're all of us obliged to you,"
+said Miranda, as she poised the hat on one hand and turned it slowly
+with the other.
+
+"Well, I do say," she exclaimed, "and I guess I've said it before, that
+of all the wearing' plumes that ever I see, that one's the wearin'est!
+Seems though it just wouldn't give up. Look at the way it's held Mis'
+Cobb's dye; it's about as brown's when it went int' the water."
+
+"Dyed, but not a mite dead," grinned Abijah, who was somewhat celebrated
+for his puns.
+
+"And I declare," Miranda continued, "when you think o' the fuss they
+make about ostriches, killin' em off by hundreds for the sake o' their
+feathers that'll string out and spoil in one hard rainstorm,--an' all
+the time lettin' useful porcupines run round with their quills on, why
+I can't hardly understand it, without milliners have found out jest
+how good they do last, an' so they won't use em for trimmin'. 'Bijah's
+right; the hat ain't no more use, Rebecca, but you can buy you another
+this mornin'--any color or shape you fancy--an' have Miss Morton sew
+these brown quills on to it with some kind of a buckle or a bow, jest
+to hide the roots. Then you'll be fixed for another season, thanks to
+'Bijah."
+
+Uncle Jerry and Aunt Sarah Cobb were made acquainted before very long
+with the part that destiny, or Abijah Flagg, had played in Rebecca's
+affairs, for, accompanied by the teacher, she walked to the old stage
+driver's that same afternoon. Taking off her new hat with the venerable
+trimming, she laid it somewhat ostentatiously upside down on the kitchen
+table and left the room, dimpling a little more than usual.
+
+Uncle Jerry rose from his seat, and, crossing the room, looked curiously
+into the hat and found that a circular paper lining was neatly pinned
+in the crown, and that it bore these lines, which were read aloud with
+great effect by Miss Dearborn, and with her approval were copied in the
+Thought Book for the benefit of posterity:
+
+"It was the bristling porcupine, As he stood on his native heath, He
+said, 'I'll pluck me some immortelles And make me up a wreath. For tho'
+I may not live myself To more than a hundred and ten, My quills will
+last till crack of doom, And maybe after then. They can be colored blue
+or green Or orange, brown, or red, But often as they may be dyed They
+never will be dead.' And so the bristling porcupine As he stood on his
+native heath, Said, I think I'll pluck me some immmortelles And make me
+up a wreath.'
+
+"R.R.R."
+
+
+
+
+Fifth Chronicle. THE SAVING OF THE COLORS
+
+
+I
+
+Even when Rebecca had left school, having attained the great age of
+seventeen and therefore able to look back over a past incredibly long
+and full, she still reckoned time not by years, but by certain important
+occurrences.
+
+There was the year her father died; the year she left Sunnybrook Farm to
+come to her aunts in Riverboro; the year Sister Hannah became engaged;
+the year little Mira died; the year Abijah Flagg ceased to be Squire
+Bean's chore-boy, and astounded Riverboro by departing for Limerick
+Academy in search of an education; and finally the year of her
+graduation, which, to the mind of seventeen, seems rather the
+culmination than the beginning of existence.
+
+Between these epoch-making events certain other happenings stood out in
+bold relief against the gray of dull daily life.
+
+There was the day she first met her friend of friends, "Mr. Aladdin,"
+and the later, even more radiant one when he gave her the coral
+necklace. There was the day the Simpson family moved away from Riverboro
+under a cloud, and she kissed Clara Belle fervently at the cross-roads,
+telling her that she would always be faithful. There was the visit of
+the Syrian missionaries to the brick house. That was a bright, romantic
+memory, as strange and brilliant as the wonderful little birds' wings
+and breasts that the strangers brought from the Far East. She remembered
+the moment they asked her to choose some for herself, and the rapture
+with which she stroked the beautiful things as they lay on the black
+haircloth sofa. Then there was the coming of the new minister, for
+though many were tried only one was chosen; and finally there was the
+flag-raising, a festivity that thrilled Riverboro and Edgewood society
+from centre to circumference, a festivity that took place just before
+she entered the Female Seminary at Wareham and said good-by to kind Miss
+Dearborn and the village school.
+
+There must have been other flag-raisings in history,--even the persons
+most interested in this particular one would grudgingly have allowed
+that much,--but it would have seemed to them improbable that any such
+flag-raising as theirs, either in magnitude of conception or brilliancy
+of actual performance, could twice glorify the same century. Of some
+pageants it is tacitly admitted that there can be no duplicates, and the
+flag-raising at Riverboro Centre was one of these; so that it is small
+wonder if Rebecca chose it as one of the important dates in her personal
+almanac.
+
+The new minister's wife was the being, under Providence, who had
+conceived the germinal idea of the flag.
+
+At this time the parish had almost settled down to the trembling belief
+that they were united on a pastor. In the earlier time a minister was
+chosen for life, and if he had faults, which was a probably enough
+contingency, and if his congregation had any, which is within the bounds
+of possibility, each bore with the other (not quite without friction),
+as old-fashioned husbands and wives once did, before the easy way out of
+the difficulty was discovered, or at least before it was popularized.
+
+The faithful old parson had died after thirty years' preaching,
+and perhaps the newer methods had begun to creep in, for it seemed
+impossible to suit the two communities most interested in the choice.
+
+The Rev. Mr. Davis, for example, was a spirited preacher, but persisted
+in keeping two horses in the parsonage stable, and in exchanging
+them whenever he could get faster ones. As a parochial visitor he was
+incomparable, dashing from house to house with such speed that he could
+cover the parish in a single afternoon. This sporting tendency, which
+would never have been remarked in a British parson, was frowned upon in
+a New England village, and Deacon Milliken told Mr. Davis, when giving
+him what he alluded to as his "walking papers," that they didn't want
+the Edgewood church run by hoss power!
+
+The next candidate pleased Edgewood, where morning preaching was held,
+but the other parish, which had afternoon service, declined to accept
+him because he wore a wig--an ill-matched, crookedly applied wig.
+
+Number three was eloquent but given to gesticulation, and Mrs. Jere
+Burbank, the president of the Dorcas Society, who sat in a front pew,
+said she couldn't bear to see a preacher scramble round the pulpit hot
+Sundays.
+
+Number four, a genial, handsome man, gifted in prayer, was found to be
+a Democrat. The congregation was overwhelmingly Republican in its
+politics, and perceived something ludicrous, if not positively
+blasphemous, in a Democrat preaching the gospel. ("Ananias and
+Beelzebub'll be candidatin' here, first thing we know!" exclaimed the
+outraged Republican nominee for district attorney.)
+
+Number five had a feeble-minded child, which the hiring committee
+prophesied, would always be standing in the parsonage front yard, making
+talk for the other denominations.
+
+Number six was the Rev. Judson Baxter, the present incumbent; and he
+was voted to be as near perfection as a minister can be in this finite
+world. His young wife had a small income of her own, a distinct and
+unusual advantage, and the subscription committee hoped that they might
+not be eternally driving over the country to get somebody's fifty cents
+that had been over-due for eight months, but might take their onerous
+duties a little more easily.
+
+"It does seem as if our ministers were the poorest lot!" complained Mrs.
+Robinson. "If their salary is two months behindhand they begin to be
+nervous! Seems as though they might lay up a little before they come
+here, and not live from hand to mouth so! The Baxters seem quite
+different, and I only hope they won't get wasteful and run into debt.
+They say she keeps the parlor blinds open bout half the time, and the
+room is lit up so often evenin's that the neighbors think her and Mr.
+Baxter must set in there. It don't seem hardly as if it could be so, but
+Mrs. Buzzell says tis, and she says we might as well say good-by to the
+parlor carpet, which is church property, for the Baxters are living all
+over it!"
+
+This criticism was the only discordant note in the chorus of praise, and
+the people gradually grew accustomed to the open blinds and the overused
+parlor carpet, which was just completing its twenty-fifth year of honest
+service.
+
+Mrs. Baxter communicated her patriotic idea of a new flag to the Dorcas
+Society, proposing that the women should cut and make it themselves.
+
+"It may not be quite as good as those manufactured in the large cities,"
+she said, "but we shall be proud to see our home-made flag flying in the
+breeze, and it will mean all the more to the young voters growing up, to
+remember that their mothers made it with their own hands."
+
+"How would it do to let some of the girls help?" modestly asked Miss
+Dearborn, the Riverboro teacher. "We might choose the best sewers and
+let them put in at least a few stitches, so that they can feel they have
+a share in it."
+
+"Just the thing!" exclaimed Mrs. Baxter. "We can cut the stripes and sew
+them together, and after we have basted on the white stars the girls can
+apply them to the blue ground. We must have it ready for the campaign
+rally, and we couldn't christen it at a better time than in this
+presidential year."
+
+II
+
+In this way the great enterprise was started, and day by day the
+preparations went forward in the two villages.
+
+The boys, as future voters and fighters, demanded an active share in
+the proceedings, and were organized by Squire Bean into a fife and drum
+corps, so that by day and night martial but most inharmonious music woke
+the echoes, and deafened mothers felt their patriotism oozing out at the
+soles of their shoes.
+
+Dick Carter was made captain, for his grandfather had a gold medal
+given him by Queen Victoria for rescuing three hundred and twenty-six
+passengers from a sinking British vessel. Riverboro thought it high time
+to pay some graceful tribute to Great Britain in return for her handsome
+conduct to Captain Nahum Carter, and human imagination could contrive
+nothing more impressive than a vicarious share in the flag raising.
+
+Living Perkins tried to be happy in the ranks, for he was offered no
+official position, principally, Mrs. Smellie observed, because "his
+father's war record wa'nt clean." "Oh, yes! Jim Perkins went to the
+war," she continued. "He hid out behind the hencoop when they was
+draftin', but they found him and took him along. He got into one battle,
+too, somehow or nother, but he run away from it. He was allers cautious,
+Jim was; if he ever see trouble of any kind comin' towards him, he was
+out o' sight fore it got a chance to light. He said eight dollars a
+month, without bounty, wouldn't pay HIM to stop bullets for. He wouldn't
+fight a skeeter, Jim wouldn't, but land! we ain't to war all the time,
+and he's a good neighbor and a good blacksmith."
+
+Miss Dearborn was to be Columbia and the older girls of the two schools
+were to be the States. Such trade in muslins and red, white, and blue
+ribbons had never been known since "Watson kep' store," and the number
+of brief white petticoats hanging out to bleach would have caused the
+passing stranger to imagine Riverboro a continual dancing school.
+
+Juvenile virtue, both male and female, reached an almost impossible
+height, for parents had only to lift a finger and say, "you shan't go
+to the flag raising!" and the refractory spirit at once armed itself for
+new struggles toward the perfect life.
+
+Mr. Jeremiah Cobb had consented to impersonate Uncle Sam, and was to
+drive Columbia and the States to the "raising" on the top of his own
+stage. Meantime the boys were drilling, the ladies were cutting and
+basting and stitching, and the girls were sewing on stars; for the
+starry part of the spangled banner was to remain with each of them in
+turn until she had performed her share of the work.
+
+It was felt by one and all a fine and splendid service indeed to help
+in the making of the flag, and if Rebecca was proud to be of the chosen
+ones, so was her Aunt Jane Sawyer, who had taught her all her delicate
+stitches.
+
+On a long-looked-for afternoon in August the minister's wife drove up
+to the brick house door, and handed out the great piece of bunting to
+Rebecca, who received it in her arms with as much solemnity as if it had
+been a child awaiting baptismal rites.
+
+"I'm so glad!" she sighed happily. "I thought it would never come my
+turn!"
+
+"You should have had it a week ago, but Huldah Meserve upset the ink
+bottle over her star, and we had to baste on another one. You are the
+last, though, and then we shall sew the stars and stripes together, and
+Seth Strout will get the top ready for hanging. Just think, it won't
+be many days before you children will be pulling the rope with all your
+strength, the band will be playing, the men will be cheering, and the
+new flag will go higher and higher, till the red, white, and blue shows
+against the sky!"
+
+Rebecca's eyes fairly blazed. "Shall I fell on' my star, or buttonhole
+it?" she asked.
+
+"Look at all the others and make the most beautiful stitches you can,
+that's all. It is your star, you know, and you can even imagine it is
+your state, and try and have it the best of all. If everybody else
+is trying to do the same thing with her state, that will make a great
+country, won't it?"
+
+Rebecca's eyes spoke glad confirmation of the idea. "My star, my state!"
+she repeated joyously. "Oh, Mrs. Baxter, I'll make such fine stitches
+you'll think the white grew out of the blue!"
+
+The new minister's wife looked pleased to see her spark kindle a flame
+in the young heart. "You can sew so much of yourself into your star,"
+she went on in the glad voice that made her so winsome, "that when you
+are an old lady you can put on your specs and find it among all the
+others. Good-by! Come up to the parsonage Saturday afternoon; Mr. Baxter
+wants to see you."
+
+"Judson, help that dear little genius of a Rebecca all you can!" she
+said that night, when they were cosily talking in their parlor and
+living "all over" the parish carpet. "I don't know what she may, or may
+not, come to, some day; I only wish she were ours! If you could have
+seen her clasp the flag tight in her arms and put her cheek against it,
+and watched the tears of feeling start in her eyes when I told her
+that her star was her state! I kept whispering to myself, Covet not thy
+neighbor's child!'"
+
+Daily at four o'clock Rebecca scrubbed her hands almost to the bone,
+brushed her hair, and otherwise prepared herself in body, mind, and
+spirit for the consecrated labor of sewing on her star. All the time
+that her needle cautiously, conscientiously formed the tiny stitches she
+was making rhymes "in her head," her favorite achievement being this:
+
+"Your star, my star, all our stars together, They make the dear old
+banner proud To float in the bright fall weather."
+
+There was much discussion as to which of the girls should impersonate
+the State of Maine, for that was felt to be the highest honor in the
+gift of the committee.
+
+Alice Robinson was the prettiest child in the village, but she was very
+shy and by no means a general favorite.
+
+Minnie Smellie possessed the handsomest dress and a pair of white
+slippers and open-work stockings that nearly carried the day. Still, as
+Miss Delia Weeks well said, she was so stupid that if she should
+suck her thumb in the very middle of the exercises nobody'd be a dite
+surprised!
+
+Huldah Meserve was next voted upon, and the fact that if she were not
+chosen her father might withdraw his subscription to the brass band fund
+was a matter for grave consideration.
+
+"I kind o' hate to have such a giggler for the State of Maine; let her
+be the Goddess of Liberty," proposed Mrs. Burbank, whose patriotism was
+more local than national.
+
+"How would Rebecca Randall do for Maine, and let her speak some of her
+verses?" suggested the new minister's wife, who, could she have had her
+way, would have given all the prominent parts to Rebecca, from Uncle Sam
+down.
+
+So, beauty, fashion, and wealth having been tried and found wanting, the
+committee discussed the claims of talent, and it transpired that to
+the awe-stricken Rebecca fell the chief plum in the pudding. It was a
+tribute to her gifts that there was no jealousy or envy among the other
+girls; they readily conceded her special fitness for the role.
+
+Her life had not been pressed down full to the brim of pleasures, and
+she had a sort of distrust of joy in the bud. Not until she saw it in
+full radiance of bloom did she dare embrace it. She had never read
+any verse but Byron, Felicia Hemans, bits of "Paradise Lost," and the
+selections in the school readers, but she would have agreed heartily
+with the poet who said:
+
+"Not by appointment do we meet delight And joy; they heed not our
+expectancy; But round some corner in the streets of life They on a
+sudden clasp us with a smile."
+
+For many nights before the raising, when she went to her bed she said to
+herself, after she had finished her prayers: "It can't be true that I'm
+chosen for the State of Maine! It just CAN'T be true! Nobody could be
+good ENOUGH, but oh, I'll try to be as good as I can! To be going to
+Wareham Seminary next week and to be the State of Maine too! Oh! I must
+pray HARD to God to keep me meek and humble!"
+
+III
+
+The flag was to be raised on a Tuesday, and on the previous Sunday it
+became known to the children that Clara Belle Simpson was coming back
+from Acreville, coming to live with Mrs. Fogg and take care of the
+baby, called by the neighborhood boys "the Fogg horn," on account of his
+excellent voice production.
+
+Clara Belle was one of Miss Dearborn's original flock, and if she
+were left wholly out of the festivities she would be the only girl of
+suitable age to be thus slighted; it seemed clear to the juvenile mind,
+therefore, that neither she nor her descendants would ever recover from
+such a blow. But, under all the circumstances, would she be allowed to
+join in the procession? Even Rebecca, the optimistic, feared not,
+and the committee confirmed her fears by saying that Abner Simpson's
+daughter certainly could not take any prominent part in the ceremony,
+but they hoped that Mrs. Fogg would allow her to witness it.
+
+When Abner Simpson, urged by the town authorities, took his wife and
+seven children away from Riverboro to Acreville, just over the border in
+the next county, Riverboro went to bed leaving its barn and shed doors
+unfastened, and drew long breaths of gratitude to Providence.
+
+Of most winning disposition and genial manners, Mr. Simpson had not
+that instinctive comprehension of property rights which renders a man a
+valuable citizen.
+
+Squire Bean was his nearest neighbor, and he conceived the novel idea
+of paying Simpson five dollars a year not to steal from him, a method
+occasionally used in the Highlands in the early days.
+
+The bargain was struck, and adhered to religiously for a twelve-month,
+but on the second of January Mr. Simpson announced the verbal contract
+as formally broken.
+
+"I didn't know what I was doin' when I made it, Squire," he urged.
+"In the first place, it's a slur on my reputation and an injury to my
+self-respect. Secondly, it's a nervous strain on me; and thirdly, five
+dollars don't pay me!"
+
+Squire Bean was so struck with the unique and convincing nature of
+these arguments that he could scarcely restrain his admiration, and he
+confessed to himself afterward, that unless Simpson's mental attitude
+could be changed he was perhaps a fitter subject for medical science
+than the state prison.
+
+Abner was a most unusual thief, and conducted his operations with a tact
+and neighborly consideration none too common in the profession. He would
+never steal a man's scythe in haying-time, nor his fur lap-robe in the
+coldest of the winter. The picking of a lock offered no attractions
+to him; "he wa'n't no burglar," he would have scornfully asserted. A
+strange horse and wagon hitched by the roadside was the most flagrant
+of his thefts; but it was the small things--the hatchet or axe on the
+chopping-block, the tin pans sunning at the side door, a stray garment
+bleaching on the grass, a hoe, rake, shovel, or a bag of early potatoes,
+that tempted him most sorely; and these appealed to him not so much for
+their intrinsic value as because they were so excellently adapted to
+swapping. The swapping was really the enjoyable part of the procedure,
+the theft was only a sad but necessary preliminary; for if Abner
+himself had been a man of sufficient property to carry on his business
+operations independently, it is doubtful if he would have helped himself
+so freely to his neighbor's goods.
+
+Riverboro regretted the loss of Mrs. Simpson, who was useful in
+scrubbing, cleaning, and washing, and was thought to exercise some
+influence over her predatory spouse. There was a story of their early
+married life, when they had a farm; a story to the effect that Mrs.
+Simpson always rode on every load of hay that her husband took to
+Milltown, with the view of keeping him sober through the day. After he
+turned out of the country road and approached the metropolis, it was
+said that he used to bury the docile lady in the load. He would then
+drive on to the scales, have the weight of the hay entered in the
+buyer's book, take his horses to the stable for feed and water, and when
+a favorable opportunity offered he would assist the hot and panting Mrs.
+Simpson out of the side or back of the rack, and gallantly brush the
+straw from her person. For this reason it was always asserted that Abner
+Simpson sold his wife every time he went to Milltown, but the story was
+never fully substantiated, and at all events it was the only suspected
+blot on meek Mrs. Simpson's personal reputation.
+
+As for the Simpson children, they were missed chiefly as familiar
+figures by the roadside; but Rebecca honestly loved Clara Belle,
+notwithstanding her Aunt Miranda's opposition to the intimacy. Rebecca's
+"taste for low company" was a source of continual anxiety to her aunt.
+
+"Anything that's human flesh is good enough for her!" Miranda groaned to
+Jane. "She'll ride with the rag-sack-and-bottle peddler just as quick as
+she would with the minister; she always sets beside the St. Vitus' dance
+young one at Sabbath school; and she's forever riggin' and onriggin'
+that dirty Simpson baby! She reminds me of a puppy that'll always go to
+everybody that'll have him!"
+
+It was thought very creditable to Mrs. Fogg that she sent for Clara
+Belle to live with her and go to school part of the year.
+
+"She'll be useful" said Mrs. Fogg, "and she'll be out of her father's
+way, and so keep honest; though she's no awful hombly I've no fears for
+her. A girl with her red hair, freckles, and cross-eyes can't fall into
+no kind of sin, I don't believe."
+
+Mrs. Fogg requested that Clara Belle should be started on her journey
+from Acreville by train and come the rest of the way by stage, and she
+was disturbed to receive word on Sunday that Mr. Simpson had borrowed a
+"good roader" from a new acquaintance, and would himself drive the girl
+from Acreville to Riverboro, a distance of thirty-five miles. That he
+would arrive in their vicinity on the very night before the flag-raising
+was thought by Riverboro to be a public misfortune, and several
+residents hastily determined to deny themselves a sight of the
+festivities and remain watchfully on their own premises.
+
+On Monday afternoon the children were rehearsing their songs at the
+meeting-house. As Rebecca came out on the broad wooden steps she watched
+Mrs. Peter Meserve's buggy out of sight, for in front, wrapped in a
+cotton sheet, lay the previous flag. After a few chattering good-bys
+and weather prophecies with the other girls, she started on her homeward
+walk, dropping in at the parsonage to read her verses to the minister.
+
+He welcomed her gladly as she removed her white cotton gloves (hastily
+slipped on outside the door, for ceremony) and pushed back the funny hat
+with the yellow and black porcupine quills--the hat with which she made
+her first appearance in Riverboro society.
+
+"You've heard the beginning, Mr. Baxter; now will you please tell me if
+you like the last verse?" she asked, taking out her paper. "I've only
+read it to Alice Robinson, and I think perhaps she can never be a poet,
+though she's a splendid writer. Last year when she was twelve she wrote
+a birthday poem to herself, and she made natal' rhyme with Milton,.'
+which, of course, it wouldn't. I remember every verse ended:
+
+     'This is my day so natal
+     And I will follow Milton.'
+
+Another one of hers was written just because she couldn't help it, she
+said. This was it:
+
+     'Let me to the hills away,
+     Give me pen and paper;
+     I'll write until the earth will sway
+     The story of my Maker.'"
+
+The minister could scarcely refrain from smiling, but he controlled
+himself that he might lose none of Rebecca's quaint observations.
+When she was perfectly at ease, unwatched and uncriticised, she was a
+marvelous companion.
+
+"The name of the poem is going to be My Star,'" she continued, "and Mrs.
+Baxter gave me all the ideas, but somehow there's a kind of magicness
+when they get into poetry, don't you think so?" (Rebecca always talked
+to grown people as if she were their age, or, a more subtle and truer
+distinction, as if they were hers.)
+
+"It has often been so remarked, in different words," agreed the
+minister.
+
+"Mrs. Baxter said that each star was a state, and if each state did its
+best we should have a splendid country. Then once she said that we ought
+to be glad the war is over and the States are all at peace together; and
+I thought Columbia must be glad, too, for Miss Dearborn says she's
+the mother of all the States. So I'm going to have it end like this: I
+didn't write it, I just sewed it while I was working on my star:
+
+     For it's your star, my star, all the stars together,
+     That make our country's flag so proud
+     To float in the bright fall weather.
+     Northern stars, Southern stars, stars of the East and West,
+     Side by side they lie at peace
+     On the dear flag's mother-breast."
+
+"'Oh! many are the poets that are sown by nature,'" thought the
+minister, quoting Wordsworth to himself. "And I wonder what becomes of
+them! That's a pretty idea, little Rebecca, and I don't know whether
+you or my wife ought to have the more praise. What made you think of the
+stars lying on the flag's mother-breast'? Where did you get that word?"
+
+"Why" (and the young poet looked rather puzzled), "that's the way it is;
+the flag is the whole country--the mother--and the stars are the states.
+The stars had to lie somewhere: 'LAP' nor 'ARMS' wouldn't sound well
+with West,' so, of course, I said 'BREAST,'" Rebecca answered, with some
+surprise at the question; and the minister put his hand under her chin
+and kissed her softly on the forehead when he said good-by at the door.
+
+IV
+
+Rebecca walked rapidly along in the gathering twilight, thinking of the
+eventful morrow.
+
+As she approached the turning on the left called the old Milltown
+road, she saw a white horse and wagon, driven by a man with a rakish,
+flapping, Panama hat, come rapidly around the turn and disappear over
+the long hills leading down to the falls. There was no mistaking him;
+there never was another Abner Simpson, with his lean height, his bushy
+reddish hair, the gay cock of his hat, and the long piratical, upturned
+mustaches, which the boys used to say were used as hat-racks by the
+Simpson children at night.. The old Milltown road ran past Mrs. Fogg's
+house, so he must have left Clara Belle there, and Rebecca's heart
+glowed to think that her poor little friend need not miss the raising.
+
+She began to run now, fearful of being late for supper, and covered the
+ground to the falls in a brief time. As she crossed the bridge she again
+saw Abner Simpson's team, drawn up at the watering trough.
+
+Coming a little nearer, with the view of inquiring for the family, her
+quick eye caught sight of something unexpected. A gust of wind blew up
+a corner of a linen lap-robe in the back of the wagon, and underneath
+it she distinctly saw the white-sheeted bundle that held the flag; the
+bundle with a tiny, tiny spot of red bunting peeping out at one corner.
+It is true she had eaten, slept, dreamed red, white, and blue for weeks,
+but there was no mistaking the evidence of her senses; the idolized
+flag, longed for, worked for, sewed for, that flag was in the back of
+Abner Simpson's wagon, and if so, what would become of the raising?
+
+Acting on blind impulse, she ran toward the watering-trough, calling out
+in her clear treble: "Mr. Simpson! Oh, Mr. Simpson, will you let me ride
+a piece with you and hear all about Clara Belle? I'm going part way over
+to the Centre on an errand." (So she was; a most important errand,--to
+recover the flag of her country at present in the hands of the foe!)
+
+Mr. Simpson turned round in his seat and cried heartily, "Certain sure I
+will!" for he liked the fair sex, young and old, and Rebecca had always
+been a prime favorite with him. "Climb right in! How's everybody? Glad
+to see ye! The folks talk bout ye from sun-up to sun-down, and Clara
+Belle can't hardly wait for a sight of ye!"
+
+Rebecca scrambled up, trembling and pale with excitement. She did not in
+the least know what was going to happen, but she was sure that the flag,
+when in the enemy's country, must be at least a little safer with the
+State of Maine sitting on top of it!
+
+Mr. Simpson began a long monologue about Acreville, the house he lived
+in, the pond in front of it, Mrs. Simpson's health, and various items of
+news about the children, varied by reports of his personal misfortunes.
+He put no questions, and asked no replies, so this gave the
+inexperienced soldier a few seconds to plan a campaign. There were
+three houses to pass; the Browns' at the corner, the Millikens', and the
+Robinsons' on the brow of the hill. If Mr. Robinson were in the front
+yard she might tell Mr. Simpson she wanted to call there and ask Mr.
+Robinson to hold the horse's head while she got out of the wagon.
+Then she might fly to the back before Mr. Simpson could realize the
+situation, and dragging out the precious bundle, sit on it hard, while
+Mr. Robinson settled the matter of ownership with Mr. Simpson.
+
+This was feasible, but it meant a quarrel between the two men, who held
+an ancient grudge against each other, and Mr. Simpson was a valiant
+fighter as the various sheriffs who had attempted to arrest him could
+cordially testify. It also meant that everybody in the village would
+hear of the incident and poor Clara Belle be branded again as the child
+of a thief.
+
+Another idea danced into her excited brain; such a clever one she could
+hardly believe it hers. She might call Mr. Robinson to the wagon, and
+when he came close to the wheels she might say, "all of a sudden":
+"Please take the flag out of the back of the wagon, Mr. Robinson. We
+have brought it here for you to keep overnight." Mr. Simpson might be
+so surprised that he would give up his prize rather than be suspected of
+stealing.
+
+But as they neared the Robinsons' house there was not a sign of life
+to be seen; so the last plan, ingenious though it was, was perforce
+abandoned.
+
+The road now lay between thick pine woods with no dwelling in sight.
+It was growing dusk and Rebecca was driving along the lonely way with a
+person who was generally called Slippery Simpson.
+
+Not a thought of fear crossed her mind, save the fear of bungling in
+her diplomacy, and so losing the flag. She knew Mr. Simpson well, and a
+pleasanter man was seldom to be met. She recalled an afternoon when he
+came home and surprised the whole school playing the Revolutionary War
+in his helter-skelter dooryard, and the way in which he had joined the
+British forces and impersonated General Burgoyne had greatly endeared
+him to her. The only difficulty was to find proper words for her
+delicate mission, for, of course, if Mr. Simpson's anger were aroused,
+he would politely push her out of the wagon and drive away with the
+flag. Perhaps if she led the conversation in the right direction an
+opportunity would present itself. She well remembered how Emma Jane
+Perkins had failed to convert Jacob Moody, simply because she failed to
+"lead up" to the delicate question of his manner of life. Clearing her
+throat nervously, she began: "Is it likely to be fair tomorrow?"
+
+"Guess so; clear as a bell. What's on foot; a picnic?"
+
+"No; we're to have a grand flag-raising!" ("That is," she thought, "if
+we have any flag to raise!")
+
+"That so? Where?"
+
+"The three villages are to club together and have a rally, and raise
+the flag at the Centre. There'll be a brass band, and speakers, and the
+Mayor of Portland, and the man that will be governor if he's elected,
+and a dinner in the Grange Hall, and we girls are chosen to raise the
+flag."
+
+"I want to know! That'll be grand, won't it?" (Still not a sign of
+consciousness on the part of Abner.)
+
+"I hope Mrs. Fogg will take Clara Belle, for it will be splendid to look
+at! Mr. Cobb is going to be Uncle Sam and drive us on the stage. Miss
+Dearborn--Clara Belle's old teacher, you know--is going to be Columbia;
+the girls will be the States of the Union, and oh, Mr. Simpson, I am the
+one to be the State of Maine!" (This was not altogether to the point,
+but a piece of information impossible to conceal.)
+
+Mr. Simpson flourished the whipstock and gave a loud, hearty laugh. Then
+he turned in his seat and regarded Rebecca curiously. "You're kind of
+small, hain't ye, for so big a state as this one?" he asked.
+
+"Any of us would be too small," replied Rebecca with dignity, "but the
+committee asked me, and I am going to try hard to do well."
+
+The tragic thought that there might be no occasion for anybody to do
+anything, well or ill, suddenly overcame her here, and putting her
+hand on Mr. Simpson's sleeve, she attacked the subject practically and
+courageously.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Simpson, dear Mr. Simpson, it's such a mortifying subject I
+can't bear to say anything about it, but please give us back our flag!
+Don't, DON'T take it over to Acreville, Mr. Simpson! We've worked so
+long to make it, and it was so hard getting the money for the bunting!
+Wait a minute, please; don't be angry, and don't say no just yet, till
+I explain more. It'll be so dreadful for everybody to get there tomorrow
+morning and find no flag to raise, and the band and the mayor all
+disappointed, and the children crying, with their muslin dresses all
+bought for nothing! O dear Mr. Simpson, please don't take our flag away
+from us!"
+
+The apparently astonished Abner pulled his mustaches and exclaimed: "But
+I don't know what you're drivin' at! Who's got yer flag? I hain't!"
+
+Could duplicity, deceit, and infamy go any further, Rebecca wondered,
+and her soul filling with righteous wrath, she cast discretion to the
+winds and spoke a little more plainly, bending her great swimming eyes
+on the now embarrassed Abner, who looked like an angle-worm, wriggling
+on a pin.
+
+"Mr. Simpson, how can you say that, when I saw the flag in the back of
+your wagon myself, when you stopped to water the horse? It's wicked of
+you to take it, and I cannot bear it!" (Her voice broke now, for a doubt
+of Mr. Simpson's yielding suddenly darkened her mind.) "If you keep it,
+you'll have to keep me, for I won't be parted from it! I can't fight
+like the boys, but I can pinch and scratch, and I WILL scratch, just
+like a panther--I'll lie right down on my star and not move, if I starve
+to death!"
+
+"Look here, hold your hosses n' don't cry till you git something to cry
+for!" grumbled the outraged Abner, to whom a clue had just come; and
+leaning over the wagon-back he caught hold of a corner of white sheet
+and dragged up the bundle, scooping off Rebecca's hat in the process,
+and almost burying her in bunting.
+
+She caught the treasure passionately to her heart and stifled her sobs
+in it, while Abner exclaimed: "I swan to man, if that hain't a flag!
+Well, in that case you're good n' welcome to it! Land! I seen that
+bundle lyin' in the middle o' the road and I says to myself, that's
+somebody's washin' and I'd better pick it up and leave it at the
+post-office to be claimed; n' all the time it was a flag!"
+
+This was a Simpsonian version of the matter, the fact being that a
+white-covered bundle lying on the Meserves' front steps had attracted
+his practiced eye, and slipping in at the open gate he had swiftly and
+deftly removed it to his wagon on general principles; thinking if it
+were clean clothes it would be extremely useful, and in any event there
+was no good in passing by something flung into your very arms, so to
+speak. He had had no leisure to examine the bundle, and indeed took
+little interest in it. Probably he stole it simply from force of habit,
+and because there was nothing else in sight to steal, everybody's
+premises being preternaturally tidy and empty, almost as if his visit
+had been expected!
+
+Rebecca was a practical child, and it seemed to her almost impossible
+that so heavy a bundle should fall out of Mrs. Meserve's buggy and not
+be noticed; but she hoped that Mr. Simpson was telling the truth, and
+she was too glad and grateful to doubt anyone at the moment.
+
+"Thank you, thank you ever so much, Mr. Simpson. You're the nicest,
+kindest, politest man I ever knew, and the girls will be so pleased you
+gave us back the flag, and so will the Dorcas Society; they'll be sure
+to write you a letter of thanks; they always do."
+
+"Tell em not to bother bout any thanks," said Simpson, beaming
+virtuously. "But land! I'm glad twas me that happened to see that bundle
+in the road and take the trouble to pick it up." ("Jest to think of it's
+bein' a flag!" he thought; "if ever there was a pesky, wuthless thing to
+trade off, twould be a great, gormin' flag like that!")
+
+"Can I get out now, please?" asked Rebecca. "I want to go back, for Mrs.
+Meserve will be dreadfully nervous when she finds out she dropped the
+flag, and she has heart trouble."
+
+"No, you don't," objected Mr. Simpson gallantly, turning the horse. "Do
+you think I'd let a little creeter like you lug that great heavy bundle?
+I hain't got time to go back to Meserve's, but I'll take you to the
+corner and dump you there, flag n' all, and you can get some o' the
+men-folks to carry it the rest o' the way. You'll wear it out, huggin'
+it so!"
+
+"I helped make it and I adore it!" said Rebecca, who was in a
+high-pitched and grandiloquent mood. "Why don't YOU like it? It's your
+country's flag."
+
+Simpson smiled an indulgent smile and looked a trifle bored at these
+frequent appeals to his extremely rusty higher feelings.
+
+"I don' know's I've got any partic'lar int'rest in the country," he
+remarked languidly. "I know I don't owe nothin' to it, nor own nothin'
+in it!"
+
+"You own a star on the flag, same as everybody," argued Rebecca, who had
+been feeding on patriotism for a month; "and you own a state, too, like
+all of us!"
+
+"Land! I wish't I did! or even a quarter section!" sighed Mr. Simpson,
+feeling somehow a little more poverty-stricken and discouraged than
+usual.
+
+As they approached the corner and the watering-trough where four
+cross-roads met, the whole neighborhood seemed to be in evidence,
+and Mr. Simpson suddenly regretted his chivalrous escort of Rebecca;
+especially when, as he neared the group, an excited lady, wringing her
+hands, turned out to be Mrs. Peter Meserve, accompanied by Huldah, the
+Browns, Mrs. Milliken, Abijah Flagg, and Miss Dearborn.
+
+"Do you know anything about the new flag, Rebecca?" shrieked Mrs.
+Meserve, too agitated, at the moment, to notice the child's companion.
+
+"It's right here in my lap, all safe," responded Rebecca joyously.
+
+"You careless, meddlesome young one, to take it off my steps where
+I left it just long enough to go round to the back and hunt up my
+door-key! You've given me a fit of sickness with my weak heart, and what
+business was it of yours? I believe you think you OWN the flag! Hand it
+over to me this minute!"
+
+Rebecca was climbing down during this torrent of language, but as she
+turned she flashed one look of knowledge at the false Simpson, a look
+that went through him from head to foot, as if it were carried by
+electricity.
+
+He had not deceived her after all, owing to the angry chatter of Mrs.
+Meserve. He had been handcuffed twice in his life, but no sheriff had
+ever discomfited him so thoroughly as this child. Fury mounted to his
+brain, and as soon as she was safely out from between the wheels he
+stood up in the wagon and flung the flag out in the road in the midst of
+the excited group.
+
+"Take it, you pious, passimonious, cheese-parin', hair-splittin',
+back-bitin', flag-raisin' crew!" he roared. "Rebecca never took the
+flag; I found it in the road, I say!"
+
+"You never, no such a thing!" exclaimed Mrs. Meserve. "You found it on
+the doorsteps in my garden!"
+
+"Mebbe twas your garden, but it was so chock full o' weeks I THOUGHT
+twas the road," retorted Abner. "I vow I wouldn't a' given the old
+rag back to one o' YOU, not if you begged me on your bended knees! But
+Rebecca's a friend o' my folks and can do with her flag's she's a mind
+to, and the rest o' ye can go to thunder--n' stay there, for all I
+care!"
+
+So saying, he made a sharp turn, gave the gaunt white horse a lash and
+disappeared in a cloud of dust, before the astonished Mr. Brown, the
+only man in the party, had a thought of detaining him.
+
+"I'm sorry I spoke so quick, Rebecca," said Mrs. Meserve, greatly
+mortified at the situation. "But don't you believe a word that lyin'
+critter said! He did steal it off my doorstep, and how did you come to
+be ridin' and consortin' with him! I believe it would kill your Aunt
+Miranda if she should hear about it!"
+
+The little school-teacher put a sheltering arm round Rebecca as Mr.
+Brown picked up the flag and dusted and folded it.
+
+"I'm willing she should hear about it," Rebecca answered. "I didn't do
+anything to be ashamed of! I saw the flag in the back of Mr. Simpson's
+wagon and I just followed it. There weren't any men or any Dorcases to
+take care of it and so it fell to me! You wouldn't have had me let it
+out of my sight, would you, and we going to raise it tomorrow morning?"
+
+"Rebecca's perfectly right, Mrs. Meserve!" said Miss Dearborn proudly.
+"And it's lucky there was somebody quick-witted enough to ride and
+consort' with Mr. Simpson! I don't know what the village will think, but
+seems to me the town clerk might write down in his book, THIS DAY THE
+STATE OF MAINE SAVED THE FLAG!'"
+
+
+
+
+Sixth Chronicle. THE STATE O' MAINE GIRL
+
+
+I
+
+The foregoing episode, if narrated in a romance, would undoubtedly have
+been called "The Saving of the Colors," but at the nightly conversazione
+in Watson's store it was alluded to as the way little Becky Randall got
+the flag away from Slippery Simpson.
+
+Dramatic as it was, it passed into the limbo of half-forgotten things
+in Rebecca's mind, its brief importance submerged in the glories of the
+next day.
+
+There was a painful prelude to these glories. Alice Robinson came to
+spend the night with Rebecca, and when the bedroom door closed upon the
+two girls, Alice announced here intention of "doing up" Rebecca's front
+hair in leads and rags, and braiding the back in six tight, wetted
+braids.
+
+Rebecca demurred. Alice persisted.
+
+"Your hair is so long and thick and dark and straight," she said, "that
+you'll look like an Injun!"
+
+"I am the State of Maine; it all belonged to the Indians once," Rebecca
+remarked gloomily, for she was curiously shy about discussing her
+personal appearance.
+
+"And your wreath of little pine-cones won't set decent without crimps,"
+continued Alice.
+
+Rebecca glanced in the cracked looking-glass and met what she considered
+an accusing lack of beauty, a sight that always either saddened or
+enraged her according to circumstances; then she sat down resignedly
+and began to help Alice in the philanthropic work of making the State of
+Maine fit to be seen at the raising.
+
+Neither of the girls was an expert hairdresser, and at the end of an
+hour, when the sixth braid was tied, and Rebecca had given one last
+shuddering look in the mirror, both were ready to weep with fatigue.
+
+The candle was blown out and Alice soon went to sleep, but Rebecca
+tossed on her pillow, its goose-feathered softness all dented by the
+cruel lead knobs and the knots of twisted rags. She slipped out of bed
+and walked to and fro, holding her aching head with both hands. Finally
+she leaned on the window-sill, watching the still weather-vane on
+Alice's barn and breathing in the fragrance of the ripening apples,
+until her restlessness subsided under the clear starry beauty of the
+night.
+
+At six in the morning the girls were out of bed, for Alice could hardly
+wait until Rebecca's hair was taken down, she was so eager to see the
+result of her labors.
+
+The leads and rags were painfully removed, together with much hair, the
+operation being punctuated by a series of squeaks, squeals, and shrieks
+on the part of Rebecca and a series of warnings from Alice, who wished
+the preliminaries to be kept secret from the aunts, that they might the
+more fully appreciate the radiant result.
+
+Then came the unbraiding, and then--dramatic moment--the "combing out;"
+a difficult, not to say impossible process, in which the hairs that had
+resisted the earlier stages almost gave up the ghost.
+
+The long front strands had been wound up from various angles and by
+various methods, so that, when released, they assumed the strangest,
+most obstinate, most unexpected attitudes. When the comb was dragged
+through the last braid, the wild, tortured, electric hairs following,
+and then rebounding from it in a bristling, snarling tangle.
+Massachusetts gave one encompassing glance at the State o' Maine's head,
+and announced her intention of going home to breakfast! She was deeply
+grieved at the result of her attempted beautifying, but she felt that
+meeting Miss Miranda Sawyer at the morning meal would not mend matters
+in the least, so slipping out of the side door, she ran up Guide Board
+hill as fast as her legs could carry her.
+
+The State o' Maine, deserted and somewhat unnerved, sat down before the
+glass and attacked her hair doggedly and with set lips, working over it
+until Miss Jane called her to breakfast; then, with a boldness born
+of despair, she entered the dining room, where her aunts were already
+seated at table. To "draw fire" she whistled, a forbidden joy, which
+only attracted more attention, instead of diverting it. There was a
+moment of silence after the grotesque figure was fully taken in; then
+came a moan from Jane and a groan from Miranda.
+
+"What have you done to yourself?" asked Miranda sternly.
+
+"Made an effort to be beautiful and failed!" jauntily replied Rebecca,
+but she was too miserable to keep up the fiction. "Oh, Aunt Miranda,
+don't scold. I'm so unhappy! Alice and I rolled up my hair to curl it
+for the raising. She said it was so straight I looked like an Indian!"
+
+"Mebbe you did," vigorously agreed Miranda, "but 't any rate you looked
+like a Christian Injun, 'n' now you look like a heathen Injun; that's
+all the difference I can see. What can we do with her, Jane, between
+this and nine o'clock?"
+
+"We'll all go out to the pump just as soon as we're through breakfast,"
+answered Jane soothingly. "We can accomplish consid'rable with water and
+force."
+
+Rebecca nibbled her corn-cake, her tearful eyes cast on her plate and
+her chin quivering.
+
+"Don't you cry and red your eyes up," chided Miranda quite kindly; "the
+minute you've eat enough run up and get your brush and comb and meet us
+at the back door."
+
+"I wouldn't care myself how bad I looked," said Rebecca, "but I can't
+bear to be so homely that I shame the State of Maine!"
+
+Oh, what an hour followed this plaint! Did any aspirant for literary
+or dramatic honors ever pass to fame through such an antechamber of
+horrors? Did poet of the day ever have his head so maltreated? To be
+dipped in the rain-water tub, soused again and again; to be held under
+the spout and pumped on; to be rubbed furiously with rough roller
+towels; to be dried with hot flannels! And is it not well-nigh
+incredible that at the close of such an hour the ends of the long hair
+should still stand out straight, the braids having been turned up two
+inches by Alice, and tied hard in that position with linen thread?
+
+"Get out the skirt-board, Jane," cried Miranda, to whom opposition
+served as a tonic, "and move that flat-iron on to the front o' the
+stove. Rebecca, set down in that low chair beside the board, and Jane,
+you spread out her hair on it and cover it up with brown paper. Don't
+cringe, Rebecca; the worst's over, and you've borne up real good! I'll
+be careful not to pull your hair nor scorch you, and oh, HOW I'd like
+to have Alice Robinson acrost my knee and a good strip o' shingle in my
+right hand! There, you're all ironed out and your Aunt Jane can put on
+your white dress and braid your hair up again good and tight. Perhaps
+you won't be the hombliest of the states, after all; but when I see you
+comin' in to breakfast I said to myself: I guess if Maine looked like
+that, it wouldn't never a' been admitted into the Union!'"
+
+When Uncle Sam and the stagecoach drew up to the brick house with a
+grand swing and a flourish, the goddess of Liberty and most of the
+States were already in their places on the "harricane deck."
+
+Words fail to describe the gallant bearing of the horses, their
+headstalls gayly trimmed and their harnesses dotted with little flags.
+The stage windows were hung in bunting, and from within beamed Columbia,
+looking out from the bright frame as if proud of her freight of loyal
+children. Patriotic streamers floated from whip, from dash-board and
+from rumble, and the effect of the whole was something to stimulate the
+most phlegmatic voter.
+
+Rebecca came out on the steps and Aunt Jane brought a chair to assist in
+the ascent. Miss Dearborn peeped from the window, and gave a despairing
+look at her favorite.
+
+What had happened to her? Who had dressed her? Had her head been put
+through a wringing-machine? Why were her eyes red and swollen? Miss
+Dearborn determined to take her behind the trees in the pine grove
+and give her some finishing touches; touches that her skillful fingers
+fairly itched to bestow.
+
+The stage started, and as the roadside pageant grew gayer and gayer,
+Rebecca began to brighten and look prettier, for most of her beautifying
+came from within. The people, walking, driving, or standing on
+their doorsteps, cheered Uncle Sam's coach with its freight of
+gossamer-muslined, fluttering-ribboned girls, and just behind, the
+gorgeously decorated haycart, driven by Abijah Flagg, bearing the jolly
+but inharmonious fife-and-drum corps.
+
+Was ever such a golden day! Such crystal air! Such mellow sunshine! Such
+a merry Uncle Sam!
+
+The stage drew up at an appointed spot near a pine grove, and while the
+crowd was gathering, the children waited for the hour to arrive when
+they should march to the platform; the hour toward which they seemed to
+have been moving since the dawn of creation.
+
+As soon as possible Miss Dearborn whispered to Rebecca: "Come behind the
+trees with me; I want to make you prettier!"
+
+Rebecca thought she had suffered enough from that process already during
+the last twelve hours, but she put out an obedient hand and the two
+withdrew.
+
+Now Miss Dearborn was, I fear, a very indifferent teacher. Dr. Moses
+always said so, and Libbie Moses, who wanted her school, said it was
+a pity she hadn't enjoyed more social advantages in her youth. Libbie
+herself had taken music lessons in Portland; and spent a night at the
+Profile House in the White Mountains, and had visited her sister in
+Lowell, Massachusetts. These experiences gave her, in her own mind, and
+in the mind of her intimate friends, a horizon so boundless that her
+view of smaller, humbler matters was a trifle distorted.
+
+Miss Dearborn's stock in trade was small, her principal virtues being
+devotion to children and ability to gain their love, and a power of
+evolving a schoolroom order so natural, cheery, serene, and peaceful
+that it gave the beholder a certain sense of being in a district heaven.
+She was poor in arithmetic and weak in geometry, but if you gave her a
+rose, a bit of ribbon, and a seven-by-nine looking-glass she could make
+herself as pretty as a pink in two minutes.
+
+Safely sheltered behind the pines, Miss Dearborn began to practice
+mysterious feminine arts. She flew at Rebecca's tight braids, opened
+the strands and rebraided them loosely; bit and tore the red, white,
+and blue ribbon in two and tied the braids separately. Then with nimble
+fingers she pulled out little tendrils of hair behind the ears and
+around the nape of the neck. After a glance of acute disapproval
+directed at the stiff balloon skirt she knelt on the ground and gave
+a strenuous embrace to Rebecca's knees, murmuring, between her hugs,
+"Starch must be cheap at the brick house!"
+
+This particular line of beauty attained, there ensued great pinchings of
+ruffles, her fingers that could never hold a ferrule nor snap children's
+ears being incomparable fluting-irons.
+
+Next the sash was scornfully untied and tightened to suggest something
+resembling a waist. The chastened bows that had been squat, dowdy,
+spiritless, were given tweaks, flirts, bracing little pokes and dabs,
+till, acknowledging a master hand, they stood up, piquant, pert, smart,
+alert!
+
+Pride of bearing was now infused into the flattened lace at the neck,
+and a pin (removed at some sacrifice from her own toilette) was darned
+in at the back to prevent any cowardly lapsing. The short white cotton
+gloves that called attention to the tanned wrist and arms were stripped
+off and put in her own pocket. Then the wreath of pine-cones was
+adjusted at a heretofore unimagined angle, the hair was pulled softly
+into a fluffy frame, and finally, as she met Rebecca's grateful eyes
+she gave her two approving, triumphant kisses. In a second the sensitive
+face lighted into happiness; pleased dimples appeared in the cheeks, the
+kissed mouth was as red as a rose, and the little fright that had walked
+behind the pine-tree stepped out on the other side Rebecca the lovely.
+
+As to the relative value of Miss Dearborn's accomplishments, the
+decision must be left to the gentle reader; but though it is certain
+that children should be properly grounded in mathematics, no heart of
+flesh could bear to hear Miss Dearborn's methods vilified who had seen
+her patting, pulling, squeezing Rebecca from ugliness into beauty.
+
+The young superintendent of district schools was a witness of the scene,
+and when later he noted the children surrounding Columbia as bees
+a honeysuckle, he observed to Dr. Moses: "She may not be much of a
+teacher, but I think she'd be considerable of a wife!" and subsequent
+events proved that he meant what he said!
+
+II
+
+Now all was ready; the moment of fate was absolutely at hand; the
+fife-and-drum corps led the way and the States followed; but what
+actually happened Rebecca never knew; she lived through the hours in a
+waking dream. Every little detail was a facet of light that reflected
+sparkles, and among them all she was fairly dazzled. The brass band
+played inspiring strains; the mayor spoke eloquently on great themes;
+the people cheered; then the rope on which so much depended was put into
+the children's hands, they applied superhuman strength to their task,
+and the flag mounted, mounted, smoothly and slowly, and slowly unwound
+and stretched itself until its splendid size and beauty were revealed
+against the maples and pines and blue New England sky.
+
+Then after cheers upon cheers and after a patriotic chorus by the church
+choirs, the State of Maine mounted the platform, vaguely conscious
+that she was to recite a poem, though for the life of her she could not
+remember a single word.
+
+"Speak up loud and clear, Rebecky," whispered Uncle Sam in the front
+row, but she could scarcely hear her own voice when, tremblingly, she
+began her first line. After that she gathered strength and the poem
+"said itself," while the dream went on.
+
+She saw Adam Ladd leaning against a tree; Aunt Jane and Aunt Miranda
+palpitating with nervousness; Clara Belle Simpson gazing cross-eyed but
+adoring from a seat on the side; and in the far, far distance, on the
+very outskirts of the crowd, a tall man standing in a wagon--a tall,
+loose-jointed man with red upturned mustaches, and a gaunt white horse
+headed toward the Acreville road.
+
+Loud applause greeted the state of Maine, the slender little white-clad
+figure standing on the mossy boulder that had been used as the centre of
+the platform. The sun came up from behind a great maple and shone full
+on the star-spangled banner, making it more dazzling than ever, so that
+its beauty drew all eyes upward.
+
+Abner Simpson lifted his vagrant shifting gaze to its softy fluttering
+folds and its splendid massing of colors, thinking:
+
+"I don't know's anybody'd ought to steal a flag--the thunderin' idjuts
+seem to set such store by it, and what is it, anyway? Nothin; but a
+sheet o' buntin!"
+
+Nothing but a sheet of bunting? He looked curiously at the rapt faces
+of the mothers, their babies asleep in their arms; the parted lips and
+shining eyes of the white-clad girls; at Cap'n Lord, who had been in
+Libby prison, and Nat Strout, who had left an arm at Bull Run; at the
+friendly, jostling crowd of farmers, happy, eager, absorbed, their
+throats ready to burst with cheers. Then the breeze served, and he heard
+Rebecca's clear voice saying:
+
+"For it's your star, my star, all the stars together, That make our
+country's flag so proud To float in the bright fall weather!"
+
+"Talk about stars! She's got a couple of em right in her head," thought
+Simpson.... "If I ever seen a young one like that lyin; on anybody's
+doorstep I'd hook her quicker'n a wink, though I've got plenty to home,
+the Lord knows! And I wouldn't swap her off neither.... Spunky little
+creeter, too; settin; up in the wagon lookin' bout's big as a pint o'
+cider, but keepin' right after the goods!... I vow I'm bout sick o' my
+job! Never WITH the crowd, allers JEST on the outside, s if I wa'n't as
+good's they be! If it paid well, mebbe I wouldn't mind, but they're so
+thunderin' stingy round here, they don't leave anything decent out for
+you to take from em, yet you're reskin' your liberty n' reputation jest
+the same!... Countin' the poor pickin's n' the time I lose in jail I
+might most's well be done with it n' work out by the day, as the folks
+want me to; I'd make bout's much n' I don't know's it would be any
+harder!"
+
+He could see Rebecca stepping down from the platform, while his own
+red-headed little girl stood up on her bench, waving her hat with one
+hand, her handkerchief with the other, and stamping with both feet.
+
+Now a man sitting beside the mayor rose from his chair and Abner heard
+him call:
+
+"Three cheers for the women who made the flag!"
+
+"HIP, HIP, HURRAH!"
+
+"Three cheers for the State of Maine!"
+
+"HIP, HIP, HURRAH!"
+
+"Three cheers for the girl that saved the flag from the hands of the
+enemy!"
+
+"HIP, HIP, HURRAH! HIP, HIP, HURRAH!"
+
+It was the Edgewood minister, whose full, vibrant voice was of the sort
+to move a crowd. His words rang out into the clear air and were carried
+from lip to lip. Hands clapped, feet stamped, hats swung, while the loud
+huzzahs might almost have wakened the echoes on old Mount Ossipee.
+
+The tall, loose-jointed man sat down in the wagon suddenly and took up
+the reins.
+
+"They're gettin' a little mite personal, and I guess it's bout time for
+you to be goin', Simpson!"
+
+The tone was jocular, but the red mustaches drooped, and the
+half-hearted cut he gave to start the white mare on her homeward journey
+showed that he was not in his usual devil-may-care mood.
+
+"Durn his skin!" he burst out in a vindictive undertone, as the mare
+swung into her long gait. "It's a lie! I thought twas somebody's wash! I
+hain't an enemy!"
+
+While the crowd at the raising dispersed in happy family groups to their
+picnics in the woods; while the Goddess of Liberty, Uncle Sam,
+Columbia, and the proud States lunched grandly in the Grange hall with
+distinguished guests and scarred veterans of two wars, the lonely
+man drove, and drove, and drove through silent woods and dull, sleepy
+villages, never alighting to replenish his wardrobe or his stock of
+swapping material.
+
+At dusk he reached a miserable tumble-down house on the edge of a pond.
+
+The faithful wife with the sad mouth and the habitual look of anxiety in
+her faded eyes came to the door at the sound of wheels and went doggedly
+to the horse-shed to help him unharness.
+
+"You didn't expect to see me back tonight, did ye?" he asked
+satirically; "leastwise not with this same horse? Well, I'm here! You
+needn't be scairt to look under the wagon seat, there hain't nothin'
+there, not even my supper, so I hope you're suited for once! No, I guess
+I hain't goin' to be an angel right away, neither. There wa'n't nothin'
+but flags layin' roun' loose down Riverboro way, n' whatever they say, I
+hain't sech a hound as to steal a flag!"
+
+It was natural that young Riverboro should have red, white, and blue
+dreams on the night after the new flag was raised. A stranger thing,
+perhaps, is the fact that Abner Simpson should lie down on his hard bed
+with the flutter of bunting before his eyes, and a whirl of unaccustomed
+words in his mind.
+
+"For it's your star, my star, all our stars together."
+
+"I'm sick of goin' it alone," he thought; "I guess I'll try the other
+road for a spell;" and with that he fell asleep.
+
+
+
+
+Seventh Chronicle. THE LITTLE PROPHET
+
+
+I
+
+"I guess York County will never get red of that Simpson crew!" exclaimed
+Miranda Sawyer to Jane. "I thought when the family moved to Acreville
+we'd seen the last of em, but we ain't! The big, cross-eyed, stutterin'
+boy has got a place at the mills in Maplewood; that's near enough to
+come over to Riverboro once in a while of a Sunday mornin' and set in
+the meetin' house starin' at Rebecca same as he used to do, only it's
+reskier now both of em are older. Then Mrs. Fogg must go and bring back
+the biggest girl to help her take care of her baby,--as if there wa'n't
+plenty of help nearer home! Now I hear say that the youngest twin has
+come to stop the summer with the Cames up to Edgewood Lower Corner."
+
+"I thought two twins were always the same age," said Rebecca,
+reflectively, as she came into the kitchen with the milk pail.
+
+"So they be," snapped Miranda, flushing and correcting herself. "But
+that pasty-faced Simpson twin looks younger and is smaller than the
+other one. He's meek as Moses and the other one is as bold as a brass
+kettle; I don't see how they come to be twins; they ain't a mite alike."
+
+"Elijah was always called the fighting twin' at school," said Rebecca,
+"and Elisha's other name was Nimbi-Pamby; but I think he's a nice little
+boy, and I'm glad he has come back. He won't like living with Mr. Came,
+but he'll be almost next door to the minister's, and Mrs. Baxter is sure
+to let him play in her garden."
+
+"I wonder why the boy's stayin' with Cassius Came," said Jane. "To be
+sure they haven't got any of their own, but the child's too young to be
+much use."
+
+"I know why," remarked Rebecca promptly, "for I heard all about it over
+to Watson's when I was getting the milk. Mr. Came traded something with
+Mr. Simpson two years ago and got the best of the bargain, and Uncle
+Jerry says he's the only man that ever did, and he ought to have a
+monument put up to him. So Mr. Came owes Mr. Simpson money and won't
+pay it, and Mr. Simpson said he'd send over a child and board part of it
+out, and take the rest in stock--a pig or a calf or something."
+
+"That's all stuff and nonsense," exclaimed Miranda; "nothin' in the
+world but store-talk. You git a clump o' men-folks settin' round
+Watson's stove, or out on the bench at the door, an' they'll make up
+stories as fast as their tongues can wag. The man don't live that's
+smart enough to cheat Abner Simpson in a trade, and who ever heard of
+anybody's owin' him money? Tain't supposable that a woman like Mrs. Came
+would allow her husband to be in debt to a man like Abner Simpson. It's
+a sight likelier that she heard that Mrs. Simpson was ailin' and sent
+for the boy so as to help the family along. She always had Mrs. Simpson
+to wash for her once a month, if you remember Jane?"
+
+There are some facts so shrouded in obscurity that the most skillful and
+patient investigator cannot drag them into the light of day. There are
+also (but only occasionally) certain motives, acts, speeches, lines of
+conduct, that can never be wholly and satisfactorily explained, even in
+a village post-office or on the loafers' bench outside the tavern door.
+
+Cassius Came was a close man, close of mouth and close of purse; and all
+that Riverboro ever knew as to the three months' visit of the Simpson
+twin was that it actually occurred. Elisha, otherwise Nimbi-Pamby, came;
+Nimbi-Pamby stayed; and Nimbi-Pamby, when he finally rejoined his own
+domestic circle, did not go empty-handed (so to speak), for he was
+accompanied on his homeward travels by a large, red, bony, somewhat
+truculent cow, who was tied on behind the wagon, and who made the
+journey a lively and eventful one by her total lack of desire to proceed
+over the road from Edgewood to Acreville. But that, the cow's tale,
+belongs to another time and place, and the coward's tale must come
+first; for Elisha Simpson was held to be sadly lacking in the manly
+quality of courage.
+
+It was the new minister's wife who called Nimbi-Pamby the Little
+Prophet. His full name was Elisha Jeremiah Simpson, but one seldom heard
+it at full length, since, if he escaped the ignominy of Nimbi-Pamby,
+Lishe was quite enough for an urchin just in his first trousers and
+those assumed somewhat prematurely. He was "Lishe," therefore, to the
+village, but the Little Prophet to the young minister's wife.
+
+Rebecca could see the Cames' brown farmhouse from Mrs. Baxter's
+sitting-room window. The little-traveled road with strips of tufted
+green between the wheel tracks curled dustily up to the very doorstep,
+and inside the screen door of pink mosquito netting was a wonderful
+drawn-in rug, shaped like a half pie, with "Welcome" in saffron letters
+on a green ground.
+
+Rebecca liked Mrs. Cassius Came, who was a friend of her Aunt Miranda's
+and one of the few persons who exchanged calls with that somewhat
+unsociable lady. The Came farm was not a long walk from the brick house,
+for Rebecca could go across the fields when haying-time was over, and
+her delight at being sent on an errand in that direction could not be
+measured, now that the new minister and his wife had grown to be such a
+resource in her life. She liked to see Mrs. Came shake the Welcome rug,
+flinging the cheery word out into the summer sunshine like a bright
+greeting to the day. She liked to see her go to the screen door a dozen
+times in a morning, open it a crack and chase an imaginary fly from the
+sacred precincts within. She liked to see her come up the cellar steps
+into the side garden, appearing mysteriously as from the bowels of the
+earth, carrying a shining pan of milk in both hands, and disappearing
+through the beds of hollyhocks and sunflowers to the pig-pen or the
+hen-house.
+
+Rebecca was not fond of Mr. Came, and neither was Mrs. Baxter, nor
+Elisha, for that matter; in fact Mr. Came was rather a difficult person
+to grow fond of, with his fiery red beard, his freckled skin, and his
+gruff way of speaking; for there were no children in the brown house to
+smooth the creases from his forehead or the roughness from his voice.
+
+II
+
+The new minister's wife was sitting under the shade of her great maple
+early one morning, when she first saw the Little Prophet. A tiny figure
+came down the grass-grown road leading a cow by a rope. If it had been a
+small boy and a small cow, a middle-sized boy and an ordinary cow, or a
+grown man and a big cow, she might not have noticed them; but it was the
+combination of an infinitesimal boy and a huge cow that attracted her
+attention. She could not guess the child's years, she only knew that he
+was small for his age, whatever it was.
+
+The cow was a dark red beast with a crumpled horn, a white star on her
+forehead, and a large surprised sort of eye. She had, of course, two
+eyes, and both were surprised, but the left one had an added hint of
+amazement in it by virtue of a few white hairs lurking accidentally in
+the centre of the eyebrow.
+
+The boy had a thin sensitive face and curtly brown hair, short trousers
+patched on both knees, and a ragged straw hat on the back of his head.
+He pattered along behind the cow, sometimes holding the rope with both
+hands, and getting over the ground in a jerky way, as the animal left
+him no time to think of a smooth path for bare feet.
+
+The Came pasture was a good half-mile distant, and the cow seemed in no
+hurry to reach it; accordingly she forsook the road now and then,
+and rambled in the hollows, where the grass was sweeter to her way of
+thinking. She started on one of these exploring expeditions just as she
+passed the minister's great maple, and gave Mrs. Baxter time to call out
+to the little fellow, "Is that your cow?"
+
+Elisha blushed and smiled, and tried to speak modestly, but there was a
+quiver of pride in his voice as he answered suggestively:
+
+"It's--nearly my cow."
+
+"How is that?" asked Mrs. Baxter.
+
+"Why, Mr. Came says when I drive her twenty-nine more times to pasture
+thout her gettin' her foot over the rope or thout my bein' afraid, she's
+goin' to be my truly cow. Are you fraid of cows?"
+
+"Ye-e-es," Mrs. Baxter confessed, "I am, just a little. You see, I am
+nothing but a woman, and boys can't understand how we feel about cows."
+
+"I can! They're awful big things, aren't they?"
+
+"Perfectly enormous! I've always thought a cow coming towards you one of
+the biggest things in the world."
+
+"Yes; me, too. Don't let's think about it. Do they hook people so very
+often?"
+
+"No indeed, in fact one scarcely ever hears of such a case."
+
+"If they stepped on your bare foot they'd scrunch it, wouldn't they?"
+
+"Yes, but you are the driver; you mustn't let them do that; you are a
+free-will boy, and they are nothing but cows."
+
+"I know; but p'raps there is free-will cows, and if they just WOULD do
+it you couldn't help being scrunched, for you mustn't let go of the rope
+nor run, Mr. Came says.
+
+"No, of course that would never do."
+
+"Where you used to live did all the cows go down into the boggy places
+when you drove em to pasture, or did some walk in the road?"
+
+"There weren't any cows or any pastures where I used to live; that's
+what makes me so foolish; why does your cow need a rope?"
+
+"She don't like to go to pasture, Mr. Came says. Sometimes she'd druther
+stay to home, and so when she gets part way she turns round and comes
+backwards."
+
+"Dear me!" thought Mrs. Baxter, "what becomes of this boy-mite if the
+cow has a spell of going backwards?--Do you like to drive her?" she
+asked.
+
+"N-no, not erzackly; but you see, it'll be my cow if I drive her
+twenty-nine more times thout her gettin' her foot over the rope and
+thout my bein' afraid," and a beaming smile gave a transient brightness
+to his harassed little face. "Will she feed in the ditch much longer?"
+he asked. "Shall I say Hurrap'? That's what Mr. Came says--HURRAP!' like
+that, and it means to hurry up."
+
+It was rather a feeble warning that he sounded and the cow fed
+on peacefully. The little fellow looked up at the minister's wife
+confidingly, and then glanced back at the farm to see if Cassius Came
+were watching the progress of events.
+
+"What shall we do next?" he asked.
+
+Mrs. Baxter delighted in that warm, cosy little 'WE;' it took her into
+the firm so pleasantly. She was a weak prop indeed when it came to cows,
+but all the courage in her soul rose to arms when Elisha said, "What
+shall WE do next?" She became alert, ingenious, strong, on the instant.
+
+"What is the cow's name?" she asked, sitting up straight in the
+swing-chair.
+
+"Buttercup; but she don't seem to know it very well. She ain't a mite
+like a buttercup."
+
+"Never mind; you must shout 'Buttercup!' at the top of your voice, and
+twitch the rope HARD; then I'll call, 'Hurrap!' with all my might at
+the same moment. And if she starts quickly we mustn't run nor seem
+frightened!"
+
+They did this; it worked to a charm, and Mrs. Baxter looked
+affectionately after her Little Prophet as the cow pulled him down Tory
+Hill.
+
+The lovely August days wore on. Rebecca was often at the parsonage
+and saw Elisha frequently, but Buttercup was seldom present at their
+interviews, as the boy now drove her to the pasture very early in the
+morning, the journey thither being one of considerable length and her
+method of reaching the goal being exceedingly roundabout.
+
+Mr. Came had pointed out the necessity of getting her into the pasture
+at least a few minutes before she had to be taken out again at night,
+and though Rebecca didn't like Mr. Came, she saw the common sense of
+this remark. Sometimes Mrs. Baxter and Rebecca caught a glimpse of
+the two at sundown, as they returned from the pasture to the twilight
+milking, Buttercup chewing her peaceful cud, her soft white bag of milk
+hanging full, her surprised eye rolling in its accustomed "fine frenzy."
+The frenzied roll did not mean anything, they used to assure Elisha; but
+if it didn't, it was an awful pity she had to do it, Rebecca thought;
+and Mrs. Baxter agreed. To have an expression of eye that meant murder,
+and yet to be a perfectly virtuous and well-meaning animal, this was a
+calamity indeed.
+
+Mrs. Baxter was looking at the sun one evening as it dropped like a ball
+of red fire into Wilkins's woods, when the Little Prophet passed.
+
+"It's the twenty-ninth night," he called joyously.
+
+"I am so glad," she answered, for she had often feared some accident
+might prevent his claiming the promised reward. "Then tomorrow Buttercup
+will be your own cow?"
+
+"I guess so. That's what Mr. Came said. He's off to Acreville now, but
+he'll be home tonight, and father's going to send my new hat by him.
+When Buttercup's my own cow I wish I could change her name and call her
+Red Rover, but p'r'aps her mother wouldn't like it. When she b'longs to
+me, mebbe I won't be so fraid of gettin' hooked and scrunched, because
+she'll know she's mine, and she'll go better. I haven't let her get
+snarled up in the rope one single time, and I don't show I'm afraid, do
+I?"
+
+"I should never suspect it for an instant," said Mrs. Baxter
+encouragingly. "I've often envied you your bold, brave look!"
+
+Elisha appeared distinctly pleased. "I haven't cried, either, when she's
+dragged me over the pasture bars and peeled my legs. Bill Petes's little
+brother Charlie says he ain't afraid of anything, not even bears. He
+says he would walk right up close and cuff em if they dared to yip;
+but I ain't like that! He ain't scared of elephants or tigers or lions
+either; he says they're all the same as frogs or chickens to him!"
+
+Rebecca told her Aunt Miranda that evening that it was the Prophet's
+twenty-ninth night, and that the big red cow was to be his on the
+morrow.
+
+"Well, I hope it'll turn out that way," she said. "But I ain't a mite
+sure that Cassius Came will give up that cow when it comes to the point.
+It won't be the first time he's tried to crawl out of a bargain with
+folks a good deal bigger than Lisha, for he's terrible close, Cassius
+is. To be sure he's stiff in his joints and he's glad enough to have
+a boy to take the cow to the pasture in summer time, but he always has
+hired help when it comes harvestin'. So Lisha'll be no use from this
+on; and I dare say the cow is Abner Simpson's anyway. If you want a walk
+tonight, I wish you'd go up there and ask Mis' Came if she'll lend me
+an' your Aunt Jane half her yeast-cake. Tell her we'll pay it back when
+we get ours a Saturday. Don't you want to take Thirza Meserve with you?
+She's alone as usual while Huldy's entertainin' beaux on the side porch.
+Don't stay too long at the parsonage!"
+
+III
+
+Rebecca was used to this sort of errand, for the whole village of
+Riverboro would sometimes be rocked to the very centre of its being by
+simultaneous desire for a yeast-cake. As the nearest repository was a
+mile and a half distant, as the yeast-cake was valued at two cents and
+wouldn't keep, as the demand was uncertain, being dependent entirely on
+a fluctuating desire for "riz bread," the storekeeper refused to order
+more than three yeast-cakes a day at his own risk. Sometimes they
+remained on his hands a dead loss; sometimes eight or ten persons would
+"hitch up" and drive from distant farms for the coveted article, only to
+be met with the flat, "No, I'm all out o' yeast-cake; Mis' Simmons
+took the last; mebbe you can borry half o' hern, she hain't much of a
+bread-eater."
+
+So Rebecca climbed the hills to Mrs. Came's, knowing that her daily
+bread depended on the successful issue of the call.
+
+Thirza was barefooted, and tough as her little feet were, the long walk
+over the stubble fields tired her. When they came within sight of the
+Came barn, she coaxed Rebecca to take a short cut through the turnips
+growing in long, beautifully weeded rows.
+
+"You know Mr. Came is awfully cross, Thirza, and can't bear anybody to
+tread on his crops or touch a tree or a bush that belongs to him. I'm
+kind of afraid, but come along and mind you step softly in between the
+rows and hold up your petticoat, so you can't possibly touch the turnip
+plants. I'll do the same. Skip along fast, because then we won't leave
+any deep footprints."
+
+The children passed safely and noiselessly along, their pleasure a
+trifle enhanced by the felt dangers of their progress. Rebecca knew that
+they were doing no harm, but that did not prevent her hoping to escape
+the gimlet eye of Mr. Came.
+
+As they neared the outer edge of the turnip patch they paused suddenly,
+petticoats in air.
+
+A great clump of elderberry bushes hid them from the barn, but from the
+other side of the clump came the sound of conversation: the timid voice
+of the Little Prophet and the gruff tones of Cassius Came.
+
+Rebecca was afraid to interrupt, and too honest to wish to overhear. She
+could only hope the man and the boy would pass on to the house as they
+talked, so she motioned to the paralyzed Thirza to take two more steps
+and stand with her behind the elderberry bushes. But no! In a moment
+they heard Mr. Came drag a stool over beside the grindstone as he said:
+
+"Well, now Elisha Jeremiah, we'll talk about the red cow. You say you've
+drove her a month, do ye? And the trade between us was that if you
+could drive her a month, without her getting the rope over her foot and
+without bein' afraid, you was to have her. That's straight, ain't it?"
+
+The Prophet's face burned with excitement, his gingham shirt rose and
+fell as if he were breathing hard, but he only nodded assent and said
+nothing.
+
+"Now," continued Mr. Came, "have you made out to keep the rope from
+under her feet?"
+
+"She ain't got t-t-tangled up one s-single time," said Elisha,
+stuttering in his excitement, but looking up with some courage from his
+bare toes, with which he was assiduously threading the grass.
+
+"So far, so good. Now bout bein' afraid. As you seem so certain of
+gettin' the cow, I suppose you hain't been a speck scared, hev you?
+Honor bright, now!"
+
+"I--I--not but just a little mite. I"--
+
+"Hold up a minute. Of course you didn't SAY you was afraid, and didn't
+SHOW you was afraid, and nobody knew you WAS afraid, but that ain't the
+way we fixed it up. You was to call the cow your'n if you could drive
+her to the pasture for a month without BEIN' afraid. Own up square now,
+hev you be'n afraid?"
+
+A long pause, then a faint, "Yes."
+
+"Where's your manners?"
+
+"I mean yes, sir."
+
+"How often? If it hain't be'n too many times mebbe I'll let ye off,
+though you're a reg'lar girl-boy, and'll be runnin' away from the cat
+bimeby. Has it be'n--twice?"
+
+"Yes," and the Little Prophet's voice was very faint now, and had a
+decided tear in it.
+
+"Yes what?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Has it be'n four times?"
+
+"Y-es, sir." More heaving of the gingham shirt.
+
+"Well, you AIR a thunderin' coward! How many times? Speak up now."
+
+More digging of the bare toes in the earth, and one premonitory tear
+drop stealing from under the downcast lids, then,--
+
+"A little, most every day, and you can keep the cow," wailed the
+Prophet, as he turned abruptly and fled behind the shed, where he flung
+himself into the green depths of a tansy bed, and gave himself up to
+unmanly sobs.
+
+Cassius Came gave a sort of shamefaced guffaw at the abrupt departure
+of the boy, and went on into the house, while Rebecca and Thirza made
+a stealthy circuit of the barn and a polite and circumspect entrance
+through the parsonage front gate.
+
+Rebecca told the minister's wife what she could remember of the
+interview between Cassius Came and Elisha Simpson, and tender-hearted
+Mrs. Baxter longed to seek and comfort her Little Prophet sobbing in the
+tansy bed, the brand of coward on his forehead, and what was much worse,
+the fear in his heart that he deserved it.
+
+Rebecca could hardly be prevented from bearding Mr. Came and openly
+espousing the cause of Elisha, for she was an impetuous, reckless,
+valiant creature when a weaker vessel was attacked or threatened
+unjustly.
+
+Mrs. Baxter acknowledged that Mr. Came had been true, in a way, to his
+word and bargain, but she confessed that she had never heard of so cruel
+and hard a bargain since the days of Shylock, and it was all the worse
+for being made with a child.
+
+Rebecca hurried home, her visit quite spoiled and her errand quite
+forgotten till she reached the brick house door, where she told her
+aunts, with her customary picturesqueness of speech, that she would
+rather eat buttermilk bread till she died than partake of food mixed
+with one of Mr. Came's yeast-cakes; that it would choke her, even in the
+shape of good raised bread.
+
+"That's all very fine, Rebecky," said her Aunt Miranda, who had a
+pin-prick for almost every bubble; "but don't forget there's two other
+mouths to feed in this house, and you might at least give your aunt and
+me the privilege of chokin' if we feel to want to!"
+
+IV
+
+Mrs. Baxter finally heard from Mrs. Came, through whom all information
+was sure to filter if you gave it time, that her husband despised a
+coward, that he considered Elisha a regular mother's-apron-string boy,
+and that he was "learnin'" him to be brave.
+
+Bill Peters, the hired man, now drove Buttercup to pasture, though
+whenever Mr. Came went to Moderation or Bonnie Eagle, as he often did,
+Mrs. Baxter noticed that Elisha took the hired man's place. She often
+joined him on these anxious expeditions, and, a like terror in both
+their souls, they attempted to train the red cow and give her some idea
+of obedience.
+
+"If she only wouldn't look at us that way we would get along real nicely
+with her, wouldn't we?" prattled the Prophet, straggling along by her
+side; "and she is a splendid cow; she gives twenty-one quarts a day, and
+Mr. Came says it's more'n half cream."
+
+The minister's wife assented to all this, thinking that if Buttercup
+would give up her habit of turning completely round in the road to roll
+her eyes and elevate her white-tipped eyebrow, she might indeed be an
+enjoyable companion; but in her present state of development her society
+was not agreeable, even did she give sixty-one quarts of milk a day.
+Furthermore, when Mrs. Baxter discovered that she never did any of these
+reprehensible things with Bill Peters, she began to believe cows more
+intelligent creatures than she had supposed them to be, and she was
+indignant to think Buttercup could count so confidently on the weakness
+of a small boy and a timid woman.
+
+One evening, when Buttercup was more than usually exasperating, Mrs.
+Baxter said to the Prophet, who was bracing himself to keep from being
+pulled into a wayside brook where Buttercup loved to dabble, "Elisha, do
+you know anything about the superiority of mind over matter?"
+
+No, he didn't, though it was not a fair time to ask the question, for he
+had sat down in the road to get a better purchase on the rope.
+
+"Well, it doesn't signify. What I mean is that we can die but once, and
+it is a glorious thing to die for a great principle. Give me that rope.
+I can pull like an ox in my present frame of mind. You run down on the
+opposite side of the brook, take that big stick wade right in--you
+are barefooted,--brandish the stick, and, if necessary, do more than
+brandish. I would go myself, but it is better she should recognize you
+as her master, and I am in as much danger as you are, anyway. She may
+try to hook you, of course, but you must keep waving the stick,--die
+brandishing, Prophet, that's the idea! She may turn and run for me, in
+which case I shall run too; but I shall die running, and the minister
+can bury us under our favorite sweet-apple tree!"
+
+The Prophet's soul was fired by the lovely lady's eloquence. Their
+spirits mounted simultaneously, and they were flushed with a splendid
+courage in which death looked a mean and paltry thing compared with
+vanquishing that cow. She had already stepped into the pool, but the
+Prophet waded in towards her, moving the alder branch menacingly. She
+looked up with the familiar roll of the eye that had done her such good
+service all summer, but she quailed beneath the stern justice and the
+new valor of the Prophet's gaze.
+
+In that moment perhaps she felt ashamed of the misery she had caused the
+helpless mite. At any rate, actuated by fear, surprise, or remorse,
+she turned and walked back into the road without a sign of passion or
+indignation, leaving the boy and the lady rather disappointed at their
+easy victory. To be prepared for a violent death and receive not even a
+scratch made them fear that they might possibly have overestimated the
+danger.
+
+They were better friends than ever after that, the young minister's wife
+and the forlorn little boy from Acreville, sent away from home he
+knew not why, unless it were that there was little to eat there and
+considerably more at the Cash Cames', as they were called in Edgewood.
+Cassius was familiarly known as Uncle Cash, partly because there was a
+disposition in Edgewood to abbreviate all Christian names, and partly
+because the old man paid cash, and expected to be paid cash, for
+everything.
+
+The late summer grew into autumn, and the minister's great maple flung
+a flaming bough of scarlet over Mrs. Baxter's swing-chair. Uncle Cash
+found Elisha very useful at picking up potatoes and apples, but the boy
+was going back to his family as soon as the harvesting was over.
+
+One Friday evening Mrs. Baxter and Rebecca, wrapped in shawls and
+"fascinators," were sitting on Mrs. Came's front steps enjoying the
+sunset. Rebecca was in a tremulous state of happiness, for she had
+come directly from the Seminary at Wareham to the parsonage, and as the
+minister was absent at a church conference, she was to stay the night
+with Mrs. Baxter and go with her to Portland next day.
+
+They were to go to the Islands, have ice cream for luncheon, ride on
+a horse-car, and walk by the Longfellow house, a programme that so
+unsettled Rebecca's never very steady mind that she radiated flashes
+and sparkles of joy, making Mrs. Baxter wonder if flesh could be
+translucent, enabling the spirit-fires within to shine through?
+
+Buttercup was being milked on the grassy slope near the shed door. As
+she walked to the barn, after giving up her pailfuls of yellow milk,
+she bent her neck and snatched a hasty bite from a pile of turnips lying
+temptingly near. In her haste she took more of a mouthful than would be
+considered good manners even among cows, and as she disappeared in the
+barn door they could see a forest of green tops hanging from her mouth,
+while she painfully attempted to grind up the mass of stolen material
+without allowing a single turnip to escape.
+
+It grew dark soon afterward and they went into the house to see Mrs.
+Came's new lamp lighted for the first time, to examine her last drawn-in
+rug (a wonderful achievement produced entirely from dyed flannel
+petticoats), and to hear the doctor's wife play "Oft in the Still
+Night," on the dulcimer.
+
+As they closed the sitting-room door opening on the piazza facing
+the barn, the women heard the cow coughing and said to one another:
+"Buttercup was too greedy, and now she has indigestion."
+
+Elisha always went to bed at sundown, and Uncle Cash had gone to the
+doctor's to have his hand dressed, for he had hurt it is some way in
+the threshing-machine. Bill Peters, the hired man, came in presently and
+asked for him, saying that the cow coughed more and more, and it must
+be that something was wrong, but he could not get her to open her mouth
+wide enough for him to see anything. "She'd up an' die ruther 'n obleege
+anybody, that tarnal, ugly cow would!" he said.
+
+When Uncle Cash had driven into the yard, he came in for a lantern, and
+went directly out to the barn. After a half-hour or so, in which the
+little party had forgotten the whole occurrence, he came in again.
+
+"I'm blamed if we ain't goin' to lose that cow," he said. "Come out,
+will ye, Hannah, and hold the lantern? I can't do anything with my right
+hand in a sling, and Bill is the stupidest critter in the country."
+
+Everybody went out to the barn accordingly, except the doctor's wife,
+who ran over to her house to see if her brother Moses had come home from
+Milltown, and could come and take a hand in the exercises.
+
+Buttercup was in a bad way; there was no doubt of it. Something, one
+of the turnips, presumably, had lodged in her throat, and would move
+neither way, despite her attempts to dislodge it. Her breathing was
+labored, and her eyes bloodshot from straining and choking. Once or
+twice they succeeded in getting her mouth partly open, but before they
+could fairly discover the cause of trouble she had wrested her head
+away.
+
+"I can see a little tuft of green sticking straight up in the middle,"
+said Uncle Cash, while Bill Peters and Moses held a lantern on each side
+of Buttercup's head; "but, land! It's so far down, and such a mite of a
+thing, I couldn't git it, even if I could use my right hand. S'pose you
+try, Bill."
+
+Bill hemmed and hawed, and confessed he didn't care to try. Buttercup's
+grinders were of good size and excellent quality, and he had no fancy
+for leaving his hand within her jaws. He said he was no good at that
+kind of work, but that he would help Uncle Cash hold the cow's head;
+that was just as necessary, and considerable safer.
+
+Moses was more inclined to the service of humanity, and did his best,
+wrapping his wrist in a cloth, and making desperate but ineffectual dabs
+at the slippery green turnip-tops in the reluctantly opened throat. But
+the cow tossed her head and stamped her feet and switched her tail
+and wriggled from under Bill's hands, so that it seemed altogether
+impossible to reach the seat of the trouble.
+
+Uncle Cash was in despair, fuming and fretting the more because of his
+own crippled hand.
+
+"Hitch up, Bill," he said, "and, Hannah, you drive over to Milliken's
+Mills for the horse-doctor. I know we can git out that turnip if we can
+hit on the right tools and somebody to manage em right; but we've got to
+be quick about it or the critter'll choke to death, sure! Your hand's so
+clumsy, Mose, she thinks her time's come when she feels it in her mouth,
+and your fingers are so big you can't ketch holt o' that green stuff
+thout its slippin'!"
+
+"Mine ain't big; let me try," said a timid voice, and turning round,
+they saw little Elisha Simpson, his trousers pulled on over his
+night-shirt, his curly hair ruffled, his eyes vague with sleep.
+
+Uncle Cash gave a laugh of good-humored derision. "You--that's afraid
+to drive a cow to pasture? No, sir; you hain't got sand enough for this
+job, I guess!"
+
+Buttercup just then gave a worse cough than ever, and her eyes rolled in
+her head as if she were giving up the ghost.
+
+"I'd rather do it than see her choke to death!" cried the boy, in
+despair.
+
+"Then, by ginger, you can try it, sonny!" said Uncle Cash. "Now this
+time we'll tie her head up. Take it slow, and make a good job of it."
+
+Accordingly they pried poor Buttercup's jaws open to put a wooden gag
+between them, tied her head up, and kept her as still as they could
+while the women held the lanterns.
+
+"Now, sonny, strip up your sleeve and reach as fur down's you can! Wind
+your little fingers in among that green stuff stickin' up there that
+ain't hardly big enough to call green stuff, give it a twist, and pull
+for all you're worth. Land! What a skinny little pipe stem!"
+
+The Little Prophet had stripped up his sleeve. It was a slender thing,
+his arm; but he had driven the red cow all summer, borne her tantrums,
+protected her from the consequences of her own obstinacy, taking (as he
+thought) a future owner's pride in her splendid flow of milk--grown fond
+of her, in a word, and now she was choking to death. A skinny little
+pipe stem is capable of a deal at such a time, and only a slender hand
+and arm could have done the work.
+
+Elisha trembled with nervousness, but he made a dexterous and dashing
+entrance into the awful cavern of Buttercup's mouth; descended upon the
+tiny clump of green spills or spikes, wound his little fingers in among
+them as firmly as he could, and then gave a long, steady, determined
+pull with all the strength in this body. That was not so much in itself,
+to be sure, but he borrowed a good deal more from some reserve quarter,
+the location of which nobody knows anything about, but upon which
+everybody draws in time of need.
+
+Such a valiant pull you would never have expected of the Little Prophet.
+Such a pull it was that, to his own utter amazement, he suddenly found
+himself lying flat on his back on the barn floor with a very slippery
+something in his hand, and a fair-sized but rather dilapidated turnip at
+the end of it.
+
+"That's the business!" cried Moses.
+
+"I could 'a' done it as easy as nothin' if my arm had been a leetle mite
+smaller," said Bill Peters.
+
+"You're a trump, sonny!" exclaimed Uncle Cash, as he helped Moses untie
+Buttercup's head and took the gag out.
+
+"You're a trump, Lisha, and, by ginger, the cow's your'n; only don't you
+let your blessed pa drink none of her cream!"
+
+The welcome air rushed into Buttercup's lungs and cooled her parched,
+torn throat. She was pretty nearly spent, poor thing, and bent her head
+(rather gently for her) over the Little Prophet's shoulder as he threw
+his arms joyfully about her neck, and whispered, "You're my truly cow
+now, ain't you, Buttercup?"
+
+"Mrs. Baxter, dear," said Rebecca, as they walked home to the parsonage
+together under the young harvest moon; "there are all sorts of cowards,
+aren't there, and don't you think Elisha is one of the best kind."
+
+"I don't quite know what to think about cowards, Rebecca Rowena," said
+the minister's wife hesitatingly. "The Little Prophet is the third
+coward I have known in my short life who turned out to be a hero when
+the real testing time came. Meanwhile the heroes themselves--or the ones
+that were taken for heroes--were always busy doing something, or being
+somewhere, else."
+
+
+
+
+Eighth Chronicle. ABNER SIMPSON'S NEW LEAF
+
+
+Rebecca had now cut the bonds that bound her to the Riverboro district
+school, and had been for a week a full-fledged pupil at the Wareham
+Seminary, towards which goal she had been speeding ever since the
+memorable day when she rode into Riverboro on the top of Uncle Jerry
+Cobb's stagecoach, and told him that education was intended to be "the
+making of her."
+
+She went to and fro, with Emma Jane and the other Riverboro boys and
+girls, on the morning and evening trains that ran between the academy
+town and Milliken's Mills.
+
+The six days had passed like a dream!--a dream in which she sat in
+corners with her eyes cast down; flushed whenever she was addressed;
+stammered whenever she answered a question, and nearly died of heart
+failure when subjected to an examination of any sort. She delighted
+the committee when reading at sight from "King Lear," but somewhat
+discouraged them when she could not tell the capital of the United
+States. She admitted that her former teacher, Miss Dearborn, might have
+mentioned it, but if so she had not remembered it.
+
+In these first weeks among strangers she passed for nothing but an
+interesting-looking, timid, innocent, country child, never revealing,
+even to the far-seeing Emily Maxwell, a hint of her originality,
+facility, or power in any direction. Rebecca was fourteen, but so
+slight, and under the paralyzing new conditions so shy, that she
+would have been mistaken for twelve had it not been for her general
+advancement in the school curriculum.
+
+Growing up in the solitude of a remote farm house, transplanted to a
+tiny village where she lived with two elderly spinsters, she was still
+the veriest child in all but the practical duties and responsibilities
+of life; in those she had long been a woman.
+
+It was Saturday afternoon; her lessons for Monday were all learned and
+she burst into the brick house sitting-room with the flushed face and
+embarrassed mien that always foreshadowed a request. Requests were more
+commonly answered in the negative than in the affirmative at the brick
+house, a fact that accounted for the slight confusion in her demeanor.
+
+"Aunt Miranda," she began, "the fishman says that Clara Belle Simpson
+wants to see me very much, but Mrs. Fogg can't spare her long at a time,
+you know, on account of the baby being no better; but Clara Belle could
+walk a mile up, and I a mile down the road, and we could meet at the
+pink house half way. Then we could rest and talk an hour or so, and both
+be back in time for our suppers. I've fed the cat; she had no appetite,
+as it's only two o'clock and she had her dinner at noon, but she'll go
+back to her saucer, and it's off my mind. I could go down cellar now
+and bring up the cookies and the pie and doughnuts for supper before I
+start. Aunt Jane saw no objection; but we thought I'd better ask you so
+as to run no risks."
+
+Miranda Sawyer, who had been patiently waiting for the end of this
+speech, laid down her knitting and raised her eyes with a half-resigned
+expression that meant: Is there anything unusual in heaven or earth or
+the waters under the earth that this child does not want to do? Will she
+ever settle down to plain, comprehensible Sawyer ways, or will she to
+the end make these sudden and radical propositions, suggesting at every
+turn the irresponsible Randall ancestry?
+
+"You know well enough, Rebecca, that I don't like you to be intimate
+with Abner Simpson's young ones," she said decisively. "They ain't fit
+company for anybody that's got Sawyer blood in their veins, if it's ever
+so little. I don't know, I'm sure, how you're goin' to turn out! The
+fish peddler seems to be your best friend, without it's Abijah Flagg
+that you're everlastingly talkin' to lately. I should think you'd
+rather read some improvin' book than to be chatterin' with Squire Bean's
+chore-boy!"
+
+"He isn't always going to be a chore-boy," explained Rebecca, "and
+that's what we're considering. It's his career we talk about, and he
+hasn't got any father or mother to advise him. Besides, Clara Belle kind
+of belongs to the village now that she lives with Mrs. Fogg; and she
+was always the best behaved of all the girls, either in school or
+Sunday-school. Children can't help having fathers!"
+
+"Everybody says Abner is turning over a new leaf, and if so, the
+family'd ought to be encouraged every possible way," said Miss Jane,
+entering the room with her mending basket in hand.
+
+"If Abner Simpson is turnin' over a leaf, or anythin' else in creation,
+it's only to see what's on the under side!" remarked Miss Miranda
+promptly. "Don't talk to me about new leaves! You can't change that kind
+of a man; he is what he is, and you can't make him no different!"
+
+"The grace of God can do consid'rable," observed Jane piously.
+
+"I ain't sayin' but it can if it sets out, but it has to begin early and
+stay late on a man like Simpson."
+
+"Now, Mirandy, Abner ain't more'n forty! I don't know what the average
+age for repentance is in men-folks, but when you think of what an awful
+sight of em leaves it to their deathbeds, forty seems real kind
+of young. Not that I've heard Abner has experienced religion, but
+everybody's surprised at the good way he's conductin' this fall."
+
+"They'll be surprised the other way round when they come to miss their
+firewood and apples and potatoes again," affirmed Miranda.
+
+"Clara Belle don't seem to have inherited from her father," Jane
+ventured again timidly. "No wonder Mrs. Fogg sets such store by the
+girl. If it hadn't been for her, the baby would have been dead by now."
+
+"Perhaps tryin' to save it was interferin' with the Lord's will," was
+Miranda's retort.
+
+"Folks can't stop to figure out just what's the Lord's will when a child
+has upset a kettle of scalding water on to himself," and as she spoke
+Jane darned more excitedly. "Mrs. Fogg knows well enough she hadn't
+ought to have left that baby alone in the kitchen with the stove, even
+if she did see Clara Belle comin' across lots. She'd ought to have
+waited before drivin' off; but of course she was afraid of missing the
+train, and she's too good a woman to be held accountable."
+
+"The minister's wife says Clara Belle is a real--I can't think of the
+word!" chimed in Rebecca. "What's the female of hero? Whatever it is,
+that's what Mrs. Baxter called her!"
+
+"Clara Belle's the female of Simpson; that's what she is," Miss Miranda
+asserted; "but she's been brought up to use her wits, and I ain't sayin'
+but she used em."
+
+"I should say she did!" exclaimed Miss Jane; "to put that screaming,
+suffering child in the baby-carriage and run all the way to the doctor's
+when there wasn't a soul on hand to advise her! Two or three more such
+actions would make the Simpson name sound consid'rable sweeter in this
+neighborhood."
+
+"Simpson will always sound like Simpson to me!" vouchsafed the elder
+sister, "but we've talked enough about em an' to spare. You can go
+along, Rebecca; but remember that a child is known by the company she
+keeps."
+
+"All right, Aunt Miranda; thank you!" cried Rebecca, leaping from the
+chair on which she had been twisting nervously for five minutes. "And
+how does this strike you? Would you be in favor of my taking Clara Belle
+a company-tart?"
+
+"Don't Mrs. Fogg feed the young one, now she's taken her right into the
+family?"
+
+"Oh, yes," Rebecca answered, "she has lovely things to eat, and Mrs.
+Fogg won't even let her drink skim milk; but I always feel that taking
+a present lets the person know you've been thinking about them and are
+extra glad to see them. Besides, unless we have company soon, those
+tarts will have to be eaten by the family, and a new batch made; you
+remember the one I had when I was rewarding myself last week? That was
+queer--but nice," she added hastily.
+
+"Mebbe you could think of something of your own you could give away
+without taking my tarts!" responded Miranda tersely; the joints of her
+armor having been pierced by the fatally keen tongue of her niece, who
+had insinuated that company-tarts lasted a long time in the brick house.
+This was a fact; indeed, the company-tart was so named, not from any
+idea that it would ever be eaten by guests, but because it was too good
+for every-day use.
+
+Rebecca's face crimsoned with shame that she had drifted into an
+impolite and, what was worse, an apparently ungrateful speech.
+
+"I didn't mean to say anything not nice, Aunt Miranda," she stammered.
+"Truly the tart was splendid, but not exactly like new, that's all. And
+oh! I know what I can take Clara Belle! A few chocolate drops out of the
+box Mr. Ladd gave me on my birthday."
+
+"You go down cellar and get that tart, same as I told you," commanded
+Miranda, "and when you fill it don't uncover a new tumbler of jelly;
+there's some dried-apple preserves open that'll do. Wear your rubbers
+and your thick jacket. After runnin' all the way down there--for your
+legs never seem to be rigged for walkin' like other girls'--you'll set
+down on some damp stone or other and ketch your death o' cold, an' your
+Aunt Jane n' I'll be kep' up nights nursin' you and luggin' your meals
+upstairs to you on a waiter."
+
+ Here Miranda leaned her head against the back of her rocking
+chair, dropped her knitting and closed her eyes wearily, for when the
+immovable body is opposed by the irresistible force there is a certain
+amount of jar and disturbance involved in the operation.
+
+Rebecca moved toward the side door, shooting a questioning glance at
+Aunt Jane as she passed. The look was full of mysterious suggestion and
+was accompanied by an almost imperceptible gesture. Miss Jane knew that
+certain articles were kept in the entry closet, and by this time she had
+become sufficiently expert in telegraphy to know that Rebecca's unspoken
+query meant: "COULD YOU PERMIT THE HAT WITH THE RED WINGS, IT BEING
+SATURDAY, FINE SETTLED WEATHER, AND A PLEASURE EXCURSION?"
+
+These confidential requests, though fraught with embarrassment when
+Miranda was in the room, gave Jane much secret joy; there was something
+about them that stirred her spinster heart--they were so gay, so
+appealing, so un-Sawyer-, un-Riverboro-like. The longer Rebecca lived in
+the brick house the more her Aunt Jane marveled at the child. What made
+her so different from everybody else. Could it be that her graceless
+popinjay of a father, Lorenzo de Medici Randall, had bequeathed her some
+strange combination of gifts instead of fortune? Her eyes, her brows,
+the color of her lips, the shape of her face, as well as her ways and
+words, proclaimed her a changeling in the Sawyer tribe; but what an
+enchanting changeling; bringing wit and nonsense and color and delight
+into the gray monotony of the dragging years!
+
+There was frost in the air, but a bright cheery sun, as Rebecca walked
+decorously out of the brick house yard. Emma Jane Perkins was away over
+Sunday on a visit to a cousin in Moderation; Alice Robinson and Candace
+Milliken were having measles, and Riverboro was very quiet. Still, life
+was seldom anything but a gay adventure to Rebecca, and she started
+afresh every morning to its conquest. She was not exacting; the Asmodean
+feat of spinning a sand heap into twine was, poetically speaking, always
+in her power, so the mile walk to the pink-house gate, and the tryst
+with freckled, red-haired Clara Belle Simpson, whose face Miss Miranda
+said looked like a raw pie in a brick oven, these commonplace incidents
+were sufficiently exhilarating to brighten her eye and quicken her step.
+
+As the great bare horse-chestnut near the pink-house gate loomed into
+view, the red linsey-woolsey speck going down the road spied the
+blue linsey-woolsey speck coming up, and both specks flew over the
+intervening distance and, meeting, embraced each other ardently,
+somewhat to the injury of the company-tart.
+
+"Didn't it come out splendidly?" exclaimed Rebecca. "I was so afraid
+the fishman wouldn't tell you to start exactly at two, or that one of us
+would walk faster than the other; but we met at the very spot! It was a
+very uncommon idea, wasn't it? Almost romantic!"
+
+"And what do you think?" asked Clara Belle proudly. "Look at this! Mrs.
+Fogg lent me her watch to come home by!"
+
+"Oh, Clara Belle, how wonderful! Mrs. Fogg gets kinder and kinder to
+you, doesn't she? You're not homesick any more, are you?"
+
+"No-o; not really; only when I remember there's only little Susan to
+manage the twins; though they're getting on real well without me. But I
+kind of think, Rebecca, that I'm going to be given away to the Foggs for
+good."
+
+"Do you mean adopted?"
+
+"Yes; I think father's going to sign papers. You see we can't tell how
+many years it'll be before the poor baby outgrows its burns, and Mrs.
+Fogg'll never be the same again, and she must have somebody to help
+her."
+
+"You'll be their real daughter, then, won't you, Clara Belle? And
+Mr. Fogg is a deacon, and a selectman, and a road commissioner, and
+everything splendid."
+
+"Yes; I'll have board, and clothes, and school, and be named Fogg, and"
+(here her voice sank to an awed whisper) "the upper farm if I should
+ever get married; Miss Dearborn told me that herself, when she was
+persuading me not to mind being given away."
+
+"Clara Belle Simpson!" exclaimed Rebecca in a transport. "Who'd have
+thought you'd be a female hero and an heiress besides? It's just like
+a book story, and it happened in Riverboro. I'll make Uncle Jerry Cobb
+allow there CAN be Riverboro stories, you see if I don't."
+
+"Of course I know it's all right," Clara Belle replied soberly. "I'll
+have a good home and father can't keep us all; but it's kind of dreadful
+to be given away, like a piano or a horse and carriage!"
+
+Rebecca's hand went out sympathetically to Clara Belle's freckled paw.
+Suddenly her own face clouded and she whispered:
+
+"I'm not sure, Clara Belle, but I'm given away too--do you s'pose I
+am? Poor father left us in debt, you see. I thought I came away from
+Sunnybrook to get an education and then help pay off the mortgage; but
+mother doesn't say anything about my coming back, and our family's one
+of those too-big ones, you know, just like yours."
+
+"Did your mother sign papers to your aunts?'
+
+"If she did I never heard anything about it; but there's something
+pinned on to the mortgage that mother keeps in the drawer of the
+bookcase."
+
+"You'd know it if twas adoption papers; I guess you're just lent," Clara
+Belle said cheeringly. "I don't believe anybody'd ever give YOU away!
+And, oh! Rebecca, father's getting on so well! He works on Daly's farm
+where they raise lots of horses and cattle, too, and he breaks all the
+young colts and trains them, and swaps off the poor ones, and drives
+all over the country. Daly told Mr. Fogg he was splendid with stock,
+and father says it's just like play. He's sent home money three Saturday
+nights."
+
+"I'm so glad!" exclaimed Rebecca sympathetically. "Now your mother'll
+have a good time and a black silk dress, won't she?"
+
+"I don't know," sighed Clara Belle, and her voice was grave. "Ever since
+I can remember she's just washed and cried and cried and washed. Miss
+Dearborn has been spending her vacation up to Acreville, you know,
+and she came yesterday to board next door to Mrs. Fogg's. I heard them
+talking last night when I was getting the baby to sleep--I couldn't
+help it, they were so close--and Miss Dearborn said mother doesn't like
+Acreville; she says nobody takes any notice of her, and they don't give
+her any more work. Mrs. Fogg said, well, they were dreadful stiff and
+particular up that way and they liked women to have wedding rings."
+
+"Hasn't your mother got a wedding ring?" asked Rebecca, astonished.
+"Why, I thought everybody HAD to have them, just as they do sofas and a
+kitchen stove!"
+
+"I never noticed she didn't have one, but when they spoke I remembered
+mother's hands washing and wringing, and she doesn't wear one, I know.
+She hasn't got any jewelry, not even a breast-pin."
+
+Rebecca's tone was somewhat censorious, "your father's been so poor
+perhaps he couldn't afford breast-pins, but I should have thought he'd
+have given your mother a wedding ring when they were married; that's the
+time to do it, right at the very first."
+
+"They didn't have any real church dress-up wedding," explained Clara
+Belle extenuatingly. "You see the first mother, mine, had the big boys
+and me, and then she died when we were little. Then after a while this
+mother came to housekeep, and she stayed, and by and by she was Mrs.
+Simpson, and Susan and the twins and the baby are hers, and she and
+father didn't have time for a regular wedding in church. They don't have
+veils and bridesmaids and refreshments round here like Miss Dearborn's
+sister did."
+
+"Do they cost a great deal--wedding rings?" asked Rebecca thoughtfully.
+"They're solid gold, so I s'pose they do. If they were cheap we might
+buy one. I've got seventy-four cents saved up; how much have you?"
+
+"Fifty-three," Clara Belle responded, in a depressing tone; "and anyway
+there are no stores nearer than Milltown. We'd have to buy it secretly,
+for I wouldn't make father angry, or shame his pride, now he's got
+steady work; and mother would know I had spent all my savings."
+
+Rebecca looked nonplussed. "I declare," she said, "I think the Acreville
+people must be perfectly horrid not to call on your mother only because
+she hasn't got any jewelry. You wouldn't dare tell your father what Miss
+Dearborn heard, so he'd save up and buy the ring?"
+
+"No; I certainly would not!" and Clara Belle's lips closed tightly and
+decisively.
+
+Rebecca sat quietly for a few moments, then she exclaimed jubilantly:
+"I know where we could get it! From Mr. Aladdin, and then I needn't tell
+him who it's for! He's coming to stay over tomorrow with his aunt, and
+I'll ask him to buy a ring for us in Boston. I won't explain anything,
+you know; I'll just say I need a wedding ring."
+
+"That would be perfectly lovely," replied Clara Belle, a look of hope
+dawning in her eyes; "and we can think afterwards how to get it over to
+mother. Perhaps you could send it to father instead, but I wouldn't dare
+to do it myself. You won't tell anybody, Rebecca?"
+
+"Cross my heart!" Rebecca exclaimed dramatically; and then with a
+reproachful look, "you know I couldn't repeat a sacred secret like
+that! Shall we meet next Saturday afternoon, and I tell you what's
+happened?--Why, Clara Belle, isn't that Mr. Ladd watering his horse at
+the foot of the hill this very minute? It is; and he's driven up from
+Milltown stead of coming on the train from Boston to Edgewood. He's all
+alone, and I can ride home with him and ask him about the ring right
+away!"
+
+Clara Belle kissed Rebecca fervently, and started on her homeward
+walk, while Rebecca waited at the top of the long hill, fluttering her
+handkerchief as a signal.
+
+"Mr. Aladdin! Mr. Aladdin!" she cried, as the horse and wagon came
+nearer.
+
+Adam Ladd drew up quickly at the sound of the eager young voice.
+
+"Well, well; here is Rebecca Rowena fluttering along the highroad like a
+red-winged blackbird! Are you going to fly home, or drive with me?"
+
+Rebecca clambered into the carriage, laughing and blushing with delight
+at his nonsense and with joy at seeing him again.
+
+"Clara Belle and I were just talking about you this minute, and I'm so
+glad you came this way, for there's something very important to ask you
+about," she began, rather breathlessly.
+
+"No doubt," laughed Adam Ladd, who had become, in the course of his
+acquaintance with Rebecca, a sort of high court of appeals; "I hope the
+premium banquet lamp doesn't smoke as it grows older?"
+
+"Now, Mr. Aladdin, you WILL not remember nicely. Mr. Simpson swapped off
+the banquet lamp when he was moving the family to Acreville; it's not
+the lamp at all, but once, when you were here last time, you said you'd
+make up your mind what you were going to give me for Christmas."
+
+"Well," and "I do remember that much quite nicely."
+
+"Well, is it bought?"
+
+"No, I never buy Christmas presents before Thanksgiving."
+
+"Then, DEAR Mr. Aladdin, would you buy me something different, something
+that I want to give away, and buy it a little sooner than Christmas?"
+
+"That depends. I don't relish having my Christmas presents given away.
+I like to have them kept forever in little girls' bureau drawers, all
+wrapped in pink tissue paper; but explain the matter and perhaps I'll
+change my mind. What is it you want?"
+
+"I need a wedding ring dreadfully," said Rebecca, "but it's a sacred
+secret."
+
+Adam Ladd's eyes flashed with surprise and he smiled to himself with
+pleasure. Had he on his list of acquaintances, he asked himself, a
+person of any age or sex so altogether irresistible and unique as this
+child? Then he turned to face her with the merry teasing look that made
+him so delightful to young people.
+
+"I thought it was perfectly understood between us," he said, "that if
+you could ever contrive to grow up and I were willing to wait, that I
+was to ride up to the brick house on my snow white"--
+
+"Coal black," corrected Rebecca, with a sparkling eye and a warning
+finger.
+
+"Coal black charger; put a golden circlet on your lily white finger,
+draw you up behind me on my pillion"--
+
+"And Emma Jane, too," Rebecca interrupted.
+
+"I think I didn't mention Emma Jane," argued Mr. Aladdin. "Three on a
+pillion is very uncomfortable. I think Emma Jane leaps on the back of a
+prancing chestnut, and we all go off to my castle in the forest."
+
+"Emma Jane never leaps, and she'd be afraid of a prancing chestnut,"
+objected Rebecca.
+
+"Then she shall have a gentle cream-colored pony; but now, without any
+explanation, you ask me to buy you a wedding ring, which shows
+plainly that you are planning to ride off on a snow white--I mean coal
+black--charger with somebody else."
+
+Rebecca dimpled and laughed with joy at the nonsense. In her prosaic
+world no one but Adam Ladd played the game and answered the fool
+according to his folly. Nobody else talked delicious fairy-story twaddle
+but Mr. Aladdin.
+
+"The ring isn't for ME!" she explained carefully. "You know very well
+that Emma Jane nor I can't be married till we're through Quackenbos's
+Grammar, Greenleaf's Arithmetic, and big enough to wear long trails and
+run a sewing machine. The ring is for a friend."
+
+"Why doesn't the groom give it to his bride himself?"
+
+"Because he's poor and kind of thoughtless, and anyway she isn't a bride
+any more; she has three step and three other kind of children."
+
+Adam Ladd put the whip back in the socket thoughtfully, and then stooped
+to tuck in the rug over Rebecca's feet and his own. When he raised his
+head again he asked: "Why not tell me a little more, Rebecca? I'm safe!"
+
+Rebecca looked at him, feeling his wisdom and strength, and above all
+his sympathy. Then she said hesitatingly: "You remember I told you all
+about the Simpsons that day on your aunt's porch when you bought the
+soap because I told you how the family were always in trouble and how
+much they needed a banquet lamp? Mr. Simpson, Clara Belle's father, has
+always been very poor, and not always very good,--a little bit THIEVISH,
+you know--but oh, so pleasant and nice to talk to! And now he's turning
+over a new leaf. And everybody in Riverboro liked Mrs. Simpson when she
+came here a stranger, because they were sorry for her and she was so
+patient, and such a hard worker, and so kind to the children. But where
+she lives now, though they used to know her when she was a girl, they're
+not polite to her and don't give her scrubbing and washing; and Clara
+belle heard our teacher say to Mrs. Fogg that the Acreville people were
+stiff, and despised her because she didn't wear a wedding ring, like all
+the rest. And Clara Belle and I thought if they were so mean as that,
+we'd love to give her one, and then she'd be happier and have more
+work; and perhaps Mr. Simpson if he gets along better will buy her a
+breast-pin and earrings, and she'll be fitted out like the others. I
+know Mrs. Peter Meserve is looked up to by everybody in Edgewood on
+account of her gold bracelets and moss agate necklace."
+
+Adam turned again to meet the luminous, innocent eyes that glowed under
+the delicate brows and long lashes, feeling as he had more than once
+felt before, as if his worldly-wise, grown-up thoughts had been bathed
+in some purifying spring.
+
+"How shall you send the ring to Mrs. Simpson?" he asked, with interest.
+
+"We haven't settled yet; Clara Belle's afraid to do it, and thinks I
+could manage better. Will the ring cost much? Because, of course, if it
+does, I must ask Aunt Jane first. There are things I have to ask Aunt
+Miranda, and others that belong to Aunt Jane."
+
+"It costs the merest trifle. I'll buy one and bring it to you, and we'll
+consult about it; but I think as you're great friends with Mr. Simpson
+you'd better send it to him in a letter, letters being your strong
+point! It's a present a man ought to give his own wife, but it's worth
+trying, Rebecca. You and Clara Belle can manage it between you, and I'll
+stay in the background where nobody will see me."
+
+
+
+
+Ninth Chronicle. THE GREEN ISLE
+
+     Many a green isle needs must be
+     In the deep sea of misery,
+     Or the mariner, worn and wan,
+     Never thus could voyage on
+     Day and night and night and day,
+     Drifting on his weary way.
+
+     --Shelley
+
+
+Meantime in these frosty autumn days life was crowded with events in the
+lonely Simpson house at Acreville.
+
+The tumble-down dwelling stood on the edge of Pliney's Pond; so called
+because old Colonel Richardson left his lands to be divided in five
+equal parts, each share to be chosen in turn by one of his five sons,
+Pliny, the eldest, having priority of choice.
+
+Pliny Richardson, having little taste for farming, and being ardently
+fond of fishing, rowing, and swimming, acted up to his reputation
+of being "a little mite odd," and took his whole twenty acres in
+water--hence Pliny's Pond.
+
+The eldest Simpson boy had been working on a farm in Cumberland County
+for two years. Samuel, generally dubbed "see-saw," had lately found a
+humble place in a shingle mill and was partially self-supporting. Clara
+Belle had been adopted by the Foggs; thus there were only three mouths
+to fill, the capacious ones of Elijah and Elisha, the twin boys, and
+of lisping, nine-year-old Susan, the capable houseworker and
+mother's assistant, for the baby had died during the summer; died of
+discouragement at having been born into a family unprovided with food
+or money or love or care, or even with desire for, or appreciation of,
+babies.
+
+There was no doubt that the erratic father of the house had turned over
+a new leaf. Exactly when he began, or how, or why, or how long he would
+continue the praiseworthy process,--in a word whether there would be
+more leaves turned as the months went on,--Mrs. Simpson did not know,
+and it is doubtful if any authority lower than that of Mr. Simpson's
+Maker could have decided the matter. He had stolen articles for swapping
+purposes for a long time, but had often avoided detection, and always
+escaped punishment until the last few years. Three fines imposed for
+small offenses were followed by several arrests and two imprisonments
+for brief periods, and he found himself wholly out of sympathy with
+the wages of sin. Sin itself he did not especially mind, but the wages
+thereof were decidedly unpleasant and irksome to him. He also minded
+very much the isolated position in the community which had lately become
+his; for he was a social being and would ALMOST rather not steal from a
+neighbor than have him find it out and cease intercourse! This feeling
+was working in him and rendering him unaccountably irritable and
+depressed when he took his daughter over to Riverboro at the time of the
+great flag-raising.
+
+There are seasons of refreshment, as well as seasons of drought, in the
+spiritual, as in the natural world, and in some way or other dews
+and rains of grace fell upon Abner Simpson's heart during that brief
+journey. Perhaps the giving away of a child that he could not support
+had made the soil of his heart a little softer and readier for planting
+than usual; but when he stole the new flag off Mrs. Peter Meserve's
+doorsteps, under the impression that the cotton-covered bundle
+contained freshly washed clothes, he unconsciously set certain forces in
+operation.
+
+It will be remembered that Rebecca saw an inch of red bunting peeping
+from the back of his wagon, and asked the pleasure of a drive with him.
+She was no daughter of the regiment, but she proposed to follow the
+flag. When she diplomatically requested the return of the sacred
+object which was to be the glory of the "raising" next day, and he thus
+discovered his mistake, he was furious with himself for having slipped
+into a disagreeable predicament; and later, when he unexpectedly faced
+a detachment of Riverboro society at the cross-roads, and met not only
+their wrath and scorn, but the reproachful, disappointed glance of
+Rebecca's eyes, he felt degraded as never before.
+
+The night at the Centre tavern did not help matters, nor the jolly
+patriotic meeting of the three villages at the flag-raising next
+morning. He would have enjoyed being at the head and front of the
+festive preparations, but as he had cut himself off from all such
+friendly gatherings, he intended at any rate to sit in his wagon on the
+very outskirts of the assembled crowd and see some of the gayety; for,
+heaven knows, he had little enough, he who loved talk, and song, and
+story, and laughter, and excitement.
+
+The flag was raised, the crowd cheered, the little girl to whom he had
+lied, the girl who was impersonating the State of Maine, was on the
+platform "speaking her piece," and he could just distinguish some of the
+words she was saying:
+
+"For it's your star, my star, all the stars together, That makes our
+country's flag so proud To float in the bright fall weather."
+
+Then suddenly there was a clarion voice cleaving the air, and he saw
+a tall man standing in the centre of the stage and heard him crying:
+"THREE CHEERS FOR THE GIRL THAT SAVED THE FLAG FROM THE HANDS OF THE
+ENEMY!"
+
+He was sore and bitter enough already; lonely, isolated enough; with
+no lot nor share in the honest community life; no hand to shake, no
+neighbor's meal to share; and this unexpected public arraignment smote
+him between the eyes. With resentment newly kindled, pride wounded,
+vanity bleeding, he flung a curse at the joyous throng and drove toward
+home, the home where he would find his ragged children and meet the
+timid eyes of a woman who had been the loyal partner of his poverty and
+disgraces.
+
+It is probable that even then his (extremely light) hand was already on
+the "new leaf." The angels, doubtless, were not especially proud of the
+matter and manner of his reformation, but I dare say they were glad to
+count him theirs on any terms, so difficult is the reformation of this
+blind and foolish world! They must have been; for they immediately
+flung into his very lap a profitable, and what is more to the point, an
+interesting and agreeable situation where money could be earned by doing
+the very things his nature craved. There were feats of daring to be
+performed in sight of admiring and applauding stable boys; the horses
+he loved were his companions; he was OBLIGED to "swap," for Daly, his
+employer, counted on him to get rid of all undesirable stock; power and
+responsibility of a sort were given him freely, for Daly was no Puritan,
+and felt himself amply capable of managing any number of Simpsons;
+so here were numberless advantages within the man's grasp, and wages
+besides!
+
+Abner positively felt no temptation to steal; his soul expanded with
+pride, and the admiration and astonishment with which he regarded
+his virtuous present was only equaled by the disgust with which he
+contemplated his past; not so much a vicious past, in his own generous
+estimation of it, as a "thunderin' foolish" one.
+
+Mrs. Simpson took the same view of Abner's new leaf as the angels.
+She was thankful for even a brief season of honesty coupled with the
+Saturday night remittance; and if she still washed and cried and cried
+and washed, as Clara Belle had always seen her, it was either because of
+some hidden sorrow, or because her poor strength seemed all at once to
+have deserted her.
+
+Just when employment and good fortune had come to the step-children, and
+her own were better fed and clothed than ever before, the pain that had
+always lurked, constant but dull, near her tired heart, grew fierce
+and triumphantly strong; clutching her in its talons, biting, gnawing,
+worrying, leaving her each week with slighter powers of resistance.
+Still hope was in the air and a greater content than had ever been hers
+was in her eyes; a content that came near to happiness when the doctor
+ordered her to keep her bed and sent for Clara Belle. She could not wash
+any longer, but there was the ever new miracle of the Saturday night
+remittance for household expenses.
+
+"Is your pain bad today, mother," asked Clara Belle, who, only lately
+given away, was merely borrowed from Mrs. Fogg for what was thought to
+be a brief emergency.
+
+"Well, there, I can't hardly tell, Clara Belle," Mrs. Simpson replied,
+with a faint smile. "I can't seem to remember the pain these days
+without it's extra bad. The neighbors are so kind; Mrs. Little has sent
+me canned mustard greens, and Mrs. Benson chocolate ice cream and mince
+pie; there's the doctor's drops to make me sleep, and these blankets
+and that great box of eatables from Mr. Ladd; and you here to keep me
+comp'ny! I declare I'm kind o' dazed with comforts. I never expected to
+see sherry wine in this house. I ain't never drawed the cork; it does
+me good enough jest to look at Mr. Ladd's bottle settin' on the
+mantel-piece with the fire shinin' on the brown glass."
+
+Mr. Simpson had come to see his wife and had met the doctor just as he
+was leaving the house.
+
+"She looks awful bad to me. Is she goin' to pull through all right, same
+as the last time?" he asked the doctor nervously.
+
+"She's going to pull right through into the other world," the doctor
+answered bluntly; "and as there don't seem to be anybody else to take
+the bull by the horns, I'd advise you, having made the woman's life
+about as hard and miserable as you could, to try and help her to die
+easy!"
+
+Abner, surprised and crushed by the weight of this verbal chastisement,
+sat down on the doorstep, his head in his hands, and thought a while
+solemnly. Thought was not an operation he was wont to indulge in, and
+when he opened the gate a few minutes later and walked slowly toward
+the barn for his horse, he looked pale and unnerved. It is uncommonly
+startling, first to see yourself in another man's scornful eyes, and
+then, clearly, in your own.
+
+Two days later he came again, and this time it was decreed that he
+should find Parson Carll tying his piebald mare at the post.
+
+Clara Belle's quick eye had observed the minister as he alighted from
+his buggy, and, warning her mother, she hastily smoothed the bedclothes,
+arranged the medicine bottles, and swept the hearth.
+
+"Oh! Don't let him in!" wailed Mrs. Simpson, all of a flutter at the
+prospect of such a visitor. "Oh, dear! They must think over to the
+village that I'm dreadful sick, or the minister wouldn't never think
+of callin'! Don't let him in, Clara Belle! I'm afraid he will say hard
+words to me, or pray to me; and I ain't never been prayed to since I was
+a child! Is his wife with him?"
+
+"No; he's alone; but father's just drove up and is hitching at the shed
+door."
+
+"That's worse than all!" and Mrs. Simpson raised herself feebly on her
+pillows and clasped her hands in despair. "You mustn't let them two
+meet, Clara Belle, and you must send Mr. Carll away; your father
+wouldn't have a minister in the house, nor speak to one, for a thousand
+dollars!"
+
+"Be quiet, mother! Lie down! It'll be all right! You'll only fret
+yourself into a spell! The minister's just a good man; he won't say
+anything to frighten you. Father's talking with him real pleasant, and
+pointing the way to the front door."
+
+The parson knocked and was admitted by the excited Clara Belle, who
+ushered him tremblingly into the sickroom, and then betook herself to
+the kitchen with the children, as he gently requested her.
+
+Abner Simpson, left alone in the shed, fumbled in his vest pocket and
+took out an envelope which held a sheet of paper and a tiny packet
+wrapped in tissue paper. The letter had been read once before and ran as
+follows:
+
+Dear Mr. Simpson:
+
+This is a secret letter. I heard that the Acreville people weren't nice
+to Mrs. Simpson because she didn't have any wedding ring like all the
+others.
+
+I know you've always been poor, dear Mr. Simpson, and troubled with a
+large family like ours at the farm; but you really ought to have given
+Mrs. Simpson a ring when you were married to her, right at the very
+first; for then it would have been over and done with, as they are solid
+gold and last forever. And probably she wouldn't feel like asking you
+for one, because ladies are just like girls, only grown up, and I know
+I'd be ashamed to beg for jewelry when just board and clothes cost
+so much. So I send you a nice, new wedding ring to save your buying,
+thinking you might get Mrs. Simpson a bracelet or eardrops for
+Christmas. It did not cost me anything, as it was a secret present from
+a friend.
+
+I hear Mrs. Simpson is sick, and it would be a great comfort to her
+while she is in bed and has so much time to look at it. When I had
+the measles Emma Jane Perkins lent me her mother's garnet ring, and it
+helped me very much to put my wasted hand outside the bedclothes and see
+the ring sparkling.
+
+Please don't be angry with me, dear Mr. Simpson, because I like you
+so much and am so glad you are happy with the horses and colts; and I
+believe now perhaps you DID think the flag was a bundle of washing
+when you took it that day; so no more from your Trusted friend, Rebecca
+Rowena Randall.
+
+Simpson tore the letter slowly and quietly into fragments and scattered
+the bits on the woodpile, took off his hat, and smoothed his hair;
+pulled his mustaches thoughtfully, straightened his shoulders, and then,
+holding the tiny packet in the palm of his hand, he went round to the
+front door, and having entered the house stood outside the sickroom for
+an instant, turned the knob and walked softly in.
+
+Then at last the angels might have enjoyed a moment of unmixed joy, for
+in that brief walk from shed to house Abner Simpson;'s conscience waked
+to life and attained sufficient strength to prick and sting, to provoke
+remorse, to incite penitence, to do all sorts of divine and beautiful
+things it was meant for, but had never been allowed to do.
+
+Clara Belle went about the kitchen quietly, making preparations for the
+children's supper. She had left Riverboro in haste, as the change for
+the worse in Mrs. Simpson had been very sudden, but since she had come
+she had thought more than once of the wedding ring. She had wondered
+whether Mr. Ladd had bought it for Rebecca, and whether Rebecca would
+find means to send it to Acreville; but her cares had been so many and
+varied that the subject had now finally retired to the background of her
+mind.
+
+The hands of the clock crept on and she kept hushing the strident tones
+of Elijah and Elisha, opening and shutting the oven door to look at
+the corn bread, advising Susan as to her dishes, and marveling that the
+minister stayed so long.
+
+At last she heard a door open and close and saw the old parson come
+out, wiping his spectacles, and step into the buggy for his drive to the
+village.
+
+Then there was another period of suspense, during which the house was
+as silent as the grave, and presently her father came into the kitchen,
+greeted the twins and Susan, and said to Clara Belle: "Don't go in there
+yet!" jerking his thumb towards Mrs. Simpson's room; "she's all beat out
+and she's just droppin' off to sleep. I'll send some groceries up from
+the store as I go along. Is the doctor makin' a second call tonight?"
+
+"Yes; he'll be here pretty soon, now," Clara Belle answered, looking at
+the clock.
+
+"All right. I'll be here again tomorrow, soon as it's light, and if she
+ain't picked up any I'll send word back to Daly, and stop here with you
+for a spell till she's better."
+
+It was true; Mrs. Simpson was "all beat out." It had been a time of
+excitement and stress, and the poor, fluttered creature was dropping off
+into the strangest sleep--a sleep made up of waking dreams. The pain,
+that had encompassed her heart like a band of steel, lessened its cruel
+pressure, and finally left her so completely that she seemed to see it
+floating above her head; only that it looked no longer like a band of
+steel, but a golden circle.
+
+The frail bark in which she had sailed her life voyage had been rocking
+on a rough and tossing ocean, and now it floated, floated slowly into
+smoother waters.
+
+As long as she could remember, her boat had been flung about in storm
+and tempest, lashed by angry winds, borne against rocks, beaten, torn,
+buffeted. Now the waves had subsided; the sky was clear; the sea was
+warm and tranquil; the sunshine dried the tattered sails; the air was
+soft and balmy.
+
+And now, for sleep plays strange tricks, the bark disappeared from the
+dream, and it was she, herself, who was floating, floating farther and
+farther away; whither she neither knew nor cared; it was enough to be at
+rest, lulled by the lapping of the cool waves.
+
+Then there appeared a green isle rising from the sea; an isle so radiant
+and fairy-like that her famished eyes could hardly believe its reality;
+but it was real, for she sailed nearer and nearer to its shores, and at
+last her feet skimmed the shining sands and she floated through the
+air as disembodied spirits float, till she sank softly at the foot of a
+spreading tree.
+
+Then she saw the green isle was a flowering isle. Every shrub and bush
+was blooming; the trees were hung with rosy garlands, and even the earth
+was carpeted with tiny flowers. The rare fragrances, the bird songs,
+soft and musical, the ravishment of color, all bore down upon her
+swimming senses at once, taking them captive so completely that she
+remembered no past, was conscious of no present, looked forward to no
+future. She seemed to leave the body and the sad, heavy things of the
+body. The humming in her ears ceased, the light faded, the birds songs
+grew fainter and more distant, the golden circle of pain receded farther
+and farther until it was lost to view; even the flowering island gently
+drifted away, and all was peace and silence.
+
+It was time for the doctor now, and Clara Belle, too anxious to wait
+longer, softly turned the knob of her mother's door and entered the
+room. The glow of the open fire illumined the darkest side of the poor
+chamber. There were no trees near the house, and a full November moon
+streamed in at the unblinded, uncurtained windows, lighting up the bare
+interior--the unpainted floor, the gray plastered walls, and the white
+counterpane.
+
+Her mother lay quite still, her head turned and drooping a little on
+the pillow. Her left hand was folded softly up against her breast, the
+fingers of the right partly covering it, as if protecting something
+precious.
+
+Was it the moonlight that made the patient brow so white, and where were
+the lines of anxiety and pain? The face of the mother who had washed
+and cried and cried and washed was as radiant as if the closed eye were
+beholding heavenly visions.
+
+"Something must have cured her!" thought Clara Belle, awed and almost
+frightened by the whiteness and the silence.
+
+She tiptoed across the floor to look more closely at the still, smiling
+shape, and bending over it saw, under the shadow of the caressing right
+hand, a narrow gold band gleaming on the work-stained finger.
+
+"Oh, the ring came, after all!" she said in a glad whisper, "and perhaps
+it was that that made her better!"
+
+She put her hand on her mother's gently. A terrified shiver, a warning
+shudder, shook the girl from head to foot at the chilling touch. A dread
+presence she had never met before suddenly took shape. It filled the
+room; stifled the cry on her lips; froze her steps to the floor, stopped
+the beating of her heart.
+
+Just then the door opened.
+
+"Oh, doctor! Come quick!" she sobbed, stretching out her hand for
+help, and then covering her eyes. "Come close! Look at mother! Is she
+better--or is she dead?"
+
+The doctor put one hand on the shoulder of the shrinking child, and
+touched the woman with the other.
+
+"She is better!" he said gently, "and she is dead."
+
+
+
+
+Tenth Chronicle. REBECCA'S REMINISCENCES
+
+
+Rebecca was sitting by the window in her room at the Wareham Female
+Seminary. She was alone, as her roommate, Emma Jane Perkins, was
+reciting Latin down below in some academic vault of the old brick
+building.
+
+A new and most ardent passion for the classics had been born in Emma
+Jane's hitherto unfertile brain, for Abijah Flagg, who was carrying off
+all the prizes at Limerick Academy, had written her a letter in Latin, a
+letter which she had been unable to translate for herself, even with the
+aid of a dictionary, and which she had been apparently unwilling that
+Rebecca, her bosom friend, confidant, and roommate, should render into
+English.
+
+An old-fashioned Female Seminary, with its allotment of one medium-sized
+room to two medium sized young females, gave small opportunities for
+privacy by night or day, for neither the double washstand, nor the thus
+far unimagined bathroom, nor even indeed the humble and serviceable
+screen, had been realized, in these dark ages of which I write.
+Accordingly, like the irrational ostrich, which defends itself by the
+simple process of not looking at its pursuers, Emma Jane had kept her
+Latin letter in her closed hand, in her pocket, or in her open book,
+flattering herself that no one had noticed her pleased bewilderment at
+its only half-imagined contents.
+
+All the fairies were not present at Rebecca's cradle. A goodly number of
+them telegraphed that they were previously engaged or unavoidably absent
+from town. The village of Temperance, Maine, where Rebecca first saw the
+light, was hardly a place on its own merits to attract large throngs of
+fairies. But one dear old personage who keeps her pocket full of Merry
+Leaves from the Laughing Tree, took a fancy to come to the little
+birthday party; and seeing so few of her sister-fairies present, she
+dowered the sleeping baby more richly than was her wont, because of its
+apparent lack of wealth in other directions. So the child grew, and the
+Merry Leaves from the Laughing Tree rustled where they hung from the
+hood of her cradle, and, being fairy leaves, when the cradle was
+given up they festooned themselves on the cribside, and later on blew
+themselves up to the ceilings at Sunnybook Farm and dangled there,
+making fun for everybody. They never withered, even at the brick house
+in Riverboro, where the air was particularly inimical to fairies,
+for Miss Miranda Sawyer would have scared any ordinary elf out of her
+seventeen senses. They followed Rebecca to Wareham, and during Abijah
+Flagg's Latin correspondence with Emma Jane they fluttered about that
+young person's head in such a manner that Rebecca was almost afraid that
+she would discover them herself, although this is something, as a matter
+of fact, that never does happen.
+
+A week had gone by since the Latin missive had been taken from
+the post-office by Emma Jane, and now, by means of much midnight
+oil-burning, by much cautious questioning of Miss Maxwell, by such
+scrutiny of the moods and tenses of Latin verbs as wellnigh destroyed
+her brain tissue, she had mastered its romantic message. If it was
+conventional in style, Emma Jane never suspected it. If some of the
+similes seemed to have been culled from the Latin poets, and some of the
+phrases built up from Latin exercises, Emma Jane was neither scholar
+nor critic; the similes, the phrases, the sentiments, when finally
+translated and written down in black-and-white English, made, in her
+opinion, the most convincing and heart-melting document ever sent
+through the mails:
+
+Mea cara Emma:
+
+Cur audeo scribere ad te epistulam? Es mihi dea! Semper es in mea anima.
+Iterum et iterum es cum me in somnis. Saepe video tuas capillos auri,
+tuos pulchros oculos similes caelo, tuas genas, quasi rubentes rosas
+in nive. Tua vox est dulcior quam cantus avium aut murmur rivuli in
+montibus.
+
+Cur sum ego tam miser et pauper et indignus, et tu tam dulcis et bona et
+nobilis?
+
+Si cogitabis de me ero beatus. Tu es sola puella quam amo, et semper
+eris. Alias puellas non amavi. Forte olim amabis me, sed sum indignus.
+Sine te sum miser, cum tu es prope mea vita omni est goddamn.
+
+Vale, carissima, carissima puella!
+
+De tuo fideli servo A.F.
+
+My dear Emma:
+
+Why dare I write to you a letter? You are to me a goddess! Always you
+are in my heart. Again and again you are with me in dreams. Often I see
+your locks of gold, your beautiful eyes like the sky, your cheeks, as
+red roses in snow. Your voice is sweeter than the singing of birds or
+the murmur of the stream in the mountains.
+
+Why am I so wretched and poor and unworthy, and you so sweet and good
+and noble?
+
+If you will think of me I shall be happy. You are the only girl that I
+love and always will be. Other girls I have not loved. Perhaps sometime
+you will love me, but I am unworthy. Without you, I am wretched, when
+you are near my life is all joy.
+
+Farewell, dearest, dearest girl!
+
+From your faithful slave A.F.
+
+Emma Jane knew the letter by heart in English. She even knew it in
+Latin, only a few days before a dead language to her, but now one filled
+with life and meaning. From beginning to end the epistle had the effect
+upon her as of an intoxicating elixir. Often, at morning prayers, or
+while eating her rice pudding at the noon dinner, or when sinking off
+to sleep at night, she heard a voice murmuring in her ear, "Vale,
+carissima, carissima puella!" As to the effect on her modest,
+countrified little heart of the phrases in which Abijah stated she was
+a goddess and he her faithful slave, that quite baffles description; for
+it lifted her bodily out of the scenes in which she moved, into a new,
+rosy, ethereal atmosphere in which even Rebecca had no place.
+
+Rebecca did not know this, fortunately; she only suspected, and waited
+for the day when Emma Jane would pour out her confidences, as she always
+did, and always would until the end of time. At the present moment
+she was busily employed in thinking about her own affairs. A shabby
+composition book with mottled board covers lay open on the table before
+her, and sometimes she wrote in it with feverish haste and absorption,
+and sometimes she rested her chin in the cup of her palm, and with the
+pencil poised in the other hand looked dreamily out on the village, its
+huddle of roofs and steeples all blurred into positive beauty by the
+fast-falling snowflakes.
+
+It was the middle of December and the friendly sky was softly dropping
+a great white mantle of peace and good-will over the little town, making
+all ready within and without for the Feast o' the Babe.
+
+The main street, that in summer was made dignified by its splendid
+avenue of shade trees, now ran quiet and white between rows of stalwart
+trunks, whose leafless branches were all hanging heavy under their
+dazzling burden.
+
+The path leading straight up the hill to the Academy was broken only by
+the feet of the hurrying, breathless boys and girls who ran up and down,
+carrying piles of books under their arms; books which they remembered
+so long as they were within the four walls of the recitation room, and
+which they eagerly forgot as soon as they met one another in the living,
+laughing world, going up and down the hill.
+
+"It's very becoming to the universe, snow is!" thought Rebecca, looking
+out of the window dreamily. "Really there's little to choose between the
+world and heaven when a snowstorm is going on. I feel as if I ought to
+look at it every minute. I wish I could get over being greedy, but it
+still seems to me at sixteen as if there weren't waking hours enough
+in the day, and as if somehow I were pressed for time and continually
+losing something. How well I remember mother's story about me when I
+was four. It was at early breakfast on the farm, but I called all meals
+dinner' then, and when I had finished I folded up my bib and sighed: O,
+dear! Only two more dinners, play a while and go to bed!' This was at
+six in the morning--lamplight in the kitchen, snowlight outside!
+
+     Powdery, powdery, powdery snow,
+     Making things lovely wherever you go!
+     Merciful, merciful, merciful snow,
+     Masking the ugliness hidden below.
+
+Herbert made me promise to do a poem for the January 'Pilot,' but I
+mustn't take the snow as a subject; there has been too great competition
+among the older poets!" And with that she turned in her chair and began
+writing again in the shabby book, which was already three quarters
+filled with childish scribblings, sometimes in pencil, and sometimes in
+violet ink with carefully shaded capital letters."
+
+* * * * *
+
+Squire Bean has had a sharp attack of rheumatism and Abijah Flagg came
+back from Limerick for a few days to nurse him. One morning the Burnham
+sisters from North Riverboro came over to spend the day with Aunt
+Miranda, and Abijah went down to put up their horse. ("'Commodatin'
+'Bijah" was his pet name when we were all young.)
+
+He scaled the ladder to the barn chamber--the dear old ladder that
+used to be my safety valve!--and pitched down the last forkful of
+grandfather's hay that will ever be eaten by any visiting horse. They
+WILL be delighted to hear that it is all gone; they have grumbled at it
+for years and years.
+
+What should Abijah find at the bottom of the heap but my Thought Book,
+hidden there two or three years ago and forgotten!
+
+When I think of what it was to me, the place it filled in my life, the
+affection I lavished on it, I wonder that I could forget it, even in
+all the excitement of coming to Wareham to school. And that gives me
+"an uncommon thought" as I used to say! It is this: that when we finish
+building an air castle we seldom live in it after all; we sometimes even
+forget that we ever longed to! Perhaps we have gone so far as to
+begin another castle on a higher hilltop, and this is so
+beautiful,--especially while we are building, and before we live in
+it!--that the first one has quite vanished from sight and mind, like the
+outgrown shell of the nautilus that he casts off on the shore and never
+looks at again. (At least I suppose he doesn't; but perhaps he takes one
+backward glance, half-smiling, half-serious, just as I am doing at my
+old Thought Book, and says, "WAS THAT MY SHELL! GOODNESS GRACIOUS! HOW
+DID I EVER SQUEEZE MYSELF INTO IT!")
+
+That bit about the nautilus sounds like an extract from a school theme,
+or a "Pilot" editorial, or a fragment of one of dear Miss Maxwell's
+lectures, but I think girls of sixteen are principally imitations of the
+people and things they love and admire; and between editing the "Pilot,"
+writing out Virgil translations, searching for composition subjects, and
+studying rhetorical models, there is very little of the original
+Rebecca Rowena about me at the present moment; I am just a member of
+the graduating class in good and regular standing. We do our hair alike,
+dress alike as much as possible, eat and drink alike, talk alike,--I am
+not even sure that we do not think alike; and what will become of the
+poor world when we are all let loose upon it on the same day of June?
+Will life, real life, bring our true selves back to us? Will love and
+duty and sorrow and trouble and work finally wear off the "school stamp"
+that has been pressed upon all of us until we look like rows of shining
+copper cents fresh from the mint?
+
+Yet there must be a little difference between us somewhere, or why does
+Abijah Flagg write Latin letters to Emma Jane, instead of to me? There
+is one example on the other side of the argument,--Abijah Flagg. He
+stands out from all the rest of the boys like the Rock of Gibraltar in
+the geography pictures. Is it because he never went to school until he
+was sixteen? He almost died of longing to go, and the longing seemed to
+teach him more than going. He knew his letters, and could read simple
+things, but it was I who taught him what books really meant when I was
+eleven and he thirteen. We studied while he was husking corn or cutting
+potatoes for seed, or shelling beans in the Squire's barn. His beloved
+Emma Jane didn't teach him; her father wold not have let her be friends
+with a chore-boy! It was I who found him after milking-time, summer
+nights, suffering, yes dying, of Least Common Multiple and Greatest
+Common Divisor; I who struck the shackles from the slave and told him to
+skip it all and go on to something easier, like Fractions, Percentage,
+and Compound Interest, as I did myself. Oh! How he used to smell of the
+cows when I was correcting his sums on warm evenings, but I don't regret
+it, for he is now the joy of Limerick and the pride of Riverboro, and I
+suppose has forgotten the proper side on which to approach a cow if you
+wish to milk her. This now unserviceable knowledge is neatly inclosed in
+the outgrown shell he threw off two or three years ago. His gratitude
+to me knows no bounds, but--he writes Latin letters to Emma Jane! But as
+Mr. Perkins said about drowning the kittens (I now quote from myself at
+thirteen), "It is the way of the world and how things have to be!"
+
+Well, I have read the Thought Book all through, and when I want to
+make Mr. Aladdin laugh, I shall show him my composition on the relative
+values of punishment and reward as builders of character.
+
+I am not at all the same Rebecca today at sixteen that I was then,
+at twelve and thirteen. I hope, in getting rid of my failings, that I
+haven't scrubbed and rubbed so hard that I have taken the gloss off the
+poor little virtues that lay just alongside of the faults; for as I read
+the foolish doggerel and the funny, funny "Remerniscences," I see on the
+whole a nice, well-meaning, trusting, loving heedless little creature,
+that after all I'd rather build on than outgrow altogether, because she
+is Me; the Me that was made and born just a little different from all
+the rest of the babies in my birthday year.
+
+One thing is alike in the child and the girl. They both love to set
+thoughts down in black and white; to see how they look, how they sound,
+and how they make one feel when one reads them over.
+
+They both love the sound of beautiful sentences and the tinkle of
+rhyming words, and in fact, of the three great R's of life, they adore
+Reading and Riting, as much as they abhor 'Rithmetic.
+
+The little girl in the old book is always thinking of what she is "going
+to be."
+
+Uncle Jerry Cobb spoiled me a good deal in this direction. I remember
+he said to everybody when I wrote my verses for the flag-raising: "Nary
+rung on the ladder o' fame but that child'll climb if you give her
+time!"--poor Uncle Jerry! He will be so disappointed in me as time goes
+on. And still he would think I have already climbed two rungs on the
+ladder, although it is only a little Wareham ladder, for I am one of
+the "Pilot" editors, the first "girl editor"--and I have taken a fifty
+dollar prize in composition and paid off the interest on a twelve
+hundred dollar mortgage with it.
+
+     "High is the rank we now possess,
+     But higher we shall rise;
+     Though what we shall hereafter be
+     Is hid from mortal eyes."
+
+This hymn was sung in meeting the Sunday after my election, and Mr.
+Aladdin was there that day and looked across the aisle and smiled at me.
+Then he sent me a sheet of paper from Boston the next morning with just
+one verse in the middle of it.
+
+"She made the cleverest people quite ashamed; And ev'n the good with
+inward envy groan, Finding themselves so very much exceeded, In their
+own way by all the things that she did."
+
+Miss Maxwell says it is Byron, and I wish I had thought of the last
+rhyme before Byron did; my rhymes are always so common.
+
+I am too busy doing, nowadays, to give very much thought to being.
+Mr. Aladdin was teasing me one day about what he calls my "cast-off
+careers."
+
+"What makes you aim at any mark in particular, Rebecca?" he asked,
+looking at Miss Maxwell and laughing. "Women never hit what they aim at,
+anyway; but if they shut their eyes and shoot in the air they generally
+find themselves in the bull's eye."
+
+I think one reason that I have always dreamed of what I should be, when
+I grew up, was, that even before father died mother worried about the
+mortgage on the farm, and what would become of us if it were foreclosed.
+
+It was hard on children to be brought up on a mortgage that way, but
+oh! it was harder still on poor dear mother, who had seven of us then
+to think of, and still has three at home to feed and clothe out of the
+farm.
+
+Aunt Jane says I am young for my age, Aunt Miranda is afraid that I will
+never really "grow up," Mr. Aladdin says that I don't know the world any
+better than the pearl inside of the oyster. They none of them know the
+old, old thoughts I have, some of them going back years and years; for
+they are never ones that I can speak about.
+
+I remember how we children used to admire father, he was so handsome and
+graceful and amusing, never cross like mother, or too busy to play with
+us. He never did any work at home because he had to keep his hands nice
+for playing the church melodeon, or the violin or piano for dances.
+
+Mother used to say: "Hannah and Rebecca, you must hull the strawberries,
+your father cannot help." "John, you must milk next year for I haven't
+the time and it would spoil your father's hands."
+
+All the other men in Temperance village wore calico, or flannel shirts,
+except on Sundays, but Father never wore any but white ones with
+starched bosoms. He was very particular about them and mother used to
+stitch and stitch on the pleats, and press and press the bosoms and
+collar and cuffs, sometimes late at night.
+
+Then she was tired and thin and gray, with no time to sew on new dresses
+for herself, and no time to wear them, because she was always taking
+care of the babies; and father was happy and well and handsome. But
+we children never thought much about it until once, after father had
+mortgaged the farm, there was going to be a sociable in Temperance
+village. Mother could not go as Jenny had whooping-cough and Mark had
+just broken his arm, and when she was tying father's necktie, the last
+thing before he started, he said: "I wish, Aurelia, that you cared a
+little about YOUR appearance and YOUR dress; it goes a long way with a
+man like me."
+
+Mother had finished the tie, and her hands dropped suddenly. I looked at
+her eyes and mouth while she looked at father and in a minute I was ever
+so old, with a grown-up ache in my heart. It has always stayed there,
+although I admired my handsome father and was proud of him because he
+was so talented; but now that I am older and have thought about things,
+my love for mother is different from what it used to be. Father was
+always the favorite when we were little, he was so interesting, and
+I wonder sometimes if we don't remember interesting people longer and
+better than we do those who are just good and patient. If so it seems
+very cruel.
+
+As I look back I see that Miss Ross, the artist who brought me my
+pink parasol from Paris, sowed the first seeds in me of ambition to do
+something special. Her life seemed so beautiful and so easy to a child.
+I had not been to school then, or read George Macdonald, so I did not
+know that "Ease is the lovely result of forgotten toil."
+
+Miss Ross sat out of doors and painted lovely things, and everybody said
+how wonderful they were, and bought them straight away; and she took
+care of a blind father and two brothers, and traveled wherever she
+wished. It comes back to me now, that summer when I was ten and Miss
+Ross painted me sitting by the mill-wheel while she talked to me of
+foreign countries!
+
+The other day Miss Maxwell read something from Browning's poems to the
+girls of her literature class. It was about David the shepherd boy
+who used to lie in his hollow watching one eagle "wheeling slow as in
+sleep." He used to wonder about the wide world that the eagle beheld,
+the eagle that was stretching his wings so far up in the blue, while he,
+the poor shepherd boy, could see only the "strip twixt the hill and the
+sky;" for he lay in a hollow.
+
+I told Mr. Baxter about it the next day, which was the Saturday before
+I joined the church. I asked him if it was wicked to long to see as much
+as the eagle saw?
+
+There was never anybody quite like Mr. Baxter. "Rebecca dear," he said,
+"it may be that you need not always lie in a hollow, as the shepherd boy
+did; but wherever you lie, that little strip you see 'twixt the hill
+and the sky' is able to hold all of earth and all of heaven, if only you
+have the right sort of vision."
+
+I was a long, long time about "experiencing religion." I remember Sunday
+afternoons at the brick house the first winter after I went there; when
+I used to sit in the middle of the dining-room as I was bid, silent and
+still, with the big family Bible on my knees. Aunt Miranda had Baxter's
+"Saints' Rest," but her seat was by the window, and she at least could
+give a glance into the street now and then without being positively
+wicked.
+
+Aunt Jane used to read the "Pilgrim's Progress." The fire burned low;
+the tall clock ticked, ticked, so slowly and steadily, that the pictures
+swam before my eyes and I almost fell asleep.
+
+They thought by shutting everything else out that I should see God;
+but I didn't, not once. I was so homesick for Sunnybook and John that
+I could hardly learn my weekly hymns, especially the sad, long one
+beginning:
+
+     "My thoughts on awful subjects roll,
+     Damnation and the dead."
+
+It was brother John for whom I was chiefly homesick on Sunday
+afternoons, because at Sunnybrook Farm father was dead and mother was
+always busy, and Hannah never liked to talk.
+
+Then the next year the missionaries from Syria came to Riverboro; and
+at the meeting Mr. Burch saw me playing the melodeon, and thought I was
+grown up and a church member, and so he asked me to lead in prayer.
+
+I didn't dare to refuse, and when I prayed, which was just like thinking
+out loud, I found I could talk to God a great deal easier than to Aunt
+Miranda or even to Uncle Jerry Cobb. There were things I could say to
+Him that I could never say to anybody else, and saying them always made
+me happy and contented.
+
+When Mr. Baxter asked me last year about joining the church, I told him
+I was afraid I did not understand God quite well enough to be a real
+member.
+
+"So you don't quite understand God, Rebecca?" he asked, smiling.
+"Well, there is something else much more important, which is, that
+He understands you! He understands your feeble love, your longings,
+desires, hopes, faults, ambitions, crosses; and that, after all, is what
+counts! Of course you don't understand Him! You are overshadowed by His
+love, His power, His benignity, His wisdom; that is as it should be!
+Why, Rebecca, dear, if you could stand erect and unabashed in God's
+presence, as one who perfectly comprehended His nature or His purposes,
+it would be sacrilege! Don't be puzzled out of your blessed inheritance
+of faith, my child; accept God easily and naturally, just as He accepts
+you!"
+
+"God never puzzled me, Mr. Baxter; it isn't that," I said; "but the
+doctrines do worry me dreadfully."
+
+"Let them alone for the present," Mr Baxter said. "Anyway, Rebecca, you
+can never prove God; you can only find Him!"
+
+"Then do you think I have really experienced religion, Mr. Baxter?" I
+asked. "Am I the beginnings of a Christian?"
+
+"You are a dear child of the understanding God!" Mr. Baxter said; "and I
+say it over to myself night and morning so that I can never forget it."
+
+* * * * *
+
+The year is nearly over and the next few months will be lived in the
+rush and whirlwind of work that comes before graduation. The bell for
+philosophy class will ring in ten minutes, and as I have been writing
+for nearly two hours, I must learn my lesson going up the Academy
+hill. It will not be the first time; it is a grand hill for learning! I
+suppose after fifty years or so the very ground has become soaked with
+knowledge, and every particle of air in the vicinity is crammed with
+useful information.
+
+I will put my book into my trunk (having no blessed haymow hereabouts)
+and take it out again,--when shall I take it out again?
+
+After graduation perhaps I shall be too grown up and too busy to write
+in a Thought Book; but oh, if only something would happen worth putting
+down; something strange; something unusual; something different from the
+things that happen every day in Riverboro and Edgewood!
+
+Graduation will surely take me a little out of "the hollow,"--make me
+a little more like the soaring eagle, gazing at the whole wide world
+beneath him while he wheels "slow as in sleep." But whether or not,
+I'll try not to be a discontented shepherd, but remember what Mr. Baxter
+said, that the little strip that I see "twixt the hill and the sky" is
+able to hold all of earth and all of heaven, if only I have the eyes to
+see it.
+
+Rebecca Rowena Randall.
+
+Wareham Female Seminary, December 187--.
+
+
+
+
+Eleventh Chronicle. ABIJAH THE BRAVE AND THE FAIR EMMAJANE
+
+
+I
+
+     "A warrior so bold and a maiden so bright
+     Conversed as they sat on the green.
+     They gazed at each other in tender delight.
+     Alonzo the brave was the name of the knight,
+     And the maid was the fair Imogene.
+
+     "Alas!' said the youth, 'since tomorrow I go
+     To fight in a far distant land,
+     Your tears for my absence soon ceasing to flow,
+     Some other will court you, and you will bestow
+     On a wealthier suitor your hand.'
+
+     'Oh, hush these suspicions!' Fair Imogene said,
+     "So hurtful to love and to me!
+     For if you be living, or if you be dead,
+     I swear by the Virgin that none in your stead
+     Shall the husband of Imogene be!'
+
+Ever since she was eight years old Rebecca had wished to be eighteen,
+but now that she was within a month of that awe-inspiring and
+long-desired age she wondered if, after all, it was destined to be a
+turning point in her quiet existence. Her eleventh year, for instance,
+had been a real turning-point, since it was then that she had left
+Sunnybrook Farm and come to her maiden aunts in Riverboro. Aurelia
+Randall may have been doubtful as to the effect upon her spinster
+sisters of the irrepressible child, but she was hopeful from the first
+that the larger opportunities of Riverboro would be the "making" of
+Rebecca herself.
+
+The next turning-point was her fourteenth year, when she left the
+district school for the Wareham Female Seminary, then in the hey-day
+of its local fame. Graduation (next to marriage, perhaps, the most
+thrilling episode in the life of a little country girl) happened at
+seventeen, and not long afterward her Aunt Miranda's death, sudden and
+unexpected, changed not only all the outward activities and conditions
+of her life, but played its own part in her development.
+
+The brick house looked very homelike and pleasant on a June morning
+nowadays with children's faces smiling at the windows and youthful
+footsteps sounding through the halls; and the brass knocker on the
+red-painted front door might have remembered Rebecca's prayer of a year
+before, when she leaned against its sun-warmed brightness and whispered:
+"God bless Aunt Miranda; God bless the brick house that was; God bless
+the brick house that's going to be!"
+
+All the doors and blinds were open to the sun and air as they had never
+been in Miss Miranda Sawyer's time. The hollyhock bed that had been her
+chief pride was never neglected, and Rebecca liked to hear the neighbors
+say that there was no such row of beautiful plants and no such variety
+of beautiful colors in Riverboro as those that climbed up and peeped in
+at the kitchen windows where old Miss Miranda used to sit.
+
+Now that the place was her very own Rebecca felt a passion of pride in
+its smoothly mown fields, its carefully thinned-out woods, its blooming
+garden spots, and its well-weeded vegetable patch; felt, too whenever
+she looked at any part of it, a passion of gratitude to the stern old
+aunt who had looked upon her as the future head of the family, as well
+as a passion of desire to be worthy of that trust.
+
+It had been a very difficult year for a girl fresh from school: the
+death of her aunt, the nursing of Miss Jane, prematurely enfeebled by
+the shock, the removal of her own invalid mother and the rest of the
+little family from Sunnybrook Farm. But all had gone smoothly; and when
+once the Randall fortunes had taken an upward turn nothing seemed able
+to stop their intrepid ascent.
+
+Aurelia Randall renewed her youth in the companionship of her sister
+Jane and the comforts by which her children were surrounded; the
+mortgage was no longer a daily terror, for Sunnybrook had been sold to
+the new railroad; Hannah, now Mrs. Will Melville, was happily situated;
+John, at last, was studying medicine; Mark, the boisterous and unlucky
+brother, had broken no bones for several months; while Jenny and Fanny
+were doing well at the district school under Miss Libby Moses, Miss
+Dearborn's successor.
+
+"I don't feel very safe," thought Rebecca, remembering all these
+unaccustomed mercies as she sat on the front doorsteps, with her tatting
+shuttle flying in and out of the fine cotton like a hummingbird. "It's
+just like one of those too beautiful July days that winds up with a
+thundershower before night! Still, when you remember that the Randalls
+never had anything but thunder and lightning, rain, snow, and hail, in
+their family history for twelve or fifteen years, perhaps it is only
+natural that they should enjoy a little spell of settled weather. If it
+really turns out to BE settled, now that Aunt Jane and mother are strong
+again I must be looking up one of what Mr. Aladdin calls my cast-off
+careers."--"There comes Emma Jane Perkins through her front gate; she
+will be here in a minute, and I'll tease her!" and Rebecca ran in the
+door and seated herself at the old piano that stood between the open
+windows in the parlor.
+
+Peeping from behind the muslin curtains, she waited until Emma Jane
+was on the very threshold and then began singing her version of an old
+ballad, made that morning while she was dressing. The ballad was a great
+favorite of hers, and she counted on doing telling execution with it in
+the present instance by the simple subterfuge of removing the original
+hero and heroine, Alonzo and Imogene, and substituting Abijah the Brave
+and the Fair Emmajane, leaving the circumstances in the first three
+verses unaltered, because in truth they seemed to require no alteration.
+
+Her high, clear voice, quivering with merriment, floated through the
+windows into the still summer air:
+
+     "'A warrior so bold and a maiden so bright
+     Conversed as they sat on the green.
+     They gazed at each other in tender delight.
+     Abijah the Brave was the name of the knight,
+     And the maid was the Fair Emmajane.'"
+
+"Rebecca Randall, stop! Somebody'll hear you!"
+
+"No, they won't--they're making jelly in the kitchen, miles away."
+
+     "'Alas!' said the youth, since tomorrow I go
+     To fight in a far distant land,
+     Your tears for my absence soon ceasing to flow,
+     Some other will court you, and you will bestow
+     On a wealthier suitor your hand.'"
+
+"Rebecca, you can't THINK how your voice carries! I believe mother can
+hear it over to my house!"
+
+"Then, if she can, I must sing the third verse, just to clear your
+reputation from the cloud cast upon it in the second," laughed her
+tormentor, going on with the song:
+
+"'Oh, hush these suspicions!' Fair Emmajane said, 'So hurtful to love
+and to me! For if you be living, or if you be dead, I swear, my Abijah,
+that none in your stead, Shall the husband of Emmajane be!'"
+
+After ending the third verse Rebecca wheeled around on the piano
+stool and confronted her friend, who was carefully closing the parlor
+windows:--
+
+"Emma Jane Perkins, it is an ordinary Thursday afternoon at four o'clock
+and you have on your new blue barege, although there is not even a
+church sociable in prospect this evening. What does this mean? Is Abijah
+the Brave coming at last?"
+
+"I don't know certainly, but it will be some time this week."
+
+"And of course you'd rather be dressed up and not seen, than seen when
+not dressed up. Right, my Fair Emmajane; so would I. Not that it makes
+any difference to poor me, wearing my fourth best black and white calico
+and expecting nobody.
+
+"Oh, well, YOU! There's something inside of you that does instead of
+pretty dresses," cried Emma Jane, whose adoration of her friend had
+never altered nor lessened since they met at the age of eleven. "You
+know you are as different from anybody else in Riverboro as a princess
+in a fairy story. Libby Moses says they would notice you in Lowell,
+Massachusetts!"
+
+"Would they? I wonder," speculated Rebecca, rendered almost speechless
+by this tribute to her charms. "Well, if Lowell, Massachusetts, could
+see me, or if you could see me, in my new lavender muslin with the
+violet sash, it would die of envy, and so would you!"
+
+"If I had been going to be envious of you, Rebecca, I should have died
+years ago. Come, let's go out on the steps where it's shady and cool."
+
+"And where we can see the Perkins front gate and the road running both
+ways," teased Rebecca, and then, softening her tone, she said: "How
+is it getting on, Emmy? Tell me what's happened since I've been in
+Brunswick."
+
+"Nothing much," confessed Emma Jane. "He writes to me, but I don't write
+to him, you know. I don't dare to, till he comes to the house."
+
+"Are his letters still in Latin?" asked Rebecca, with a twinkling eye.
+
+"Oh, no! Not now, because--well, because there are things you can't seem
+to write in Latin. I saw him at the Masonic picnic in the grove, but he
+won't say anything REAL to me till he gets more pay and dares to speak
+to mother and father. He IS brave in all other ways, but I ain't sure
+he'll ever have the courage for that, he's so afraid of them and always
+has been. Just remember what's in his mind all the time, Rebecca, that
+my folks know all about what his mother was, and how he was born on the
+poor-farm. Not that I care; look how he's educated and worked himself
+up! I think he's perfectly elegant, and I shouldn't mind if he had been
+born in the bulrushes, like Moses."
+
+Emma Jane's every-day vocabulary was pretty much what it had been before
+she went to the expensive Wareham Female Seminary. She had acquired
+a certain amount of information concerning the art of speech, but in
+moments of strong feeling she lapsed into the vernacular. She grew
+slowly in all directions, did Emma Jane, and, to use Rebecca's favorite
+nautilus figure, she had left comparatively few outgrown shells on the
+shores of "life's unresting sea."
+
+"Moses wasn't born in the bulrushes, Emmy dear," corrected Rebecca
+laughingly. "Pharaoh's daughter found him there. It wasn't quite as
+romantic a scene--Squire Bean's wife taking little Abijah Flagg from the
+poorhouse when his girl-mother died, but, oh, I think Abijah's splendid!
+Mr. Ladd says Riverboro'll be proud of him yet, and I shouldn't wonder,
+Emmy dear, if you had a three-story house with a cupola on it, some day;
+and sitting down at your mahogany desk inlaid with garnets, you will
+write notes stating that Mrs. Abijah Flagg requests the pleasure of Miss
+Rebecca Randall's company to tea, and that the Hon. Abijah Flagg, M.C.,
+will call for her on his way from the station with a span of horses and
+the turquoise carryall!"
+
+Emma Jane laughed at the ridiculous prophecy, and answered: "If I ever
+write the invitation I shan't be addressing it to Miss Randall, I'm sure
+of that; it'll be to Mrs.-----"
+
+"Don't!" cried Rebecca impetuously, changing color and putting her hand
+over Emma Jane's lips. "If you won't I'll stop teasing. I couldn't bear
+a name put to anything, I couldn't, Emmy dear! I wouldn't tease you,
+either, if it weren't something we've both known ever so long--something
+that you have always consulted me about of your own accord, and Abijah
+too."
+
+"Don't get excited," replied Emma Jane, "I was only going to say you
+were sure to be Mrs. Somebody in course of time."
+
+"Oh," said Rebecca with a relieved sigh, her color coming back; "if
+that's all you meant, just nonsense; but I thought, I thought--I don't
+really know just what I thought!"
+
+"I think you thought something you didn't want me to think you thought,"
+said Emma Jane with unusual felicity.
+
+"No, it's not that; but somehow, today, I have been remembering things.
+Perhaps it was because at breakfast Aunt Jane and mother reminded me of
+my coming birthday and said that Squire Bean would give me the deed of
+the brick house. That made me feel very old and responsible; and when I
+came out on the steps this afternoon it was just as if pictures of the
+old years were moving up and down the road. Everything is so beautiful
+today! Doesn't the sky look as if it had been dyed blue and the fields
+painted pink and green and yellow this very minute?"
+
+"It's a perfectly elegant day!" responded Emma Jane with a sigh. "If
+only my mind was at rest! That's the difference between being young and
+grown-up. We never used to think and worry."
+
+"Indeed we didn't! Look, Emmy, there's the very spot where Uncle Jerry
+Cobb stopped the stage and I stepped out with my pink parasol and my
+bouquet of purple lilacs, and you were watching me from your bedroom
+window and wondering what I had in mother's little hair trunk strapped
+on behind. Poor Aunt Miranda didn't love me at first sight, and oh, how
+cross she was the first two years! But now every hard thought I ever had
+comes back to me and cuts like a knife!"
+
+"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 excitement.
+
+"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 crochet needle
+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 love letter 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
+feeling for Abijah! Upon my word, Emma Jane," she cried with a sudden
+change of tone, "if I had suspected for an instant that Abijah the Brave
+had that Latin letter in him I should have tried to get him to write it
+to me; and then it would be I who would sit down at my mahogany desk and
+ask Miss Perkins to come to tea with Mrs. Flagg."
+
+Emma Jane paled and shuddered openly. "I speak as a church member,
+Rebecca," she said, "when I tell you I've always thanked the Lord that
+you never looked at Abijah Flagg and he never looked at you. If either
+of you ever had, there never would have been a chance for me, and I've
+always known it!"
+
+II
+
+The romance alluded to in the foregoing chapter had been going on, so
+far as Abijah Flagg's part of it was concerned, for many years, his
+affection dating back in his own mind to the first moment that he saw
+Emma Jane Perkins at the age of nine.
+
+Emma Jane had shown no sign of reciprocating his attachment until the
+last three years, when the evolution of the chore-boy into the
+budding scholar and man of affairs had inflamed even her somewhat dull
+imagination.
+
+Squire Bean's wife had taken Abijah away from the poorhouse, thinking
+that she could make him of some little use in her home. Abbie Flagg, the
+mother, was neither wise nor beautiful; it is to be feared that she
+was not even good, and her lack of all these desirable qualities,
+particularly the last one, had been impressed upon the child ever since
+he could remember. People seemed to blame him for being in the world at
+all; this world that had not expected him nor desired him, nor made any
+provision for him. The great battle-axe of poorhouse opinion was forever
+leveled at the mere little atom of innocent transgression, until he grew
+sad and shy, clumsy, stiff, and self-conscious. He had an indomitable
+craving for love in his heart and had never received a caress in his
+life.
+
+He was more contented when he came to Squire Bean's house. The first
+year he could only pick up chips, carry pine wood into the kitchen, go
+to the post-office, run errands, drive the cows, and feed the hens, but
+every day he grew more and more useful.
+
+His only friend was little Jim Watson, the storekeeper's son, and they
+were inseparable companions whenever Abijah had time for play.
+
+One never-to-be-forgotten July day a new family moved into the white
+cottage between Squire Bean's house and the Sawyers'. Mr. Perkins had
+sold his farm beyond North Riverboro and had established a blacksmith's
+shop in the village, at the Edgewood end of the bridge. This fact was of
+no special interest to the nine-year-old Abijah, but what really was of
+importance, was the appearance of a pretty little girl of seven in the
+front yard; a pretty little fat doll of a girl, with bright fuzzy hair,
+pink cheeks, blue eyes, and a smile of almost bewildering continuity.
+Another might have criticised it as having the air of being glued on,
+but Abijah was already in the toils and never wished it to move.
+
+The next day being the glorious Fourth and a holiday, Jimmy Watson came
+over like David, to visit his favorite Jonathan. His Jonathan met him
+at the top of the hill, pleaded a pressing engagement, curtly sent him
+home, and then went back to play with his new idol, with whom he
+had already scraped acquaintance, her parents being exceedingly busy
+settling the new house.
+
+After the noon dinner Jimmy again yearned to resume friendly relations,
+and, forgetting his rebuff, again toiled up the hill and appeared
+unexpectedly at no great distance from the Perkins premises, wearing the
+broad and beaming smile of one who is confident of welcome.
+
+His morning call had been officious and unpleasant and unsolicited, but
+his afternoon visit could only be regarded as impudent, audacious,
+and positively dangerous; for Abijah and Emma Jane were cosily playing
+house, the game of all others in which it is particularly desirable to
+have two and not three participants.
+
+At that moment the nature of Abijah changed, at once and forever.
+Without a pang of conscience he flew over the intervening patch of
+ground between himself and his dreaded rival, and seizing small stones
+and larger ones, as haste and fury demanded, flung them at Jimmy Watson,
+and flung and flung, till the bewildered boy ran down the hill howling.
+Then he made a "stickin'" door to the play-house, put the awed Emma Jane
+inside and strode up and down in front of the edifice like an Indian
+brave. At such an early age does woman become a distracting and
+disturbing influence in man's career!
+
+Time went on, and so did the rivalry between the poorhouse boy and the
+son of wealth, but Abijah's chances of friendship with Emma Jane grew
+fewer and fewer as they both grew older. He did not go to school, so
+there was no meeting-ground there, but sometimes, when he saw the knot
+of boys and girls returning in the afternoon, he would invite Elijah and
+Elisha, the Simpson twins, to visit him, and take pains to be in Squire
+Bean's front yard, doing something that might impress his inamorata as
+she passed the premises.
+
+As Jimmy Watson was particularly small and fragile, Abijah generally
+chose feats of strength and skill for these prearranged performances.
+
+Sometimes he would throw his hat up into the elm trees as far as he
+could and, when it came down, catch it on his head. Sometimes he would
+walk on his hands, with his legs wriggling in the air, or turn a double
+somersault, or jump incredible distances across the extended arms of
+the Simpson twins; and his bosom swelled with pride when the girls
+exclaimed, "Isn't he splendid!" although he often heard his rival murmur
+scornfully, "SMARTY ALECK!"--a scathing allusion of unknown origin.
+
+Squire Bean, although he did not send the boy to school (thinking, as
+he was of no possible importance in the universe, it was not worth
+while bothering about his education), finally became impressed with his
+ability, lent him books, and gave him more time to study. These were all
+he needed, books and time, and when there was an especially hard knot to
+untie, Rebecca, as the star scholar of the neighborhood, helped him to
+untie it.
+
+When he was sixteen he longed to go away from Riverboro and be something
+better than a chore boy. Squire Bean had been giving him small wages
+for three or four years, and when the time of parting came presented him
+with a ten-dollar bill and a silver watch.
+
+Many a time had he discussed his future with Rebecca and asked her
+opinion.
+
+This was not strange, for there was nothing in human form that she could
+not and did not converse with, easily and delightedly. She had ideas
+on every conceivable subject, and would have cheerfully advised the
+minister if he had asked her. The fishman consulted her when he couldn't
+endure his mother-in-law another minute in the house; Uncle Jerry
+Cobb didn't part with his river field until he had talked it over with
+Rebecca; and as for Aunt Jane, she couldn't decide whether to wear her
+black merino or her gray thibet unless Rebecca cast the final vote.
+
+Abijah wanted to go far away from Riverboro, as far as Limerick Academy,
+which was at least fifteen miles; but although this seemed extreme,
+Rebecca agreed, saying pensively: "There IS a kind of magicness about
+going far away and then coming back all changed."
+
+This was precisely Abijah's unspoken thought. Limerick knew nothing of
+Abbie Flagg's worthlessness, birth, and training, and the awful stigma
+of his poorhouse birth, so that he would start fair. He could have gone
+to Wareham and thus remained within daily sight of the beloved Emma
+Jane; but no, he was not going to permit her to watch him in the process
+of "becoming," but after he had "become" something. He did not propose
+to take any risks after all these years of silence and patience. Not he!
+He proposed to disappear, like the moon on a dark night, and as he was,
+at present, something that Mr. Perkins would by no means have in the
+family nor Mrs. Perkins allow in the house, he would neither return to
+Riverboro nor ask any favors of them until he had something to offer.
+Yes, sir. He was going to be crammed to the eyebrows with learning for
+one thing,--useless kinds and all,--going to have good clothes, and a
+good income. Everything that was in his power should be right, because
+there would always be lurking in the background the things he never
+could help--the mother and the poorhouse.
+
+So he went away, and, although at Squire Bean's invitation he came back
+the first year for two brief visits at Christmas and Easter, he was
+little seen in Riverboro, for Mr. Ladd finally found him a place where
+he could make his vacations profitable and learn bookkeeping at the same
+time.
+
+The visits in Riverboro were tantalizing rather than pleasant. He
+was invited to two parties, but he was all the time conscious of his
+shirt-collar, and he was sure that his "pants" were not the proper
+thing, for by this time his ideals of dress had attained an almost
+unrealizable height. As for his shoes, he felt that he walked on carpets
+as if they were furrows and he were propelling a plow or a harrow before
+him. They played Drop the Handkerchief and Copenhagen at the parties,
+but he had not had the audacity to kiss Emma Jane, which was bad enough,
+but Jimmy had and did, which was infinitely worse! The sight of James
+Watson's unworthy and over-ambitious lips on Emma Jane's pink cheek
+almost destroyed his faith in an overruling Providence.
+
+After the parties were over he went back to his old room in Squire
+Bean's shed chamber. As he lay in bed his thoughts fluttered about
+Emma Jane as swallows circle around the eaves. The terrible sickness of
+hopeless handicapped love kept him awake. Once he crawled out of bed in
+the night, lighted the lamp, and looked for his mustache, remembering
+that he had seen a suspicion of down on his rival's upper lip. He rose
+again half an hour later, again lighted the lamp, put a few drops of oil
+on his hair, and brushed it violently for several minutes. Then he went
+back to bed, and after making up his mind that he would buy a dulcimer
+and learn to play on it so that he would be more attractive at parties,
+and outshine his rival in society as he had aforetime in athletics, he
+finally sank into a troubled slumber.
+
+Those days, so full of hope and doubt and torture, seemed mercifully
+unreal now, they lay so far back in the past--six or eight years, in
+fact, which is a lifetime to the lad of twenty--and meantime he had
+conquered many of the adverse circumstances that had threatened to cloud
+his career.
+
+Abijah Flagg was a true child of his native State. Something of the same
+timber that Maine puts into her forests, something of the same strength
+and resisting power that she works into her rocks, goes into her sons
+and daughters; and at twenty Abijah was going to take his fate in his
+hand and ask Mr. Perkins, the rich blacksmith, if, after a suitable
+period of probation (during which he would further prepare himself for
+his exalted destiny), he might marry the fair Emma Jane, sole heiress of
+the Perkins house and fortunes.
+
+III
+
+This was boy and girl love, calf love, perhaps, though even that may
+develop into something larger, truer, and finer; but not so far away
+were other and very different hearts growing and budding, each in its
+own way. There was little Miss Dearborn, the pretty school teacher,
+drifting into a foolish alliance because she did not agree with her
+stepmother at home; there was Herbert Dunn, valedictorian of his class,
+dazzled by Huldah Meserve, who like a glowworm "shone afar off bright,
+but looked at near, had neither heat nor light."
+
+There was sweet Emily Maxwell, less than thirty still, with most of her
+heart bestowed in the wrong quarter. She was toiling on at the Wareham
+school, living as unselfish a life as a nun in a convent; lavishing the
+mind and soul of her, the heart and body of her, on her chosen work.
+How many women give themselves thus, consciously and unconsciously;
+and, though they themselves miss the joys and compensations of mothering
+their own little twos and threes, God must be grateful to them for
+their mothering of the hundreds which make them so precious in His
+regenerating purposes.
+
+Then there was Adam Ladd, waiting at thirty-five for a girl to grow a
+little older, simply because he could not find one already grown who
+suited his somewhat fastidious and exacting tastes.
+
+"I'll not call Rebecca perfection," he quoted once, in a letter to Emily
+Maxwell,--"I'll not call her perfection, for that's a post, afraid to
+move. But she's a dancing sprig of the tree next it."
+
+When first she appeared on his aunt's piazza in North Riverboro and
+insisted on selling him a large quantity of very inferior soap in order
+that her friends, the Simpsons, might possess a premium in the shape of
+a greatly needed banquet lamp, she had riveted his attention. He thought
+all the time that he enjoyed talking with her more than with any woman
+alive, and he had never changed his opinion. She always caught what
+he said as if it were a ball tossed to her, and sometimes her mind, as
+through it his thoughts came back to him, seemed like a prism which had
+dyed them with deeper colors.
+
+Adam Ladd always called Rebecca in his heart his little Spring. His
+boyhood had been lonely and unhappy. That was the part of life he had
+missed, and although it was the full summer of success and prosperity
+with him now, he found his lost youth only in her.
+
+She was to him--how shall I describe it?
+
+Do you remember an early day in May with budding leaf, warm earth,
+tremulous air, and changing, willful sky--how new it seemed? How fresh
+and joyous beyond all explaining?
+
+Have you lain with half-closed eyes where the flickering of sunlight
+through young leaves, the song of birds and brook and the fragrance of
+wild flowers combined to charm your senses, and you felt the sweetness
+and grace of nature as never before?
+
+Rebecca was springtide to Adam's thirsty heart. She was blithe youth
+incarnate; she was music--an Aeolian harp that every passing breeze
+woke to some whispering little tune; she was a changing, iridescent
+joy-bubble; she was the shadow of a leaf dancing across a dusty floor.
+No bough of his thought could be so bare but she somehow built a nest in
+it and evoked life where none was before.
+
+And Rebecca herself?
+
+She had been quite unconscious of all this until very lately, and even
+now she was but half awakened; searching among her childish instincts
+and her girlish dreams for some Ariadne thread that should guide her
+safely through the labyrinth of her new sensations.
+
+For the moment she was absorbed, or thought she was, in the little love
+story of Abijah and Emma Jane, but in reality, had she realized it, that
+love story served chiefly as a basis of comparison for a possible one of
+her own, later on.
+
+She liked and respected Abijah Flagg, and loving Emma Jane was a habit
+contracted early in life; but everything that they did or said, or
+thought or wrote, or hoped or feared, seemed so inadequate, so painfully
+short of what might be done or said, or thought or written, or hoped or
+feared, under easily conceivable circumstances, that she almost felt a
+disposition to smile gently at the fancy of the ignorant young couple
+that they had caught a glimpse of the great vision.
+
+She was sitting under the sweet apple tree at twilight. Supper was over;
+Mark's restless feet were quiet, Fanny and Jenny were tucked safely in
+bed; her aunt and her mother were stemming currants on the side porch.
+
+A blue spot at one of the Perkins windows showed that in one vestal
+bosom hope was not dead yet, although it was seven o'clock.
+
+Suddenly there was the sound of a horse's feet coming up the quiet road;
+plainly a steed hired from some metropolis like Milltown or Wareham,
+as Riverboro horses when through with their day's work never disported
+themselves so gayly.
+
+A little open vehicle came in sight, and in it sat Abijah Flagg. The
+wagon was so freshly painted and so shiny that Rebecca thought that he
+must have alighted at the bridge and given it a last polish. The creases
+in his trousers, too, had an air of having been pressed in only a few
+minutes before. The whip was new and had a yellow ribbon on it; the
+gray suit of clothes was new, and the coat flourished a flower in its
+button-hole. The hat was the latest thing in hats, and the intrepid
+swain wore a seal-ring on the little finger of his right hand. As
+Rebecca remembered that she had guided it in making capital G's in his
+copy-book, she felt positively maternal, although she was two years
+younger than Abijah the Brave.
+
+He drove up to the Perkins gate and was so long about hitching the horse
+that Rebecca's heart beat tumultuously at the thought of Emma Jane's
+heart waiting under the blue barege. Then he brushed an imaginary speck
+off his sleeve, then he drew on a pair of buff kid gloves, then he went
+up the path, rapped at the knocker, and went in.
+
+"Not all the heroes go to the wars," thought Rebecca. "Abijah has laid
+the ghost of his father and redeemed the memory of his mother, for no
+one will dare say again that Abbie Flagg's son could never amount to
+anything!"
+
+The minutes went by, and more minutes, and more. The tranquil dusk
+settled down over the little village street and the young moon came out
+just behind the top of the Perkins pine tree.
+
+The Perkins front door opened and Abijah the Brave came out hand in hand
+with his Fair Emma Jane.
+
+They walked through the orchard, the eyes of the old couple following
+them from the window, and just as they disappeared down the green slope
+that led to the riverside the gray coat sleeve encircled the blue barege
+waist.
+
+Rebecca, quivering with instant sympathy and comprehension, hid her face
+in her hands.
+
+"Emmy has sailed away and I am all alone in the little harbor," she
+thought.
+
+It was as if childhood, like a thing real and visible, were slipping
+down the grassy river banks, after Abijah and Emma Jane, and
+disappearing like them into the moon-lit shadows of the summer night.
+
+"I am all alone in the little harbor," she repeated; "and oh, I wonder,
+I wonder, shall I be afraid to leave it, if anybody ever comes to carry
+me out to sea!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's New Chronicles of Rebecca, by Kate Douglas Wiggin
+
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1375 ***
+
+NEW CHRONICLES OF REBECCA
+
+By Kate Douglas Wiggin
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+     First Chronicle
+     Jack O'Lantern
+
+     Second Chronicle
+     Daughters of Zion
+
+     Third Chronicle
+     Rebecca's Thought Book
+
+     Fourth Chronicle
+     A Tragedy in Millinery
+
+     Fifth Chronicle
+     The Saving of the Colors
+
+     Sixth Chronicle
+     The State of Maine Girl
+
+     Seventh Chronicle
+     The Little Prophet
+
+     Eighth Chronicle
+     Abner Simpson's New Leaf
+
+     Ninth Chronicle
+     The Green Isle
+
+     Tenth Chronicle
+     Rebecca's Reminiscences
+
+     Eleventh Chronicle
+     Abijah the Brave and the Fair Emma Jane
+
+
+
+
+First Chronicle. JACK O'LANTERN
+
+
+I
+
+Miss Miranda Sawyer's old-fashioned garden was the pleasantest spot in
+Riverboro on a sunny July morning. The rich color of the brick house
+gleamed and glowed through the shade of the elms and maples. Luxuriant
+hop-vines clambered up the lightning rods and water spouts, hanging
+their delicate clusters here and there in graceful profusion. Woodbine
+transformed the old shed and tool house to things of beauty, and the
+flower beds themselves were the prettiest and most fragrant in all
+the countryside. A row of dahlias ran directly around the garden
+spot,--dahlias scarlet, gold, and variegated. In the very centre was a
+round plot where the upturned faces of a thousand pansies smiled amid
+their leaves, and in the four corners were triangular blocks of sweet
+phlox over which the butterflies fluttered unceasingly. In the spaces
+between ran a riot of portulaca and nasturtiums, while in the more
+regular, shell-bordered beds grew spirea and gillyflowers, mignonette,
+marigolds, and clove pinks.
+
+Back of the barn and encroaching on the edge of the hay field was a
+grove of sweet clover whose white feathery tips fairly bent under the
+assaults of the bees, while banks of aromatic mint and thyme drank
+in the sunshine and sent it out again into the summer air, warm, and
+deliciously odorous.
+
+The hollyhocks were Miss Sawyer's pride, and they grew in a stately line
+beneath the four kitchen windows, their tapering tips set thickly with
+gay satin circlets of pink or lavender or crimson.
+
+“They grow something like steeples,” thought little Rebecca Randall, who
+was weeding the bed, “and the flat, round flowers are like rosettes; but
+steeples wouldn't be studded with rosettes, so if you were writing about
+them in a composition you'd have to give up one or the other, and I
+think I'll give up the steeples:--
+
+     Gay little hollyhock
+     Lifting your head,
+     Sweetly rosetted
+     Out from your bed.
+
+It's a pity the hollyhock isn't really little, instead of steepling up
+to the window top, but I can't say, 'Gay TALL hollyhock.'... I might
+have it 'Lines to a Hollyhock in May,' for then it would be small; but
+oh, no! I forgot; in May it wouldn't be blooming, and it's so pretty
+to say that its head is 'sweetly rosetted'... I wish the teacher wasn't
+away; she would like 'sweetly rosetted,' and she would like to hear me
+recite 'Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!' that I learned
+out of Aunt Jane's Byron; the rolls come booming out of it just like the
+waves at the beach.... I could make nice compositions now, everything
+is blooming so, and it's so warm and sunny and happy outdoors. Miss
+Dearborn told me to write something in my thought book every single day,
+and I'll begin this very night when I go to bed.”
+
+Rebecca Rowena Randall, the little niece of the brick-house ladies, and
+at present sojourning there for purposes of board, lodging, education,
+and incidentally such discipline and chastening as might ultimately
+produce moral excellence,--Rebecca Randall had a passion for the rhyme
+and rhythm of poetry. From her earliest childhood words had always been
+to her what dolls and toys are to other children, and now at twelve she
+amused herself with phrases and sentences and images as her schoolmates
+played with the pieces of their dissected puzzles. If the heroine of
+a story took a “cursory glance” about her “apartment,” Rebecca would
+shortly ask her Aunt Jane to take a “cursory glance” at her oversewing
+or hemming; if the villain “aided and abetted” someone in committing
+a crime, she would before long request the pleasure of “aiding and
+abetting” in dishwashing or bedmaking. Sometimes she used the borrowed
+phrases unconsciously; sometimes she brought them into the conversation
+with an intense sense of pleasure in their harmony or appropriateness;
+for a beautiful word or sentence had the same effect upon her
+imagination as a fragrant nosegay, a strain of music, or a brilliant
+sunset.
+
+“How are you gettin' on, Rebecca Rowena?” called a peremptory voice from
+within.
+
+“Pretty good, Aunt Miranda; only I wish flowers would ever come up as
+thick as this pigweed and plantain and sorrel. What MAKES weeds be thick
+and flowers be thin?--I just happened to be stopping to think a minute
+when you looked out.”
+
+“You think considerable more than you weed, I guess, by appearances. How
+many times have you peeked into that humming bird's nest? Why don't you
+work all to once and play all to once, like other folks?”
+
+“I don't know,” the child answered, confounded by the question, and
+still more by the apparent logic back of it. “I don't know, Aunt
+Miranda, but when I'm working outdoors such a Saturday morning as this,
+the whole creation just screams to me to stop it and come and play.”
+
+“Well, you needn't go if it does!” responded her aunt sharply. “It don't
+scream to me when I'm rollin' out these doughnuts, and it wouldn't to
+you if your mind was on your duty.”
+
+Rebecca's little brown hands flew in and out among the weeds as she
+thought rebelliously: “Creation WOULDN'T scream to Aunt Miranda; it
+would know she wouldn't come.”
+
+     Scream on, thou bright and gay creation, scream!
+     'Tis not Miranda that will hear thy cry!
+
+Oh, such funny, nice things come into my head out here by myself, I do
+wish I could run up and put them down in my thought book before I forget
+them, but Aunt Miranda wouldn't like me to leave off weeding:--
+
+     Rebecca was weeding the hollyhock bed
+     When wonderful thoughts came into her head.
+     Her aunt was occupied with the rolling pin
+     And the thoughts of her mind were common and thin.
+
+That wouldn't do because it's mean to Aunt Miranda, and anyway it isn't
+good. I MUST crawl under the syringa shade a minute, it's so hot, and
+anybody has to stop working once in a while, just to get their breath,
+even if they weren't making poetry.
+
+Rebecca was weeding the hollyhock bed When marvelous thoughts came into
+her head. Miranda was wielding the rolling pin And thoughts at such
+times seemed to her as a sin.
+
+How pretty the hollyhock rosettes look from down here on the sweet,
+smelly ground!
+
+“Let me see what would go with rosetting. AIDING AND ABETTING, PETTING,
+HEN-SETTING, FRETTING,--there's nothing very nice, but I can make
+fretting' do.
+
+     Cheered by Rowena's petting,
+     The flowers are rosetting,
+     But Aunt Miranda's fretting
+     Doth somewhat cloud the day.”
+
+Suddenly the sound of wagon wheels broke the silence and then a voice
+called out--a voice that could not wait until the feet that belonged to
+it reached the spot: “Miss Saw-YER! Father's got to drive over to North
+Riverboro on an errand, and please can Rebecca go, too, as it's Saturday
+morning and vacation besides?”
+
+Rebecca sprang out from under the syringa bush, eyes flashing with
+delight as only Rebecca's eyes COULD flash, her face one luminous circle
+of joyous anticipation. She clapped her grubby hands, and dancing up
+and down, cried: “May I, Aunt Miranda--can I, Aunt Jane--can I, Aunt
+Miranda-Jane? I'm more than half through the bed.”
+
+“If you finish your weeding tonight before sundown I s'pose you can go,
+so long as Mr. Perkins has been good enough to ask you,” responded Miss
+Sawyer reluctantly. “Take off that gingham apron and wash your hands
+clean at the pump. You ain't be'n out o' bed but two hours an' your head
+looks as rough as if you'd slep' in it. That comes from layin' on the
+ground same as a caterpillar. Smooth your hair down with your hands an'
+p'r'aps Emma Jane can braid it as you go along the road. Run up and get
+your second-best hair ribbon out o' your upper drawer and put on
+your shade hat. No, you can't wear your coral chain--jewelry ain't
+appropriate in the morning. How long do you cal'late to be gone, Emma
+Jane?”
+
+“I don't know. Father's just been sent for to see about a sick woman
+over to North Riverboro. She's got to go to the poor farm.”
+
+This fragment of news speedily brought Miss Sawyer, and her sister Jane
+as well, to the door, which commanded a view of Mr. Perkins and his
+wagon. Mr. Perkins, the father of Rebecca's bosom friend, was primarily
+a blacksmith, and secondarily a selectman and an overseer of the poor, a
+man therefore possessed of wide and varied information.
+
+“Who is it that's sick?” inquired Miranda.
+
+“A woman over to North Riverboro.”
+
+“What's the trouble?”
+
+“Can't say.”
+
+“Stranger?'
+
+“Yes, and no; she's that wild daughter of old Nate Perry that used to
+live up towards Moderation. You remember she ran away to work in the
+factory at Milltown and married a do--nothin' fellow by the name o' John
+Winslow?”
+
+“Yes; well, where is he? Why don't he take care of her?”
+
+“They ain't worked well in double harness. They've been rovin' round the
+country, livin' a month here and a month there wherever they could get
+work and house-room. They quarreled a couple o' weeks ago and he left
+her. She and the little boy kind o' camped out in an old loggin' cabin
+back in the woods and she took in washin' for a spell; then she got
+terrible sick and ain't expected to live.”
+
+“Who's been nursing her?” inquired Miss Jane.
+
+“Lizy Ann Dennett, that lives nearest neighbor to the cabin; but I
+guess she's tired out bein' good Samaritan. Anyways, she sent word this
+mornin' that nobody can't seem to find John Winslow; that there ain't
+no relations, and the town's got to be responsible, so I'm goin' over to
+see how the land lays. Climb in, Rebecca. You an' Emmy Jane crowd back
+on the cushion an' I'll set forrard. That's the trick! Now we're off!”
+
+“Dear, dear!” sighed Jane Sawyer as the sisters walked back into the
+brick house. “I remember once seeing Sally Perry at meeting. She was a
+handsome girl, and I'm sorry she's come to grief.”
+
+“If she'd kep' on goin' to meetin' an' hadn't looked at the men folks
+she might a' be'n earnin' an honest livin' this minute,” said Miranda.
+“Men folks are at the bottom of everything wrong in this world,” she
+continued, unconsciously reversing the verdict of history.
+
+“Then we ought to be a happy and contented community here in Riverboro,”
+ replied Jane, “as there's six women to one man.”
+
+“If 't was sixteen to one we'd be all the safer,” responded Miranda
+grimly, putting the doughnuts in a brown crock in the cellar-way and
+slamming the door.
+
+
+II
+
+The Perkins horse and wagon rumbled along over the dusty country road,
+and after a discreet silence, maintained as long as human flesh could
+endure, Rebecca remarked sedately:
+
+“It's a sad errand for such a shiny morning, isn't it, Mr. Perkins?”
+
+“Plenty o' trouble in the world, Rebecky, shiny mornin's an' all,” that
+good man replied. “If you want a bed to lay on, a roof over your head,
+an' food to eat, you've got to work for em. If I hadn't a' labored early
+an' late, learned my trade, an' denied myself when I was young, I might
+a' be'n a pauper layin' sick in a loggin' cabin, stead o' bein' an
+overseer o' the poor an' selectman drivin' along to take the pauper to
+the poor farm.”
+
+“People that are mortgaged don't have to go to the poor farm, do they,
+Mr. Perkins?” asked Rebecca, with a shiver of fear as she remembered her
+home farm at Sunnybrook and the debt upon it; a debt which had lain like
+a shadow over her childhood.
+
+“Bless your soul, no; not unless they fail to pay up; but Sal Perry an'
+her husband hadn't got fur enough along in life to BE mortgaged. You
+have to own something before you can mortgage it.”
+
+Rebecca's heart bounded as she learned that a mortgage represented a
+certain stage in worldly prosperity.
+
+“Well,” she said, sniffing in the fragrance of the new-mown hay and
+growing hopeful as she did so; “maybe the sick woman will be better such
+a beautiful day, and maybe the husband will come back to make it up and
+say he's sorry, and sweet content will reign in the humble habitation
+that was once the scene of poverty, grief, and despair. That's how it
+came out in a story I'm reading.”
+
+“I hain't noticed that life comes out like stories very much,” responded
+the pessimistic blacksmith, who, as Rebecca privately thought, had read
+less than half a dozen books in his long and prosperous career.
+
+A drive of three or four miles brought the party to a patch of woodland
+where many of the tall pines had been hewn the previous winter. The roof
+of a ramshackle hut was outlined against a background of young birches,
+and a rough path made in hauling the logs to the main road led directly
+to its door.
+
+As they drew near the figure of a woman approached--Mrs. Lizy Ann
+Dennett, in a gingham dress, with a calico apron over her head.
+
+“Good morning, Mr. Perkins,” said the woman, who looked tired and
+irritable. “I'm real glad you come right over, for she took worse after
+I sent you word, and she's dead.”
+
+Dead! The word struck heavily and mysteriously on the children's ears.
+Dead! And their young lives, just begun, stretched on and on, all
+decked, like hope, in living green. Dead! And all the rest of the world
+reveling in strength. Dead! With all the daisies and buttercups waving
+in the fields and the men heaping the mown grass into fragrant cocks
+or tossing it into heavily laden carts. Dead! With the brooks tinkling
+after the summer showers, with the potatoes and corn blossoming, the
+birds singing for joy, and every little insect humming and chirping,
+adding its note to the blithe chorus of warm, throbbing life.
+
+“I was all alone with her. She passed away suddenly jest about break o'
+day,” said Lizy Ann Dennett.
+
+“Her soul passed upward to its God Just at the break of day.”
+
+These words came suddenly into Rebecca's mind from a tiny chamber where
+such things were wont to lie quietly until something brought them to the
+surface. She could not remember whether she had heard them at a funeral
+or read them in the hymn book or made them up “out of her own head,” but
+she was so thrilled with the idea of dying just as the dawn was breaking
+that she scarcely heard Mrs. Dennett's conversation.
+
+“I sent for Aunt Beulah Day, an' she's be'n here an' laid her out,”
+ continued the long suffering Lizy Ann. “She ain't got any folks, an'
+John Winslow ain't never had any as far back as I can remember. She
+belongs to your town and you'll have to bury her and take care of
+Jacky--that's the boy. He's seventeen months old, a bright little
+feller, the image o' John, but I can't keep him another day. I'm all
+wore out; my own baby's sick, mother's rheumatiz is extry bad, and my
+husband's comin' home tonight from his week's work. If he finds a child
+o' John Winslow's under his roof I can't say what would happen; you'll
+have to take him back with you to the poor farm.”
+
+“I can't take him up there this afternoon,” objected Mr. Perkins.
+
+“Well, then, keep him over Sunday yourself; he's good as a kitten. John
+Winslow'll hear o' Sal's death sooner or later, unless he's gone out of
+the state altogether, an' when he knows the boy's at the poor farm, I
+kind o' think he'll come and claim him. Could you drive me over to the
+village to see about the coffin, and would you children be afraid to
+stay here alone for a spell?” she asked, turning to the girls.
+
+“Afraid?” they both echoed uncomprehendingly.
+
+Lizy Ann and Mr. Perkins, perceiving that the fear of a dead presence
+had not entered the minds of Rebecca or Emma Jane, said nothing, but
+drove off together, counseling them not to stray far away from the cabin
+and promising to be back in an hour.
+
+There was not a house within sight, either looking up or down the shady
+road, and the two girls stood hand in hand, watching the wagon out of
+sight; then they sat down quietly under a tree, feeling all at once a
+nameless depression hanging over their gay summer-morning spirits.
+
+It was very still in the woods; just the chirp of a grasshopper now
+and then, or the note of a bird, or the click of a far-distant mowing
+machine.
+
+“We're WATCHING!” whispered Emma Jane. “They watched with Gran'pa
+Perkins, and there was a great funeral and two ministers. He left two
+thousand dollars in the bank and a store full of goods, and a paper
+thing you could cut tickets off of twice a year, and they were just like
+money.”
+
+“They watched with my little sister Mira, too,” said Rebecca. “You
+remember when she died, and I went home to Sunnybrook Farm? It was
+winter time, but she was covered with evergreen and white pinks, and
+there was singing.”
+
+“There won't be any funeral or ministers or singing here, will there?
+Isn't that awful?”
+
+“I s'pose not; and oh, Emma Jane, no flowers either. We might get those
+for her if there's nobody else to do it.”
+
+“Would you dare put them on to her?” asked Emma Jane, in a hushed voice.
+
+“I don't know; I can't tell; it makes me shiver, but, of course, we
+COULD do it if we were the only friends she had. Let's look into
+the cabin first and be perfectly sure that there aren't any. Are you
+afraid?”
+
+“N-no; I guess not. I looked at Gran'pa Perkins, and he was just the
+same as ever.”
+
+At the door of the hut Emma Jane's courage suddenly departed. She
+held back shuddering and refused either to enter or look in. Rebecca
+shuddered too, but kept on, drawn by an insatiable curiosity about life
+and death, an overmastering desire to know and feel and understand the
+mysteries of existence, a hunger for knowledge and experience at all
+hazards and at any cost.
+
+Emma Jane hurried softly away from the felt terrors of the cabin, and
+after two or three minutes of utter silence Rebecca issued from the
+open door, her sensitive face pale and woe-begone, the ever-ready tears
+raining down her cheeks. She ran toward the edge of the wood, sinking
+down by Emma Jane's side, and covering her eyes, sobbed with excitement:
+
+“Oh, Emma Jane, she hasn't got a flower, and she's so tired and
+sad-looking, as if she'd been hurt and hurt and never had any good
+times, and there's a weeny, weeny baby side of her. Oh, I wish I hadn't
+gone in!”
+
+Emma Jane blenched for an instant. “Mrs. Dennett never said THERE WAS
+TWO DEAD ONES! ISN'T THAT DREADFUL? But,” she continued, her practical
+common sense coming to the rescue, “you've been in once and it's all
+over; it won't be so bad when you take in the flowers because you'll
+be used to it. The goldenrod hasn't begun to bud, so there's nothing
+to pick but daisies. Shall I make a long rope of them, as I did for the
+schoolroom?”
+
+“Yes,” said Rebecca, wiping her eyes and still sobbing. “Yes, that's the
+prettiest, and if we put it all round her like a frame, the undertaker
+couldn't be so cruel as to throw it away, even if she is a pauper,
+because it will look so beautiful. From what the Sunday school lessons
+say, she's only asleep now, and when she wakes up she'll be in heaven.”
+
+“THERE'S ANOTHER PLACE,” said Emma Jane, in an orthodox and sepulchral
+whisper, as she took her ever-present ball of crochet cotton from her
+pocket and began to twine the whiteweed blossoms into a rope.
+
+“Oh, well!” Rebecca replied with the easy theology that belonged to her
+temperament. “They simply couldn't send her DOWN THERE with that little
+weeny baby. Who'd take care of it? You know page six of the catechism
+says the only companions of the wicked after death are their father the
+devil and all the other evil angels; it wouldn't be any place to bring
+up a baby.”
+
+“Whenever and wherever she wakes up, I hope she won't know that the big
+baby is going to the poor farm. I wonder where he is?”
+
+“Perhaps over to Mrs. Dennett's house. She didn't seem sorry a bit, did
+she?”
+
+“No, but I suppose she's tired sitting up and nursing a stranger. Mother
+wasn't sorry when Gran'pa Perkins died; she couldn't be, for he was
+cross all the time and had to be fed like a child. Why ARE you crying
+again, Rebecca?”
+
+“Oh, I don't know, I can't tell, Emma Jane! Only I don't want to die and
+have no funeral or singing and nobody sorry for me! I just couldn't bear
+it!”
+
+“Neither could I,” Emma Jane responded sympathetically; “but p'r'aps
+if we're real good and die young before we have to be fed, they will
+be sorry. I do wish you could write some poetry for her as you did for
+Alice Robinson's canary bird, only still better, of course, like that
+you read me out of your thought book.”
+
+“I could, easy enough,” exclaimed Rebecca, somewhat consoled by the
+idea that her rhyming faculty could be of any use in such an emergency.
+“Though I don't know but it would be kind of bold to do it. I'm all
+puzzled about how people get to heaven after they're buried. I can't
+understand it a bit; but if the poetry is on her, what if that should
+go, too? And how could I write anything good enough to be read out loud
+in heaven?”
+
+“A little piece of paper couldn't get to heaven; it just couldn't,”
+ asserted Emma Jane decisively. “It would be all blown to pieces and
+dried up. And nobody knows that the angels can read writing, anyway.”
+
+“They must be as educated as we are, and more so, too,” agreed Rebecca.
+“They must be more than just dead people, or else why should they have
+wings? But I'll go off and write something while you finish the rope;
+it's lucky you brought your crochet cotton and I my lead pencil.”
+
+In fifteen or twenty minutes she returned with some lines written on a
+scrap of brown wrapping paper. Standing soberly by Emma Jane, she said,
+preparing to read them aloud: “They're not good; I was afraid your
+father'd come back before I finished, and the first verse sounds exactly
+like the funeral hymns in the church book. I couldn't call her Sally
+Winslow; it didn't seem nice when I didn't know her and she is dead, so
+I thought if I said friend' it would show she had somebody to be sorry.
+
+     “This friend of ours has died and gone
+     From us to heaven to live.
+     If she has sinned against Thee, Lord,
+     We pray Thee, Lord, forgive.
+
+     “Her husband runneth far away
+     And knoweth not she's dead.
+     Oh, bring him back--ere tis too late--
+     To mourn beside her bed.
+
+     “And if perchance it can't be so,
+     Be to the children kind;
+     The weeny one that goes with her,
+     The other left behind.”
+
+“I think that's perfectly elegant!” exclaimed Emma Jane, kissing Rebecca
+fervently. “You are the smartest girl in the whole State of Maine, and
+it sounds like a minister's prayer. I wish we could save up and buy a
+printing machine. Then I could learn to print what you write and we'd
+be partners like father and Bill Moses. Shall you sign it with your name
+like we do our school compositions?”
+
+“No,” said Rebecca soberly. “I certainly shan't sign it, not knowing
+where it's going or who'll read it. I shall just hide it in the flowers,
+and whoever finds it will guess that there wasn't any minister or
+singing, or gravestone, or anything, so somebody just did the best they
+could.”
+
+
+III
+
+The tired mother with the “weeny baby” on her arm lay on a long
+carpenter's bench, her earthly journey over, and when Rebecca stole
+in and placed the flowery garland all along the edge of the rude bier,
+death suddenly took on a more gracious and benign aspect. It was only
+a child's sympathy and intuition that softened the rigors of the sad
+moment, but poor, wild Sal Winslow, in her frame of daisies, looked
+as if she were missed a little by an unfriendly world; while the weeny
+baby, whose heart had fallen asleep almost as soon as it had learned to
+beat, the weeny baby, with Emma Jane's nosegay of buttercups in its tiny
+wrinkled hand, smiled as if it might have been loved and longed for and
+mourned.
+
+“We've done all we can now without a minister,” whispered Rebecca. “We
+could sing, God is ever good' out of the Sunday school song book, but
+I'm afraid somebody would hear us and think we were gay and happy.
+What's that?”
+
+A strange sound broke the stillness; a gurgle, a yawn, a merry little
+call. The two girls ran in the direction from which it came, and there,
+on an old coat, in a clump of goldenrod bushes, lay a child just waking
+from a refreshing nap.
+
+“It's the other baby that Lizy Ann Dennett told about!” cried Emma Jane.
+
+“Isn't he beautiful!” exclaimed Rebecca. “Come straight to me!” and she
+stretched out her arms.
+
+The child struggled to its feet, and tottered, wavering, toward the warm
+welcome of the voice and eyes. Rebecca was all mother, and her maternal
+instincts had been well developed in the large family in which she was
+next to the eldest. She had always confessed that there were perhaps a
+trifle too many babies at Sunnybrook Farm, but, nevertheless, had she
+ever heard it, she would have stood loyally by the Japanese proverb:
+“Whether brought forth upon the mountain or in the field, it matters
+nothing; more than a treasure of one thousand ryo a baby precious is.”
+
+“You darling thing!” she crooned, as she caught and lifted the child.
+“You look just like a Jack-o'-lantern.”
+
+The boy was clad in a yellow cotton dress, very full and stiff. His hair
+was of such a bright gold, and so sleek and shiny, that he looked like
+a fair, smooth little pumpkin. He had wide blue eyes full of laughter,
+a neat little vertical nose, a neat little horizontal mouth with his
+few neat little teeth showing very plainly, and on the whole Rebecca's
+figure of speech was not so wide of the mark.
+
+“Oh, Emma Jane! Isn't he too lovely to go to the poor farm? If only we
+were married we could keep him and say nothing and nobody would know the
+difference! Now that the Simpsons have gone away there isn't a single
+baby in Riverboro, and only one in Edgewood. It's a perfect shame, but
+I can't do anything; you remember Aunt Miranda wouldn't let me have the
+Simpson baby when I wanted to borrow her just for one rainy Sunday.”
+
+“My mother won't keep him, so it's no use to ask her; she says most
+every day she's glad we're grown up, and she thanks the Lord there
+wasn't but two of us.”
+
+“And Mrs. Peter Meserve is too nervous,” Rebecca went on, taking the
+village houses in turn; “and Mrs. Robinson is too neat.”
+
+“People don't seem to like any but their own babies,” observed Emma
+Jane.
+
+“Well, I can't understand it,” Rebecca answered. “A baby's a baby, I
+should think, whose ever it is! Miss Dearborn is coming back Monday;
+I wonder if she'd like it? She has nothing to do out of school, and we
+could borrow it all the time!”
+
+“I don't think it would seem very genteel for a young lady like Miss
+Dearborn, who 'boards round,' to take a baby from place to place,”
+ objected Emma Jane.
+
+“Perhaps not,” agreed Rebecca despondently, “but I think if we haven't
+got any--any--PRIVATE babies in Riverboro we ought to have one for the
+town, and all have a share in it. We've got a town hall and a town lamp
+post and a town watering trough. Things are so uneven! One house like
+mine at Sunnybrook, brimful of children, and the very next one empty!
+The only way to fix them right would be to let all the babies that ever
+are belong to all the grown-up people that ever are,--just divide
+them up, you know, if they'd go round. Oh, I have a thought! Don't
+you believe Aunt Sarah Cobb would keep him? She carries flowers to the
+graveyard every little while, and once she took me with her. There's a
+marble cross, and it says: SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF SARAH ELLEN, BELOVED
+CHILD OF SARAH AND JEREMIAH COBB, AGED 17 MONTHS. Why, that's another
+reason; Mrs. Dennett says this one is seventeen months. There's five of
+us left at the farm without me, but if we were only nearer to Riverboro,
+how quick mother would let in one more!”
+
+“We might see what father thinks, and that would settle it,” said Emma
+Jane. “Father doesn't think very sudden, but he thinks awful strong. If
+we don't bother him, and find a place ourselves for the baby, perhaps
+he'll be willing. He's coming now; I hear the wheels.”
+
+Lizy Ann Dennett volunteered to stay and perform the last rites with
+the undertaker, and Jack-o'-lantern, with his slender wardrobe tied in
+a bandanna handkerchief, was lifted into the wagon by the reluctant Mr.
+Perkins, and jubilantly held by Rebecca in her lap. Mr. Perkins drove
+off as speedily as possible, being heartily sick of the whole affair,
+and thinking wisely that the little girls had already seen and heard
+more than enough of the seamy side of life that morning.
+
+Discussion concerning Jack-o'-lantern's future was prudently deferred
+for a quarter of an hour, and then Mr. Perkins was mercilessly pelted
+with arguments against the choice of the poor farm as a place of
+residence for a baby.
+
+“His father is sure to come back some time, Mr. Perkins,” urged Rebecca.
+“He couldn't leave this beautiful thing forever; and if Emma Jane and I
+can persuade Mrs. Cobb to keep him a little while, would you care?”
+
+No; on reflection Mr. Perkins did not care. He merely wanted a quiet
+life and enough time left over from the public service to attend to his
+blacksmith's shop; so instead of going home over the same road by which
+they came he crossed the bridge into Edgewood and dropped the children
+at the long lane which led to the Cobb house.
+
+Mrs. Cobb, “Aunt Sarah” to the whole village, sat by the window looking
+for Uncle Jerry, who would soon be seen driving the noon stage to the
+post office over the hill. She always had an eye out for Rebecca, too,
+for ever since the child had been a passenger on Mr. Cobb's stagecoach,
+making the eventful trip from her home farm to the brick house in
+Riverboro in his company, she had been a constant visitor and the joy
+of the quiet household. Emma Jane, too, was a well-known figure in the
+lane, but the strange baby was in the nature of a surprise--a surprise
+somewhat modified by the fact that Rebecca was a dramatic personage and
+more liable to appear in conjunction with curious outriders, comrades,
+and retainers than the ordinary Riverboro child. She had run away from
+the too stern discipline of the brick house on one occasion, and had
+been persuaded to return by Uncle Jerry. She had escorted a wandering
+organ grinder to their door and begged a lodging for him on a rainy
+night; so on the whole there was nothing amazing about the coming
+procession.
+
+The little party toiled up to the hospitable door, and Mrs. Cobb came
+out to meet them.
+
+Rebecca was spokesman. Emma Jane's talent did not lie in eloquent
+speech, but it would have been a valiant and a fluent child indeed
+who could have usurped Rebecca's privileges and tendencies in this
+direction, language being her native element, and words of assorted
+sizes springing spontaneously to her lips.
+
+“Aunt Sarah, dear,” she said, plumping Jack-o'-lantern down on the grass
+as she pulled his dress over his feet and smoothed his hair becomingly,
+“will you please not say a word till I get through--as it's very
+important you should know everything before you answer yes or no?
+This is a baby named Jacky Winslow, and I think he looks like a
+Jack-o'-lantern. His mother has just died over to North Riverboro, all
+alone, excepting for Mrs. Lizy Ann Dennett, and there was another little
+weeny baby that died with her, and Emma Jane and I put flowers
+around them and did the best we could. The father--that's John
+Winslow--quarreled with the mother--that was Sal Perry on the Moderation
+Road--and ran away and left her. So he doesn't know his wife and the
+weeny baby are dead. And the town has got to bury them because they
+can't find the father right off quick, and Jacky has got to go to the
+poor farm this afternoon. And it seems an awful shame to take him up to
+that lonesome place with those old people that can't amuse him, and
+if Emma Jane and Alice Robinson and I take most all the care of him we
+thought perhaps you and Uncle Jerry would keep him just for a little
+while. You've got a cow and a turn-up bedstead, you know,” she hurried
+on insinuatingly, “and there's hardly any pleasure as cheap as more
+babies where there's ever been any before, for baby carriages and
+trundle beds and cradles don't wear out, and there's always clothes
+left over from the old baby to begin the new one on. Of course, we can
+collect enough things to start Jacky, so he won't be much trouble or
+expense; and anyway, he's past the most troublesome age and you won't
+have to be up nights with him, and he isn't afraid of anybody or
+anything, as you can see by his just sitting there laughing and sucking
+his thumb, though he doesn't know what's going to become of him. And
+he's just seventeen months old like dear little Sarah Ellen in the
+graveyard, and we thought we ought to give you the refusal of him before
+he goes to the poor farm, and what do you think about it? Because it's
+near my dinner time and Aunt Miranda will keep me in the whole afternoon
+if I'm late, and I've got to finish weeding the hollyhock bed before
+sundown.”
+
+IV
+
+Mrs. Cobb had enjoyed a considerable period of reflection during this
+monologue, and Jacky had not used the time unwisely, offering several
+unconscious arguments and suggestions to the matter under discussion;
+lurching over on the greensward and righting himself with a chuckle,
+kicking his bare feet about in delight at the sunshine and groping for
+his toes with arms too short to reach them, the movement involving an
+entire upsetting of equilibrium followed by more chuckles.
+
+Coming down the last of the stone steps, Sarah Ellen's mother regarded
+the baby with interest and sympathy.
+
+“Poor little mite!” she said; “that doesn't know what he's lost and
+what's going to happen to him. Seems to me we might keep him a spell
+till we're sure his father's deserted him for good. Want to come to Aunt
+Sarah, baby?”
+
+Jack-o'-lantern turned from Rebecca and Emma Jane and regarded the kind
+face gravely; then he held out both his hands and Mrs. Cobb, stooping,
+gathered him like a harvest. Being lifted into her arms, he at once tore
+her spectacles from her nose and laughed aloud. Taking them from him
+gently, she put them on again, and set him in the cushioned rocking
+chair under the lilac bushes beside the steps. Then she took one of his
+soft hands in hers and patted it, and fluttered her fingers like birds
+before his eyes, and snapped them like castanets, remembering all the
+arts she had lavished upon “Sarah Ellen, aged seventeen months,” years
+and years ago.
+
+     Motherless baby and babyless mother,
+     Bring them together to love one another.
+
+Rebecca knew nothing of this couplet, but she saw clearly enough that
+her case was won.
+
+“The boy must be hungry; when was he fed last?” asked Mrs. Cobb. “Just
+stay a second longer while I get him some morning's milk; then you
+run home to your dinners and I'll speak to Mr. Cobb this afternoon. Of
+course, we can keep the baby for a week or two till we see what happens.
+Land! He ain't goin' to be any more trouble than a wax doll! I guess he
+ain't been used to much attention, and that kind's always the easiest to
+take care of.”
+
+At six o'clock that evening Rebecca and Emma Jane flew up the hill and
+down the lane again, waving their hands to the dear old couple who were
+waiting for them in the usual place, the back piazza where they had sat
+so many summers in a blessed companionship never marred by an unloving
+word.
+
+“Where's Jacky?” called Rebecca breathlessly, her voice always
+outrunning her feet.
+
+“Go up to my chamber, both of you, if you want to see,” smiled Mrs.
+Cobb, “only don't wake him up.”
+
+The girls went softly up the stairs into Aunt Sarah's room. There, in
+the turn-up bedstead that had been so long empty, slept Jack-o'-lantern,
+in blissful unconsciousness of the doom he had so lately escaped. His
+nightgown and pillow case were clean and fragrant with lavender, but
+they were both as yellow as saffron, for they had belonged to Sarah
+Ellen.
+
+“I wish his mother could see him!” whispered Emma Jane.
+
+“You can't tell; it's all puzzly about heaven, and perhaps she does,”
+ said Rebecca, as they turned reluctantly from the fascinating scene and
+stole down to the piazza.
+
+It was a beautiful and a happy summer that year, and every day it was
+filled with blissful plays and still more blissful duties. On the
+Monday after Jack-o'-lantern's arrival in Edgewood Rebecca founded the
+Riverboro Aunts Association. The Aunts were Rebecca, Emma Jane, Alice
+Robinson, and Minnie Smellie, and each of the first three promised
+to labor for and amuse the visiting baby for two days a week, Minnie
+Smellie, who lived at some distance from the Cobbs, making herself
+responsible for Saturday afternoons.
+
+Minnie Smellie was not a general favorite among the Riverboro girls, and
+it was only in an unprecedented burst of magnanimity that they admitted
+her into the rites of fellowship, Rebecca hugging herself secretly at
+the thought, that as Minnie gave only the leisure time of one day a
+week, she could not be called a “full” Aunt. There had been long and
+bitter feuds between the two children during Rebecca's first summer in
+Riverboro, but since Mrs. Smellie had told her daughter that one more
+quarrel would invite a punishment so terrible that it could only be
+hinted at vaguely, and Miss Miranda Sawyer had remarked that any niece
+of hers who couldn't get along peaceable with the neighbors had better
+go back to the seclusion of a farm where there weren't any, hostilities
+had been veiled, and a suave and diplomatic relationship had replaced
+the former one, which had been wholly primitive, direct, and barbaric.
+Still, whenever Minnie Smellie, flaxen-haired, pink-nosed, and
+ferret-eyed, indulged in fluent conversation, Rebecca, remembering the
+old fairy story, could always see toads hopping out of her mouth. It was
+really very unpleasant, because Minnie could never see them herself; and
+what was more amazing, Emma Jane perceived nothing of the sort, being
+almost as blind, too, to the diamonds that fell continually from
+Rebecca's lips; but Emma Jane's strong point was not her imagination.
+
+A shaky perambulator was found in Mrs. Perkins's wonderful attic; shoes
+and stockings were furnished by Mrs. Robinson; Miss Jane Sawyer knitted
+a blanket and some shirts; Thirza Meserve, though too young for an aunt,
+coaxed from her mother some dresses and nightgowns, and was presented
+with a green paper certificate allowing her to wheel Jacky up and down
+the road for an hour under the superintendence of a full Aunt. Each
+girl, under the constitution of the association, could call Jacky “hers”
+ for two days in the week, and great, though friendly, was the rivalry
+between them, as they washed, ironed, and sewed for their adored nephew.
+
+If Mrs. Cobb had not been the most amiable woman in the world she might
+have had difficulty in managing the aunts, but she always had Jacky to
+herself the earlier part of the day and after dusk at night.
+
+Meanwhile Jack-o'-lantern grew healthier and heartier and jollier as the
+weeks slipped away. Uncle Jerry joined the little company of worshipers
+and slaves, and one fear alone stirred in all their hearts; not, as a
+sensible and practical person might imagine, the fear that the recreant
+father might never return to claim his child, but, on the contrary, that
+he MIGHT do so!
+
+October came at length with its cheery days and frosty nights, its glory
+of crimson leaves and its golden harvest of pumpkins and ripened corn.
+Rebecca had been down by the Edgewood side of the river and had come
+up across the pastures for a good-night play with Jacky. Her literary
+labors had been somewhat interrupted by the joys and responsibilities of
+vice-motherhood, and the thought book was less frequently drawn from its
+hiding place under the old haymow in the barn chamber.
+
+Mrs. Cobb stood behind the screen door with her face pressed against the
+wire netting, and Rebecca could see that she was wiping her eyes.
+
+All at once the child's heart gave one prophetic throb and then stood
+still. She was like a harp that vibrated with every wind of emotion,
+whether from another's grief or her own.
+
+She looked down the lane, around the curve of the stone wall, red with
+woodbine, the lane that would meet the stage road to the station. There,
+just mounting the crown of the hill and about to disappear on the other
+side, strode a stranger man, big and tall, with a crop of reddish curly
+hair showing from under his straw hat. A woman walked by his side, and
+perched on his shoulder, wearing his most radiant and triumphant mien,
+as joyous in leaving Edgewood as he had been during every hour of his
+sojourn there--rode Jack-o'-lantern!
+
+Rebecca gave a cry in which maternal longing and helpless, hopeless
+jealousy strove for supremacy. Then, with an impetuous movement she
+started to run after the disappearing trio.
+
+Mrs. Cobb opened the door hastily, calling after her, “Rebecca, Rebecca,
+come back here! You mustn't follow where you haven't any right to go. If
+there'd been anything to say or do, I'd a' done it.”
+
+“He's mine! He's mine!” stormed Rebecca. “At least he's yours and mine!”
+
+“He's his father's first of all,” faltered Mrs. Cobb; “don't let's
+forget that; and we'd ought to be glad and grateful that John Winslow's
+come to his senses an' remembers he's brought a child into the world and
+ought to take care of it. Our loss is his gain and it may make a man of
+him. Come in, and we'll put things away all neat before your Uncle Jerry
+gets home.”
+
+Rebecca sank in a pitiful little heap on Mrs. Cobb's bedroom floor
+and sobbed her heart out. “Oh, Aunt Sarah, where shall we get another
+Jack-o'-lantern, and how shall I break it to Emma Jane? What if his
+father doesn't love him, and what if he forgets to strain the milk or
+lets him go without his nap? That's the worst of babies that aren't
+private--you have to part with them sooner or later!”
+
+“Sometimes you have to part with your own, too,” said Mrs. Cobb sadly;
+and though there were lines of sadness in her face there was neither
+rebellion nor repining, as she folded up the sides of the turn-up
+bedstead preparatory to banishing it a second time to the attic. “I
+shall miss Sarah Ellen now more'n ever. Still, Rebecca, we mustn't feel
+to complain. It's the Lord that giveth and the Lord that taketh away:
+Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
+
+
+
+
+Second Chronicle. DAUGHTERS OF ZION
+
+
+I
+
+Abijah Flagg was driving over to Wareham on an errand for old Squire
+Winship, whose general chore-boy and farmer's assistant he had been for
+some years.
+
+He passed Emma Jane Perkins's house slowly, as he always did. She was
+only a little girl of thirteen and he a boy of fifteen or sixteen, but
+somehow, for no particular reason, he liked to see the sun shine on her
+thick braids of reddish-brown hair. He admired her china-blue eyes too,
+and her amiable, friendly expression. He was quite alone in the world,
+and he always thought that if he had anybody belonging to him he would
+rather have a sister like Emma Jane Perkins than anything else within
+the power of Providence to bestow. When she herself suggested this
+relationship a few years later he cast it aside with scorn, having
+changed his mind in the interval--but that story belongs to another time
+and place.
+
+Emma Jane was not to be seen in garden, field, or at the window, and
+Abijah turned his gaze to the large brick house that came next on the
+other side of the quiet village street. It might have been closed for
+a funeral. Neither Miss Miranda nor Miss Jane Sawyer sat at their
+respective windows knitting, nor was Rebecca Randall's gypsy face to be
+discerned. Ordinarily that will-o'-the wispish little person could be
+seen, heard, or felt wherever she was.
+
+“The village must be abed, I guess,” mused Abijah, as he neared the
+Robinsons' yellow cottage, where all the blinds were closed and no sign
+of life showed on porch or in shed. “No, 't aint, neither,” he thought
+again, as his horse crept cautiously down the hill, for from the
+direction of the Robinsons' barn chamber there floated out into the air
+certain burning sentiments set to the tune of “Antioch.” The words, to a
+lad brought up in the orthodox faith, were quite distinguishable:
+
+“Daughter of Zion, from the dust, Exalt thy fallen head!”
+
+Even the most religious youth is stronger on first lines than others,
+but Abijah pulled up his horse and waited till he caught another
+familiar verse, beginning:
+
+“Rebuild thy walls, thy bounds enlarge, And send thy heralds forth.”
+
+“That's Rebecca carrying the air, and I can hear Emma Jane's alto.”
+
+     “Say to the North,
+     Give up thy charge,
+     And hold not back, O South,
+     And hold not back, O South,” etc.
+
+“Land! ain't they smart, seesawin' up and down in that part they learnt
+in singin' school! I wonder what they're actin' out, singin' hymn-tunes
+up in the barn chamber? Some o' Rebecca's doins, I'll be bound! Git dap,
+Aleck!”
+
+Aleck pursued his serene and steady trot up the hills on the Edgewood
+side of the river, till at length he approached the green Common where
+the old Tory Hill meeting-house stood, its white paint and green blinds
+showing fair and pleasant in the afternoon sun. Both doors were open,
+and as Abijah turned into the Wareham road the church melodeon pealed
+out the opening bars of the Missionary Hymn, and presently a score of
+voices sent the good old tune from the choir-loft out to the dusty road:
+
+     “Shall we whose souls are lighted
+     With Wisdom from on high,
+     Shall we to men benighted
+     The lamp of life deny?”
+
+“Land!” exclaimed Abijah under his breath. “They're at it up here, too!
+That explains it all. There's a missionary meeting at the church, and
+the girls wa'n't allowed to come so they held one of their own, and I
+bate ye it's the liveliest of the two.”
+
+Abijah Flagg's shrewd Yankee guesses were not far from the truth, though
+he was not in possession of all the facts. It will be remembered by
+those who have been in the way of hearing Rebecca's experiences in
+Riverboro, that the Rev. and Mrs. Burch, returned missionaries from the
+Far East, together with some of their children, “all born under Syrian
+skies,” as they always explained to interested inquirers, spent a day or
+two at the brick house, and gave parlor meetings in native costume.
+
+These visitors, coming straight from foreign lands to the little Maine
+village, brought with them a nameless enchantment to the children, and
+especially to Rebecca, whose imagination always kindled easily. The
+romance of that visit had never died in her heart, and among the many
+careers that dazzled her youthful vision was that of converting such
+Syrian heathen as might continue in idol worship after the Burches'
+efforts in their behalf had ceased. She thought at the age of eighteen
+she might be suitably equipped for storming some minor citadel of
+Mohammedanism; and Mrs. Burch had encouraged her in the idea, not, it is
+to be feared, because Rebecca showed any surplus of virtue or Christian
+grace, but because her gift of language, her tact and sympathy, and her
+musical talent seemed to fit her for the work.
+
+It chanced that the quarterly meeting of the Maine Missionary Society
+had been appointed just at the time when a letter from Mrs. Burch to
+Miss Jane Sawyer suggested that Rebecca should form a children's branch
+in Riverboro. Mrs. Burch's real idea was that the young people should
+save their pennies and divert a gentle stream of financial aid into
+the parent fund, thus learning early in life to be useful in such work,
+either at home or abroad.
+
+The girls themselves, however, read into her letter no such modest
+participation in the conversion of the world, and wishing to effect an
+organization without delay, they chose an afternoon when every house in
+the village was vacant, and seized upon the Robinsons' barn chamber as
+the place of meeting.
+
+Rebecca, Alice Robinson, Emma Jane Perkins, Candace Milliken, and Persis
+Watson, each with her hymn book, had climbed the ladder leading to
+the haymow a half hour before Abijah Flagg had heard the strains
+of “Daughters of Zion” floating out to the road. Rebecca, being an
+executive person, had carried, besides her hymn book, a silver call-bell
+and pencil and paper. An animated discussion regarding one of two
+names for the society, The Junior Heralds or The Daughters of Zion,
+had resulted in a unanimous vote for the latter, and Rebecca had been
+elected president at an early stage of the meeting. She had modestly
+suggested that Alice Robinson, as the granddaughter of a missionary to
+China, would be much more eligible.
+
+“No,” said Alice, with entire good nature, “whoever is ELECTED
+president, you WILL be, Rebecca--you're that kind--so you might as well
+have the honor; I'd just as lieves be secretary, anyway.”
+
+“If you should want me to be treasurer, I could be, as well as not,”
+ said Persis Watson suggestively; “for you know my father keeps china
+banks at his store--ones that will hold as much as two dollars if you
+will let them. I think he'd give us one if I happen to be treasurer.”
+
+The three principal officers were thus elected at one fell swoop
+and with an entire absence of that red tape which commonly renders
+organization so tiresome, Candace Milliken suggesting that perhaps she'd
+better be vice-president, as Emma Jane Perkins was always so bashful.
+
+“We ought to have more members,” she reminded the other girls, “but if
+we had invited them the first day they'd have all wanted to be officers,
+especially Minnie Smellie, so it's just as well not to ask them till
+another time. Is Thirza Meserve too little to join?”
+
+“I can't think why anybody named Meserve should have called a baby
+Thirza,” said Rebecca, somewhat out of order, though the meeting was
+carried on with small recognition of parliamentary laws. “It always
+makes me want to say:
+
+     Thirza Meserver
+     Heaven preserve her!
+     Thirza Meserver
+     Do we deserve her?
+
+She's little, but she's sweet, and absolutely without guile. I think we
+ought to have her.”
+
+“Is 'guile' the same as 'guilt?” inquired Emma Jane Perkins.
+
+“Yes,” the president answered; “exactly the same, except one is written
+and the other spoken language.” (Rebecca was rather good at imbibing
+information, and a master hand at imparting it!) “Written language is
+for poems and graduations and occasions like this--kind of like a best
+Sunday-go-to-meeting dress that you wouldn't like to go blueberrying in
+for fear of getting it spotted.”
+
+“I'd just as 'lieves get 'guile' spotted as not,” affirmed the
+unimaginative Emma Jane. “I think it's an awful foolish word; but now
+we're all named and our officers elected, what do we do first? It's
+easy enough for Mary and Martha Burch; they just play at missionarying
+because their folks work at it, same as Living and I used to make
+believe be blacksmiths when we were little.”
+
+“It must be nicer missionarying in those foreign places,” said Persis,
+“because on 'Afric's shores and India's plains and other spots where
+Satan reigns' (that's father's favorite hymn) there's always a heathen
+bowing down to wood and stone. You can take away his idols if he'll let
+you and give him a bible and the beginning's all made. But who'll we
+begin on? Jethro Small?”
+
+“Oh, he's entirely too dirty, and foolish besides!” exclaimed Candace.
+“Why not Ethan Hunt? He swears dreadfully.”
+
+“He lives on nuts and is a hermit, and it's a mile to his camp through
+the thick woods; my mother'll never let me go there,” objected Alice.
+“There's Uncle Tut Judson.”
+
+“He's too old; he's most a hundred and deaf as a post,” complained Emma
+Jane. “Besides, his married daughter is a Sabbath-school teacher--why
+doesn't she teach him to behave? I can't think of anybody just right to
+start on!”
+
+“Don't talk like that, Emma Jane,” and Rebecca's tone had a tinge of
+reproof in it. “We are a copperated body named the Daughters of Zion,
+and, of course, we've got to find something to do. Foreigners are the
+easiest; there's a Scotch family at North Riverboro, an English one in
+Edgewood, and one Cuban man at Millkin's Mills.”
+
+“Haven't foreigners got any religion of their own?” inquired Persis
+curiously.
+
+“Ye-es, I s'pose so; kind of a one; but foreigners' religions are never
+right--ours is the only good one.” This was from Candace, the deacon's
+daughter.
+
+“I do think it must be dreadful, being born with a religion and growing
+up with it, and then finding out it's no use and all your time wasted!”
+ Here Rebecca sighed, chewed a straw, and looked troubled.
+
+“Well, that's your punishment for being a heathen,” retorted Candace,
+who had been brought up strictly.
+
+“But I can't for the life of me see how you can help being a heathen if
+you're born in Africa,” persisted Persis, who was well named.
+
+“You can't.” Rebecca was clear on this point. “I had that all out with
+Mrs. Burch when she was visiting Aunt Miranda. She says they can't help
+being heathen, but if there's a single mission station in the whole of
+Africa, they're accountable if they don't go there and get saved.”
+
+“Are there plenty of stages and railroads?” asked Alice; “because there
+must be dreadfully long distances, and what if they couldn't pay the
+fare?”
+
+“That part of it is so dreadfully puzzly we mustn't talk about it,
+please,” said Rebecca, her sensitive face quivering with the force of
+the problem. Poor little soul! She did not realize that her superiors
+in age and intellect had spent many a sleepless night over that same
+“accountability of the heathen.”
+
+“It's too bad the Simpsons have moved away,” said Candace. “It's so
+seldom you can find a real big wicked family like that to save, with
+only Clara Belle and Susan good in it.”
+
+“And numbers count for so much,” continued Alice. “My grandmother says
+if missionaries can't convert about so many in a year the Board advises
+them to come back to America and take up some other work.”
+
+“I know,” Rebecca corroborated; “and it's the same with revivalists. At
+the Centennial picnic at North Riverboro, a revivalist sat opposite to
+Mr. Ladd and Aunt Jane and me, and he was telling about his wonderful
+success in Bangor last winter. He'd converted a hundred and thirty in
+a month, he said, or about four and a third a day. I had just finished
+fractions, so I asked Mr. Ladd how the third of a man could be
+converted. He laughed and said it was just the other way; that the man
+was a third converted. Then he explained that if you were trying to
+convince a person of his sin on a Monday, and couldn't quite finish by
+sundown, perhaps you wouldn't want to sit up all night with him, and
+perhaps he wouldn't want you to; so you'd begin again on Tuesday, and
+you couldn't say just which day he was converted, because it would be
+two thirds on Monday and one third on Tuesday.”
+
+“Mr. Ladd is always making fun, and the Board couldn't expect any great
+things of us girls, new beginners,” suggested Emma Jane, who was being
+constantly warned against tautology by her teacher. “I think it's awful
+rude, anyway, to go right out and try to convert your neighbors; but if
+you borrow a horse and go to Edgewood Lower Corner, or Milliken's Mills,
+I s'pose that makes it Foreign Missions.”
+
+“Would we each go alone or wait upon them with a committee, as they did
+when they asked Deacon Tuttle for a contribution for the new hearse?”
+ asked Persis.
+
+“Oh! We must go alone,” decided Rebecca; “it would be much more refined
+and delicate. Aunt Miranda says that one man alone could never get
+a subscription from Deacon Tuttle, and that's the reason they sent a
+committee. But it seems to me Mrs. Burch couldn't mean for us to try
+and convert people when we're none of us even church members, except
+Candace. I think all we can do is to persuade them to go to meeting and
+Sabbath school, or give money for the hearse, or the new horse sheds.
+Now let's all think quietly for a minute or two who's the very most
+heathenish and reperrehensiblest person in Riverboro.”
+
+After a very brief period of silence the words “Jacob Moody” fell from
+all lips with entire accord.
+
+“You are right,” said the president tersely; “and after singing hymn
+number two hundred seventy four, to be found on the sixty-sixth page,
+we will take up the question of persuading Mr. Moody to attend divine
+service or the minister's Bible class, he not having been in the
+meeting-house for lo! these many years.
+
+     'Daughter of Zion, the power that hath saved thee
+     Extolled with the harp and the timbrel should be.'
+
+“Sing without reading, if you please, omitting the second stanza. Hymn
+two seventy four, to be found on the sixty-sixth page of the new hymn
+book or on page thirty two of Emma Jane Perkins's old one.”
+
+II
+
+It is doubtful if the Rev. Mr. Burch had ever found in Syria a person
+more difficult to persuade than the already “gospel-hardened” Jacob
+Moody of Riverboro.
+
+Tall, gaunt, swarthy, black-bearded--his masses of grizzled, uncombed
+hair and the red scar across his nose and cheek added to his sinister
+appearance. His tumble-down house stood on a rocky bit of land back of
+the Sawyer pasture, and the acres of his farm stretched out on all sides
+of it. He lived alone, ate alone, plowed, planted, sowed, harvested
+alone, and was more than willing to die alone, “unwept, unhonored, and
+unsung.” The road that bordered upon his fields was comparatively little
+used by any one, and notwithstanding the fact that it was thickly set
+with chokecherry trees and blackberry bushes it had been for years
+practically deserted by the children. Jacob's Red Astrakhan and Granny
+Garland trees hung thick with apples, but no Riverboro or Edgewood boy
+stole them; for terrifying accounts of the fate that had overtaken one
+urchin in times agone had been handed along from boy to boy, protecting
+the Moody fruit far better than any police patrol.
+
+Perhaps no circumstances could have extenuated the old man's surly
+manners or his lack of all citizenly graces and virtues; but his
+neighbors commonly rebuked his present way of living and forgot the
+troubled past that had brought it about: the sharp-tongued wife, the
+unloving and disloyal sons, the daughter's hapless fate, and all the
+other sorry tricks that fortune had played upon him--at least that was
+the way in which he had always regarded his disappointments and griefs.
+
+This, then, was the personage whose moral rehabilitation was to be
+accomplished by the Daughters of Zion. But how?
+
+“Who will volunteer to visit Mr. Moody?” blandly asked the president.
+
+VISIT MR. MOODY! It was a wonder the roof of the barn chamber did not
+fall; it did, indeed echo the words and in some way make them sound more
+grim and satirical.
+
+“Nobody'll volunteer, Rebecca Rowena Randall, and you know it,” said
+Emma Jane.
+
+“Why don't we draw lots, when none of us wants to speak to him and yet
+one of us must?”
+
+This suggestion fell from Persis Watson, who had been pale and
+thoughtful ever since the first mention of Jacob Moody. (She was fond of
+Granny Garlands; she had once met Jacob; and, as to what befell, well,
+we all have our secret tragedies!)
+
+“Wouldn't it be wicked to settle it that way?”
+
+“It's gamblers that draw lots.”
+
+“People did it in the Bible ever so often.”
+
+“It doesn't seem nice for a missionary meeting.”
+
+These remarks fell all together upon the president's bewildered ear the
+while (as she always said in compositions)--“the while” she was trying
+to adjust the ethics of this unexpected and difficult dilemma.
+
+“It is a very puzzly question,” she said thoughtfully. “I could ask Aunt
+Jane if we had time, but I suppose we haven't. It doesn't seem nice to
+draw lots, and yet how can we settle it without? We know we mean right,
+and perhaps it will be. Alice, take this paper and tear off five narrow
+pieces, all different lengths.”
+
+At this moment a voice from a distance floated up to the haymow--a voice
+saying plaintively: “Will you let me play with you, girls? Huldah has
+gone to ride, and I'm all alone.”
+
+It was the voice of the absolutely-without-guile Thirza Meserve, and it
+came at an opportune moment.
+
+“If she is going to be a member,” said Persis, “why not let her come up
+and hold the lots? She'd be real honest and not favor anybody.”
+
+It seemed an excellent idea, and was followed up so quickly that
+scarcely three minutes ensued before the guileless one was holding the
+five scraps in her hot little palm, laboriously changing their places
+again and again until they looked exactly alike and all rather soiled
+and wilted.
+
+“Come, girls, draw!” commanded the president. “Thirza, you mustn't chew
+gum at a missionary meeting, it isn't polite nor holy. Take it out and
+stick it somewhere till the exercises are over.”
+
+The five Daughters of Zion approached the spot so charged with fate, and
+extended their trembling hands one by one. Then after a moment's silent
+clutch of their papers they drew nearer to one another and compared
+them.
+
+Emma Jane Perkins had drawn the short one, becoming thus the destined
+instrument for Jacob Moody's conversion to a more seemly manner of life!
+
+She looked about her despairingly, as if to seek some painless and
+respectable method of self-destruction.
+
+“Do let's draw over again,” she pleaded. “I'm the worst of all of us.
+I'm sure to make a mess of it till I kind o' get trained in.”
+
+Rebecca's heart sank at this frank confession, which only corroborated
+her own fears.
+
+“I'm sorry, Emmy, dear,” she said, “but our only excuse for drawing lots
+at all would be to have it sacred. We must think of it as a kind of a
+sign, almost like God speaking to Moses in the burning bush.”
+
+“Oh, I WISH there was a burning bush right here!” cried the distracted
+and recalcitrant missionary. “How quick I'd step into it without even
+stopping to take off my garnet ring!”
+
+“Don't be such a scare-cat, Emma Jane!” exclaimed Candace bracingly.
+“Jacob Moody can't kill you, even if he has an awful temper. Trot right
+along now before you get more frightened. Shall we go cross lots with
+her, Rebecca, and wait at the pasture gate? Then whatever happens Alice
+can put it down in the minutes of the meeting.”
+
+In these terrible crises of life time gallops with such incredible
+velocity that it seemed to Emma Jane only a breath before she was being
+dragged through the fields by the other Daughters of Zion, the guileless
+little Thirza panting in the rear.
+
+At the entrance to the pasture Rebecca gave her an impassioned embrace,
+and whispering, “WHATEVER YOU DO, BE CAREFUL HOW YOU LEAD UP,” lifted
+off the top rail and pushed her through the bars. Then the girls turned
+their backs reluctantly on the pathetic figure, and each sought a tree
+under whose friendly shade she could watch, and perhaps pray, until the
+missionary should return from her field of labor.
+
+Alice Robinson, whose compositions were always marked 96 or 97,--100
+symbolizing such perfection as could be attained in the mortal world of
+Riverboro,--Alice, not only Daughter, but Scribe of Zion, sharpened her
+pencil and wrote a few well-chosen words of introduction, to be used
+when the records of the afternoon had been made by Emma Jane Perkins and
+Jacob Moody.
+
+Rebecca's heart beat tumultuously under her gingham dress. She felt
+that a drama was being enacted, and though unfortunately she was not the
+central figure, she had at least a modest part in it. The short lot had
+not fallen to the properest Daughter, that she quite realized; yet would
+any one of them succeed in winning Jacob Moody's attention, in
+engaging him in pleasant conversation, and finally in bringing him to
+a realization of his mistaken way of life? She doubted, but at the same
+moment her spirits rose at the thought of the difficulties involved in
+the undertaking.
+
+Difficulties always spurred Rebecca on, but they daunted poor Emma Jane,
+who had no little thrills of excitement and wonder and fear and longing
+to sustain her lagging soul. That her interview was to be entered as
+“minutes” by a secretary seemed to her the last straw. Her blue eyes
+looked lighter than usual and had the glaze of china saucers; her
+usually pink cheeks were pale, but she pressed on, determined to be
+a faithful Daughter of Zion, and above all to be worthy of Rebecca's
+admiration and respect.
+
+“Rebecca can do anything,” she thought, with enthusiastic loyalty, “and
+I mustn't be any stupider than I can help, or she'll choose one of
+the other girls for her most intimate friend.” So, mustering all her
+courage, she turned into Jacob Moody's dooryard, where he was chopping
+wood.
+
+“It's a pleasant afternoon, Mr. Moody,” she said in a polite but hoarse
+whisper, Rebecca's words, “LEAD UP! LEAD UP!” ringing in clarion tones
+through her brain.
+
+Jacob Moody looked at her curiously. “Good enough, I guess,” he growled;
+“but I don't never have time to look at afternoons.”
+
+Emma Jane seated herself timorously on the end of a large log near the
+chopping block, supposing that Jacob, like other hosts, would pause in
+his tasks and chat.
+
+“The block is kind of like an idol,” she thought; “I wish I could take
+it away from him, and then perhaps he'd talk.”
+
+At this moment Jacob raised his axe and came down on the block with such
+a stunning blow that Emma Jane fairly leaped into the air.
+
+“You'd better look out, Sissy, or you'll git chips in the eye!” said
+Moody, grimly going on with his work.
+
+The Daughter of Zion sent up a silent prayer for inspiration, but none
+came, and she sat silent, giving nervous jumps in spite of herself
+whenever the axe fell upon the log Jacob was cutting.
+
+Finally, the host became tired of his dumb visitor, and leaning on
+his axe he said, “Look here, Sis, what have you come for? What's your
+errant? Do you want apples? Or cider? Or what? Speak out, or GIT out,
+one or t'other.”
+
+Emma Jane, who had wrung her handkerchief into a clammy ball, gave it
+a last despairing wrench, and faltered: “Wouldn't you like--hadn't you
+better--don't you think you'd ought to be more constant at meeting and
+Sabbath school?”
+
+Jacob's axe almost dropped from his nerveless hand, and he regarded
+the Daughter of Zion with unspeakable rage and disdain. Then, the blood
+mounting in his face, he gathered himself together, and shouted: “You
+take yourself off that log and out o' this dooryard double-quick, you
+imperdent sanct'omus young one! You just let me ketch Bill Perkins'
+child trying to teach me where I shall go, at my age! Scuttle, I tell
+ye! And if I see your pious cantin' little mug inside my fence ag'in on
+sech a business I'll chase ye down the hill or set the dog on ye! SCOOT,
+I TELL YE!”
+
+Emma Jane obeyed orders summarily, taking herself off the log, out the
+dooryard, and otherwise scuttling and scooting down the hill at a pace
+never contemplated even by Jacob Moody, who stood regarding her flying
+heels with a sardonic grin.
+
+Down she stumbled, the tears coursing over her cheeks and mingling with
+the dust of her flight; blighted hope, shame, fear, rage, all tearing
+her bosom in turn, till with a hysterical shriek she fell over the bars
+and into Rebecca's arms outstretched to receive her. The other Daughters
+wiped her eyes and supported her almost fainting form, while Thirza,
+thoroughly frightened, burst into sympathetic tears, and refused to be
+comforted.
+
+No questions were asked, for it was felt by all parties that Emma Jane's
+demeanor was answering them before they could be framed.
+
+“He threatened to set the dog on me!” she wailed presently, when, as
+they neared the Sawyer pasture, she was able to control her voice. “He
+called me a pious, cantin' young one, and said he'd chase me out o' the
+dooryard if I ever came again! And he'll tell my father--I know he will,
+for he hates him like poison.”
+
+All at once the adult point of view dawned upon Rebecca. She never
+saw it until it was too obvious to be ignored. Had they done wrong in
+interviewing Jacob Moody? Would Aunt Miranda be angry, as well as Mr.
+Perkins?
+
+“Why was he so dreadful, Emmy?” she questioned tenderly. “What did you
+say first? How did you lead up to it?”
+
+Emma Jane sobbed more convulsively, and wiped her nose and eyes
+impartially as she tried to think.
+
+“I guess I never led up at all; not a mite. I didn't know what you
+meant. I was sent on an errant, and I went and done it the best I could!
+(Emma Jane's grammar always lapsed in moments of excitement.) And then
+Jake roared at me like Squire Winship's bull.... And he called my face
+a mug.... You shut up that secretary book, Alice Robinson! If you write
+down a single word I'll never speak to you again.... And I don't want to
+be a member' another minute for fear of drawing another short lot. I've
+got enough of the Daughters or Zion to last me the rest o' my life! I
+don't care who goes to meetin' and who don't.”
+
+The girls were at the Perkins's gate by this time, and Emma Jane went
+sadly into the empty house to remove all traces of the tragedy from her
+person before her mother should come home from the church.
+
+The others wended their way slowly down the street, feeling that their
+promising missionary branch had died almost as soon as it had budded.
+
+“Goodby,” said Rebecca, swallowing lumps of disappointment and chagrin
+as she saw the whole inspiring plan break and vanish into thin air like
+an iridescent bubble. “It's all over and we won't ever try it again.
+I'm going in to do overcasting as hard as I can, because I hate that the
+worst. Aunt Jane must write to Mrs. Burch that we don't want to be
+home missionaries. Perhaps we're not big enough, anyway. I'm perfectly
+certain it's nicer to convert people when they're yellow or brown or
+any color but white; and I believe it must be easier to save their souls
+than it is to make them go to meeting.”
+
+
+
+
+Third Chronicle. REBECCA'S THOUGHT BOOK
+
+
+I
+
+The “Sawyer girls'” barn still had its haymow in Rebecca's time,
+although the hay was a dozen years old or more, and, in the opinion of
+the occasional visiting horse, sadly juiceless and wanting in flavor.
+It still sheltered, too, old Deacon Israel Sawyer's carryall and
+mowing-machine, with his pung, his sleigh, and a dozen other survivals
+of an earlier era, when the broad acres of the brick house went to make
+one of the finest farms in Riverboro.
+
+There were no horses or cows in the stalls nowadays; no pig grunting
+comfortably of future spare ribs in the sty; no hens to peck the plants
+in the cherished garden patch. The Sawyer girls were getting on in
+years, and, mindful that care once killed a cat, they ordered their
+lives with the view of escaping that particular doom, at least, and
+succeeded fairly well until Rebecca's advent made existence a trifle
+more sensational.
+
+Once a month for years upon years, Miss Miranda and Miss Jane had put
+towels over their heads and made a solemn visit to the barn, taking off
+the enameled cloth coverings (occasionally called “emmanuel covers” in
+Riverboro), dusting the ancient implements, and sometimes sweeping
+the heaviest of the cobwebs from the corners, or giving a brush to the
+floor.
+
+Deacon Israel's tottering ladder still stood in its accustomed place,
+propped against the haymow, and the heavenly stairway leading to eternal
+glory scarcely looked fairer to Jacob of old than this to Rebecca. By
+means of its dusty rounds she mounted, mounted, mounted far away
+from time and care and maiden aunts, far away from childish tasks
+and childish troubles, to the barn chamber, a place so full of golden
+dreams, happy reveries, and vague longings, that, as her little brown
+hands clung to the sides of the ladder and her feet trod the rounds
+cautiously in her ascent, her heart almost stopped beating in the sheer
+joy of anticipation.
+
+Once having gained the heights, the next thing was to unlatch the heavy
+doors and give them a gentle swing outward. Then, oh, ever new Paradise!
+Then, oh, ever lovely green and growing world! For Rebecca had that
+something in her soul that
+
+“Gives to seas and sunset skies The unspent beauty of surprise.”
+
+At the top of Guide Board hill she could see Alice Robinson's barn with
+its shining weather vane, a huge burnished fish that swam with the wind
+and foretold the day to all Riverboro. The meadow, with its sunny
+slopes stretching up to the pine woods, was sometimes a flowing sheet
+of shimmering grass, sometimes--when daisies and buttercups were
+blooming--a vision of white and gold. Sometimes the shorn stubble would
+be dotted with “the happy hills of hay,” and a little later the rock
+maple on the edge of the pines would stand out like a golden ball
+against the green; its neighbor, the sugar maple, glowing beside it,
+brave in scarlet.
+
+It was on one of these autumn days with a wintry nip in the air that
+Adam Ladd (Rebecca's favorite “Mr. Aladdin”), after searching for her in
+field and garden, suddenly noticed the open doors of the barn chamber,
+and called to her. At the sound of his vice she dropped her precious
+diary, and flew to the edge of the haymow. He never forgot the vision
+of the startled little poetess, book in one mittened hand, pencil in
+the other, dark hair all ruffled, with the picturesque addition of an
+occasional glade of straw, her cheeks crimson, her eyes shining.
+
+“A Sappho in mittens!” he cried laughingly, and at her eager question
+told her to look up the unknown lady in the school encyclopedia, when
+she was admitted to the Female Seminary at Wareham.
+
+Now, all being ready, Rebecca went to a corner of the haymow, and
+withdrew a thick blank-book with mottled covers. Out of her gingham
+apron pocket came a pencil, a bit of rubber, and some pieces of brown
+paper; then she seated herself gravely on the floor, and drew an
+inverted soapbox nearer to her for a table.
+
+The book was reverently opened, and there was a serious reading of the
+extracts already carefully copied therein. Most of them were apparently
+to the writer's liking, for dimples of pleasure showed themselves now
+and then, and smiles of obvious delight played about her face; but
+once in a while there was a knitting of the brows and a sigh of
+discouragement, showing that the artist in the child was not wholly
+satisfied.
+
+Then came the crucial moment when the budding author was supposedly to
+be racked with the throes of composition; but seemingly there were
+no throes. Other girls could wield the darning or crochet or knitting
+needle, and send the tatting shuttle through loops of the finest cotton;
+hemstitch, oversew, braid hair in thirteen strands, but the pencil was
+never obedient in their fingers, and the pen and ink-pot were a horror
+from early childhood to the end of time.
+
+Not so with Rebecca; her pencil moved as easily as her tongue, and no
+more striking simile could possibly be used. Her handwriting was not
+Spencerian; she had neither time, nor patience, it is to be feared,
+for copybook methods, and her unformed characters were frequently the
+despair of her teachers; but write she could, write she would, write she
+must and did, in season and out; from the time she made pothooks at six,
+till now, writing was the easiest of all possible tasks; to be indulged
+in as solace and balm when the terrors of examples in least common
+multiple threatened to dethrone the reason, or the rules of grammar
+loomed huge and unconquerable in the near horizon.
+
+As to spelling, it came to her in the main by free grace, and not by
+training, and though she slipped at times from the beaten path, her
+extraordinary ear and good visual memory kept her from many or flagrant
+mistakes. It was her intention, especially when saying her prayers at
+night, to look up all doubtful words in her small dictionary, before
+copying her Thoughts into the sacred book for the inspiration
+of posterity; but when genius burned with a brilliant flame, and
+particularly when she was in the barn and the dictionary in the house,
+impulse as usual carried the day.
+
+There sits Rebecca, then, in the open door of the Sawyers barn
+chamber--the sunset door. How many a time had her grandfather, the good
+deacon, sat just underneath in his tipped-back chair, when Mrs. Israel's
+temper was uncertain, and the serenity of the barn was in comforting
+contrast to his own fireside!
+
+The open doors swinging out to the peaceful landscape, the solace of the
+pipe, not allowed in the “settin'-room”--how beautifully these simple
+agents have ministered to the family peace in days agone! “If I hadn't
+had my barn and my store BOTH, I couldn't never have lived in holy
+matrimony with Maryliza!” once said Mr. Watson feelingly.
+
+But the deacon, looking on his waving grass fields, his tasseling corn
+and his timber lands, bright and honest as were his eyes, never saw
+such visions as Rebecca. The child, transplanted from her home farm at
+Sunnybrook, from the care of the overworked but easy-going mother, and
+the companionship of the scantily fed, scantily clothed, happy-go-lucky
+brothers and sisters--she had indeed fallen on shady days in Riverboro.
+The blinds were closed in every room of the house but two, and the same
+might have been said of Miss Miranda's mind and heart, though Miss
+Jane had a few windows opening to the sun, and Rebecca already had her
+unconscious hand on several others. Brickhouse rules were rigid and many
+for a little creature so full of life, but Rebecca's gay spirit could
+not be pinioned in a strait jacket for long at a time; it escaped
+somehow and winged its merry way into the sunshine and free air; if she
+were not allowed to sing in the orchard, like the wild bird she was, she
+could still sing in the cage, like the canary.
+
+II
+
+If you had opened the carefully guarded volume with the mottled covers,
+you would first have seen a wonderful title page, constructed apparently
+on the same lines as an obituary, or the inscription on a tombstone,
+save for the quantity and variety of information contained in it. Much
+of the matter would seem to the captious critic better adapted to the
+body of the book than to the title page, but Rebecca was apparently
+anxious that the principal personages in her chronicle should be well
+described at the outset.
+
+She seems to have had a conviction that heredity plays its part in the
+evolution of genius, and her belief that the world will be inspired
+by the possession of her Thoughts is too artless to be offensive. She
+evidently has respect for rich material confided to her teacher, and
+one can imagine Miss Dearborn's woe had she been confronted by Rebecca's
+chosen literary executor and bidden to deliver certain “Valuable Poetry
+and Thoughts,” the property of posterity “unless carelessly destroyed.”
+
+THOUGHT BOOK of Rebecca Rowena Randall Really of Sunnybrook Farm But
+temporily of The Brick House Riverboro. Own niece of Miss Miranda and
+Jane Sawyer Second of seven children of her father, Mr. L. D. M. Randall
+(Now at rest in Temperance cemmetary and there will be a monument as
+soon as we pay off the mortgage on the farm) Also of her mother Mrs.
+Aurelia Randall
+
+     In case of Death the best of these Thoughts
+     May be printed in my Remerniscences
+     For the Sunday School Library at Temperance, Maine
+     Which needs more books fearfully
+     And I hereby
+     Will and Testament them to Mr. Adam Ladd
+     Who bought 300 cakes of soap from me
+     And thus secured a premium
+     A Greatly Needed Banquet Lamp
+     For my friends the Simpsons.
+     He is the only one that incourages
+     My writing Remerniscences and
+     My teacher Miss Dearborn will
+     Have much valuable Poetry and Thoughts
+     To give him unless carelessly destroyed.
+
+     The pictures are by the same hand that
+     Wrote the Thoughts.
+
+IT IS NOT NOW DECIDED WHETHER REBECCA ROWENA RANDALL WILL BE A PAINTER
+OR AN AUTHOR, BUT AFTER HER DEATH IT WILL BE KNOWN WHICH SHE HAS BEEN,
+IF ANY.
+
+FINIS
+
+From the title page, with its wealth of detail, and its unnecessary and
+irrelevant information, the book ripples on like a brook, and to the
+weary reader of problem novels it may have something of the brook's
+refreshing quality.
+
+OUR DIARIES May, 187--
+
+All the girls are keeping a diary because Miss Dearborn was very much
+ashamed when the school trustees told her that most of the girls' and
+all of the boys' compositions were disgraceful, and must be improved
+upon next term. She asked the boys to write letters to her once a week
+instead of keeping a diary, which they thought was girlish like playing
+with dolls. The boys thought it was dreadful to have to write letters
+every seven days, but she told them it was not half as bad for them as
+it was for her who had to read them.
+
+To make my diary a little different I am going to call it a THOUGHT Book
+(written just like that, with capitals). I have thoughts that I never
+can use unless I write them down, for Aunt Miranda always says, Keep
+your thoughts to yourself. Aunt Jane lets me tell her some, but does not
+like my queer ones and my true thoughts are mostly queer. Emma Jane does
+not mind hearing them now and then, and that is my only chance.
+
+If Miss Dearborn does not like the name Thought Book I will call it
+Remerniscences (written just like that with a capital R). Remerniscences
+are things you remember about yourself and write down in case you should
+die. Aunt Jane doesn't like to read any other kind of books but just
+lives of interesting dead people and she says that is what Longfellow
+(who was born in the state of Maine and we should be very proud of it
+and try to write like him) meant in his poem:
+
+     “Lives of great men all remind us
+     We should make our lives sublime,
+     And departing, leave behind us
+     Footprints on the sands of time.”
+
+I know what this means because when Emma Jane and I went to the beach
+with Uncle Jerry Cobb we ran along the wet sand and looked at the shapes
+our boots made, just as if they were stamped in wax. Emma Jane turns in
+her left foot (splayfoot the boys call it, which is not polite) and Seth
+Strout had just patched one of my shoes and it all came out in the sand
+pictures. When I learned The Psalm of Life for Friday afternoon speaking
+I thought I shouldn't like to leave a patched footprint, nor have Emma
+Jane's look crooked on the sands of time, and right away I thought Oh!
+What a splendid thought for my Thought Book when Aunt Jane buys me a
+fifteen-cent one over to Watson's store.
+
+* * * * *
+
+
+REMERNISCENCES
+
+June, 187--
+
+I told Aunt Jane I was going to begin my Remerniscences, and she says
+I am full young, but I reminded her that Candace Milliken's sister died
+when she was ten, leaving no footprints whatever, and if I should die
+suddenly who would write down my Remerniscences? Aunt Miranda says the
+sun and moon would rise and set just the same, and it was no matter if
+they didn't get written down, and to go up attic and find her piece-bag;
+but I said it would, as there was only one of everybody in the world,
+and nobody else could do their remerniscensing for them. If I should die
+tonight I know now who would describe me right. Miss Dearborn would
+say one thing and brother John another. Emma Jane would try to do me
+justice, but has no words; and I am glad Aunt Miranda never takes the
+pen in hand.
+
+My dictionary is so small it has not many genteel words in it, and I
+cannot find how to spell Remerniscences, but I remember from the cover
+of Aunt Jane's book that there was an “s” and a “c” close together in
+the middle of it, which I thought foolish and not needful.
+
+All the girls like their dairies very much, but Minnie Smellie got Alice
+Robinson's where she had hid it under the school wood pile and read
+it all through. She said it was no worse than reading anybody's
+composition, but we told her it was just like peeking through a keyhole,
+or listening at a window, or opening a bureau drawer. She said she
+didn't look at it that way, and I told her that unless her eyes got
+unscealed she would never leave any kind of a sublime footprint on
+the sands of time. I told her a diary was very sacred as you generally
+poured your deepest feelings into it expecting nobody to look at it but
+yourself and your indulgent heavenly Father who seeeth all things.
+
+Of course it would not hurt Persis Watson to show her diary because she
+has not a sacred plan and this is the way it goes, for she reads it out
+loud to us:
+
+“Arose at six this morning--(you always arise in a diary but you say
+get up when you talk about it). Ate breakfast at half past six. Had soda
+biscuits, coffee, fish hash and doughnuts. Wiped the dishes, fed the
+hens and made my bed before school. Had a good arithmetic lesson, but
+went down two in spelling. At half past four played hide and coop in the
+Sawyer pasture. Fed hens and went to bed at eight.”
+
+She says she can't put in what doesn't happen, but as I don't think her
+diary is interesting she will ask her mother to have meat hash instead
+of fish, with pie when the doughnuts give out, and she will feed the
+hens before breakfast to make a change. We are all going now to try and
+make something happen every single day so the diaries won't be so dull
+and the footprints so common.
+
+* * * * *
+
+
+AN UNCOMMON THOUGHT
+
+July 187--
+
+We dug up our rosecakes today, and that gave me a good Remerniscence.
+The way you make rose cakes is, you take the leaves of full blown roses
+and mix them with a little cinnamon and as much brown sugar as they
+will give you, which is never half enough except Persis Watson, whose
+affectionate parents let her go to the barrel in their store. Then you
+do up little bits like sedlitz powders, first in soft paper and then
+in brown, and bury them in the ground and let them stay as long as you
+possibly can hold out; then dig them up and eat them. Emma Jane and
+I stick up little signs over the holes in the ground with the date we
+buried them and when they'll be done enough to dig up, but we can never
+wait. When Aunt Jane saw us she said it was the first thing for children
+to learn,--not to be impatient,--so when I went to the barn chamber I
+made a poem.
+
+IMPATIENCE
+
+We dug our rose cakes up oh! all too soon. Twas in the orchard just at
+noon. Twas in a bright July forenoon. Twas in the sunny afternoon. Twas
+underneath the harvest moon.
+
+It was not that way at all; it was a foggy morning before school, and I
+should think poets could never possibly get to heaven, for it is so hard
+to stick to the truth when you are writing poetry. Emma Jane thinks it
+is nobody's business when we dug the rosecakes up. I like the line about
+the harvest moon best, but it would give a wrong idea of our lives and
+characters to the people that read my Thoughts, for they would think we
+were up late nights, so I have fixed it like this:
+
+                    IMPATIENCE
+
+     We dug our rose cakes up oh! all too soon,
+     We thought their sweetness would be such a boon.
+     We ne'er suspicioned they would not be done
+     After three days of autumn wind and sun.
+     Why did we from the earth our treasures draw?
+     Twas not for fear that rat or mole might naw,
+     An aged aunt doth say impatience was the reason,
+     She says that youth is ever out of season.
+
+That is just as Aunt Jane said it, and it gave me the thought for the
+poem which is rather uncommon.
+
+* * * * *
+
+
+A DREADFUL QUESTION
+
+September, 187--
+
+WHICH HAS BEEN THE MOST BENEFERCENT INFLUENCE ON CHARACTER--PUNISHMENT
+OR REWARD?
+
+This truly dreadful question was given us by Dr. Moses when he visited
+school today. He is a School Committee; not a whole one but I do not
+know the singular number of him. He told us we could ask our families
+what they thought, though he would rather we wouldn't, but we must write
+our own words and he would hear them next week.
+
+After he went out and shut the door the scholars were all plunged in
+gloom and you could have heard a pin drop. Alice Robinson cried and
+borrowed my handkerchief, and the boys looked as if the schoolhouse had
+been struck by lightning. The worst of all was poor Miss Dearborn, who
+will lose her place if she does not make us better scholars soon, for
+Dr. Moses has a daughter all ready to put right in to the school and she
+can board at home and save all her wages. Libby Moses is her name.
+
+Miss Dearborn stared out the window, and her mouth and chin shook like
+Alice Robinson's, for she knew, ah! all to well, what the coming week
+would bring forth.
+
+Then I raised my hand for permission to speak, and stood up and said:
+“Miss Dearborn, don't you mind! Just explain to us what benefercent'
+means and we'll write something real interesting; for all of us know
+what punishment is, and have seen others get rewards, and it is not so
+bad a subject as some.” And Dick Carter whispered, “GOOD ON YOUR HEAD,
+REBECCA!” which mean he was sorry for her too, and would try his best,
+but has no words.
+
+Then teacher smiled and said benefercent meant good or healthy for
+anybody, and would all rise who thought punishment made the best
+scholars and men and women; and everybody sat stock still.
+
+And then she asked all to stand who believed that rewards produced the
+finest results, and there was a mighty sound like unto the rushing of
+waters, but really was our feet scraping the floor, and the scholars
+stood up, and it looked like an army, though it was only nineteen,
+because of the strong belief that was in them. Then Miss Dearborn
+laughed and said she was thankful for every whipping she had when
+she was a child, and Living Perkins said perhaps we hadn't got to the
+thankful age, or perhaps her father hadn't used a strap, and she said
+oh! no, it was her mother with the open hand; and Dick Carter said he
+wouldn't call that punishment, and Sam Simpson said so too.
+
+I am going to write about the subject in my Thought Book first, and when
+I make it into a composition, I can leave out anything about the family
+or not genteel, as there is much to relate about punishment not pleasant
+or nice and hardly polite.
+
+* * * * * * * * * * * * *
+
+PUNISHMENT
+
+Punishment is a very puzzly thing, but I believe in it when really
+deserved, only when I punish myself it does not always turn out well.
+When I leaned over the new bridge, and got my dress all paint, and Aunt
+Sarah Cobb couldn't get it out, I had to wear it spotted for six
+months which hurt my pride, but was right. I stayed at home from Alice
+Robinson's birthday party for a punishment, and went to the circus
+next day instead, but Alice's parties are very cold and stiff, as Mrs.
+Robinson makes the boys stand on newspapers if they come inside the
+door, and the blinds are always shut, and Mrs. Robinson tells me how bad
+her liver complaint is this year. So I thought, to pay for the circus
+and a few other things, I ought to get more punishment, and I threw my
+pink parasol down the well, as the mothers in the missionary books throw
+their infants to the crocodiles in the Ganges river. But it got stuck
+in the chain that holds the bucket, and Aunt Miranda had to get Abijah
+Flagg to take out all the broken bits before we could ring up water.
+
+I punished myself this way because Aunt Miranda said that unless I
+improved I would be nothing but a Burden and a Blight.
+
+There was an old man used to go by our farm carrying a lot of broken
+chairs to bottom, and mother used to say--“Poor man! His back is too
+weak for such a burden!” and I used to take him out a doughnut, and this
+is the part I want to go into the Remerniscences. Once I told him we
+were sorry the chairs were so heavy, and he said THEY DIDN'T SEEM SO
+HEAVY WHEN HE HAD ET THE DOUGHNUT. This does not mean that the doughnut
+was heavier than the chairs which is what brother John said, but it is a
+beautiful thought and shows how the human race should have sympathy, and
+help bear burdens.
+
+I know about a Blight, for there was a dreadful east wind over at our
+farm that destroyed all the little young crops just out of the ground,
+and the farmers called it the Blight. And I would rather be hail, sleet,
+frost, or snow than a Blight, which is mean and secret, and which is the
+reason I threw away the dearest thing on earth to me, the pink parasol
+that Miss Ross brought me from Paris, France. I have also wrapped up my
+bead purse in three papers and put it away marked not to be opened till
+after my death unless needed for a party.
+
+I must not be Burden, I must not be Blight, The angels in heaven would
+weep at the sight.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+REWARDS
+
+A good way to find out which has the most benefercent effect would be to
+try rewards on myself this next week and write my composition the very
+last day, when I see how my character is. It is hard to find rewards for
+yourself, but perhaps Aunt Jane and some of the girls would each give
+me one to help out. I could carry my bead purse to school every day,
+or wear my coral chain a little while before I go to sleep at night. I
+could read Cora or the Sorrows of a Doctor's Wife a little oftener, but
+that's all the rewards I can think of. I fear Aunt Miranda would say
+they are wicked but oh! if they should turn out benefercent how glad and
+joyful life would be to me! A sweet and beautiful character, beloved
+by my teacher and schoolmates, admired and petted by my aunts and
+neighbors, yet carrying my bead purse constantly, with perhaps my best
+hat on Wednesday afternoons, as well as Sundays!
+
+* * * * *
+
+A GREAT SHOCK
+
+The reason why Alice Robinson could not play was, she was being punished
+for breaking her mother's blue platter. Just before supper my story
+being finished I went up Guide Board hill to see how she was bearing
+up and she spoke to me from her window. She said she did not mind being
+punished because she hadn't been for a long time, and she hoped it would
+help her with her composition. She thought it would give her thoughts,
+and tomorrow's the last day for her to have any. This gave me a good
+idea and I told her to call her father up and beg him to beat her
+violently. It would hurt, I said, but perhaps none of the other girls
+would have a punishment like that, and her composition would be all
+different and splendid. I would borrow Aunt Miranda's witchhayzel and
+pour it on her wounds like the Samaritan in the Bible.
+
+I went up again after supper with Dick Carter to see how it turned out.
+Alice came to the window and Dick threw up a note tied to a stick. I
+had written: “DEMAND YOUR PUNISHMENT TO THE FULL. BE BRAVE LIKE DOLORES'
+MOTHER IN THE Martyrs of Spain.”
+
+She threw down an answer, and it was: “YOU JUST BE LIKE DOLORES' MOTHER
+YOURSELF IF YOU'RE SO SMART!” Then she stamped away from the window and
+my feelings were hurt, but Dick said perhaps she was hungry, and that
+made her cross. And as Dick and I turned to go out of the yard we looked
+back and I saw something I can never forget. (The Great Shock) Mrs.
+Robinson was out behind the barn feeding the turkies. Mr. Robinson
+came softly out of the side door in the orchard and looking everywheres
+around he stepped to the wire closet and took out a saucer of cold beans
+with a pickled beet on top, and a big piece of blueberry pie. Then he
+crept up the back stairs and we could see Alice open her door and take
+in the supper.
+
+Oh! What will become of her composition, and how can she tell anything
+of the benefercent effects of punishment, when she is locked up by
+one parent, and fed by the other? I have forgiven her for the way she
+snapped me up for, of course, you couldn't beg your father to beat you
+when he was bringing you blueberry pie. Mrs. Robinson makes a kind that
+leaks out a thick purple juice into the plate and needs a spoon and
+blacks your mouth, but is heavenly.
+
+* * * * *
+
+A DREAM
+
+The week is almost up and very soon Dr. Moses will drive up to the
+school house like Elijah in the chariot and come in to hear us read.
+There is a good deal of sickness among us. Some of the boys are not able
+to come to school just now, but hope to be about again by Monday, when
+Dr. Moses goes away to a convention. It is a very hard composition to
+write, somehow. Last night I dreamed that the river was ink and I kept
+dipping into it and writing with a penstalk made of a young pine tree. I
+sliced great slabs of marble off the side of one of the White Mountains,
+the one you see when going to meeting, and wrote on those. Then I threw
+them all into the falls, not being good enough for Dr. Moses.
+
+Dick Carter had a splendid boy to stay over Sunday. He makes the real
+newspaper named The Pilot published by the boys at Wareham Academy. He
+says when he talks about himself in writing he calls himself “we,” and
+it sounds much more like print, besides conscealing him more.
+
+Example: Our hair was measured this morning and has grown two inches
+since last time.... We have a loose tooth that troubles us very much...
+Our inkspot that we made by negligence on our only white petticoat we
+have been able to remove with lemon and milk. Some of our petticoat came
+out with the spot.
+
+I shall try it in my composition sometime, for of course I shall write
+for the Pilot when I go to Wareham Seminary. Uncle Jerry Cobb says that
+I shall, and thinks that in four years I might rise to be editor if they
+ever have girls.
+
+I have never been more good than since I have been rewarding myself
+steady, even to asking Aunt Miranda kindly to offer me a company jelly
+tart, not because I was hungry, but for an experement I was trying, and
+would explain to her sometime.
+
+She said she never thought it was wise to experement with your stomach,
+and I said, with a queer thrilling look, it was not my stomach but my
+soul, that was being tried. Then she gave me the tart and walked away
+all puzzled and nervous.
+
+The new minister has asked me to come and see him any Saturday afternoon
+as he writes poetry himself, but I would rather not ask him about this
+composition.
+
+Ministers never believe in rewards, and it is useless to hope that they
+will. We had the wrath of God four times in sermons this last summer,
+but God cannot be angry all the time,--nobody could, especially in
+summer; Mr. Baxter is different and calls his wife dear which is lovely
+and the first time I ever heard it in Riverboro. Mrs. Baxter is another
+kind of people too, from those that live in Temperance. I like to
+watch her in meeting and see her listen to her husband who is young and
+handsome for a minister; it gives me very queer and uncommon feelings,
+when they look at each other, which they always do when not otherwise
+engaged.
+
+She has different clothes from anybody else. Aunt Miranda says you must
+think only of two things: will your dress keep you warm and will it wear
+well and there is nobody in the world to know how I love pink and red
+and how I hate drab and green and how I never wear my hat with the
+black and yellow porkupine quills without wishing it would blow into the
+river.
+
+Whene'er I take my walks abroad How many quills I see. But as they are
+not porkupines They never come to me.
+
+
+COMPOSITION
+
+WHICH HAS THE MOST BENEFERCENT EFFECT ON THE CHARACTER, PUNISHMENT OR
+REWARD?
+
+By Rebecca Rowena Randall
+
+(This copy not corrected by Miss Dearborn yet.)
+
+We find ourselves very puzzled in approaching this truly great and
+national question though we have tried very ernestly to understand it,
+so as to show how wisely and wonderfully our dear teacher guides the
+youthful mind, it being her wish that our composition class shall long
+be remembered in Riverboro Centre.
+
+We would say first of all that punishment seems more benefercently
+needed by boys than girls. Boys' sins are very violent, like stealing
+fruit, profane language, playing truant, fighting, breaking windows, and
+killing innocent little flies and bugs. If these were not taken out of
+them early in life it would be impossible for them to become like our
+martyred president, Abraham Lincoln.
+
+Although we have asked everybody on our street, they think boys' sins
+can only be whipped out of them with a switch or strap, which makes
+us feel very sad, as boys when not sinning the dreadful sins mentioned
+above seem just as good as girls, and never cry when switched, and say
+it does not hurt much.
+
+We now approach girls, which we know better, being one. Girls seem
+better than boys because their sins are not so noisy and showy. They
+can disobey their parents and aunts, whisper in silent hour, cheat in
+lessons, say angry things to their schoolmates, tell lies, be sulky and
+lazy, but all these can be conducted quite ladylike and genteel, and
+nobody wants to strap girls because their skins are tender and get black
+and blue very easily.
+
+Punishments make one very unhappy and rewards very happy, and one would
+think when one is happy one would behave the best. We were acquainted
+with a girl who gave herself rewards every day for a week, and it seemed
+to make her as lovely a character as one could wish; but perhaps if one
+went on for years giving rewards to onesself one would become selfish.
+One cannot tell, one can only fear.
+
+If a dog kills a sheep we should whip him straight away, and on the very
+spot where he can see the sheep, or he will not know what we mean, and
+may forget and kill another. The same is true of the human race. We must
+be firm and patient in punishing, no matter how much we love the one who
+has done wrong, and how hungry she is. It does no good to whip a person
+with one hand and offer her a pickled beet with the other. This confuses
+her mind, and she may grow up not knowing right from wrong. (The
+striking example of the pickled beet was removed from the essay by the
+refined but ruthless Miss Dearborn, who strove patiently, but vainly, to
+keep such vulgar images out of her pupils' literary efforts.)
+
+We now respectfully approach the Holy Bible and the people in the Bible
+were punished the whole time, and that would seem to make it right.
+Everybody says Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth; but we think ourself,
+that the Lord is a better punisher than we are, and knows better how and
+when to do it having attended to it ever since the year B.C. while
+the human race could not know about it till 1492 A.D., which is when
+Columbus discovered America.
+
+We do not believe we can find out all about this truly great and
+national subject till we get to heaven, where the human race, strapped
+and unstrapped, if any, can meet together and laying down their harps
+discuss how they got there.
+
+And we would gently advise boys to be more quiet and genteel in conduct
+and try rewards to see how they would work. Rewards are not all like
+the little rosebud merit cards we receive on Fridays, and which boys
+sometimes tear up and fling scornfully to the breeze when they get
+outside, but girls preserve carefully in an envelope.
+
+Some rewards are great and glorious, for boys can get to be governor or
+school trustee or road commissioner or president, while girls can only
+be wife and mother. But all of us can have the ornament of a meek and
+lowly spirit, especially girls, who have more use for it than boys.
+
+R.R.R.
+
+* * * * *
+
+
+STORIES AND PEOPLE
+
+October, 187--
+
+There are people in books and people in Riverboro, and they are not the
+same kind. They never talk of chargers and palfreys in the village, nor
+say How oft and Methinks, and if a Scotchman out of Rob Roy should come
+to Riverboro and want to marry one of us girls we could not understand
+him unless he made motions; though Huldah Meserve says if a nobleman of
+high degree should ask her to be his,--one of vast estates with serfs at
+his bidding,--she would be able to guess his meaning in any language.
+
+Uncle Jerry Cobb thinks that Riverboro people would not make a story,
+but I know that some of them would.
+
+Jack-o'-lantern, though only a baby, was just like a real story if
+anybody had written a piece about him: How his mother was dead and his
+father ran away and Emma Jane and I got Aunt Sarah Cobb to keep him so
+Mr. Perkins wouldn't take him to the poor farm; and about our lovely
+times with him that summer, and our dreadful loss when his father
+remembered him in the fall and came to take him away; and how Aunt Sarah
+carried the trundle bed up attic again and Emma Jane and I heard her
+crying and stole away.
+
+Mrs. Peter Meserve says Grandpa Sawyer was a wonderful hand at stories
+before his spirit was broken by grandmother. She says he was the life
+of the store and tavern when he was a young man, though generally sober,
+and she thinks I take after him, because I like compositions better than
+all the other lessons; but mother says I take after father, who always
+could say everything nicely whether he had anything to say or not; so
+methinks I should be grateful to both of them. They are what is called
+ancestors and much depends upon whether you have them or not. The
+Simpsons have not any at all. Aunt Miranda says the reason everybody
+is so prosperous around here is because their ancestors were all first
+settlers and raised on burnt ground. This should make us very proud.
+
+Methinks and methought are splendid words for compositions. Miss
+Dearborn likes them very much, but Alice and I never bring them in to
+suit her. Methought means the same as I thought, but sounds better.
+Example: If you are telling a dream you had about your aged aunt:
+
+     Methought I heard her say
+     My child you have so useful been
+     You need not sew today.
+
+This is a good example one way, but too unlikely, woe is me!
+
+This afternoon I was walking over to the store to buy molasses, and as
+I came off the bridge and turned up the hill, I saw lots and lots of
+heelprints in the side of the road, heelprints with little spike holes
+in them.
+
+“Oh! The river drivers have come from up country,” I thought, “and
+they'll be breaking the jam at our falls tomorrow.” I looked everywhere
+about and not a man did I see, but still I knew I was not mistaken for
+the heelprints could not lie. All the way over and back I thought about
+it, though unfortunately forgetting the molasses, and Alice Robinson
+not being able to come out, I took playtime to write a story. It is
+the first grown-up one I ever did, and is intended to be like Cora the
+Doctor's Wife, not like a school composition. It is written for Mr. Adam
+Ladd, and people like him who live in Boston, and is the printed kind
+you get money for, to pay off a mortgage.
+
+* * * * *
+
+LANCELOT OR THE PARTED LOVERS
+
+A beautiful village maiden was betrothed to a stallwart river driver,
+but they had high and bitter words and parted, he to weep into the
+crystal stream as he drove his logs, and she to sigh and moan as she
+went about her round of household tasks.
+
+At eventide the maiden was wont to lean over the bridge and her tears
+also fell into the foaming stream; so, though the two unhappy lovers did
+not know it, the river was their friend, the only one to whom they told
+their secrets and wept into.
+
+The months crept on and it was the next July when the maiden was passing
+over the bridge and up the hill. Suddenly she spied footprints on the
+sands of time.
+
+“The river drivers have come again!” she cried, putting her hand to
+her side for she had a slight heart trouble like Cora and Mrs. Peter
+Meserve, that doesn't kill.
+
+“They HAVE come indeed; ESPECIALLY ONE YOU KNOW,” said a voice, and
+out from the alder bushes sprung Lancelot Littlefield, for that was the
+lover's name and it was none other than he. His hair was curly and like
+living gold. His shirt, white of flannel, was new and dry, and of a
+handsome color, and as the maiden looked at him she could think of
+nought but a fairy prince.
+
+“Forgive,” she mermered, stretching out her waisted hands.
+
+“Nay, sweet,” he replied. “'Tis I should say that to you,” and bending
+gracefully on one knee he kissed the hem of her dress. It was a rich
+pink gingham check, ellaborately ornamented with white tape trimming.
+
+Clasping each other to the heart like Cora and the Doctor, they stood
+there for a long while, till they heard the rumble of wheels on the
+bridge and knew they must disentangle.
+
+The wheels came nearer and verily! it was the maiden's father.
+
+“Can I wed with your fair daughter this very moon,” asked Lancelot, who
+will not be called his whole name again in this story.
+
+“You may,” said the father, “for lo! she has been ready and waiting for
+many months.” This he said not noting how he was shaming the maiden,
+whose name was Linda Rowenetta.
+
+Then and there the nuptial day was appointed and when it came, the
+marriage knot was tied upon the river bank where first they met; the
+river bank where they had parted in anger, and where they had again
+scealeld their vows and clasped each other to the heart. And it was very
+low water that summer, and the river always thought it was because no
+tears dropped into it but so many smiles that like sunshine they dried
+it up.
+
+R.R.R.
+
+Finis
+
+* * * * *
+
+
+CAREERS
+
+November, 187--
+
+Long ago when I used to watch Miss Ross painting the old mill at
+Sunnybrook I thought I would be a painter, for Miss Ross went to Paris
+France where she bought my bead purse and pink parasol and I thought
+I would like to see a street with beautiful bright-colored things
+sparkling and hanging in the store windows.
+
+Then when the missionaries from Syria came to stay at the brick house
+Mrs. Burch said that after I had experienced religion I must learn music
+and train my voice and go out to heathen lands and save souls, so I
+thought that would be my career. But we girls tried to have a branch and
+be home missionaries and it did not work well. Emma Jane's father would
+not let her have her birthday party when he found out what she had done
+and Aunt Jane sent me up to Jake Moody's to tell him we did not mean
+to be rude when we asked him to go to meeting more often. He said all
+right, but just let him catch that little dough-faced Perkins young one
+in his yard once more and she'd have reason to remember the call, which
+was just as rude and impolite as our trying to lead him to a purer and a
+better life.
+
+Then Uncle Jerry and Mr. Aladdin and Miss Dearborn liked my
+compositions, and I thought I'd better be a writer, for I must be
+something the minute I'm seventeen, or how shall we ever get the
+mortgage off the farm? But even that hope is taken away from me now,
+for Uncle Jerry made fun of my story Lancelot Or The Parted Lovers and I
+have decided to be a teacher like Miss Dearborn.
+
+The pathetic announcement of a change in the career and life purposes of
+Rebecca was brought about by her reading the grown-up story to Mr. and
+Mrs. Jeremiah Cobb after supper in the orchard. Uncle Jerry was the
+person who had maintained all along that Riverboro people would not make
+a story; and Lancelot or The Parted Lovers was intended to refute that
+assertion at once and forever; an assertion which Rebecca regarded
+(quite truly) as untenable, though why she certainly never could have
+explained. Unfortunately Lancelot was a poor missionary, quite unfitted
+for the high achievements to which he was destined by the youthful
+novelist, and Uncle Jerry, though a stage-driver and no reading man, at
+once perceived the flabbiness and transparency of the Parted Lovers the
+moment they were held up to his inspection.
+
+“You see Riverboro people WILL make a story!” asserted Rebecca
+triumphantly as she finished her reading and folded the paper. “And it
+all came from my noticing the river drivers' tracks by the roadside, and
+wondering about them; and wondering always makes stories; the minister
+says so.”
+
+“Ye-es,” allowed Uncle Jerry reflectively, tipping his chair back
+against the apple tree and forcing his slow mind to violent and
+instantaneous action, for Rebecca was his pride and joy; a person, in
+his opinion, of superhuman talent, one therefore to be “whittled into
+shape” if occasion demanded.
+
+“It's a Riverboro story, sure enough, because you've got the river
+and the bridge and the hill and the drivers all right there in it; but
+there's something awful queer bout it; the folks don't act Riverboro,
+and don't talk Riverboro, cordin' to my notions. I call it a reg'lar
+book story.”
+
+“But,” objected Rebecca, “the people in Cinderella didn't act like us,
+and you thought that was a beautiful story when I told it to you.”
+
+“I know,” replied Uncle Jerry, gaining eloquence in the heat of
+argument. “They didn't act like us, but 't any rate they acted like
+'emselves! Somehow they was all of a piece. Cinderella was a little too
+good, mebbe, and the sisters was most too thunderin' bad to live on the
+face o' the earth, and that fayry old lady that kep' the punkin' coach
+up her sleeve--well, anyhow, you jest believe that punkin' coach, rats,
+mice, and all, when you're hearin' bout it, fore ever you stop to think
+it ain't so.
+
+“I don' know how tis, but the folks in that Cinderella story seem to
+match together somehow; they're all pow'ful onlikely--the prince feller
+with the glass slipper, and the hull bunch; but jest the same you kind
+o' gulp em all down in a lump. But land, Rebecky, nobody'd swaller that
+there village maiden o' your'n, and as for what's-his-name Littlefield,
+that come out o' them bushes, such a feller never 'd a' be'n IN bushes!
+No, Rebecky, you're the smartest little critter there is in this
+township, and you beat your Uncle Jerry all holler when it comes to
+usin' a lead pencil, but I say that ain't no true Riverboro story! Look
+at the way they talk! What was that' bout being BETROTHED'?”
+
+“Betrothed is a genteel word for engaged to be married,” explained the
+crushed and chastened author; and it was fortunate the doting old man
+did not notice her eyes in the twilight, or he might have known that
+tears were not far away.
+
+“Well, that's all right, then; I'm as ignorant as Cooper's cow when
+it comes to the dictionary. How about what's-his-name callin' the girl
+'Naysweet'?”
+
+“I thought myself that sounded foolish,:” confessed Rebecca; “but it's
+what the Doctor calls Cora when he tries to persuade her not to quarrel
+with his mother who comes to live with them. I know they don't say it in
+Riverboro or Temperance, but I thought perhaps it was Boston talk.”
+
+“Well, it ain't!” asserted Mr. Cobb decisively. “I've druv Boston men
+up in the stage from Milltown many's the time, and none of em ever
+said Naysweet to me, nor nothin'like it. They talked like folks, every
+mother's son of em! If I'd a' had that what's-his-name on the harricane
+deck' o' the stage and he tried any naysweetin' on me, I'd a' pitched
+him into the cornfield, side o' the road. I guess you ain't growed up
+enough for that kind of a story, Rebecky, for your poetry can't be beat
+in York County, that's sure, and your compositions are good enough to
+read out loud in town meetin' any day!”
+
+Rebecca brightened up a little and bade the old couple her usual
+affectionate good night, but she descended the hill in a saddened mood.
+When she reached the bridge the sun, a ball of red fire, was setting
+behind Squire Bean's woods. As she looked, it shone full on the broad,
+still bosom of the river, and for one perfect instant the trees on the
+shores were reflected, all swimming in a sea of pink. Leaning over the
+rail, she watched the light fade from crimson to carmine, from carmine
+to rose, from rose to amber, and from amber to gray. Then withdrawing
+Lancelot or the Parted Lovers from her apron pocket, she tore the pages
+into bits and dropped them into the water below with a sigh.
+
+“Uncle Jerry never said a word about the ending!” she thought; “and that
+was so nice!”
+
+And she was right; but while Uncle Jerry was an illuminating critic when
+it came to the actions and language of his Riverboro neighbors, he had
+no power to direct the young mariner when she “followed the gleam,” and
+used her imagination.
+
+OUR SECRET SOCIETY
+
+November, 187--
+
+Our Secret society has just had a splendid picnic in Candace Milliken's
+barn.
+
+Our name is the B.O.S.S., and not a single boy in the village has been
+able to guess it. It means Braid Over Shoulder Society, and that is the
+sign. All the members wear one of their braids over the right shoulder
+in front; the president's tied with red ribbon (I am the president) and
+all the rest tied with blue.
+
+To attract the attention of another member when in company or at a
+public place we take the braid between the thumb and little finger and
+stand carelessly on one leg. This is the Secret Signal and the password
+is Sobb (B.O.S.S. spelled backwards) which was my idea and is thought
+rather uncommon.
+
+One of the rules of the B.O.S.S. is that any member may be required to
+tell her besetting sin at any meeting, if asked to do so by a majority
+of the members.
+
+This was Candace Milliken's idea and much opposed by everybody, but when
+it came to a vote so many of the girls were afraid of offending Candace
+that they agreed because there was nobody else's father and mother
+who would let us picnic in their barn and use their plow, harrow,
+grindstone, sleigh, carryall, pung, sled, and wheelbarrow, which we did
+and injured hardly anything.
+
+They asked me to tell my besetting sin at the very first meeting, and it
+nearly killed me to do it because it is such a common greedy one. It is
+that I can't bear to call the other girls when I have found a thick spot
+when we are out berrying in the summer time.
+
+After I confessed, which made me dreadfully ashamed, every one of the
+girls seemed surprised and said they had never noticed that one but had
+each thought of something very different that I would be sure to think
+was my besetting sin. Then Emma Jane said that rather than tell hers she
+would resign from the Society and miss the picnic. So it made so
+much trouble that Candace gave up. We struck out the rule from the
+constitution and I had told my sin for nothing.
+
+The reason we named ourselves the B.O.S.S. is that Minnie Smellie has
+had her head shaved after scarlet fever and has no braid, so she can't
+be a member.
+
+I don't want her for a member but I can't be happy thinking she will
+feel slighted, and it takes away half the pleasure of belonging to the
+Society myself and being president.
+
+That, I think, is the principal trouble about doing mean and unkind
+things; that you can't do wrong and feel right, or be bad and feel good.
+If you only could you could do anything that came into your mind yet
+always be happy.
+
+Minnie Smellie spoils everything she comes into but I suppose we
+other girls must either have our hair shaved and call ourselves The
+Baldheadians or let her be some kind of a special officer in the
+B.O.S.S.
+
+She might be the B.I.T.U.D. member (Braid in the Upper Drawer), for
+there is where Mrs. Smellie keeps it now that it is cut off.
+
+WINTER THOUGHTS
+
+March, 187--
+
+It is not such a cold day for March and I am up in the barn chamber with
+my coat and hood on and Aunt Jane's waterproof and my mittens.
+
+After I do three pages I am going to hide away this book in the haymow
+till spring.
+
+Perhaps they get made into icicles on the way but I do not seem to have
+any thoughts in the winter time. The barn chamber is full of thoughts in
+warm weather. The sky gives them to me, and the trees and flowers, and
+the birds, and the river; but now it is always gray and nipping, the
+branches are bare and the river is frozen.
+
+It is too cold to write in my bedroom but while we still kept an open
+fire I had a few thoughts, but now there is an air-tight stove in the
+dining room where we sit, and we seem so close together, Aunt Miranda,
+Aunt Jane and I that I don't like to write in my book for fear they will
+ask me to read out loud my secret thoughts.
+
+I have just read over the first part of my Thought Book and I have
+outgrown it all, just exactly as I have outgrown my last year's drab
+cashmere.
+
+It is very queer how anybody can change so fast in a few months, but I
+remember that Emma Jane's cat had kittens the day my book was bought at
+Watson's store. Mrs. Perkins kept the prettiest white one, Abijah Flagg
+drowning all the others.
+
+It seems strange to me that cats will go on having kittens when they
+know what becomes of them! We were very sad about it, but Mrs. Perkins
+said it was the way of the world and how things had to be.
+
+I cannot help being glad that they do not do the same with children, or
+John and Jenny Mira Mark and me would all have had stones tied to our
+necks and been dropped into the deepest part of Sunny Brook, for Hannah
+and Fanny are the only truly handsome ones in the family.
+
+Mrs. Perkins says I dress up well, but never being dressed up it does
+not matter much. At least they didn't wait to dress up the kittens to
+see how they would improve, before drowning them, but decided right
+away.
+
+Emma Jane's kitten that was born the same day this book was is now quite
+an old cat who knows the way of the world herself, and how things have
+to be, for she has had one batch of kittens drowned already.
+
+So perhaps it is not strange that my Thought Book seems so babyish and
+foolish to me when I think of all I have gone through and the millions
+of things I have learned, and how much better I spell than I did ten
+months ago.
+
+My fingers are cold through the mittens, so good-bye dear Thought Book,
+friend of my childhood, now so far far behind me!
+
+I will hide you in the haymow where you'll be warm and cosy all the long
+winter and where nobody can find you again in the summer time but your
+affectionate author,
+
+Rebecca Rowena Randall.
+
+
+
+
+Fourth Chronicle. A TRAGEDY IN MILLINERY
+
+
+I
+
+Emma Jane Perkins's new winter dress was a blue and green Scotch plaid
+poplin, trimmed with narrow green velvet-ribbon and steel nail-heads.
+She had a gray jacket of thick furry cloth with large steel buttons
+up the front, a pair of green kid gloves, and a gray felt hat with an
+encircling band of bright green feathers. The band began in front with
+a bird's head and ended behind with a bird's tail, and angels could have
+desired no more beautiful toilette. That was her opinion, and it was
+shared to the full by Rebecca.
+
+But Emma Jane, as Rebecca had once described her to Mr. Adam Ladd, was
+a rich blacksmith's daughter, and she, Rebecca, was a little half-orphan
+from a mortgaged farm “up Temperance way,” dependent upon her spinster
+aunts for board, clothes, and schooling. Scotch plaid poplins were
+manifestly not for her, but dark-colored woolen stuffs were, and
+mittens, and last winter's coats and furs.
+
+And how about hats? Was there hope in store for her there? she wondered,
+as she walked home from the Perkins house, full of admiration for Emma
+Jane's winter outfit, and loyally trying to keep that admiration free
+from wicked envy. Her red-winged black hat was her second best, and
+although it was shabby she still liked it, but it would never do for
+church, even in Aunt Miranda's strange and never-to-be-comprehended
+views of suitable raiment.
+
+There was a brown felt turban in existence, if one could call it
+existence when it had been rained on, snowed on, and hailed on for two
+seasons; but the trimmings had at any rate perished quite off the face
+of the earth, that was one comfort!
+
+Emma Jane had said, rather indiscreetly, that at the village milliner's
+at Milliken's Mills there was a perfectly elegant pink breast to be had,
+a breast that began in a perfectly elegant solferino and terminated in a
+perfectly elegant magenta; two colors much in vogue at that time. If
+the old brown hat was to be her portion yet another winter, would Aunt
+Miranda conceal its deficiencies from a carping world beneath the shaded
+solferino breast? WOULD she, that was the question?
+
+Filled with these perplexing thoughts, Rebecca entered the brick house,
+hung up her hood in the entry, and went into the dining-room.
+
+Miss Jane was not there, but Aunt Miranda sat by the window with her lap
+full of sewing things, and a chair piled with pasteboard boxes by her
+side. In one hand was the ancient, battered, brown felt turban, and in
+the other were the orange and black porcupine 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 hateful porcupine 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 breath freely 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 the plume of Henry
+of Navarre.
+
+Rebecca was resigned, if not greatly comforted, but she had grace enough
+to conceal her feelings, now that she knew economy was at the root
+of some of her aunt's decrees in matters of dress; and she managed to
+forget the solferino breast, save in sleep, where a vision of it had a
+way of appearing to her, dangling from the ceiling, and dazzling her
+so with its rich color that she used to hope the milliner would sell it
+that she might never be tempted with it when she passed the shop window.
+
+One day, not long afterward, Miss Miranda borrowed Mr. Perkins's horse
+and wagon and took Rebecca with her on a drive to Union, to see about
+some sausage meat and head cheese. She intended to call on Mrs. Cobb,
+order a load of pine wood from Mr. Strout on the way, and leave some
+rags for a rug with old Mrs. Pease, so that the journey could be made
+as profitable as possible, consistent with the loss of time and the wear
+and tear on her second-best black dress.
+
+The red-winged black hat was forcibly removed from Rebecca's head just
+before starting, and the nightmare turban substituted.
+
+“You might as well begin to wear it first as last,” remarked Miranda,
+while Jane stood in the side door and sympathized secretly with Rebecca.
+
+“I will!” said Rebecca, ramming the stiff turban down on her head with a
+vindictive grimace, and snapping the elastic under her long braids; “but
+it makes me think of what Mr. Robinson said when the minister told him
+his mother-in-law would ride in the same buggy with him at his wife's
+funeral.”
+
+“I can't see how any speech of Mr. Robinson's, made years an' years ago,
+can have anything to do with wearin' your turban down to Union,” said
+Miranda, settling the lap robe over her knees.
+
+“Well, it can; because he said: Have it that way, then, but it'll spile
+the hull blamed trip for me!'”
+
+Jane closed the door suddenly, partly because she experienced a desire
+to smile (a desire she had not felt for years before Rebecca came to
+the brick house to live), and partly because she had no wish to overhear
+what her sister would say when she took in the full significance of
+Rebecca's anecdote, which was a favorite one with Mr. Perkins.
+
+It was a cold blustering day with a high wind that promised to bring an
+early fall of snow. The trees were stripped bare of leaves, the
+ground was hard, and the wagon wheels rattled noisily over the
+thank-you-ma'ams.
+
+“I'm glad I wore my Paisley shawl over my cloak,” said Miranda. “Be you
+warm enough, Rebecca? Tie that white rigolette tighter round your neck.
+The wind fairly blows through my bones. I most wish t we'd waited till
+a pleasanter day, for this Union road is all up hill or down, and we
+shan't get over the ground fast, it's so rough. Don't forget, when you
+go into Scott's, to say I want all the trimmin's when they send me the
+pork, for mebbe I can try out a little mite o' lard. The last load o'
+pine's gone turrible quick; I must see if “Bijah Flagg can't get us some
+cut-rounds at the mills, when he hauls for Squire Bean next time. Keep
+your mind on your drivin', Rebecca, and don't look at the trees and the
+sky so much. It's the same sky and same trees that have been here right
+along. Go awful slow down this hill and walk the hoss over Cook's Brook
+bridge, for I always suspicion it's goin' to break down under me, an' I
+shouldn't want to be dropped into that fast runnin' water this cold day.
+It'll be froze stiff by this time next week. Hadn't you better get out
+and lead”--
+
+The rest of the sentence was very possibly not vital, but at any rate
+it was never completed, for in the middle of the bridge a fierce gale
+of wind took Miss Miranda's Paisley shawl and blew it over her head. The
+long heavy ends whirled in opposite directions and wrapped themselves
+tightly about her wavering bonnet. Rebecca had the whip and the reins,
+and in trying to rescue her struggling aunt could not steady her own
+hat, which was suddenly torn from her head and tossed against the bridge
+rail, where it trembled and flapped for an instant.
+
+“My hat! Oh! Aunt Miranda, my hateful hat!” cried Rebecca, never
+remembering at the instant how often she had prayed that the “fretful
+porcupine” might some time vanish in this violent manner, since it
+refused to die a natural death.
+
+She had already stopped the horse, so, giving her aunt's shawl one last
+desperate twitch, she slipped out between the wagon wheels, and darted
+in the direction of the hated object, the loss of which had dignified it
+with a temporary value and importance.
+
+The stiff brown turban rose in the air, then dropped and flew along the
+bridge; Rebecca pursued; it danced along and stuck between two of the
+railings; Rebecca flew after it, her long braids floating in the wind.
+
+“Come back! Come back! Don't leave me alone with the team. I won't have
+it! Come back, and leave your hat!”
+
+Miranda had at length extricated herself from the submerging shawl, but
+she was so blinded by the wind, and so confused that she did not measure
+the financial loss involved in her commands.
+
+Rebecca heard, but her spirit being in arms, she made one more mad
+scramble for the vagrant hat, which now seemed possessed with an evil
+spirit, for it flew back and forth, and bounded here and there, like
+a living thing, finally distinguishing itself by blowing between the
+horse's front and hind legs, Rebecca trying to circumvent it by going
+around the wagon, and meeting it on the other side.
+
+It was no use; as she darted from behind the wheels the wind gave the
+hat an extra whirl, and scurrying in the opposite direction it soared
+above the bridge rail and disappeared into the rapid water below.
+
+“Get in again!” cried Miranda, holding on her bonnet. “You done your
+best and it can't be helped, I only wish't I'd let you wear your black
+hat as you wanted to; and I wish't we'd never come such a day! The shawl
+has broke the stems of the velvet geraniums in my bonnet, and the wind
+has blowed away my shawl pin and my back comb. I'd like to give up and
+turn right back this minute, but I don't like to borrer Perkins's hoss
+again this month. When we get up in the woods you can smooth your hair
+down and tie the rigolette over your head and settle what's left of my
+bonnet; it'll be an expensive errant, this will!”
+
+ * * * * *
+
+II
+
+It was not till next morning that Rebecca's heart really began its song
+of thanksgiving. Her Aunt Miranda announced at breakfast, that as Mrs.
+Perkins was going to Milliken's Mills, Rebecca might go too, and buy a
+serviceable hat.
+
+“You mustn't pay over two dollars and a half, and you mustn't get the
+pink bird without Mrs. Perkins says, and the milliner says, that it
+won't fade nor moult. Don't buy a light-colored felt because you'll get
+sick of it in two or three years same as you did the brown one. I always
+liked the shape of the brown one, and you'll never get another trimmin'
+that'll wear like them quills.”
+
+“I hope not!” thought Rebecca.
+
+“If you had put your elastic under your chin, same as you used to, and
+not worn it behind because you think it's more grown-up an' fash'onable,
+the wind never'd a' took the hat off your head, and you wouldn't a' lost
+it; but the mischief's done and you can go right over to Mis' Perkins
+now, so you won't miss her nor keep her waitin'. The two dollars and a
+half is in an envelope side o' the clock.”
+
+Rebecca swallowed the last spoonful of picked-up codfish on her plate,
+wiped her lips, and rose from her chair happier than the seraphs in
+Paradise.
+
+The porcupine quills had disappeared from her life, and without any
+fault or violence on her part. She was wholly innocent and virtuous, but
+nevertheless she was going to have a new hat with the solferino breast,
+should the adored object prove, under rigorous examination, to be
+practically indestructible.
+
+“Whene'er I take my walks abroad, How many hats I'll see; But if they're
+trimmed with hedgehog quills They'll not belong to me!”
+
+So she improvised, secretly and ecstatically, as she went towards the
+side entry.
+
+“There's 'Bijah Flagg drivin' in,” said Miss Miranda, going to the
+window. “Step out and see what he's got, Jane; some passel from the
+Squire, I guess. It's a paper bag and it may be a punkin, though he
+wouldn't wrop up a punkin, come to think of it! Shet the dinin' room
+door, Jane; it's turrible drafty. Make haste, for the Squire's hoss
+never stan's still a minute cept when he's goin'!”
+
+Abijah Flagg alighted and approached the side door with a grin.
+
+“Guess what I've got for ye, Rebecky?”
+
+No throb of prophetic soul warned Rebecca of her approaching doom.
+
+“Nodhead apples?” she sparkled, looking as bright and rosy and
+satin-skinned as an apple herself.
+
+“No; guess again.”
+
+“A flowering geranium?”
+
+“Guess again!”
+
+“Nuts? Oh! I can't, Bijah; I'm just going to Milliken's Mills on an
+errand, and I'm afraid of missing Mrs. Perkins. Show me quick! Is it
+really for me, or for Aunt Miranda?”
+
+“Reely for you, I guess!” and he opened the large brown paper bag and
+drew from it the remains of a water-soaked hat!
+
+They WERE remains, but there was no doubt of their nature and substance.
+They had clearly been a hat in the past, and one could even suppose
+that, when resuscitated, they might again assume their original form in
+some near and happy future.
+
+Miss Miranda, full of curiosity, joined the group in the side entry at
+this dramatic moment.
+
+“Well, I never!” she exclaimed. “Where, and how under the canopy, did
+you ever?”
+
+“I was working on the dam at Union Falls yesterday,” chuckled Abijah,
+with a pleased glance at each of the trio in turn, “an' I seen this
+little bunnit skippin' over the water jest as Becky does over the road.
+It's shaped kind o' like a boat, an' gorry, ef it wa'nt sailin' jest
+like a boat! Where hev I seen that kind of a bristlin' plume?' thinks
+I.”
+
+(“Where indeed!” thought Rebecca stormily.)
+
+“Then it come to me that I'd drove that plume to school and drove it to
+meetin' and drove it to the Fair an'drove it most everywheres on Becky.
+So I reached out a pole an' ketched it fore it got in amongst the logs
+an' come to any damage, an' here it is! The hat's passed in its checks,
+I guess; looks kind as if a wet elephant had stepped on it; but the
+plume's bout's good as new! I reely fetched the hat beck for the sake o'
+the plume.”
+
+“It was real good of you, 'Bijah, an' we're all of us obliged to you,”
+ said Miranda, as she poised the hat on one hand and turned it slowly
+with the other.
+
+“Well, I do say,” she exclaimed, “and I guess I've said it before, that
+of all the wearing' plumes that ever I see, that one's the wearin'est!
+Seems though it just wouldn't give up. Look at the way it's held Mis'
+Cobb's dye; it's about as brown's when it went int' the water.”
+
+“Dyed, but not a mite dead,” grinned Abijah, who was somewhat celebrated
+for his puns.
+
+“And I declare,” Miranda continued, “when you think o' the fuss they
+make about ostriches, killin' em off by hundreds for the sake o' their
+feathers that'll string out and spoil in one hard rainstorm,--an' all
+the time lettin' useful porcupines run round with their quills on, why
+I can't hardly understand it, without milliners have found out jest
+how good they do last, an' so they won't use em for trimmin'. 'Bijah's
+right; the hat ain't no more use, Rebecca, but you can buy you another
+this mornin'--any color or shape you fancy--an' have Miss Morton sew
+these brown quills on to it with some kind of a buckle or a bow, jest
+to hide the roots. Then you'll be fixed for another season, thanks to
+'Bijah.”
+
+Uncle Jerry and Aunt Sarah Cobb were made acquainted before very long
+with the part that destiny, or Abijah Flagg, had played in Rebecca's
+affairs, for, accompanied by the teacher, she walked to the old stage
+driver's that same afternoon. Taking off her new hat with the venerable
+trimming, she laid it somewhat ostentatiously upside down on the kitchen
+table and left the room, dimpling a little more than usual.
+
+Uncle Jerry rose from his seat, and, crossing the room, looked curiously
+into the hat and found that a circular paper lining was neatly pinned
+in the crown, and that it bore these lines, which were read aloud with
+great effect by Miss Dearborn, and with her approval were copied in the
+Thought Book for the benefit of posterity:
+
+“It was the bristling porcupine, As he stood on his native heath, He
+said, 'I'll pluck me some immortelles And make me up a wreath. For tho'
+I may not live myself To more than a hundred and ten, My quills will
+last till crack of doom, And maybe after then. They can be colored blue
+or green Or orange, brown, or red, But often as they may be dyed They
+never will be dead.' And so the bristling porcupine As he stood on his
+native heath, Said, I think I'll pluck me some immmortelles And make me
+up a wreath.'
+
+“R.R.R.”
+
+
+
+
+Fifth Chronicle. THE SAVING OF THE COLORS
+
+
+I
+
+Even when Rebecca had left school, having attained the great age of
+seventeen and therefore able to look back over a past incredibly long
+and full, she still reckoned time not by years, but by certain important
+occurrences.
+
+There was the year her father died; the year she left Sunnybrook Farm to
+come to her aunts in Riverboro; the year Sister Hannah became engaged;
+the year little Mira died; the year Abijah Flagg ceased to be Squire
+Bean's chore-boy, and astounded Riverboro by departing for Limerick
+Academy in search of an education; and finally the year of her
+graduation, which, to the mind of seventeen, seems rather the
+culmination than the beginning of existence.
+
+Between these epoch-making events certain other happenings stood out in
+bold relief against the gray of dull daily life.
+
+There was the day she first met her friend of friends, “Mr. Aladdin,”
+ and the later, even more radiant one when he gave her the coral
+necklace. There was the day the Simpson family moved away from Riverboro
+under a cloud, and she kissed Clara Belle fervently at the cross-roads,
+telling her that she would always be faithful. There was the visit of
+the Syrian missionaries to the brick house. That was a bright, romantic
+memory, as strange and brilliant as the wonderful little birds' wings
+and breasts that the strangers brought from the Far East. She remembered
+the moment they asked her to choose some for herself, and the rapture
+with which she stroked the beautiful things as they lay on the black
+haircloth sofa. Then there was the coming of the new minister, for
+though many were tried only one was chosen; and finally there was the
+flag-raising, a festivity that thrilled Riverboro and Edgewood society
+from centre to circumference, a festivity that took place just before
+she entered the Female Seminary at Wareham and said good-by to kind Miss
+Dearborn and the village school.
+
+There must have been other flag-raisings in history,--even the persons
+most interested in this particular one would grudgingly have allowed
+that much,--but it would have seemed to them improbable that any such
+flag-raising as theirs, either in magnitude of conception or brilliancy
+of actual performance, could twice glorify the same century. Of some
+pageants it is tacitly admitted that there can be no duplicates, and the
+flag-raising at Riverboro Centre was one of these; so that it is small
+wonder if Rebecca chose it as one of the important dates in her personal
+almanac.
+
+The new minister's wife was the being, under Providence, who had
+conceived the germinal idea of the flag.
+
+At this time the parish had almost settled down to the trembling belief
+that they were united on a pastor. In the earlier time a minister was
+chosen for life, and if he had faults, which was a probably enough
+contingency, and if his congregation had any, which is within the bounds
+of possibility, each bore with the other (not quite without friction),
+as old-fashioned husbands and wives once did, before the easy way out of
+the difficulty was discovered, or at least before it was popularized.
+
+The faithful old parson had died after thirty years' preaching,
+and perhaps the newer methods had begun to creep in, for it seemed
+impossible to suit the two communities most interested in the choice.
+
+The Rev. Mr. Davis, for example, was a spirited preacher, but persisted
+in keeping two horses in the parsonage stable, and in exchanging
+them whenever he could get faster ones. As a parochial visitor he was
+incomparable, dashing from house to house with such speed that he could
+cover the parish in a single afternoon. This sporting tendency, which
+would never have been remarked in a British parson, was frowned upon in
+a New England village, and Deacon Milliken told Mr. Davis, when giving
+him what he alluded to as his “walking papers,” that they didn't want
+the Edgewood church run by hoss power!
+
+The next candidate pleased Edgewood, where morning preaching was held,
+but the other parish, which had afternoon service, declined to accept
+him because he wore a wig--an ill-matched, crookedly applied wig.
+
+Number three was eloquent but given to gesticulation, and Mrs. Jere
+Burbank, the president of the Dorcas Society, who sat in a front pew,
+said she couldn't bear to see a preacher scramble round the pulpit hot
+Sundays.
+
+Number four, a genial, handsome man, gifted in prayer, was found to be
+a Democrat. The congregation was overwhelmingly Republican in its
+politics, and perceived something ludicrous, if not positively
+blasphemous, in a Democrat preaching the gospel. (“Ananias and
+Beelzebub'll be candidatin' here, first thing we know!” exclaimed the
+outraged Republican nominee for district attorney.)
+
+Number five had a feeble-minded child, which the hiring committee
+prophesied, would always be standing in the parsonage front yard, making
+talk for the other denominations.
+
+Number six was the Rev. Judson Baxter, the present incumbent; and he
+was voted to be as near perfection as a minister can be in this finite
+world. His young wife had a small income of her own, a distinct and
+unusual advantage, and the subscription committee hoped that they might
+not be eternally driving over the country to get somebody's fifty cents
+that had been over-due for eight months, but might take their onerous
+duties a little more easily.
+
+“It does seem as if our ministers were the poorest lot!” complained Mrs.
+Robinson. “If their salary is two months behindhand they begin to be
+nervous! Seems as though they might lay up a little before they come
+here, and not live from hand to mouth so! The Baxters seem quite
+different, and I only hope they won't get wasteful and run into debt.
+They say she keeps the parlor blinds open bout half the time, and the
+room is lit up so often evenin's that the neighbors think her and Mr.
+Baxter must set in there. It don't seem hardly as if it could be so, but
+Mrs. Buzzell says tis, and she says we might as well say good-by to the
+parlor carpet, which is church property, for the Baxters are living all
+over it!”
+
+This criticism was the only discordant note in the chorus of praise, and
+the people gradually grew accustomed to the open blinds and the overused
+parlor carpet, which was just completing its twenty-fifth year of honest
+service.
+
+Mrs. Baxter communicated her patriotic idea of a new flag to the Dorcas
+Society, proposing that the women should cut and make it themselves.
+
+“It may not be quite as good as those manufactured in the large cities,”
+ she said, “but we shall be proud to see our home-made flag flying in the
+breeze, and it will mean all the more to the young voters growing up, to
+remember that their mothers made it with their own hands.”
+
+“How would it do to let some of the girls help?” modestly asked Miss
+Dearborn, the Riverboro teacher. “We might choose the best sewers and
+let them put in at least a few stitches, so that they can feel they have
+a share in it.”
+
+“Just the thing!” exclaimed Mrs. Baxter. “We can cut the stripes and sew
+them together, and after we have basted on the white stars the girls can
+apply them to the blue ground. We must have it ready for the campaign
+rally, and we couldn't christen it at a better time than in this
+presidential year.”
+
+II
+
+In this way the great enterprise was started, and day by day the
+preparations went forward in the two villages.
+
+The boys, as future voters and fighters, demanded an active share in
+the proceedings, and were organized by Squire Bean into a fife and drum
+corps, so that by day and night martial but most inharmonious music woke
+the echoes, and deafened mothers felt their patriotism oozing out at the
+soles of their shoes.
+
+Dick Carter was made captain, for his grandfather had a gold medal
+given him by Queen Victoria for rescuing three hundred and twenty-six
+passengers from a sinking British vessel. Riverboro thought it high time
+to pay some graceful tribute to Great Britain in return for her handsome
+conduct to Captain Nahum Carter, and human imagination could contrive
+nothing more impressive than a vicarious share in the flag raising.
+
+Living Perkins tried to be happy in the ranks, for he was offered no
+official position, principally, Mrs. Smellie observed, because “his
+father's war record wa'nt clean.” “Oh, yes! Jim Perkins went to the
+war,” she continued. “He hid out behind the hencoop when they was
+draftin', but they found him and took him along. He got into one battle,
+too, somehow or nother, but he run away from it. He was allers cautious,
+Jim was; if he ever see trouble of any kind comin' towards him, he was
+out o' sight fore it got a chance to light. He said eight dollars a
+month, without bounty, wouldn't pay HIM to stop bullets for. He wouldn't
+fight a skeeter, Jim wouldn't, but land! we ain't to war all the time,
+and he's a good neighbor and a good blacksmith.”
+
+Miss Dearborn was to be Columbia and the older girls of the two schools
+were to be the States. Such trade in muslins and red, white, and blue
+ribbons had never been known since “Watson kep' store,” and the number
+of brief white petticoats hanging out to bleach would have caused the
+passing stranger to imagine Riverboro a continual dancing school.
+
+Juvenile virtue, both male and female, reached an almost impossible
+height, for parents had only to lift a finger and say, “you shan't go
+to the flag raising!” and the refractory spirit at once armed itself for
+new struggles toward the perfect life.
+
+Mr. Jeremiah Cobb had consented to impersonate Uncle Sam, and was to
+drive Columbia and the States to the “raising” on the top of his own
+stage. Meantime the boys were drilling, the ladies were cutting and
+basting and stitching, and the girls were sewing on stars; for the
+starry part of the spangled banner was to remain with each of them in
+turn until she had performed her share of the work.
+
+It was felt by one and all a fine and splendid service indeed to help
+in the making of the flag, and if Rebecca was proud to be of the chosen
+ones, so was her Aunt Jane Sawyer, who had taught her all her delicate
+stitches.
+
+On a long-looked-for afternoon in August the minister's wife drove up
+to the brick house door, and handed out the great piece of bunting to
+Rebecca, who received it in her arms with as much solemnity as if it had
+been a child awaiting baptismal rites.
+
+“I'm so glad!” she sighed happily. “I thought it would never come my
+turn!”
+
+“You should have had it a week ago, but Huldah Meserve upset the ink
+bottle over her star, and we had to baste on another one. You are the
+last, though, and then we shall sew the stars and stripes together, and
+Seth Strout will get the top ready for hanging. Just think, it won't
+be many days before you children will be pulling the rope with all your
+strength, the band will be playing, the men will be cheering, and the
+new flag will go higher and higher, till the red, white, and blue shows
+against the sky!”
+
+Rebecca's eyes fairly blazed. “Shall I fell on' my star, or buttonhole
+it?” she asked.
+
+“Look at all the others and make the most beautiful stitches you can,
+that's all. It is your star, you know, and you can even imagine it is
+your state, and try and have it the best of all. If everybody else
+is trying to do the same thing with her state, that will make a great
+country, won't it?”
+
+Rebecca's eyes spoke glad confirmation of the idea. “My star, my state!”
+ she repeated joyously. “Oh, Mrs. Baxter, I'll make such fine stitches
+you'll think the white grew out of the blue!”
+
+The new minister's wife looked pleased to see her spark kindle a flame
+in the young heart. “You can sew so much of yourself into your star,”
+ she went on in the glad voice that made her so winsome, “that when you
+are an old lady you can put on your specs and find it among all the
+others. Good-by! Come up to the parsonage Saturday afternoon; Mr. Baxter
+wants to see you.”
+
+“Judson, help that dear little genius of a Rebecca all you can!” she
+said that night, when they were cosily talking in their parlor and
+living “all over” the parish carpet. “I don't know what she may, or may
+not, come to, some day; I only wish she were ours! If you could have
+seen her clasp the flag tight in her arms and put her cheek against it,
+and watched the tears of feeling start in her eyes when I told her
+that her star was her state! I kept whispering to myself, Covet not thy
+neighbor's child!'”
+
+Daily at four o'clock Rebecca scrubbed her hands almost to the bone,
+brushed her hair, and otherwise prepared herself in body, mind, and
+spirit for the consecrated labor of sewing on her star. All the time
+that her needle cautiously, conscientiously formed the tiny stitches she
+was making rhymes “in her head,” her favorite achievement being this:
+
+“Your star, my star, all our stars together, They make the dear old
+banner proud To float in the bright fall weather.”
+
+There was much discussion as to which of the girls should impersonate
+the State of Maine, for that was felt to be the highest honor in the
+gift of the committee.
+
+Alice Robinson was the prettiest child in the village, but she was very
+shy and by no means a general favorite.
+
+Minnie Smellie possessed the handsomest dress and a pair of white
+slippers and open-work stockings that nearly carried the day. Still, as
+Miss Delia Weeks well said, she was so stupid that if she should
+suck her thumb in the very middle of the exercises nobody'd be a dite
+surprised!
+
+Huldah Meserve was next voted upon, and the fact that if she were not
+chosen her father might withdraw his subscription to the brass band fund
+was a matter for grave consideration.
+
+“I kind o' hate to have such a giggler for the State of Maine; let her
+be the Goddess of Liberty,” proposed Mrs. Burbank, whose patriotism was
+more local than national.
+
+“How would Rebecca Randall do for Maine, and let her speak some of her
+verses?” suggested the new minister's wife, who, could she have had her
+way, would have given all the prominent parts to Rebecca, from Uncle Sam
+down.
+
+So, beauty, fashion, and wealth having been tried and found wanting, the
+committee discussed the claims of talent, and it transpired that to
+the awe-stricken Rebecca fell the chief plum in the pudding. It was a
+tribute to her gifts that there was no jealousy or envy among the other
+girls; they readily conceded her special fitness for the role.
+
+Her life had not been pressed down full to the brim of pleasures, and
+she had a sort of distrust of joy in the bud. Not until she saw it in
+full radiance of bloom did she dare embrace it. She had never read
+any verse but Byron, Felicia Hemans, bits of “Paradise Lost,” and the
+selections in the school readers, but she would have agreed heartily
+with the poet who said:
+
+“Not by appointment do we meet delight And joy; they heed not our
+expectancy; But round some corner in the streets of life They on a
+sudden clasp us with a smile.”
+
+For many nights before the raising, when she went to her bed she said to
+herself, after she had finished her prayers: “It can't be true that I'm
+chosen for the State of Maine! It just CAN'T be true! Nobody could be
+good ENOUGH, but oh, I'll try to be as good as I can! To be going to
+Wareham Seminary next week and to be the State of Maine too! Oh! I must
+pray HARD to God to keep me meek and humble!”
+
+III
+
+The flag was to be raised on a Tuesday, and on the previous Sunday it
+became known to the children that Clara Belle Simpson was coming back
+from Acreville, coming to live with Mrs. Fogg and take care of the
+baby, called by the neighborhood boys “the Fogg horn,” on account of his
+excellent voice production.
+
+Clara Belle was one of Miss Dearborn's original flock, and if she
+were left wholly out of the festivities she would be the only girl of
+suitable age to be thus slighted; it seemed clear to the juvenile mind,
+therefore, that neither she nor her descendants would ever recover from
+such a blow. But, under all the circumstances, would she be allowed to
+join in the procession? Even Rebecca, the optimistic, feared not,
+and the committee confirmed her fears by saying that Abner Simpson's
+daughter certainly could not take any prominent part in the ceremony,
+but they hoped that Mrs. Fogg would allow her to witness it.
+
+When Abner Simpson, urged by the town authorities, took his wife and
+seven children away from Riverboro to Acreville, just over the border in
+the next county, Riverboro went to bed leaving its barn and shed doors
+unfastened, and drew long breaths of gratitude to Providence.
+
+Of most winning disposition and genial manners, Mr. Simpson had not
+that instinctive comprehension of property rights which renders a man a
+valuable citizen.
+
+Squire Bean was his nearest neighbor, and he conceived the novel idea
+of paying Simpson five dollars a year not to steal from him, a method
+occasionally used in the Highlands in the early days.
+
+The bargain was struck, and adhered to religiously for a twelve-month,
+but on the second of January Mr. Simpson announced the verbal contract
+as formally broken.
+
+“I didn't know what I was doin' when I made it, Squire,” he urged.
+“In the first place, it's a slur on my reputation and an injury to my
+self-respect. Secondly, it's a nervous strain on me; and thirdly, five
+dollars don't pay me!”
+
+Squire Bean was so struck with the unique and convincing nature of
+these arguments that he could scarcely restrain his admiration, and he
+confessed to himself afterward, that unless Simpson's mental attitude
+could be changed he was perhaps a fitter subject for medical science
+than the state prison.
+
+Abner was a most unusual thief, and conducted his operations with a tact
+and neighborly consideration none too common in the profession. He would
+never steal a man's scythe in haying-time, nor his fur lap-robe in the
+coldest of the winter. The picking of a lock offered no attractions
+to him; “he wa'n't no burglar,” he would have scornfully asserted. A
+strange horse and wagon hitched by the roadside was the most flagrant
+of his thefts; but it was the small things--the hatchet or axe on the
+chopping-block, the tin pans sunning at the side door, a stray garment
+bleaching on the grass, a hoe, rake, shovel, or a bag of early potatoes,
+that tempted him most sorely; and these appealed to him not so much for
+their intrinsic value as because they were so excellently adapted to
+swapping. The swapping was really the enjoyable part of the procedure,
+the theft was only a sad but necessary preliminary; for if Abner
+himself had been a man of sufficient property to carry on his business
+operations independently, it is doubtful if he would have helped himself
+so freely to his neighbor's goods.
+
+Riverboro regretted the loss of Mrs. Simpson, who was useful in
+scrubbing, cleaning, and washing, and was thought to exercise some
+influence over her predatory spouse. There was a story of their early
+married life, when they had a farm; a story to the effect that Mrs.
+Simpson always rode on every load of hay that her husband took to
+Milltown, with the view of keeping him sober through the day. After he
+turned out of the country road and approached the metropolis, it was
+said that he used to bury the docile lady in the load. He would then
+drive on to the scales, have the weight of the hay entered in the
+buyer's book, take his horses to the stable for feed and water, and when
+a favorable opportunity offered he would assist the hot and panting Mrs.
+Simpson out of the side or back of the rack, and gallantly brush the
+straw from her person. For this reason it was always asserted that Abner
+Simpson sold his wife every time he went to Milltown, but the story was
+never fully substantiated, and at all events it was the only suspected
+blot on meek Mrs. Simpson's personal reputation.
+
+As for the Simpson children, they were missed chiefly as familiar
+figures by the roadside; but Rebecca honestly loved Clara Belle,
+notwithstanding her Aunt Miranda's opposition to the intimacy. Rebecca's
+“taste for low company” was a source of continual anxiety to her aunt.
+
+“Anything that's human flesh is good enough for her!” Miranda groaned to
+Jane. “She'll ride with the rag-sack-and-bottle peddler just as quick as
+she would with the minister; she always sets beside the St. Vitus' dance
+young one at Sabbath school; and she's forever riggin' and onriggin'
+that dirty Simpson baby! She reminds me of a puppy that'll always go to
+everybody that'll have him!”
+
+It was thought very creditable to Mrs. Fogg that she sent for Clara
+Belle to live with her and go to school part of the year.
+
+“She'll be useful” said Mrs. Fogg, “and she'll be out of her father's
+way, and so keep honest; though she's no awful hombly I've no fears for
+her. A girl with her red hair, freckles, and cross-eyes can't fall into
+no kind of sin, I don't believe.”
+
+Mrs. Fogg requested that Clara Belle should be started on her journey
+from Acreville by train and come the rest of the way by stage, and she
+was disturbed to receive word on Sunday that Mr. Simpson had borrowed a
+“good roader” from a new acquaintance, and would himself drive the girl
+from Acreville to Riverboro, a distance of thirty-five miles. That he
+would arrive in their vicinity on the very night before the flag-raising
+was thought by Riverboro to be a public misfortune, and several
+residents hastily determined to deny themselves a sight of the
+festivities and remain watchfully on their own premises.
+
+On Monday afternoon the children were rehearsing their songs at the
+meeting-house. As Rebecca came out on the broad wooden steps she watched
+Mrs. Peter Meserve's buggy out of sight, for in front, wrapped in a
+cotton sheet, lay the previous flag. After a few chattering good-bys
+and weather prophecies with the other girls, she started on her homeward
+walk, dropping in at the parsonage to read her verses to the minister.
+
+He welcomed her gladly as she removed her white cotton gloves (hastily
+slipped on outside the door, for ceremony) and pushed back the funny hat
+with the yellow and black porcupine quills--the hat with which she made
+her first appearance in Riverboro society.
+
+“You've heard the beginning, Mr. Baxter; now will you please tell me if
+you like the last verse?” she asked, taking out her paper. “I've only
+read it to Alice Robinson, and I think perhaps she can never be a poet,
+though she's a splendid writer. Last year when she was twelve she wrote
+a birthday poem to herself, and she made natal' rhyme with Milton,.'
+which, of course, it wouldn't. I remember every verse ended:
+
+     'This is my day so natal
+     And I will follow Milton.'
+
+Another one of hers was written just because she couldn't help it, she
+said. This was it:
+
+     'Let me to the hills away,
+     Give me pen and paper;
+     I'll write until the earth will sway
+     The story of my Maker.'”
+
+The minister could scarcely refrain from smiling, but he controlled
+himself that he might lose none of Rebecca's quaint observations.
+When she was perfectly at ease, unwatched and uncriticised, she was a
+marvelous companion.
+
+“The name of the poem is going to be My Star,'” she continued, “and Mrs.
+Baxter gave me all the ideas, but somehow there's a kind of magicness
+when they get into poetry, don't you think so?” (Rebecca always talked
+to grown people as if she were their age, or, a more subtle and truer
+distinction, as if they were hers.)
+
+“It has often been so remarked, in different words,” agreed the
+minister.
+
+“Mrs. Baxter said that each star was a state, and if each state did its
+best we should have a splendid country. Then once she said that we ought
+to be glad the war is over and the States are all at peace together; and
+I thought Columbia must be glad, too, for Miss Dearborn says she's
+the mother of all the States. So I'm going to have it end like this: I
+didn't write it, I just sewed it while I was working on my star:
+
+     For it's your star, my star, all the stars together,
+     That make our country's flag so proud
+     To float in the bright fall weather.
+     Northern stars, Southern stars, stars of the East and West,
+     Side by side they lie at peace
+     On the dear flag's mother-breast.”
+
+“'Oh! many are the poets that are sown by nature,'” thought the
+minister, quoting Wordsworth to himself. “And I wonder what becomes of
+them! That's a pretty idea, little Rebecca, and I don't know whether
+you or my wife ought to have the more praise. What made you think of the
+stars lying on the flag's mother-breast'? Where did you get that word?”
+
+“Why” (and the young poet looked rather puzzled), “that's the way it is;
+the flag is the whole country--the mother--and the stars are the states.
+The stars had to lie somewhere: 'LAP' nor 'ARMS' wouldn't sound well
+with West,' so, of course, I said 'BREAST,'” Rebecca answered, with some
+surprise at the question; and the minister put his hand under her chin
+and kissed her softly on the forehead when he said good-by at the door.
+
+IV
+
+Rebecca walked rapidly along in the gathering twilight, thinking of the
+eventful morrow.
+
+As she approached the turning on the left called the old Milltown
+road, she saw a white horse and wagon, driven by a man with a rakish,
+flapping, Panama hat, come rapidly around the turn and disappear over
+the long hills leading down to the falls. There was no mistaking him;
+there never was another Abner Simpson, with his lean height, his bushy
+reddish hair, the gay cock of his hat, and the long piratical, upturned
+mustaches, which the boys used to say were used as hat-racks by the
+Simpson children at night.. The old Milltown road ran past Mrs. Fogg's
+house, so he must have left Clara Belle there, and Rebecca's heart
+glowed to think that her poor little friend need not miss the raising.
+
+She began to run now, fearful of being late for supper, and covered the
+ground to the falls in a brief time. As she crossed the bridge she again
+saw Abner Simpson's team, drawn up at the watering trough.
+
+Coming a little nearer, with the view of inquiring for the family, her
+quick eye caught sight of something unexpected. A gust of wind blew up
+a corner of a linen lap-robe in the back of the wagon, and underneath
+it she distinctly saw the white-sheeted bundle that held the flag; the
+bundle with a tiny, tiny spot of red bunting peeping out at one corner.
+It is true she had eaten, slept, dreamed red, white, and blue for weeks,
+but there was no mistaking the evidence of her senses; the idolized
+flag, longed for, worked for, sewed for, that flag was in the back of
+Abner Simpson's wagon, and if so, what would become of the raising?
+
+Acting on blind impulse, she ran toward the watering-trough, calling out
+in her clear treble: “Mr. Simpson! Oh, Mr. Simpson, will you let me ride
+a piece with you and hear all about Clara Belle? I'm going part way over
+to the Centre on an errand.” (So she was; a most important errand,--to
+recover the flag of her country at present in the hands of the foe!)
+
+Mr. Simpson turned round in his seat and cried heartily, “Certain sure I
+will!” for he liked the fair sex, young and old, and Rebecca had always
+been a prime favorite with him. “Climb right in! How's everybody? Glad
+to see ye! The folks talk bout ye from sun-up to sun-down, and Clara
+Belle can't hardly wait for a sight of ye!”
+
+Rebecca scrambled up, trembling and pale with excitement. She did not in
+the least know what was going to happen, but she was sure that the flag,
+when in the enemy's country, must be at least a little safer with the
+State of Maine sitting on top of it!
+
+Mr. Simpson began a long monologue about Acreville, the house he lived
+in, the pond in front of it, Mrs. Simpson's health, and various items of
+news about the children, varied by reports of his personal misfortunes.
+He put no questions, and asked no replies, so this gave the
+inexperienced soldier a few seconds to plan a campaign. There were
+three houses to pass; the Browns' at the corner, the Millikens', and the
+Robinsons' on the brow of the hill. If Mr. Robinson were in the front
+yard she might tell Mr. Simpson she wanted to call there and ask Mr.
+Robinson to hold the horse's head while she got out of the wagon.
+Then she might fly to the back before Mr. Simpson could realize the
+situation, and dragging out the precious bundle, sit on it hard, while
+Mr. Robinson settled the matter of ownership with Mr. Simpson.
+
+This was feasible, but it meant a quarrel between the two men, who held
+an ancient grudge against each other, and Mr. Simpson was a valiant
+fighter as the various sheriffs who had attempted to arrest him could
+cordially testify. It also meant that everybody in the village would
+hear of the incident and poor Clara Belle be branded again as the child
+of a thief.
+
+Another idea danced into her excited brain; such a clever one she could
+hardly believe it hers. She might call Mr. Robinson to the wagon, and
+when he came close to the wheels she might say, “all of a sudden”:
+“Please take the flag out of the back of the wagon, Mr. Robinson. We
+have brought it here for you to keep overnight.” Mr. Simpson might be
+so surprised that he would give up his prize rather than be suspected of
+stealing.
+
+But as they neared the Robinsons' house there was not a sign of life
+to be seen; so the last plan, ingenious though it was, was perforce
+abandoned.
+
+The road now lay between thick pine woods with no dwelling in sight.
+It was growing dusk and Rebecca was driving along the lonely way with a
+person who was generally called Slippery Simpson.
+
+Not a thought of fear crossed her mind, save the fear of bungling in
+her diplomacy, and so losing the flag. She knew Mr. Simpson well, and a
+pleasanter man was seldom to be met. She recalled an afternoon when he
+came home and surprised the whole school playing the Revolutionary War
+in his helter-skelter dooryard, and the way in which he had joined the
+British forces and impersonated General Burgoyne had greatly endeared
+him to her. The only difficulty was to find proper words for her
+delicate mission, for, of course, if Mr. Simpson's anger were aroused,
+he would politely push her out of the wagon and drive away with the
+flag. Perhaps if she led the conversation in the right direction an
+opportunity would present itself. She well remembered how Emma Jane
+Perkins had failed to convert Jacob Moody, simply because she failed to
+“lead up” to the delicate question of his manner of life. Clearing her
+throat nervously, she began: “Is it likely to be fair tomorrow?”
+
+“Guess so; clear as a bell. What's on foot; a picnic?”
+
+“No; we're to have a grand flag-raising!” (“That is,” she thought, “if
+we have any flag to raise!”)
+
+“That so? Where?”
+
+“The three villages are to club together and have a rally, and raise
+the flag at the Centre. There'll be a brass band, and speakers, and the
+Mayor of Portland, and the man that will be governor if he's elected,
+and a dinner in the Grange Hall, and we girls are chosen to raise the
+flag.”
+
+“I want to know! That'll be grand, won't it?” (Still not a sign of
+consciousness on the part of Abner.)
+
+“I hope Mrs. Fogg will take Clara Belle, for it will be splendid to look
+at! Mr. Cobb is going to be Uncle Sam and drive us on the stage. Miss
+Dearborn--Clara Belle's old teacher, you know--is going to be Columbia;
+the girls will be the States of the Union, and oh, Mr. Simpson, I am the
+one to be the State of Maine!” (This was not altogether to the point,
+but a piece of information impossible to conceal.)
+
+Mr. Simpson flourished the whipstock and gave a loud, hearty laugh. Then
+he turned in his seat and regarded Rebecca curiously. “You're kind of
+small, hain't ye, for so big a state as this one?” he asked.
+
+“Any of us would be too small,” replied Rebecca with dignity, “but the
+committee asked me, and I am going to try hard to do well.”
+
+The tragic thought that there might be no occasion for anybody to do
+anything, well or ill, suddenly overcame her here, and putting her
+hand on Mr. Simpson's sleeve, she attacked the subject practically and
+courageously.
+
+“Oh, Mr. Simpson, dear Mr. Simpson, it's such a mortifying subject I
+can't bear to say anything about it, but please give us back our flag!
+Don't, DON'T take it over to Acreville, Mr. Simpson! We've worked so
+long to make it, and it was so hard getting the money for the bunting!
+Wait a minute, please; don't be angry, and don't say no just yet, till
+I explain more. It'll be so dreadful for everybody to get there tomorrow
+morning and find no flag to raise, and the band and the mayor all
+disappointed, and the children crying, with their muslin dresses all
+bought for nothing! O dear Mr. Simpson, please don't take our flag away
+from us!”
+
+The apparently astonished Abner pulled his mustaches and exclaimed: “But
+I don't know what you're drivin' at! Who's got yer flag? I hain't!”
+
+Could duplicity, deceit, and infamy go any further, Rebecca wondered,
+and her soul filling with righteous wrath, she cast discretion to the
+winds and spoke a little more plainly, bending her great swimming eyes
+on the now embarrassed Abner, who looked like an angle-worm, wriggling
+on a pin.
+
+“Mr. Simpson, how can you say that, when I saw the flag in the back of
+your wagon myself, when you stopped to water the horse? It's wicked of
+you to take it, and I cannot bear it!” (Her voice broke now, for a doubt
+of Mr. Simpson's yielding suddenly darkened her mind.) “If you keep it,
+you'll have to keep me, for I won't be parted from it! I can't fight
+like the boys, but I can pinch and scratch, and I WILL scratch, just
+like a panther--I'll lie right down on my star and not move, if I starve
+to death!”
+
+“Look here, hold your hosses n' don't cry till you git something to cry
+for!” grumbled the outraged Abner, to whom a clue had just come; and
+leaning over the wagon-back he caught hold of a corner of white sheet
+and dragged up the bundle, scooping off Rebecca's hat in the process,
+and almost burying her in bunting.
+
+She caught the treasure passionately to her heart and stifled her sobs
+in it, while Abner exclaimed: “I swan to man, if that hain't a flag!
+Well, in that case you're good n' welcome to it! Land! I seen that
+bundle lyin' in the middle o' the road and I says to myself, that's
+somebody's washin' and I'd better pick it up and leave it at the
+post-office to be claimed; n' all the time it was a flag!”
+
+This was a Simpsonian version of the matter, the fact being that a
+white-covered bundle lying on the Meserves' front steps had attracted
+his practiced eye, and slipping in at the open gate he had swiftly and
+deftly removed it to his wagon on general principles; thinking if it
+were clean clothes it would be extremely useful, and in any event there
+was no good in passing by something flung into your very arms, so to
+speak. He had had no leisure to examine the bundle, and indeed took
+little interest in it. Probably he stole it simply from force of habit,
+and because there was nothing else in sight to steal, everybody's
+premises being preternaturally tidy and empty, almost as if his visit
+had been expected!
+
+Rebecca was a practical child, and it seemed to her almost impossible
+that so heavy a bundle should fall out of Mrs. Meserve's buggy and not
+be noticed; but she hoped that Mr. Simpson was telling the truth, and
+she was too glad and grateful to doubt anyone at the moment.
+
+“Thank you, thank you ever so much, Mr. Simpson. You're the nicest,
+kindest, politest man I ever knew, and the girls will be so pleased you
+gave us back the flag, and so will the Dorcas Society; they'll be sure
+to write you a letter of thanks; they always do.”
+
+“Tell em not to bother bout any thanks,” said Simpson, beaming
+virtuously. “But land! I'm glad twas me that happened to see that bundle
+in the road and take the trouble to pick it up.” (“Jest to think of it's
+bein' a flag!” he thought; “if ever there was a pesky, wuthless thing to
+trade off, twould be a great, gormin' flag like that!”)
+
+“Can I get out now, please?” asked Rebecca. “I want to go back, for Mrs.
+Meserve will be dreadfully nervous when she finds out she dropped the
+flag, and she has heart trouble.”
+
+“No, you don't,” objected Mr. Simpson gallantly, turning the horse. “Do
+you think I'd let a little creeter like you lug that great heavy bundle?
+I hain't got time to go back to Meserve's, but I'll take you to the
+corner and dump you there, flag n' all, and you can get some o' the
+men-folks to carry it the rest o' the way. You'll wear it out, huggin'
+it so!”
+
+“I helped make it and I adore it!” said Rebecca, who was in a
+high-pitched and grandiloquent mood. “Why don't YOU like it? It's your
+country's flag.”
+
+Simpson smiled an indulgent smile and looked a trifle bored at these
+frequent appeals to his extremely rusty higher feelings.
+
+“I don' know's I've got any partic'lar int'rest in the country,” he
+remarked languidly. “I know I don't owe nothin' to it, nor own nothin'
+in it!”
+
+“You own a star on the flag, same as everybody,” argued Rebecca, who had
+been feeding on patriotism for a month; “and you own a state, too, like
+all of us!”
+
+“Land! I wish't I did! or even a quarter section!” sighed Mr. Simpson,
+feeling somehow a little more poverty-stricken and discouraged than
+usual.
+
+As they approached the corner and the watering-trough where four
+cross-roads met, the whole neighborhood seemed to be in evidence,
+and Mr. Simpson suddenly regretted his chivalrous escort of Rebecca;
+especially when, as he neared the group, an excited lady, wringing her
+hands, turned out to be Mrs. Peter Meserve, accompanied by Huldah, the
+Browns, Mrs. Milliken, Abijah Flagg, and Miss Dearborn.
+
+“Do you know anything about the new flag, Rebecca?” shrieked Mrs.
+Meserve, too agitated, at the moment, to notice the child's companion.
+
+“It's right here in my lap, all safe,” responded Rebecca joyously.
+
+“You careless, meddlesome young one, to take it off my steps where
+I left it just long enough to go round to the back and hunt up my
+door-key! You've given me a fit of sickness with my weak heart, and what
+business was it of yours? I believe you think you OWN the flag! Hand it
+over to me this minute!”
+
+Rebecca was climbing down during this torrent of language, but as she
+turned she flashed one look of knowledge at the false Simpson, a look
+that went through him from head to foot, as if it were carried by
+electricity.
+
+He had not deceived her after all, owing to the angry chatter of Mrs.
+Meserve. He had been handcuffed twice in his life, but no sheriff had
+ever discomfited him so thoroughly as this child. Fury mounted to his
+brain, and as soon as she was safely out from between the wheels he
+stood up in the wagon and flung the flag out in the road in the midst of
+the excited group.
+
+“Take it, you pious, passimonious, cheese-parin', hair-splittin',
+back-bitin', flag-raisin' crew!” he roared. “Rebecca never took the
+flag; I found it in the road, I say!”
+
+“You never, no such a thing!” exclaimed Mrs. Meserve. “You found it on
+the doorsteps in my garden!”
+
+“Mebbe twas your garden, but it was so chock full o' weeks I THOUGHT
+twas the road,” retorted Abner. “I vow I wouldn't a' given the old
+rag back to one o' YOU, not if you begged me on your bended knees! But
+Rebecca's a friend o' my folks and can do with her flag's she's a mind
+to, and the rest o' ye can go to thunder--n' stay there, for all I
+care!”
+
+So saying, he made a sharp turn, gave the gaunt white horse a lash and
+disappeared in a cloud of dust, before the astonished Mr. Brown, the
+only man in the party, had a thought of detaining him.
+
+“I'm sorry I spoke so quick, Rebecca,” said Mrs. Meserve, greatly
+mortified at the situation. “But don't you believe a word that lyin'
+critter said! He did steal it off my doorstep, and how did you come to
+be ridin' and consortin' with him! I believe it would kill your Aunt
+Miranda if she should hear about it!”
+
+The little school-teacher put a sheltering arm round Rebecca as Mr.
+Brown picked up the flag and dusted and folded it.
+
+“I'm willing she should hear about it,” Rebecca answered. “I didn't do
+anything to be ashamed of! I saw the flag in the back of Mr. Simpson's
+wagon and I just followed it. There weren't any men or any Dorcases to
+take care of it and so it fell to me! You wouldn't have had me let it
+out of my sight, would you, and we going to raise it tomorrow morning?”
+
+“Rebecca's perfectly right, Mrs. Meserve!” said Miss Dearborn proudly.
+“And it's lucky there was somebody quick-witted enough to ride and
+consort' with Mr. Simpson! I don't know what the village will think, but
+seems to me the town clerk might write down in his book, THIS DAY THE
+STATE OF MAINE SAVED THE FLAG!'”
+
+
+
+
+Sixth Chronicle. THE STATE O' MAINE GIRL
+
+
+I
+
+The foregoing episode, if narrated in a romance, would undoubtedly have
+been called “The Saving of the Colors,” but at the nightly conversazione
+in Watson's store it was alluded to as the way little Becky Randall got
+the flag away from Slippery Simpson.
+
+Dramatic as it was, it passed into the limbo of half-forgotten things
+in Rebecca's mind, its brief importance submerged in the glories of the
+next day.
+
+There was a painful prelude to these glories. Alice Robinson came to
+spend the night with Rebecca, and when the bedroom door closed upon the
+two girls, Alice announced here intention of “doing up” Rebecca's front
+hair in leads and rags, and braiding the back in six tight, wetted
+braids.
+
+Rebecca demurred. Alice persisted.
+
+“Your hair is so long and thick and dark and straight,” she said, “that
+you'll look like an Injun!”
+
+“I am the State of Maine; it all belonged to the Indians once,” Rebecca
+remarked gloomily, for she was curiously shy about discussing her
+personal appearance.
+
+“And your wreath of little pine-cones won't set decent without crimps,”
+ continued Alice.
+
+Rebecca glanced in the cracked looking-glass and met what she considered
+an accusing lack of beauty, a sight that always either saddened or
+enraged her according to circumstances; then she sat down resignedly
+and began to help Alice in the philanthropic work of making the State of
+Maine fit to be seen at the raising.
+
+Neither of the girls was an expert hairdresser, and at the end of an
+hour, when the sixth braid was tied, and Rebecca had given one last
+shuddering look in the mirror, both were ready to weep with fatigue.
+
+The candle was blown out and Alice soon went to sleep, but Rebecca
+tossed on her pillow, its goose-feathered softness all dented by the
+cruel lead knobs and the knots of twisted rags. She slipped out of bed
+and walked to and fro, holding her aching head with both hands. Finally
+she leaned on the window-sill, watching the still weather-vane on
+Alice's barn and breathing in the fragrance of the ripening apples,
+until her restlessness subsided under the clear starry beauty of the
+night.
+
+At six in the morning the girls were out of bed, for Alice could hardly
+wait until Rebecca's hair was taken down, she was so eager to see the
+result of her labors.
+
+The leads and rags were painfully removed, together with much hair, the
+operation being punctuated by a series of squeaks, squeals, and shrieks
+on the part of Rebecca and a series of warnings from Alice, who wished
+the preliminaries to be kept secret from the aunts, that they might the
+more fully appreciate the radiant result.
+
+Then came the unbraiding, and then--dramatic moment--the “combing out;”
+ a difficult, not to say impossible process, in which the hairs that had
+resisted the earlier stages almost gave up the ghost.
+
+The long front strands had been wound up from various angles and by
+various methods, so that, when released, they assumed the strangest,
+most obstinate, most unexpected attitudes. When the comb was dragged
+through the last braid, the wild, tortured, electric hairs following,
+and then rebounding from it in a bristling, snarling tangle.
+Massachusetts gave one encompassing glance at the State o' Maine's head,
+and announced her intention of going home to breakfast! She was deeply
+grieved at the result of her attempted beautifying, but she felt that
+meeting Miss Miranda Sawyer at the morning meal would not mend matters
+in the least, so slipping out of the side door, she ran up Guide Board
+hill as fast as her legs could carry her.
+
+The State o' Maine, deserted and somewhat unnerved, sat down before the
+glass and attacked her hair doggedly and with set lips, working over it
+until Miss Jane called her to breakfast; then, with a boldness born
+of despair, she entered the dining room, where her aunts were already
+seated at table. To “draw fire” she whistled, a forbidden joy, which
+only attracted more attention, instead of diverting it. There was a
+moment of silence after the grotesque figure was fully taken in; then
+came a moan from Jane and a groan from Miranda.
+
+“What have you done to yourself?” asked Miranda sternly.
+
+“Made an effort to be beautiful and failed!” jauntily replied Rebecca,
+but she was too miserable to keep up the fiction. “Oh, Aunt Miranda,
+don't scold. I'm so unhappy! Alice and I rolled up my hair to curl it
+for the raising. She said it was so straight I looked like an Indian!”
+
+“Mebbe you did,” vigorously agreed Miranda, “but 't any rate you looked
+like a Christian Injun, 'n' now you look like a heathen Injun; that's
+all the difference I can see. What can we do with her, Jane, between
+this and nine o'clock?”
+
+“We'll all go out to the pump just as soon as we're through breakfast,”
+ answered Jane soothingly. “We can accomplish consid'rable with water and
+force.”
+
+Rebecca nibbled her corn-cake, her tearful eyes cast on her plate and
+her chin quivering.
+
+“Don't you cry and red your eyes up,” chided Miranda quite kindly; “the
+minute you've eat enough run up and get your brush and comb and meet us
+at the back door.”
+
+“I wouldn't care myself how bad I looked,” said Rebecca, “but I can't
+bear to be so homely that I shame the State of Maine!”
+
+Oh, what an hour followed this plaint! Did any aspirant for literary
+or dramatic honors ever pass to fame through such an antechamber of
+horrors? Did poet of the day ever have his head so maltreated? To be
+dipped in the rain-water tub, soused again and again; to be held under
+the spout and pumped on; to be rubbed furiously with rough roller
+towels; to be dried with hot flannels! And is it not well-nigh
+incredible that at the close of such an hour the ends of the long hair
+should still stand out straight, the braids having been turned up two
+inches by Alice, and tied hard in that position with linen thread?
+
+“Get out the skirt-board, Jane,” cried Miranda, to whom opposition
+served as a tonic, “and move that flat-iron on to the front o' the
+stove. Rebecca, set down in that low chair beside the board, and Jane,
+you spread out her hair on it and cover it up with brown paper. Don't
+cringe, Rebecca; the worst's over, and you've borne up real good! I'll
+be careful not to pull your hair nor scorch you, and oh, HOW I'd like
+to have Alice Robinson acrost my knee and a good strip o' shingle in my
+right hand! There, you're all ironed out and your Aunt Jane can put on
+your white dress and braid your hair up again good and tight. Perhaps
+you won't be the hombliest of the states, after all; but when I see you
+comin' in to breakfast I said to myself: I guess if Maine looked like
+that, it wouldn't never a' been admitted into the Union!'”
+
+When Uncle Sam and the stagecoach drew up to the brick house with a
+grand swing and a flourish, the goddess of Liberty and most of the
+States were already in their places on the “harricane deck.”
+
+Words fail to describe the gallant bearing of the horses, their
+headstalls gayly trimmed and their harnesses dotted with little flags.
+The stage windows were hung in bunting, and from within beamed Columbia,
+looking out from the bright frame as if proud of her freight of loyal
+children. Patriotic streamers floated from whip, from dash-board and
+from rumble, and the effect of the whole was something to stimulate the
+most phlegmatic voter.
+
+Rebecca came out on the steps and Aunt Jane brought a chair to assist in
+the ascent. Miss Dearborn peeped from the window, and gave a despairing
+look at her favorite.
+
+What had happened to her? Who had dressed her? Had her head been put
+through a wringing-machine? Why were her eyes red and swollen? Miss
+Dearborn determined to take her behind the trees in the pine grove
+and give her some finishing touches; touches that her skillful fingers
+fairly itched to bestow.
+
+The stage started, and as the roadside pageant grew gayer and gayer,
+Rebecca began to brighten and look prettier, for most of her beautifying
+came from within. The people, walking, driving, or standing on
+their doorsteps, cheered Uncle Sam's coach with its freight of
+gossamer-muslined, fluttering-ribboned girls, and just behind, the
+gorgeously decorated haycart, driven by Abijah Flagg, bearing the jolly
+but inharmonious fife-and-drum corps.
+
+Was ever such a golden day! Such crystal air! Such mellow sunshine! Such
+a merry Uncle Sam!
+
+The stage drew up at an appointed spot near a pine grove, and while the
+crowd was gathering, the children waited for the hour to arrive when
+they should march to the platform; the hour toward which they seemed to
+have been moving since the dawn of creation.
+
+As soon as possible Miss Dearborn whispered to Rebecca: “Come behind the
+trees with me; I want to make you prettier!”
+
+Rebecca thought she had suffered enough from that process already during
+the last twelve hours, but she put out an obedient hand and the two
+withdrew.
+
+Now Miss Dearborn was, I fear, a very indifferent teacher. Dr. Moses
+always said so, and Libbie Moses, who wanted her school, said it was
+a pity she hadn't enjoyed more social advantages in her youth. Libbie
+herself had taken music lessons in Portland; and spent a night at the
+Profile House in the White Mountains, and had visited her sister in
+Lowell, Massachusetts. These experiences gave her, in her own mind, and
+in the mind of her intimate friends, a horizon so boundless that her
+view of smaller, humbler matters was a trifle distorted.
+
+Miss Dearborn's stock in trade was small, her principal virtues being
+devotion to children and ability to gain their love, and a power of
+evolving a schoolroom order so natural, cheery, serene, and peaceful
+that it gave the beholder a certain sense of being in a district heaven.
+She was poor in arithmetic and weak in geometry, but if you gave her a
+rose, a bit of ribbon, and a seven-by-nine looking-glass she could make
+herself as pretty as a pink in two minutes.
+
+Safely sheltered behind the pines, Miss Dearborn began to practice
+mysterious feminine arts. She flew at Rebecca's tight braids, opened
+the strands and rebraided them loosely; bit and tore the red, white,
+and blue ribbon in two and tied the braids separately. Then with nimble
+fingers she pulled out little tendrils of hair behind the ears and
+around the nape of the neck. After a glance of acute disapproval
+directed at the stiff balloon skirt she knelt on the ground and gave
+a strenuous embrace to Rebecca's knees, murmuring, between her hugs,
+“Starch must be cheap at the brick house!”
+
+This particular line of beauty attained, there ensued great pinchings of
+ruffles, her fingers that could never hold a ferrule nor snap children's
+ears being incomparable fluting-irons.
+
+Next the sash was scornfully untied and tightened to suggest something
+resembling a waist. The chastened bows that had been squat, dowdy,
+spiritless, were given tweaks, flirts, bracing little pokes and dabs,
+till, acknowledging a master hand, they stood up, piquant, pert, smart,
+alert!
+
+Pride of bearing was now infused into the flattened lace at the neck,
+and a pin (removed at some sacrifice from her own toilette) was darned
+in at the back to prevent any cowardly lapsing. The short white cotton
+gloves that called attention to the tanned wrist and arms were stripped
+off and put in her own pocket. Then the wreath of pine-cones was
+adjusted at a heretofore unimagined angle, the hair was pulled softly
+into a fluffy frame, and finally, as she met Rebecca's grateful eyes
+she gave her two approving, triumphant kisses. In a second the sensitive
+face lighted into happiness; pleased dimples appeared in the cheeks, the
+kissed mouth was as red as a rose, and the little fright that had walked
+behind the pine-tree stepped out on the other side Rebecca the lovely.
+
+As to the relative value of Miss Dearborn's accomplishments, the
+decision must be left to the gentle reader; but though it is certain
+that children should be properly grounded in mathematics, no heart of
+flesh could bear to hear Miss Dearborn's methods vilified who had seen
+her patting, pulling, squeezing Rebecca from ugliness into beauty.
+
+The young superintendent of district schools was a witness of the scene,
+and when later he noted the children surrounding Columbia as bees
+a honeysuckle, he observed to Dr. Moses: “She may not be much of a
+teacher, but I think she'd be considerable of a wife!” and subsequent
+events proved that he meant what he said!
+
+II
+
+Now all was ready; the moment of fate was absolutely at hand; the
+fife-and-drum corps led the way and the States followed; but what
+actually happened Rebecca never knew; she lived through the hours in a
+waking dream. Every little detail was a facet of light that reflected
+sparkles, and among them all she was fairly dazzled. The brass band
+played inspiring strains; the mayor spoke eloquently on great themes;
+the people cheered; then the rope on which so much depended was put into
+the children's hands, they applied superhuman strength to their task,
+and the flag mounted, mounted, smoothly and slowly, and slowly unwound
+and stretched itself until its splendid size and beauty were revealed
+against the maples and pines and blue New England sky.
+
+Then after cheers upon cheers and after a patriotic chorus by the church
+choirs, the State of Maine mounted the platform, vaguely conscious
+that she was to recite a poem, though for the life of her she could not
+remember a single word.
+
+“Speak up loud and clear, Rebecky,” whispered Uncle Sam in the front
+row, but she could scarcely hear her own voice when, tremblingly, she
+began her first line. After that she gathered strength and the poem
+“said itself,” while the dream went on.
+
+She saw Adam Ladd leaning against a tree; Aunt Jane and Aunt Miranda
+palpitating with nervousness; Clara Belle Simpson gazing cross-eyed but
+adoring from a seat on the side; and in the far, far distance, on the
+very outskirts of the crowd, a tall man standing in a wagon--a tall,
+loose-jointed man with red upturned mustaches, and a gaunt white horse
+headed toward the Acreville road.
+
+Loud applause greeted the state of Maine, the slender little white-clad
+figure standing on the mossy boulder that had been used as the centre of
+the platform. The sun came up from behind a great maple and shone full
+on the star-spangled banner, making it more dazzling than ever, so that
+its beauty drew all eyes upward.
+
+Abner Simpson lifted his vagrant shifting gaze to its softy fluttering
+folds and its splendid massing of colors, thinking:
+
+“I don't know's anybody'd ought to steal a flag--the thunderin' idjuts
+seem to set such store by it, and what is it, anyway? Nothin; but a
+sheet o' buntin!”
+
+Nothing but a sheet of bunting? He looked curiously at the rapt faces
+of the mothers, their babies asleep in their arms; the parted lips and
+shining eyes of the white-clad girls; at Cap'n Lord, who had been in
+Libby prison, and Nat Strout, who had left an arm at Bull Run; at the
+friendly, jostling crowd of farmers, happy, eager, absorbed, their
+throats ready to burst with cheers. Then the breeze served, and he heard
+Rebecca's clear voice saying:
+
+“For it's your star, my star, all the stars together, That make our
+country's flag so proud To float in the bright fall weather!”
+
+“Talk about stars! She's got a couple of em right in her head,” thought
+Simpson.... “If I ever seen a young one like that lyin; on anybody's
+doorstep I'd hook her quicker'n a wink, though I've got plenty to home,
+the Lord knows! And I wouldn't swap her off neither.... Spunky little
+creeter, too; settin; up in the wagon lookin' bout's big as a pint o'
+cider, but keepin' right after the goods!... I vow I'm bout sick o' my
+job! Never WITH the crowd, allers JEST on the outside, s if I wa'n't as
+good's they be! If it paid well, mebbe I wouldn't mind, but they're so
+thunderin' stingy round here, they don't leave anything decent out for
+you to take from em, yet you're reskin' your liberty n' reputation jest
+the same!... Countin' the poor pickin's n' the time I lose in jail I
+might most's well be done with it n' work out by the day, as the folks
+want me to; I'd make bout's much n' I don't know's it would be any
+harder!”
+
+He could see Rebecca stepping down from the platform, while his own
+red-headed little girl stood up on her bench, waving her hat with one
+hand, her handkerchief with the other, and stamping with both feet.
+
+Now a man sitting beside the mayor rose from his chair and Abner heard
+him call:
+
+“Three cheers for the women who made the flag!”
+
+“HIP, HIP, HURRAH!”
+
+“Three cheers for the State of Maine!”
+
+“HIP, HIP, HURRAH!”
+
+“Three cheers for the girl that saved the flag from the hands of the
+enemy!”
+
+“HIP, HIP, HURRAH! HIP, HIP, HURRAH!”
+
+It was the Edgewood minister, whose full, vibrant voice was of the sort
+to move a crowd. His words rang out into the clear air and were carried
+from lip to lip. Hands clapped, feet stamped, hats swung, while the loud
+huzzahs might almost have wakened the echoes on old Mount Ossipee.
+
+The tall, loose-jointed man sat down in the wagon suddenly and took up
+the reins.
+
+“They're gettin' a little mite personal, and I guess it's bout time for
+you to be goin', Simpson!”
+
+The tone was jocular, but the red mustaches drooped, and the
+half-hearted cut he gave to start the white mare on her homeward journey
+showed that he was not in his usual devil-may-care mood.
+
+“Durn his skin!” he burst out in a vindictive undertone, as the mare
+swung into her long gait. “It's a lie! I thought twas somebody's wash! I
+hain't an enemy!”
+
+While the crowd at the raising dispersed in happy family groups to their
+picnics in the woods; while the Goddess of Liberty, Uncle Sam,
+Columbia, and the proud States lunched grandly in the Grange hall with
+distinguished guests and scarred veterans of two wars, the lonely
+man drove, and drove, and drove through silent woods and dull, sleepy
+villages, never alighting to replenish his wardrobe or his stock of
+swapping material.
+
+At dusk he reached a miserable tumble-down house on the edge of a pond.
+
+The faithful wife with the sad mouth and the habitual look of anxiety in
+her faded eyes came to the door at the sound of wheels and went doggedly
+to the horse-shed to help him unharness.
+
+“You didn't expect to see me back tonight, did ye?” he asked
+satirically; “leastwise not with this same horse? Well, I'm here! You
+needn't be scairt to look under the wagon seat, there hain't nothin'
+there, not even my supper, so I hope you're suited for once! No, I guess
+I hain't goin' to be an angel right away, neither. There wa'n't nothin'
+but flags layin' roun' loose down Riverboro way, n' whatever they say, I
+hain't sech a hound as to steal a flag!”
+
+It was natural that young Riverboro should have red, white, and blue
+dreams on the night after the new flag was raised. A stranger thing,
+perhaps, is the fact that Abner Simpson should lie down on his hard bed
+with the flutter of bunting before his eyes, and a whirl of unaccustomed
+words in his mind.
+
+“For it's your star, my star, all our stars together.”
+
+“I'm sick of goin' it alone,” he thought; “I guess I'll try the other
+road for a spell;” and with that he fell asleep.
+
+
+
+
+Seventh Chronicle. THE LITTLE PROPHET
+
+
+I
+
+“I guess York County will never get red of that Simpson crew!” exclaimed
+Miranda Sawyer to Jane. “I thought when the family moved to Acreville
+we'd seen the last of em, but we ain't! The big, cross-eyed, stutterin'
+boy has got a place at the mills in Maplewood; that's near enough to
+come over to Riverboro once in a while of a Sunday mornin' and set in
+the meetin' house starin' at Rebecca same as he used to do, only it's
+reskier now both of em are older. Then Mrs. Fogg must go and bring back
+the biggest girl to help her take care of her baby,--as if there wa'n't
+plenty of help nearer home! Now I hear say that the youngest twin has
+come to stop the summer with the Cames up to Edgewood Lower Corner.”
+
+“I thought two twins were always the same age,” said Rebecca,
+reflectively, as she came into the kitchen with the milk pail.
+
+“So they be,” snapped Miranda, flushing and correcting herself. “But
+that pasty-faced Simpson twin looks younger and is smaller than the
+other one. He's meek as Moses and the other one is as bold as a brass
+kettle; I don't see how they come to be twins; they ain't a mite alike.”
+
+“Elijah was always called the fighting twin' at school,” said Rebecca,
+“and Elisha's other name was Nimbi-Pamby; but I think he's a nice little
+boy, and I'm glad he has come back. He won't like living with Mr. Came,
+but he'll be almost next door to the minister's, and Mrs. Baxter is sure
+to let him play in her garden.”
+
+“I wonder why the boy's stayin' with Cassius Came,” said Jane. “To be
+sure they haven't got any of their own, but the child's too young to be
+much use.”
+
+“I know why,” remarked Rebecca promptly, “for I heard all about it over
+to Watson's when I was getting the milk. Mr. Came traded something with
+Mr. Simpson two years ago and got the best of the bargain, and Uncle
+Jerry says he's the only man that ever did, and he ought to have a
+monument put up to him. So Mr. Came owes Mr. Simpson money and won't
+pay it, and Mr. Simpson said he'd send over a child and board part of it
+out, and take the rest in stock--a pig or a calf or something.”
+
+“That's all stuff and nonsense,” exclaimed Miranda; “nothin' in the
+world but store-talk. You git a clump o' men-folks settin' round
+Watson's stove, or out on the bench at the door, an' they'll make up
+stories as fast as their tongues can wag. The man don't live that's
+smart enough to cheat Abner Simpson in a trade, and who ever heard of
+anybody's owin' him money? Tain't supposable that a woman like Mrs. Came
+would allow her husband to be in debt to a man like Abner Simpson. It's
+a sight likelier that she heard that Mrs. Simpson was ailin' and sent
+for the boy so as to help the family along. She always had Mrs. Simpson
+to wash for her once a month, if you remember Jane?”
+
+There are some facts so shrouded in obscurity that the most skillful and
+patient investigator cannot drag them into the light of day. There are
+also (but only occasionally) certain motives, acts, speeches, lines of
+conduct, that can never be wholly and satisfactorily explained, even in
+a village post-office or on the loafers' bench outside the tavern door.
+
+Cassius Came was a close man, close of mouth and close of purse; and all
+that Riverboro ever knew as to the three months' visit of the Simpson
+twin was that it actually occurred. Elisha, otherwise Nimbi-Pamby, came;
+Nimbi-Pamby stayed; and Nimbi-Pamby, when he finally rejoined his own
+domestic circle, did not go empty-handed (so to speak), for he was
+accompanied on his homeward travels by a large, red, bony, somewhat
+truculent cow, who was tied on behind the wagon, and who made the
+journey a lively and eventful one by her total lack of desire to proceed
+over the road from Edgewood to Acreville. But that, the cow's tale,
+belongs to another time and place, and the coward's tale must come
+first; for Elisha Simpson was held to be sadly lacking in the manly
+quality of courage.
+
+It was the new minister's wife who called Nimbi-Pamby the Little
+Prophet. His full name was Elisha Jeremiah Simpson, but one seldom heard
+it at full length, since, if he escaped the ignominy of Nimbi-Pamby,
+Lishe was quite enough for an urchin just in his first trousers and
+those assumed somewhat prematurely. He was “Lishe,” therefore, to the
+village, but the Little Prophet to the young minister's wife.
+
+Rebecca could see the Cames' brown farmhouse from Mrs. Baxter's
+sitting-room window. The little-traveled road with strips of tufted
+green between the wheel tracks curled dustily up to the very doorstep,
+and inside the screen door of pink mosquito netting was a wonderful
+drawn-in rug, shaped like a half pie, with “Welcome” in saffron letters
+on a green ground.
+
+Rebecca liked Mrs. Cassius Came, who was a friend of her Aunt Miranda's
+and one of the few persons who exchanged calls with that somewhat
+unsociable lady. The Came farm was not a long walk from the brick house,
+for Rebecca could go across the fields when haying-time was over, and
+her delight at being sent on an errand in that direction could not be
+measured, now that the new minister and his wife had grown to be such a
+resource in her life. She liked to see Mrs. Came shake the Welcome rug,
+flinging the cheery word out into the summer sunshine like a bright
+greeting to the day. She liked to see her go to the screen door a dozen
+times in a morning, open it a crack and chase an imaginary fly from the
+sacred precincts within. She liked to see her come up the cellar steps
+into the side garden, appearing mysteriously as from the bowels of the
+earth, carrying a shining pan of milk in both hands, and disappearing
+through the beds of hollyhocks and sunflowers to the pig-pen or the
+hen-house.
+
+Rebecca was not fond of Mr. Came, and neither was Mrs. Baxter, nor
+Elisha, for that matter; in fact Mr. Came was rather a difficult person
+to grow fond of, with his fiery red beard, his freckled skin, and his
+gruff way of speaking; for there were no children in the brown house to
+smooth the creases from his forehead or the roughness from his voice.
+
+II
+
+The new minister's wife was sitting under the shade of her great maple
+early one morning, when she first saw the Little Prophet. A tiny figure
+came down the grass-grown road leading a cow by a rope. If it had been a
+small boy and a small cow, a middle-sized boy and an ordinary cow, or a
+grown man and a big cow, she might not have noticed them; but it was the
+combination of an infinitesimal boy and a huge cow that attracted her
+attention. She could not guess the child's years, she only knew that he
+was small for his age, whatever it was.
+
+The cow was a dark red beast with a crumpled horn, a white star on her
+forehead, and a large surprised sort of eye. She had, of course, two
+eyes, and both were surprised, but the left one had an added hint of
+amazement in it by virtue of a few white hairs lurking accidentally in
+the centre of the eyebrow.
+
+The boy had a thin sensitive face and curtly brown hair, short trousers
+patched on both knees, and a ragged straw hat on the back of his head.
+He pattered along behind the cow, sometimes holding the rope with both
+hands, and getting over the ground in a jerky way, as the animal left
+him no time to think of a smooth path for bare feet.
+
+The Came pasture was a good half-mile distant, and the cow seemed in no
+hurry to reach it; accordingly she forsook the road now and then,
+and rambled in the hollows, where the grass was sweeter to her way of
+thinking. She started on one of these exploring expeditions just as she
+passed the minister's great maple, and gave Mrs. Baxter time to call out
+to the little fellow, “Is that your cow?”
+
+Elisha blushed and smiled, and tried to speak modestly, but there was a
+quiver of pride in his voice as he answered suggestively:
+
+“It's--nearly my cow.”
+
+“How is that?” asked Mrs. Baxter.
+
+“Why, Mr. Came says when I drive her twenty-nine more times to pasture
+thout her gettin' her foot over the rope or thout my bein' afraid, she's
+goin' to be my truly cow. Are you fraid of cows?”
+
+“Ye-e-es,” Mrs. Baxter confessed, “I am, just a little. You see, I am
+nothing but a woman, and boys can't understand how we feel about cows.”
+
+“I can! They're awful big things, aren't they?”
+
+“Perfectly enormous! I've always thought a cow coming towards you one of
+the biggest things in the world.”
+
+“Yes; me, too. Don't let's think about it. Do they hook people so very
+often?”
+
+“No indeed, in fact one scarcely ever hears of such a case.”
+
+“If they stepped on your bare foot they'd scrunch it, wouldn't they?”
+
+“Yes, but you are the driver; you mustn't let them do that; you are a
+free-will boy, and they are nothing but cows.”
+
+“I know; but p'raps there is free-will cows, and if they just WOULD do
+it you couldn't help being scrunched, for you mustn't let go of the rope
+nor run, Mr. Came says.
+
+“No, of course that would never do.”
+
+“Where you used to live did all the cows go down into the boggy places
+when you drove em to pasture, or did some walk in the road?”
+
+“There weren't any cows or any pastures where I used to live; that's
+what makes me so foolish; why does your cow need a rope?”
+
+“She don't like to go to pasture, Mr. Came says. Sometimes she'd druther
+stay to home, and so when she gets part way she turns round and comes
+backwards.”
+
+“Dear me!” thought Mrs. Baxter, “what becomes of this boy-mite if the
+cow has a spell of going backwards?--Do you like to drive her?” she
+asked.
+
+“N-no, not erzackly; but you see, it'll be my cow if I drive her
+twenty-nine more times thout her gettin' her foot over the rope and
+thout my bein' afraid,” and a beaming smile gave a transient brightness
+to his harassed little face. “Will she feed in the ditch much longer?”
+ he asked. “Shall I say Hurrap'? That's what Mr. Came says--HURRAP!' like
+that, and it means to hurry up.”
+
+It was rather a feeble warning that he sounded and the cow fed
+on peacefully. The little fellow looked up at the minister's wife
+confidingly, and then glanced back at the farm to see if Cassius Came
+were watching the progress of events.
+
+“What shall we do next?” he asked.
+
+Mrs. Baxter delighted in that warm, cosy little 'WE;' it took her into
+the firm so pleasantly. She was a weak prop indeed when it came to cows,
+but all the courage in her soul rose to arms when Elisha said, “What
+shall WE do next?” She became alert, ingenious, strong, on the instant.
+
+“What is the cow's name?” she asked, sitting up straight in the
+swing-chair.
+
+“Buttercup; but she don't seem to know it very well. She ain't a mite
+like a buttercup.”
+
+“Never mind; you must shout 'Buttercup!' at the top of your voice, and
+twitch the rope HARD; then I'll call, 'Hurrap!' with all my might at
+the same moment. And if she starts quickly we mustn't run nor seem
+frightened!”
+
+They did this; it worked to a charm, and Mrs. Baxter looked
+affectionately after her Little Prophet as the cow pulled him down Tory
+Hill.
+
+The lovely August days wore on. Rebecca was often at the parsonage
+and saw Elisha frequently, but Buttercup was seldom present at their
+interviews, as the boy now drove her to the pasture very early in the
+morning, the journey thither being one of considerable length and her
+method of reaching the goal being exceedingly roundabout.
+
+Mr. Came had pointed out the necessity of getting her into the pasture
+at least a few minutes before she had to be taken out again at night,
+and though Rebecca didn't like Mr. Came, she saw the common sense of
+this remark. Sometimes Mrs. Baxter and Rebecca caught a glimpse of
+the two at sundown, as they returned from the pasture to the twilight
+milking, Buttercup chewing her peaceful cud, her soft white bag of milk
+hanging full, her surprised eye rolling in its accustomed “fine frenzy.”
+ The frenzied roll did not mean anything, they used to assure Elisha; but
+if it didn't, it was an awful pity she had to do it, Rebecca thought;
+and Mrs. Baxter agreed. To have an expression of eye that meant murder,
+and yet to be a perfectly virtuous and well-meaning animal, this was a
+calamity indeed.
+
+Mrs. Baxter was looking at the sun one evening as it dropped like a ball
+of red fire into Wilkins's woods, when the Little Prophet passed.
+
+“It's the twenty-ninth night,” he called joyously.
+
+“I am so glad,” she answered, for she had often feared some accident
+might prevent his claiming the promised reward. “Then tomorrow Buttercup
+will be your own cow?”
+
+“I guess so. That's what Mr. Came said. He's off to Acreville now, but
+he'll be home tonight, and father's going to send my new hat by him.
+When Buttercup's my own cow I wish I could change her name and call her
+Red Rover, but p'r'aps her mother wouldn't like it. When she b'longs to
+me, mebbe I won't be so fraid of gettin' hooked and scrunched, because
+she'll know she's mine, and she'll go better. I haven't let her get
+snarled up in the rope one single time, and I don't show I'm afraid, do
+I?”
+
+“I should never suspect it for an instant,” said Mrs. Baxter
+encouragingly. “I've often envied you your bold, brave look!”
+
+Elisha appeared distinctly pleased. “I haven't cried, either, when she's
+dragged me over the pasture bars and peeled my legs. Bill Petes's little
+brother Charlie says he ain't afraid of anything, not even bears. He
+says he would walk right up close and cuff em if they dared to yip;
+but I ain't like that! He ain't scared of elephants or tigers or lions
+either; he says they're all the same as frogs or chickens to him!”
+
+Rebecca told her Aunt Miranda that evening that it was the Prophet's
+twenty-ninth night, and that the big red cow was to be his on the
+morrow.
+
+“Well, I hope it'll turn out that way,” she said. “But I ain't a mite
+sure that Cassius Came will give up that cow when it comes to the point.
+It won't be the first time he's tried to crawl out of a bargain with
+folks a good deal bigger than Lisha, for he's terrible close, Cassius
+is. To be sure he's stiff in his joints and he's glad enough to have
+a boy to take the cow to the pasture in summer time, but he always has
+hired help when it comes harvestin'. So Lisha'll be no use from this
+on; and I dare say the cow is Abner Simpson's anyway. If you want a walk
+tonight, I wish you'd go up there and ask Mis' Came if she'll lend me
+an' your Aunt Jane half her yeast-cake. Tell her we'll pay it back when
+we get ours a Saturday. Don't you want to take Thirza Meserve with you?
+She's alone as usual while Huldy's entertainin' beaux on the side porch.
+Don't stay too long at the parsonage!”
+
+III
+
+Rebecca was used to this sort of errand, for the whole village of
+Riverboro would sometimes be rocked to the very centre of its being by
+simultaneous desire for a yeast-cake. As the nearest repository was a
+mile and a half distant, as the yeast-cake was valued at two cents and
+wouldn't keep, as the demand was uncertain, being dependent entirely on
+a fluctuating desire for “riz bread,” the storekeeper refused to order
+more than three yeast-cakes a day at his own risk. Sometimes they
+remained on his hands a dead loss; sometimes eight or ten persons would
+“hitch up” and drive from distant farms for the coveted article, only to
+be met with the flat, “No, I'm all out o' yeast-cake; Mis' Simmons
+took the last; mebbe you can borry half o' hern, she hain't much of a
+bread-eater.”
+
+So Rebecca climbed the hills to Mrs. Came's, knowing that her daily
+bread depended on the successful issue of the call.
+
+Thirza was barefooted, and tough as her little feet were, the long walk
+over the stubble fields tired her. When they came within sight of the
+Came barn, she coaxed Rebecca to take a short cut through the turnips
+growing in long, beautifully weeded rows.
+
+“You know Mr. Came is awfully cross, Thirza, and can't bear anybody to
+tread on his crops or touch a tree or a bush that belongs to him. I'm
+kind of afraid, but come along and mind you step softly in between the
+rows and hold up your petticoat, so you can't possibly touch the turnip
+plants. I'll do the same. Skip along fast, because then we won't leave
+any deep footprints.”
+
+The children passed safely and noiselessly along, their pleasure a
+trifle enhanced by the felt dangers of their progress. Rebecca knew that
+they were doing no harm, but that did not prevent her hoping to escape
+the gimlet eye of Mr. Came.
+
+As they neared the outer edge of the turnip patch they paused suddenly,
+petticoats in air.
+
+A great clump of elderberry bushes hid them from the barn, but from the
+other side of the clump came the sound of conversation: the timid voice
+of the Little Prophet and the gruff tones of Cassius Came.
+
+Rebecca was afraid to interrupt, and too honest to wish to overhear. She
+could only hope the man and the boy would pass on to the house as they
+talked, so she motioned to the paralyzed Thirza to take two more steps
+and stand with her behind the elderberry bushes. But no! In a moment
+they heard Mr. Came drag a stool over beside the grindstone as he said:
+
+“Well, now Elisha Jeremiah, we'll talk about the red cow. You say you've
+drove her a month, do ye? And the trade between us was that if you
+could drive her a month, without her getting the rope over her foot and
+without bein' afraid, you was to have her. That's straight, ain't it?”
+
+The Prophet's face burned with excitement, his gingham shirt rose and
+fell as if he were breathing hard, but he only nodded assent and said
+nothing.
+
+“Now,” continued Mr. Came, “have you made out to keep the rope from
+under her feet?”
+
+“She ain't got t-t-tangled up one s-single time,” said Elisha,
+stuttering in his excitement, but looking up with some courage from his
+bare toes, with which he was assiduously threading the grass.
+
+“So far, so good. Now bout bein' afraid. As you seem so certain of
+gettin' the cow, I suppose you hain't been a speck scared, hev you?
+Honor bright, now!”
+
+“I--I--not but just a little mite. I”--
+
+“Hold up a minute. Of course you didn't SAY you was afraid, and didn't
+SHOW you was afraid, and nobody knew you WAS afraid, but that ain't the
+way we fixed it up. You was to call the cow your'n if you could drive
+her to the pasture for a month without BEIN' afraid. Own up square now,
+hev you be'n afraid?”
+
+A long pause, then a faint, “Yes.”
+
+“Where's your manners?”
+
+“I mean yes, sir.”
+
+“How often? If it hain't be'n too many times mebbe I'll let ye off,
+though you're a reg'lar girl-boy, and'll be runnin' away from the cat
+bimeby. Has it be'n--twice?”
+
+“Yes,” and the Little Prophet's voice was very faint now, and had a
+decided tear in it.
+
+“Yes what?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Has it be'n four times?”
+
+“Y-es, sir.” More heaving of the gingham shirt.
+
+“Well, you AIR a thunderin' coward! How many times? Speak up now.”
+
+More digging of the bare toes in the earth, and one premonitory tear
+drop stealing from under the downcast lids, then,--
+
+“A little, most every day, and you can keep the cow,” wailed the
+Prophet, as he turned abruptly and fled behind the shed, where he flung
+himself into the green depths of a tansy bed, and gave himself up to
+unmanly sobs.
+
+Cassius Came gave a sort of shamefaced guffaw at the abrupt departure
+of the boy, and went on into the house, while Rebecca and Thirza made
+a stealthy circuit of the barn and a polite and circumspect entrance
+through the parsonage front gate.
+
+Rebecca told the minister's wife what she could remember of the
+interview between Cassius Came and Elisha Simpson, and tender-hearted
+Mrs. Baxter longed to seek and comfort her Little Prophet sobbing in the
+tansy bed, the brand of coward on his forehead, and what was much worse,
+the fear in his heart that he deserved it.
+
+Rebecca could hardly be prevented from bearding Mr. Came and openly
+espousing the cause of Elisha, for she was an impetuous, reckless,
+valiant creature when a weaker vessel was attacked or threatened
+unjustly.
+
+Mrs. Baxter acknowledged that Mr. Came had been true, in a way, to his
+word and bargain, but she confessed that she had never heard of so cruel
+and hard a bargain since the days of Shylock, and it was all the worse
+for being made with a child.
+
+Rebecca hurried home, her visit quite spoiled and her errand quite
+forgotten till she reached the brick house door, where she told her
+aunts, with her customary picturesqueness of speech, that she would
+rather eat buttermilk bread till she died than partake of food mixed
+with one of Mr. Came's yeast-cakes; that it would choke her, even in the
+shape of good raised bread.
+
+“That's all very fine, Rebecky,” said her Aunt Miranda, who had a
+pin-prick for almost every bubble; “but don't forget there's two other
+mouths to feed in this house, and you might at least give your aunt and
+me the privilege of chokin' if we feel to want to!”
+
+IV
+
+Mrs. Baxter finally heard from Mrs. Came, through whom all information
+was sure to filter if you gave it time, that her husband despised a
+coward, that he considered Elisha a regular mother's-apron-string boy,
+and that he was “learnin'” him to be brave.
+
+Bill Peters, the hired man, now drove Buttercup to pasture, though
+whenever Mr. Came went to Moderation or Bonnie Eagle, as he often did,
+Mrs. Baxter noticed that Elisha took the hired man's place. She often
+joined him on these anxious expeditions, and, a like terror in both
+their souls, they attempted to train the red cow and give her some idea
+of obedience.
+
+“If she only wouldn't look at us that way we would get along real nicely
+with her, wouldn't we?” prattled the Prophet, straggling along by her
+side; “and she is a splendid cow; she gives twenty-one quarts a day, and
+Mr. Came says it's more'n half cream.”
+
+The minister's wife assented to all this, thinking that if Buttercup
+would give up her habit of turning completely round in the road to roll
+her eyes and elevate her white-tipped eyebrow, she might indeed be an
+enjoyable companion; but in her present state of development her society
+was not agreeable, even did she give sixty-one quarts of milk a day.
+Furthermore, when Mrs. Baxter discovered that she never did any of these
+reprehensible things with Bill Peters, she began to believe cows more
+intelligent creatures than she had supposed them to be, and she was
+indignant to think Buttercup could count so confidently on the weakness
+of a small boy and a timid woman.
+
+One evening, when Buttercup was more than usually exasperating, Mrs.
+Baxter said to the Prophet, who was bracing himself to keep from being
+pulled into a wayside brook where Buttercup loved to dabble, “Elisha, do
+you know anything about the superiority of mind over matter?”
+
+No, he didn't, though it was not a fair time to ask the question, for he
+had sat down in the road to get a better purchase on the rope.
+
+“Well, it doesn't signify. What I mean is that we can die but once, and
+it is a glorious thing to die for a great principle. Give me that rope.
+I can pull like an ox in my present frame of mind. You run down on the
+opposite side of the brook, take that big stick wade right in--you
+are barefooted,--brandish the stick, and, if necessary, do more than
+brandish. I would go myself, but it is better she should recognize you
+as her master, and I am in as much danger as you are, anyway. She may
+try to hook you, of course, but you must keep waving the stick,--die
+brandishing, Prophet, that's the idea! She may turn and run for me, in
+which case I shall run too; but I shall die running, and the minister
+can bury us under our favorite sweet-apple tree!”
+
+The Prophet's soul was fired by the lovely lady's eloquence. Their
+spirits mounted simultaneously, and they were flushed with a splendid
+courage in which death looked a mean and paltry thing compared with
+vanquishing that cow. She had already stepped into the pool, but the
+Prophet waded in towards her, moving the alder branch menacingly. She
+looked up with the familiar roll of the eye that had done her such good
+service all summer, but she quailed beneath the stern justice and the
+new valor of the Prophet's gaze.
+
+In that moment perhaps she felt ashamed of the misery she had caused the
+helpless mite. At any rate, actuated by fear, surprise, or remorse,
+she turned and walked back into the road without a sign of passion or
+indignation, leaving the boy and the lady rather disappointed at their
+easy victory. To be prepared for a violent death and receive not even a
+scratch made them fear that they might possibly have overestimated the
+danger.
+
+They were better friends than ever after that, the young minister's wife
+and the forlorn little boy from Acreville, sent away from home he
+knew not why, unless it were that there was little to eat there and
+considerably more at the Cash Cames', as they were called in Edgewood.
+Cassius was familiarly known as Uncle Cash, partly because there was a
+disposition in Edgewood to abbreviate all Christian names, and partly
+because the old man paid cash, and expected to be paid cash, for
+everything.
+
+The late summer grew into autumn, and the minister's great maple flung
+a flaming bough of scarlet over Mrs. Baxter's swing-chair. Uncle Cash
+found Elisha very useful at picking up potatoes and apples, but the boy
+was going back to his family as soon as the harvesting was over.
+
+One Friday evening Mrs. Baxter and Rebecca, wrapped in shawls and
+“fascinators,” were sitting on Mrs. Came's front steps enjoying the
+sunset. Rebecca was in a tremulous state of happiness, for she had
+come directly from the Seminary at Wareham to the parsonage, and as the
+minister was absent at a church conference, she was to stay the night
+with Mrs. Baxter and go with her to Portland next day.
+
+They were to go to the Islands, have ice cream for luncheon, ride on
+a horse-car, and walk by the Longfellow house, a programme that so
+unsettled Rebecca's never very steady mind that she radiated flashes
+and sparkles of joy, making Mrs. Baxter wonder if flesh could be
+translucent, enabling the spirit-fires within to shine through?
+
+Buttercup was being milked on the grassy slope near the shed door. As
+she walked to the barn, after giving up her pailfuls of yellow milk,
+she bent her neck and snatched a hasty bite from a pile of turnips lying
+temptingly near. In her haste she took more of a mouthful than would be
+considered good manners even among cows, and as she disappeared in the
+barn door they could see a forest of green tops hanging from her mouth,
+while she painfully attempted to grind up the mass of stolen material
+without allowing a single turnip to escape.
+
+It grew dark soon afterward and they went into the house to see Mrs.
+Came's new lamp lighted for the first time, to examine her last drawn-in
+rug (a wonderful achievement produced entirely from dyed flannel
+petticoats), and to hear the doctor's wife play “Oft in the Still
+Night,” on the dulcimer.
+
+As they closed the sitting-room door opening on the piazza facing
+the barn, the women heard the cow coughing and said to one another:
+“Buttercup was too greedy, and now she has indigestion.”
+
+Elisha always went to bed at sundown, and Uncle Cash had gone to the
+doctor's to have his hand dressed, for he had hurt it is some way in
+the threshing-machine. Bill Peters, the hired man, came in presently and
+asked for him, saying that the cow coughed more and more, and it must
+be that something was wrong, but he could not get her to open her mouth
+wide enough for him to see anything. “She'd up an' die ruther 'n obleege
+anybody, that tarnal, ugly cow would!” he said.
+
+When Uncle Cash had driven into the yard, he came in for a lantern, and
+went directly out to the barn. After a half-hour or so, in which the
+little party had forgotten the whole occurrence, he came in again.
+
+“I'm blamed if we ain't goin' to lose that cow,” he said. “Come out,
+will ye, Hannah, and hold the lantern? I can't do anything with my right
+hand in a sling, and Bill is the stupidest critter in the country.”
+
+Everybody went out to the barn accordingly, except the doctor's wife,
+who ran over to her house to see if her brother Moses had come home from
+Milltown, and could come and take a hand in the exercises.
+
+Buttercup was in a bad way; there was no doubt of it. Something, one
+of the turnips, presumably, had lodged in her throat, and would move
+neither way, despite her attempts to dislodge it. Her breathing was
+labored, and her eyes bloodshot from straining and choking. Once or
+twice they succeeded in getting her mouth partly open, but before they
+could fairly discover the cause of trouble she had wrested her head
+away.
+
+“I can see a little tuft of green sticking straight up in the middle,”
+ said Uncle Cash, while Bill Peters and Moses held a lantern on each side
+of Buttercup's head; “but, land! It's so far down, and such a mite of a
+thing, I couldn't git it, even if I could use my right hand. S'pose you
+try, Bill.”
+
+Bill hemmed and hawed, and confessed he didn't care to try. Buttercup's
+grinders were of good size and excellent quality, and he had no fancy
+for leaving his hand within her jaws. He said he was no good at that
+kind of work, but that he would help Uncle Cash hold the cow's head;
+that was just as necessary, and considerable safer.
+
+Moses was more inclined to the service of humanity, and did his best,
+wrapping his wrist in a cloth, and making desperate but ineffectual dabs
+at the slippery green turnip-tops in the reluctantly opened throat. But
+the cow tossed her head and stamped her feet and switched her tail
+and wriggled from under Bill's hands, so that it seemed altogether
+impossible to reach the seat of the trouble.
+
+Uncle Cash was in despair, fuming and fretting the more because of his
+own crippled hand.
+
+“Hitch up, Bill,” he said, “and, Hannah, you drive over to Milliken's
+Mills for the horse-doctor. I know we can git out that turnip if we can
+hit on the right tools and somebody to manage em right; but we've got to
+be quick about it or the critter'll choke to death, sure! Your hand's so
+clumsy, Mose, she thinks her time's come when she feels it in her mouth,
+and your fingers are so big you can't ketch holt o' that green stuff
+thout its slippin'!”
+
+“Mine ain't big; let me try,” said a timid voice, and turning round,
+they saw little Elisha Simpson, his trousers pulled on over his
+night-shirt, his curly hair ruffled, his eyes vague with sleep.
+
+Uncle Cash gave a laugh of good-humored derision. “You--that's afraid
+to drive a cow to pasture? No, sir; you hain't got sand enough for this
+job, I guess!”
+
+Buttercup just then gave a worse cough than ever, and her eyes rolled in
+her head as if she were giving up the ghost.
+
+“I'd rather do it than see her choke to death!” cried the boy, in
+despair.
+
+“Then, by ginger, you can try it, sonny!” said Uncle Cash. “Now this
+time we'll tie her head up. Take it slow, and make a good job of it.”
+
+Accordingly they pried poor Buttercup's jaws open to put a wooden gag
+between them, tied her head up, and kept her as still as they could
+while the women held the lanterns.
+
+“Now, sonny, strip up your sleeve and reach as fur down's you can! Wind
+your little fingers in among that green stuff stickin' up there that
+ain't hardly big enough to call green stuff, give it a twist, and pull
+for all you're worth. Land! What a skinny little pipe stem!”
+
+The Little Prophet had stripped up his sleeve. It was a slender thing,
+his arm; but he had driven the red cow all summer, borne her tantrums,
+protected her from the consequences of her own obstinacy, taking (as he
+thought) a future owner's pride in her splendid flow of milk--grown fond
+of her, in a word, and now she was choking to death. A skinny little
+pipe stem is capable of a deal at such a time, and only a slender hand
+and arm could have done the work.
+
+Elisha trembled with nervousness, but he made a dexterous and dashing
+entrance into the awful cavern of Buttercup's mouth; descended upon the
+tiny clump of green spills or spikes, wound his little fingers in among
+them as firmly as he could, and then gave a long, steady, determined
+pull with all the strength in this body. That was not so much in itself,
+to be sure, but he borrowed a good deal more from some reserve quarter,
+the location of which nobody knows anything about, but upon which
+everybody draws in time of need.
+
+Such a valiant pull you would never have expected of the Little Prophet.
+Such a pull it was that, to his own utter amazement, he suddenly found
+himself lying flat on his back on the barn floor with a very slippery
+something in his hand, and a fair-sized but rather dilapidated turnip at
+the end of it.
+
+“That's the business!” cried Moses.
+
+“I could 'a' done it as easy as nothin' if my arm had been a leetle mite
+smaller,” said Bill Peters.
+
+“You're a trump, sonny!” exclaimed Uncle Cash, as he helped Moses untie
+Buttercup's head and took the gag out.
+
+“You're a trump, Lisha, and, by ginger, the cow's your'n; only don't you
+let your blessed pa drink none of her cream!”
+
+The welcome air rushed into Buttercup's lungs and cooled her parched,
+torn throat. She was pretty nearly spent, poor thing, and bent her head
+(rather gently for her) over the Little Prophet's shoulder as he threw
+his arms joyfully about her neck, and whispered, “You're my truly cow
+now, ain't you, Buttercup?”
+
+“Mrs. Baxter, dear,” said Rebecca, as they walked home to the parsonage
+together under the young harvest moon; “there are all sorts of cowards,
+aren't there, and don't you think Elisha is one of the best kind.”
+
+“I don't quite know what to think about cowards, Rebecca Rowena,” said
+the minister's wife hesitatingly. “The Little Prophet is the third
+coward I have known in my short life who turned out to be a hero when
+the real testing time came. Meanwhile the heroes themselves--or the ones
+that were taken for heroes--were always busy doing something, or being
+somewhere, else.”
+
+
+
+
+Eighth Chronicle. ABNER SIMPSON'S NEW LEAF
+
+
+Rebecca had now cut the bonds that bound her to the Riverboro district
+school, and had been for a week a full-fledged pupil at the Wareham
+Seminary, towards which goal she had been speeding ever since the
+memorable day when she rode into Riverboro on the top of Uncle Jerry
+Cobb's stagecoach, and told him that education was intended to be “the
+making of her.”
+
+She went to and fro, with Emma Jane and the other Riverboro boys and
+girls, on the morning and evening trains that ran between the academy
+town and Milliken's Mills.
+
+The six days had passed like a dream!--a dream in which she sat in
+corners with her eyes cast down; flushed whenever she was addressed;
+stammered whenever she answered a question, and nearly died of heart
+failure when subjected to an examination of any sort. She delighted
+the committee when reading at sight from “King Lear,” but somewhat
+discouraged them when she could not tell the capital of the United
+States. She admitted that her former teacher, Miss Dearborn, might have
+mentioned it, but if so she had not remembered it.
+
+In these first weeks among strangers she passed for nothing but an
+interesting-looking, timid, innocent, country child, never revealing,
+even to the far-seeing Emily Maxwell, a hint of her originality,
+facility, or power in any direction. Rebecca was fourteen, but so
+slight, and under the paralyzing new conditions so shy, that she
+would have been mistaken for twelve had it not been for her general
+advancement in the school curriculum.
+
+Growing up in the solitude of a remote farm house, transplanted to a
+tiny village where she lived with two elderly spinsters, she was still
+the veriest child in all but the practical duties and responsibilities
+of life; in those she had long been a woman.
+
+It was Saturday afternoon; her lessons for Monday were all learned and
+she burst into the brick house sitting-room with the flushed face and
+embarrassed mien that always foreshadowed a request. Requests were more
+commonly answered in the negative than in the affirmative at the brick
+house, a fact that accounted for the slight confusion in her demeanor.
+
+“Aunt Miranda,” she began, “the fishman says that Clara Belle Simpson
+wants to see me very much, but Mrs. Fogg can't spare her long at a time,
+you know, on account of the baby being no better; but Clara Belle could
+walk a mile up, and I a mile down the road, and we could meet at the
+pink house half way. Then we could rest and talk an hour or so, and both
+be back in time for our suppers. I've fed the cat; she had no appetite,
+as it's only two o'clock and she had her dinner at noon, but she'll go
+back to her saucer, and it's off my mind. I could go down cellar now
+and bring up the cookies and the pie and doughnuts for supper before I
+start. Aunt Jane saw no objection; but we thought I'd better ask you so
+as to run no risks.”
+
+Miranda Sawyer, who had been patiently waiting for the end of this
+speech, laid down her knitting and raised her eyes with a half-resigned
+expression that meant: Is there anything unusual in heaven or earth or
+the waters under the earth that this child does not want to do? Will she
+ever settle down to plain, comprehensible Sawyer ways, or will she to
+the end make these sudden and radical propositions, suggesting at every
+turn the irresponsible Randall ancestry?
+
+“You know well enough, Rebecca, that I don't like you to be intimate
+with Abner Simpson's young ones,” she said decisively. “They ain't fit
+company for anybody that's got Sawyer blood in their veins, if it's ever
+so little. I don't know, I'm sure, how you're goin' to turn out! The
+fish peddler seems to be your best friend, without it's Abijah Flagg
+that you're everlastingly talkin' to lately. I should think you'd
+rather read some improvin' book than to be chatterin' with Squire Bean's
+chore-boy!”
+
+“He isn't always going to be a chore-boy,” explained Rebecca, “and
+that's what we're considering. It's his career we talk about, and he
+hasn't got any father or mother to advise him. Besides, Clara Belle kind
+of belongs to the village now that she lives with Mrs. Fogg; and she
+was always the best behaved of all the girls, either in school or
+Sunday-school. Children can't help having fathers!”
+
+“Everybody says Abner is turning over a new leaf, and if so, the
+family'd ought to be encouraged every possible way,” said Miss Jane,
+entering the room with her mending basket in hand.
+
+“If Abner Simpson is turnin' over a leaf, or anythin' else in creation,
+it's only to see what's on the under side!” remarked Miss Miranda
+promptly. “Don't talk to me about new leaves! You can't change that kind
+of a man; he is what he is, and you can't make him no different!”
+
+“The grace of God can do consid'rable,” observed Jane piously.
+
+“I ain't sayin' but it can if it sets out, but it has to begin early and
+stay late on a man like Simpson.”
+
+“Now, Mirandy, Abner ain't more'n forty! I don't know what the average
+age for repentance is in men-folks, but when you think of what an awful
+sight of em leaves it to their deathbeds, forty seems real kind
+of young. Not that I've heard Abner has experienced religion, but
+everybody's surprised at the good way he's conductin' this fall.”
+
+“They'll be surprised the other way round when they come to miss their
+firewood and apples and potatoes again,” affirmed Miranda.
+
+“Clara Belle don't seem to have inherited from her father,” Jane
+ventured again timidly. “No wonder Mrs. Fogg sets such store by the
+girl. If it hadn't been for her, the baby would have been dead by now.”
+
+“Perhaps tryin' to save it was interferin' with the Lord's will,” was
+Miranda's retort.
+
+“Folks can't stop to figure out just what's the Lord's will when a child
+has upset a kettle of scalding water on to himself,” and as she spoke
+Jane darned more excitedly. “Mrs. Fogg knows well enough she hadn't
+ought to have left that baby alone in the kitchen with the stove, even
+if she did see Clara Belle comin' across lots. She'd ought to have
+waited before drivin' off; but of course she was afraid of missing the
+train, and she's too good a woman to be held accountable.”
+
+“The minister's wife says Clara Belle is a real--I can't think of the
+word!” chimed in Rebecca. “What's the female of hero? Whatever it is,
+that's what Mrs. Baxter called her!”
+
+“Clara Belle's the female of Simpson; that's what she is,” Miss Miranda
+asserted; “but she's been brought up to use her wits, and I ain't sayin'
+but she used em.”
+
+“I should say she did!” exclaimed Miss Jane; “to put that screaming,
+suffering child in the baby-carriage and run all the way to the doctor's
+when there wasn't a soul on hand to advise her! Two or three more such
+actions would make the Simpson name sound consid'rable sweeter in this
+neighborhood.”
+
+“Simpson will always sound like Simpson to me!” vouchsafed the elder
+sister, “but we've talked enough about em an' to spare. You can go
+along, Rebecca; but remember that a child is known by the company she
+keeps.”
+
+“All right, Aunt Miranda; thank you!” cried Rebecca, leaping from the
+chair on which she had been twisting nervously for five minutes. “And
+how does this strike you? Would you be in favor of my taking Clara Belle
+a company-tart?”
+
+“Don't Mrs. Fogg feed the young one, now she's taken her right into the
+family?”
+
+“Oh, yes,” Rebecca answered, “she has lovely things to eat, and Mrs.
+Fogg won't even let her drink skim milk; but I always feel that taking
+a present lets the person know you've been thinking about them and are
+extra glad to see them. Besides, unless we have company soon, those
+tarts will have to be eaten by the family, and a new batch made; you
+remember the one I had when I was rewarding myself last week? That was
+queer--but nice,” she added hastily.
+
+“Mebbe you could think of something of your own you could give away
+without taking my tarts!” responded Miranda tersely; the joints of her
+armor having been pierced by the fatally keen tongue of her niece, who
+had insinuated that company-tarts lasted a long time in the brick house.
+This was a fact; indeed, the company-tart was so named, not from any
+idea that it would ever be eaten by guests, but because it was too good
+for every-day use.
+
+Rebecca's face crimsoned with shame that she had drifted into an
+impolite and, what was worse, an apparently ungrateful speech.
+
+“I didn't mean to say anything not nice, Aunt Miranda,” she stammered.
+“Truly the tart was splendid, but not exactly like new, that's all. And
+oh! I know what I can take Clara Belle! A few chocolate drops out of the
+box Mr. Ladd gave me on my birthday.”
+
+“You go down cellar and get that tart, same as I told you,” commanded
+Miranda, “and when you fill it don't uncover a new tumbler of jelly;
+there's some dried-apple preserves open that'll do. Wear your rubbers
+and your thick jacket. After runnin' all the way down there--for your
+legs never seem to be rigged for walkin' like other girls'--you'll set
+down on some damp stone or other and ketch your death o' cold, an' your
+Aunt Jane n' I'll be kep' up nights nursin' you and luggin' your meals
+upstairs to you on a waiter.”
+
+ Here Miranda leaned her head against the back of her rocking
+chair, dropped her knitting and closed her eyes wearily, for when the
+immovable body is opposed by the irresistible force there is a certain
+amount of jar and disturbance involved in the operation.
+
+Rebecca moved toward the side door, shooting a questioning glance at
+Aunt Jane as she passed. The look was full of mysterious suggestion and
+was accompanied by an almost imperceptible gesture. Miss Jane knew that
+certain articles were kept in the entry closet, and by this time she had
+become sufficiently expert in telegraphy to know that Rebecca's unspoken
+query meant: “COULD YOU PERMIT THE HAT WITH THE RED WINGS, IT BEING
+SATURDAY, FINE SETTLED WEATHER, AND A PLEASURE EXCURSION?”
+
+These confidential requests, though fraught with embarrassment when
+Miranda was in the room, gave Jane much secret joy; there was something
+about them that stirred her spinster heart--they were so gay, so
+appealing, so un-Sawyer-, un-Riverboro-like. The longer Rebecca lived in
+the brick house the more her Aunt Jane marveled at the child. What made
+her so different from everybody else. Could it be that her graceless
+popinjay of a father, Lorenzo de Medici Randall, had bequeathed her some
+strange combination of gifts instead of fortune? Her eyes, her brows,
+the color of her lips, the shape of her face, as well as her ways and
+words, proclaimed her a changeling in the Sawyer tribe; but what an
+enchanting changeling; bringing wit and nonsense and color and delight
+into the gray monotony of the dragging years!
+
+There was frost in the air, but a bright cheery sun, as Rebecca walked
+decorously out of the brick house yard. Emma Jane Perkins was away over
+Sunday on a visit to a cousin in Moderation; Alice Robinson and Candace
+Milliken were having measles, and Riverboro was very quiet. Still, life
+was seldom anything but a gay adventure to Rebecca, and she started
+afresh every morning to its conquest. She was not exacting; the Asmodean
+feat of spinning a sand heap into twine was, poetically speaking, always
+in her power, so the mile walk to the pink-house gate, and the tryst
+with freckled, red-haired Clara Belle Simpson, whose face Miss Miranda
+said looked like a raw pie in a brick oven, these commonplace incidents
+were sufficiently exhilarating to brighten her eye and quicken her step.
+
+As the great bare horse-chestnut near the pink-house gate loomed into
+view, the red linsey-woolsey speck going down the road spied the
+blue linsey-woolsey speck coming up, and both specks flew over the
+intervening distance and, meeting, embraced each other ardently,
+somewhat to the injury of the company-tart.
+
+“Didn't it come out splendidly?” exclaimed Rebecca. “I was so afraid
+the fishman wouldn't tell you to start exactly at two, or that one of us
+would walk faster than the other; but we met at the very spot! It was a
+very uncommon idea, wasn't it? Almost romantic!”
+
+“And what do you think?” asked Clara Belle proudly. “Look at this! Mrs.
+Fogg lent me her watch to come home by!”
+
+“Oh, Clara Belle, how wonderful! Mrs. Fogg gets kinder and kinder to
+you, doesn't she? You're not homesick any more, are you?”
+
+“No-o; not really; only when I remember there's only little Susan to
+manage the twins; though they're getting on real well without me. But I
+kind of think, Rebecca, that I'm going to be given away to the Foggs for
+good.”
+
+“Do you mean adopted?”
+
+“Yes; I think father's going to sign papers. You see we can't tell how
+many years it'll be before the poor baby outgrows its burns, and Mrs.
+Fogg'll never be the same again, and she must have somebody to help
+her.”
+
+“You'll be their real daughter, then, won't you, Clara Belle? And
+Mr. Fogg is a deacon, and a selectman, and a road commissioner, and
+everything splendid.”
+
+“Yes; I'll have board, and clothes, and school, and be named Fogg, and”
+ (here her voice sank to an awed whisper) “the upper farm if I should
+ever get married; Miss Dearborn told me that herself, when she was
+persuading me not to mind being given away.”
+
+“Clara Belle Simpson!” exclaimed Rebecca in a transport. “Who'd have
+thought you'd be a female hero and an heiress besides? It's just like
+a book story, and it happened in Riverboro. I'll make Uncle Jerry Cobb
+allow there CAN be Riverboro stories, you see if I don't.”
+
+“Of course I know it's all right,” Clara Belle replied soberly. “I'll
+have a good home and father can't keep us all; but it's kind of dreadful
+to be given away, like a piano or a horse and carriage!”
+
+Rebecca's hand went out sympathetically to Clara Belle's freckled paw.
+Suddenly her own face clouded and she whispered:
+
+“I'm not sure, Clara Belle, but I'm given away too--do you s'pose I
+am? Poor father left us in debt, you see. I thought I came away from
+Sunnybrook to get an education and then help pay off the mortgage; but
+mother doesn't say anything about my coming back, and our family's one
+of those too-big ones, you know, just like yours.”
+
+“Did your mother sign papers to your aunts?'
+
+“If she did I never heard anything about it; but there's something
+pinned on to the mortgage that mother keeps in the drawer of the
+bookcase.”
+
+“You'd know it if twas adoption papers; I guess you're just lent,” Clara
+Belle said cheeringly. “I don't believe anybody'd ever give YOU away!
+And, oh! Rebecca, father's getting on so well! He works on Daly's farm
+where they raise lots of horses and cattle, too, and he breaks all the
+young colts and trains them, and swaps off the poor ones, and drives
+all over the country. Daly told Mr. Fogg he was splendid with stock,
+and father says it's just like play. He's sent home money three Saturday
+nights.”
+
+“I'm so glad!” exclaimed Rebecca sympathetically. “Now your mother'll
+have a good time and a black silk dress, won't she?”
+
+“I don't know,” sighed Clara Belle, and her voice was grave. “Ever since
+I can remember she's just washed and cried and cried and washed. Miss
+Dearborn has been spending her vacation up to Acreville, you know,
+and she came yesterday to board next door to Mrs. Fogg's. I heard them
+talking last night when I was getting the baby to sleep--I couldn't
+help it, they were so close--and Miss Dearborn said mother doesn't like
+Acreville; she says nobody takes any notice of her, and they don't give
+her any more work. Mrs. Fogg said, well, they were dreadful stiff and
+particular up that way and they liked women to have wedding rings.”
+
+“Hasn't your mother got a wedding ring?” asked Rebecca, astonished.
+“Why, I thought everybody HAD to have them, just as they do sofas and a
+kitchen stove!”
+
+“I never noticed she didn't have one, but when they spoke I remembered
+mother's hands washing and wringing, and she doesn't wear one, I know.
+She hasn't got any jewelry, not even a breast-pin.”
+
+Rebecca's tone was somewhat censorious, “your father's been so poor
+perhaps he couldn't afford breast-pins, but I should have thought he'd
+have given your mother a wedding ring when they were married; that's the
+time to do it, right at the very first.”
+
+“They didn't have any real church dress-up wedding,” explained Clara
+Belle extenuatingly. “You see the first mother, mine, had the big boys
+and me, and then she died when we were little. Then after a while this
+mother came to housekeep, and she stayed, and by and by she was Mrs.
+Simpson, and Susan and the twins and the baby are hers, and she and
+father didn't have time for a regular wedding in church. They don't have
+veils and bridesmaids and refreshments round here like Miss Dearborn's
+sister did.”
+
+“Do they cost a great deal--wedding rings?” asked Rebecca thoughtfully.
+“They're solid gold, so I s'pose they do. If they were cheap we might
+buy one. I've got seventy-four cents saved up; how much have you?”
+
+“Fifty-three,” Clara Belle responded, in a depressing tone; “and anyway
+there are no stores nearer than Milltown. We'd have to buy it secretly,
+for I wouldn't make father angry, or shame his pride, now he's got
+steady work; and mother would know I had spent all my savings.”
+
+Rebecca looked nonplussed. “I declare,” she said, “I think the Acreville
+people must be perfectly horrid not to call on your mother only because
+she hasn't got any jewelry. You wouldn't dare tell your father what Miss
+Dearborn heard, so he'd save up and buy the ring?”
+
+“No; I certainly would not!” and Clara Belle's lips closed tightly and
+decisively.
+
+Rebecca sat quietly for a few moments, then she exclaimed jubilantly:
+“I know where we could get it! From Mr. Aladdin, and then I needn't tell
+him who it's for! He's coming to stay over tomorrow with his aunt, and
+I'll ask him to buy a ring for us in Boston. I won't explain anything,
+you know; I'll just say I need a wedding ring.”
+
+“That would be perfectly lovely,” replied Clara Belle, a look of hope
+dawning in her eyes; “and we can think afterwards how to get it over to
+mother. Perhaps you could send it to father instead, but I wouldn't dare
+to do it myself. You won't tell anybody, Rebecca?”
+
+“Cross my heart!” Rebecca exclaimed dramatically; and then with a
+reproachful look, “you know I couldn't repeat a sacred secret like
+that! Shall we meet next Saturday afternoon, and I tell you what's
+happened?--Why, Clara Belle, isn't that Mr. Ladd watering his horse at
+the foot of the hill this very minute? It is; and he's driven up from
+Milltown stead of coming on the train from Boston to Edgewood. He's all
+alone, and I can ride home with him and ask him about the ring right
+away!”
+
+Clara Belle kissed Rebecca fervently, and started on her homeward
+walk, while Rebecca waited at the top of the long hill, fluttering her
+handkerchief as a signal.
+
+“Mr. Aladdin! Mr. Aladdin!” she cried, as the horse and wagon came
+nearer.
+
+Adam Ladd drew up quickly at the sound of the eager young voice.
+
+“Well, well; here is Rebecca Rowena fluttering along the highroad like a
+red-winged blackbird! Are you going to fly home, or drive with me?”
+
+Rebecca clambered into the carriage, laughing and blushing with delight
+at his nonsense and with joy at seeing him again.
+
+“Clara Belle and I were just talking about you this minute, and I'm so
+glad you came this way, for there's something very important to ask you
+about,” she began, rather breathlessly.
+
+“No doubt,” laughed Adam Ladd, who had become, in the course of his
+acquaintance with Rebecca, a sort of high court of appeals; “I hope the
+premium banquet lamp doesn't smoke as it grows older?”
+
+“Now, Mr. Aladdin, you WILL not remember nicely. Mr. Simpson swapped off
+the banquet lamp when he was moving the family to Acreville; it's not
+the lamp at all, but once, when you were here last time, you said you'd
+make up your mind what you were going to give me for Christmas.”
+
+“Well,” and “I do remember that much quite nicely.”
+
+“Well, is it bought?”
+
+“No, I never buy Christmas presents before Thanksgiving.”
+
+“Then, DEAR Mr. Aladdin, would you buy me something different, something
+that I want to give away, and buy it a little sooner than Christmas?”
+
+“That depends. I don't relish having my Christmas presents given away.
+I like to have them kept forever in little girls' bureau drawers, all
+wrapped in pink tissue paper; but explain the matter and perhaps I'll
+change my mind. What is it you want?”
+
+“I need a wedding ring dreadfully,” said Rebecca, “but it's a sacred
+secret.”
+
+Adam Ladd's eyes flashed with surprise and he smiled to himself with
+pleasure. Had he on his list of acquaintances, he asked himself, a
+person of any age or sex so altogether irresistible and unique as this
+child? Then he turned to face her with the merry teasing look that made
+him so delightful to young people.
+
+“I thought it was perfectly understood between us,” he said, “that if
+you could ever contrive to grow up and I were willing to wait, that I
+was to ride up to the brick house on my snow white”--
+
+“Coal black,” corrected Rebecca, with a sparkling eye and a warning
+finger.
+
+“Coal black charger; put a golden circlet on your lily white finger,
+draw you up behind me on my pillion”--
+
+“And Emma Jane, too,” Rebecca interrupted.
+
+“I think I didn't mention Emma Jane,” argued Mr. Aladdin. “Three on a
+pillion is very uncomfortable. I think Emma Jane leaps on the back of a
+prancing chestnut, and we all go off to my castle in the forest.”
+
+“Emma Jane never leaps, and she'd be afraid of a prancing chestnut,”
+ objected Rebecca.
+
+“Then she shall have a gentle cream-colored pony; but now, without any
+explanation, you ask me to buy you a wedding ring, which shows
+plainly that you are planning to ride off on a snow white--I mean coal
+black--charger with somebody else.”
+
+Rebecca dimpled and laughed with joy at the nonsense. In her prosaic
+world no one but Adam Ladd played the game and answered the fool
+according to his folly. Nobody else talked delicious fairy-story twaddle
+but Mr. Aladdin.
+
+“The ring isn't for ME!” she explained carefully. “You know very well
+that Emma Jane nor I can't be married till we're through Quackenbos's
+Grammar, Greenleaf's Arithmetic, and big enough to wear long trails and
+run a sewing machine. The ring is for a friend.”
+
+“Why doesn't the groom give it to his bride himself?”
+
+“Because he's poor and kind of thoughtless, and anyway she isn't a bride
+any more; she has three step and three other kind of children.”
+
+Adam Ladd put the whip back in the socket thoughtfully, and then stooped
+to tuck in the rug over Rebecca's feet and his own. When he raised his
+head again he asked: “Why not tell me a little more, Rebecca? I'm safe!”
+
+Rebecca looked at him, feeling his wisdom and strength, and above all
+his sympathy. Then she said hesitatingly: “You remember I told you all
+about the Simpsons that day on your aunt's porch when you bought the
+soap because I told you how the family were always in trouble and how
+much they needed a banquet lamp? Mr. Simpson, Clara Belle's father, has
+always been very poor, and not always very good,--a little bit THIEVISH,
+you know--but oh, so pleasant and nice to talk to! And now he's turning
+over a new leaf. And everybody in Riverboro liked Mrs. Simpson when she
+came here a stranger, because they were sorry for her and she was so
+patient, and such a hard worker, and so kind to the children. But where
+she lives now, though they used to know her when she was a girl, they're
+not polite to her and don't give her scrubbing and washing; and Clara
+belle heard our teacher say to Mrs. Fogg that the Acreville people were
+stiff, and despised her because she didn't wear a wedding ring, like all
+the rest. And Clara Belle and I thought if they were so mean as that,
+we'd love to give her one, and then she'd be happier and have more
+work; and perhaps Mr. Simpson if he gets along better will buy her a
+breast-pin and earrings, and she'll be fitted out like the others. I
+know Mrs. Peter Meserve is looked up to by everybody in Edgewood on
+account of her gold bracelets and moss agate necklace.”
+
+Adam turned again to meet the luminous, innocent eyes that glowed under
+the delicate brows and long lashes, feeling as he had more than once
+felt before, as if his worldly-wise, grown-up thoughts had been bathed
+in some purifying spring.
+
+“How shall you send the ring to Mrs. Simpson?” he asked, with interest.
+
+“We haven't settled yet; Clara Belle's afraid to do it, and thinks I
+could manage better. Will the ring cost much? Because, of course, if it
+does, I must ask Aunt Jane first. There are things I have to ask Aunt
+Miranda, and others that belong to Aunt Jane.”
+
+“It costs the merest trifle. I'll buy one and bring it to you, and we'll
+consult about it; but I think as you're great friends with Mr. Simpson
+you'd better send it to him in a letter, letters being your strong
+point! It's a present a man ought to give his own wife, but it's worth
+trying, Rebecca. You and Clara Belle can manage it between you, and I'll
+stay in the background where nobody will see me.”
+
+
+
+
+Ninth Chronicle. THE GREEN ISLE
+
+     Many a green isle needs must be
+     In the deep sea of misery,
+     Or the mariner, worn and wan,
+     Never thus could voyage on
+     Day and night and night and day,
+     Drifting on his weary way.
+
+     --Shelley
+
+
+Meantime in these frosty autumn days life was crowded with events in the
+lonely Simpson house at Acreville.
+
+The tumble-down dwelling stood on the edge of Pliney's Pond; so called
+because old Colonel Richardson left his lands to be divided in five
+equal parts, each share to be chosen in turn by one of his five sons,
+Pliny, the eldest, having priority of choice.
+
+Pliny Richardson, having little taste for farming, and being ardently
+fond of fishing, rowing, and swimming, acted up to his reputation
+of being “a little mite odd,” and took his whole twenty acres in
+water--hence Pliny's Pond.
+
+The eldest Simpson boy had been working on a farm in Cumberland County
+for two years. Samuel, generally dubbed “see-saw,” had lately found a
+humble place in a shingle mill and was partially self-supporting. Clara
+Belle had been adopted by the Foggs; thus there were only three mouths
+to fill, the capacious ones of Elijah and Elisha, the twin boys, and
+of lisping, nine-year-old Susan, the capable houseworker and
+mother's assistant, for the baby had died during the summer; died of
+discouragement at having been born into a family unprovided with food
+or money or love or care, or even with desire for, or appreciation of,
+babies.
+
+There was no doubt that the erratic father of the house had turned over
+a new leaf. Exactly when he began, or how, or why, or how long he would
+continue the praiseworthy process,--in a word whether there would be
+more leaves turned as the months went on,--Mrs. Simpson did not know,
+and it is doubtful if any authority lower than that of Mr. Simpson's
+Maker could have decided the matter. He had stolen articles for swapping
+purposes for a long time, but had often avoided detection, and always
+escaped punishment until the last few years. Three fines imposed for
+small offenses were followed by several arrests and two imprisonments
+for brief periods, and he found himself wholly out of sympathy with
+the wages of sin. Sin itself he did not especially mind, but the wages
+thereof were decidedly unpleasant and irksome to him. He also minded
+very much the isolated position in the community which had lately become
+his; for he was a social being and would ALMOST rather not steal from a
+neighbor than have him find it out and cease intercourse! This feeling
+was working in him and rendering him unaccountably irritable and
+depressed when he took his daughter over to Riverboro at the time of the
+great flag-raising.
+
+There are seasons of refreshment, as well as seasons of drought, in the
+spiritual, as in the natural world, and in some way or other dews
+and rains of grace fell upon Abner Simpson's heart during that brief
+journey. Perhaps the giving away of a child that he could not support
+had made the soil of his heart a little softer and readier for planting
+than usual; but when he stole the new flag off Mrs. Peter Meserve's
+doorsteps, under the impression that the cotton-covered bundle
+contained freshly washed clothes, he unconsciously set certain forces in
+operation.
+
+It will be remembered that Rebecca saw an inch of red bunting peeping
+from the back of his wagon, and asked the pleasure of a drive with him.
+She was no daughter of the regiment, but she proposed to follow the
+flag. When she diplomatically requested the return of the sacred
+object which was to be the glory of the “raising” next day, and he thus
+discovered his mistake, he was furious with himself for having slipped
+into a disagreeable predicament; and later, when he unexpectedly faced
+a detachment of Riverboro society at the cross-roads, and met not only
+their wrath and scorn, but the reproachful, disappointed glance of
+Rebecca's eyes, he felt degraded as never before.
+
+The night at the Centre tavern did not help matters, nor the jolly
+patriotic meeting of the three villages at the flag-raising next
+morning. He would have enjoyed being at the head and front of the
+festive preparations, but as he had cut himself off from all such
+friendly gatherings, he intended at any rate to sit in his wagon on the
+very outskirts of the assembled crowd and see some of the gayety; for,
+heaven knows, he had little enough, he who loved talk, and song, and
+story, and laughter, and excitement.
+
+The flag was raised, the crowd cheered, the little girl to whom he had
+lied, the girl who was impersonating the State of Maine, was on the
+platform “speaking her piece,” and he could just distinguish some of the
+words she was saying:
+
+“For it's your star, my star, all the stars together, That makes our
+country's flag so proud To float in the bright fall weather.”
+
+Then suddenly there was a clarion voice cleaving the air, and he saw
+a tall man standing in the centre of the stage and heard him crying:
+“THREE CHEERS FOR THE GIRL THAT SAVED THE FLAG FROM THE HANDS OF THE
+ENEMY!”
+
+He was sore and bitter enough already; lonely, isolated enough; with
+no lot nor share in the honest community life; no hand to shake, no
+neighbor's meal to share; and this unexpected public arraignment smote
+him between the eyes. With resentment newly kindled, pride wounded,
+vanity bleeding, he flung a curse at the joyous throng and drove toward
+home, the home where he would find his ragged children and meet the
+timid eyes of a woman who had been the loyal partner of his poverty and
+disgraces.
+
+It is probable that even then his (extremely light) hand was already on
+the “new leaf.” The angels, doubtless, were not especially proud of the
+matter and manner of his reformation, but I dare say they were glad to
+count him theirs on any terms, so difficult is the reformation of this
+blind and foolish world! They must have been; for they immediately
+flung into his very lap a profitable, and what is more to the point, an
+interesting and agreeable situation where money could be earned by doing
+the very things his nature craved. There were feats of daring to be
+performed in sight of admiring and applauding stable boys; the horses
+he loved were his companions; he was OBLIGED to “swap,” for Daly, his
+employer, counted on him to get rid of all undesirable stock; power and
+responsibility of a sort were given him freely, for Daly was no Puritan,
+and felt himself amply capable of managing any number of Simpsons;
+so here were numberless advantages within the man's grasp, and wages
+besides!
+
+Abner positively felt no temptation to steal; his soul expanded with
+pride, and the admiration and astonishment with which he regarded
+his virtuous present was only equaled by the disgust with which he
+contemplated his past; not so much a vicious past, in his own generous
+estimation of it, as a “thunderin' foolish” one.
+
+Mrs. Simpson took the same view of Abner's new leaf as the angels.
+She was thankful for even a brief season of honesty coupled with the
+Saturday night remittance; and if she still washed and cried and cried
+and washed, as Clara Belle had always seen her, it was either because of
+some hidden sorrow, or because her poor strength seemed all at once to
+have deserted her.
+
+Just when employment and good fortune had come to the step-children, and
+her own were better fed and clothed than ever before, the pain that had
+always lurked, constant but dull, near her tired heart, grew fierce
+and triumphantly strong; clutching her in its talons, biting, gnawing,
+worrying, leaving her each week with slighter powers of resistance.
+Still hope was in the air and a greater content than had ever been hers
+was in her eyes; a content that came near to happiness when the doctor
+ordered her to keep her bed and sent for Clara Belle. She could not wash
+any longer, but there was the ever new miracle of the Saturday night
+remittance for household expenses.
+
+“Is your pain bad today, mother,” asked Clara Belle, who, only lately
+given away, was merely borrowed from Mrs. Fogg for what was thought to
+be a brief emergency.
+
+“Well, there, I can't hardly tell, Clara Belle,” Mrs. Simpson replied,
+with a faint smile. “I can't seem to remember the pain these days
+without it's extra bad. The neighbors are so kind; Mrs. Little has sent
+me canned mustard greens, and Mrs. Benson chocolate ice cream and mince
+pie; there's the doctor's drops to make me sleep, and these blankets
+and that great box of eatables from Mr. Ladd; and you here to keep me
+comp'ny! I declare I'm kind o' dazed with comforts. I never expected to
+see sherry wine in this house. I ain't never drawed the cork; it does
+me good enough jest to look at Mr. Ladd's bottle settin' on the
+mantel-piece with the fire shinin' on the brown glass.”
+
+Mr. Simpson had come to see his wife and had met the doctor just as he
+was leaving the house.
+
+“She looks awful bad to me. Is she goin' to pull through all right, same
+as the last time?” he asked the doctor nervously.
+
+“She's going to pull right through into the other world,” the doctor
+answered bluntly; “and as there don't seem to be anybody else to take
+the bull by the horns, I'd advise you, having made the woman's life
+about as hard and miserable as you could, to try and help her to die
+easy!”
+
+Abner, surprised and crushed by the weight of this verbal chastisement,
+sat down on the doorstep, his head in his hands, and thought a while
+solemnly. Thought was not an operation he was wont to indulge in, and
+when he opened the gate a few minutes later and walked slowly toward
+the barn for his horse, he looked pale and unnerved. It is uncommonly
+startling, first to see yourself in another man's scornful eyes, and
+then, clearly, in your own.
+
+Two days later he came again, and this time it was decreed that he
+should find Parson Carll tying his piebald mare at the post.
+
+Clara Belle's quick eye had observed the minister as he alighted from
+his buggy, and, warning her mother, she hastily smoothed the bedclothes,
+arranged the medicine bottles, and swept the hearth.
+
+“Oh! Don't let him in!” wailed Mrs. Simpson, all of a flutter at the
+prospect of such a visitor. “Oh, dear! They must think over to the
+village that I'm dreadful sick, or the minister wouldn't never think
+of callin'! Don't let him in, Clara Belle! I'm afraid he will say hard
+words to me, or pray to me; and I ain't never been prayed to since I was
+a child! Is his wife with him?”
+
+“No; he's alone; but father's just drove up and is hitching at the shed
+door.”
+
+“That's worse than all!” and Mrs. Simpson raised herself feebly on her
+pillows and clasped her hands in despair. “You mustn't let them two
+meet, Clara Belle, and you must send Mr. Carll away; your father
+wouldn't have a minister in the house, nor speak to one, for a thousand
+dollars!”
+
+“Be quiet, mother! Lie down! It'll be all right! You'll only fret
+yourself into a spell! The minister's just a good man; he won't say
+anything to frighten you. Father's talking with him real pleasant, and
+pointing the way to the front door.”
+
+The parson knocked and was admitted by the excited Clara Belle, who
+ushered him tremblingly into the sickroom, and then betook herself to
+the kitchen with the children, as he gently requested her.
+
+Abner Simpson, left alone in the shed, fumbled in his vest pocket and
+took out an envelope which held a sheet of paper and a tiny packet
+wrapped in tissue paper. The letter had been read once before and ran as
+follows:
+
+Dear Mr. Simpson:
+
+This is a secret letter. I heard that the Acreville people weren't nice
+to Mrs. Simpson because she didn't have any wedding ring like all the
+others.
+
+I know you've always been poor, dear Mr. Simpson, and troubled with a
+large family like ours at the farm; but you really ought to have given
+Mrs. Simpson a ring when you were married to her, right at the very
+first; for then it would have been over and done with, as they are solid
+gold and last forever. And probably she wouldn't feel like asking you
+for one, because ladies are just like girls, only grown up, and I know
+I'd be ashamed to beg for jewelry when just board and clothes cost
+so much. So I send you a nice, new wedding ring to save your buying,
+thinking you might get Mrs. Simpson a bracelet or eardrops for
+Christmas. It did not cost me anything, as it was a secret present from
+a friend.
+
+I hear Mrs. Simpson is sick, and it would be a great comfort to her
+while she is in bed and has so much time to look at it. When I had
+the measles Emma Jane Perkins lent me her mother's garnet ring, and it
+helped me very much to put my wasted hand outside the bedclothes and see
+the ring sparkling.
+
+Please don't be angry with me, dear Mr. Simpson, because I like you
+so much and am so glad you are happy with the horses and colts; and I
+believe now perhaps you DID think the flag was a bundle of washing
+when you took it that day; so no more from your Trusted friend, Rebecca
+Rowena Randall.
+
+Simpson tore the letter slowly and quietly into fragments and scattered
+the bits on the woodpile, took off his hat, and smoothed his hair;
+pulled his mustaches thoughtfully, straightened his shoulders, and then,
+holding the tiny packet in the palm of his hand, he went round to the
+front door, and having entered the house stood outside the sickroom for
+an instant, turned the knob and walked softly in.
+
+Then at last the angels might have enjoyed a moment of unmixed joy, for
+in that brief walk from shed to house Abner Simpson's conscience waked
+to life and attained sufficient strength to prick and sting, to provoke
+remorse, to incite penitence, to do all sorts of divine and beautiful
+things it was meant for, but had never been allowed to do.
+
+Clara Belle went about the kitchen quietly, making preparations for the
+children's supper. She had left Riverboro in haste, as the change for
+the worse in Mrs. Simpson had been very sudden, but since she had come
+she had thought more than once of the wedding ring. She had wondered
+whether Mr. Ladd had bought it for Rebecca, and whether Rebecca would
+find means to send it to Acreville; but her cares had been so many and
+varied that the subject had now finally retired to the background of her
+mind.
+
+The hands of the clock crept on and she kept hushing the strident tones
+of Elijah and Elisha, opening and shutting the oven door to look at
+the corn bread, advising Susan as to her dishes, and marveling that the
+minister stayed so long.
+
+At last she heard a door open and close and saw the old parson come
+out, wiping his spectacles, and step into the buggy for his drive to the
+village.
+
+Then there was another period of suspense, during which the house was
+as silent as the grave, and presently her father came into the kitchen,
+greeted the twins and Susan, and said to Clara Belle: “Don't go in there
+yet!” jerking his thumb towards Mrs. Simpson's room; “she's all beat out
+and she's just droppin' off to sleep. I'll send some groceries up from
+the store as I go along. Is the doctor makin' a second call tonight?”
+
+“Yes; he'll be here pretty soon, now,” Clara Belle answered, looking at
+the clock.
+
+“All right. I'll be here again tomorrow, soon as it's light, and if she
+ain't picked up any I'll send word back to Daly, and stop here with you
+for a spell till she's better.”
+
+It was true; Mrs. Simpson was “all beat out.” It had been a time of
+excitement and stress, and the poor, fluttered creature was dropping off
+into the strangest sleep--a sleep made up of waking dreams. The pain,
+that had encompassed her heart like a band of steel, lessened its cruel
+pressure, and finally left her so completely that she seemed to see it
+floating above her head; only that it looked no longer like a band of
+steel, but a golden circle.
+
+The frail bark in which she had sailed her life voyage had been rocking
+on a rough and tossing ocean, and now it floated, floated slowly into
+smoother waters.
+
+As long as she could remember, her boat had been flung about in storm
+and tempest, lashed by angry winds, borne against rocks, beaten, torn,
+buffeted. Now the waves had subsided; the sky was clear; the sea was
+warm and tranquil; the sunshine dried the tattered sails; the air was
+soft and balmy.
+
+And now, for sleep plays strange tricks, the bark disappeared from the
+dream, and it was she, herself, who was floating, floating farther and
+farther away; whither she neither knew nor cared; it was enough to be at
+rest, lulled by the lapping of the cool waves.
+
+Then there appeared a green isle rising from the sea; an isle so radiant
+and fairy-like that her famished eyes could hardly believe its reality;
+but it was real, for she sailed nearer and nearer to its shores, and at
+last her feet skimmed the shining sands and she floated through the
+air as disembodied spirits float, till she sank softly at the foot of a
+spreading tree.
+
+Then she saw the green isle was a flowering isle. Every shrub and bush
+was blooming; the trees were hung with rosy garlands, and even the earth
+was carpeted with tiny flowers. The rare fragrances, the bird songs,
+soft and musical, the ravishment of color, all bore down upon her
+swimming senses at once, taking them captive so completely that she
+remembered no past, was conscious of no present, looked forward to no
+future. She seemed to leave the body and the sad, heavy things of the
+body. The humming in her ears ceased, the light faded, the birds songs
+grew fainter and more distant, the golden circle of pain receded farther
+and farther until it was lost to view; even the flowering island gently
+drifted away, and all was peace and silence.
+
+It was time for the doctor now, and Clara Belle, too anxious to wait
+longer, softly turned the knob of her mother's door and entered the
+room. The glow of the open fire illumined the darkest side of the poor
+chamber. There were no trees near the house, and a full November moon
+streamed in at the unblinded, uncurtained windows, lighting up the bare
+interior--the unpainted floor, the gray plastered walls, and the white
+counterpane.
+
+Her mother lay quite still, her head turned and drooping a little on
+the pillow. Her left hand was folded softly up against her breast, the
+fingers of the right partly covering it, as if protecting something
+precious.
+
+Was it the moonlight that made the patient brow so white, and where were
+the lines of anxiety and pain? The face of the mother who had washed
+and cried and cried and washed was as radiant as if the closed eye were
+beholding heavenly visions.
+
+“Something must have cured her!” thought Clara Belle, awed and almost
+frightened by the whiteness and the silence.
+
+She tiptoed across the floor to look more closely at the still, smiling
+shape, and bending over it saw, under the shadow of the caressing right
+hand, a narrow gold band gleaming on the work-stained finger.
+
+“Oh, the ring came, after all!” she said in a glad whisper, “and perhaps
+it was that that made her better!”
+
+She put her hand on her mother's gently. A terrified shiver, a warning
+shudder, shook the girl from head to foot at the chilling touch. A dread
+presence she had never met before suddenly took shape. It filled the
+room; stifled the cry on her lips; froze her steps to the floor, stopped
+the beating of her heart.
+
+Just then the door opened.
+
+“Oh, doctor! Come quick!” she sobbed, stretching out her hand for
+help, and then covering her eyes. “Come close! Look at mother! Is she
+better--or is she dead?”
+
+The doctor put one hand on the shoulder of the shrinking child, and
+touched the woman with the other.
+
+“She is better!” he said gently, “and she is dead.”
+
+
+
+
+Tenth Chronicle. REBECCA'S REMINISCENCES
+
+
+Rebecca was sitting by the window in her room at the Wareham Female
+Seminary. She was alone, as her roommate, Emma Jane Perkins, was
+reciting Latin down below in some academic vault of the old brick
+building.
+
+A new and most ardent passion for the classics had been born in Emma
+Jane's hitherto unfertile brain, for Abijah Flagg, who was carrying off
+all the prizes at Limerick Academy, had written her a letter in Latin, a
+letter which she had been unable to translate for herself, even with the
+aid of a dictionary, and which she had been apparently unwilling that
+Rebecca, her bosom friend, confidant, and roommate, should render into
+English.
+
+An old-fashioned Female Seminary, with its allotment of one medium-sized
+room to two medium sized young females, gave small opportunities for
+privacy by night or day, for neither the double washstand, nor the thus
+far unimagined bathroom, nor even indeed the humble and serviceable
+screen, had been realized, in these dark ages of which I write.
+Accordingly, like the irrational ostrich, which defends itself by the
+simple process of not looking at its pursuers, Emma Jane had kept her
+Latin letter in her closed hand, in her pocket, or in her open book,
+flattering herself that no one had noticed her pleased bewilderment at
+its only half-imagined contents.
+
+All the fairies were not present at Rebecca's cradle. A goodly number of
+them telegraphed that they were previously engaged or unavoidably absent
+from town. The village of Temperance, Maine, where Rebecca first saw the
+light, was hardly a place on its own merits to attract large throngs of
+fairies. But one dear old personage who keeps her pocket full of Merry
+Leaves from the Laughing Tree, took a fancy to come to the little
+birthday party; and seeing so few of her sister-fairies present, she
+dowered the sleeping baby more richly than was her wont, because of its
+apparent lack of wealth in other directions. So the child grew, and the
+Merry Leaves from the Laughing Tree rustled where they hung from the
+hood of her cradle, and, being fairy leaves, when the cradle was
+given up they festooned themselves on the cribside, and later on blew
+themselves up to the ceilings at Sunnybook Farm and dangled there,
+making fun for everybody. They never withered, even at the brick house
+in Riverboro, where the air was particularly inimical to fairies,
+for Miss Miranda Sawyer would have scared any ordinary elf out of her
+seventeen senses. They followed Rebecca to Wareham, and during Abijah
+Flagg's Latin correspondence with Emma Jane they fluttered about that
+young person's head in such a manner that Rebecca was almost afraid that
+she would discover them herself, although this is something, as a matter
+of fact, that never does happen.
+
+A week had gone by since the Latin missive had been taken from
+the post-office by Emma Jane, and now, by means of much midnight
+oil-burning, by much cautious questioning of Miss Maxwell, by such
+scrutiny of the moods and tenses of Latin verbs as wellnigh destroyed
+her brain tissue, she had mastered its romantic message. If it was
+conventional in style, Emma Jane never suspected it. If some of the
+similes seemed to have been culled from the Latin poets, and some of the
+phrases built up from Latin exercises, Emma Jane was neither scholar
+nor critic; the similes, the phrases, the sentiments, when finally
+translated and written down in black-and-white English, made, in her
+opinion, the most convincing and heart-melting document ever sent
+through the mails:
+
+Mea cara Emma:
+
+Cur audeo scribere ad te epistulam? Es mihi dea! Semper es in mea anima.
+Iterum et iterum es cum me in somnis. Saepe video tuas capillos auri,
+tuos pulchros oculos similes caelo, tuas genas, quasi rubentes rosas
+in nive. Tua vox est dulcior quam cantus avium aut murmur rivuli in
+montibus.
+
+Cur sum ego tam miser et pauper et indignus, et tu tam dulcis et bona et
+nobilis?
+
+Si cogitabis de me ero beatus. Tu es sola puella quam amo, et semper
+eris. Alias puellas non amavi. Forte olim amabis me, sed sum indignus.
+Sine te sum miser, cum tu es prope mea vita omni est goddamn.
+
+Vale, carissima, carissima puella!
+
+De tuo fideli servo A.F.
+
+My dear Emma:
+
+Why dare I write to you a letter? You are to me a goddess! Always you
+are in my heart. Again and again you are with me in dreams. Often I see
+your locks of gold, your beautiful eyes like the sky, your cheeks, as
+red roses in snow. Your voice is sweeter than the singing of birds or
+the murmur of the stream in the mountains.
+
+Why am I so wretched and poor and unworthy, and you so sweet and good
+and noble?
+
+If you will think of me I shall be happy. You are the only girl that I
+love and always will be. Other girls I have not loved. Perhaps sometime
+you will love me, but I am unworthy. Without you, I am wretched, when
+you are near my life is all joy.
+
+Farewell, dearest, dearest girl!
+
+From your faithful slave A.F.
+
+Emma Jane knew the letter by heart in English. She even knew it in
+Latin, only a few days before a dead language to her, but now one filled
+with life and meaning. From beginning to end the epistle had the effect
+upon her as of an intoxicating elixir. Often, at morning prayers, or
+while eating her rice pudding at the noon dinner, or when sinking off
+to sleep at night, she heard a voice murmuring in her ear, “Vale,
+carissima, carissima puella!” As to the effect on her modest,
+countrified little heart of the phrases in which Abijah stated she was
+a goddess and he her faithful slave, that quite baffles description; for
+it lifted her bodily out of the scenes in which she moved, into a new,
+rosy, ethereal atmosphere in which even Rebecca had no place.
+
+Rebecca did not know this, fortunately; she only suspected, and waited
+for the day when Emma Jane would pour out her confidences, as she always
+did, and always would until the end of time. At the present moment
+she was busily employed in thinking about her own affairs. A shabby
+composition book with mottled board covers lay open on the table before
+her, and sometimes she wrote in it with feverish haste and absorption,
+and sometimes she rested her chin in the cup of her palm, and with the
+pencil poised in the other hand looked dreamily out on the village, its
+huddle of roofs and steeples all blurred into positive beauty by the
+fast-falling snowflakes.
+
+It was the middle of December and the friendly sky was softly dropping
+a great white mantle of peace and good-will over the little town, making
+all ready within and without for the Feast o' the Babe.
+
+The main street, that in summer was made dignified by its splendid
+avenue of shade trees, now ran quiet and white between rows of stalwart
+trunks, whose leafless branches were all hanging heavy under their
+dazzling burden.
+
+The path leading straight up the hill to the Academy was broken only by
+the feet of the hurrying, breathless boys and girls who ran up and down,
+carrying piles of books under their arms; books which they remembered
+so long as they were within the four walls of the recitation room, and
+which they eagerly forgot as soon as they met one another in the living,
+laughing world, going up and down the hill.
+
+“It's very becoming to the universe, snow is!” thought Rebecca, looking
+out of the window dreamily. “Really there's little to choose between the
+world and heaven when a snowstorm is going on. I feel as if I ought to
+look at it every minute. I wish I could get over being greedy, but it
+still seems to me at sixteen as if there weren't waking hours enough
+in the day, and as if somehow I were pressed for time and continually
+losing something. How well I remember mother's story about me when I
+was four. It was at early breakfast on the farm, but I called all meals
+dinner' then, and when I had finished I folded up my bib and sighed: O,
+dear! Only two more dinners, play a while and go to bed!' This was at
+six in the morning--lamplight in the kitchen, snowlight outside!
+
+     Powdery, powdery, powdery snow,
+     Making things lovely wherever you go!
+     Merciful, merciful, merciful snow,
+     Masking the ugliness hidden below.
+
+Herbert made me promise to do a poem for the January 'Pilot,' but I
+mustn't take the snow as a subject; there has been too great competition
+among the older poets!” And with that she turned in her chair and began
+writing again in the shabby book, which was already three quarters
+filled with childish scribblings, sometimes in pencil, and sometimes in
+violet ink with carefully shaded capital letters.”
+
+* * * * *
+
+Squire Bean has had a sharp attack of rheumatism and Abijah Flagg came
+back from Limerick for a few days to nurse him. One morning the Burnham
+sisters from North Riverboro came over to spend the day with Aunt
+Miranda, and Abijah went down to put up their horse. (“'Commodatin'
+'Bijah” was his pet name when we were all young.)
+
+He scaled the ladder to the barn chamber--the dear old ladder that
+used to be my safety valve!--and pitched down the last forkful of
+grandfather's hay that will ever be eaten by any visiting horse. They
+WILL be delighted to hear that it is all gone; they have grumbled at it
+for years and years.
+
+What should Abijah find at the bottom of the heap but my Thought Book,
+hidden there two or three years ago and forgotten!
+
+When I think of what it was to me, the place it filled in my life, the
+affection I lavished on it, I wonder that I could forget it, even in
+all the excitement of coming to Wareham to school. And that gives me
+“an uncommon thought” as I used to say! It is this: that when we finish
+building an air castle we seldom live in it after all; we sometimes even
+forget that we ever longed to! Perhaps we have gone so far as to
+begin another castle on a higher hilltop, and this is so
+beautiful,--especially while we are building, and before we live in
+it!--that the first one has quite vanished from sight and mind, like the
+outgrown shell of the nautilus that he casts off on the shore and never
+looks at again. (At least I suppose he doesn't; but perhaps he takes one
+backward glance, half-smiling, half-serious, just as I am doing at my
+old Thought Book, and says, “WAS THAT MY SHELL! GOODNESS GRACIOUS! HOW
+DID I EVER SQUEEZE MYSELF INTO IT!”)
+
+That bit about the nautilus sounds like an extract from a school theme,
+or a “Pilot” editorial, or a fragment of one of dear Miss Maxwell's
+lectures, but I think girls of sixteen are principally imitations of the
+people and things they love and admire; and between editing the “Pilot,”
+ writing out Virgil translations, searching for composition subjects, and
+studying rhetorical models, there is very little of the original
+Rebecca Rowena about me at the present moment; I am just a member of
+the graduating class in good and regular standing. We do our hair alike,
+dress alike as much as possible, eat and drink alike, talk alike,--I am
+not even sure that we do not think alike; and what will become of the
+poor world when we are all let loose upon it on the same day of June?
+Will life, real life, bring our true selves back to us? Will love and
+duty and sorrow and trouble and work finally wear off the “school stamp”
+ that has been pressed upon all of us until we look like rows of shining
+copper cents fresh from the mint?
+
+Yet there must be a little difference between us somewhere, or why does
+Abijah Flagg write Latin letters to Emma Jane, instead of to me? There
+is one example on the other side of the argument,--Abijah Flagg. He
+stands out from all the rest of the boys like the Rock of Gibraltar in
+the geography pictures. Is it because he never went to school until he
+was sixteen? He almost died of longing to go, and the longing seemed to
+teach him more than going. He knew his letters, and could read simple
+things, but it was I who taught him what books really meant when I was
+eleven and he thirteen. We studied while he was husking corn or cutting
+potatoes for seed, or shelling beans in the Squire's barn. His beloved
+Emma Jane didn't teach him; her father wold not have let her be friends
+with a chore-boy! It was I who found him after milking-time, summer
+nights, suffering, yes dying, of Least Common Multiple and Greatest
+Common Divisor; I who struck the shackles from the slave and told him to
+skip it all and go on to something easier, like Fractions, Percentage,
+and Compound Interest, as I did myself. Oh! How he used to smell of the
+cows when I was correcting his sums on warm evenings, but I don't regret
+it, for he is now the joy of Limerick and the pride of Riverboro, and I
+suppose has forgotten the proper side on which to approach a cow if you
+wish to milk her. This now unserviceable knowledge is neatly inclosed in
+the outgrown shell he threw off two or three years ago. His gratitude
+to me knows no bounds, but--he writes Latin letters to Emma Jane! But as
+Mr. Perkins said about drowning the kittens (I now quote from myself at
+thirteen), “It is the way of the world and how things have to be!”
+
+Well, I have read the Thought Book all through, and when I want to
+make Mr. Aladdin laugh, I shall show him my composition on the relative
+values of punishment and reward as builders of character.
+
+I am not at all the same Rebecca today at sixteen that I was then,
+at twelve and thirteen. I hope, in getting rid of my failings, that I
+haven't scrubbed and rubbed so hard that I have taken the gloss off the
+poor little virtues that lay just alongside of the faults; for as I read
+the foolish doggerel and the funny, funny “Remerniscences,” I see on the
+whole a nice, well-meaning, trusting, loving heedless little creature,
+that after all I'd rather build on than outgrow altogether, because she
+is Me; the Me that was made and born just a little different from all
+the rest of the babies in my birthday year.
+
+One thing is alike in the child and the girl. They both love to set
+thoughts down in black and white; to see how they look, how they sound,
+and how they make one feel when one reads them over.
+
+They both love the sound of beautiful sentences and the tinkle of
+rhyming words, and in fact, of the three great R's of life, they adore
+Reading and Riting, as much as they abhor 'Rithmetic.
+
+The little girl in the old book is always thinking of what she is “going
+to be.”
+
+Uncle Jerry Cobb spoiled me a good deal in this direction. I remember
+he said to everybody when I wrote my verses for the flag-raising: “Nary
+rung on the ladder o' fame but that child'll climb if you give her
+time!”--poor Uncle Jerry! He will be so disappointed in me as time goes
+on. And still he would think I have already climbed two rungs on the
+ladder, although it is only a little Wareham ladder, for I am one of
+the “Pilot” editors, the first “girl editor”--and I have taken a fifty
+dollar prize in composition and paid off the interest on a twelve
+hundred dollar mortgage with it.
+
+     “High is the rank we now possess,
+     But higher we shall rise;
+     Though what we shall hereafter be
+     Is hid from mortal eyes.”
+
+This hymn was sung in meeting the Sunday after my election, and Mr.
+Aladdin was there that day and looked across the aisle and smiled at me.
+Then he sent me a sheet of paper from Boston the next morning with just
+one verse in the middle of it.
+
+“She made the cleverest people quite ashamed; And ev'n the good with
+inward envy groan, Finding themselves so very much exceeded, In their
+own way by all the things that she did.”
+
+Miss Maxwell says it is Byron, and I wish I had thought of the last
+rhyme before Byron did; my rhymes are always so common.
+
+I am too busy doing, nowadays, to give very much thought to being.
+Mr. Aladdin was teasing me one day about what he calls my “cast-off
+careers.”
+
+“What makes you aim at any mark in particular, Rebecca?” he asked,
+looking at Miss Maxwell and laughing. “Women never hit what they aim at,
+anyway; but if they shut their eyes and shoot in the air they generally
+find themselves in the bull's eye.”
+
+I think one reason that I have always dreamed of what I should be, when
+I grew up, was, that even before father died mother worried about the
+mortgage on the farm, and what would become of us if it were foreclosed.
+
+It was hard on children to be brought up on a mortgage that way, but
+oh! it was harder still on poor dear mother, who had seven of us then
+to think of, and still has three at home to feed and clothe out of the
+farm.
+
+Aunt Jane says I am young for my age, Aunt Miranda is afraid that I will
+never really “grow up,” Mr. Aladdin says that I don't know the world any
+better than the pearl inside of the oyster. They none of them know the
+old, old thoughts I have, some of them going back years and years; for
+they are never ones that I can speak about.
+
+I remember how we children used to admire father, he was so handsome and
+graceful and amusing, never cross like mother, or too busy to play with
+us. He never did any work at home because he had to keep his hands nice
+for playing the church melodeon, or the violin or piano for dances.
+
+Mother used to say: “Hannah and Rebecca, you must hull the strawberries,
+your father cannot help.” “John, you must milk next year for I haven't
+the time and it would spoil your father's hands.”
+
+All the other men in Temperance village wore calico, or flannel shirts,
+except on Sundays, but Father never wore any but white ones with
+starched bosoms. He was very particular about them and mother used to
+stitch and stitch on the pleats, and press and press the bosoms and
+collar and cuffs, sometimes late at night.
+
+Then she was tired and thin and gray, with no time to sew on new dresses
+for herself, and no time to wear them, because she was always taking
+care of the babies; and father was happy and well and handsome. But
+we children never thought much about it until once, after father had
+mortgaged the farm, there was going to be a sociable in Temperance
+village. Mother could not go as Jenny had whooping-cough and Mark had
+just broken his arm, and when she was tying father's necktie, the last
+thing before he started, he said: “I wish, Aurelia, that you cared a
+little about YOUR appearance and YOUR dress; it goes a long way with a
+man like me.”
+
+Mother had finished the tie, and her hands dropped suddenly. I looked at
+her eyes and mouth while she looked at father and in a minute I was ever
+so old, with a grown-up ache in my heart. It has always stayed there,
+although I admired my handsome father and was proud of him because he
+was so talented; but now that I am older and have thought about things,
+my love for mother is different from what it used to be. Father was
+always the favorite when we were little, he was so interesting, and
+I wonder sometimes if we don't remember interesting people longer and
+better than we do those who are just good and patient. If so it seems
+very cruel.
+
+As I look back I see that Miss Ross, the artist who brought me my
+pink parasol from Paris, sowed the first seeds in me of ambition to do
+something special. Her life seemed so beautiful and so easy to a child.
+I had not been to school then, or read George Macdonald, so I did not
+know that “Ease is the lovely result of forgotten toil.”
+
+Miss Ross sat out of doors and painted lovely things, and everybody said
+how wonderful they were, and bought them straight away; and she took
+care of a blind father and two brothers, and traveled wherever she
+wished. It comes back to me now, that summer when I was ten and Miss
+Ross painted me sitting by the mill-wheel while she talked to me of
+foreign countries!
+
+The other day Miss Maxwell read something from Browning's poems to the
+girls of her literature class. It was about David the shepherd boy
+who used to lie in his hollow watching one eagle “wheeling slow as in
+sleep.” He used to wonder about the wide world that the eagle beheld,
+the eagle that was stretching his wings so far up in the blue, while he,
+the poor shepherd boy, could see only the “strip twixt the hill and the
+sky;” for he lay in a hollow.
+
+I told Mr. Baxter about it the next day, which was the Saturday before
+I joined the church. I asked him if it was wicked to long to see as much
+as the eagle saw?
+
+There was never anybody quite like Mr. Baxter. “Rebecca dear,” he said,
+“it may be that you need not always lie in a hollow, as the shepherd boy
+did; but wherever you lie, that little strip you see 'twixt the hill
+and the sky' is able to hold all of earth and all of heaven, if only you
+have the right sort of vision.”
+
+I was a long, long time about “experiencing religion.” I remember Sunday
+afternoons at the brick house the first winter after I went there; when
+I used to sit in the middle of the dining-room as I was bid, silent and
+still, with the big family Bible on my knees. Aunt Miranda had Baxter's
+“Saints' Rest,” but her seat was by the window, and she at least could
+give a glance into the street now and then without being positively
+wicked.
+
+Aunt Jane used to read the “Pilgrim's Progress.” The fire burned low;
+the tall clock ticked, ticked, so slowly and steadily, that the pictures
+swam before my eyes and I almost fell asleep.
+
+They thought by shutting everything else out that I should see God;
+but I didn't, not once. I was so homesick for Sunnybook and John that
+I could hardly learn my weekly hymns, especially the sad, long one
+beginning:
+
+     “My thoughts on awful subjects roll,
+     Damnation and the dead.”
+
+It was brother John for whom I was chiefly homesick on Sunday
+afternoons, because at Sunnybrook Farm father was dead and mother was
+always busy, and Hannah never liked to talk.
+
+Then the next year the missionaries from Syria came to Riverboro; and
+at the meeting Mr. Burch saw me playing the melodeon, and thought I was
+grown up and a church member, and so he asked me to lead in prayer.
+
+I didn't dare to refuse, and when I prayed, which was just like thinking
+out loud, I found I could talk to God a great deal easier than to Aunt
+Miranda or even to Uncle Jerry Cobb. There were things I could say to
+Him that I could never say to anybody else, and saying them always made
+me happy and contented.
+
+When Mr. Baxter asked me last year about joining the church, I told him
+I was afraid I did not understand God quite well enough to be a real
+member.
+
+“So you don't quite understand God, Rebecca?” he asked, smiling.
+“Well, there is something else much more important, which is, that
+He understands you! He understands your feeble love, your longings,
+desires, hopes, faults, ambitions, crosses; and that, after all, is what
+counts! Of course you don't understand Him! You are overshadowed by His
+love, His power, His benignity, His wisdom; that is as it should be!
+Why, Rebecca, dear, if you could stand erect and unabashed in God's
+presence, as one who perfectly comprehended His nature or His purposes,
+it would be sacrilege! Don't be puzzled out of your blessed inheritance
+of faith, my child; accept God easily and naturally, just as He accepts
+you!”
+
+“God never puzzled me, Mr. Baxter; it isn't that,” I said; “but the
+doctrines do worry me dreadfully.”
+
+“Let them alone for the present,” Mr Baxter said. “Anyway, Rebecca, you
+can never prove God; you can only find Him!”
+
+“Then do you think I have really experienced religion, Mr. Baxter?” I
+asked. “Am I the beginnings of a Christian?”
+
+“You are a dear child of the understanding God!” Mr. Baxter said; “and I
+say it over to myself night and morning so that I can never forget it.”
+
+* * * * *
+
+The year is nearly over and the next few months will be lived in the
+rush and whirlwind of work that comes before graduation. The bell for
+philosophy class will ring in ten minutes, and as I have been writing
+for nearly two hours, I must learn my lesson going up the Academy
+hill. It will not be the first time; it is a grand hill for learning! I
+suppose after fifty years or so the very ground has become soaked with
+knowledge, and every particle of air in the vicinity is crammed with
+useful information.
+
+I will put my book into my trunk (having no blessed haymow hereabouts)
+and take it out again,--when shall I take it out again?
+
+After graduation perhaps I shall be too grown up and too busy to write
+in a Thought Book; but oh, if only something would happen worth putting
+down; something strange; something unusual; something different from the
+things that happen every day in Riverboro and Edgewood!
+
+Graduation will surely take me a little out of “the hollow,”--make me
+a little more like the soaring eagle, gazing at the whole wide world
+beneath him while he wheels “slow as in sleep.” But whether or not,
+I'll try not to be a discontented shepherd, but remember what Mr. Baxter
+said, that the little strip that I see “twixt the hill and the sky” is
+able to hold all of earth and all of heaven, if only I have the eyes to
+see it.
+
+Rebecca Rowena Randall.
+
+Wareham Female Seminary, December 187--.
+
+
+
+
+Eleventh Chronicle. ABIJAH THE BRAVE AND THE FAIR EMMAJANE
+
+
+I
+
+     “A warrior so bold and a maiden so bright
+     Conversed as they sat on the green.
+     They gazed at each other in tender delight.
+     Alonzo the brave was the name of the knight,
+     And the maid was the fair Imogene.
+
+     “Alas!' said the youth, 'since tomorrow I go
+     To fight in a far distant land,
+     Your tears for my absence soon ceasing to flow,
+     Some other will court you, and you will bestow
+     On a wealthier suitor your hand.'
+
+     'Oh, hush these suspicions!' Fair Imogene said,
+     “So hurtful to love and to me!
+     For if you be living, or if you be dead,
+     I swear by the Virgin that none in your stead
+     Shall the husband of Imogene be!'
+
+Ever since she was eight years old Rebecca had wished to be eighteen,
+but now that she was within a month of that awe-inspiring and
+long-desired age she wondered if, after all, it was destined to be a
+turning point in her quiet existence. Her eleventh year, for instance,
+had been a real turning-point, since it was then that she had left
+Sunnybrook Farm and come to her maiden aunts in Riverboro. Aurelia
+Randall may have been doubtful as to the effect upon her spinster
+sisters of the irrepressible child, but she was hopeful from the first
+that the larger opportunities of Riverboro would be the “making” of
+Rebecca herself.
+
+The next turning-point was her fourteenth year, when she left the
+district school for the Wareham Female Seminary, then in the hey-day
+of its local fame. Graduation (next to marriage, perhaps, the most
+thrilling episode in the life of a little country girl) happened at
+seventeen, and not long afterward her Aunt Miranda's death, sudden and
+unexpected, changed not only all the outward activities and conditions
+of her life, but played its own part in her development.
+
+The brick house looked very homelike and pleasant on a June morning
+nowadays with children's faces smiling at the windows and youthful
+footsteps sounding through the halls; and the brass knocker on the
+red-painted front door might have remembered Rebecca's prayer of a year
+before, when she leaned against its sun-warmed brightness and whispered:
+“God bless Aunt Miranda; God bless the brick house that was; God bless
+the brick house that's going to be!”
+
+All the doors and blinds were open to the sun and air as they had never
+been in Miss Miranda Sawyer's time. The hollyhock bed that had been her
+chief pride was never neglected, and Rebecca liked to hear the neighbors
+say that there was no such row of beautiful plants and no such variety
+of beautiful colors in Riverboro as those that climbed up and peeped in
+at the kitchen windows where old Miss Miranda used to sit.
+
+Now that the place was her very own Rebecca felt a passion of pride in
+its smoothly mown fields, its carefully thinned-out woods, its blooming
+garden spots, and its well-weeded vegetable patch; felt, too whenever
+she looked at any part of it, a passion of gratitude to the stern old
+aunt who had looked upon her as the future head of the family, as well
+as a passion of desire to be worthy of that trust.
+
+It had been a very difficult year for a girl fresh from school: the
+death of her aunt, the nursing of Miss Jane, prematurely enfeebled by
+the shock, the removal of her own invalid mother and the rest of the
+little family from Sunnybrook Farm. But all had gone smoothly; and when
+once the Randall fortunes had taken an upward turn nothing seemed able
+to stop their intrepid ascent.
+
+Aurelia Randall renewed her youth in the companionship of her sister
+Jane and the comforts by which her children were surrounded; the
+mortgage was no longer a daily terror, for Sunnybrook had been sold to
+the new railroad; Hannah, now Mrs. Will Melville, was happily situated;
+John, at last, was studying medicine; Mark, the boisterous and unlucky
+brother, had broken no bones for several months; while Jenny and Fanny
+were doing well at the district school under Miss Libby Moses, Miss
+Dearborn's successor.
+
+“I don't feel very safe,” thought Rebecca, remembering all these
+unaccustomed mercies as she sat on the front doorsteps, with her tatting
+shuttle flying in and out of the fine cotton like a hummingbird. “It's
+just like one of those too beautiful July days that winds up with a
+thundershower before night! Still, when you remember that the Randalls
+never had anything but thunder and lightning, rain, snow, and hail, in
+their family history for twelve or fifteen years, perhaps it is only
+natural that they should enjoy a little spell of settled weather. If it
+really turns out to BE settled, now that Aunt Jane and mother are strong
+again I must be looking up one of what Mr. Aladdin calls my cast-off
+careers.”--“There comes Emma Jane Perkins through her front gate; she
+will be here in a minute, and I'll tease her!” and Rebecca ran in the
+door and seated herself at the old piano that stood between the open
+windows in the parlor.
+
+Peeping from behind the muslin curtains, she waited until Emma Jane
+was on the very threshold and then began singing her version of an old
+ballad, made that morning while she was dressing. The ballad was a great
+favorite of hers, and she counted on doing telling execution with it in
+the present instance by the simple subterfuge of removing the original
+hero and heroine, Alonzo and Imogene, and substituting Abijah the Brave
+and the Fair Emmajane, leaving the circumstances in the first three
+verses unaltered, because in truth they seemed to require no alteration.
+
+Her high, clear voice, quivering with merriment, floated through the
+windows into the still summer air:
+
+     “'A warrior so bold and a maiden so bright
+     Conversed as they sat on the green.
+     They gazed at each other in tender delight.
+     Abijah the Brave was the name of the knight,
+     And the maid was the Fair Emmajane.'”
+
+“Rebecca Randall, stop! Somebody'll hear you!”
+
+“No, they won't--they're making jelly in the kitchen, miles away.”
+
+     “'Alas!' said the youth, since tomorrow I go
+     To fight in a far distant land,
+     Your tears for my absence soon ceasing to flow,
+     Some other will court you, and you will bestow
+     On a wealthier suitor your hand.'”
+
+“Rebecca, you can't THINK how your voice carries! I believe mother can
+hear it over to my house!”
+
+“Then, if she can, I must sing the third verse, just to clear your
+reputation from the cloud cast upon it in the second,” laughed her
+tormentor, going on with the song:
+
+“'Oh, hush these suspicions!' Fair Emmajane said, 'So hurtful to love
+and to me! For if you be living, or if you be dead, I swear, my Abijah,
+that none in your stead, Shall the husband of Emmajane be!'”
+
+After ending the third verse Rebecca wheeled around on the piano
+stool and confronted her friend, who was carefully closing the parlor
+windows:--
+
+“Emma Jane Perkins, it is an ordinary Thursday afternoon at four o'clock
+and you have on your new blue barege, although there is not even a
+church sociable in prospect this evening. What does this mean? Is Abijah
+the Brave coming at last?”
+
+“I don't know certainly, but it will be some time this week.”
+
+“And of course you'd rather be dressed up and not seen, than seen when
+not dressed up. Right, my Fair Emmajane; so would I. Not that it makes
+any difference to poor me, wearing my fourth best black and white calico
+and expecting nobody.
+
+“Oh, well, YOU! There's something inside of you that does instead of
+pretty dresses,” cried Emma Jane, whose adoration of her friend had
+never altered nor lessened since they met at the age of eleven. “You
+know you are as different from anybody else in Riverboro as a princess
+in a fairy story. Libby Moses says they would notice you in Lowell,
+Massachusetts!”
+
+“Would they? I wonder,” speculated Rebecca, rendered almost speechless
+by this tribute to her charms. “Well, if Lowell, Massachusetts, could
+see me, or if you could see me, in my new lavender muslin with the
+violet sash, it would die of envy, and so would you!”
+
+“If I had been going to be envious of you, Rebecca, I should have died
+years ago. Come, let's go out on the steps where it's shady and cool.”
+
+“And where we can see the Perkins front gate and the road running both
+ways,” teased Rebecca, and then, softening her tone, she said: “How
+is it getting on, Emmy? Tell me what's happened since I've been in
+Brunswick.”
+
+“Nothing much,” confessed Emma Jane. “He writes to me, but I don't write
+to him, you know. I don't dare to, till he comes to the house.”
+
+“Are his letters still in Latin?” asked Rebecca, with a twinkling eye.
+
+“Oh, no! Not now, because--well, because there are things you can't seem
+to write in Latin. I saw him at the Masonic picnic in the grove, but he
+won't say anything REAL to me till he gets more pay and dares to speak
+to mother and father. He IS brave in all other ways, but I ain't sure
+he'll ever have the courage for that, he's so afraid of them and always
+has been. Just remember what's in his mind all the time, Rebecca, that
+my folks know all about what his mother was, and how he was born on the
+poor-farm. Not that I care; look how he's educated and worked himself
+up! I think he's perfectly elegant, and I shouldn't mind if he had been
+born in the bulrushes, like Moses.”
+
+Emma Jane's every-day vocabulary was pretty much what it had been before
+she went to the expensive Wareham Female Seminary. She had acquired
+a certain amount of information concerning the art of speech, but in
+moments of strong feeling she lapsed into the vernacular. She grew
+slowly in all directions, did Emma Jane, and, to use Rebecca's favorite
+nautilus figure, she had left comparatively few outgrown shells on the
+shores of “life's unresting sea.”
+
+“Moses wasn't born in the bulrushes, Emmy dear,” corrected Rebecca
+laughingly. “Pharaoh's daughter found him there. It wasn't quite as
+romantic a scene--Squire Bean's wife taking little Abijah Flagg from the
+poorhouse when his girl-mother died, but, oh, I think Abijah's splendid!
+Mr. Ladd says Riverboro'll be proud of him yet, and I shouldn't wonder,
+Emmy dear, if you had a three-story house with a cupola on it, some day;
+and sitting down at your mahogany desk inlaid with garnets, you will
+write notes stating that Mrs. Abijah Flagg requests the pleasure of Miss
+Rebecca Randall's company to tea, and that the Hon. Abijah Flagg, M.C.,
+will call for her on his way from the station with a span of horses and
+the turquoise carryall!”
+
+Emma Jane laughed at the ridiculous prophecy, and answered: “If I ever
+write the invitation I shan't be addressing it to Miss Randall, I'm sure
+of that; it'll be to Mrs.-----”
+
+“Don't!” cried Rebecca impetuously, changing color and putting her hand
+over Emma Jane's lips. “If you won't I'll stop teasing. I couldn't bear
+a name put to anything, I couldn't, Emmy dear! I wouldn't tease you,
+either, if it weren't something we've both known ever so long--something
+that you have always consulted me about of your own accord, and Abijah
+too.”
+
+“Don't get excited,” replied Emma Jane, “I was only going to say you
+were sure to be Mrs. Somebody in course of time.”
+
+“Oh,” said Rebecca with a relieved sigh, her color coming back; “if
+that's all you meant, just nonsense; but I thought, I thought--I don't
+really know just what I thought!”
+
+“I think you thought something you didn't want me to think you thought,”
+ said Emma Jane with unusual felicity.
+
+“No, it's not that; but somehow, today, I have been remembering things.
+Perhaps it was because at breakfast Aunt Jane and mother reminded me of
+my coming birthday and said that Squire Bean would give me the deed of
+the brick house. That made me feel very old and responsible; and when I
+came out on the steps this afternoon it was just as if pictures of the
+old years were moving up and down the road. Everything is so beautiful
+today! Doesn't the sky look as if it had been dyed blue and the fields
+painted pink and green and yellow this very minute?”
+
+“It's a perfectly elegant day!” responded Emma Jane with a sigh. “If
+only my mind was at rest! That's the difference between being young and
+grown-up. We never used to think and worry.”
+
+“Indeed we didn't! Look, Emmy, there's the very spot where Uncle Jerry
+Cobb stopped the stage and I stepped out with my pink parasol and my
+bouquet of purple lilacs, and you were watching me from your bedroom
+window and wondering what I had in mother's little hair trunk strapped
+on behind. Poor Aunt Miranda didn't love me at first sight, and oh, how
+cross she was the first two years! But now every hard thought I ever had
+comes back to me and cuts like a knife!”
+
+“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 excitement.
+
+“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 crochet needle
+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 love letter 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
+feeling for Abijah! Upon my word, Emma Jane,” she cried with a sudden
+change of tone, “if I had suspected for an instant that Abijah the Brave
+had that Latin letter in him I should have tried to get him to write it
+to me; and then it would be I who would sit down at my mahogany desk and
+ask Miss Perkins to come to tea with Mrs. Flagg.”
+
+Emma Jane paled and shuddered openly. “I speak as a church member,
+Rebecca,” she said, “when I tell you I've always thanked the Lord that
+you never looked at Abijah Flagg and he never looked at you. If either
+of you ever had, there never would have been a chance for me, and I've
+always known it!”
+
+II
+
+The romance alluded to in the foregoing chapter had been going on, so
+far as Abijah Flagg's part of it was concerned, for many years, his
+affection dating back in his own mind to the first moment that he saw
+Emma Jane Perkins at the age of nine.
+
+Emma Jane had shown no sign of reciprocating his attachment until the
+last three years, when the evolution of the chore-boy into the
+budding scholar and man of affairs had inflamed even her somewhat dull
+imagination.
+
+Squire Bean's wife had taken Abijah away from the poorhouse, thinking
+that she could make him of some little use in her home. Abbie Flagg, the
+mother, was neither wise nor beautiful; it is to be feared that she
+was not even good, and her lack of all these desirable qualities,
+particularly the last one, had been impressed upon the child ever since
+he could remember. People seemed to blame him for being in the world at
+all; this world that had not expected him nor desired him, nor made any
+provision for him. The great battle-axe of poorhouse opinion was forever
+leveled at the mere little atom of innocent transgression, until he grew
+sad and shy, clumsy, stiff, and self-conscious. He had an indomitable
+craving for love in his heart and had never received a caress in his
+life.
+
+He was more contented when he came to Squire Bean's house. The first
+year he could only pick up chips, carry pine wood into the kitchen, go
+to the post-office, run errands, drive the cows, and feed the hens, but
+every day he grew more and more useful.
+
+His only friend was little Jim Watson, the storekeeper's son, and they
+were inseparable companions whenever Abijah had time for play.
+
+One never-to-be-forgotten July day a new family moved into the white
+cottage between Squire Bean's house and the Sawyers'. Mr. Perkins had
+sold his farm beyond North Riverboro and had established a blacksmith's
+shop in the village, at the Edgewood end of the bridge. This fact was of
+no special interest to the nine-year-old Abijah, but what really was of
+importance, was the appearance of a pretty little girl of seven in the
+front yard; a pretty little fat doll of a girl, with bright fuzzy hair,
+pink cheeks, blue eyes, and a smile of almost bewildering continuity.
+Another might have criticised it as having the air of being glued on,
+but Abijah was already in the toils and never wished it to move.
+
+The next day being the glorious Fourth and a holiday, Jimmy Watson came
+over like David, to visit his favorite Jonathan. His Jonathan met him
+at the top of the hill, pleaded a pressing engagement, curtly sent him
+home, and then went back to play with his new idol, with whom he
+had already scraped acquaintance, her parents being exceedingly busy
+settling the new house.
+
+After the noon dinner Jimmy again yearned to resume friendly relations,
+and, forgetting his rebuff, again toiled up the hill and appeared
+unexpectedly at no great distance from the Perkins premises, wearing the
+broad and beaming smile of one who is confident of welcome.
+
+His morning call had been officious and unpleasant and unsolicited, but
+his afternoon visit could only be regarded as impudent, audacious,
+and positively dangerous; for Abijah and Emma Jane were cosily playing
+house, the game of all others in which it is particularly desirable to
+have two and not three participants.
+
+At that moment the nature of Abijah changed, at once and forever.
+Without a pang of conscience he flew over the intervening patch of
+ground between himself and his dreaded rival, and seizing small stones
+and larger ones, as haste and fury demanded, flung them at Jimmy Watson,
+and flung and flung, till the bewildered boy ran down the hill howling.
+Then he made a “stickin'” door to the play-house, put the awed Emma Jane
+inside and strode up and down in front of the edifice like an Indian
+brave. At such an early age does woman become a distracting and
+disturbing influence in man's career!
+
+Time went on, and so did the rivalry between the poorhouse boy and the
+son of wealth, but Abijah's chances of friendship with Emma Jane grew
+fewer and fewer as they both grew older. He did not go to school, so
+there was no meeting-ground there, but sometimes, when he saw the knot
+of boys and girls returning in the afternoon, he would invite Elijah and
+Elisha, the Simpson twins, to visit him, and take pains to be in Squire
+Bean's front yard, doing something that might impress his inamorata as
+she passed the premises.
+
+As Jimmy Watson was particularly small and fragile, Abijah generally
+chose feats of strength and skill for these prearranged performances.
+
+Sometimes he would throw his hat up into the elm trees as far as he
+could and, when it came down, catch it on his head. Sometimes he would
+walk on his hands, with his legs wriggling in the air, or turn a double
+somersault, or jump incredible distances across the extended arms of
+the Simpson twins; and his bosom swelled with pride when the girls
+exclaimed, “Isn't he splendid!” although he often heard his rival murmur
+scornfully, “SMARTY ALECK!”--a scathing allusion of unknown origin.
+
+Squire Bean, although he did not send the boy to school (thinking, as
+he was of no possible importance in the universe, it was not worth
+while bothering about his education), finally became impressed with his
+ability, lent him books, and gave him more time to study. These were all
+he needed, books and time, and when there was an especially hard knot to
+untie, Rebecca, as the star scholar of the neighborhood, helped him to
+untie it.
+
+When he was sixteen he longed to go away from Riverboro and be something
+better than a chore boy. Squire Bean had been giving him small wages
+for three or four years, and when the time of parting came presented him
+with a ten-dollar bill and a silver watch.
+
+Many a time had he discussed his future with Rebecca and asked her
+opinion.
+
+This was not strange, for there was nothing in human form that she could
+not and did not converse with, easily and delightedly. She had ideas
+on every conceivable subject, and would have cheerfully advised the
+minister if he had asked her. The fishman consulted her when he couldn't
+endure his mother-in-law another minute in the house; Uncle Jerry
+Cobb didn't part with his river field until he had talked it over with
+Rebecca; and as for Aunt Jane, she couldn't decide whether to wear her
+black merino or her gray thibet unless Rebecca cast the final vote.
+
+Abijah wanted to go far away from Riverboro, as far as Limerick Academy,
+which was at least fifteen miles; but although this seemed extreme,
+Rebecca agreed, saying pensively: “There IS a kind of magicness about
+going far away and then coming back all changed.”
+
+This was precisely Abijah's unspoken thought. Limerick knew nothing of
+Abbie Flagg's worthlessness, birth, and training, and the awful stigma
+of his poorhouse birth, so that he would start fair. He could have gone
+to Wareham and thus remained within daily sight of the beloved Emma
+Jane; but no, he was not going to permit her to watch him in the process
+of “becoming,” but after he had “become” something. He did not propose
+to take any risks after all these years of silence and patience. Not he!
+He proposed to disappear, like the moon on a dark night, and as he was,
+at present, something that Mr. Perkins would by no means have in the
+family nor Mrs. Perkins allow in the house, he would neither return to
+Riverboro nor ask any favors of them until he had something to offer.
+Yes, sir. He was going to be crammed to the eyebrows with learning for
+one thing,--useless kinds and all,--going to have good clothes, and a
+good income. Everything that was in his power should be right, because
+there would always be lurking in the background the things he never
+could help--the mother and the poorhouse.
+
+So he went away, and, although at Squire Bean's invitation he came back
+the first year for two brief visits at Christmas and Easter, he was
+little seen in Riverboro, for Mr. Ladd finally found him a place where
+he could make his vacations profitable and learn bookkeeping at the same
+time.
+
+The visits in Riverboro were tantalizing rather than pleasant. He
+was invited to two parties, but he was all the time conscious of his
+shirt-collar, and he was sure that his “pants” were not the proper
+thing, for by this time his ideals of dress had attained an almost
+unrealizable height. As for his shoes, he felt that he walked on carpets
+as if they were furrows and he were propelling a plow or a harrow before
+him. They played Drop the Handkerchief and Copenhagen at the parties,
+but he had not had the audacity to kiss Emma Jane, which was bad enough,
+but Jimmy had and did, which was infinitely worse! The sight of James
+Watson's unworthy and over-ambitious lips on Emma Jane's pink cheek
+almost destroyed his faith in an overruling Providence.
+
+After the parties were over he went back to his old room in Squire
+Bean's shed chamber. As he lay in bed his thoughts fluttered about
+Emma Jane as swallows circle around the eaves. The terrible sickness of
+hopeless handicapped love kept him awake. Once he crawled out of bed in
+the night, lighted the lamp, and looked for his mustache, remembering
+that he had seen a suspicion of down on his rival's upper lip. He rose
+again half an hour later, again lighted the lamp, put a few drops of oil
+on his hair, and brushed it violently for several minutes. Then he went
+back to bed, and after making up his mind that he would buy a dulcimer
+and learn to play on it so that he would be more attractive at parties,
+and outshine his rival in society as he had aforetime in athletics, he
+finally sank into a troubled slumber.
+
+Those days, so full of hope and doubt and torture, seemed mercifully
+unreal now, they lay so far back in the past--six or eight years, in
+fact, which is a lifetime to the lad of twenty--and meantime he had
+conquered many of the adverse circumstances that had threatened to cloud
+his career.
+
+Abijah Flagg was a true child of his native State. Something of the same
+timber that Maine puts into her forests, something of the same strength
+and resisting power that she works into her rocks, goes into her sons
+and daughters; and at twenty Abijah was going to take his fate in his
+hand and ask Mr. Perkins, the rich blacksmith, if, after a suitable
+period of probation (during which he would further prepare himself for
+his exalted destiny), he might marry the fair Emma Jane, sole heiress of
+the Perkins house and fortunes.
+
+III
+
+This was boy and girl love, calf love, perhaps, though even that may
+develop into something larger, truer, and finer; but not so far away
+were other and very different hearts growing and budding, each in its
+own way. There was little Miss Dearborn, the pretty school teacher,
+drifting into a foolish alliance because she did not agree with her
+stepmother at home; there was Herbert Dunn, valedictorian of his class,
+dazzled by Huldah Meserve, who like a glowworm “shone afar off bright,
+but looked at near, had neither heat nor light.”
+
+There was sweet Emily Maxwell, less than thirty still, with most of her
+heart bestowed in the wrong quarter. She was toiling on at the Wareham
+school, living as unselfish a life as a nun in a convent; lavishing the
+mind and soul of her, the heart and body of her, on her chosen work.
+How many women give themselves thus, consciously and unconsciously;
+and, though they themselves miss the joys and compensations of mothering
+their own little twos and threes, God must be grateful to them for
+their mothering of the hundreds which make them so precious in His
+regenerating purposes.
+
+Then there was Adam Ladd, waiting at thirty-five for a girl to grow a
+little older, simply because he could not find one already grown who
+suited his somewhat fastidious and exacting tastes.
+
+“I'll not call Rebecca perfection,” he quoted once, in a letter to Emily
+Maxwell,--“I'll not call her perfection, for that's a post, afraid to
+move. But she's a dancing sprig of the tree next it.”
+
+When first she appeared on his aunt's piazza in North Riverboro and
+insisted on selling him a large quantity of very inferior soap in order
+that her friends, the Simpsons, might possess a premium in the shape of
+a greatly needed banquet lamp, she had riveted his attention. He thought
+all the time that he enjoyed talking with her more than with any woman
+alive, and he had never changed his opinion. She always caught what
+he said as if it were a ball tossed to her, and sometimes her mind, as
+through it his thoughts came back to him, seemed like a prism which had
+dyed them with deeper colors.
+
+Adam Ladd always called Rebecca in his heart his little Spring. His
+boyhood had been lonely and unhappy. That was the part of life he had
+missed, and although it was the full summer of success and prosperity
+with him now, he found his lost youth only in her.
+
+She was to him--how shall I describe it?
+
+Do you remember an early day in May with budding leaf, warm earth,
+tremulous air, and changing, willful sky--how new it seemed? How fresh
+and joyous beyond all explaining?
+
+Have you lain with half-closed eyes where the flickering of sunlight
+through young leaves, the song of birds and brook and the fragrance of
+wild flowers combined to charm your senses, and you felt the sweetness
+and grace of nature as never before?
+
+Rebecca was springtide to Adam's thirsty heart. She was blithe youth
+incarnate; she was music--an Aeolian harp that every passing breeze
+woke to some whispering little tune; she was a changing, iridescent
+joy-bubble; she was the shadow of a leaf dancing across a dusty floor.
+No bough of his thought could be so bare but she somehow built a nest in
+it and evoked life where none was before.
+
+And Rebecca herself?
+
+She had been quite unconscious of all this until very lately, and even
+now she was but half awakened; searching among her childish instincts
+and her girlish dreams for some Ariadne thread that should guide her
+safely through the labyrinth of her new sensations.
+
+For the moment she was absorbed, or thought she was, in the little love
+story of Abijah and Emma Jane, but in reality, had she realized it, that
+love story served chiefly as a basis of comparison for a possible one of
+her own, later on.
+
+She liked and respected Abijah Flagg, and loving Emma Jane was a habit
+contracted early in life; but everything that they did or said, or
+thought or wrote, or hoped or feared, seemed so inadequate, so painfully
+short of what might be done or said, or thought or written, or hoped or
+feared, under easily conceivable circumstances, that she almost felt a
+disposition to smile gently at the fancy of the ignorant young couple
+that they had caught a glimpse of the great vision.
+
+She was sitting under the sweet apple tree at twilight. Supper was over;
+Mark's restless feet were quiet, Fanny and Jenny were tucked safely in
+bed; her aunt and her mother were stemming currants on the side porch.
+
+A blue spot at one of the Perkins windows showed that in one vestal
+bosom hope was not dead yet, although it was seven o'clock.
+
+Suddenly there was the sound of a horse's feet coming up the quiet road;
+plainly a steed hired from some metropolis like Milltown or Wareham,
+as Riverboro horses when through with their day's work never disported
+themselves so gayly.
+
+A little open vehicle came in sight, and in it sat Abijah Flagg. The
+wagon was so freshly painted and so shiny that Rebecca thought that he
+must have alighted at the bridge and given it a last polish. The creases
+in his trousers, too, had an air of having been pressed in only a few
+minutes before. The whip was new and had a yellow ribbon on it; the
+gray suit of clothes was new, and the coat flourished a flower in its
+button-hole. The hat was the latest thing in hats, and the intrepid
+swain wore a seal-ring on the little finger of his right hand. As
+Rebecca remembered that she had guided it in making capital G's in his
+copy-book, she felt positively maternal, although she was two years
+younger than Abijah the Brave.
+
+He drove up to the Perkins gate and was so long about hitching the horse
+that Rebecca's heart beat tumultuously at the thought of Emma Jane's
+heart waiting under the blue barege. Then he brushed an imaginary speck
+off his sleeve, then he drew on a pair of buff kid gloves, then he went
+up the path, rapped at the knocker, and went in.
+
+“Not all the heroes go to the wars,” thought Rebecca. “Abijah has laid
+the ghost of his father and redeemed the memory of his mother, for no
+one will dare say again that Abbie Flagg's son could never amount to
+anything!”
+
+The minutes went by, and more minutes, and more. The tranquil dusk
+settled down over the little village street and the young moon came out
+just behind the top of the Perkins pine tree.
+
+The Perkins front door opened and Abijah the Brave came out hand in hand
+with his Fair Emma Jane.
+
+They walked through the orchard, the eyes of the old couple following
+them from the window, and just as they disappeared down the green slope
+that led to the riverside the gray coat sleeve encircled the blue barege
+waist.
+
+Rebecca, quivering with instant sympathy and comprehension, hid her face
+in her hands.
+
+“Emmy has sailed away and I am all alone in the little harbor,” she
+thought.
+
+It was as if childhood, like a thing real and visible, were slipping
+down the grassy river banks, after Abijah and Emma Jane, and
+disappearing like them into the moon-lit shadows of the summer night.
+
+“I am all alone in the little harbor,” she repeated; “and oh, I wonder,
+I wonder, shall I be afraid to leave it, if anybody ever comes to carry
+me out to sea!”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's New Chronicles of Rebecca, by Kate Douglas Wiggin
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1375 ***
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+  <head>
+    <title>
+      New Chronicles of Rebecca, by Kate Douglas Wiggin
+    </title>
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+
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+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
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+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
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+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
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+  </head>
+  <body>
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1375 ***</div>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      NEW CHRONICLES OF REBECCA
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Kate Douglas Wiggin
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      Contents
+    </h2>
+    <table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto">
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> First Chronicle. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          JACK O'LANTERN
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> Second Chronicle. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          DAUGHTERS OF ZION
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> Third Chronicle. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          REBECCA'S THOUGHT BOOK
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> Fourth Chronicle. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          A TRAGEDY IN MILLINERY
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> Fifth Chronicle. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          THE SAVING OF THE COLORS
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> Sixth Chronicle. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          THE STATE O' MAINE GIRL
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> Seventh Chronicle. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          THE LITTLE PROPHET
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> Eighth Chronicle. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          ABNER SIMPSON'S NEW LEAF
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> Ninth Chronicle. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          THE GREEN ISLE
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> Tenth Chronicle. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          REBECCA'S REMINISCENCES
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> Eleventh Chronicle. &nbsp;&nbsp;</a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          ABIJAH THE BRAVE AND THE FAIR EMMAJANE
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+    </table>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      First Chronicle. JACK O'LANTERN
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Miranda Sawyer's old-fashioned garden was the pleasantest spot in
+      Riverboro on a sunny July morning. The rich color of the brick house
+      gleamed and glowed through the shade of the elms and maples. Luxuriant
+      hop-vines clambered up the lightning rods and water spouts, hanging their
+      delicate clusters here and there in graceful profusion. Woodbine
+      transformed the old shed and tool house to things of beauty, and the
+      flower beds themselves were the prettiest and most fragrant in all the
+      countryside. A row of dahlias ran directly around the garden spot,&mdash;dahlias
+      scarlet, gold, and variegated. In the very centre was a round plot where
+      the upturned faces of a thousand pansies smiled amid their leaves, and in
+      the four corners were triangular blocks of sweet phlox over which the
+      butterflies fluttered unceasingly. In the spaces between ran a riot of
+      portulaca and nasturtiums, while in the more regular, shell-bordered beds
+      grew spirea and gillyflowers, mignonette, marigolds, and clove pinks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Back of the barn and encroaching on the edge of the hay field was a grove
+      of sweet clover whose white feathery tips fairly bent under the assaults
+      of the bees, while banks of aromatic mint and thyme drank in the sunshine
+      and sent it out again into the summer air, warm, and deliciously odorous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hollyhocks were Miss Sawyer's pride, and they grew in a stately line
+      beneath the four kitchen windows, their tapering tips set thickly with gay
+      satin circlets of pink or lavender or crimson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They grow something like steeples,&rdquo; thought little Rebecca Randall, who
+      was weeding the bed, &ldquo;and the flat, round flowers are like rosettes; but
+      steeples wouldn't be studded with rosettes, so if you were writing about
+      them in a composition you'd have to give up one or the other, and I think
+      I'll give up the steeples:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Gay little hollyhock
+     Lifting your head,
+     Sweetly rosetted
+     Out from your bed.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      It's a pity the hollyhock isn't really little, instead of steepling up to
+      the window top, but I can't say, 'Gay TALL hollyhock.'... I might have it
+      'Lines to a Hollyhock in May,' for then it would be small; but oh, no! I
+      forgot; in May it wouldn't be blooming, and it's so pretty to say that its
+      head is 'sweetly rosetted'... I wish the teacher wasn't away; she would
+      like 'sweetly rosetted,' and she would like to hear me recite 'Roll on,
+      thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!' that I learned out of Aunt Jane's
+      Byron; the rolls come booming out of it just like the waves at the
+      beach.... I could make nice compositions now, everything is blooming so,
+      and it's so warm and sunny and happy outdoors. Miss Dearborn told me to
+      write something in my thought book every single day, and I'll begin this
+      very night when I go to bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca Rowena Randall, the little niece of the brick-house ladies, and at
+      present sojourning there for purposes of board, lodging, education, and
+      incidentally such discipline and chastening as might ultimately produce
+      moral excellence,&mdash;Rebecca Randall had a passion for the rhyme and
+      rhythm of poetry. From her earliest childhood words had always been to her
+      what dolls and toys are to other children, and now at twelve she amused
+      herself with phrases and sentences and images as her schoolmates played
+      with the pieces of their dissected puzzles. If the heroine of a story took
+      a &ldquo;cursory glance&rdquo; about her &ldquo;apartment,&rdquo; Rebecca would shortly ask her
+      Aunt Jane to take a &ldquo;cursory glance&rdquo; at her oversewing or hemming; if the
+      villain &ldquo;aided and abetted&rdquo; someone in committing a crime, she would
+      before long request the pleasure of &ldquo;aiding and abetting&rdquo; in dishwashing
+      or bedmaking. Sometimes she used the borrowed phrases unconsciously;
+      sometimes she brought them into the conversation with an intense sense of
+      pleasure in their harmony or appropriateness; for a beautiful word or
+      sentence had the same effect upon her imagination as a fragrant nosegay, a
+      strain of music, or a brilliant sunset.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How are you gettin' on, Rebecca Rowena?&rdquo; called a peremptory voice from
+      within.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pretty good, Aunt Miranda; only I wish flowers would ever come up as
+      thick as this pigweed and plantain and sorrel. What MAKES weeds be thick
+      and flowers be thin?&mdash;I just happened to be stopping to think a
+      minute when you looked out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think considerable more than you weed, I guess, by appearances. How
+      many times have you peeked into that humming bird's nest? Why don't you
+      work all to once and play all to once, like other folks?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know,&rdquo; the child answered, confounded by the question, and still
+      more by the apparent logic back of it. &ldquo;I don't know, Aunt Miranda, but
+      when I'm working outdoors such a Saturday morning as this, the whole
+      creation just screams to me to stop it and come and play.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you needn't go if it does!&rdquo; responded her aunt sharply. &ldquo;It don't
+      scream to me when I'm rollin' out these doughnuts, and it wouldn't to you
+      if your mind was on your duty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+Rebecca's little brown hands flew in and out among the weeds as she
+thought rebelliously: &ldquo;Creation WOULDN'T scream to Aunt Miranda; it
+would know she wouldn't come.&rdquo;
+
+     Scream on, thou bright and gay creation, scream!
+     'Tis not Miranda that will hear thy cry!
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+Oh, such funny, nice things come into my head out here by myself, I do
+wish I could run up and put them down in my thought book before I forget
+them, but Aunt Miranda wouldn't like me to leave off weeding:&mdash;
+
+     Rebecca was weeding the hollyhock bed
+     When wonderful thoughts came into her head.
+     Her aunt was occupied with the rolling pin
+     And the thoughts of her mind were common and thin.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      That wouldn't do because it's mean to Aunt Miranda, and anyway it isn't
+      good. I MUST crawl under the syringa shade a minute, it's so hot, and
+      anybody has to stop working once in a while, just to get their breath,
+      even if they weren't making poetry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca was weeding the hollyhock bed When marvelous thoughts came into
+      her head. Miranda was wielding the rolling pin And thoughts at such times
+      seemed to her as a sin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How pretty the hollyhock rosettes look from down here on the sweet, smelly
+      ground!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me see what would go with rosetting. AIDING AND ABETTING, PETTING,
+      HEN-SETTING, FRETTING,&mdash;there's nothing very nice, but I can make
+      fretting' do.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Cheered by Rowena's petting,
+     The flowers are rosetting,
+     But Aunt Miranda's fretting
+     Doth somewhat cloud the day.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly the sound of wagon wheels broke the silence and then a voice
+      called out&mdash;a voice that could not wait until the feet that belonged
+      to it reached the spot: &ldquo;Miss Saw-YER! Father's got to drive over to North
+      Riverboro on an errand, and please can Rebecca go, too, as it's Saturday
+      morning and vacation besides?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca sprang out from under the syringa bush, eyes flashing with delight
+      as only Rebecca's eyes COULD flash, her face one luminous circle of joyous
+      anticipation. She clapped her grubby hands, and dancing up and down,
+      cried: &ldquo;May I, Aunt Miranda&mdash;can I, Aunt Jane&mdash;can I, Aunt
+      Miranda-Jane? I'm more than half through the bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you finish your weeding tonight before sundown I s'pose you can go, so
+      long as Mr. Perkins has been good enough to ask you,&rdquo; responded Miss
+      Sawyer reluctantly. &ldquo;Take off that gingham apron and wash your hands clean
+      at the pump. You ain't be'n out o' bed but two hours an' your head looks
+      as rough as if you'd slep' in it. That comes from layin' on the ground
+      same as a caterpillar. Smooth your hair down with your hands an' p'r'aps
+      Emma Jane can braid it as you go along the road. Run up and get your
+      second-best hair ribbon out o' your upper drawer and put on your shade
+      hat. No, you can't wear your coral chain&mdash;jewelry ain't appropriate
+      in the morning. How long do you cal'late to be gone, Emma Jane?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know. Father's just been sent for to see about a sick woman over
+      to North Riverboro. She's got to go to the poor farm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This fragment of news speedily brought Miss Sawyer, and her sister Jane as
+      well, to the door, which commanded a view of Mr. Perkins and his wagon.
+      Mr. Perkins, the father of Rebecca's bosom friend, was primarily a
+      blacksmith, and secondarily a selectman and an overseer of the poor, a man
+      therefore possessed of wide and varied information.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is it that's sick?&rdquo; inquired Miranda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A woman over to North Riverboro.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the trouble?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stranger?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and no; she's that wild daughter of old Nate Perry that used to live
+      up towards Moderation. You remember she ran away to work in the factory at
+      Milltown and married a do&mdash;nothin' fellow by the name o' John
+      Winslow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; well, where is he? Why don't he take care of her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They ain't worked well in double harness. They've been rovin' round the
+      country, livin' a month here and a month there wherever they could get
+      work and house-room. They quarreled a couple o' weeks ago and he left her.
+      She and the little boy kind o' camped out in an old loggin' cabin back in
+      the woods and she took in washin' for a spell; then she got terrible sick
+      and ain't expected to live.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who's been nursing her?&rdquo; inquired Miss Jane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lizy Ann Dennett, that lives nearest neighbor to the cabin; but I guess
+      she's tired out bein' good Samaritan. Anyways, she sent word this mornin'
+      that nobody can't seem to find John Winslow; that there ain't no
+      relations, and the town's got to be responsible, so I'm goin' over to see
+      how the land lays. Climb in, Rebecca. You an' Emmy Jane crowd back on the
+      cushion an' I'll set forrard. That's the trick! Now we're off!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear, dear!&rdquo; sighed Jane Sawyer as the sisters walked back into the brick
+      house. &ldquo;I remember once seeing Sally Perry at meeting. She was a handsome
+      girl, and I'm sorry she's come to grief.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If she'd kep' on goin' to meetin' an' hadn't looked at the men folks she
+      might a' be'n earnin' an honest livin' this minute,&rdquo; said Miranda. &ldquo;Men
+      folks are at the bottom of everything wrong in this world,&rdquo; she continued,
+      unconsciously reversing the verdict of history.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then we ought to be a happy and contented community here in Riverboro,&rdquo;
+       replied Jane, &ldquo;as there's six women to one man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If 't was sixteen to one we'd be all the safer,&rdquo; responded Miranda
+      grimly, putting the doughnuts in a brown crock in the cellar-way and
+      slamming the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      II
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Perkins horse and wagon rumbled along over the dusty country road, and
+      after a discreet silence, maintained as long as human flesh could endure,
+      Rebecca remarked sedately:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a sad errand for such a shiny morning, isn't it, Mr. Perkins?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Plenty o' trouble in the world, Rebecky, shiny mornin's an' all,&rdquo; that
+      good man replied. &ldquo;If you want a bed to lay on, a roof over your head, an'
+      food to eat, you've got to work for em. If I hadn't a' labored early an'
+      late, learned my trade, an' denied myself when I was young, I might a'
+      be'n a pauper layin' sick in a loggin' cabin, stead o' bein' an overseer
+      o' the poor an' selectman drivin' along to take the pauper to the poor
+      farm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;People that are mortgaged don't have to go to the poor farm, do they, Mr.
+      Perkins?&rdquo; asked Rebecca, with a shiver of fear as she remembered her home
+      farm at Sunnybrook and the debt upon it; a debt which had lain like a
+      shadow over her childhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bless your soul, no; not unless they fail to pay up; but Sal Perry an'
+      her husband hadn't got fur enough along in life to BE mortgaged. You have
+      to own something before you can mortgage it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca's heart bounded as she learned that a mortgage represented a
+      certain stage in worldly prosperity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she said, sniffing in the fragrance of the new-mown hay and
+      growing hopeful as she did so; &ldquo;maybe the sick woman will be better such a
+      beautiful day, and maybe the husband will come back to make it up and say
+      he's sorry, and sweet content will reign in the humble habitation that was
+      once the scene of poverty, grief, and despair. That's how it came out in a
+      story I'm reading.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hain't noticed that life comes out like stories very much,&rdquo; responded
+      the pessimistic blacksmith, who, as Rebecca privately thought, had read
+      less than half a dozen books in his long and prosperous career.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A drive of three or four miles brought the party to a patch of woodland
+      where many of the tall pines had been hewn the previous winter. The roof
+      of a ramshackle hut was outlined against a background of young birches,
+      and a rough path made in hauling the logs to the main road led directly to
+      its door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they drew near the figure of a woman approached&mdash;Mrs. Lizy Ann
+      Dennett, in a gingham dress, with a calico apron over her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good morning, Mr. Perkins,&rdquo; said the woman, who looked tired and
+      irritable. &ldquo;I'm real glad you come right over, for she took worse after I
+      sent you word, and she's dead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dead! The word struck heavily and mysteriously on the children's ears.
+      Dead! And their young lives, just begun, stretched on and on, all decked,
+      like hope, in living green. Dead! And all the rest of the world reveling
+      in strength. Dead! With all the daisies and buttercups waving in the
+      fields and the men heaping the mown grass into fragrant cocks or tossing
+      it into heavily laden carts. Dead! With the brooks tinkling after the
+      summer showers, with the potatoes and corn blossoming, the birds singing
+      for joy, and every little insect humming and chirping, adding its note to
+      the blithe chorus of warm, throbbing life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was all alone with her. She passed away suddenly jest about break o'
+      day,&rdquo; said Lizy Ann Dennett.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her soul passed upward to its God Just at the break of day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      These words came suddenly into Rebecca's mind from a tiny chamber where
+      such things were wont to lie quietly until something brought them to the
+      surface. She could not remember whether she had heard them at a funeral or
+      read them in the hymn book or made them up &ldquo;out of her own head,&rdquo; but she
+      was so thrilled with the idea of dying just as the dawn was breaking that
+      she scarcely heard Mrs. Dennett's conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I sent for Aunt Beulah Day, an' she's be'n here an' laid her out,&rdquo;
+       continued the long suffering Lizy Ann. &ldquo;She ain't got any folks, an' John
+      Winslow ain't never had any as far back as I can remember. She belongs to
+      your town and you'll have to bury her and take care of Jacky&mdash;that's
+      the boy. He's seventeen months old, a bright little feller, the image o'
+      John, but I can't keep him another day. I'm all wore out; my own baby's
+      sick, mother's rheumatiz is extry bad, and my husband's comin' home
+      tonight from his week's work. If he finds a child o' John Winslow's under
+      his roof I can't say what would happen; you'll have to take him back with
+      you to the poor farm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't take him up there this afternoon,&rdquo; objected Mr. Perkins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, keep him over Sunday yourself; he's good as a kitten. John
+      Winslow'll hear o' Sal's death sooner or later, unless he's gone out of
+      the state altogether, an' when he knows the boy's at the poor farm, I kind
+      o' think he'll come and claim him. Could you drive me over to the village
+      to see about the coffin, and would you children be afraid to stay here
+      alone for a spell?&rdquo; she asked, turning to the girls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Afraid?&rdquo; they both echoed uncomprehendingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lizy Ann and Mr. Perkins, perceiving that the fear of a dead presence had
+      not entered the minds of Rebecca or Emma Jane, said nothing, but drove off
+      together, counseling them not to stray far away from the cabin and
+      promising to be back in an hour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was not a house within sight, either looking up or down the shady
+      road, and the two girls stood hand in hand, watching the wagon out of
+      sight; then they sat down quietly under a tree, feeling all at once a
+      nameless depression hanging over their gay summer-morning spirits.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was very still in the woods; just the chirp of a grasshopper now and
+      then, or the note of a bird, or the click of a far-distant mowing machine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We're WATCHING!&rdquo; whispered Emma Jane. &ldquo;They watched with Gran'pa Perkins,
+      and there was a great funeral and two ministers. He left two thousand
+      dollars in the bank and a store full of goods, and a paper thing you could
+      cut tickets off of twice a year, and they were just like money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They watched with my little sister Mira, too,&rdquo; said Rebecca. &ldquo;You
+      remember when she died, and I went home to Sunnybrook Farm? It was winter
+      time, but she was covered with evergreen and white pinks, and there was
+      singing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There won't be any funeral or ministers or singing here, will there?
+      Isn't that awful?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I s'pose not; and oh, Emma Jane, no flowers either. We might get those
+      for her if there's nobody else to do it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you dare put them on to her?&rdquo; asked Emma Jane, in a hushed voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know; I can't tell; it makes me shiver, but, of course, we COULD
+      do it if we were the only friends she had. Let's look into the cabin first
+      and be perfectly sure that there aren't any. Are you afraid?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;N-no; I guess not. I looked at Gran'pa Perkins, and he was just the same
+      as ever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the door of the hut Emma Jane's courage suddenly departed. She held
+      back shuddering and refused either to enter or look in. Rebecca shuddered
+      too, but kept on, drawn by an insatiable curiosity about life and death,
+      an overmastering desire to know and feel and understand the mysteries of
+      existence, a hunger for knowledge and experience at all hazards and at any
+      cost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane hurried softly away from the felt terrors of the cabin, and
+      after two or three minutes of utter silence Rebecca issued from the open
+      door, her sensitive face pale and woe-begone, the ever-ready tears raining
+      down her cheeks. She ran toward the edge of the wood, sinking down by Emma
+      Jane's side, and covering her eyes, sobbed with excitement:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Emma Jane, she hasn't got a flower, and she's so tired and
+      sad-looking, as if she'd been hurt and hurt and never had any good times,
+      and there's a weeny, weeny baby side of her. Oh, I wish I hadn't gone in!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane blenched for an instant. &ldquo;Mrs. Dennett never said THERE WAS TWO
+      DEAD ONES! ISN'T THAT DREADFUL? But,&rdquo; she continued, her practical common
+      sense coming to the rescue, &ldquo;you've been in once and it's all over; it
+      won't be so bad when you take in the flowers because you'll be used to it.
+      The goldenrod hasn't begun to bud, so there's nothing to pick but daisies.
+      Shall I make a long rope of them, as I did for the schoolroom?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Rebecca, wiping her eyes and still sobbing. &ldquo;Yes, that's the
+      prettiest, and if we put it all round her like a frame, the undertaker
+      couldn't be so cruel as to throw it away, even if she is a pauper, because
+      it will look so beautiful. From what the Sunday school lessons say, she's
+      only asleep now, and when she wakes up she'll be in heaven.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;THERE'S ANOTHER PLACE,&rdquo; said Emma Jane, in an orthodox and sepulchral
+      whisper, as she took her ever-present ball of crochet cotton from her
+      pocket and began to twine the whiteweed blossoms into a rope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, well!&rdquo; Rebecca replied with the easy theology that belonged to her
+      temperament. &ldquo;They simply couldn't send her DOWN THERE with that little
+      weeny baby. Who'd take care of it? You know page six of the catechism says
+      the only companions of the wicked after death are their father the devil
+      and all the other evil angels; it wouldn't be any place to bring up a
+      baby.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whenever and wherever she wakes up, I hope she won't know that the big
+      baby is going to the poor farm. I wonder where he is?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps over to Mrs. Dennett's house. She didn't seem sorry a bit, did
+      she?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, but I suppose she's tired sitting up and nursing a stranger. Mother
+      wasn't sorry when Gran'pa Perkins died; she couldn't be, for he was cross
+      all the time and had to be fed like a child. Why ARE you crying again,
+      Rebecca?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I don't know, I can't tell, Emma Jane! Only I don't want to die and
+      have no funeral or singing and nobody sorry for me! I just couldn't bear
+      it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Neither could I,&rdquo; Emma Jane responded sympathetically; &ldquo;but p'r'aps if
+      we're real good and die young before we have to be fed, they will be
+      sorry. I do wish you could write some poetry for her as you did for Alice
+      Robinson's canary bird, only still better, of course, like that you read
+      me out of your thought book.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could, easy enough,&rdquo; exclaimed Rebecca, somewhat consoled by the idea
+      that her rhyming faculty could be of any use in such an emergency. &ldquo;Though
+      I don't know but it would be kind of bold to do it. I'm all puzzled about
+      how people get to heaven after they're buried. I can't understand it a
+      bit; but if the poetry is on her, what if that should go, too? And how
+      could I write anything good enough to be read out loud in heaven?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A little piece of paper couldn't get to heaven; it just couldn't,&rdquo;
+       asserted Emma Jane decisively. &ldquo;It would be all blown to pieces and dried
+      up. And nobody knows that the angels can read writing, anyway.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They must be as educated as we are, and more so, too,&rdquo; agreed Rebecca.
+      &ldquo;They must be more than just dead people, or else why should they have
+      wings? But I'll go off and write something while you finish the rope; it's
+      lucky you brought your crochet cotton and I my lead pencil.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In fifteen or twenty minutes she returned with some lines written on a
+      scrap of brown wrapping paper. Standing soberly by Emma Jane, she said,
+      preparing to read them aloud: &ldquo;They're not good; I was afraid your
+      father'd come back before I finished, and the first verse sounds exactly
+      like the funeral hymns in the church book. I couldn't call her Sally
+      Winslow; it didn't seem nice when I didn't know her and she is dead, so I
+      thought if I said friend' it would show she had somebody to be sorry.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;This friend of ours has died and gone
+     From us to heaven to live.
+     If she has sinned against Thee, Lord,
+     We pray Thee, Lord, forgive.
+
+     &ldquo;Her husband runneth far away
+     And knoweth not she's dead.
+     Oh, bring him back&mdash;ere tis too late&mdash;
+     To mourn beside her bed.
+
+     &ldquo;And if perchance it can't be so,
+     Be to the children kind;
+     The weeny one that goes with her,
+     The other left behind.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think that's perfectly elegant!&rdquo; exclaimed Emma Jane, kissing Rebecca
+      fervently. &ldquo;You are the smartest girl in the whole State of Maine, and it
+      sounds like a minister's prayer. I wish we could save up and buy a
+      printing machine. Then I could learn to print what you write and we'd be
+      partners like father and Bill Moses. Shall you sign it with your name like
+      we do our school compositions?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Rebecca soberly. &ldquo;I certainly shan't sign it, not knowing where
+      it's going or who'll read it. I shall just hide it in the flowers, and
+      whoever finds it will guess that there wasn't any minister or singing, or
+      gravestone, or anything, so somebody just did the best they could.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      III
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tired mother with the &ldquo;weeny baby&rdquo; on her arm lay on a long
+      carpenter's bench, her earthly journey over, and when Rebecca stole in and
+      placed the flowery garland all along the edge of the rude bier, death
+      suddenly took on a more gracious and benign aspect. It was only a child's
+      sympathy and intuition that softened the rigors of the sad moment, but
+      poor, wild Sal Winslow, in her frame of daisies, looked as if she were
+      missed a little by an unfriendly world; while the weeny baby, whose heart
+      had fallen asleep almost as soon as it had learned to beat, the weeny
+      baby, with Emma Jane's nosegay of buttercups in its tiny wrinkled hand,
+      smiled as if it might have been loved and longed for and mourned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We've done all we can now without a minister,&rdquo; whispered Rebecca. &ldquo;We
+      could sing, God is ever good' out of the Sunday school song book, but I'm
+      afraid somebody would hear us and think we were gay and happy. What's
+      that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A strange sound broke the stillness; a gurgle, a yawn, a merry little
+      call. The two girls ran in the direction from which it came, and there, on
+      an old coat, in a clump of goldenrod bushes, lay a child just waking from
+      a refreshing nap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's the other baby that Lizy Ann Dennett told about!&rdquo; cried Emma Jane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn't he beautiful!&rdquo; exclaimed Rebecca. &ldquo;Come straight to me!&rdquo; and she
+      stretched out her arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The child struggled to its feet, and tottered, wavering, toward the warm
+      welcome of the voice and eyes. Rebecca was all mother, and her maternal
+      instincts had been well developed in the large family in which she was
+      next to the eldest. She had always confessed that there were perhaps a
+      trifle too many babies at Sunnybrook Farm, but, nevertheless, had she ever
+      heard it, she would have stood loyally by the Japanese proverb: &ldquo;Whether
+      brought forth upon the mountain or in the field, it matters nothing; more
+      than a treasure of one thousand ryo a baby precious is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You darling thing!&rdquo; she crooned, as she caught and lifted the child. &ldquo;You
+      look just like a Jack-o'-lantern.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy was clad in a yellow cotton dress, very full and stiff. His hair
+      was of such a bright gold, and so sleek and shiny, that he looked like a
+      fair, smooth little pumpkin. He had wide blue eyes full of laughter, a
+      neat little vertical nose, a neat little horizontal mouth with his few
+      neat little teeth showing very plainly, and on the whole Rebecca's figure
+      of speech was not so wide of the mark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Emma Jane! Isn't he too lovely to go to the poor farm? If only we
+      were married we could keep him and say nothing and nobody would know the
+      difference! Now that the Simpsons have gone away there isn't a single baby
+      in Riverboro, and only one in Edgewood. It's a perfect shame, but I can't
+      do anything; you remember Aunt Miranda wouldn't let me have the Simpson
+      baby when I wanted to borrow her just for one rainy Sunday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My mother won't keep him, so it's no use to ask her; she says most every
+      day she's glad we're grown up, and she thanks the Lord there wasn't but
+      two of us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Mrs. Peter Meserve is too nervous,&rdquo; Rebecca went on, taking the
+      village houses in turn; &ldquo;and Mrs. Robinson is too neat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;People don't seem to like any but their own babies,&rdquo; observed Emma Jane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I can't understand it,&rdquo; Rebecca answered. &ldquo;A baby's a baby, I
+      should think, whose ever it is! Miss Dearborn is coming back Monday; I
+      wonder if she'd like it? She has nothing to do out of school, and we could
+      borrow it all the time!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't think it would seem very genteel for a young lady like Miss
+      Dearborn, who 'boards round,' to take a baby from place to place,&rdquo;
+       objected Emma Jane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps not,&rdquo; agreed Rebecca despondently, &ldquo;but I think if we haven't got
+      any&mdash;any&mdash;PRIVATE babies in Riverboro we ought to have one for
+      the town, and all have a share in it. We've got a town hall and a town
+      lamp post and a town watering trough. Things are so uneven! One house like
+      mine at Sunnybrook, brimful of children, and the very next one empty! The
+      only way to fix them right would be to let all the babies that ever are
+      belong to all the grown-up people that ever are,&mdash;just divide them
+      up, you know, if they'd go round. Oh, I have a thought! Don't you believe
+      Aunt Sarah Cobb would keep him? She carries flowers to the graveyard every
+      little while, and once she took me with her. There's a marble cross, and
+      it says: SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF SARAH ELLEN, BELOVED CHILD OF SARAH AND
+      JEREMIAH COBB, AGED 17 MONTHS. Why, that's another reason; Mrs. Dennett
+      says this one is seventeen months. There's five of us left at the farm
+      without me, but if we were only nearer to Riverboro, how quick mother
+      would let in one more!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We might see what father thinks, and that would settle it,&rdquo; said Emma
+      Jane. &ldquo;Father doesn't think very sudden, but he thinks awful strong. If we
+      don't bother him, and find a place ourselves for the baby, perhaps he'll
+      be willing. He's coming now; I hear the wheels.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lizy Ann Dennett volunteered to stay and perform the last rites with the
+      undertaker, and Jack-o'-lantern, with his slender wardrobe tied in a
+      bandanna handkerchief, was lifted into the wagon by the reluctant Mr.
+      Perkins, and jubilantly held by Rebecca in her lap. Mr. Perkins drove off
+      as speedily as possible, being heartily sick of the whole affair, and
+      thinking wisely that the little girls had already seen and heard more than
+      enough of the seamy side of life that morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Discussion concerning Jack-o'-lantern's future was prudently deferred for
+      a quarter of an hour, and then Mr. Perkins was mercilessly pelted with
+      arguments against the choice of the poor farm as a place of residence for
+      a baby.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His father is sure to come back some time, Mr. Perkins,&rdquo; urged Rebecca.
+      &ldquo;He couldn't leave this beautiful thing forever; and if Emma Jane and I
+      can persuade Mrs. Cobb to keep him a little while, would you care?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      No; on reflection Mr. Perkins did not care. He merely wanted a quiet life
+      and enough time left over from the public service to attend to his
+      blacksmith's shop; so instead of going home over the same road by which
+      they came he crossed the bridge into Edgewood and dropped the children at
+      the long lane which led to the Cobb house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Cobb, &ldquo;Aunt Sarah&rdquo; to the whole village, sat by the window looking
+      for Uncle Jerry, who would soon be seen driving the noon stage to the post
+      office over the hill. She always had an eye out for Rebecca, too, for ever
+      since the child had been a passenger on Mr. Cobb's stagecoach, making the
+      eventful trip from her home farm to the brick house in Riverboro in his
+      company, she had been a constant visitor and the joy of the quiet
+      household. Emma Jane, too, was a well-known figure in the lane, but the
+      strange baby was in the nature of a surprise&mdash;a surprise somewhat
+      modified by the fact that Rebecca was a dramatic personage and more liable
+      to appear in conjunction with curious outriders, comrades, and retainers
+      than the ordinary Riverboro child. She had run away from the too stern
+      discipline of the brick house on one occasion, and had been persuaded to
+      return by Uncle Jerry. She had escorted a wandering organ grinder to their
+      door and begged a lodging for him on a rainy night; so on the whole there
+      was nothing amazing about the coming procession.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little party toiled up to the hospitable door, and Mrs. Cobb came out
+      to meet them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca was spokesman. Emma Jane's talent did not lie in eloquent speech,
+      but it would have been a valiant and a fluent child indeed who could have
+      usurped Rebecca's privileges and tendencies in this direction, language
+      being her native element, and words of assorted sizes springing
+      spontaneously to her lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aunt Sarah, dear,&rdquo; she said, plumping Jack-o'-lantern down on the grass
+      as she pulled his dress over his feet and smoothed his hair becomingly,
+      &ldquo;will you please not say a word till I get through&mdash;as it's very
+      important you should know everything before you answer yes or no? This is
+      a baby named Jacky Winslow, and I think he looks like a Jack-o'-lantern.
+      His mother has just died over to North Riverboro, all alone, excepting for
+      Mrs. Lizy Ann Dennett, and there was another little weeny baby that died
+      with her, and Emma Jane and I put flowers around them and did the best we
+      could. The father&mdash;that's John Winslow&mdash;quarreled with the
+      mother&mdash;that was Sal Perry on the Moderation Road&mdash;and ran away
+      and left her. So he doesn't know his wife and the weeny baby are dead. And
+      the town has got to bury them because they can't find the father right off
+      quick, and Jacky has got to go to the poor farm this afternoon. And it
+      seems an awful shame to take him up to that lonesome place with those old
+      people that can't amuse him, and if Emma Jane and Alice Robinson and I
+      take most all the care of him we thought perhaps you and Uncle Jerry would
+      keep him just for a little while. You've got a cow and a turn-up bedstead,
+      you know,&rdquo; she hurried on insinuatingly, &ldquo;and there's hardly any pleasure
+      as cheap as more babies where there's ever been any before, for baby
+      carriages and trundle beds and cradles don't wear out, and there's always
+      clothes left over from the old baby to begin the new one on. Of course, we
+      can collect enough things to start Jacky, so he won't be much trouble or
+      expense; and anyway, he's past the most troublesome age and you won't have
+      to be up nights with him, and he isn't afraid of anybody or anything, as
+      you can see by his just sitting there laughing and sucking his thumb,
+      though he doesn't know what's going to become of him. And he's just
+      seventeen months old like dear little Sarah Ellen in the graveyard, and we
+      thought we ought to give you the refusal of him before he goes to the poor
+      farm, and what do you think about it? Because it's near my dinner time and
+      Aunt Miranda will keep me in the whole afternoon if I'm late, and I've got
+      to finish weeding the hollyhock bed before sundown.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      IV
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Cobb had enjoyed a considerable period of reflection during this
+      monologue, and Jacky had not used the time unwisely, offering several
+      unconscious arguments and suggestions to the matter under discussion;
+      lurching over on the greensward and righting himself with a chuckle,
+      kicking his bare feet about in delight at the sunshine and groping for his
+      toes with arms too short to reach them, the movement involving an entire
+      upsetting of equilibrium followed by more chuckles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Coming down the last of the stone steps, Sarah Ellen's mother regarded the
+      baby with interest and sympathy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor little mite!&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;that doesn't know what he's lost and what's
+      going to happen to him. Seems to me we might keep him a spell till we're
+      sure his father's deserted him for good. Want to come to Aunt Sarah,
+      baby?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jack-o'-lantern turned from Rebecca and Emma Jane and regarded the kind
+      face gravely; then he held out both his hands and Mrs. Cobb, stooping,
+      gathered him like a harvest. Being lifted into her arms, he at once tore
+      her spectacles from her nose and laughed aloud. Taking them from him
+      gently, she put them on again, and set him in the cushioned rocking chair
+      under the lilac bushes beside the steps. Then she took one of his soft
+      hands in hers and patted it, and fluttered her fingers like birds before
+      his eyes, and snapped them like castanets, remembering all the arts she
+      had lavished upon &ldquo;Sarah Ellen, aged seventeen months,&rdquo; years and years
+      ago.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Motherless baby and babyless mother,
+     Bring them together to love one another.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca knew nothing of this couplet, but she saw clearly enough that her
+      case was won.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The boy must be hungry; when was he fed last?&rdquo; asked Mrs. Cobb. &ldquo;Just
+      stay a second longer while I get him some morning's milk; then you run
+      home to your dinners and I'll speak to Mr. Cobb this afternoon. Of course,
+      we can keep the baby for a week or two till we see what happens. Land! He
+      ain't goin' to be any more trouble than a wax doll! I guess he ain't been
+      used to much attention, and that kind's always the easiest to take care
+      of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At six o'clock that evening Rebecca and Emma Jane flew up the hill and
+      down the lane again, waving their hands to the dear old couple who were
+      waiting for them in the usual place, the back piazza where they had sat so
+      many summers in a blessed companionship never marred by an unloving word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where's Jacky?&rdquo; called Rebecca breathlessly, her voice always outrunning
+      her feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go up to my chamber, both of you, if you want to see,&rdquo; smiled Mrs. Cobb,
+      &ldquo;only don't wake him up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girls went softly up the stairs into Aunt Sarah's room. There, in the
+      turn-up bedstead that had been so long empty, slept Jack-o'-lantern, in
+      blissful unconsciousness of the doom he had so lately escaped. His
+      nightgown and pillow case were clean and fragrant with lavender, but they
+      were both as yellow as saffron, for they had belonged to Sarah Ellen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish his mother could see him!&rdquo; whispered Emma Jane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can't tell; it's all puzzly about heaven, and perhaps she does,&rdquo; said
+      Rebecca, as they turned reluctantly from the fascinating scene and stole
+      down to the piazza.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a beautiful and a happy summer that year, and every day it was
+      filled with blissful plays and still more blissful duties. On the Monday
+      after Jack-o'-lantern's arrival in Edgewood Rebecca founded the Riverboro
+      Aunts Association. The Aunts were Rebecca, Emma Jane, Alice Robinson, and
+      Minnie Smellie, and each of the first three promised to labor for and
+      amuse the visiting baby for two days a week, Minnie Smellie, who lived at
+      some distance from the Cobbs, making herself responsible for Saturday
+      afternoons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Minnie Smellie was not a general favorite among the Riverboro girls, and
+      it was only in an unprecedented burst of magnanimity that they admitted
+      her into the rites of fellowship, Rebecca hugging herself secretly at the
+      thought, that as Minnie gave only the leisure time of one day a week, she
+      could not be called a &ldquo;full&rdquo; Aunt. There had been long and bitter feuds
+      between the two children during Rebecca's first summer in Riverboro, but
+      since Mrs. Smellie had told her daughter that one more quarrel would
+      invite a punishment so terrible that it could only be hinted at vaguely,
+      and Miss Miranda Sawyer had remarked that any niece of hers who couldn't
+      get along peaceable with the neighbors had better go back to the seclusion
+      of a farm where there weren't any, hostilities had been veiled, and a
+      suave and diplomatic relationship had replaced the former one, which had
+      been wholly primitive, direct, and barbaric. Still, whenever Minnie
+      Smellie, flaxen-haired, pink-nosed, and ferret-eyed, indulged in fluent
+      conversation, Rebecca, remembering the old fairy story, could always see
+      toads hopping out of her mouth. It was really very unpleasant, because
+      Minnie could never see them herself; and what was more amazing, Emma Jane
+      perceived nothing of the sort, being almost as blind, too, to the diamonds
+      that fell continually from Rebecca's lips; but Emma Jane's strong point
+      was not her imagination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A shaky perambulator was found in Mrs. Perkins's wonderful attic; shoes
+      and stockings were furnished by Mrs. Robinson; Miss Jane Sawyer knitted a
+      blanket and some shirts; Thirza Meserve, though too young for an aunt,
+      coaxed from her mother some dresses and nightgowns, and was presented with
+      a green paper certificate allowing her to wheel Jacky up and down the road
+      for an hour under the superintendence of a full Aunt. Each girl, under the
+      constitution of the association, could call Jacky &ldquo;hers&rdquo; for two days in
+      the week, and great, though friendly, was the rivalry between them, as
+      they washed, ironed, and sewed for their adored nephew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If Mrs. Cobb had not been the most amiable woman in the world she might
+      have had difficulty in managing the aunts, but she always had Jacky to
+      herself the earlier part of the day and after dusk at night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile Jack-o'-lantern grew healthier and heartier and jollier as the
+      weeks slipped away. Uncle Jerry joined the little company of worshipers
+      and slaves, and one fear alone stirred in all their hearts; not, as a
+      sensible and practical person might imagine, the fear that the recreant
+      father might never return to claim his child, but, on the contrary, that
+      he MIGHT do so!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      October came at length with its cheery days and frosty nights, its glory
+      of crimson leaves and its golden harvest of pumpkins and ripened corn.
+      Rebecca had been down by the Edgewood side of the river and had come up
+      across the pastures for a good-night play with Jacky. Her literary labors
+      had been somewhat interrupted by the joys and responsibilities of
+      vice-motherhood, and the thought book was less frequently drawn from its
+      hiding place under the old haymow in the barn chamber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Cobb stood behind the screen door with her face pressed against the
+      wire netting, and Rebecca could see that she was wiping her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All at once the child's heart gave one prophetic throb and then stood
+      still. She was like a harp that vibrated with every wind of emotion,
+      whether from another's grief or her own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked down the lane, around the curve of the stone wall, red with
+      woodbine, the lane that would meet the stage road to the station. There,
+      just mounting the crown of the hill and about to disappear on the other
+      side, strode a stranger man, big and tall, with a crop of reddish curly
+      hair showing from under his straw hat. A woman walked by his side, and
+      perched on his shoulder, wearing his most radiant and triumphant mien, as
+      joyous in leaving Edgewood as he had been during every hour of his sojourn
+      there&mdash;rode Jack-o'-lantern!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca gave a cry in which maternal longing and helpless, hopeless
+      jealousy strove for supremacy. Then, with an impetuous movement she
+      started to run after the disappearing trio.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Cobb opened the door hastily, calling after her, &ldquo;Rebecca, Rebecca,
+      come back here! You mustn't follow where you haven't any right to go. If
+      there'd been anything to say or do, I'd a' done it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's mine! He's mine!&rdquo; stormed Rebecca. &ldquo;At least he's yours and mine!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's his father's first of all,&rdquo; faltered Mrs. Cobb; &ldquo;don't let's forget
+      that; and we'd ought to be glad and grateful that John Winslow's come to
+      his senses an' remembers he's brought a child into the world and ought to
+      take care of it. Our loss is his gain and it may make a man of him. Come
+      in, and we'll put things away all neat before your Uncle Jerry gets home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca sank in a pitiful little heap on Mrs. Cobb's bedroom floor and
+      sobbed her heart out. &ldquo;Oh, Aunt Sarah, where shall we get another
+      Jack-o'-lantern, and how shall I break it to Emma Jane? What if his father
+      doesn't love him, and what if he forgets to strain the milk or lets him go
+      without his nap? That's the worst of babies that aren't private&mdash;you
+      have to part with them sooner or later!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sometimes you have to part with your own, too,&rdquo; said Mrs. Cobb sadly; and
+      though there were lines of sadness in her face there was neither rebellion
+      nor repining, as she folded up the sides of the turn-up bedstead
+      preparatory to banishing it a second time to the attic. &ldquo;I shall miss
+      Sarah Ellen now more'n ever. Still, Rebecca, we mustn't feel to complain.
+      It's the Lord that giveth and the Lord that taketh away: Blessed be the
+      name of the Lord.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Second Chronicle. DAUGHTERS OF ZION
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abijah Flagg was driving over to Wareham on an errand for old Squire
+      Winship, whose general chore-boy and farmer's assistant he had been for
+      some years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He passed Emma Jane Perkins's house slowly, as he always did. She was only
+      a little girl of thirteen and he a boy of fifteen or sixteen, but somehow,
+      for no particular reason, he liked to see the sun shine on her thick
+      braids of reddish-brown hair. He admired her china-blue eyes too, and her
+      amiable, friendly expression. He was quite alone in the world, and he
+      always thought that if he had anybody belonging to him he would rather
+      have a sister like Emma Jane Perkins than anything else within the power
+      of Providence to bestow. When she herself suggested this relationship a
+      few years later he cast it aside with scorn, having changed his mind in
+      the interval&mdash;but that story belongs to another time and place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane was not to be seen in garden, field, or at the window, and
+      Abijah turned his gaze to the large brick house that came next on the
+      other side of the quiet village street. It might have been closed for a
+      funeral. Neither Miss Miranda nor Miss Jane Sawyer sat at their respective
+      windows knitting, nor was Rebecca Randall's gypsy face to be discerned.
+      Ordinarily that will-o'-the wispish little person could be seen, heard, or
+      felt wherever she was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The village must be abed, I guess,&rdquo; mused Abijah, as he neared the
+      Robinsons' yellow cottage, where all the blinds were closed and no sign of
+      life showed on porch or in shed. &ldquo;No, 't aint, neither,&rdquo; he thought again,
+      as his horse crept cautiously down the hill, for from the direction of the
+      Robinsons' barn chamber there floated out into the air certain burning
+      sentiments set to the tune of &ldquo;Antioch.&rdquo; The words, to a lad brought up in
+      the orthodox faith, were quite distinguishable:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Daughter of Zion, from the dust, Exalt thy fallen head!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Even the most religious youth is stronger on first lines than others, but
+      Abijah pulled up his horse and waited till he caught another familiar
+      verse, beginning:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rebuild thy walls, thy bounds enlarge, And send thy heralds forth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's Rebecca carrying the air, and I can hear Emma Jane's alto.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Say to the North,
+     Give up thy charge,
+     And hold not back, O South,
+     And hold not back, O South,&rdquo; etc.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Land! ain't they smart, seesawin' up and down in that part they learnt in
+      singin' school! I wonder what they're actin' out, singin' hymn-tunes up in
+      the barn chamber? Some o' Rebecca's doins, I'll be bound! Git dap, Aleck!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Aleck pursued his serene and steady trot up the hills on the Edgewood side
+      of the river, till at length he approached the green Common where the old
+      Tory Hill meeting-house stood, its white paint and green blinds showing
+      fair and pleasant in the afternoon sun. Both doors were open, and as
+      Abijah turned into the Wareham road the church melodeon pealed out the
+      opening bars of the Missionary Hymn, and presently a score of voices sent
+      the good old tune from the choir-loft out to the dusty road:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Shall we whose souls are lighted
+     With Wisdom from on high,
+     Shall we to men benighted
+     The lamp of life deny?&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Land!&rdquo; exclaimed Abijah under his breath. &ldquo;They're at it up here, too!
+      That explains it all. There's a missionary meeting at the church, and the
+      girls wa'n't allowed to come so they held one of their own, and I bate ye
+      it's the liveliest of the two.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Abijah Flagg's shrewd Yankee guesses were not far from the truth, though
+      he was not in possession of all the facts. It will be remembered by those
+      who have been in the way of hearing Rebecca's experiences in Riverboro,
+      that the Rev. and Mrs. Burch, returned missionaries from the Far East,
+      together with some of their children, &ldquo;all born under Syrian skies,&rdquo; as
+      they always explained to interested inquirers, spent a day or two at the
+      brick house, and gave parlor meetings in native costume.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These visitors, coming straight from foreign lands to the little Maine
+      village, brought with them a nameless enchantment to the children, and
+      especially to Rebecca, whose imagination always kindled easily. The
+      romance of that visit had never died in her heart, and among the many
+      careers that dazzled her youthful vision was that of converting such
+      Syrian heathen as might continue in idol worship after the Burches'
+      efforts in their behalf had ceased. She thought at the age of eighteen she
+      might be suitably equipped for storming some minor citadel of
+      Mohammedanism; and Mrs. Burch had encouraged her in the idea, not, it is
+      to be feared, because Rebecca showed any surplus of virtue or Christian
+      grace, but because her gift of language, her tact and sympathy, and her
+      musical talent seemed to fit her for the work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It chanced that the quarterly meeting of the Maine Missionary Society had
+      been appointed just at the time when a letter from Mrs. Burch to Miss Jane
+      Sawyer suggested that Rebecca should form a children's branch in
+      Riverboro. Mrs. Burch's real idea was that the young people should save
+      their pennies and divert a gentle stream of financial aid into the parent
+      fund, thus learning early in life to be useful in such work, either at
+      home or abroad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girls themselves, however, read into her letter no such modest
+      participation in the conversion of the world, and wishing to effect an
+      organization without delay, they chose an afternoon when every house in
+      the village was vacant, and seized upon the Robinsons' barn chamber as the
+      place of meeting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca, Alice Robinson, Emma Jane Perkins, Candace Milliken, and Persis
+      Watson, each with her hymn book, had climbed the ladder leading to the
+      haymow a half hour before Abijah Flagg had heard the strains of &ldquo;Daughters
+      of Zion&rdquo; floating out to the road. Rebecca, being an executive person, had
+      carried, besides her hymn book, a silver call-bell and pencil and paper.
+      An animated discussion regarding one of two names for the society, The
+      Junior Heralds or The Daughters of Zion, had resulted in a unanimous vote
+      for the latter, and Rebecca had been elected president at an early stage
+      of the meeting. She had modestly suggested that Alice Robinson, as the
+      granddaughter of a missionary to China, would be much more eligible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Alice, with entire good nature, &ldquo;whoever is ELECTED president,
+      you WILL be, Rebecca&mdash;you're that kind&mdash;so you might as well
+      have the honor; I'd just as lieves be secretary, anyway.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you should want me to be treasurer, I could be, as well as not,&rdquo; said
+      Persis Watson suggestively; &ldquo;for you know my father keeps china banks at
+      his store&mdash;ones that will hold as much as two dollars if you will let
+      them. I think he'd give us one if I happen to be treasurer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The three principal officers were thus elected at one fell swoop and with
+      an entire absence of that red tape which commonly renders organization so
+      tiresome, Candace Milliken suggesting that perhaps she'd better be
+      vice-president, as Emma Jane Perkins was always so bashful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We ought to have more members,&rdquo; she reminded the other girls, &ldquo;but if we
+      had invited them the first day they'd have all wanted to be officers,
+      especially Minnie Smellie, so it's just as well not to ask them till
+      another time. Is Thirza Meserve too little to join?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't think why anybody named Meserve should have called a baby
+      Thirza,&rdquo; said Rebecca, somewhat out of order, though the meeting was
+      carried on with small recognition of parliamentary laws. &ldquo;It always makes
+      me want to say:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Thirza Meserver
+     Heaven preserve her!
+     Thirza Meserver
+     Do we deserve her?
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      She's little, but she's sweet, and absolutely without guile. I think we
+      ought to have her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is 'guile' the same as 'guilt?&rdquo; inquired Emma Jane Perkins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; the president answered; &ldquo;exactly the same, except one is written
+      and the other spoken language.&rdquo; (Rebecca was rather good at imbibing
+      information, and a master hand at imparting it!) &ldquo;Written language is for
+      poems and graduations and occasions like this&mdash;kind of like a best
+      Sunday-go-to-meeting dress that you wouldn't like to go blueberrying in
+      for fear of getting it spotted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd just as 'lieves get 'guile' spotted as not,&rdquo; affirmed the
+      unimaginative Emma Jane. &ldquo;I think it's an awful foolish word; but now
+      we're all named and our officers elected, what do we do first? It's easy
+      enough for Mary and Martha Burch; they just play at missionarying because
+      their folks work at it, same as Living and I used to make believe be
+      blacksmiths when we were little.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It must be nicer missionarying in those foreign places,&rdquo; said Persis,
+      &ldquo;because on 'Afric's shores and India's plains and other spots where Satan
+      reigns' (that's father's favorite hymn) there's always a heathen bowing
+      down to wood and stone. You can take away his idols if he'll let you and
+      give him a bible and the beginning's all made. But who'll we begin on?
+      Jethro Small?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, he's entirely too dirty, and foolish besides!&rdquo; exclaimed Candace.
+      &ldquo;Why not Ethan Hunt? He swears dreadfully.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He lives on nuts and is a hermit, and it's a mile to his camp through the
+      thick woods; my mother'll never let me go there,&rdquo; objected Alice. &ldquo;There's
+      Uncle Tut Judson.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's too old; he's most a hundred and deaf as a post,&rdquo; complained Emma
+      Jane. &ldquo;Besides, his married daughter is a Sabbath-school teacher&mdash;why
+      doesn't she teach him to behave? I can't think of anybody just right to
+      start on!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't talk like that, Emma Jane,&rdquo; and Rebecca's tone had a tinge of
+      reproof in it. &ldquo;We are a copperated body named the Daughters of Zion, and,
+      of course, we've got to find something to do. Foreigners are the easiest;
+      there's a Scotch family at North Riverboro, an English one in Edgewood,
+      and one Cuban man at Millkin's Mills.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Haven't foreigners got any religion of their own?&rdquo; inquired Persis
+      curiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye-es, I s'pose so; kind of a one; but foreigners' religions are never
+      right&mdash;ours is the only good one.&rdquo; This was from Candace, the
+      deacon's daughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do think it must be dreadful, being born with a religion and growing up
+      with it, and then finding out it's no use and all your time wasted!&rdquo; Here
+      Rebecca sighed, chewed a straw, and looked troubled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that's your punishment for being a heathen,&rdquo; retorted Candace, who
+      had been brought up strictly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I can't for the life of me see how you can help being a heathen if
+      you're born in Africa,&rdquo; persisted Persis, who was well named.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can't.&rdquo; Rebecca was clear on this point. &ldquo;I had that all out with
+      Mrs. Burch when she was visiting Aunt Miranda. She says they can't help
+      being heathen, but if there's a single mission station in the whole of
+      Africa, they're accountable if they don't go there and get saved.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are there plenty of stages and railroads?&rdquo; asked Alice; &ldquo;because there
+      must be dreadfully long distances, and what if they couldn't pay the
+      fare?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That part of it is so dreadfully puzzly we mustn't talk about it,
+      please,&rdquo; said Rebecca, her sensitive face quivering with the force of the
+      problem. Poor little soul! She did not realize that her superiors in age
+      and intellect had spent many a sleepless night over that same
+      &ldquo;accountability of the heathen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's too bad the Simpsons have moved away,&rdquo; said Candace. &ldquo;It's so seldom
+      you can find a real big wicked family like that to save, with only Clara
+      Belle and Susan good in it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And numbers count for so much,&rdquo; continued Alice. &ldquo;My grandmother says if
+      missionaries can't convert about so many in a year the Board advises them
+      to come back to America and take up some other work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; Rebecca corroborated; &ldquo;and it's the same with revivalists. At
+      the Centennial picnic at North Riverboro, a revivalist sat opposite to Mr.
+      Ladd and Aunt Jane and me, and he was telling about his wonderful success
+      in Bangor last winter. He'd converted a hundred and thirty in a month, he
+      said, or about four and a third a day. I had just finished fractions, so I
+      asked Mr. Ladd how the third of a man could be converted. He laughed and
+      said it was just the other way; that the man was a third converted. Then
+      he explained that if you were trying to convince a person of his sin on a
+      Monday, and couldn't quite finish by sundown, perhaps you wouldn't want to
+      sit up all night with him, and perhaps he wouldn't want you to; so you'd
+      begin again on Tuesday, and you couldn't say just which day he was
+      converted, because it would be two thirds on Monday and one third on
+      Tuesday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Ladd is always making fun, and the Board couldn't expect any great
+      things of us girls, new beginners,&rdquo; suggested Emma Jane, who was being
+      constantly warned against tautology by her teacher. &ldquo;I think it's awful
+      rude, anyway, to go right out and try to convert your neighbors; but if
+      you borrow a horse and go to Edgewood Lower Corner, or Milliken's Mills, I
+      s'pose that makes it Foreign Missions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would we each go alone or wait upon them with a committee, as they did
+      when they asked Deacon Tuttle for a contribution for the new hearse?&rdquo;
+       asked Persis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! We must go alone,&rdquo; decided Rebecca; &ldquo;it would be much more refined
+      and delicate. Aunt Miranda says that one man alone could never get a
+      subscription from Deacon Tuttle, and that's the reason they sent a
+      committee. But it seems to me Mrs. Burch couldn't mean for us to try and
+      convert people when we're none of us even church members, except Candace.
+      I think all we can do is to persuade them to go to meeting and Sabbath
+      school, or give money for the hearse, or the new horse sheds. Now let's
+      all think quietly for a minute or two who's the very most heathenish and
+      reperrehensiblest person in Riverboro.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After a very brief period of silence the words &ldquo;Jacob Moody&rdquo; fell from all
+      lips with entire accord.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+&ldquo;You are right,&rdquo; said the president tersely; &ldquo;and after singing hymn
+number two hundred seventy four, to be found on the sixty-sixth page,
+we will take up the question of persuading Mr. Moody to attend divine
+service or the minister's Bible class, he not having been in the
+meeting-house for lo! these many years.
+
+     'Daughter of Zion, the power that hath saved thee
+     Extolled with the harp and the timbrel should be.'
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sing without reading, if you please, omitting the second stanza. Hymn two
+      seventy four, to be found on the sixty-sixth page of the new hymn book or
+      on page thirty two of Emma Jane Perkins's old one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      II
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is doubtful if the Rev. Mr. Burch had ever found in Syria a person more
+      difficult to persuade than the already &ldquo;gospel-hardened&rdquo; Jacob Moody of
+      Riverboro.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tall, gaunt, swarthy, black-bearded&mdash;his masses of grizzled, uncombed
+      hair and the red scar across his nose and cheek added to his sinister
+      appearance. His tumble-down house stood on a rocky bit of land back of the
+      Sawyer pasture, and the acres of his farm stretched out on all sides of
+      it. He lived alone, ate alone, plowed, planted, sowed, harvested alone,
+      and was more than willing to die alone, &ldquo;unwept, unhonored, and unsung.&rdquo;
+       The road that bordered upon his fields was comparatively little used by
+      any one, and notwithstanding the fact that it was thickly set with
+      chokecherry trees and blackberry bushes it had been for years practically
+      deserted by the children. Jacob's Red Astrakhan and Granny Garland trees
+      hung thick with apples, but no Riverboro or Edgewood boy stole them; for
+      terrifying accounts of the fate that had overtaken one urchin in times
+      agone had been handed along from boy to boy, protecting the Moody fruit
+      far better than any police patrol.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps no circumstances could have extenuated the old man's surly manners
+      or his lack of all citizenly graces and virtues; but his neighbors
+      commonly rebuked his present way of living and forgot the troubled past
+      that had brought it about: the sharp-tongued wife, the unloving and
+      disloyal sons, the daughter's hapless fate, and all the other sorry tricks
+      that fortune had played upon him&mdash;at least that was the way in which
+      he had always regarded his disappointments and griefs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This, then, was the personage whose moral rehabilitation was to be
+      accomplished by the Daughters of Zion. But how?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who will volunteer to visit Mr. Moody?&rdquo; blandly asked the president.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VISIT MR. MOODY! It was a wonder the roof of the barn chamber did not
+      fall; it did, indeed echo the words and in some way make them sound more
+      grim and satirical.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nobody'll volunteer, Rebecca Rowena Randall, and you know it,&rdquo; said Emma
+      Jane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why don't we draw lots, when none of us wants to speak to him and yet one
+      of us must?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This suggestion fell from Persis Watson, who had been pale and thoughtful
+      ever since the first mention of Jacob Moody. (She was fond of Granny
+      Garlands; she had once met Jacob; and, as to what befell, well, we all
+      have our secret tragedies!)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wouldn't it be wicked to settle it that way?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's gamblers that draw lots.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;People did it in the Bible ever so often.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It doesn't seem nice for a missionary meeting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      These remarks fell all together upon the president's bewildered ear the
+      while (as she always said in compositions)&mdash;&ldquo;the while&rdquo; she was
+      trying to adjust the ethics of this unexpected and difficult dilemma.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a very puzzly question,&rdquo; she said thoughtfully. &ldquo;I could ask Aunt
+      Jane if we had time, but I suppose we haven't. It doesn't seem nice to
+      draw lots, and yet how can we settle it without? We know we mean right,
+      and perhaps it will be. Alice, take this paper and tear off five narrow
+      pieces, all different lengths.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment a voice from a distance floated up to the haymow&mdash;a
+      voice saying plaintively: &ldquo;Will you let me play with you, girls? Huldah
+      has gone to ride, and I'm all alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the voice of the absolutely-without-guile Thirza Meserve, and it
+      came at an opportune moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If she is going to be a member,&rdquo; said Persis, &ldquo;why not let her come up
+      and hold the lots? She'd be real honest and not favor anybody.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed an excellent idea, and was followed up so quickly that scarcely
+      three minutes ensued before the guileless one was holding the five scraps
+      in her hot little palm, laboriously changing their places again and again
+      until they looked exactly alike and all rather soiled and wilted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, girls, draw!&rdquo; commanded the president. &ldquo;Thirza, you mustn't chew
+      gum at a missionary meeting, it isn't polite nor holy. Take it out and
+      stick it somewhere till the exercises are over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The five Daughters of Zion approached the spot so charged with fate, and
+      extended their trembling hands one by one. Then after a moment's silent
+      clutch of their papers they drew nearer to one another and compared them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane Perkins had drawn the short one, becoming thus the destined
+      instrument for Jacob Moody's conversion to a more seemly manner of life!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked about her despairingly, as if to seek some painless and
+      respectable method of self-destruction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do let's draw over again,&rdquo; she pleaded. &ldquo;I'm the worst of all of us. I'm
+      sure to make a mess of it till I kind o' get trained in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca's heart sank at this frank confession, which only corroborated her
+      own fears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sorry, Emmy, dear,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;but our only excuse for drawing lots
+      at all would be to have it sacred. We must think of it as a kind of a
+      sign, almost like God speaking to Moses in the burning bush.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I WISH there was a burning bush right here!&rdquo; cried the distracted and
+      recalcitrant missionary. &ldquo;How quick I'd step into it without even stopping
+      to take off my garnet ring!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't be such a scare-cat, Emma Jane!&rdquo; exclaimed Candace bracingly.
+      &ldquo;Jacob Moody can't kill you, even if he has an awful temper. Trot right
+      along now before you get more frightened. Shall we go cross lots with her,
+      Rebecca, and wait at the pasture gate? Then whatever happens Alice can put
+      it down in the minutes of the meeting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In these terrible crises of life time gallops with such incredible
+      velocity that it seemed to Emma Jane only a breath before she was being
+      dragged through the fields by the other Daughters of Zion, the guileless
+      little Thirza panting in the rear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the entrance to the pasture Rebecca gave her an impassioned embrace,
+      and whispering, &ldquo;WHATEVER YOU DO, BE CAREFUL HOW YOU LEAD UP,&rdquo; lifted off
+      the top rail and pushed her through the bars. Then the girls turned their
+      backs reluctantly on the pathetic figure, and each sought a tree under
+      whose friendly shade she could watch, and perhaps pray, until the
+      missionary should return from her field of labor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Alice Robinson, whose compositions were always marked 96 or 97,&mdash;100
+      symbolizing such perfection as could be attained in the mortal world of
+      Riverboro,&mdash;Alice, not only Daughter, but Scribe of Zion, sharpened
+      her pencil and wrote a few well-chosen words of introduction, to be used
+      when the records of the afternoon had been made by Emma Jane Perkins and
+      Jacob Moody.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca's heart beat tumultuously under her gingham dress. She felt that a
+      drama was being enacted, and though unfortunately she was not the central
+      figure, she had at least a modest part in it. The short lot had not fallen
+      to the properest Daughter, that she quite realized; yet would any one of
+      them succeed in winning Jacob Moody's attention, in engaging him in
+      pleasant conversation, and finally in bringing him to a realization of his
+      mistaken way of life? She doubted, but at the same moment her spirits rose
+      at the thought of the difficulties involved in the undertaking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Difficulties always spurred Rebecca on, but they daunted poor Emma Jane,
+      who had no little thrills of excitement and wonder and fear and longing to
+      sustain her lagging soul. That her interview was to be entered as
+      &ldquo;minutes&rdquo; by a secretary seemed to her the last straw. Her blue eyes
+      looked lighter than usual and had the glaze of china saucers; her usually
+      pink cheeks were pale, but she pressed on, determined to be a faithful
+      Daughter of Zion, and above all to be worthy of Rebecca's admiration and
+      respect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rebecca can do anything,&rdquo; she thought, with enthusiastic loyalty, &ldquo;and I
+      mustn't be any stupider than I can help, or she'll choose one of the other
+      girls for her most intimate friend.&rdquo; So, mustering all her courage, she
+      turned into Jacob Moody's dooryard, where he was chopping wood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a pleasant afternoon, Mr. Moody,&rdquo; she said in a polite but hoarse
+      whisper, Rebecca's words, &ldquo;LEAD UP! LEAD UP!&rdquo; ringing in clarion tones
+      through her brain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jacob Moody looked at her curiously. &ldquo;Good enough, I guess,&rdquo; he growled;
+      &ldquo;but I don't never have time to look at afternoons.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane seated herself timorously on the end of a large log near the
+      chopping block, supposing that Jacob, like other hosts, would pause in his
+      tasks and chat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The block is kind of like an idol,&rdquo; she thought; &ldquo;I wish I could take it
+      away from him, and then perhaps he'd talk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment Jacob raised his axe and came down on the block with such a
+      stunning blow that Emma Jane fairly leaped into the air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'd better look out, Sissy, or you'll git chips in the eye!&rdquo; said
+      Moody, grimly going on with his work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Daughter of Zion sent up a silent prayer for inspiration, but none
+      came, and she sat silent, giving nervous jumps in spite of herself
+      whenever the axe fell upon the log Jacob was cutting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Finally, the host became tired of his dumb visitor, and leaning on his axe
+      he said, &ldquo;Look here, Sis, what have you come for? What's your errant? Do
+      you want apples? Or cider? Or what? Speak out, or GIT out, one or
+      t'other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane, who had wrung her handkerchief into a clammy ball, gave it a
+      last despairing wrench, and faltered: &ldquo;Wouldn't you like&mdash;hadn't you
+      better&mdash;don't you think you'd ought to be more constant at meeting
+      and Sabbath school?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jacob's axe almost dropped from his nerveless hand, and he regarded the
+      Daughter of Zion with unspeakable rage and disdain. Then, the blood
+      mounting in his face, he gathered himself together, and shouted: &ldquo;You take
+      yourself off that log and out o' this dooryard double-quick, you imperdent
+      sanct'omus young one! You just let me ketch Bill Perkins' child trying to
+      teach me where I shall go, at my age! Scuttle, I tell ye! And if I see
+      your pious cantin' little mug inside my fence ag'in on sech a business
+      I'll chase ye down the hill or set the dog on ye! SCOOT, I TELL YE!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane obeyed orders summarily, taking herself off the log, out the
+      dooryard, and otherwise scuttling and scooting down the hill at a pace
+      never contemplated even by Jacob Moody, who stood regarding her flying
+      heels with a sardonic grin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Down she stumbled, the tears coursing over her cheeks and mingling with
+      the dust of her flight; blighted hope, shame, fear, rage, all tearing her
+      bosom in turn, till with a hysterical shriek she fell over the bars and
+      into Rebecca's arms outstretched to receive her. The other Daughters wiped
+      her eyes and supported her almost fainting form, while Thirza, thoroughly
+      frightened, burst into sympathetic tears, and refused to be comforted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No questions were asked, for it was felt by all parties that Emma Jane's
+      demeanor was answering them before they could be framed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He threatened to set the dog on me!&rdquo; she wailed presently, when, as they
+      neared the Sawyer pasture, she was able to control her voice. &ldquo;He called
+      me a pious, cantin' young one, and said he'd chase me out o' the dooryard
+      if I ever came again! And he'll tell my father&mdash;I know he will, for
+      he hates him like poison.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All at once the adult point of view dawned upon Rebecca. She never saw it
+      until it was too obvious to be ignored. Had they done wrong in
+      interviewing Jacob Moody? Would Aunt Miranda be angry, as well as Mr.
+      Perkins?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why was he so dreadful, Emmy?&rdquo; she questioned tenderly. &ldquo;What did you say
+      first? How did you lead up to it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane sobbed more convulsively, and wiped her nose and eyes
+      impartially as she tried to think.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess I never led up at all; not a mite. I didn't know what you meant.
+      I was sent on an errant, and I went and done it the best I could! (Emma
+      Jane's grammar always lapsed in moments of excitement.) And then Jake
+      roared at me like Squire Winship's bull.... And he called my face a
+      mug.... You shut up that secretary book, Alice Robinson! If you write down
+      a single word I'll never speak to you again.... And I don't want to be a
+      member' another minute for fear of drawing another short lot. I've got
+      enough of the Daughters or Zion to last me the rest o' my life! I don't
+      care who goes to meetin' and who don't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girls were at the Perkins's gate by this time, and Emma Jane went
+      sadly into the empty house to remove all traces of the tragedy from her
+      person before her mother should come home from the church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The others wended their way slowly down the street, feeling that their
+      promising missionary branch had died almost as soon as it had budded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Goodby,&rdquo; said Rebecca, swallowing lumps of disappointment and chagrin as
+      she saw the whole inspiring plan break and vanish into thin air like an
+      iridescent bubble. &ldquo;It's all over and we won't ever try it again. I'm
+      going in to do overcasting as hard as I can, because I hate that the
+      worst. Aunt Jane must write to Mrs. Burch that we don't want to be home
+      missionaries. Perhaps we're not big enough, anyway. I'm perfectly certain
+      it's nicer to convert people when they're yellow or brown or any color but
+      white; and I believe it must be easier to save their souls than it is to
+      make them go to meeting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Third Chronicle. REBECCA'S THOUGHT BOOK
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The &ldquo;Sawyer girls'&rdquo; barn still had its haymow in Rebecca's time, although
+      the hay was a dozen years old or more, and, in the opinion of the
+      occasional visiting horse, sadly juiceless and wanting in flavor. It still
+      sheltered, too, old Deacon Israel Sawyer's carryall and mowing-machine,
+      with his pung, his sleigh, and a dozen other survivals of an earlier era,
+      when the broad acres of the brick house went to make one of the finest
+      farms in Riverboro.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were no horses or cows in the stalls nowadays; no pig grunting
+      comfortably of future spare ribs in the sty; no hens to peck the plants in
+      the cherished garden patch. The Sawyer girls were getting on in years,
+      and, mindful that care once killed a cat, they ordered their lives with
+      the view of escaping that particular doom, at least, and succeeded fairly
+      well until Rebecca's advent made existence a trifle more sensational.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once a month for years upon years, Miss Miranda and Miss Jane had put
+      towels over their heads and made a solemn visit to the barn, taking off
+      the enameled cloth coverings (occasionally called &ldquo;emmanuel covers&rdquo; in
+      Riverboro), dusting the ancient implements, and sometimes sweeping the
+      heaviest of the cobwebs from the corners, or giving a brush to the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deacon Israel's tottering ladder still stood in its accustomed place,
+      propped against the haymow, and the heavenly stairway leading to eternal
+      glory scarcely looked fairer to Jacob of old than this to Rebecca. By
+      means of its dusty rounds she mounted, mounted, mounted far away from time
+      and care and maiden aunts, far away from childish tasks and childish
+      troubles, to the barn chamber, a place so full of golden dreams, happy
+      reveries, and vague longings, that, as her little brown hands clung to the
+      sides of the ladder and her feet trod the rounds cautiously in her ascent,
+      her heart almost stopped beating in the sheer joy of anticipation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once having gained the heights, the next thing was to unlatch the heavy
+      doors and give them a gentle swing outward. Then, oh, ever new Paradise!
+      Then, oh, ever lovely green and growing world! For Rebecca had that
+      something in her soul that
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gives to seas and sunset skies The unspent beauty of surprise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the top of Guide Board hill she could see Alice Robinson's barn with
+      its shining weather vane, a huge burnished fish that swam with the wind
+      and foretold the day to all Riverboro. The meadow, with its sunny slopes
+      stretching up to the pine woods, was sometimes a flowing sheet of
+      shimmering grass, sometimes&mdash;when daisies and buttercups were
+      blooming&mdash;a vision of white and gold. Sometimes the shorn stubble
+      would be dotted with &ldquo;the happy hills of hay,&rdquo; and a little later the rock
+      maple on the edge of the pines would stand out like a golden ball against
+      the green; its neighbor, the sugar maple, glowing beside it, brave in
+      scarlet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was on one of these autumn days with a wintry nip in the air that Adam
+      Ladd (Rebecca's favorite &ldquo;Mr. Aladdin&rdquo;), after searching for her in field
+      and garden, suddenly noticed the open doors of the barn chamber, and
+      called to her. At the sound of his vice she dropped her precious diary,
+      and flew to the edge of the haymow. He never forgot the vision of the
+      startled little poetess, book in one mittened hand, pencil in the other,
+      dark hair all ruffled, with the picturesque addition of an occasional
+      glade of straw, her cheeks crimson, her eyes shining.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A Sappho in mittens!&rdquo; he cried laughingly, and at her eager question told
+      her to look up the unknown lady in the school encyclopedia, when she was
+      admitted to the Female Seminary at Wareham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, all being ready, Rebecca went to a corner of the haymow, and withdrew
+      a thick blank-book with mottled covers. Out of her gingham apron pocket
+      came a pencil, a bit of rubber, and some pieces of brown paper; then she
+      seated herself gravely on the floor, and drew an inverted soapbox nearer
+      to her for a table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The book was reverently opened, and there was a serious reading of the
+      extracts already carefully copied therein. Most of them were apparently to
+      the writer's liking, for dimples of pleasure showed themselves now and
+      then, and smiles of obvious delight played about her face; but once in a
+      while there was a knitting of the brows and a sigh of discouragement,
+      showing that the artist in the child was not wholly satisfied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then came the crucial moment when the budding author was supposedly to be
+      racked with the throes of composition; but seemingly there were no throes.
+      Other girls could wield the darning or crochet or knitting needle, and
+      send the tatting shuttle through loops of the finest cotton; hemstitch,
+      oversew, braid hair in thirteen strands, but the pencil was never obedient
+      in their fingers, and the pen and ink-pot were a horror from early
+      childhood to the end of time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not so with Rebecca; her pencil moved as easily as her tongue, and no more
+      striking simile could possibly be used. Her handwriting was not
+      Spencerian; she had neither time, nor patience, it is to be feared, for
+      copybook methods, and her unformed characters were frequently the despair
+      of her teachers; but write she could, write she would, write she must and
+      did, in season and out; from the time she made pothooks at six, till now,
+      writing was the easiest of all possible tasks; to be indulged in as solace
+      and balm when the terrors of examples in least common multiple threatened
+      to dethrone the reason, or the rules of grammar loomed huge and
+      unconquerable in the near horizon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As to spelling, it came to her in the main by free grace, and not by
+      training, and though she slipped at times from the beaten path, her
+      extraordinary ear and good visual memory kept her from many or flagrant
+      mistakes. It was her intention, especially when saying her prayers at
+      night, to look up all doubtful words in her small dictionary, before
+      copying her Thoughts into the sacred book for the inspiration of
+      posterity; but when genius burned with a brilliant flame, and particularly
+      when she was in the barn and the dictionary in the house, impulse as usual
+      carried the day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There sits Rebecca, then, in the open door of the Sawyers barn chamber&mdash;the
+      sunset door. How many a time had her grandfather, the good deacon, sat
+      just underneath in his tipped-back chair, when Mrs. Israel's temper was
+      uncertain, and the serenity of the barn was in comforting contrast to his
+      own fireside!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The open doors swinging out to the peaceful landscape, the solace of the
+      pipe, not allowed in the &ldquo;settin'-room&rdquo;&mdash;how beautifully these simple
+      agents have ministered to the family peace in days agone! &ldquo;If I hadn't had
+      my barn and my store BOTH, I couldn't never have lived in holy matrimony
+      with Maryliza!&rdquo; once said Mr. Watson feelingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the deacon, looking on his waving grass fields, his tasseling corn and
+      his timber lands, bright and honest as were his eyes, never saw such
+      visions as Rebecca. The child, transplanted from her home farm at
+      Sunnybrook, from the care of the overworked but easy-going mother, and the
+      companionship of the scantily fed, scantily clothed, happy-go-lucky
+      brothers and sisters&mdash;she had indeed fallen on shady days in
+      Riverboro. The blinds were closed in every room of the house but two, and
+      the same might have been said of Miss Miranda's mind and heart, though
+      Miss Jane had a few windows opening to the sun, and Rebecca already had
+      her unconscious hand on several others. Brickhouse rules were rigid and
+      many for a little creature so full of life, but Rebecca's gay spirit could
+      not be pinioned in a strait jacket for long at a time; it escaped somehow
+      and winged its merry way into the sunshine and free air; if she were not
+      allowed to sing in the orchard, like the wild bird she was, she could
+      still sing in the cage, like the canary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      II
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If you had opened the carefully guarded volume with the mottled covers,
+      you would first have seen a wonderful title page, constructed apparently
+      on the same lines as an obituary, or the inscription on a tombstone, save
+      for the quantity and variety of information contained in it. Much of the
+      matter would seem to the captious critic better adapted to the body of the
+      book than to the title page, but Rebecca was apparently anxious that the
+      principal personages in her chronicle should be well described at the
+      outset.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She seems to have had a conviction that heredity plays its part in the
+      evolution of genius, and her belief that the world will be inspired by the
+      possession of her Thoughts is too artless to be offensive. She evidently
+      has respect for rich material confided to her teacher, and one can imagine
+      Miss Dearborn's woe had she been confronted by Rebecca's chosen literary
+      executor and bidden to deliver certain &ldquo;Valuable Poetry and Thoughts,&rdquo; the
+      property of posterity &ldquo;unless carelessly destroyed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      THOUGHT BOOK of Rebecca Rowena Randall Really of Sunnybrook Farm But
+      temporily of The Brick House Riverboro. Own niece of Miss Miranda and Jane
+      Sawyer Second of seven children of her father, Mr. L. D. M. Randall (Now
+      at rest in Temperance cemmetary and there will be a monument as soon as we
+      pay off the mortgage on the farm) Also of her mother Mrs. Aurelia Randall
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     In case of Death the best of these Thoughts
+     May be printed in my Remerniscences
+     For the Sunday School Library at Temperance, Maine
+     Which needs more books fearfully
+     And I hereby
+     Will and Testament them to Mr. Adam Ladd
+     Who bought 300 cakes of soap from me
+     And thus secured a premium
+     A Greatly Needed Banquet Lamp
+     For my friends the Simpsons.
+     He is the only one that incourages
+     My writing Remerniscences and
+     My teacher Miss Dearborn will
+     Have much valuable Poetry and Thoughts
+     To give him unless carelessly destroyed.
+
+     The pictures are by the same hand that
+     Wrote the Thoughts.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      IT IS NOT NOW DECIDED WHETHER REBECCA ROWENA RANDALL WILL BE A PAINTER OR
+      AN AUTHOR, BUT AFTER HER DEATH IT WILL BE KNOWN WHICH SHE HAS BEEN, IF
+      ANY.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FINIS
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the title page, with its wealth of detail, and its unnecessary and
+      irrelevant information, the book ripples on like a brook, and to the weary
+      reader of problem novels it may have something of the brook's refreshing
+      quality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      OUR DIARIES May, 187&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All the girls are keeping a diary because Miss Dearborn was very much
+      ashamed when the school trustees told her that most of the girls' and all
+      of the boys' compositions were disgraceful, and must be improved upon next
+      term. She asked the boys to write letters to her once a week instead of
+      keeping a diary, which they thought was girlish like playing with dolls.
+      The boys thought it was dreadful to have to write letters every seven
+      days, but she told them it was not half as bad for them as it was for her
+      who had to read them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To make my diary a little different I am going to call it a THOUGHT Book
+      (written just like that, with capitals). I have thoughts that I never can
+      use unless I write them down, for Aunt Miranda always says, Keep your
+      thoughts to yourself. Aunt Jane lets me tell her some, but does not like
+      my queer ones and my true thoughts are mostly queer. Emma Jane does not
+      mind hearing them now and then, and that is my only chance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If Miss Dearborn does not like the name Thought Book I will call it
+      Remerniscences (written just like that with a capital R). Remerniscences
+      are things you remember about yourself and write down in case you should
+      die. Aunt Jane doesn't like to read any other kind of books but just lives
+      of interesting dead people and she says that is what Longfellow (who was
+      born in the state of Maine and we should be very proud of it and try to
+      write like him) meant in his poem:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Lives of great men all remind us
+     We should make our lives sublime,
+     And departing, leave behind us
+     Footprints on the sands of time.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      I know what this means because when Emma Jane and I went to the beach with
+      Uncle Jerry Cobb we ran along the wet sand and looked at the shapes our
+      boots made, just as if they were stamped in wax. Emma Jane turns in her
+      left foot (splayfoot the boys call it, which is not polite) and Seth
+      Strout had just patched one of my shoes and it all came out in the sand
+      pictures. When I learned The Psalm of Life for Friday afternoon speaking I
+      thought I shouldn't like to leave a patched footprint, nor have Emma
+      Jane's look crooked on the sands of time, and right away I thought Oh!
+      What a splendid thought for my Thought Book when Aunt Jane buys me a
+      fifteen-cent one over to Watson's store.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      REMERNISCENCES
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      June, 187&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I told Aunt Jane I was going to begin my Remerniscences, and she says I am
+      full young, but I reminded her that Candace Milliken's sister died when
+      she was ten, leaving no footprints whatever, and if I should die suddenly
+      who would write down my Remerniscences? Aunt Miranda says the sun and moon
+      would rise and set just the same, and it was no matter if they didn't get
+      written down, and to go up attic and find her piece-bag; but I said it
+      would, as there was only one of everybody in the world, and nobody else
+      could do their remerniscensing for them. If I should die tonight I know
+      now who would describe me right. Miss Dearborn would say one thing and
+      brother John another. Emma Jane would try to do me justice, but has no
+      words; and I am glad Aunt Miranda never takes the pen in hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My dictionary is so small it has not many genteel words in it, and I
+      cannot find how to spell Remerniscences, but I remember from the cover of
+      Aunt Jane's book that there was an &ldquo;s&rdquo; and a &ldquo;c&rdquo; close together in the
+      middle of it, which I thought foolish and not needful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All the girls like their dairies very much, but Minnie Smellie got Alice
+      Robinson's where she had hid it under the school wood pile and read it all
+      through. She said it was no worse than reading anybody's composition, but
+      we told her it was just like peeking through a keyhole, or listening at a
+      window, or opening a bureau drawer. She said she didn't look at it that
+      way, and I told her that unless her eyes got unscealed she would never
+      leave any kind of a sublime footprint on the sands of time. I told her a
+      diary was very sacred as you generally poured your deepest feelings into
+      it expecting nobody to look at it but yourself and your indulgent heavenly
+      Father who seeeth all things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course it would not hurt Persis Watson to show her diary because she
+      has not a sacred plan and this is the way it goes, for she reads it out
+      loud to us:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Arose at six this morning&mdash;(you always arise in a diary but you say
+      get up when you talk about it). Ate breakfast at half past six. Had soda
+      biscuits, coffee, fish hash and doughnuts. Wiped the dishes, fed the hens
+      and made my bed before school. Had a good arithmetic lesson, but went down
+      two in spelling. At half past four played hide and coop in the Sawyer
+      pasture. Fed hens and went to bed at eight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She says she can't put in what doesn't happen, but as I don't think her
+      diary is interesting she will ask her mother to have meat hash instead of
+      fish, with pie when the doughnuts give out, and she will feed the hens
+      before breakfast to make a change. We are all going now to try and make
+      something happen every single day so the diaries won't be so dull and the
+      footprints so common.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      AN UNCOMMON THOUGHT
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      July 187&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We dug up our rosecakes today, and that gave me a good Remerniscence. The
+      way you make rose cakes is, you take the leaves of full blown roses and
+      mix them with a little cinnamon and as much brown sugar as they will give
+      you, which is never half enough except Persis Watson, whose affectionate
+      parents let her go to the barrel in their store. Then you do up little
+      bits like sedlitz powders, first in soft paper and then in brown, and bury
+      them in the ground and let them stay as long as you possibly can hold out;
+      then dig them up and eat them. Emma Jane and I stick up little signs over
+      the holes in the ground with the date we buried them and when they'll be
+      done enough to dig up, but we can never wait. When Aunt Jane saw us she
+      said it was the first thing for children to learn,&mdash;not to be
+      impatient,&mdash;so when I went to the barn chamber I made a poem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IMPATIENCE
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We dug our rose cakes up oh! all too soon. Twas in the orchard just at
+      noon. Twas in a bright July forenoon. Twas in the sunny afternoon. Twas
+      underneath the harvest moon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not that way at all; it was a foggy morning before school, and I
+      should think poets could never possibly get to heaven, for it is so hard
+      to stick to the truth when you are writing poetry. Emma Jane thinks it is
+      nobody's business when we dug the rosecakes up. I like the line about the
+      harvest moon best, but it would give a wrong idea of our lives and
+      characters to the people that read my Thoughts, for they would think we
+      were up late nights, so I have fixed it like this:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                    IMPATIENCE
+
+     We dug our rose cakes up oh! all too soon,
+     We thought their sweetness would be such a boon.
+     We ne'er suspicioned they would not be done
+     After three days of autumn wind and sun.
+     Why did we from the earth our treasures draw?
+     Twas not for fear that rat or mole might naw,
+     An aged aunt doth say impatience was the reason,
+     She says that youth is ever out of season.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      That is just as Aunt Jane said it, and it gave me the thought for the poem
+      which is rather uncommon.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      A DREADFUL QUESTION
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      September, 187&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      WHICH HAS BEEN THE MOST BENEFERCENT INFLUENCE ON CHARACTER&mdash;PUNISHMENT
+      OR REWARD?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This truly dreadful question was given us by Dr. Moses when he visited
+      school today. He is a School Committee; not a whole one but I do not know
+      the singular number of him. He told us we could ask our families what they
+      thought, though he would rather we wouldn't, but we must write our own
+      words and he would hear them next week.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After he went out and shut the door the scholars were all plunged in gloom
+      and you could have heard a pin drop. Alice Robinson cried and borrowed my
+      handkerchief, and the boys looked as if the schoolhouse had been struck by
+      lightning. The worst of all was poor Miss Dearborn, who will lose her
+      place if she does not make us better scholars soon, for Dr. Moses has a
+      daughter all ready to put right in to the school and she can board at home
+      and save all her wages. Libby Moses is her name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Dearborn stared out the window, and her mouth and chin shook like
+      Alice Robinson's, for she knew, ah! all to well, what the coming week
+      would bring forth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then I raised my hand for permission to speak, and stood up and said:
+      &ldquo;Miss Dearborn, don't you mind! Just explain to us what benefercent' means
+      and we'll write something real interesting; for all of us know what
+      punishment is, and have seen others get rewards, and it is not so bad a
+      subject as some.&rdquo; And Dick Carter whispered, &ldquo;GOOD ON YOUR HEAD, REBECCA!&rdquo;
+       which mean he was sorry for her too, and would try his best, but has no
+      words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then teacher smiled and said benefercent meant good or healthy for
+      anybody, and would all rise who thought punishment made the best scholars
+      and men and women; and everybody sat stock still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then she asked all to stand who believed that rewards produced the
+      finest results, and there was a mighty sound like unto the rushing of
+      waters, but really was our feet scraping the floor, and the scholars stood
+      up, and it looked like an army, though it was only nineteen, because of
+      the strong belief that was in them. Then Miss Dearborn laughed and said
+      she was thankful for every whipping she had when she was a child, and
+      Living Perkins said perhaps we hadn't got to the thankful age, or perhaps
+      her father hadn't used a strap, and she said oh! no, it was her mother
+      with the open hand; and Dick Carter said he wouldn't call that punishment,
+      and Sam Simpson said so too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am going to write about the subject in my Thought Book first, and when I
+      make it into a composition, I can leave out anything about the family or
+      not genteel, as there is much to relate about punishment not pleasant or
+      nice and hardly polite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      * * * * * * * * * * * * * PUNISHMENT
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Punishment is a very puzzly thing, but I believe in it when really
+      deserved, only when I punish myself it does not always turn out well. When
+      I leaned over the new bridge, and got my dress all paint, and Aunt Sarah
+      Cobb couldn't get it out, I had to wear it spotted for six months which
+      hurt my pride, but was right. I stayed at home from Alice Robinson's
+      birthday party for a punishment, and went to the circus next day instead,
+      but Alice's parties are very cold and stiff, as Mrs. Robinson makes the
+      boys stand on newspapers if they come inside the door, and the blinds are
+      always shut, and Mrs. Robinson tells me how bad her liver complaint is
+      this year. So I thought, to pay for the circus and a few other things, I
+      ought to get more punishment, and I threw my pink parasol down the well,
+      as the mothers in the missionary books throw their infants to the
+      crocodiles in the Ganges river. But it got stuck in the chain that holds
+      the bucket, and Aunt Miranda had to get Abijah Flagg to take out all the
+      broken bits before we could ring up water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I punished myself this way because Aunt Miranda said that unless I
+      improved I would be nothing but a Burden and a Blight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an old man used to go by our farm carrying a lot of broken
+      chairs to bottom, and mother used to say&mdash;&ldquo;Poor man! His back is too
+      weak for such a burden!&rdquo; and I used to take him out a doughnut, and this
+      is the part I want to go into the Remerniscences. Once I told him we were
+      sorry the chairs were so heavy, and he said THEY DIDN'T SEEM SO HEAVY WHEN
+      HE HAD ET THE DOUGHNUT. This does not mean that the doughnut was heavier
+      than the chairs which is what brother John said, but it is a beautiful
+      thought and shows how the human race should have sympathy, and help bear
+      burdens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I know about a Blight, for there was a dreadful east wind over at our farm
+      that destroyed all the little young crops just out of the ground, and the
+      farmers called it the Blight. And I would rather be hail, sleet, frost, or
+      snow than a Blight, which is mean and secret, and which is the reason I
+      threw away the dearest thing on earth to me, the pink parasol that Miss
+      Ross brought me from Paris, France. I have also wrapped up my bead purse
+      in three papers and put it away marked not to be opened till after my
+      death unless needed for a party.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I must not be Burden, I must not be Blight, The angels in heaven would
+      weep at the sight.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      REWARDS
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A good way to find out which has the most benefercent effect would be to
+      try rewards on myself this next week and write my composition the very
+      last day, when I see how my character is. It is hard to find rewards for
+      yourself, but perhaps Aunt Jane and some of the girls would each give me
+      one to help out. I could carry my bead purse to school every day, or wear
+      my coral chain a little while before I go to sleep at night. I could read
+      Cora or the Sorrows of a Doctor's Wife a little oftener, but that's all
+      the rewards I can think of. I fear Aunt Miranda would say they are wicked
+      but oh! if they should turn out benefercent how glad and joyful life would
+      be to me! A sweet and beautiful character, beloved by my teacher and
+      schoolmates, admired and petted by my aunts and neighbors, yet carrying my
+      bead purse constantly, with perhaps my best hat on Wednesday afternoons,
+      as well as Sundays!
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      A GREAT SHOCK
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reason why Alice Robinson could not play was, she was being punished
+      for breaking her mother's blue platter. Just before supper my story being
+      finished I went up Guide Board hill to see how she was bearing up and she
+      spoke to me from her window. She said she did not mind being punished
+      because she hadn't been for a long time, and she hoped it would help her
+      with her composition. She thought it would give her thoughts, and
+      tomorrow's the last day for her to have any. This gave me a good idea and
+      I told her to call her father up and beg him to beat her violently. It
+      would hurt, I said, but perhaps none of the other girls would have a
+      punishment like that, and her composition would be all different and
+      splendid. I would borrow Aunt Miranda's witchhayzel and pour it on her
+      wounds like the Samaritan in the Bible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I went up again after supper with Dick Carter to see how it turned out.
+      Alice came to the window and Dick threw up a note tied to a stick. I had
+      written: &ldquo;DEMAND YOUR PUNISHMENT TO THE FULL. BE BRAVE LIKE DOLORES'
+      MOTHER IN THE Martyrs of Spain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She threw down an answer, and it was: &ldquo;YOU JUST BE LIKE DOLORES' MOTHER
+      YOURSELF IF YOU'RE SO SMART!&rdquo; Then she stamped away from the window and my
+      feelings were hurt, but Dick said perhaps she was hungry, and that made
+      her cross. And as Dick and I turned to go out of the yard we looked back
+      and I saw something I can never forget. (The Great Shock) Mrs. Robinson
+      was out behind the barn feeding the turkies. Mr. Robinson came softly out
+      of the side door in the orchard and looking everywheres around he stepped
+      to the wire closet and took out a saucer of cold beans with a pickled beet
+      on top, and a big piece of blueberry pie. Then he crept up the back stairs
+      and we could see Alice open her door and take in the supper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh! What will become of her composition, and how can she tell anything of
+      the benefercent effects of punishment, when she is locked up by one
+      parent, and fed by the other? I have forgiven her for the way she snapped
+      me up for, of course, you couldn't beg your father to beat you when he was
+      bringing you blueberry pie. Mrs. Robinson makes a kind that leaks out a
+      thick purple juice into the plate and needs a spoon and blacks your mouth,
+      but is heavenly.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      A DREAM
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The week is almost up and very soon Dr. Moses will drive up to the school
+      house like Elijah in the chariot and come in to hear us read. There is a
+      good deal of sickness among us. Some of the boys are not able to come to
+      school just now, but hope to be about again by Monday, when Dr. Moses goes
+      away to a convention. It is a very hard composition to write, somehow.
+      Last night I dreamed that the river was ink and I kept dipping into it and
+      writing with a penstalk made of a young pine tree. I sliced great slabs of
+      marble off the side of one of the White Mountains, the one you see when
+      going to meeting, and wrote on those. Then I threw them all into the
+      falls, not being good enough for Dr. Moses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dick Carter had a splendid boy to stay over Sunday. He makes the real
+      newspaper named The Pilot published by the boys at Wareham Academy. He
+      says when he talks about himself in writing he calls himself &ldquo;we,&rdquo; and it
+      sounds much more like print, besides conscealing him more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Example: Our hair was measured this morning and has grown two inches since
+      last time.... We have a loose tooth that troubles us very much... Our
+      inkspot that we made by negligence on our only white petticoat we have
+      been able to remove with lemon and milk. Some of our petticoat came out
+      with the spot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I shall try it in my composition sometime, for of course I shall write for
+      the Pilot when I go to Wareham Seminary. Uncle Jerry Cobb says that I
+      shall, and thinks that in four years I might rise to be editor if they
+      ever have girls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have never been more good than since I have been rewarding myself
+      steady, even to asking Aunt Miranda kindly to offer me a company jelly
+      tart, not because I was hungry, but for an experement I was trying, and
+      would explain to her sometime.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She said she never thought it was wise to experement with your stomach,
+      and I said, with a queer thrilling look, it was not my stomach but my
+      soul, that was being tried. Then she gave me the tart and walked away all
+      puzzled and nervous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The new minister has asked me to come and see him any Saturday afternoon
+      as he writes poetry himself, but I would rather not ask him about this
+      composition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ministers never believe in rewards, and it is useless to hope that they
+      will. We had the wrath of God four times in sermons this last summer, but
+      God cannot be angry all the time,&mdash;nobody could, especially in
+      summer; Mr. Baxter is different and calls his wife dear which is lovely
+      and the first time I ever heard it in Riverboro. Mrs. Baxter is another
+      kind of people too, from those that live in Temperance. I like to watch
+      her in meeting and see her listen to her husband who is young and handsome
+      for a minister; it gives me very queer and uncommon feelings, when they
+      look at each other, which they always do when not otherwise engaged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She has different clothes from anybody else. Aunt Miranda says you must
+      think only of two things: will your dress keep you warm and will it wear
+      well and there is nobody in the world to know how I love pink and red and
+      how I hate drab and green and how I never wear my hat with the black and
+      yellow porkupine quills without wishing it would blow into the river.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whene'er I take my walks abroad How many quills I see. But as they are not
+      porkupines They never come to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      COMPOSITION
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      WHICH HAS THE MOST BENEFERCENT EFFECT ON THE CHARACTER, PUNISHMENT OR
+      REWARD?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By Rebecca Rowena Randall
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (This copy not corrected by Miss Dearborn yet.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We find ourselves very puzzled in approaching this truly great and
+      national question though we have tried very ernestly to understand it, so
+      as to show how wisely and wonderfully our dear teacher guides the youthful
+      mind, it being her wish that our composition class shall long be
+      remembered in Riverboro Centre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We would say first of all that punishment seems more benefercently needed
+      by boys than girls. Boys' sins are very violent, like stealing fruit,
+      profane language, playing truant, fighting, breaking windows, and killing
+      innocent little flies and bugs. If these were not taken out of them early
+      in life it would be impossible for them to become like our martyred
+      president, Abraham Lincoln.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Although we have asked everybody on our street, they think boys' sins can
+      only be whipped out of them with a switch or strap, which makes us feel
+      very sad, as boys when not sinning the dreadful sins mentioned above seem
+      just as good as girls, and never cry when switched, and say it does not
+      hurt much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We now approach girls, which we know better, being one. Girls seem better
+      than boys because their sins are not so noisy and showy. They can disobey
+      their parents and aunts, whisper in silent hour, cheat in lessons, say
+      angry things to their schoolmates, tell lies, be sulky and lazy, but all
+      these can be conducted quite ladylike and genteel, and nobody wants to
+      strap girls because their skins are tender and get black and blue very
+      easily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Punishments make one very unhappy and rewards very happy, and one would
+      think when one is happy one would behave the best. We were acquainted with
+      a girl who gave herself rewards every day for a week, and it seemed to
+      make her as lovely a character as one could wish; but perhaps if one went
+      on for years giving rewards to onesself one would become selfish. One
+      cannot tell, one can only fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If a dog kills a sheep we should whip him straight away, and on the very
+      spot where he can see the sheep, or he will not know what we mean, and may
+      forget and kill another. The same is true of the human race. We must be
+      firm and patient in punishing, no matter how much we love the one who has
+      done wrong, and how hungry she is. It does no good to whip a person with
+      one hand and offer her a pickled beet with the other. This confuses her
+      mind, and she may grow up not knowing right from wrong. (The striking
+      example of the pickled beet was removed from the essay by the refined but
+      ruthless Miss Dearborn, who strove patiently, but vainly, to keep such
+      vulgar images out of her pupils' literary efforts.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We now respectfully approach the Holy Bible and the people in the Bible
+      were punished the whole time, and that would seem to make it right.
+      Everybody says Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth; but we think ourself,
+      that the Lord is a better punisher than we are, and knows better how and
+      when to do it having attended to it ever since the year B.C. while the
+      human race could not know about it till 1492 A.D., which is when Columbus
+      discovered America.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We do not believe we can find out all about this truly great and national
+      subject till we get to heaven, where the human race, strapped and
+      unstrapped, if any, can meet together and laying down their harps discuss
+      how they got there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And we would gently advise boys to be more quiet and genteel in conduct
+      and try rewards to see how they would work. Rewards are not all like the
+      little rosebud merit cards we receive on Fridays, and which boys sometimes
+      tear up and fling scornfully to the breeze when they get outside, but
+      girls preserve carefully in an envelope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some rewards are great and glorious, for boys can get to be governor or
+      school trustee or road commissioner or president, while girls can only be
+      wife and mother. But all of us can have the ornament of a meek and lowly
+      spirit, especially girls, who have more use for it than boys.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      R.R.R.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      STORIES AND PEOPLE
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      October, 187&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are people in books and people in Riverboro, and they are not the
+      same kind. They never talk of chargers and palfreys in the village, nor
+      say How oft and Methinks, and if a Scotchman out of Rob Roy should come to
+      Riverboro and want to marry one of us girls we could not understand him
+      unless he made motions; though Huldah Meserve says if a nobleman of high
+      degree should ask her to be his,&mdash;one of vast estates with serfs at
+      his bidding,&mdash;she would be able to guess his meaning in any language.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Uncle Jerry Cobb thinks that Riverboro people would not make a story, but
+      I know that some of them would.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jack-o'-lantern, though only a baby, was just like a real story if anybody
+      had written a piece about him: How his mother was dead and his father ran
+      away and Emma Jane and I got Aunt Sarah Cobb to keep him so Mr. Perkins
+      wouldn't take him to the poor farm; and about our lovely times with him
+      that summer, and our dreadful loss when his father remembered him in the
+      fall and came to take him away; and how Aunt Sarah carried the trundle bed
+      up attic again and Emma Jane and I heard her crying and stole away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peter Meserve says Grandpa Sawyer was a wonderful hand at stories
+      before his spirit was broken by grandmother. She says he was the life of
+      the store and tavern when he was a young man, though generally sober, and
+      she thinks I take after him, because I like compositions better than all
+      the other lessons; but mother says I take after father, who always could
+      say everything nicely whether he had anything to say or not; so methinks I
+      should be grateful to both of them. They are what is called ancestors and
+      much depends upon whether you have them or not. The Simpsons have not any
+      at all. Aunt Miranda says the reason everybody is so prosperous around
+      here is because their ancestors were all first settlers and raised on
+      burnt ground. This should make us very proud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Methinks and methought are splendid words for compositions. Miss Dearborn
+      likes them very much, but Alice and I never bring them in to suit her.
+      Methought means the same as I thought, but sounds better. Example: If you
+      are telling a dream you had about your aged aunt:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Methought I heard her say
+     My child you have so useful been
+     You need not sew today.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      This is a good example one way, but too unlikely, woe is me!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This afternoon I was walking over to the store to buy molasses, and as I
+      came off the bridge and turned up the hill, I saw lots and lots of
+      heelprints in the side of the road, heelprints with little spike holes in
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! The river drivers have come from up country,&rdquo; I thought, &ldquo;and they'll
+      be breaking the jam at our falls tomorrow.&rdquo; I looked everywhere about and
+      not a man did I see, but still I knew I was not mistaken for the
+      heelprints could not lie. All the way over and back I thought about it,
+      though unfortunately forgetting the molasses, and Alice Robinson not being
+      able to come out, I took playtime to write a story. It is the first
+      grown-up one I ever did, and is intended to be like Cora the Doctor's
+      Wife, not like a school composition. It is written for Mr. Adam Ladd, and
+      people like him who live in Boston, and is the printed kind you get money
+      for, to pay off a mortgage.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      LANCELOT OR THE PARTED LOVERS
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A beautiful village maiden was betrothed to a stallwart river driver, but
+      they had high and bitter words and parted, he to weep into the crystal
+      stream as he drove his logs, and she to sigh and moan as she went about
+      her round of household tasks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At eventide the maiden was wont to lean over the bridge and her tears also
+      fell into the foaming stream; so, though the two unhappy lovers did not
+      know it, the river was their friend, the only one to whom they told their
+      secrets and wept into.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The months crept on and it was the next July when the maiden was passing
+      over the bridge and up the hill. Suddenly she spied footprints on the
+      sands of time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The river drivers have come again!&rdquo; she cried, putting her hand to her
+      side for she had a slight heart trouble like Cora and Mrs. Peter Meserve,
+      that doesn't kill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They HAVE come indeed; ESPECIALLY ONE YOU KNOW,&rdquo; said a voice, and out
+      from the alder bushes sprung Lancelot Littlefield, for that was the
+      lover's name and it was none other than he. His hair was curly and like
+      living gold. His shirt, white of flannel, was new and dry, and of a
+      handsome color, and as the maiden looked at him she could think of nought
+      but a fairy prince.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Forgive,&rdquo; she mermered, stretching out her waisted hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay, sweet,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;'Tis I should say that to you,&rdquo; and bending
+      gracefully on one knee he kissed the hem of her dress. It was a rich pink
+      gingham check, ellaborately ornamented with white tape trimming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Clasping each other to the heart like Cora and the Doctor, they stood
+      there for a long while, till they heard the rumble of wheels on the bridge
+      and knew they must disentangle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wheels came nearer and verily! it was the maiden's father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can I wed with your fair daughter this very moon,&rdquo; asked Lancelot, who
+      will not be called his whole name again in this story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may,&rdquo; said the father, &ldquo;for lo! she has been ready and waiting for
+      many months.&rdquo; This he said not noting how he was shaming the maiden, whose
+      name was Linda Rowenetta.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then and there the nuptial day was appointed and when it came, the
+      marriage knot was tied upon the river bank where first they met; the river
+      bank where they had parted in anger, and where they had again scealeld
+      their vows and clasped each other to the heart. And it was very low water
+      that summer, and the river always thought it was because no tears dropped
+      into it but so many smiles that like sunshine they dried it up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      R.R.R.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Finis
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      CAREERS
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      November, 187&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Long ago when I used to watch Miss Ross painting the old mill at
+      Sunnybrook I thought I would be a painter, for Miss Ross went to Paris
+      France where she bought my bead purse and pink parasol and I thought I
+      would like to see a street with beautiful bright-colored things sparkling
+      and hanging in the store windows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then when the missionaries from Syria came to stay at the brick house Mrs.
+      Burch said that after I had experienced religion I must learn music and
+      train my voice and go out to heathen lands and save souls, so I thought
+      that would be my career. But we girls tried to have a branch and be home
+      missionaries and it did not work well. Emma Jane's father would not let
+      her have her birthday party when he found out what she had done and Aunt
+      Jane sent me up to Jake Moody's to tell him we did not mean to be rude
+      when we asked him to go to meeting more often. He said all right, but just
+      let him catch that little dough-faced Perkins young one in his yard once
+      more and she'd have reason to remember the call, which was just as rude
+      and impolite as our trying to lead him to a purer and a better life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Uncle Jerry and Mr. Aladdin and Miss Dearborn liked my compositions,
+      and I thought I'd better be a writer, for I must be something the minute
+      I'm seventeen, or how shall we ever get the mortgage off the farm? But
+      even that hope is taken away from me now, for Uncle Jerry made fun of my
+      story Lancelot Or The Parted Lovers and I have decided to be a teacher
+      like Miss Dearborn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pathetic announcement of a change in the career and life purposes of
+      Rebecca was brought about by her reading the grown-up story to Mr. and
+      Mrs. Jeremiah Cobb after supper in the orchard. Uncle Jerry was the person
+      who had maintained all along that Riverboro people would not make a story;
+      and Lancelot or The Parted Lovers was intended to refute that assertion at
+      once and forever; an assertion which Rebecca regarded (quite truly) as
+      untenable, though why she certainly never could have explained.
+      Unfortunately Lancelot was a poor missionary, quite unfitted for the high
+      achievements to which he was destined by the youthful novelist, and Uncle
+      Jerry, though a stage-driver and no reading man, at once perceived the
+      flabbiness and transparency of the Parted Lovers the moment they were held
+      up to his inspection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see Riverboro people WILL make a story!&rdquo; asserted Rebecca
+      triumphantly as she finished her reading and folded the paper. &ldquo;And it all
+      came from my noticing the river drivers' tracks by the roadside, and
+      wondering about them; and wondering always makes stories; the minister
+      says so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye-es,&rdquo; allowed Uncle Jerry reflectively, tipping his chair back against
+      the apple tree and forcing his slow mind to violent and instantaneous
+      action, for Rebecca was his pride and joy; a person, in his opinion, of
+      superhuman talent, one therefore to be &ldquo;whittled into shape&rdquo; if occasion
+      demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a Riverboro story, sure enough, because you've got the river and the
+      bridge and the hill and the drivers all right there in it; but there's
+      something awful queer bout it; the folks don't act Riverboro, and don't
+      talk Riverboro, cordin' to my notions. I call it a reg'lar book story.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; objected Rebecca, &ldquo;the people in Cinderella didn't act like us, and
+      you thought that was a beautiful story when I told it to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; replied Uncle Jerry, gaining eloquence in the heat of argument.
+      &ldquo;They didn't act like us, but 't any rate they acted like 'emselves!
+      Somehow they was all of a piece. Cinderella was a little too good, mebbe,
+      and the sisters was most too thunderin' bad to live on the face o' the
+      earth, and that fayry old lady that kep' the punkin' coach up her sleeve&mdash;well,
+      anyhow, you jest believe that punkin' coach, rats, mice, and all, when
+      you're hearin' bout it, fore ever you stop to think it ain't so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don' know how tis, but the folks in that Cinderella story seem to match
+      together somehow; they're all pow'ful onlikely&mdash;the prince feller
+      with the glass slipper, and the hull bunch; but jest the same you kind o'
+      gulp em all down in a lump. But land, Rebecky, nobody'd swaller that there
+      village maiden o' your'n, and as for what's-his-name Littlefield, that
+      come out o' them bushes, such a feller never 'd a' be'n IN bushes! No,
+      Rebecky, you're the smartest little critter there is in this township, and
+      you beat your Uncle Jerry all holler when it comes to usin' a lead pencil,
+      but I say that ain't no true Riverboro story! Look at the way they talk!
+      What was that' bout being BETROTHED'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Betrothed is a genteel word for engaged to be married,&rdquo; explained the
+      crushed and chastened author; and it was fortunate the doting old man did
+      not notice her eyes in the twilight, or he might have known that tears
+      were not far away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that's all right, then; I'm as ignorant as Cooper's cow when it
+      comes to the dictionary. How about what's-his-name callin' the girl
+      'Naysweet'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought myself that sounded foolish,:&rdquo; confessed Rebecca; &ldquo;but it's
+      what the Doctor calls Cora when he tries to persuade her not to quarrel
+      with his mother who comes to live with them. I know they don't say it in
+      Riverboro or Temperance, but I thought perhaps it was Boston talk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it ain't!&rdquo; asserted Mr. Cobb decisively. &ldquo;I've druv Boston men up
+      in the stage from Milltown many's the time, and none of em ever said
+      Naysweet to me, nor nothin'like it. They talked like folks, every mother's
+      son of em! If I'd a' had that what's-his-name on the harricane deck' o'
+      the stage and he tried any naysweetin' on me, I'd a' pitched him into the
+      cornfield, side o' the road. I guess you ain't growed up enough for that
+      kind of a story, Rebecky, for your poetry can't be beat in York County,
+      that's sure, and your compositions are good enough to read out loud in
+      town meetin' any day!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca brightened up a little and bade the old couple her usual
+      affectionate good night, but she descended the hill in a saddened mood.
+      When she reached the bridge the sun, a ball of red fire, was setting
+      behind Squire Bean's woods. As she looked, it shone full on the broad,
+      still bosom of the river, and for one perfect instant the trees on the
+      shores were reflected, all swimming in a sea of pink. Leaning over the
+      rail, she watched the light fade from crimson to carmine, from carmine to
+      rose, from rose to amber, and from amber to gray. Then withdrawing
+      Lancelot or the Parted Lovers from her apron pocket, she tore the pages
+      into bits and dropped them into the water below with a sigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Uncle Jerry never said a word about the ending!&rdquo; she thought; &ldquo;and that
+      was so nice!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And she was right; but while Uncle Jerry was an illuminating critic when
+      it came to the actions and language of his Riverboro neighbors, he had no
+      power to direct the young mariner when she &ldquo;followed the gleam,&rdquo; and used
+      her imagination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      OUR SECRET SOCIETY
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      November, 187&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our Secret society has just had a splendid picnic in Candace Milliken's
+      barn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our name is the B.O.S.S., and not a single boy in the village has been
+      able to guess it. It means Braid Over Shoulder Society, and that is the
+      sign. All the members wear one of their braids over the right shoulder in
+      front; the president's tied with red ribbon (I am the president) and all
+      the rest tied with blue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To attract the attention of another member when in company or at a public
+      place we take the braid between the thumb and little finger and stand
+      carelessly on one leg. This is the Secret Signal and the password is Sobb
+      (B.O.S.S. spelled backwards) which was my idea and is thought rather
+      uncommon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the rules of the B.O.S.S. is that any member may be required to
+      tell her besetting sin at any meeting, if asked to do so by a majority of
+      the members.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was Candace Milliken's idea and much opposed by everybody, but when
+      it came to a vote so many of the girls were afraid of offending Candace
+      that they agreed because there was nobody else's father and mother who
+      would let us picnic in their barn and use their plow, harrow, grindstone,
+      sleigh, carryall, pung, sled, and wheelbarrow, which we did and injured
+      hardly anything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They asked me to tell my besetting sin at the very first meeting, and it
+      nearly killed me to do it because it is such a common greedy one. It is
+      that I can't bear to call the other girls when I have found a thick spot
+      when we are out berrying in the summer time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After I confessed, which made me dreadfully ashamed, every one of the
+      girls seemed surprised and said they had never noticed that one but had
+      each thought of something very different that I would be sure to think was
+      my besetting sin. Then Emma Jane said that rather than tell hers she would
+      resign from the Society and miss the picnic. So it made so much trouble
+      that Candace gave up. We struck out the rule from the constitution and I
+      had told my sin for nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reason we named ourselves the B.O.S.S. is that Minnie Smellie has had
+      her head shaved after scarlet fever and has no braid, so she can't be a
+      member.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I don't want her for a member but I can't be happy thinking she will feel
+      slighted, and it takes away half the pleasure of belonging to the Society
+      myself and being president.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That, I think, is the principal trouble about doing mean and unkind
+      things; that you can't do wrong and feel right, or be bad and feel good.
+      If you only could you could do anything that came into your mind yet
+      always be happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Minnie Smellie spoils everything she comes into but I suppose we other
+      girls must either have our hair shaved and call ourselves The Baldheadians
+      or let her be some kind of a special officer in the B.O.S.S.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She might be the B.I.T.U.D. member (Braid in the Upper Drawer), for there
+      is where Mrs. Smellie keeps it now that it is cut off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      WINTER THOUGHTS
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      March, 187&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is not such a cold day for March and I am up in the barn chamber with
+      my coat and hood on and Aunt Jane's waterproof and my mittens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After I do three pages I am going to hide away this book in the haymow
+      till spring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps they get made into icicles on the way but I do not seem to have
+      any thoughts in the winter time. The barn chamber is full of thoughts in
+      warm weather. The sky gives them to me, and the trees and flowers, and the
+      birds, and the river; but now it is always gray and nipping, the branches
+      are bare and the river is frozen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is too cold to write in my bedroom but while we still kept an open fire
+      I had a few thoughts, but now there is an air-tight stove in the dining
+      room where we sit, and we seem so close together, Aunt Miranda, Aunt Jane
+      and I that I don't like to write in my book for fear they will ask me to
+      read out loud my secret thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have just read over the first part of my Thought Book and I have
+      outgrown it all, just exactly as I have outgrown my last year's drab
+      cashmere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is very queer how anybody can change so fast in a few months, but I
+      remember that Emma Jane's cat had kittens the day my book was bought at
+      Watson's store. Mrs. Perkins kept the prettiest white one, Abijah Flagg
+      drowning all the others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seems strange to me that cats will go on having kittens when they know
+      what becomes of them! We were very sad about it, but Mrs. Perkins said it
+      was the way of the world and how things had to be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I cannot help being glad that they do not do the same with children, or
+      John and Jenny Mira Mark and me would all have had stones tied to our
+      necks and been dropped into the deepest part of Sunny Brook, for Hannah
+      and Fanny are the only truly handsome ones in the family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Perkins says I dress up well, but never being dressed up it does not
+      matter much. At least they didn't wait to dress up the kittens to see how
+      they would improve, before drowning them, but decided right away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane's kitten that was born the same day this book was is now quite
+      an old cat who knows the way of the world herself, and how things have to
+      be, for she has had one batch of kittens drowned already.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So perhaps it is not strange that my Thought Book seems so babyish and
+      foolish to me when I think of all I have gone through and the millions of
+      things I have learned, and how much better I spell than I did ten months
+      ago.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My fingers are cold through the mittens, so good-bye dear Thought Book,
+      friend of my childhood, now so far far behind me!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I will hide you in the haymow where you'll be warm and cosy all the long
+      winter and where nobody can find you again in the summer time but your
+      affectionate author,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca Rowena Randall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Fourth Chronicle. A TRAGEDY IN MILLINERY
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane Perkins's new winter dress was a blue and green Scotch plaid
+      poplin, trimmed with narrow green velvet-ribbon and steel nail-heads. She
+      had a gray jacket of thick furry cloth with large steel buttons up the
+      front, a pair of green kid gloves, and a gray felt hat with an encircling
+      band of bright green feathers. The band began in front with a bird's head
+      and ended behind with a bird's tail, and angels could have desired no more
+      beautiful toilette. That was her opinion, and it was shared to the full by
+      Rebecca.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Emma Jane, as Rebecca had once described her to Mr. Adam Ladd, was a
+      rich blacksmith's daughter, and she, Rebecca, was a little half-orphan
+      from a mortgaged farm &ldquo;up Temperance way,&rdquo; dependent upon her spinster
+      aunts for board, clothes, and schooling. Scotch plaid poplins were
+      manifestly not for her, but dark-colored woolen stuffs were, and mittens,
+      and last winter's coats and furs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And how about hats? Was there hope in store for her there? she wondered,
+      as she walked home from the Perkins house, full of admiration for Emma
+      Jane's winter outfit, and loyally trying to keep that admiration free from
+      wicked envy. Her red-winged black hat was her second best, and although it
+      was shabby she still liked it, but it would never do for church, even in
+      Aunt Miranda's strange and never-to-be-comprehended views of suitable
+      raiment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a brown felt turban in existence, if one could call it existence
+      when it had been rained on, snowed on, and hailed on for two seasons; but
+      the trimmings had at any rate perished quite off the face of the earth,
+      that was one comfort!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane had said, rather indiscreetly, that at the village milliner's at
+      Milliken's Mills there was a perfectly elegant pink breast to be had, a
+      breast that began in a perfectly elegant solferino and terminated in a
+      perfectly elegant magenta; two colors much in vogue at that time. If the
+      old brown hat was to be her portion yet another winter, would Aunt Miranda
+      conceal its deficiencies from a carping world beneath the shaded solferino
+      breast? WOULD she, that was the question?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Filled with these perplexing thoughts, Rebecca entered the brick house,
+      hung up her hood in the entry, and went into the dining-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Jane was not there, but Aunt Miranda sat by the window with her lap
+      full of sewing things, and a chair piled with pasteboard boxes by her
+      side. In one hand was the ancient, battered, brown felt turban, and in the
+      other were the orange and black porcupine 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!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Sawyer glanced up for a second with a satisfied expression and then
+      bent her eyes again upon her work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I was going to buy a hat trimming,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;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,&mdash;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?&rdquo; she asked,
+      inclining her head in a discriminating attitude and poising them awkwardly
+      on the hat with her work-stained hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How did she like them on the brown felt indeed?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will NOT wear those hateful porcupine 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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miranda Sawyer had learned a few lessons in the last two years, lessons
+      which were making her (at least on her &ldquo;good days&rdquo;) 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 breath freely and enjoy the sunshine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she said finally, after staring first at Rebecca and then at the
+      porcupine quills, as if to gain some insight into the situation, &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca wiped her eyes and laughed aloud. &ldquo;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,&mdash;cover them up quick before
+      I begin again! I'm all right! Shower's over, sun's out!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Miranda looked at her searchingly and uncomprehendingly. Rebecca's
+      state of mind came perilously near to disease, she thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you seen me buyin' any new bunnits, or your Aunt Jane?&rdquo; she asked
+      cuttingly. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh-h!&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 the plume of Henry of Navarre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca was resigned, if not greatly comforted, but she had grace enough
+      to conceal her feelings, now that she knew economy was at the root of some
+      of her aunt's decrees in matters of dress; and she managed to forget the
+      solferino breast, save in sleep, where a vision of it had a way of
+      appearing to her, dangling from the ceiling, and dazzling her so with its
+      rich color that she used to hope the milliner would sell it that she might
+      never be tempted with it when she passed the shop window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day, not long afterward, Miss Miranda borrowed Mr. Perkins's horse and
+      wagon and took Rebecca with her on a drive to Union, to see about some
+      sausage meat and head cheese. She intended to call on Mrs. Cobb, order a
+      load of pine wood from Mr. Strout on the way, and leave some rags for a
+      rug with old Mrs. Pease, so that the journey could be made as profitable
+      as possible, consistent with the loss of time and the wear and tear on her
+      second-best black dress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The red-winged black hat was forcibly removed from Rebecca's head just
+      before starting, and the nightmare turban substituted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You might as well begin to wear it first as last,&rdquo; remarked Miranda,
+      while Jane stood in the side door and sympathized secretly with Rebecca.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will!&rdquo; said Rebecca, ramming the stiff turban down on her head with a
+      vindictive grimace, and snapping the elastic under her long braids; &ldquo;but
+      it makes me think of what Mr. Robinson said when the minister told him his
+      mother-in-law would ride in the same buggy with him at his wife's
+      funeral.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't see how any speech of Mr. Robinson's, made years an' years ago,
+      can have anything to do with wearin' your turban down to Union,&rdquo; said
+      Miranda, settling the lap robe over her knees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it can; because he said: Have it that way, then, but it'll spile
+      the hull blamed trip for me!'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jane closed the door suddenly, partly because she experienced a desire to
+      smile (a desire she had not felt for years before Rebecca came to the
+      brick house to live), and partly because she had no wish to overhear what
+      her sister would say when she took in the full significance of Rebecca's
+      anecdote, which was a favorite one with Mr. Perkins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a cold blustering day with a high wind that promised to bring an
+      early fall of snow. The trees were stripped bare of leaves, the ground was
+      hard, and the wagon wheels rattled noisily over the thank-you-ma'ams.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm glad I wore my Paisley shawl over my cloak,&rdquo; said Miranda. &ldquo;Be you
+      warm enough, Rebecca? Tie that white rigolette tighter round your neck.
+      The wind fairly blows through my bones. I most wish t we'd waited till a
+      pleasanter day, for this Union road is all up hill or down, and we shan't
+      get over the ground fast, it's so rough. Don't forget, when you go into
+      Scott's, to say I want all the trimmin's when they send me the pork, for
+      mebbe I can try out a little mite o' lard. The last load o' pine's gone
+      turrible quick; I must see if &ldquo;Bijah Flagg can't get us some cut-rounds at
+      the mills, when he hauls for Squire Bean next time. Keep your mind on your
+      drivin', Rebecca, and don't look at the trees and the sky so much. It's
+      the same sky and same trees that have been here right along. Go awful slow
+      down this hill and walk the hoss over Cook's Brook bridge, for I always
+      suspicion it's goin' to break down under me, an' I shouldn't want to be
+      dropped into that fast runnin' water this cold day. It'll be froze stiff
+      by this time next week. Hadn't you better get out and lead&rdquo;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rest of the sentence was very possibly not vital, but at any rate it
+      was never completed, for in the middle of the bridge a fierce gale of wind
+      took Miss Miranda's Paisley shawl and blew it over her head. The long
+      heavy ends whirled in opposite directions and wrapped themselves tightly
+      about her wavering bonnet. Rebecca had the whip and the reins, and in
+      trying to rescue her struggling aunt could not steady her own hat, which
+      was suddenly torn from her head and tossed against the bridge rail, where
+      it trembled and flapped for an instant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My hat! Oh! Aunt Miranda, my hateful hat!&rdquo; cried Rebecca, never
+      remembering at the instant how often she had prayed that the &ldquo;fretful
+      porcupine&rdquo; might some time vanish in this violent manner, since it refused
+      to die a natural death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had already stopped the horse, so, giving her aunt's shawl one last
+      desperate twitch, she slipped out between the wagon wheels, and darted in
+      the direction of the hated object, the loss of which had dignified it with
+      a temporary value and importance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stiff brown turban rose in the air, then dropped and flew along the
+      bridge; Rebecca pursued; it danced along and stuck between two of the
+      railings; Rebecca flew after it, her long braids floating in the wind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come back! Come back! Don't leave me alone with the team. I won't have
+      it! Come back, and leave your hat!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miranda had at length extricated herself from the submerging shawl, but
+      she was so blinded by the wind, and so confused that she did not measure
+      the financial loss involved in her commands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca heard, but her spirit being in arms, she made one more mad
+      scramble for the vagrant hat, which now seemed possessed with an evil
+      spirit, for it flew back and forth, and bounded here and there, like a
+      living thing, finally distinguishing itself by blowing between the horse's
+      front and hind legs, Rebecca trying to circumvent it by going around the
+      wagon, and meeting it on the other side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was no use; as she darted from behind the wheels the wind gave the hat
+      an extra whirl, and scurrying in the opposite direction it soared above
+      the bridge rail and disappeared into the rapid water below.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get in again!&rdquo; cried Miranda, holding on her bonnet. &ldquo;You done your best
+      and it can't be helped, I only wish't I'd let you wear your black hat as
+      you wanted to; and I wish't we'd never come such a day! The shawl has
+      broke the stems of the velvet geraniums in my bonnet, and the wind has
+      blowed away my shawl pin and my back comb. I'd like to give up and turn
+      right back this minute, but I don't like to borrer Perkins's hoss again
+      this month. When we get up in the woods you can smooth your hair down and
+      tie the rigolette over your head and settle what's left of my bonnet;
+      it'll be an expensive errant, this will!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      II
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not till next morning that Rebecca's heart really began its song of
+      thanksgiving. Her Aunt Miranda announced at breakfast, that as Mrs.
+      Perkins was going to Milliken's Mills, Rebecca might go too, and buy a
+      serviceable hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mustn't pay over two dollars and a half, and you mustn't get the pink
+      bird without Mrs. Perkins says, and the milliner says, that it won't fade
+      nor moult. Don't buy a light-colored felt because you'll get sick of it in
+      two or three years same as you did the brown one. I always liked the shape
+      of the brown one, and you'll never get another trimmin' that'll wear like
+      them quills.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope not!&rdquo; thought Rebecca.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you had put your elastic under your chin, same as you used to, and not
+      worn it behind because you think it's more grown-up an' fash'onable, the
+      wind never'd a' took the hat off your head, and you wouldn't a' lost it;
+      but the mischief's done and you can go right over to Mis' Perkins now, so
+      you won't miss her nor keep her waitin'. The two dollars and a half is in
+      an envelope side o' the clock.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca swallowed the last spoonful of picked-up codfish on her plate,
+      wiped her lips, and rose from her chair happier than the seraphs in
+      Paradise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The porcupine quills had disappeared from her life, and without any fault
+      or violence on her part. She was wholly innocent and virtuous, but
+      nevertheless she was going to have a new hat with the solferino breast,
+      should the adored object prove, under rigorous examination, to be
+      practically indestructible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whene'er I take my walks abroad, How many hats I'll see; But if they're
+      trimmed with hedgehog quills They'll not belong to me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So she improvised, secretly and ecstatically, as she went towards the side
+      entry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's 'Bijah Flagg drivin' in,&rdquo; said Miss Miranda, going to the window.
+      &ldquo;Step out and see what he's got, Jane; some passel from the Squire, I
+      guess. It's a paper bag and it may be a punkin, though he wouldn't wrop up
+      a punkin, come to think of it! Shet the dinin' room door, Jane; it's
+      turrible drafty. Make haste, for the Squire's hoss never stan's still a
+      minute cept when he's goin'!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Abijah Flagg alighted and approached the side door with a grin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Guess what I've got for ye, Rebecky?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      No throb of prophetic soul warned Rebecca of her approaching doom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nodhead apples?&rdquo; she sparkled, looking as bright and rosy and
+      satin-skinned as an apple herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; guess again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A flowering geranium?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Guess again!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nuts? Oh! I can't, Bijah; I'm just going to Milliken's Mills on an
+      errand, and I'm afraid of missing Mrs. Perkins. Show me quick! Is it
+      really for me, or for Aunt Miranda?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Reely for you, I guess!&rdquo; and he opened the large brown paper bag and drew
+      from it the remains of a water-soaked hat!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They WERE remains, but there was no doubt of their nature and substance.
+      They had clearly been a hat in the past, and one could even suppose that,
+      when resuscitated, they might again assume their original form in some
+      near and happy future.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Miranda, full of curiosity, joined the group in the side entry at
+      this dramatic moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I never!&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;Where, and how under the canopy, did you
+      ever?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was working on the dam at Union Falls yesterday,&rdquo; chuckled Abijah, with
+      a pleased glance at each of the trio in turn, &ldquo;an' I seen this little
+      bunnit skippin' over the water jest as Becky does over the road. It's
+      shaped kind o' like a boat, an' gorry, ef it wa'nt sailin' jest like a
+      boat! Where hev I seen that kind of a bristlin' plume?' thinks I.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      (&ldquo;Where indeed!&rdquo; thought Rebecca stormily.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then it come to me that I'd drove that plume to school and drove it to
+      meetin' and drove it to the Fair an'drove it most everywheres on Becky. So
+      I reached out a pole an' ketched it fore it got in amongst the logs an'
+      come to any damage, an' here it is! The hat's passed in its checks, I
+      guess; looks kind as if a wet elephant had stepped on it; but the plume's
+      bout's good as new! I reely fetched the hat beck for the sake o' the
+      plume.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was real good of you, 'Bijah, an' we're all of us obliged to you,&rdquo;
+       said Miranda, as she poised the hat on one hand and turned it slowly with
+      the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I do say,&rdquo; she exclaimed, &ldquo;and I guess I've said it before, that of
+      all the wearing' plumes that ever I see, that one's the wearin'est! Seems
+      though it just wouldn't give up. Look at the way it's held Mis' Cobb's
+      dye; it's about as brown's when it went int' the water.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dyed, but not a mite dead,&rdquo; grinned Abijah, who was somewhat celebrated
+      for his puns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I declare,&rdquo; Miranda continued, &ldquo;when you think o' the fuss they make
+      about ostriches, killin' em off by hundreds for the sake o' their feathers
+      that'll string out and spoil in one hard rainstorm,&mdash;an' all the time
+      lettin' useful porcupines run round with their quills on, why I can't
+      hardly understand it, without milliners have found out jest how good they
+      do last, an' so they won't use em for trimmin'. 'Bijah's right; the hat
+      ain't no more use, Rebecca, but you can buy you another this mornin'&mdash;any
+      color or shape you fancy&mdash;an' have Miss Morton sew these brown quills
+      on to it with some kind of a buckle or a bow, jest to hide the roots. Then
+      you'll be fixed for another season, thanks to 'Bijah.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Uncle Jerry and Aunt Sarah Cobb were made acquainted before very long with
+      the part that destiny, or Abijah Flagg, had played in Rebecca's affairs,
+      for, accompanied by the teacher, she walked to the old stage driver's that
+      same afternoon. Taking off her new hat with the venerable trimming, she
+      laid it somewhat ostentatiously upside down on the kitchen table and left
+      the room, dimpling a little more than usual.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Uncle Jerry rose from his seat, and, crossing the room, looked curiously
+      into the hat and found that a circular paper lining was neatly pinned in
+      the crown, and that it bore these lines, which were read aloud with great
+      effect by Miss Dearborn, and with her approval were copied in the Thought
+      Book for the benefit of posterity:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was the bristling porcupine, As he stood on his native heath, He said,
+      'I'll pluck me some immortelles And make me up a wreath. For tho' I may
+      not live myself To more than a hundred and ten, My quills will last till
+      crack of doom, And maybe after then. They can be colored blue or green Or
+      orange, brown, or red, But often as they may be dyed They never will be
+      dead.' And so the bristling porcupine As he stood on his native heath,
+      Said, I think I'll pluck me some immmortelles And make me up a wreath.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;R.R.R.&rdquo; <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Fifth Chronicle. THE SAVING OF THE COLORS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even when Rebecca had left school, having attained the great age of
+      seventeen and therefore able to look back over a past incredibly long and
+      full, she still reckoned time not by years, but by certain important
+      occurrences.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was the year her father died; the year she left Sunnybrook Farm to
+      come to her aunts in Riverboro; the year Sister Hannah became engaged; the
+      year little Mira died; the year Abijah Flagg ceased to be Squire Bean's
+      chore-boy, and astounded Riverboro by departing for Limerick Academy in
+      search of an education; and finally the year of her graduation, which, to
+      the mind of seventeen, seems rather the culmination than the beginning of
+      existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Between these epoch-making events certain other happenings stood out in
+      bold relief against the gray of dull daily life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was the day she first met her friend of friends, &ldquo;Mr. Aladdin,&rdquo; and
+      the later, even more radiant one when he gave her the coral necklace.
+      There was the day the Simpson family moved away from Riverboro under a
+      cloud, and she kissed Clara Belle fervently at the cross-roads, telling
+      her that she would always be faithful. There was the visit of the Syrian
+      missionaries to the brick house. That was a bright, romantic memory, as
+      strange and brilliant as the wonderful little birds' wings and breasts
+      that the strangers brought from the Far East. She remembered the moment
+      they asked her to choose some for herself, and the rapture with which she
+      stroked the beautiful things as they lay on the black haircloth sofa. Then
+      there was the coming of the new minister, for though many were tried only
+      one was chosen; and finally there was the flag-raising, a festivity that
+      thrilled Riverboro and Edgewood society from centre to circumference, a
+      festivity that took place just before she entered the Female Seminary at
+      Wareham and said good-by to kind Miss Dearborn and the village school.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There must have been other flag-raisings in history,&mdash;even the
+      persons most interested in this particular one would grudgingly have
+      allowed that much,&mdash;but it would have seemed to them improbable that
+      any such flag-raising as theirs, either in magnitude of conception or
+      brilliancy of actual performance, could twice glorify the same century. Of
+      some pageants it is tacitly admitted that there can be no duplicates, and
+      the flag-raising at Riverboro Centre was one of these; so that it is small
+      wonder if Rebecca chose it as one of the important dates in her personal
+      almanac.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The new minister's wife was the being, under Providence, who had conceived
+      the germinal idea of the flag.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this time the parish had almost settled down to the trembling belief
+      that they were united on a pastor. In the earlier time a minister was
+      chosen for life, and if he had faults, which was a probably enough
+      contingency, and if his congregation had any, which is within the bounds
+      of possibility, each bore with the other (not quite without friction), as
+      old-fashioned husbands and wives once did, before the easy way out of the
+      difficulty was discovered, or at least before it was popularized.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The faithful old parson had died after thirty years' preaching, and
+      perhaps the newer methods had begun to creep in, for it seemed impossible
+      to suit the two communities most interested in the choice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Rev. Mr. Davis, for example, was a spirited preacher, but persisted in
+      keeping two horses in the parsonage stable, and in exchanging them
+      whenever he could get faster ones. As a parochial visitor he was
+      incomparable, dashing from house to house with such speed that he could
+      cover the parish in a single afternoon. This sporting tendency, which
+      would never have been remarked in a British parson, was frowned upon in a
+      New England village, and Deacon Milliken told Mr. Davis, when giving him
+      what he alluded to as his &ldquo;walking papers,&rdquo; that they didn't want the
+      Edgewood church run by hoss power!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next candidate pleased Edgewood, where morning preaching was held, but
+      the other parish, which had afternoon service, declined to accept him
+      because he wore a wig&mdash;an ill-matched, crookedly applied wig.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Number three was eloquent but given to gesticulation, and Mrs. Jere
+      Burbank, the president of the Dorcas Society, who sat in a front pew, said
+      she couldn't bear to see a preacher scramble round the pulpit hot Sundays.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Number four, a genial, handsome man, gifted in prayer, was found to be a
+      Democrat. The congregation was overwhelmingly Republican in its politics,
+      and perceived something ludicrous, if not positively blasphemous, in a
+      Democrat preaching the gospel. (&ldquo;Ananias and Beelzebub'll be candidatin'
+      here, first thing we know!&rdquo; exclaimed the outraged Republican nominee for
+      district attorney.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Number five had a feeble-minded child, which the hiring committee
+      prophesied, would always be standing in the parsonage front yard, making
+      talk for the other denominations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Number six was the Rev. Judson Baxter, the present incumbent; and he was
+      voted to be as near perfection as a minister can be in this finite world.
+      His young wife had a small income of her own, a distinct and unusual
+      advantage, and the subscription committee hoped that they might not be
+      eternally driving over the country to get somebody's fifty cents that had
+      been over-due for eight months, but might take their onerous duties a
+      little more easily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It does seem as if our ministers were the poorest lot!&rdquo; complained Mrs.
+      Robinson. &ldquo;If their salary is two months behindhand they begin to be
+      nervous! Seems as though they might lay up a little before they come here,
+      and not live from hand to mouth so! The Baxters seem quite different, and
+      I only hope they won't get wasteful and run into debt. They say she keeps
+      the parlor blinds open bout half the time, and the room is lit up so often
+      evenin's that the neighbors think her and Mr. Baxter must set in there. It
+      don't seem hardly as if it could be so, but Mrs. Buzzell says tis, and she
+      says we might as well say good-by to the parlor carpet, which is church
+      property, for the Baxters are living all over it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This criticism was the only discordant note in the chorus of praise, and
+      the people gradually grew accustomed to the open blinds and the overused
+      parlor carpet, which was just completing its twenty-fifth year of honest
+      service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Baxter communicated her patriotic idea of a new flag to the Dorcas
+      Society, proposing that the women should cut and make it themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It may not be quite as good as those manufactured in the large cities,&rdquo;
+       she said, &ldquo;but we shall be proud to see our home-made flag flying in the
+      breeze, and it will mean all the more to the young voters growing up, to
+      remember that their mothers made it with their own hands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How would it do to let some of the girls help?&rdquo; modestly asked Miss
+      Dearborn, the Riverboro teacher. &ldquo;We might choose the best sewers and let
+      them put in at least a few stitches, so that they can feel they have a
+      share in it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just the thing!&rdquo; exclaimed Mrs. Baxter. &ldquo;We can cut the stripes and sew
+      them together, and after we have basted on the white stars the girls can
+      apply them to the blue ground. We must have it ready for the campaign
+      rally, and we couldn't christen it at a better time than in this
+      presidential year.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      II
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this way the great enterprise was started, and day by day the
+      preparations went forward in the two villages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boys, as future voters and fighters, demanded an active share in the
+      proceedings, and were organized by Squire Bean into a fife and drum corps,
+      so that by day and night martial but most inharmonious music woke the
+      echoes, and deafened mothers felt their patriotism oozing out at the soles
+      of their shoes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dick Carter was made captain, for his grandfather had a gold medal given
+      him by Queen Victoria for rescuing three hundred and twenty-six passengers
+      from a sinking British vessel. Riverboro thought it high time to pay some
+      graceful tribute to Great Britain in return for her handsome conduct to
+      Captain Nahum Carter, and human imagination could contrive nothing more
+      impressive than a vicarious share in the flag raising.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Living Perkins tried to be happy in the ranks, for he was offered no
+      official position, principally, Mrs. Smellie observed, because &ldquo;his
+      father's war record wa'nt clean.&rdquo; &ldquo;Oh, yes! Jim Perkins went to the war,&rdquo;
+       she continued. &ldquo;He hid out behind the hencoop when they was draftin', but
+      they found him and took him along. He got into one battle, too, somehow or
+      nother, but he run away from it. He was allers cautious, Jim was; if he
+      ever see trouble of any kind comin' towards him, he was out o' sight fore
+      it got a chance to light. He said eight dollars a month, without bounty,
+      wouldn't pay HIM to stop bullets for. He wouldn't fight a skeeter, Jim
+      wouldn't, but land! we ain't to war all the time, and he's a good neighbor
+      and a good blacksmith.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Dearborn was to be Columbia and the older girls of the two schools
+      were to be the States. Such trade in muslins and red, white, and blue
+      ribbons had never been known since &ldquo;Watson kep' store,&rdquo; and the number of
+      brief white petticoats hanging out to bleach would have caused the passing
+      stranger to imagine Riverboro a continual dancing school.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Juvenile virtue, both male and female, reached an almost impossible
+      height, for parents had only to lift a finger and say, &ldquo;you shan't go to
+      the flag raising!&rdquo; and the refractory spirit at once armed itself for new
+      struggles toward the perfect life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Jeremiah Cobb had consented to impersonate Uncle Sam, and was to drive
+      Columbia and the States to the &ldquo;raising&rdquo; on the top of his own stage.
+      Meantime the boys were drilling, the ladies were cutting and basting and
+      stitching, and the girls were sewing on stars; for the starry part of the
+      spangled banner was to remain with each of them in turn until she had
+      performed her share of the work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was felt by one and all a fine and splendid service indeed to help in
+      the making of the flag, and if Rebecca was proud to be of the chosen ones,
+      so was her Aunt Jane Sawyer, who had taught her all her delicate stitches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On a long-looked-for afternoon in August the minister's wife drove up to
+      the brick house door, and handed out the great piece of bunting to
+      Rebecca, who received it in her arms with as much solemnity as if it had
+      been a child awaiting baptismal rites.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm so glad!&rdquo; she sighed happily. &ldquo;I thought it would never come my
+      turn!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You should have had it a week ago, but Huldah Meserve upset the ink
+      bottle over her star, and we had to baste on another one. You are the
+      last, though, and then we shall sew the stars and stripes together, and
+      Seth Strout will get the top ready for hanging. Just think, it won't be
+      many days before you children will be pulling the rope with all your
+      strength, the band will be playing, the men will be cheering, and the new
+      flag will go higher and higher, till the red, white, and blue shows
+      against the sky!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca's eyes fairly blazed. &ldquo;Shall I fell on' my star, or buttonhole
+      it?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look at all the others and make the most beautiful stitches you can,
+      that's all. It is your star, you know, and you can even imagine it is your
+      state, and try and have it the best of all. If everybody else is trying to
+      do the same thing with her state, that will make a great country, won't
+      it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca's eyes spoke glad confirmation of the idea. &ldquo;My star, my state!&rdquo;
+       she repeated joyously. &ldquo;Oh, Mrs. Baxter, I'll make such fine stitches
+      you'll think the white grew out of the blue!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The new minister's wife looked pleased to see her spark kindle a flame in
+      the young heart. &ldquo;You can sew so much of yourself into your star,&rdquo; she
+      went on in the glad voice that made her so winsome, &ldquo;that when you are an
+      old lady you can put on your specs and find it among all the others.
+      Good-by! Come up to the parsonage Saturday afternoon; Mr. Baxter wants to
+      see you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Judson, help that dear little genius of a Rebecca all you can!&rdquo; she said
+      that night, when they were cosily talking in their parlor and living &ldquo;all
+      over&rdquo; the parish carpet. &ldquo;I don't know what she may, or may not, come to,
+      some day; I only wish she were ours! If you could have seen her clasp the
+      flag tight in her arms and put her cheek against it, and watched the tears
+      of feeling start in her eyes when I told her that her star was her state!
+      I kept whispering to myself, Covet not thy neighbor's child!'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Daily at four o'clock Rebecca scrubbed her hands almost to the bone,
+      brushed her hair, and otherwise prepared herself in body, mind, and spirit
+      for the consecrated labor of sewing on her star. All the time that her
+      needle cautiously, conscientiously formed the tiny stitches she was making
+      rhymes &ldquo;in her head,&rdquo; her favorite achievement being this:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your star, my star, all our stars together, They make the dear old banner
+      proud To float in the bright fall weather.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was much discussion as to which of the girls should impersonate the
+      State of Maine, for that was felt to be the highest honor in the gift of
+      the committee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Alice Robinson was the prettiest child in the village, but she was very
+      shy and by no means a general favorite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Minnie Smellie possessed the handsomest dress and a pair of white slippers
+      and open-work stockings that nearly carried the day. Still, as Miss Delia
+      Weeks well said, she was so stupid that if she should suck her thumb in
+      the very middle of the exercises nobody'd be a dite surprised!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Huldah Meserve was next voted upon, and the fact that if she were not
+      chosen her father might withdraw his subscription to the brass band fund
+      was a matter for grave consideration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I kind o' hate to have such a giggler for the State of Maine; let her be
+      the Goddess of Liberty,&rdquo; proposed Mrs. Burbank, whose patriotism was more
+      local than national.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How would Rebecca Randall do for Maine, and let her speak some of her
+      verses?&rdquo; suggested the new minister's wife, who, could she have had her
+      way, would have given all the prominent parts to Rebecca, from Uncle Sam
+      down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So, beauty, fashion, and wealth having been tried and found wanting, the
+      committee discussed the claims of talent, and it transpired that to the
+      awe-stricken Rebecca fell the chief plum in the pudding. It was a tribute
+      to her gifts that there was no jealousy or envy among the other girls;
+      they readily conceded her special fitness for the role.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her life had not been pressed down full to the brim of pleasures, and she
+      had a sort of distrust of joy in the bud. Not until she saw it in full
+      radiance of bloom did she dare embrace it. She had never read any verse
+      but Byron, Felicia Hemans, bits of &ldquo;Paradise Lost,&rdquo; and the selections in
+      the school readers, but she would have agreed heartily with the poet who
+      said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not by appointment do we meet delight And joy; they heed not our
+      expectancy; But round some corner in the streets of life They on a sudden
+      clasp us with a smile.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For many nights before the raising, when she went to her bed she said to
+      herself, after she had finished her prayers: &ldquo;It can't be true that I'm
+      chosen for the State of Maine! It just CAN'T be true! Nobody could be good
+      ENOUGH, but oh, I'll try to be as good as I can! To be going to Wareham
+      Seminary next week and to be the State of Maine too! Oh! I must pray HARD
+      to God to keep me meek and humble!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      III
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The flag was to be raised on a Tuesday, and on the previous Sunday it
+      became known to the children that Clara Belle Simpson was coming back from
+      Acreville, coming to live with Mrs. Fogg and take care of the baby, called
+      by the neighborhood boys &ldquo;the Fogg horn,&rdquo; on account of his excellent
+      voice production.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Clara Belle was one of Miss Dearborn's original flock, and if she were
+      left wholly out of the festivities she would be the only girl of suitable
+      age to be thus slighted; it seemed clear to the juvenile mind, therefore,
+      that neither she nor her descendants would ever recover from such a blow.
+      But, under all the circumstances, would she be allowed to join in the
+      procession? Even Rebecca, the optimistic, feared not, and the committee
+      confirmed her fears by saying that Abner Simpson's daughter certainly
+      could not take any prominent part in the ceremony, but they hoped that
+      Mrs. Fogg would allow her to witness it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Abner Simpson, urged by the town authorities, took his wife and seven
+      children away from Riverboro to Acreville, just over the border in the
+      next county, Riverboro went to bed leaving its barn and shed doors
+      unfastened, and drew long breaths of gratitude to Providence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of most winning disposition and genial manners, Mr. Simpson had not that
+      instinctive comprehension of property rights which renders a man a
+      valuable citizen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Squire Bean was his nearest neighbor, and he conceived the novel idea of
+      paying Simpson five dollars a year not to steal from him, a method
+      occasionally used in the Highlands in the early days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bargain was struck, and adhered to religiously for a twelve-month, but
+      on the second of January Mr. Simpson announced the verbal contract as
+      formally broken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't know what I was doin' when I made it, Squire,&rdquo; he urged. &ldquo;In the
+      first place, it's a slur on my reputation and an injury to my
+      self-respect. Secondly, it's a nervous strain on me; and thirdly, five
+      dollars don't pay me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Squire Bean was so struck with the unique and convincing nature of these
+      arguments that he could scarcely restrain his admiration, and he confessed
+      to himself afterward, that unless Simpson's mental attitude could be
+      changed he was perhaps a fitter subject for medical science than the state
+      prison.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abner was a most unusual thief, and conducted his operations with a tact
+      and neighborly consideration none too common in the profession. He would
+      never steal a man's scythe in haying-time, nor his fur lap-robe in the
+      coldest of the winter. The picking of a lock offered no attractions to
+      him; &ldquo;he wa'n't no burglar,&rdquo; he would have scornfully asserted. A strange
+      horse and wagon hitched by the roadside was the most flagrant of his
+      thefts; but it was the small things&mdash;the hatchet or axe on the
+      chopping-block, the tin pans sunning at the side door, a stray garment
+      bleaching on the grass, a hoe, rake, shovel, or a bag of early potatoes,
+      that tempted him most sorely; and these appealed to him not so much for
+      their intrinsic value as because they were so excellently adapted to
+      swapping. The swapping was really the enjoyable part of the procedure, the
+      theft was only a sad but necessary preliminary; for if Abner himself had
+      been a man of sufficient property to carry on his business operations
+      independently, it is doubtful if he would have helped himself so freely to
+      his neighbor's goods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Riverboro regretted the loss of Mrs. Simpson, who was useful in scrubbing,
+      cleaning, and washing, and was thought to exercise some influence over her
+      predatory spouse. There was a story of their early married life, when they
+      had a farm; a story to the effect that Mrs. Simpson always rode on every
+      load of hay that her husband took to Milltown, with the view of keeping
+      him sober through the day. After he turned out of the country road and
+      approached the metropolis, it was said that he used to bury the docile
+      lady in the load. He would then drive on to the scales, have the weight of
+      the hay entered in the buyer's book, take his horses to the stable for
+      feed and water, and when a favorable opportunity offered he would assist
+      the hot and panting Mrs. Simpson out of the side or back of the rack, and
+      gallantly brush the straw from her person. For this reason it was always
+      asserted that Abner Simpson sold his wife every time he went to Milltown,
+      but the story was never fully substantiated, and at all events it was the
+      only suspected blot on meek Mrs. Simpson's personal reputation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for the Simpson children, they were missed chiefly as familiar figures
+      by the roadside; but Rebecca honestly loved Clara Belle, notwithstanding
+      her Aunt Miranda's opposition to the intimacy. Rebecca's &ldquo;taste for low
+      company&rdquo; was a source of continual anxiety to her aunt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anything that's human flesh is good enough for her!&rdquo; Miranda groaned to
+      Jane. &ldquo;She'll ride with the rag-sack-and-bottle peddler just as quick as
+      she would with the minister; she always sets beside the St. Vitus' dance
+      young one at Sabbath school; and she's forever riggin' and onriggin' that
+      dirty Simpson baby! She reminds me of a puppy that'll always go to
+      everybody that'll have him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was thought very creditable to Mrs. Fogg that she sent for Clara Belle
+      to live with her and go to school part of the year.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She'll be useful&rdquo; said Mrs. Fogg, &ldquo;and she'll be out of her father's way,
+      and so keep honest; though she's no awful hombly I've no fears for her. A
+      girl with her red hair, freckles, and cross-eyes can't fall into no kind
+      of sin, I don't believe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Fogg requested that Clara Belle should be started on her journey from
+      Acreville by train and come the rest of the way by stage, and she was
+      disturbed to receive word on Sunday that Mr. Simpson had borrowed a &ldquo;good
+      roader&rdquo; from a new acquaintance, and would himself drive the girl from
+      Acreville to Riverboro, a distance of thirty-five miles. That he would
+      arrive in their vicinity on the very night before the flag-raising was
+      thought by Riverboro to be a public misfortune, and several residents
+      hastily determined to deny themselves a sight of the festivities and
+      remain watchfully on their own premises.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On Monday afternoon the children were rehearsing their songs at the
+      meeting-house. As Rebecca came out on the broad wooden steps she watched
+      Mrs. Peter Meserve's buggy out of sight, for in front, wrapped in a cotton
+      sheet, lay the previous flag. After a few chattering good-bys and weather
+      prophecies with the other girls, she started on her homeward walk,
+      dropping in at the parsonage to read her verses to the minister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He welcomed her gladly as she removed her white cotton gloves (hastily
+      slipped on outside the door, for ceremony) and pushed back the funny hat
+      with the yellow and black porcupine quills&mdash;the hat with which she
+      made her first appearance in Riverboro society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've heard the beginning, Mr. Baxter; now will you please tell me if
+      you like the last verse?&rdquo; she asked, taking out her paper. &ldquo;I've only read
+      it to Alice Robinson, and I think perhaps she can never be a poet, though
+      she's a splendid writer. Last year when she was twelve she wrote a
+      birthday poem to herself, and she made natal' rhyme with Milton,.' which,
+      of course, it wouldn't. I remember every verse ended:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     'This is my day so natal
+     And I will follow Milton.'
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Another one of hers was written just because she couldn't help it, she
+      said. This was it:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     'Let me to the hills away,
+     Give me pen and paper;
+     I'll write until the earth will sway
+     The story of my Maker.'&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      The minister could scarcely refrain from smiling, but he controlled
+      himself that he might lose none of Rebecca's quaint observations. When she
+      was perfectly at ease, unwatched and uncriticised, she was a marvelous
+      companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The name of the poem is going to be My Star,'&rdquo; she continued, &ldquo;and Mrs.
+      Baxter gave me all the ideas, but somehow there's a kind of magicness when
+      they get into poetry, don't you think so?&rdquo; (Rebecca always talked to grown
+      people as if she were their age, or, a more subtle and truer distinction,
+      as if they were hers.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It has often been so remarked, in different words,&rdquo; agreed the minister.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+&ldquo;Mrs. Baxter said that each star was a state, and if each state did its
+best we should have a splendid country. Then once she said that we ought
+to be glad the war is over and the States are all at peace together; and
+I thought Columbia must be glad, too, for Miss Dearborn says she's
+the mother of all the States. So I'm going to have it end like this: I
+didn't write it, I just sewed it while I was working on my star:
+
+     For it's your star, my star, all the stars together,
+     That make our country's flag so proud
+     To float in the bright fall weather.
+     Northern stars, Southern stars, stars of the East and West,
+     Side by side they lie at peace
+     On the dear flag's mother-breast.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Oh! many are the poets that are sown by nature,'&rdquo; thought the minister,
+      quoting Wordsworth to himself. &ldquo;And I wonder what becomes of them! That's
+      a pretty idea, little Rebecca, and I don't know whether you or my wife
+      ought to have the more praise. What made you think of the stars lying on
+      the flag's mother-breast'? Where did you get that word?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why&rdquo; (and the young poet looked rather puzzled), &ldquo;that's the way it is;
+      the flag is the whole country&mdash;the mother&mdash;and the stars are the
+      states. The stars had to lie somewhere: 'LAP' nor 'ARMS' wouldn't sound
+      well with West,' so, of course, I said 'BREAST,'&rdquo; Rebecca answered, with
+      some surprise at the question; and the minister put his hand under her
+      chin and kissed her softly on the forehead when he said good-by at the
+      door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IV
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca walked rapidly along in the gathering twilight, thinking of the
+      eventful morrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As she approached the turning on the left called the old Milltown road,
+      she saw a white horse and wagon, driven by a man with a rakish, flapping,
+      Panama hat, come rapidly around the turn and disappear over the long hills
+      leading down to the falls. There was no mistaking him; there never was
+      another Abner Simpson, with his lean height, his bushy reddish hair, the
+      gay cock of his hat, and the long piratical, upturned mustaches, which the
+      boys used to say were used as hat-racks by the Simpson children at night..
+      The old Milltown road ran past Mrs. Fogg's house, so he must have left
+      Clara Belle there, and Rebecca's heart glowed to think that her poor
+      little friend need not miss the raising.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She began to run now, fearful of being late for supper, and covered the
+      ground to the falls in a brief time. As she crossed the bridge she again
+      saw Abner Simpson's team, drawn up at the watering trough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Coming a little nearer, with the view of inquiring for the family, her
+      quick eye caught sight of something unexpected. A gust of wind blew up a
+      corner of a linen lap-robe in the back of the wagon, and underneath it she
+      distinctly saw the white-sheeted bundle that held the flag; the bundle
+      with a tiny, tiny spot of red bunting peeping out at one corner. It is
+      true she had eaten, slept, dreamed red, white, and blue for weeks, but
+      there was no mistaking the evidence of her senses; the idolized flag,
+      longed for, worked for, sewed for, that flag was in the back of Abner
+      Simpson's wagon, and if so, what would become of the raising?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Acting on blind impulse, she ran toward the watering-trough, calling out
+      in her clear treble: &ldquo;Mr. Simpson! Oh, Mr. Simpson, will you let me ride a
+      piece with you and hear all about Clara Belle? I'm going part way over to
+      the Centre on an errand.&rdquo; (So she was; a most important errand,&mdash;to
+      recover the flag of her country at present in the hands of the foe!)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Simpson turned round in his seat and cried heartily, &ldquo;Certain sure I
+      will!&rdquo; for he liked the fair sex, young and old, and Rebecca had always
+      been a prime favorite with him. &ldquo;Climb right in! How's everybody? Glad to
+      see ye! The folks talk bout ye from sun-up to sun-down, and Clara Belle
+      can't hardly wait for a sight of ye!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca scrambled up, trembling and pale with excitement. She did not in
+      the least know what was going to happen, but she was sure that the flag,
+      when in the enemy's country, must be at least a little safer with the
+      State of Maine sitting on top of it!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Simpson began a long monologue about Acreville, the house he lived in,
+      the pond in front of it, Mrs. Simpson's health, and various items of news
+      about the children, varied by reports of his personal misfortunes. He put
+      no questions, and asked no replies, so this gave the inexperienced soldier
+      a few seconds to plan a campaign. There were three houses to pass; the
+      Browns' at the corner, the Millikens', and the Robinsons' on the brow of
+      the hill. If Mr. Robinson were in the front yard she might tell Mr.
+      Simpson she wanted to call there and ask Mr. Robinson to hold the horse's
+      head while she got out of the wagon. Then she might fly to the back before
+      Mr. Simpson could realize the situation, and dragging out the precious
+      bundle, sit on it hard, while Mr. Robinson settled the matter of ownership
+      with Mr. Simpson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was feasible, but it meant a quarrel between the two men, who held an
+      ancient grudge against each other, and Mr. Simpson was a valiant fighter
+      as the various sheriffs who had attempted to arrest him could cordially
+      testify. It also meant that everybody in the village would hear of the
+      incident and poor Clara Belle be branded again as the child of a thief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another idea danced into her excited brain; such a clever one she could
+      hardly believe it hers. She might call Mr. Robinson to the wagon, and when
+      he came close to the wheels she might say, &ldquo;all of a sudden&rdquo;: &ldquo;Please take
+      the flag out of the back of the wagon, Mr. Robinson. We have brought it
+      here for you to keep overnight.&rdquo; Mr. Simpson might be so surprised that he
+      would give up his prize rather than be suspected of stealing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But as they neared the Robinsons' house there was not a sign of life to be
+      seen; so the last plan, ingenious though it was, was perforce abandoned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The road now lay between thick pine woods with no dwelling in sight. It
+      was growing dusk and Rebecca was driving along the lonely way with a
+      person who was generally called Slippery Simpson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not a thought of fear crossed her mind, save the fear of bungling in her
+      diplomacy, and so losing the flag. She knew Mr. Simpson well, and a
+      pleasanter man was seldom to be met. She recalled an afternoon when he
+      came home and surprised the whole school playing the Revolutionary War in
+      his helter-skelter dooryard, and the way in which he had joined the
+      British forces and impersonated General Burgoyne had greatly endeared him
+      to her. The only difficulty was to find proper words for her delicate
+      mission, for, of course, if Mr. Simpson's anger were aroused, he would
+      politely push her out of the wagon and drive away with the flag. Perhaps
+      if she led the conversation in the right direction an opportunity would
+      present itself. She well remembered how Emma Jane Perkins had failed to
+      convert Jacob Moody, simply because she failed to &ldquo;lead up&rdquo; to the
+      delicate question of his manner of life. Clearing her throat nervously,
+      she began: &ldquo;Is it likely to be fair tomorrow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Guess so; clear as a bell. What's on foot; a picnic?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; we're to have a grand flag-raising!&rdquo; (&ldquo;That is,&rdquo; she thought, &ldquo;if we
+      have any flag to raise!&rdquo;)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That so? Where?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The three villages are to club together and have a rally, and raise the
+      flag at the Centre. There'll be a brass band, and speakers, and the Mayor
+      of Portland, and the man that will be governor if he's elected, and a
+      dinner in the Grange Hall, and we girls are chosen to raise the flag.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to know! That'll be grand, won't it?&rdquo; (Still not a sign of
+      consciousness on the part of Abner.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope Mrs. Fogg will take Clara Belle, for it will be splendid to look
+      at! Mr. Cobb is going to be Uncle Sam and drive us on the stage. Miss
+      Dearborn&mdash;Clara Belle's old teacher, you know&mdash;is going to be
+      Columbia; the girls will be the States of the Union, and oh, Mr. Simpson,
+      I am the one to be the State of Maine!&rdquo; (This was not altogether to the
+      point, but a piece of information impossible to conceal.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Simpson flourished the whipstock and gave a loud, hearty laugh. Then
+      he turned in his seat and regarded Rebecca curiously. &ldquo;You're kind of
+      small, hain't ye, for so big a state as this one?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Any of us would be too small,&rdquo; replied Rebecca with dignity, &ldquo;but the
+      committee asked me, and I am going to try hard to do well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tragic thought that there might be no occasion for anybody to do
+      anything, well or ill, suddenly overcame her here, and putting her hand on
+      Mr. Simpson's sleeve, she attacked the subject practically and
+      courageously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Mr. Simpson, dear Mr. Simpson, it's such a mortifying subject I can't
+      bear to say anything about it, but please give us back our flag! Don't,
+      DON'T take it over to Acreville, Mr. Simpson! We've worked so long to make
+      it, and it was so hard getting the money for the bunting! Wait a minute,
+      please; don't be angry, and don't say no just yet, till I explain more.
+      It'll be so dreadful for everybody to get there tomorrow morning and find
+      no flag to raise, and the band and the mayor all disappointed, and the
+      children crying, with their muslin dresses all bought for nothing! O dear
+      Mr. Simpson, please don't take our flag away from us!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The apparently astonished Abner pulled his mustaches and exclaimed: &ldquo;But I
+      don't know what you're drivin' at! Who's got yer flag? I hain't!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Could duplicity, deceit, and infamy go any further, Rebecca wondered, and
+      her soul filling with righteous wrath, she cast discretion to the winds
+      and spoke a little more plainly, bending her great swimming eyes on the
+      now embarrassed Abner, who looked like an angle-worm, wriggling on a pin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Simpson, how can you say that, when I saw the flag in the back of
+      your wagon myself, when you stopped to water the horse? It's wicked of you
+      to take it, and I cannot bear it!&rdquo; (Her voice broke now, for a doubt of
+      Mr. Simpson's yielding suddenly darkened her mind.) &ldquo;If you keep it,
+      you'll have to keep me, for I won't be parted from it! I can't fight like
+      the boys, but I can pinch and scratch, and I WILL scratch, just like a
+      panther&mdash;I'll lie right down on my star and not move, if I starve to
+      death!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here, hold your hosses n' don't cry till you git something to cry
+      for!&rdquo; grumbled the outraged Abner, to whom a clue had just come; and
+      leaning over the wagon-back he caught hold of a corner of white sheet and
+      dragged up the bundle, scooping off Rebecca's hat in the process, and
+      almost burying her in bunting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She caught the treasure passionately to her heart and stifled her sobs in
+      it, while Abner exclaimed: &ldquo;I swan to man, if that hain't a flag! Well, in
+      that case you're good n' welcome to it! Land! I seen that bundle lyin' in
+      the middle o' the road and I says to myself, that's somebody's washin' and
+      I'd better pick it up and leave it at the post-office to be claimed; n'
+      all the time it was a flag!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was a Simpsonian version of the matter, the fact being that a
+      white-covered bundle lying on the Meserves' front steps had attracted his
+      practiced eye, and slipping in at the open gate he had swiftly and deftly
+      removed it to his wagon on general principles; thinking if it were clean
+      clothes it would be extremely useful, and in any event there was no good
+      in passing by something flung into your very arms, so to speak. He had had
+      no leisure to examine the bundle, and indeed took little interest in it.
+      Probably he stole it simply from force of habit, and because there was
+      nothing else in sight to steal, everybody's premises being preternaturally
+      tidy and empty, almost as if his visit had been expected!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca was a practical child, and it seemed to her almost impossible that
+      so heavy a bundle should fall out of Mrs. Meserve's buggy and not be
+      noticed; but she hoped that Mr. Simpson was telling the truth, and she was
+      too glad and grateful to doubt anyone at the moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, thank you ever so much, Mr. Simpson. You're the nicest,
+      kindest, politest man I ever knew, and the girls will be so pleased you
+      gave us back the flag, and so will the Dorcas Society; they'll be sure to
+      write you a letter of thanks; they always do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell em not to bother bout any thanks,&rdquo; said Simpson, beaming virtuously.
+      &ldquo;But land! I'm glad twas me that happened to see that bundle in the road
+      and take the trouble to pick it up.&rdquo; (&ldquo;Jest to think of it's bein' a
+      flag!&rdquo; he thought; &ldquo;if ever there was a pesky, wuthless thing to trade
+      off, twould be a great, gormin' flag like that!&rdquo;)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can I get out now, please?&rdquo; asked Rebecca. &ldquo;I want to go back, for Mrs.
+      Meserve will be dreadfully nervous when she finds out she dropped the
+      flag, and she has heart trouble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, you don't,&rdquo; objected Mr. Simpson gallantly, turning the horse. &ldquo;Do
+      you think I'd let a little creeter like you lug that great heavy bundle? I
+      hain't got time to go back to Meserve's, but I'll take you to the corner
+      and dump you there, flag n' all, and you can get some o' the men-folks to
+      carry it the rest o' the way. You'll wear it out, huggin' it so!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I helped make it and I adore it!&rdquo; said Rebecca, who was in a high-pitched
+      and grandiloquent mood. &ldquo;Why don't YOU like it? It's your country's flag.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Simpson smiled an indulgent smile and looked a trifle bored at these
+      frequent appeals to his extremely rusty higher feelings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don' know's I've got any partic'lar int'rest in the country,&rdquo; he
+      remarked languidly. &ldquo;I know I don't owe nothin' to it, nor own nothin' in
+      it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You own a star on the flag, same as everybody,&rdquo; argued Rebecca, who had
+      been feeding on patriotism for a month; &ldquo;and you own a state, too, like
+      all of us!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Land! I wish't I did! or even a quarter section!&rdquo; sighed Mr. Simpson,
+      feeling somehow a little more poverty-stricken and discouraged than usual.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they approached the corner and the watering-trough where four
+      cross-roads met, the whole neighborhood seemed to be in evidence, and Mr.
+      Simpson suddenly regretted his chivalrous escort of Rebecca; especially
+      when, as he neared the group, an excited lady, wringing her hands, turned
+      out to be Mrs. Peter Meserve, accompanied by Huldah, the Browns, Mrs.
+      Milliken, Abijah Flagg, and Miss Dearborn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know anything about the new flag, Rebecca?&rdquo; shrieked Mrs. Meserve,
+      too agitated, at the moment, to notice the child's companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's right here in my lap, all safe,&rdquo; responded Rebecca joyously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You careless, meddlesome young one, to take it off my steps where I left
+      it just long enough to go round to the back and hunt up my door-key!
+      You've given me a fit of sickness with my weak heart, and what business
+      was it of yours? I believe you think you OWN the flag! Hand it over to me
+      this minute!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca was climbing down during this torrent of language, but as she
+      turned she flashed one look of knowledge at the false Simpson, a look that
+      went through him from head to foot, as if it were carried by electricity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had not deceived her after all, owing to the angry chatter of Mrs.
+      Meserve. He had been handcuffed twice in his life, but no sheriff had ever
+      discomfited him so thoroughly as this child. Fury mounted to his brain,
+      and as soon as she was safely out from between the wheels he stood up in
+      the wagon and flung the flag out in the road in the midst of the excited
+      group.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take it, you pious, passimonious, cheese-parin', hair-splittin',
+      back-bitin', flag-raisin' crew!&rdquo; he roared. &ldquo;Rebecca never took the flag;
+      I found it in the road, I say!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You never, no such a thing!&rdquo; exclaimed Mrs. Meserve. &ldquo;You found it on the
+      doorsteps in my garden!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mebbe twas your garden, but it was so chock full o' weeks I THOUGHT twas
+      the road,&rdquo; retorted Abner. &ldquo;I vow I wouldn't a' given the old rag back to
+      one o' YOU, not if you begged me on your bended knees! But Rebecca's a
+      friend o' my folks and can do with her flag's she's a mind to, and the
+      rest o' ye can go to thunder&mdash;n' stay there, for all I care!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So saying, he made a sharp turn, gave the gaunt white horse a lash and
+      disappeared in a cloud of dust, before the astonished Mr. Brown, the only
+      man in the party, had a thought of detaining him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sorry I spoke so quick, Rebecca,&rdquo; said Mrs. Meserve, greatly
+      mortified at the situation. &ldquo;But don't you believe a word that lyin'
+      critter said! He did steal it off my doorstep, and how did you come to be
+      ridin' and consortin' with him! I believe it would kill your Aunt Miranda
+      if she should hear about it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The little school-teacher put a sheltering arm round Rebecca as Mr. Brown
+      picked up the flag and dusted and folded it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm willing she should hear about it,&rdquo; Rebecca answered. &ldquo;I didn't do
+      anything to be ashamed of! I saw the flag in the back of Mr. Simpson's
+      wagon and I just followed it. There weren't any men or any Dorcases to
+      take care of it and so it fell to me! You wouldn't have had me let it out
+      of my sight, would you, and we going to raise it tomorrow morning?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rebecca's perfectly right, Mrs. Meserve!&rdquo; said Miss Dearborn proudly.
+      &ldquo;And it's lucky there was somebody quick-witted enough to ride and
+      consort' with Mr. Simpson! I don't know what the village will think, but
+      seems to me the town clerk might write down in his book, THIS DAY THE
+      STATE OF MAINE SAVED THE FLAG!'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Sixth Chronicle. THE STATE O' MAINE GIRL
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The foregoing episode, if narrated in a romance, would undoubtedly have
+      been called &ldquo;The Saving of the Colors,&rdquo; but at the nightly conversazione
+      in Watson's store it was alluded to as the way little Becky Randall got
+      the flag away from Slippery Simpson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dramatic as it was, it passed into the limbo of half-forgotten things in
+      Rebecca's mind, its brief importance submerged in the glories of the next
+      day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a painful prelude to these glories. Alice Robinson came to spend
+      the night with Rebecca, and when the bedroom door closed upon the two
+      girls, Alice announced here intention of &ldquo;doing up&rdquo; Rebecca's front hair
+      in leads and rags, and braiding the back in six tight, wetted braids.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca demurred. Alice persisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your hair is so long and thick and dark and straight,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that
+      you'll look like an Injun!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am the State of Maine; it all belonged to the Indians once,&rdquo; Rebecca
+      remarked gloomily, for she was curiously shy about discussing her personal
+      appearance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And your wreath of little pine-cones won't set decent without crimps,&rdquo;
+       continued Alice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca glanced in the cracked looking-glass and met what she considered
+      an accusing lack of beauty, a sight that always either saddened or enraged
+      her according to circumstances; then she sat down resignedly and began to
+      help Alice in the philanthropic work of making the State of Maine fit to
+      be seen at the raising.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Neither of the girls was an expert hairdresser, and at the end of an hour,
+      when the sixth braid was tied, and Rebecca had given one last shuddering
+      look in the mirror, both were ready to weep with fatigue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The candle was blown out and Alice soon went to sleep, but Rebecca tossed
+      on her pillow, its goose-feathered softness all dented by the cruel lead
+      knobs and the knots of twisted rags. She slipped out of bed and walked to
+      and fro, holding her aching head with both hands. Finally she leaned on
+      the window-sill, watching the still weather-vane on Alice's barn and
+      breathing in the fragrance of the ripening apples, until her restlessness
+      subsided under the clear starry beauty of the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At six in the morning the girls were out of bed, for Alice could hardly
+      wait until Rebecca's hair was taken down, she was so eager to see the
+      result of her labors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The leads and rags were painfully removed, together with much hair, the
+      operation being punctuated by a series of squeaks, squeals, and shrieks on
+      the part of Rebecca and a series of warnings from Alice, who wished the
+      preliminaries to be kept secret from the aunts, that they might the more
+      fully appreciate the radiant result.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then came the unbraiding, and then&mdash;dramatic moment&mdash;the
+      &ldquo;combing out;&rdquo; a difficult, not to say impossible process, in which the
+      hairs that had resisted the earlier stages almost gave up the ghost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The long front strands had been wound up from various angles and by
+      various methods, so that, when released, they assumed the strangest, most
+      obstinate, most unexpected attitudes. When the comb was dragged through
+      the last braid, the wild, tortured, electric hairs following, and then
+      rebounding from it in a bristling, snarling tangle. Massachusetts gave one
+      encompassing glance at the State o' Maine's head, and announced her
+      intention of going home to breakfast! She was deeply grieved at the result
+      of her attempted beautifying, but she felt that meeting Miss Miranda
+      Sawyer at the morning meal would not mend matters in the least, so
+      slipping out of the side door, she ran up Guide Board hill as fast as her
+      legs could carry her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The State o' Maine, deserted and somewhat unnerved, sat down before the
+      glass and attacked her hair doggedly and with set lips, working over it
+      until Miss Jane called her to breakfast; then, with a boldness born of
+      despair, she entered the dining room, where her aunts were already seated
+      at table. To &ldquo;draw fire&rdquo; she whistled, a forbidden joy, which only
+      attracted more attention, instead of diverting it. There was a moment of
+      silence after the grotesque figure was fully taken in; then came a moan
+      from Jane and a groan from Miranda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What have you done to yourself?&rdquo; asked Miranda sternly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Made an effort to be beautiful and failed!&rdquo; jauntily replied Rebecca, but
+      she was too miserable to keep up the fiction. &ldquo;Oh, Aunt Miranda, don't
+      scold. I'm so unhappy! Alice and I rolled up my hair to curl it for the
+      raising. She said it was so straight I looked like an Indian!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mebbe you did,&rdquo; vigorously agreed Miranda, &ldquo;but 't any rate you looked
+      like a Christian Injun, 'n' now you look like a heathen Injun; that's all
+      the difference I can see. What can we do with her, Jane, between this and
+      nine o'clock?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll all go out to the pump just as soon as we're through breakfast,&rdquo;
+       answered Jane soothingly. &ldquo;We can accomplish consid'rable with water and
+      force.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca nibbled her corn-cake, her tearful eyes cast on her plate and her
+      chin quivering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you cry and red your eyes up,&rdquo; chided Miranda quite kindly; &ldquo;the
+      minute you've eat enough run up and get your brush and comb and meet us at
+      the back door.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wouldn't care myself how bad I looked,&rdquo; said Rebecca, &ldquo;but I can't bear
+      to be so homely that I shame the State of Maine!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh, what an hour followed this plaint! Did any aspirant for literary or
+      dramatic honors ever pass to fame through such an antechamber of horrors?
+      Did poet of the day ever have his head so maltreated? To be dipped in the
+      rain-water tub, soused again and again; to be held under the spout and
+      pumped on; to be rubbed furiously with rough roller towels; to be dried
+      with hot flannels! And is it not well-nigh incredible that at the close of
+      such an hour the ends of the long hair should still stand out straight,
+      the braids having been turned up two inches by Alice, and tied hard in
+      that position with linen thread?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get out the skirt-board, Jane,&rdquo; cried Miranda, to whom opposition served
+      as a tonic, &ldquo;and move that flat-iron on to the front o' the stove.
+      Rebecca, set down in that low chair beside the board, and Jane, you spread
+      out her hair on it and cover it up with brown paper. Don't cringe,
+      Rebecca; the worst's over, and you've borne up real good! I'll be careful
+      not to pull your hair nor scorch you, and oh, HOW I'd like to have Alice
+      Robinson acrost my knee and a good strip o' shingle in my right hand!
+      There, you're all ironed out and your Aunt Jane can put on your white
+      dress and braid your hair up again good and tight. Perhaps you won't be
+      the hombliest of the states, after all; but when I see you comin' in to
+      breakfast I said to myself: I guess if Maine looked like that, it wouldn't
+      never a' been admitted into the Union!'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When Uncle Sam and the stagecoach drew up to the brick house with a grand
+      swing and a flourish, the goddess of Liberty and most of the States were
+      already in their places on the &ldquo;harricane deck.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Words fail to describe the gallant bearing of the horses, their headstalls
+      gayly trimmed and their harnesses dotted with little flags. The stage
+      windows were hung in bunting, and from within beamed Columbia, looking out
+      from the bright frame as if proud of her freight of loyal children.
+      Patriotic streamers floated from whip, from dash-board and from rumble,
+      and the effect of the whole was something to stimulate the most phlegmatic
+      voter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca came out on the steps and Aunt Jane brought a chair to assist in
+      the ascent. Miss Dearborn peeped from the window, and gave a despairing
+      look at her favorite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What had happened to her? Who had dressed her? Had her head been put
+      through a wringing-machine? Why were her eyes red and swollen? Miss
+      Dearborn determined to take her behind the trees in the pine grove and
+      give her some finishing touches; touches that her skillful fingers fairly
+      itched to bestow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stage started, and as the roadside pageant grew gayer and gayer,
+      Rebecca began to brighten and look prettier, for most of her beautifying
+      came from within. The people, walking, driving, or standing on their
+      doorsteps, cheered Uncle Sam's coach with its freight of
+      gossamer-muslined, fluttering-ribboned girls, and just behind, the
+      gorgeously decorated haycart, driven by Abijah Flagg, bearing the jolly
+      but inharmonious fife-and-drum corps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Was ever such a golden day! Such crystal air! Such mellow sunshine! Such a
+      merry Uncle Sam!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stage drew up at an appointed spot near a pine grove, and while the
+      crowd was gathering, the children waited for the hour to arrive when they
+      should march to the platform; the hour toward which they seemed to have
+      been moving since the dawn of creation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as possible Miss Dearborn whispered to Rebecca: &ldquo;Come behind the
+      trees with me; I want to make you prettier!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca thought she had suffered enough from that process already during
+      the last twelve hours, but she put out an obedient hand and the two
+      withdrew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now Miss Dearborn was, I fear, a very indifferent teacher. Dr. Moses
+      always said so, and Libbie Moses, who wanted her school, said it was a
+      pity she hadn't enjoyed more social advantages in her youth. Libbie
+      herself had taken music lessons in Portland; and spent a night at the
+      Profile House in the White Mountains, and had visited her sister in
+      Lowell, Massachusetts. These experiences gave her, in her own mind, and in
+      the mind of her intimate friends, a horizon so boundless that her view of
+      smaller, humbler matters was a trifle distorted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Dearborn's stock in trade was small, her principal virtues being
+      devotion to children and ability to gain their love, and a power of
+      evolving a schoolroom order so natural, cheery, serene, and peaceful that
+      it gave the beholder a certain sense of being in a district heaven. She
+      was poor in arithmetic and weak in geometry, but if you gave her a rose, a
+      bit of ribbon, and a seven-by-nine looking-glass she could make herself as
+      pretty as a pink in two minutes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Safely sheltered behind the pines, Miss Dearborn began to practice
+      mysterious feminine arts. She flew at Rebecca's tight braids, opened the
+      strands and rebraided them loosely; bit and tore the red, white, and blue
+      ribbon in two and tied the braids separately. Then with nimble fingers she
+      pulled out little tendrils of hair behind the ears and around the nape of
+      the neck. After a glance of acute disapproval directed at the stiff
+      balloon skirt she knelt on the ground and gave a strenuous embrace to
+      Rebecca's knees, murmuring, between her hugs, &ldquo;Starch must be cheap at the
+      brick house!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This particular line of beauty attained, there ensued great pinchings of
+      ruffles, her fingers that could never hold a ferrule nor snap children's
+      ears being incomparable fluting-irons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next the sash was scornfully untied and tightened to suggest something
+      resembling a waist. The chastened bows that had been squat, dowdy,
+      spiritless, were given tweaks, flirts, bracing little pokes and dabs,
+      till, acknowledging a master hand, they stood up, piquant, pert, smart,
+      alert!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pride of bearing was now infused into the flattened lace at the neck, and
+      a pin (removed at some sacrifice from her own toilette) was darned in at
+      the back to prevent any cowardly lapsing. The short white cotton gloves
+      that called attention to the tanned wrist and arms were stripped off and
+      put in her own pocket. Then the wreath of pine-cones was adjusted at a
+      heretofore unimagined angle, the hair was pulled softly into a fluffy
+      frame, and finally, as she met Rebecca's grateful eyes she gave her two
+      approving, triumphant kisses. In a second the sensitive face lighted into
+      happiness; pleased dimples appeared in the cheeks, the kissed mouth was as
+      red as a rose, and the little fright that had walked behind the pine-tree
+      stepped out on the other side Rebecca the lovely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As to the relative value of Miss Dearborn's accomplishments, the decision
+      must be left to the gentle reader; but though it is certain that children
+      should be properly grounded in mathematics, no heart of flesh could bear
+      to hear Miss Dearborn's methods vilified who had seen her patting,
+      pulling, squeezing Rebecca from ugliness into beauty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young superintendent of district schools was a witness of the scene,
+      and when later he noted the children surrounding Columbia as bees a
+      honeysuckle, he observed to Dr. Moses: &ldquo;She may not be much of a teacher,
+      but I think she'd be considerable of a wife!&rdquo; and subsequent events proved
+      that he meant what he said!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      II
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now all was ready; the moment of fate was absolutely at hand; the
+      fife-and-drum corps led the way and the States followed; but what actually
+      happened Rebecca never knew; she lived through the hours in a waking
+      dream. Every little detail was a facet of light that reflected sparkles,
+      and among them all she was fairly dazzled. The brass band played inspiring
+      strains; the mayor spoke eloquently on great themes; the people cheered;
+      then the rope on which so much depended was put into the children's hands,
+      they applied superhuman strength to their task, and the flag mounted,
+      mounted, smoothly and slowly, and slowly unwound and stretched itself
+      until its splendid size and beauty were revealed against the maples and
+      pines and blue New England sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then after cheers upon cheers and after a patriotic chorus by the church
+      choirs, the State of Maine mounted the platform, vaguely conscious that
+      she was to recite a poem, though for the life of her she could not
+      remember a single word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Speak up loud and clear, Rebecky,&rdquo; whispered Uncle Sam in the front row,
+      but she could scarcely hear her own voice when, tremblingly, she began her
+      first line. After that she gathered strength and the poem &ldquo;said itself,&rdquo;
+       while the dream went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She saw Adam Ladd leaning against a tree; Aunt Jane and Aunt Miranda
+      palpitating with nervousness; Clara Belle Simpson gazing cross-eyed but
+      adoring from a seat on the side; and in the far, far distance, on the very
+      outskirts of the crowd, a tall man standing in a wagon&mdash;a tall,
+      loose-jointed man with red upturned mustaches, and a gaunt white horse
+      headed toward the Acreville road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Loud applause greeted the state of Maine, the slender little white-clad
+      figure standing on the mossy boulder that had been used as the centre of
+      the platform. The sun came up from behind a great maple and shone full on
+      the star-spangled banner, making it more dazzling than ever, so that its
+      beauty drew all eyes upward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abner Simpson lifted his vagrant shifting gaze to its softy fluttering
+      folds and its splendid massing of colors, thinking:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know's anybody'd ought to steal a flag&mdash;the thunderin'
+      idjuts seem to set such store by it, and what is it, anyway? Nothin; but a
+      sheet o' buntin!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nothing but a sheet of bunting? He looked curiously at the rapt faces of
+      the mothers, their babies asleep in their arms; the parted lips and
+      shining eyes of the white-clad girls; at Cap'n Lord, who had been in Libby
+      prison, and Nat Strout, who had left an arm at Bull Run; at the friendly,
+      jostling crowd of farmers, happy, eager, absorbed, their throats ready to
+      burst with cheers. Then the breeze served, and he heard Rebecca's clear
+      voice saying:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For it's your star, my star, all the stars together, That make our
+      country's flag so proud To float in the bright fall weather!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Talk about stars! She's got a couple of em right in her head,&rdquo; thought
+      Simpson.... &ldquo;If I ever seen a young one like that lyin; on anybody's
+      doorstep I'd hook her quicker'n a wink, though I've got plenty to home,
+      the Lord knows! And I wouldn't swap her off neither.... Spunky little
+      creeter, too; settin; up in the wagon lookin' bout's big as a pint o'
+      cider, but keepin' right after the goods!... I vow I'm bout sick o' my
+      job! Never WITH the crowd, allers JEST on the outside, s if I wa'n't as
+      good's they be! If it paid well, mebbe I wouldn't mind, but they're so
+      thunderin' stingy round here, they don't leave anything decent out for you
+      to take from em, yet you're reskin' your liberty n' reputation jest the
+      same!... Countin' the poor pickin's n' the time I lose in jail I might
+      most's well be done with it n' work out by the day, as the folks want me
+      to; I'd make bout's much n' I don't know's it would be any harder!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He could see Rebecca stepping down from the platform, while his own
+      red-headed little girl stood up on her bench, waving her hat with one
+      hand, her handkerchief with the other, and stamping with both feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now a man sitting beside the mayor rose from his chair and Abner heard him
+      call:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Three cheers for the women who made the flag!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;HIP, HIP, HURRAH!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Three cheers for the State of Maine!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;HIP, HIP, HURRAH!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Three cheers for the girl that saved the flag from the hands of the
+      enemy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;HIP, HIP, HURRAH! HIP, HIP, HURRAH!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the Edgewood minister, whose full, vibrant voice was of the sort to
+      move a crowd. His words rang out into the clear air and were carried from
+      lip to lip. Hands clapped, feet stamped, hats swung, while the loud
+      huzzahs might almost have wakened the echoes on old Mount Ossipee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tall, loose-jointed man sat down in the wagon suddenly and took up the
+      reins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're gettin' a little mite personal, and I guess it's bout time for
+      you to be goin', Simpson!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tone was jocular, but the red mustaches drooped, and the half-hearted
+      cut he gave to start the white mare on her homeward journey showed that he
+      was not in his usual devil-may-care mood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Durn his skin!&rdquo; he burst out in a vindictive undertone, as the mare swung
+      into her long gait. &ldquo;It's a lie! I thought twas somebody's wash! I hain't
+      an enemy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While the crowd at the raising dispersed in happy family groups to their
+      picnics in the woods; while the Goddess of Liberty, Uncle Sam, Columbia,
+      and the proud States lunched grandly in the Grange hall with distinguished
+      guests and scarred veterans of two wars, the lonely man drove, and drove,
+      and drove through silent woods and dull, sleepy villages, never alighting
+      to replenish his wardrobe or his stock of swapping material.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At dusk he reached a miserable tumble-down house on the edge of a pond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The faithful wife with the sad mouth and the habitual look of anxiety in
+      her faded eyes came to the door at the sound of wheels and went doggedly
+      to the horse-shed to help him unharness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You didn't expect to see me back tonight, did ye?&rdquo; he asked satirically;
+      &ldquo;leastwise not with this same horse? Well, I'm here! You needn't be scairt
+      to look under the wagon seat, there hain't nothin' there, not even my
+      supper, so I hope you're suited for once! No, I guess I hain't goin' to be
+      an angel right away, neither. There wa'n't nothin' but flags layin' roun'
+      loose down Riverboro way, n' whatever they say, I hain't sech a hound as
+      to steal a flag!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was natural that young Riverboro should have red, white, and blue
+      dreams on the night after the new flag was raised. A stranger thing,
+      perhaps, is the fact that Abner Simpson should lie down on his hard bed
+      with the flutter of bunting before his eyes, and a whirl of unaccustomed
+      words in his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For it's your star, my star, all our stars together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sick of goin' it alone,&rdquo; he thought; &ldquo;I guess I'll try the other road
+      for a spell;&rdquo; and with that he fell asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Seventh Chronicle. THE LITTLE PROPHET
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess York County will never get red of that Simpson crew!&rdquo; exclaimed
+      Miranda Sawyer to Jane. &ldquo;I thought when the family moved to Acreville we'd
+      seen the last of em, but we ain't! The big, cross-eyed, stutterin' boy has
+      got a place at the mills in Maplewood; that's near enough to come over to
+      Riverboro once in a while of a Sunday mornin' and set in the meetin' house
+      starin' at Rebecca same as he used to do, only it's reskier now both of em
+      are older. Then Mrs. Fogg must go and bring back the biggest girl to help
+      her take care of her baby,&mdash;as if there wa'n't plenty of help nearer
+      home! Now I hear say that the youngest twin has come to stop the summer
+      with the Cames up to Edgewood Lower Corner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought two twins were always the same age,&rdquo; said Rebecca,
+      reflectively, as she came into the kitchen with the milk pail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So they be,&rdquo; snapped Miranda, flushing and correcting herself. &ldquo;But that
+      pasty-faced Simpson twin looks younger and is smaller than the other one.
+      He's meek as Moses and the other one is as bold as a brass kettle; I don't
+      see how they come to be twins; they ain't a mite alike.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Elijah was always called the fighting twin' at school,&rdquo; said Rebecca,
+      &ldquo;and Elisha's other name was Nimbi-Pamby; but I think he's a nice little
+      boy, and I'm glad he has come back. He won't like living with Mr. Came,
+      but he'll be almost next door to the minister's, and Mrs. Baxter is sure
+      to let him play in her garden.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder why the boy's stayin' with Cassius Came,&rdquo; said Jane. &ldquo;To be sure
+      they haven't got any of their own, but the child's too young to be much
+      use.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know why,&rdquo; remarked Rebecca promptly, &ldquo;for I heard all about it over to
+      Watson's when I was getting the milk. Mr. Came traded something with Mr.
+      Simpson two years ago and got the best of the bargain, and Uncle Jerry
+      says he's the only man that ever did, and he ought to have a monument put
+      up to him. So Mr. Came owes Mr. Simpson money and won't pay it, and Mr.
+      Simpson said he'd send over a child and board part of it out, and take the
+      rest in stock&mdash;a pig or a calf or something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's all stuff and nonsense,&rdquo; exclaimed Miranda; &ldquo;nothin' in the world
+      but store-talk. You git a clump o' men-folks settin' round Watson's stove,
+      or out on the bench at the door, an' they'll make up stories as fast as
+      their tongues can wag. The man don't live that's smart enough to cheat
+      Abner Simpson in a trade, and who ever heard of anybody's owin' him money?
+      Tain't supposable that a woman like Mrs. Came would allow her husband to
+      be in debt to a man like Abner Simpson. It's a sight likelier that she
+      heard that Mrs. Simpson was ailin' and sent for the boy so as to help the
+      family along. She always had Mrs. Simpson to wash for her once a month, if
+      you remember Jane?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There are some facts so shrouded in obscurity that the most skillful and
+      patient investigator cannot drag them into the light of day. There are
+      also (but only occasionally) certain motives, acts, speeches, lines of
+      conduct, that can never be wholly and satisfactorily explained, even in a
+      village post-office or on the loafers' bench outside the tavern door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cassius Came was a close man, close of mouth and close of purse; and all
+      that Riverboro ever knew as to the three months' visit of the Simpson twin
+      was that it actually occurred. Elisha, otherwise Nimbi-Pamby, came;
+      Nimbi-Pamby stayed; and Nimbi-Pamby, when he finally rejoined his own
+      domestic circle, did not go empty-handed (so to speak), for he was
+      accompanied on his homeward travels by a large, red, bony, somewhat
+      truculent cow, who was tied on behind the wagon, and who made the journey
+      a lively and eventful one by her total lack of desire to proceed over the
+      road from Edgewood to Acreville. But that, the cow's tale, belongs to
+      another time and place, and the coward's tale must come first; for Elisha
+      Simpson was held to be sadly lacking in the manly quality of courage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the new minister's wife who called Nimbi-Pamby the Little Prophet.
+      His full name was Elisha Jeremiah Simpson, but one seldom heard it at full
+      length, since, if he escaped the ignominy of Nimbi-Pamby, Lishe was quite
+      enough for an urchin just in his first trousers and those assumed somewhat
+      prematurely. He was &ldquo;Lishe,&rdquo; therefore, to the village, but the Little
+      Prophet to the young minister's wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca could see the Cames' brown farmhouse from Mrs. Baxter's
+      sitting-room window. The little-traveled road with strips of tufted green
+      between the wheel tracks curled dustily up to the very doorstep, and
+      inside the screen door of pink mosquito netting was a wonderful drawn-in
+      rug, shaped like a half pie, with &ldquo;Welcome&rdquo; in saffron letters on a green
+      ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca liked Mrs. Cassius Came, who was a friend of her Aunt Miranda's
+      and one of the few persons who exchanged calls with that somewhat
+      unsociable lady. The Came farm was not a long walk from the brick house,
+      for Rebecca could go across the fields when haying-time was over, and her
+      delight at being sent on an errand in that direction could not be
+      measured, now that the new minister and his wife had grown to be such a
+      resource in her life. She liked to see Mrs. Came shake the Welcome rug,
+      flinging the cheery word out into the summer sunshine like a bright
+      greeting to the day. She liked to see her go to the screen door a dozen
+      times in a morning, open it a crack and chase an imaginary fly from the
+      sacred precincts within. She liked to see her come up the cellar steps
+      into the side garden, appearing mysteriously as from the bowels of the
+      earth, carrying a shining pan of milk in both hands, and disappearing
+      through the beds of hollyhocks and sunflowers to the pig-pen or the
+      hen-house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca was not fond of Mr. Came, and neither was Mrs. Baxter, nor Elisha,
+      for that matter; in fact Mr. Came was rather a difficult person to grow
+      fond of, with his fiery red beard, his freckled skin, and his gruff way of
+      speaking; for there were no children in the brown house to smooth the
+      creases from his forehead or the roughness from his voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      II
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The new minister's wife was sitting under the shade of her great maple
+      early one morning, when she first saw the Little Prophet. A tiny figure
+      came down the grass-grown road leading a cow by a rope. If it had been a
+      small boy and a small cow, a middle-sized boy and an ordinary cow, or a
+      grown man and a big cow, she might not have noticed them; but it was the
+      combination of an infinitesimal boy and a huge cow that attracted her
+      attention. She could not guess the child's years, she only knew that he
+      was small for his age, whatever it was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cow was a dark red beast with a crumpled horn, a white star on her
+      forehead, and a large surprised sort of eye. She had, of course, two eyes,
+      and both were surprised, but the left one had an added hint of amazement
+      in it by virtue of a few white hairs lurking accidentally in the centre of
+      the eyebrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy had a thin sensitive face and curtly brown hair, short trousers
+      patched on both knees, and a ragged straw hat on the back of his head. He
+      pattered along behind the cow, sometimes holding the rope with both hands,
+      and getting over the ground in a jerky way, as the animal left him no time
+      to think of a smooth path for bare feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Came pasture was a good half-mile distant, and the cow seemed in no
+      hurry to reach it; accordingly she forsook the road now and then, and
+      rambled in the hollows, where the grass was sweeter to her way of
+      thinking. She started on one of these exploring expeditions just as she
+      passed the minister's great maple, and gave Mrs. Baxter time to call out
+      to the little fellow, &ldquo;Is that your cow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Elisha blushed and smiled, and tried to speak modestly, but there was a
+      quiver of pride in his voice as he answered suggestively:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's&mdash;nearly my cow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How is that?&rdquo; asked Mrs. Baxter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Mr. Came says when I drive her twenty-nine more times to pasture
+      thout her gettin' her foot over the rope or thout my bein' afraid, she's
+      goin' to be my truly cow. Are you fraid of cows?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye-e-es,&rdquo; Mrs. Baxter confessed, &ldquo;I am, just a little. You see, I am
+      nothing but a woman, and boys can't understand how we feel about cows.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can! They're awful big things, aren't they?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perfectly enormous! I've always thought a cow coming towards you one of
+      the biggest things in the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; me, too. Don't let's think about it. Do they hook people so very
+      often?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No indeed, in fact one scarcely ever hears of such a case.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If they stepped on your bare foot they'd scrunch it, wouldn't they?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but you are the driver; you mustn't let them do that; you are a
+      free-will boy, and they are nothing but cows.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know; but p'raps there is free-will cows, and if they just WOULD do it
+      you couldn't help being scrunched, for you mustn't let go of the rope nor
+      run, Mr. Came says.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, of course that would never do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where you used to live did all the cows go down into the boggy places
+      when you drove em to pasture, or did some walk in the road?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There weren't any cows or any pastures where I used to live; that's what
+      makes me so foolish; why does your cow need a rope?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She don't like to go to pasture, Mr. Came says. Sometimes she'd druther
+      stay to home, and so when she gets part way she turns round and comes
+      backwards.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear me!&rdquo; thought Mrs. Baxter, &ldquo;what becomes of this boy-mite if the cow
+      has a spell of going backwards?&mdash;Do you like to drive her?&rdquo; she
+      asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;N-no, not erzackly; but you see, it'll be my cow if I drive her
+      twenty-nine more times thout her gettin' her foot over the rope and thout
+      my bein' afraid,&rdquo; and a beaming smile gave a transient brightness to his
+      harassed little face. &ldquo;Will she feed in the ditch much longer?&rdquo; he asked.
+      &ldquo;Shall I say Hurrap'? That's what Mr. Came says&mdash;HURRAP!' like that,
+      and it means to hurry up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was rather a feeble warning that he sounded and the cow fed on
+      peacefully. The little fellow looked up at the minister's wife
+      confidingly, and then glanced back at the farm to see if Cassius Came were
+      watching the progress of events.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What shall we do next?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Baxter delighted in that warm, cosy little 'WE;' it took her into the
+      firm so pleasantly. She was a weak prop indeed when it came to cows, but
+      all the courage in her soul rose to arms when Elisha said, &ldquo;What shall WE
+      do next?&rdquo; She became alert, ingenious, strong, on the instant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the cow's name?&rdquo; she asked, sitting up straight in the
+      swing-chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Buttercup; but she don't seem to know it very well. She ain't a mite like
+      a buttercup.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind; you must shout 'Buttercup!' at the top of your voice, and
+      twitch the rope HARD; then I'll call, 'Hurrap!' with all my might at the
+      same moment. And if she starts quickly we mustn't run nor seem
+      frightened!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They did this; it worked to a charm, and Mrs. Baxter looked affectionately
+      after her Little Prophet as the cow pulled him down Tory Hill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lovely August days wore on. Rebecca was often at the parsonage and saw
+      Elisha frequently, but Buttercup was seldom present at their interviews,
+      as the boy now drove her to the pasture very early in the morning, the
+      journey thither being one of considerable length and her method of
+      reaching the goal being exceedingly roundabout.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Came had pointed out the necessity of getting her into the pasture at
+      least a few minutes before she had to be taken out again at night, and
+      though Rebecca didn't like Mr. Came, she saw the common sense of this
+      remark. Sometimes Mrs. Baxter and Rebecca caught a glimpse of the two at
+      sundown, as they returned from the pasture to the twilight milking,
+      Buttercup chewing her peaceful cud, her soft white bag of milk hanging
+      full, her surprised eye rolling in its accustomed &ldquo;fine frenzy.&rdquo; The
+      frenzied roll did not mean anything, they used to assure Elisha; but if it
+      didn't, it was an awful pity she had to do it, Rebecca thought; and Mrs.
+      Baxter agreed. To have an expression of eye that meant murder, and yet to
+      be a perfectly virtuous and well-meaning animal, this was a calamity
+      indeed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Baxter was looking at the sun one evening as it dropped like a ball
+      of red fire into Wilkins's woods, when the Little Prophet passed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's the twenty-ninth night,&rdquo; he called joyously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am so glad,&rdquo; she answered, for she had often feared some accident might
+      prevent his claiming the promised reward. &ldquo;Then tomorrow Buttercup will be
+      your own cow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess so. That's what Mr. Came said. He's off to Acreville now, but
+      he'll be home tonight, and father's going to send my new hat by him. When
+      Buttercup's my own cow I wish I could change her name and call her Red
+      Rover, but p'r'aps her mother wouldn't like it. When she b'longs to me,
+      mebbe I won't be so fraid of gettin' hooked and scrunched, because she'll
+      know she's mine, and she'll go better. I haven't let her get snarled up in
+      the rope one single time, and I don't show I'm afraid, do I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should never suspect it for an instant,&rdquo; said Mrs. Baxter
+      encouragingly. &ldquo;I've often envied you your bold, brave look!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Elisha appeared distinctly pleased. &ldquo;I haven't cried, either, when she's
+      dragged me over the pasture bars and peeled my legs. Bill Petes's little
+      brother Charlie says he ain't afraid of anything, not even bears. He says
+      he would walk right up close and cuff em if they dared to yip; but I ain't
+      like that! He ain't scared of elephants or tigers or lions either; he says
+      they're all the same as frogs or chickens to him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca told her Aunt Miranda that evening that it was the Prophet's
+      twenty-ninth night, and that the big red cow was to be his on the morrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I hope it'll turn out that way,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;But I ain't a mite sure
+      that Cassius Came will give up that cow when it comes to the point. It
+      won't be the first time he's tried to crawl out of a bargain with folks a
+      good deal bigger than Lisha, for he's terrible close, Cassius is. To be
+      sure he's stiff in his joints and he's glad enough to have a boy to take
+      the cow to the pasture in summer time, but he always has hired help when
+      it comes harvestin'. So Lisha'll be no use from this on; and I dare say
+      the cow is Abner Simpson's anyway. If you want a walk tonight, I wish
+      you'd go up there and ask Mis' Came if she'll lend me an' your Aunt Jane
+      half her yeast-cake. Tell her we'll pay it back when we get ours a
+      Saturday. Don't you want to take Thirza Meserve with you? She's alone as
+      usual while Huldy's entertainin' beaux on the side porch. Don't stay too
+      long at the parsonage!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      III
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca was used to this sort of errand, for the whole village of
+      Riverboro would sometimes be rocked to the very centre of its being by
+      simultaneous desire for a yeast-cake. As the nearest repository was a mile
+      and a half distant, as the yeast-cake was valued at two cents and wouldn't
+      keep, as the demand was uncertain, being dependent entirely on a
+      fluctuating desire for &ldquo;riz bread,&rdquo; the storekeeper refused to order more
+      than three yeast-cakes a day at his own risk. Sometimes they remained on
+      his hands a dead loss; sometimes eight or ten persons would &ldquo;hitch up&rdquo; and
+      drive from distant farms for the coveted article, only to be met with the
+      flat, &ldquo;No, I'm all out o' yeast-cake; Mis' Simmons took the last; mebbe
+      you can borry half o' hern, she hain't much of a bread-eater.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So Rebecca climbed the hills to Mrs. Came's, knowing that her daily bread
+      depended on the successful issue of the call.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thirza was barefooted, and tough as her little feet were, the long walk
+      over the stubble fields tired her. When they came within sight of the Came
+      barn, she coaxed Rebecca to take a short cut through the turnips growing
+      in long, beautifully weeded rows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know Mr. Came is awfully cross, Thirza, and can't bear anybody to
+      tread on his crops or touch a tree or a bush that belongs to him. I'm kind
+      of afraid, but come along and mind you step softly in between the rows and
+      hold up your petticoat, so you can't possibly touch the turnip plants.
+      I'll do the same. Skip along fast, because then we won't leave any deep
+      footprints.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The children passed safely and noiselessly along, their pleasure a trifle
+      enhanced by the felt dangers of their progress. Rebecca knew that they
+      were doing no harm, but that did not prevent her hoping to escape the
+      gimlet eye of Mr. Came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they neared the outer edge of the turnip patch they paused suddenly,
+      petticoats in air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A great clump of elderberry bushes hid them from the barn, but from the
+      other side of the clump came the sound of conversation: the timid voice of
+      the Little Prophet and the gruff tones of Cassius Came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca was afraid to interrupt, and too honest to wish to overhear. She
+      could only hope the man and the boy would pass on to the house as they
+      talked, so she motioned to the paralyzed Thirza to take two more steps and
+      stand with her behind the elderberry bushes. But no! In a moment they
+      heard Mr. Came drag a stool over beside the grindstone as he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, now Elisha Jeremiah, we'll talk about the red cow. You say you've
+      drove her a month, do ye? And the trade between us was that if you could
+      drive her a month, without her getting the rope over her foot and without
+      bein' afraid, you was to have her. That's straight, ain't it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Prophet's face burned with excitement, his gingham shirt rose and fell
+      as if he were breathing hard, but he only nodded assent and said nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now,&rdquo; continued Mr. Came, &ldquo;have you made out to keep the rope from under
+      her feet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She ain't got t-t-tangled up one s-single time,&rdquo; said Elisha, stuttering
+      in his excitement, but looking up with some courage from his bare toes,
+      with which he was assiduously threading the grass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So far, so good. Now bout bein' afraid. As you seem so certain of gettin'
+      the cow, I suppose you hain't been a speck scared, hev you? Honor bright,
+      now!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;I&mdash;not but just a little mite. I&rdquo;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hold up a minute. Of course you didn't SAY you was afraid, and didn't
+      SHOW you was afraid, and nobody knew you WAS afraid, but that ain't the
+      way we fixed it up. You was to call the cow your'n if you could drive her
+      to the pasture for a month without BEIN' afraid. Own up square now, hev
+      you be'n afraid?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A long pause, then a faint, &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where's your manners?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean yes, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How often? If it hain't be'n too many times mebbe I'll let ye off, though
+      you're a reg'lar girl-boy, and'll be runnin' away from the cat bimeby. Has
+      it be'n&mdash;twice?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; and the Little Prophet's voice was very faint now, and had a
+      decided tear in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has it be'n four times?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Y-es, sir.&rdquo; More heaving of the gingham shirt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you AIR a thunderin' coward! How many times? Speak up now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      More digging of the bare toes in the earth, and one premonitory tear drop
+      stealing from under the downcast lids, then,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A little, most every day, and you can keep the cow,&rdquo; wailed the Prophet,
+      as he turned abruptly and fled behind the shed, where he flung himself
+      into the green depths of a tansy bed, and gave himself up to unmanly sobs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cassius Came gave a sort of shamefaced guffaw at the abrupt departure of
+      the boy, and went on into the house, while Rebecca and Thirza made a
+      stealthy circuit of the barn and a polite and circumspect entrance through
+      the parsonage front gate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca told the minister's wife what she could remember of the interview
+      between Cassius Came and Elisha Simpson, and tender-hearted Mrs. Baxter
+      longed to seek and comfort her Little Prophet sobbing in the tansy bed,
+      the brand of coward on his forehead, and what was much worse, the fear in
+      his heart that he deserved it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca could hardly be prevented from bearding Mr. Came and openly
+      espousing the cause of Elisha, for she was an impetuous, reckless, valiant
+      creature when a weaker vessel was attacked or threatened unjustly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Baxter acknowledged that Mr. Came had been true, in a way, to his
+      word and bargain, but she confessed that she had never heard of so cruel
+      and hard a bargain since the days of Shylock, and it was all the worse for
+      being made with a child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca hurried home, her visit quite spoiled and her errand quite
+      forgotten till she reached the brick house door, where she told her aunts,
+      with her customary picturesqueness of speech, that she would rather eat
+      buttermilk bread till she died than partake of food mixed with one of Mr.
+      Came's yeast-cakes; that it would choke her, even in the shape of good
+      raised bread.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's all very fine, Rebecky,&rdquo; said her Aunt Miranda, who had a
+      pin-prick for almost every bubble; &ldquo;but don't forget there's two other
+      mouths to feed in this house, and you might at least give your aunt and me
+      the privilege of chokin' if we feel to want to!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      IV
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Baxter finally heard from Mrs. Came, through whom all information was
+      sure to filter if you gave it time, that her husband despised a coward,
+      that he considered Elisha a regular mother's-apron-string boy, and that he
+      was &ldquo;learnin'&rdquo; him to be brave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bill Peters, the hired man, now drove Buttercup to pasture, though
+      whenever Mr. Came went to Moderation or Bonnie Eagle, as he often did,
+      Mrs. Baxter noticed that Elisha took the hired man's place. She often
+      joined him on these anxious expeditions, and, a like terror in both their
+      souls, they attempted to train the red cow and give her some idea of
+      obedience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If she only wouldn't look at us that way we would get along real nicely
+      with her, wouldn't we?&rdquo; prattled the Prophet, straggling along by her
+      side; &ldquo;and she is a splendid cow; she gives twenty-one quarts a day, and
+      Mr. Came says it's more'n half cream.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The minister's wife assented to all this, thinking that if Buttercup would
+      give up her habit of turning completely round in the road to roll her eyes
+      and elevate her white-tipped eyebrow, she might indeed be an enjoyable
+      companion; but in her present state of development her society was not
+      agreeable, even did she give sixty-one quarts of milk a day. Furthermore,
+      when Mrs. Baxter discovered that she never did any of these reprehensible
+      things with Bill Peters, she began to believe cows more intelligent
+      creatures than she had supposed them to be, and she was indignant to think
+      Buttercup could count so confidently on the weakness of a small boy and a
+      timid woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One evening, when Buttercup was more than usually exasperating, Mrs.
+      Baxter said to the Prophet, who was bracing himself to keep from being
+      pulled into a wayside brook where Buttercup loved to dabble, &ldquo;Elisha, do
+      you know anything about the superiority of mind over matter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      No, he didn't, though it was not a fair time to ask the question, for he
+      had sat down in the road to get a better purchase on the rope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it doesn't signify. What I mean is that we can die but once, and it
+      is a glorious thing to die for a great principle. Give me that rope. I can
+      pull like an ox in my present frame of mind. You run down on the opposite
+      side of the brook, take that big stick wade right in&mdash;you are
+      barefooted,&mdash;brandish the stick, and, if necessary, do more than
+      brandish. I would go myself, but it is better she should recognize you as
+      her master, and I am in as much danger as you are, anyway. She may try to
+      hook you, of course, but you must keep waving the stick,&mdash;die
+      brandishing, Prophet, that's the idea! She may turn and run for me, in
+      which case I shall run too; but I shall die running, and the minister can
+      bury us under our favorite sweet-apple tree!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Prophet's soul was fired by the lovely lady's eloquence. Their spirits
+      mounted simultaneously, and they were flushed with a splendid courage in
+      which death looked a mean and paltry thing compared with vanquishing that
+      cow. She had already stepped into the pool, but the Prophet waded in
+      towards her, moving the alder branch menacingly. She looked up with the
+      familiar roll of the eye that had done her such good service all summer,
+      but she quailed beneath the stern justice and the new valor of the
+      Prophet's gaze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In that moment perhaps she felt ashamed of the misery she had caused the
+      helpless mite. At any rate, actuated by fear, surprise, or remorse, she
+      turned and walked back into the road without a sign of passion or
+      indignation, leaving the boy and the lady rather disappointed at their
+      easy victory. To be prepared for a violent death and receive not even a
+      scratch made them fear that they might possibly have overestimated the
+      danger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were better friends than ever after that, the young minister's wife
+      and the forlorn little boy from Acreville, sent away from home he knew not
+      why, unless it were that there was little to eat there and considerably
+      more at the Cash Cames', as they were called in Edgewood. Cassius was
+      familiarly known as Uncle Cash, partly because there was a disposition in
+      Edgewood to abbreviate all Christian names, and partly because the old man
+      paid cash, and expected to be paid cash, for everything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The late summer grew into autumn, and the minister's great maple flung a
+      flaming bough of scarlet over Mrs. Baxter's swing-chair. Uncle Cash found
+      Elisha very useful at picking up potatoes and apples, but the boy was
+      going back to his family as soon as the harvesting was over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One Friday evening Mrs. Baxter and Rebecca, wrapped in shawls and
+      &ldquo;fascinators,&rdquo; were sitting on Mrs. Came's front steps enjoying the
+      sunset. Rebecca was in a tremulous state of happiness, for she had come
+      directly from the Seminary at Wareham to the parsonage, and as the
+      minister was absent at a church conference, she was to stay the night with
+      Mrs. Baxter and go with her to Portland next day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were to go to the Islands, have ice cream for luncheon, ride on a
+      horse-car, and walk by the Longfellow house, a programme that so unsettled
+      Rebecca's never very steady mind that she radiated flashes and sparkles of
+      joy, making Mrs. Baxter wonder if flesh could be translucent, enabling the
+      spirit-fires within to shine through?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Buttercup was being milked on the grassy slope near the shed door. As she
+      walked to the barn, after giving up her pailfuls of yellow milk, she bent
+      her neck and snatched a hasty bite from a pile of turnips lying temptingly
+      near. In her haste she took more of a mouthful than would be considered
+      good manners even among cows, and as she disappeared in the barn door they
+      could see a forest of green tops hanging from her mouth, while she
+      painfully attempted to grind up the mass of stolen material without
+      allowing a single turnip to escape.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It grew dark soon afterward and they went into the house to see Mrs.
+      Came's new lamp lighted for the first time, to examine her last drawn-in
+      rug (a wonderful achievement produced entirely from dyed flannel
+      petticoats), and to hear the doctor's wife play &ldquo;Oft in the Still Night,&rdquo;
+       on the dulcimer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they closed the sitting-room door opening on the piazza facing the
+      barn, the women heard the cow coughing and said to one another: &ldquo;Buttercup
+      was too greedy, and now she has indigestion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Elisha always went to bed at sundown, and Uncle Cash had gone to the
+      doctor's to have his hand dressed, for he had hurt it is some way in the
+      threshing-machine. Bill Peters, the hired man, came in presently and asked
+      for him, saying that the cow coughed more and more, and it must be that
+      something was wrong, but he could not get her to open her mouth wide
+      enough for him to see anything. &ldquo;She'd up an' die ruther 'n obleege
+      anybody, that tarnal, ugly cow would!&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Uncle Cash had driven into the yard, he came in for a lantern, and
+      went directly out to the barn. After a half-hour or so, in which the
+      little party had forgotten the whole occurrence, he came in again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm blamed if we ain't goin' to lose that cow,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Come out, will
+      ye, Hannah, and hold the lantern? I can't do anything with my right hand
+      in a sling, and Bill is the stupidest critter in the country.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Everybody went out to the barn accordingly, except the doctor's wife, who
+      ran over to her house to see if her brother Moses had come home from
+      Milltown, and could come and take a hand in the exercises.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Buttercup was in a bad way; there was no doubt of it. Something, one of
+      the turnips, presumably, had lodged in her throat, and would move neither
+      way, despite her attempts to dislodge it. Her breathing was labored, and
+      her eyes bloodshot from straining and choking. Once or twice they
+      succeeded in getting her mouth partly open, but before they could fairly
+      discover the cause of trouble she had wrested her head away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can see a little tuft of green sticking straight up in the middle,&rdquo;
+       said Uncle Cash, while Bill Peters and Moses held a lantern on each side
+      of Buttercup's head; &ldquo;but, land! It's so far down, and such a mite of a
+      thing, I couldn't git it, even if I could use my right hand. S'pose you
+      try, Bill.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bill hemmed and hawed, and confessed he didn't care to try. Buttercup's
+      grinders were of good size and excellent quality, and he had no fancy for
+      leaving his hand within her jaws. He said he was no good at that kind of
+      work, but that he would help Uncle Cash hold the cow's head; that was just
+      as necessary, and considerable safer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moses was more inclined to the service of humanity, and did his best,
+      wrapping his wrist in a cloth, and making desperate but ineffectual dabs
+      at the slippery green turnip-tops in the reluctantly opened throat. But
+      the cow tossed her head and stamped her feet and switched her tail and
+      wriggled from under Bill's hands, so that it seemed altogether impossible
+      to reach the seat of the trouble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Uncle Cash was in despair, fuming and fretting the more because of his own
+      crippled hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hitch up, Bill,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and, Hannah, you drive over to Milliken's
+      Mills for the horse-doctor. I know we can git out that turnip if we can
+      hit on the right tools and somebody to manage em right; but we've got to
+      be quick about it or the critter'll choke to death, sure! Your hand's so
+      clumsy, Mose, she thinks her time's come when she feels it in her mouth,
+      and your fingers are so big you can't ketch holt o' that green stuff thout
+      its slippin'!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mine ain't big; let me try,&rdquo; said a timid voice, and turning round, they
+      saw little Elisha Simpson, his trousers pulled on over his night-shirt,
+      his curly hair ruffled, his eyes vague with sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Uncle Cash gave a laugh of good-humored derision. &ldquo;You&mdash;that's afraid
+      to drive a cow to pasture? No, sir; you hain't got sand enough for this
+      job, I guess!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Buttercup just then gave a worse cough than ever, and her eyes rolled in
+      her head as if she were giving up the ghost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd rather do it than see her choke to death!&rdquo; cried the boy, in despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, by ginger, you can try it, sonny!&rdquo; said Uncle Cash. &ldquo;Now this time
+      we'll tie her head up. Take it slow, and make a good job of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Accordingly they pried poor Buttercup's jaws open to put a wooden gag
+      between them, tied her head up, and kept her as still as they could while
+      the women held the lanterns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, sonny, strip up your sleeve and reach as fur down's you can! Wind
+      your little fingers in among that green stuff stickin' up there that ain't
+      hardly big enough to call green stuff, give it a twist, and pull for all
+      you're worth. Land! What a skinny little pipe stem!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Little Prophet had stripped up his sleeve. It was a slender thing, his
+      arm; but he had driven the red cow all summer, borne her tantrums,
+      protected her from the consequences of her own obstinacy, taking (as he
+      thought) a future owner's pride in her splendid flow of milk&mdash;grown
+      fond of her, in a word, and now she was choking to death. A skinny little
+      pipe stem is capable of a deal at such a time, and only a slender hand and
+      arm could have done the work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elisha trembled with nervousness, but he made a dexterous and dashing
+      entrance into the awful cavern of Buttercup's mouth; descended upon the
+      tiny clump of green spills or spikes, wound his little fingers in among
+      them as firmly as he could, and then gave a long, steady, determined pull
+      with all the strength in this body. That was not so much in itself, to be
+      sure, but he borrowed a good deal more from some reserve quarter, the
+      location of which nobody knows anything about, but upon which everybody
+      draws in time of need.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such a valiant pull you would never have expected of the Little Prophet.
+      Such a pull it was that, to his own utter amazement, he suddenly found
+      himself lying flat on his back on the barn floor with a very slippery
+      something in his hand, and a fair-sized but rather dilapidated turnip at
+      the end of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the business!&rdquo; cried Moses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could 'a' done it as easy as nothin' if my arm had been a leetle mite
+      smaller,&rdquo; said Bill Peters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're a trump, sonny!&rdquo; exclaimed Uncle Cash, as he helped Moses untie
+      Buttercup's head and took the gag out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're a trump, Lisha, and, by ginger, the cow's your'n; only don't you
+      let your blessed pa drink none of her cream!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The welcome air rushed into Buttercup's lungs and cooled her parched, torn
+      throat. She was pretty nearly spent, poor thing, and bent her head (rather
+      gently for her) over the Little Prophet's shoulder as he threw his arms
+      joyfully about her neck, and whispered, &ldquo;You're my truly cow now, ain't
+      you, Buttercup?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Baxter, dear,&rdquo; said Rebecca, as they walked home to the parsonage
+      together under the young harvest moon; &ldquo;there are all sorts of cowards,
+      aren't there, and don't you think Elisha is one of the best kind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't quite know what to think about cowards, Rebecca Rowena,&rdquo; said the
+      minister's wife hesitatingly. &ldquo;The Little Prophet is the third coward I
+      have known in my short life who turned out to be a hero when the real
+      testing time came. Meanwhile the heroes themselves&mdash;or the ones that
+      were taken for heroes&mdash;were always busy doing something, or being
+      somewhere, else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Eighth Chronicle. ABNER SIMPSON'S NEW LEAF
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca had now cut the bonds that bound her to the Riverboro district
+      school, and had been for a week a full-fledged pupil at the Wareham
+      Seminary, towards which goal she had been speeding ever since the
+      memorable day when she rode into Riverboro on the top of Uncle Jerry
+      Cobb's stagecoach, and told him that education was intended to be &ldquo;the
+      making of her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She went to and fro, with Emma Jane and the other Riverboro boys and
+      girls, on the morning and evening trains that ran between the academy town
+      and Milliken's Mills.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The six days had passed like a dream!&mdash;a dream in which she sat in
+      corners with her eyes cast down; flushed whenever she was addressed;
+      stammered whenever she answered a question, and nearly died of heart
+      failure when subjected to an examination of any sort. She delighted the
+      committee when reading at sight from &ldquo;King Lear,&rdquo; but somewhat discouraged
+      them when she could not tell the capital of the United States. She
+      admitted that her former teacher, Miss Dearborn, might have mentioned it,
+      but if so she had not remembered it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In these first weeks among strangers she passed for nothing but an
+      interesting-looking, timid, innocent, country child, never revealing, even
+      to the far-seeing Emily Maxwell, a hint of her originality, facility, or
+      power in any direction. Rebecca was fourteen, but so slight, and under the
+      paralyzing new conditions so shy, that she would have been mistaken for
+      twelve had it not been for her general advancement in the school
+      curriculum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Growing up in the solitude of a remote farm house, transplanted to a tiny
+      village where she lived with two elderly spinsters, she was still the
+      veriest child in all but the practical duties and responsibilities of
+      life; in those she had long been a woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Saturday afternoon; her lessons for Monday were all learned and she
+      burst into the brick house sitting-room with the flushed face and
+      embarrassed mien that always foreshadowed a request. Requests were more
+      commonly answered in the negative than in the affirmative at the brick
+      house, a fact that accounted for the slight confusion in her demeanor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aunt Miranda,&rdquo; she began, &ldquo;the fishman says that Clara Belle Simpson
+      wants to see me very much, but Mrs. Fogg can't spare her long at a time,
+      you know, on account of the baby being no better; but Clara Belle could
+      walk a mile up, and I a mile down the road, and we could meet at the pink
+      house half way. Then we could rest and talk an hour or so, and both be
+      back in time for our suppers. I've fed the cat; she had no appetite, as
+      it's only two o'clock and she had her dinner at noon, but she'll go back
+      to her saucer, and it's off my mind. I could go down cellar now and bring
+      up the cookies and the pie and doughnuts for supper before I start. Aunt
+      Jane saw no objection; but we thought I'd better ask you so as to run no
+      risks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miranda Sawyer, who had been patiently waiting for the end of this speech,
+      laid down her knitting and raised her eyes with a half-resigned expression
+      that meant: Is there anything unusual in heaven or earth or the waters
+      under the earth that this child does not want to do? Will she ever settle
+      down to plain, comprehensible Sawyer ways, or will she to the end make
+      these sudden and radical propositions, suggesting at every turn the
+      irresponsible Randall ancestry?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know well enough, Rebecca, that I don't like you to be intimate with
+      Abner Simpson's young ones,&rdquo; she said decisively. &ldquo;They ain't fit company
+      for anybody that's got Sawyer blood in their veins, if it's ever so
+      little. I don't know, I'm sure, how you're goin' to turn out! The fish
+      peddler seems to be your best friend, without it's Abijah Flagg that
+      you're everlastingly talkin' to lately. I should think you'd rather read
+      some improvin' book than to be chatterin' with Squire Bean's chore-boy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He isn't always going to be a chore-boy,&rdquo; explained Rebecca, &ldquo;and that's
+      what we're considering. It's his career we talk about, and he hasn't got
+      any father or mother to advise him. Besides, Clara Belle kind of belongs
+      to the village now that she lives with Mrs. Fogg; and she was always the
+      best behaved of all the girls, either in school or Sunday-school. Children
+      can't help having fathers!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everybody says Abner is turning over a new leaf, and if so, the family'd
+      ought to be encouraged every possible way,&rdquo; said Miss Jane, entering the
+      room with her mending basket in hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If Abner Simpson is turnin' over a leaf, or anythin' else in creation,
+      it's only to see what's on the under side!&rdquo; remarked Miss Miranda
+      promptly. &ldquo;Don't talk to me about new leaves! You can't change that kind
+      of a man; he is what he is, and you can't make him no different!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The grace of God can do consid'rable,&rdquo; observed Jane piously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ain't sayin' but it can if it sets out, but it has to begin early and
+      stay late on a man like Simpson.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Mirandy, Abner ain't more'n forty! I don't know what the average age
+      for repentance is in men-folks, but when you think of what an awful sight
+      of em leaves it to their deathbeds, forty seems real kind of young. Not
+      that I've heard Abner has experienced religion, but everybody's surprised
+      at the good way he's conductin' this fall.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They'll be surprised the other way round when they come to miss their
+      firewood and apples and potatoes again,&rdquo; affirmed Miranda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Clara Belle don't seem to have inherited from her father,&rdquo; Jane ventured
+      again timidly. &ldquo;No wonder Mrs. Fogg sets such store by the girl. If it
+      hadn't been for her, the baby would have been dead by now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps tryin' to save it was interferin' with the Lord's will,&rdquo; was
+      Miranda's retort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Folks can't stop to figure out just what's the Lord's will when a child
+      has upset a kettle of scalding water on to himself,&rdquo; and as she spoke Jane
+      darned more excitedly. &ldquo;Mrs. Fogg knows well enough she hadn't ought to
+      have left that baby alone in the kitchen with the stove, even if she did
+      see Clara Belle comin' across lots. She'd ought to have waited before
+      drivin' off; but of course she was afraid of missing the train, and she's
+      too good a woman to be held accountable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The minister's wife says Clara Belle is a real&mdash;I can't think of the
+      word!&rdquo; chimed in Rebecca. &ldquo;What's the female of hero? Whatever it is,
+      that's what Mrs. Baxter called her!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Clara Belle's the female of Simpson; that's what she is,&rdquo; Miss Miranda
+      asserted; &ldquo;but she's been brought up to use her wits, and I ain't sayin'
+      but she used em.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should say she did!&rdquo; exclaimed Miss Jane; &ldquo;to put that screaming,
+      suffering child in the baby-carriage and run all the way to the doctor's
+      when there wasn't a soul on hand to advise her! Two or three more such
+      actions would make the Simpson name sound consid'rable sweeter in this
+      neighborhood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Simpson will always sound like Simpson to me!&rdquo; vouchsafed the elder
+      sister, &ldquo;but we've talked enough about em an' to spare. You can go along,
+      Rebecca; but remember that a child is known by the company she keeps.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, Aunt Miranda; thank you!&rdquo; cried Rebecca, leaping from the
+      chair on which she had been twisting nervously for five minutes. &ldquo;And how
+      does this strike you? Would you be in favor of my taking Clara Belle a
+      company-tart?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't Mrs. Fogg feed the young one, now she's taken her right into the
+      family?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes,&rdquo; Rebecca answered, &ldquo;she has lovely things to eat, and Mrs. Fogg
+      won't even let her drink skim milk; but I always feel that taking a
+      present lets the person know you've been thinking about them and are extra
+      glad to see them. Besides, unless we have company soon, those tarts will
+      have to be eaten by the family, and a new batch made; you remember the one
+      I had when I was rewarding myself last week? That was queer&mdash;but
+      nice,&rdquo; she added hastily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mebbe you could think of something of your own you could give away
+      without taking my tarts!&rdquo; responded Miranda tersely; the joints of her
+      armor having been pierced by the fatally keen tongue of her niece, who had
+      insinuated that company-tarts lasted a long time in the brick house. This
+      was a fact; indeed, the company-tart was so named, not from any idea that
+      it would ever be eaten by guests, but because it was too good for
+      every-day use.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca's face crimsoned with shame that she had drifted into an impolite
+      and, what was worse, an apparently ungrateful speech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't mean to say anything not nice, Aunt Miranda,&rdquo; she stammered.
+      &ldquo;Truly the tart was splendid, but not exactly like new, that's all. And
+      oh! I know what I can take Clara Belle! A few chocolate drops out of the
+      box Mr. Ladd gave me on my birthday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+&ldquo;You go down cellar and get that tart, same as I told you,&rdquo; commanded
+Miranda, &ldquo;and when you fill it don't uncover a new tumbler of jelly;
+there's some dried-apple preserves open that'll do. Wear your rubbers
+and your thick jacket. After runnin' all the way down there&mdash;for your
+legs never seem to be rigged for walkin' like other girls'&mdash;you'll set
+down on some damp stone or other and ketch your death o' cold, an' your
+Aunt Jane n' I'll be kep' up nights nursin' you and luggin' your meals
+upstairs to you on a waiter.&rdquo;
+
+ Here Miranda leaned her head against the back of her rocking
+chair, dropped her knitting and closed her eyes wearily, for when the
+immovable body is opposed by the irresistible force there is a certain
+amount of jar and disturbance involved in the operation.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca moved toward the side door, shooting a questioning glance at Aunt
+      Jane as she passed. The look was full of mysterious suggestion and was
+      accompanied by an almost imperceptible gesture. Miss Jane knew that
+      certain articles were kept in the entry closet, and by this time she had
+      become sufficiently expert in telegraphy to know that Rebecca's unspoken
+      query meant: &ldquo;COULD YOU PERMIT THE HAT WITH THE RED WINGS, IT BEING
+      SATURDAY, FINE SETTLED WEATHER, AND A PLEASURE EXCURSION?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      These confidential requests, though fraught with embarrassment when
+      Miranda was in the room, gave Jane much secret joy; there was something
+      about them that stirred her spinster heart&mdash;they were so gay, so
+      appealing, so un-Sawyer-, un-Riverboro-like. The longer Rebecca lived in
+      the brick house the more her Aunt Jane marveled at the child. What made
+      her so different from everybody else. Could it be that her graceless
+      popinjay of a father, Lorenzo de Medici Randall, had bequeathed her some
+      strange combination of gifts instead of fortune? Her eyes, her brows, the
+      color of her lips, the shape of her face, as well as her ways and words,
+      proclaimed her a changeling in the Sawyer tribe; but what an enchanting
+      changeling; bringing wit and nonsense and color and delight into the gray
+      monotony of the dragging years!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was frost in the air, but a bright cheery sun, as Rebecca walked
+      decorously out of the brick house yard. Emma Jane Perkins was away over
+      Sunday on a visit to a cousin in Moderation; Alice Robinson and Candace
+      Milliken were having measles, and Riverboro was very quiet. Still, life
+      was seldom anything but a gay adventure to Rebecca, and she started afresh
+      every morning to its conquest. She was not exacting; the Asmodean feat of
+      spinning a sand heap into twine was, poetically speaking, always in her
+      power, so the mile walk to the pink-house gate, and the tryst with
+      freckled, red-haired Clara Belle Simpson, whose face Miss Miranda said
+      looked like a raw pie in a brick oven, these commonplace incidents were
+      sufficiently exhilarating to brighten her eye and quicken her step.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the great bare horse-chestnut near the pink-house gate loomed into
+      view, the red linsey-woolsey speck going down the road spied the blue
+      linsey-woolsey speck coming up, and both specks flew over the intervening
+      distance and, meeting, embraced each other ardently, somewhat to the
+      injury of the company-tart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn't it come out splendidly?&rdquo; exclaimed Rebecca. &ldquo;I was so afraid the
+      fishman wouldn't tell you to start exactly at two, or that one of us would
+      walk faster than the other; but we met at the very spot! It was a very
+      uncommon idea, wasn't it? Almost romantic!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what do you think?&rdquo; asked Clara Belle proudly. &ldquo;Look at this! Mrs.
+      Fogg lent me her watch to come home by!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Clara Belle, how wonderful! Mrs. Fogg gets kinder and kinder to you,
+      doesn't she? You're not homesick any more, are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No-o; not really; only when I remember there's only little Susan to
+      manage the twins; though they're getting on real well without me. But I
+      kind of think, Rebecca, that I'm going to be given away to the Foggs for
+      good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean adopted?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I think father's going to sign papers. You see we can't tell how
+      many years it'll be before the poor baby outgrows its burns, and Mrs.
+      Fogg'll never be the same again, and she must have somebody to help her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll be their real daughter, then, won't you, Clara Belle? And Mr. Fogg
+      is a deacon, and a selectman, and a road commissioner, and everything
+      splendid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I'll have board, and clothes, and school, and be named Fogg, and&rdquo;
+       (here her voice sank to an awed whisper) &ldquo;the upper farm if I should ever
+      get married; Miss Dearborn told me that herself, when she was persuading
+      me not to mind being given away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Clara Belle Simpson!&rdquo; exclaimed Rebecca in a transport. &ldquo;Who'd have
+      thought you'd be a female hero and an heiress besides? It's just like a
+      book story, and it happened in Riverboro. I'll make Uncle Jerry Cobb allow
+      there CAN be Riverboro stories, you see if I don't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I know it's all right,&rdquo; Clara Belle replied soberly. &ldquo;I'll have
+      a good home and father can't keep us all; but it's kind of dreadful to be
+      given away, like a piano or a horse and carriage!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca's hand went out sympathetically to Clara Belle's freckled paw.
+      Suddenly her own face clouded and she whispered:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not sure, Clara Belle, but I'm given away too&mdash;do you s'pose I
+      am? Poor father left us in debt, you see. I thought I came away from
+      Sunnybrook to get an education and then help pay off the mortgage; but
+      mother doesn't say anything about my coming back, and our family's one of
+      those too-big ones, you know, just like yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did your mother sign papers to your aunts?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If she did I never heard anything about it; but there's something pinned
+      on to the mortgage that mother keeps in the drawer of the bookcase.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'd know it if twas adoption papers; I guess you're just lent,&rdquo; Clara
+      Belle said cheeringly. &ldquo;I don't believe anybody'd ever give YOU away! And,
+      oh! Rebecca, father's getting on so well! He works on Daly's farm where
+      they raise lots of horses and cattle, too, and he breaks all the young
+      colts and trains them, and swaps off the poor ones, and drives all over
+      the country. Daly told Mr. Fogg he was splendid with stock, and father
+      says it's just like play. He's sent home money three Saturday nights.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm so glad!&rdquo; exclaimed Rebecca sympathetically. &ldquo;Now your mother'll have
+      a good time and a black silk dress, won't she?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know,&rdquo; sighed Clara Belle, and her voice was grave. &ldquo;Ever since I
+      can remember she's just washed and cried and cried and washed. Miss
+      Dearborn has been spending her vacation up to Acreville, you know, and she
+      came yesterday to board next door to Mrs. Fogg's. I heard them talking
+      last night when I was getting the baby to sleep&mdash;I couldn't help it,
+      they were so close&mdash;and Miss Dearborn said mother doesn't like
+      Acreville; she says nobody takes any notice of her, and they don't give
+      her any more work. Mrs. Fogg said, well, they were dreadful stiff and
+      particular up that way and they liked women to have wedding rings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hasn't your mother got a wedding ring?&rdquo; asked Rebecca, astonished. &ldquo;Why,
+      I thought everybody HAD to have them, just as they do sofas and a kitchen
+      stove!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never noticed she didn't have one, but when they spoke I remembered
+      mother's hands washing and wringing, and she doesn't wear one, I know. She
+      hasn't got any jewelry, not even a breast-pin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca's tone was somewhat censorious, &ldquo;your father's been so poor
+      perhaps he couldn't afford breast-pins, but I should have thought he'd
+      have given your mother a wedding ring when they were married; that's the
+      time to do it, right at the very first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They didn't have any real church dress-up wedding,&rdquo; explained Clara Belle
+      extenuatingly. &ldquo;You see the first mother, mine, had the big boys and me,
+      and then she died when we were little. Then after a while this mother came
+      to housekeep, and she stayed, and by and by she was Mrs. Simpson, and
+      Susan and the twins and the baby are hers, and she and father didn't have
+      time for a regular wedding in church. They don't have veils and
+      bridesmaids and refreshments round here like Miss Dearborn's sister did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do they cost a great deal&mdash;wedding rings?&rdquo; asked Rebecca
+      thoughtfully. &ldquo;They're solid gold, so I s'pose they do. If they were cheap
+      we might buy one. I've got seventy-four cents saved up; how much have
+      you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fifty-three,&rdquo; Clara Belle responded, in a depressing tone; &ldquo;and anyway
+      there are no stores nearer than Milltown. We'd have to buy it secretly,
+      for I wouldn't make father angry, or shame his pride, now he's got steady
+      work; and mother would know I had spent all my savings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca looked nonplussed. &ldquo;I declare,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I think the Acreville
+      people must be perfectly horrid not to call on your mother only because
+      she hasn't got any jewelry. You wouldn't dare tell your father what Miss
+      Dearborn heard, so he'd save up and buy the ring?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I certainly would not!&rdquo; and Clara Belle's lips closed tightly and
+      decisively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca sat quietly for a few moments, then she exclaimed jubilantly: &ldquo;I
+      know where we could get it! From Mr. Aladdin, and then I needn't tell him
+      who it's for! He's coming to stay over tomorrow with his aunt, and I'll
+      ask him to buy a ring for us in Boston. I won't explain anything, you
+      know; I'll just say I need a wedding ring.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That would be perfectly lovely,&rdquo; replied Clara Belle, a look of hope
+      dawning in her eyes; &ldquo;and we can think afterwards how to get it over to
+      mother. Perhaps you could send it to father instead, but I wouldn't dare
+      to do it myself. You won't tell anybody, Rebecca?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cross my heart!&rdquo; Rebecca exclaimed dramatically; and then with a
+      reproachful look, &ldquo;you know I couldn't repeat a sacred secret like that!
+      Shall we meet next Saturday afternoon, and I tell you what's happened?&mdash;Why,
+      Clara Belle, isn't that Mr. Ladd watering his horse at the foot of the
+      hill this very minute? It is; and he's driven up from Milltown stead of
+      coming on the train from Boston to Edgewood. He's all alone, and I can
+      ride home with him and ask him about the ring right away!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Clara Belle kissed Rebecca fervently, and started on her homeward walk,
+      while Rebecca waited at the top of the long hill, fluttering her
+      handkerchief as a signal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Aladdin! Mr. Aladdin!&rdquo; she cried, as the horse and wagon came nearer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Adam Ladd drew up quickly at the sound of the eager young voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, well; here is Rebecca Rowena fluttering along the highroad like a
+      red-winged blackbird! Are you going to fly home, or drive with me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca clambered into the carriage, laughing and blushing with delight at
+      his nonsense and with joy at seeing him again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Clara Belle and I were just talking about you this minute, and I'm so
+      glad you came this way, for there's something very important to ask you
+      about,&rdquo; she began, rather breathlessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No doubt,&rdquo; laughed Adam Ladd, who had become, in the course of his
+      acquaintance with Rebecca, a sort of high court of appeals; &ldquo;I hope the
+      premium banquet lamp doesn't smoke as it grows older?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Mr. Aladdin, you WILL not remember nicely. Mr. Simpson swapped off
+      the banquet lamp when he was moving the family to Acreville; it's not the
+      lamp at all, but once, when you were here last time, you said you'd make
+      up your mind what you were going to give me for Christmas.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; and &ldquo;I do remember that much quite nicely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, is it bought?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I never buy Christmas presents before Thanksgiving.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, DEAR Mr. Aladdin, would you buy me something different, something
+      that I want to give away, and buy it a little sooner than Christmas?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That depends. I don't relish having my Christmas presents given away. I
+      like to have them kept forever in little girls' bureau drawers, all
+      wrapped in pink tissue paper; but explain the matter and perhaps I'll
+      change my mind. What is it you want?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I need a wedding ring dreadfully,&rdquo; said Rebecca, &ldquo;but it's a sacred
+      secret.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Adam Ladd's eyes flashed with surprise and he smiled to himself with
+      pleasure. Had he on his list of acquaintances, he asked himself, a person
+      of any age or sex so altogether irresistible and unique as this child?
+      Then he turned to face her with the merry teasing look that made him so
+      delightful to young people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought it was perfectly understood between us,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that if you
+      could ever contrive to grow up and I were willing to wait, that I was to
+      ride up to the brick house on my snow white&rdquo;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Coal black,&rdquo; corrected Rebecca, with a sparkling eye and a warning
+      finger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Coal black charger; put a golden circlet on your lily white finger, draw
+      you up behind me on my pillion&rdquo;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Emma Jane, too,&rdquo; Rebecca interrupted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I didn't mention Emma Jane,&rdquo; argued Mr. Aladdin. &ldquo;Three on a
+      pillion is very uncomfortable. I think Emma Jane leaps on the back of a
+      prancing chestnut, and we all go off to my castle in the forest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Emma Jane never leaps, and she'd be afraid of a prancing chestnut,&rdquo;
+       objected Rebecca.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then she shall have a gentle cream-colored pony; but now, without any
+      explanation, you ask me to buy you a wedding ring, which shows plainly
+      that you are planning to ride off on a snow white&mdash;I mean coal black&mdash;charger
+      with somebody else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca dimpled and laughed with joy at the nonsense. In her prosaic world
+      no one but Adam Ladd played the game and answered the fool according to
+      his folly. Nobody else talked delicious fairy-story twaddle but Mr.
+      Aladdin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The ring isn't for ME!&rdquo; she explained carefully. &ldquo;You know very well that
+      Emma Jane nor I can't be married till we're through Quackenbos's Grammar,
+      Greenleaf's Arithmetic, and big enough to wear long trails and run a
+      sewing machine. The ring is for a friend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why doesn't the groom give it to his bride himself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because he's poor and kind of thoughtless, and anyway she isn't a bride
+      any more; she has three step and three other kind of children.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Adam Ladd put the whip back in the socket thoughtfully, and then stooped
+      to tuck in the rug over Rebecca's feet and his own. When he raised his
+      head again he asked: &ldquo;Why not tell me a little more, Rebecca? I'm safe!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca looked at him, feeling his wisdom and strength, and above all his
+      sympathy. Then she said hesitatingly: &ldquo;You remember I told you all about
+      the Simpsons that day on your aunt's porch when you bought the soap
+      because I told you how the family were always in trouble and how much they
+      needed a banquet lamp? Mr. Simpson, Clara Belle's father, has always been
+      very poor, and not always very good,&mdash;a little bit THIEVISH, you know&mdash;but
+      oh, so pleasant and nice to talk to! And now he's turning over a new leaf.
+      And everybody in Riverboro liked Mrs. Simpson when she came here a
+      stranger, because they were sorry for her and she was so patient, and such
+      a hard worker, and so kind to the children. But where she lives now,
+      though they used to know her when she was a girl, they're not polite to
+      her and don't give her scrubbing and washing; and Clara belle heard our
+      teacher say to Mrs. Fogg that the Acreville people were stiff, and
+      despised her because she didn't wear a wedding ring, like all the rest.
+      And Clara Belle and I thought if they were so mean as that, we'd love to
+      give her one, and then she'd be happier and have more work; and perhaps
+      Mr. Simpson if he gets along better will buy her a breast-pin and
+      earrings, and she'll be fitted out like the others. I know Mrs. Peter
+      Meserve is looked up to by everybody in Edgewood on account of her gold
+      bracelets and moss agate necklace.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Adam turned again to meet the luminous, innocent eyes that glowed under
+      the delicate brows and long lashes, feeling as he had more than once felt
+      before, as if his worldly-wise, grown-up thoughts had been bathed in some
+      purifying spring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How shall you send the ring to Mrs. Simpson?&rdquo; he asked, with interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We haven't settled yet; Clara Belle's afraid to do it, and thinks I could
+      manage better. Will the ring cost much? Because, of course, if it does, I
+      must ask Aunt Jane first. There are things I have to ask Aunt Miranda, and
+      others that belong to Aunt Jane.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It costs the merest trifle. I'll buy one and bring it to you, and we'll
+      consult about it; but I think as you're great friends with Mr. Simpson
+      you'd better send it to him in a letter, letters being your strong point!
+      It's a present a man ought to give his own wife, but it's worth trying,
+      Rebecca. You and Clara Belle can manage it between you, and I'll stay in
+      the background where nobody will see me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Ninth Chronicle. THE GREEN ISLE
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Many a green isle needs must be
+     In the deep sea of misery,
+     Or the mariner, worn and wan,
+     Never thus could voyage on
+     Day and night and night and day,
+     Drifting on his weary way.
+
+     &mdash;Shelley
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Meantime in these frosty autumn days life was crowded with events in the
+      lonely Simpson house at Acreville.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tumble-down dwelling stood on the edge of Pliney's Pond; so called
+      because old Colonel Richardson left his lands to be divided in five equal
+      parts, each share to be chosen in turn by one of his five sons, Pliny, the
+      eldest, having priority of choice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pliny Richardson, having little taste for farming, and being ardently fond
+      of fishing, rowing, and swimming, acted up to his reputation of being &ldquo;a
+      little mite odd,&rdquo; and took his whole twenty acres in water&mdash;hence
+      Pliny's Pond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The eldest Simpson boy had been working on a farm in Cumberland County for
+      two years. Samuel, generally dubbed &ldquo;see-saw,&rdquo; had lately found a humble
+      place in a shingle mill and was partially self-supporting. Clara Belle had
+      been adopted by the Foggs; thus there were only three mouths to fill, the
+      capacious ones of Elijah and Elisha, the twin boys, and of lisping,
+      nine-year-old Susan, the capable houseworker and mother's assistant, for
+      the baby had died during the summer; died of discouragement at having been
+      born into a family unprovided with food or money or love or care, or even
+      with desire for, or appreciation of, babies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no doubt that the erratic father of the house had turned over a
+      new leaf. Exactly when he began, or how, or why, or how long he would
+      continue the praiseworthy process,&mdash;in a word whether there would be
+      more leaves turned as the months went on,&mdash;Mrs. Simpson did not know,
+      and it is doubtful if any authority lower than that of Mr. Simpson's Maker
+      could have decided the matter. He had stolen articles for swapping
+      purposes for a long time, but had often avoided detection, and always
+      escaped punishment until the last few years. Three fines imposed for small
+      offenses were followed by several arrests and two imprisonments for brief
+      periods, and he found himself wholly out of sympathy with the wages of
+      sin. Sin itself he did not especially mind, but the wages thereof were
+      decidedly unpleasant and irksome to him. He also minded very much the
+      isolated position in the community which had lately become his; for he was
+      a social being and would ALMOST rather not steal from a neighbor than have
+      him find it out and cease intercourse! This feeling was working in him and
+      rendering him unaccountably irritable and depressed when he took his
+      daughter over to Riverboro at the time of the great flag-raising.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are seasons of refreshment, as well as seasons of drought, in the
+      spiritual, as in the natural world, and in some way or other dews and
+      rains of grace fell upon Abner Simpson's heart during that brief journey.
+      Perhaps the giving away of a child that he could not support had made the
+      soil of his heart a little softer and readier for planting than usual; but
+      when he stole the new flag off Mrs. Peter Meserve's doorsteps, under the
+      impression that the cotton-covered bundle contained freshly washed
+      clothes, he unconsciously set certain forces in operation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It will be remembered that Rebecca saw an inch of red bunting peeping from
+      the back of his wagon, and asked the pleasure of a drive with him. She was
+      no daughter of the regiment, but she proposed to follow the flag. When she
+      diplomatically requested the return of the sacred object which was to be
+      the glory of the &ldquo;raising&rdquo; next day, and he thus discovered his mistake,
+      he was furious with himself for having slipped into a disagreeable
+      predicament; and later, when he unexpectedly faced a detachment of
+      Riverboro society at the cross-roads, and met not only their wrath and
+      scorn, but the reproachful, disappointed glance of Rebecca's eyes, he felt
+      degraded as never before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The night at the Centre tavern did not help matters, nor the jolly
+      patriotic meeting of the three villages at the flag-raising next morning.
+      He would have enjoyed being at the head and front of the festive
+      preparations, but as he had cut himself off from all such friendly
+      gatherings, he intended at any rate to sit in his wagon on the very
+      outskirts of the assembled crowd and see some of the gayety; for, heaven
+      knows, he had little enough, he who loved talk, and song, and story, and
+      laughter, and excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The flag was raised, the crowd cheered, the little girl to whom he had
+      lied, the girl who was impersonating the State of Maine, was on the
+      platform &ldquo;speaking her piece,&rdquo; and he could just distinguish some of the
+      words she was saying:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For it's your star, my star, all the stars together, That makes our
+      country's flag so proud To float in the bright fall weather.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then suddenly there was a clarion voice cleaving the air, and he saw a
+      tall man standing in the centre of the stage and heard him crying: &ldquo;THREE
+      CHEERS FOR THE GIRL THAT SAVED THE FLAG FROM THE HANDS OF THE ENEMY!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was sore and bitter enough already; lonely, isolated enough; with no
+      lot nor share in the honest community life; no hand to shake, no
+      neighbor's meal to share; and this unexpected public arraignment smote him
+      between the eyes. With resentment newly kindled, pride wounded, vanity
+      bleeding, he flung a curse at the joyous throng and drove toward home, the
+      home where he would find his ragged children and meet the timid eyes of a
+      woman who had been the loyal partner of his poverty and disgraces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is probable that even then his (extremely light) hand was already on
+      the &ldquo;new leaf.&rdquo; The angels, doubtless, were not especially proud of the
+      matter and manner of his reformation, but I dare say they were glad to
+      count him theirs on any terms, so difficult is the reformation of this
+      blind and foolish world! They must have been; for they immediately flung
+      into his very lap a profitable, and what is more to the point, an
+      interesting and agreeable situation where money could be earned by doing
+      the very things his nature craved. There were feats of daring to be
+      performed in sight of admiring and applauding stable boys; the horses he
+      loved were his companions; he was OBLIGED to &ldquo;swap,&rdquo; for Daly, his
+      employer, counted on him to get rid of all undesirable stock; power and
+      responsibility of a sort were given him freely, for Daly was no Puritan,
+      and felt himself amply capable of managing any number of Simpsons; so here
+      were numberless advantages within the man's grasp, and wages besides!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abner positively felt no temptation to steal; his soul expanded with
+      pride, and the admiration and astonishment with which he regarded his
+      virtuous present was only equaled by the disgust with which he
+      contemplated his past; not so much a vicious past, in his own generous
+      estimation of it, as a &ldquo;thunderin' foolish&rdquo; one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Simpson took the same view of Abner's new leaf as the angels. She was
+      thankful for even a brief season of honesty coupled with the Saturday
+      night remittance; and if she still washed and cried and cried and washed,
+      as Clara Belle had always seen her, it was either because of some hidden
+      sorrow, or because her poor strength seemed all at once to have deserted
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just when employment and good fortune had come to the step-children, and
+      her own were better fed and clothed than ever before, the pain that had
+      always lurked, constant but dull, near her tired heart, grew fierce and
+      triumphantly strong; clutching her in its talons, biting, gnawing,
+      worrying, leaving her each week with slighter powers of resistance. Still
+      hope was in the air and a greater content than had ever been hers was in
+      her eyes; a content that came near to happiness when the doctor ordered
+      her to keep her bed and sent for Clara Belle. She could not wash any
+      longer, but there was the ever new miracle of the Saturday night
+      remittance for household expenses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is your pain bad today, mother,&rdquo; asked Clara Belle, who, only lately
+      given away, was merely borrowed from Mrs. Fogg for what was thought to be
+      a brief emergency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, there, I can't hardly tell, Clara Belle,&rdquo; Mrs. Simpson replied,
+      with a faint smile. &ldquo;I can't seem to remember the pain these days without
+      it's extra bad. The neighbors are so kind; Mrs. Little has sent me canned
+      mustard greens, and Mrs. Benson chocolate ice cream and mince pie; there's
+      the doctor's drops to make me sleep, and these blankets and that great box
+      of eatables from Mr. Ladd; and you here to keep me comp'ny! I declare I'm
+      kind o' dazed with comforts. I never expected to see sherry wine in this
+      house. I ain't never drawed the cork; it does me good enough jest to look
+      at Mr. Ladd's bottle settin' on the mantel-piece with the fire shinin' on
+      the brown glass.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Simpson had come to see his wife and had met the doctor just as he was
+      leaving the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She looks awful bad to me. Is she goin' to pull through all right, same
+      as the last time?&rdquo; he asked the doctor nervously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's going to pull right through into the other world,&rdquo; the doctor
+      answered bluntly; &ldquo;and as there don't seem to be anybody else to take the
+      bull by the horns, I'd advise you, having made the woman's life about as
+      hard and miserable as you could, to try and help her to die easy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Abner, surprised and crushed by the weight of this verbal chastisement,
+      sat down on the doorstep, his head in his hands, and thought a while
+      solemnly. Thought was not an operation he was wont to indulge in, and when
+      he opened the gate a few minutes later and walked slowly toward the barn
+      for his horse, he looked pale and unnerved. It is uncommonly startling,
+      first to see yourself in another man's scornful eyes, and then, clearly,
+      in your own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two days later he came again, and this time it was decreed that he should
+      find Parson Carll tying his piebald mare at the post.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Clara Belle's quick eye had observed the minister as he alighted from his
+      buggy, and, warning her mother, she hastily smoothed the bedclothes,
+      arranged the medicine bottles, and swept the hearth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! Don't let him in!&rdquo; wailed Mrs. Simpson, all of a flutter at the
+      prospect of such a visitor. &ldquo;Oh, dear! They must think over to the village
+      that I'm dreadful sick, or the minister wouldn't never think of callin'!
+      Don't let him in, Clara Belle! I'm afraid he will say hard words to me, or
+      pray to me; and I ain't never been prayed to since I was a child! Is his
+      wife with him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; he's alone; but father's just drove up and is hitching at the shed
+      door.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's worse than all!&rdquo; and Mrs. Simpson raised herself feebly on her
+      pillows and clasped her hands in despair. &ldquo;You mustn't let them two meet,
+      Clara Belle, and you must send Mr. Carll away; your father wouldn't have a
+      minister in the house, nor speak to one, for a thousand dollars!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be quiet, mother! Lie down! It'll be all right! You'll only fret yourself
+      into a spell! The minister's just a good man; he won't say anything to
+      frighten you. Father's talking with him real pleasant, and pointing the
+      way to the front door.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The parson knocked and was admitted by the excited Clara Belle, who
+      ushered him tremblingly into the sickroom, and then betook herself to the
+      kitchen with the children, as he gently requested her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abner Simpson, left alone in the shed, fumbled in his vest pocket and took
+      out an envelope which held a sheet of paper and a tiny packet wrapped in
+      tissue paper. The letter had been read once before and ran as follows:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dear Mr. Simpson:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is a secret letter. I heard that the Acreville people weren't nice to
+      Mrs. Simpson because she didn't have any wedding ring like all the others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I know you've always been poor, dear Mr. Simpson, and troubled with a
+      large family like ours at the farm; but you really ought to have given
+      Mrs. Simpson a ring when you were married to her, right at the very first;
+      for then it would have been over and done with, as they are solid gold and
+      last forever. And probably she wouldn't feel like asking you for one,
+      because ladies are just like girls, only grown up, and I know I'd be
+      ashamed to beg for jewelry when just board and clothes cost so much. So I
+      send you a nice, new wedding ring to save your buying, thinking you might
+      get Mrs. Simpson a bracelet or eardrops for Christmas. It did not cost me
+      anything, as it was a secret present from a friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I hear Mrs. Simpson is sick, and it would be a great comfort to her while
+      she is in bed and has so much time to look at it. When I had the measles
+      Emma Jane Perkins lent me her mother's garnet ring, and it helped me very
+      much to put my wasted hand outside the bedclothes and see the ring
+      sparkling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Please don't be angry with me, dear Mr. Simpson, because I like you so
+      much and am so glad you are happy with the horses and colts; and I believe
+      now perhaps you DID think the flag was a bundle of washing when you took
+      it that day; so no more from your Trusted friend, Rebecca Rowena Randall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Simpson tore the letter slowly and quietly into fragments and scattered
+      the bits on the woodpile, took off his hat, and smoothed his hair; pulled
+      his mustaches thoughtfully, straightened his shoulders, and then, holding
+      the tiny packet in the palm of his hand, he went round to the front door,
+      and having entered the house stood outside the sickroom for an instant,
+      turned the knob and walked softly in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then at last the angels might have enjoyed a moment of unmixed joy, for in
+      that brief walk from shed to house Abner Simpson's conscience waked to
+      life and attained sufficient strength to prick and sting, to provoke
+      remorse, to incite penitence, to do all sorts of divine and beautiful
+      things it was meant for, but had never been allowed to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Clara Belle went about the kitchen quietly, making preparations for the
+      children's supper. She had left Riverboro in haste, as the change for the
+      worse in Mrs. Simpson had been very sudden, but since she had come she had
+      thought more than once of the wedding ring. She had wondered whether Mr.
+      Ladd had bought it for Rebecca, and whether Rebecca would find means to
+      send it to Acreville; but her cares had been so many and varied that the
+      subject had now finally retired to the background of her mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hands of the clock crept on and she kept hushing the strident tones of
+      Elijah and Elisha, opening and shutting the oven door to look at the corn
+      bread, advising Susan as to her dishes, and marveling that the minister
+      stayed so long.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last she heard a door open and close and saw the old parson come out,
+      wiping his spectacles, and step into the buggy for his drive to the
+      village.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then there was another period of suspense, during which the house was as
+      silent as the grave, and presently her father came into the kitchen,
+      greeted the twins and Susan, and said to Clara Belle: &ldquo;Don't go in there
+      yet!&rdquo; jerking his thumb towards Mrs. Simpson's room; &ldquo;she's all beat out
+      and she's just droppin' off to sleep. I'll send some groceries up from the
+      store as I go along. Is the doctor makin' a second call tonight?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; he'll be here pretty soon, now,&rdquo; Clara Belle answered, looking at
+      the clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right. I'll be here again tomorrow, soon as it's light, and if she
+      ain't picked up any I'll send word back to Daly, and stop here with you
+      for a spell till she's better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was true; Mrs. Simpson was &ldquo;all beat out.&rdquo; It had been a time of
+      excitement and stress, and the poor, fluttered creature was dropping off
+      into the strangest sleep&mdash;a sleep made up of waking dreams. The pain,
+      that had encompassed her heart like a band of steel, lessened its cruel
+      pressure, and finally left her so completely that she seemed to see it
+      floating above her head; only that it looked no longer like a band of
+      steel, but a golden circle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The frail bark in which she had sailed her life voyage had been rocking on
+      a rough and tossing ocean, and now it floated, floated slowly into
+      smoother waters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As long as she could remember, her boat had been flung about in storm and
+      tempest, lashed by angry winds, borne against rocks, beaten, torn,
+      buffeted. Now the waves had subsided; the sky was clear; the sea was warm
+      and tranquil; the sunshine dried the tattered sails; the air was soft and
+      balmy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now, for sleep plays strange tricks, the bark disappeared from the
+      dream, and it was she, herself, who was floating, floating farther and
+      farther away; whither she neither knew nor cared; it was enough to be at
+      rest, lulled by the lapping of the cool waves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then there appeared a green isle rising from the sea; an isle so radiant
+      and fairy-like that her famished eyes could hardly believe its reality;
+      but it was real, for she sailed nearer and nearer to its shores, and at
+      last her feet skimmed the shining sands and she floated through the air as
+      disembodied spirits float, till she sank softly at the foot of a spreading
+      tree.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she saw the green isle was a flowering isle. Every shrub and bush was
+      blooming; the trees were hung with rosy garlands, and even the earth was
+      carpeted with tiny flowers. The rare fragrances, the bird songs, soft and
+      musical, the ravishment of color, all bore down upon her swimming senses
+      at once, taking them captive so completely that she remembered no past,
+      was conscious of no present, looked forward to no future. She seemed to
+      leave the body and the sad, heavy things of the body. The humming in her
+      ears ceased, the light faded, the birds songs grew fainter and more
+      distant, the golden circle of pain receded farther and farther until it
+      was lost to view; even the flowering island gently drifted away, and all
+      was peace and silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was time for the doctor now, and Clara Belle, too anxious to wait
+      longer, softly turned the knob of her mother's door and entered the room.
+      The glow of the open fire illumined the darkest side of the poor chamber.
+      There were no trees near the house, and a full November moon streamed in
+      at the unblinded, uncurtained windows, lighting up the bare interior&mdash;the
+      unpainted floor, the gray plastered walls, and the white counterpane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her mother lay quite still, her head turned and drooping a little on the
+      pillow. Her left hand was folded softly up against her breast, the fingers
+      of the right partly covering it, as if protecting something precious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Was it the moonlight that made the patient brow so white, and where were
+      the lines of anxiety and pain? The face of the mother who had washed and
+      cried and cried and washed was as radiant as if the closed eye were
+      beholding heavenly visions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Something must have cured her!&rdquo; thought Clara Belle, awed and almost
+      frightened by the whiteness and the silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She tiptoed across the floor to look more closely at the still, smiling
+      shape, and bending over it saw, under the shadow of the caressing right
+      hand, a narrow gold band gleaming on the work-stained finger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, the ring came, after all!&rdquo; she said in a glad whisper, &ldquo;and perhaps
+      it was that that made her better!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She put her hand on her mother's gently. A terrified shiver, a warning
+      shudder, shook the girl from head to foot at the chilling touch. A dread
+      presence she had never met before suddenly took shape. It filled the room;
+      stifled the cry on her lips; froze her steps to the floor, stopped the
+      beating of her heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just then the door opened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, doctor! Come quick!&rdquo; she sobbed, stretching out her hand for help,
+      and then covering her eyes. &ldquo;Come close! Look at mother! Is she better&mdash;or
+      is she dead?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor put one hand on the shoulder of the shrinking child, and
+      touched the woman with the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is better!&rdquo; he said gently, &ldquo;and she is dead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Tenth Chronicle. REBECCA'S REMINISCENCES
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca was sitting by the window in her room at the Wareham Female
+      Seminary. She was alone, as her roommate, Emma Jane Perkins, was reciting
+      Latin down below in some academic vault of the old brick building.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A new and most ardent passion for the classics had been born in Emma
+      Jane's hitherto unfertile brain, for Abijah Flagg, who was carrying off
+      all the prizes at Limerick Academy, had written her a letter in Latin, a
+      letter which she had been unable to translate for herself, even with the
+      aid of a dictionary, and which she had been apparently unwilling that
+      Rebecca, her bosom friend, confidant, and roommate, should render into
+      English.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An old-fashioned Female Seminary, with its allotment of one medium-sized
+      room to two medium sized young females, gave small opportunities for
+      privacy by night or day, for neither the double washstand, nor the thus
+      far unimagined bathroom, nor even indeed the humble and serviceable
+      screen, had been realized, in these dark ages of which I write.
+      Accordingly, like the irrational ostrich, which defends itself by the
+      simple process of not looking at its pursuers, Emma Jane had kept her
+      Latin letter in her closed hand, in her pocket, or in her open book,
+      flattering herself that no one had noticed her pleased bewilderment at its
+      only half-imagined contents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All the fairies were not present at Rebecca's cradle. A goodly number of
+      them telegraphed that they were previously engaged or unavoidably absent
+      from town. The village of Temperance, Maine, where Rebecca first saw the
+      light, was hardly a place on its own merits to attract large throngs of
+      fairies. But one dear old personage who keeps her pocket full of Merry
+      Leaves from the Laughing Tree, took a fancy to come to the little birthday
+      party; and seeing so few of her sister-fairies present, she dowered the
+      sleeping baby more richly than was her wont, because of its apparent lack
+      of wealth in other directions. So the child grew, and the Merry Leaves
+      from the Laughing Tree rustled where they hung from the hood of her
+      cradle, and, being fairy leaves, when the cradle was given up they
+      festooned themselves on the cribside, and later on blew themselves up to
+      the ceilings at Sunnybook Farm and dangled there, making fun for
+      everybody. They never withered, even at the brick house in Riverboro,
+      where the air was particularly inimical to fairies, for Miss Miranda
+      Sawyer would have scared any ordinary elf out of her seventeen senses.
+      They followed Rebecca to Wareham, and during Abijah Flagg's Latin
+      correspondence with Emma Jane they fluttered about that young person's
+      head in such a manner that Rebecca was almost afraid that she would
+      discover them herself, although this is something, as a matter of fact,
+      that never does happen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A week had gone by since the Latin missive had been taken from the
+      post-office by Emma Jane, and now, by means of much midnight oil-burning,
+      by much cautious questioning of Miss Maxwell, by such scrutiny of the
+      moods and tenses of Latin verbs as wellnigh destroyed her brain tissue,
+      she had mastered its romantic message. If it was conventional in style,
+      Emma Jane never suspected it. If some of the similes seemed to have been
+      culled from the Latin poets, and some of the phrases built up from Latin
+      exercises, Emma Jane was neither scholar nor critic; the similes, the
+      phrases, the sentiments, when finally translated and written down in
+      black-and-white English, made, in her opinion, the most convincing and
+      heart-melting document ever sent through the mails:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mea cara Emma:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cur audeo scribere ad te epistulam? Es mihi dea! Semper es in mea anima.
+      Iterum et iterum es cum me in somnis. Saepe video tuas capillos auri, tuos
+      pulchros oculos similes caelo, tuas genas, quasi rubentes rosas in nive.
+      Tua vox est dulcior quam cantus avium aut murmur rivuli in montibus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cur sum ego tam miser et pauper et indignus, et tu tam dulcis et bona et
+      nobilis?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Si cogitabis de me ero beatus. Tu es sola puella quam amo, et semper eris.
+      Alias puellas non amavi. Forte olim amabis me, sed sum indignus. Sine te
+      sum miser, cum tu es prope mea vita omni est goddamn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vale, carissima, carissima puella!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      De tuo fideli servo A.F.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My dear Emma:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Why dare I write to you a letter? You are to me a goddess! Always you are
+      in my heart. Again and again you are with me in dreams. Often I see your
+      locks of gold, your beautiful eyes like the sky, your cheeks, as red roses
+      in snow. Your voice is sweeter than the singing of birds or the murmur of
+      the stream in the mountains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Why am I so wretched and poor and unworthy, and you so sweet and good and
+      noble?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If you will think of me I shall be happy. You are the only girl that I
+      love and always will be. Other girls I have not loved. Perhaps sometime
+      you will love me, but I am unworthy. Without you, I am wretched, when you
+      are near my life is all joy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Farewell, dearest, dearest girl!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From your faithful slave A.F.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane knew the letter by heart in English. She even knew it in Latin,
+      only a few days before a dead language to her, but now one filled with
+      life and meaning. From beginning to end the epistle had the effect upon
+      her as of an intoxicating elixir. Often, at morning prayers, or while
+      eating her rice pudding at the noon dinner, or when sinking off to sleep
+      at night, she heard a voice murmuring in her ear, &ldquo;Vale, carissima,
+      carissima puella!&rdquo; As to the effect on her modest, countrified little
+      heart of the phrases in which Abijah stated she was a goddess and he her
+      faithful slave, that quite baffles description; for it lifted her bodily
+      out of the scenes in which she moved, into a new, rosy, ethereal
+      atmosphere in which even Rebecca had no place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca did not know this, fortunately; she only suspected, and waited for
+      the day when Emma Jane would pour out her confidences, as she always did,
+      and always would until the end of time. At the present moment she was
+      busily employed in thinking about her own affairs. A shabby composition
+      book with mottled board covers lay open on the table before her, and
+      sometimes she wrote in it with feverish haste and absorption, and
+      sometimes she rested her chin in the cup of her palm, and with the pencil
+      poised in the other hand looked dreamily out on the village, its huddle of
+      roofs and steeples all blurred into positive beauty by the fast-falling
+      snowflakes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the middle of December and the friendly sky was softly dropping a
+      great white mantle of peace and good-will over the little town, making all
+      ready within and without for the Feast o' the Babe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The main street, that in summer was made dignified by its splendid avenue
+      of shade trees, now ran quiet and white between rows of stalwart trunks,
+      whose leafless branches were all hanging heavy under their dazzling
+      burden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The path leading straight up the hill to the Academy was broken only by
+      the feet of the hurrying, breathless boys and girls who ran up and down,
+      carrying piles of books under their arms; books which they remembered so
+      long as they were within the four walls of the recitation room, and which
+      they eagerly forgot as soon as they met one another in the living,
+      laughing world, going up and down the hill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's very becoming to the universe, snow is!&rdquo; thought Rebecca, looking
+      out of the window dreamily. &ldquo;Really there's little to choose between the
+      world and heaven when a snowstorm is going on. I feel as if I ought to
+      look at it every minute. I wish I could get over being greedy, but it
+      still seems to me at sixteen as if there weren't waking hours enough in
+      the day, and as if somehow I were pressed for time and continually losing
+      something. How well I remember mother's story about me when I was four. It
+      was at early breakfast on the farm, but I called all meals dinner' then,
+      and when I had finished I folded up my bib and sighed: O, dear! Only two
+      more dinners, play a while and go to bed!' This was at six in the morning&mdash;lamplight
+      in the kitchen, snowlight outside!
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Powdery, powdery, powdery snow,
+     Making things lovely wherever you go!
+     Merciful, merciful, merciful snow,
+     Masking the ugliness hidden below.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Herbert made me promise to do a poem for the January 'Pilot,' but I
+      mustn't take the snow as a subject; there has been too great competition
+      among the older poets!&rdquo; And with that she turned in her chair and began
+      writing again in the shabby book, which was already three quarters filled
+      with childish scribblings, sometimes in pencil, and sometimes in violet
+      ink with carefully shaded capital letters.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      Squire Bean has had a sharp attack of rheumatism and Abijah Flagg came
+      back from Limerick for a few days to nurse him. One morning the Burnham
+      sisters from North Riverboro came over to spend the day with Aunt Miranda,
+      and Abijah went down to put up their horse. (&ldquo;'Commodatin' 'Bijah&rdquo; was his
+      pet name when we were all young.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He scaled the ladder to the barn chamber&mdash;the dear old ladder that
+      used to be my safety valve!&mdash;and pitched down the last forkful of
+      grandfather's hay that will ever be eaten by any visiting horse. They WILL
+      be delighted to hear that it is all gone; they have grumbled at it for
+      years and years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What should Abijah find at the bottom of the heap but my Thought Book,
+      hidden there two or three years ago and forgotten!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I think of what it was to me, the place it filled in my life, the
+      affection I lavished on it, I wonder that I could forget it, even in all
+      the excitement of coming to Wareham to school. And that gives me &ldquo;an
+      uncommon thought&rdquo; as I used to say! It is this: that when we finish
+      building an air castle we seldom live in it after all; we sometimes even
+      forget that we ever longed to! Perhaps we have gone so far as to begin
+      another castle on a higher hilltop, and this is so beautiful,&mdash;especially
+      while we are building, and before we live in it!&mdash;that the first one
+      has quite vanished from sight and mind, like the outgrown shell of the
+      nautilus that he casts off on the shore and never looks at again. (At
+      least I suppose he doesn't; but perhaps he takes one backward glance,
+      half-smiling, half-serious, just as I am doing at my old Thought Book, and
+      says, &ldquo;WAS THAT MY SHELL! GOODNESS GRACIOUS! HOW DID I EVER SQUEEZE MYSELF
+      INTO IT!&rdquo;)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That bit about the nautilus sounds like an extract from a school theme, or
+      a &ldquo;Pilot&rdquo; editorial, or a fragment of one of dear Miss Maxwell's lectures,
+      but I think girls of sixteen are principally imitations of the people and
+      things they love and admire; and between editing the &ldquo;Pilot,&rdquo; writing out
+      Virgil translations, searching for composition subjects, and studying
+      rhetorical models, there is very little of the original Rebecca Rowena
+      about me at the present moment; I am just a member of the graduating class
+      in good and regular standing. We do our hair alike, dress alike as much as
+      possible, eat and drink alike, talk alike,&mdash;I am not even sure that
+      we do not think alike; and what will become of the poor world when we are
+      all let loose upon it on the same day of June? Will life, real life, bring
+      our true selves back to us? Will love and duty and sorrow and trouble and
+      work finally wear off the &ldquo;school stamp&rdquo; that has been pressed upon all of
+      us until we look like rows of shining copper cents fresh from the mint?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet there must be a little difference between us somewhere, or why does
+      Abijah Flagg write Latin letters to Emma Jane, instead of to me? There is
+      one example on the other side of the argument,&mdash;Abijah Flagg. He
+      stands out from all the rest of the boys like the Rock of Gibraltar in the
+      geography pictures. Is it because he never went to school until he was
+      sixteen? He almost died of longing to go, and the longing seemed to teach
+      him more than going. He knew his letters, and could read simple things,
+      but it was I who taught him what books really meant when I was eleven and
+      he thirteen. We studied while he was husking corn or cutting potatoes for
+      seed, or shelling beans in the Squire's barn. His beloved Emma Jane didn't
+      teach him; her father wold not have let her be friends with a chore-boy!
+      It was I who found him after milking-time, summer nights, suffering, yes
+      dying, of Least Common Multiple and Greatest Common Divisor; I who struck
+      the shackles from the slave and told him to skip it all and go on to
+      something easier, like Fractions, Percentage, and Compound Interest, as I
+      did myself. Oh! How he used to smell of the cows when I was correcting his
+      sums on warm evenings, but I don't regret it, for he is now the joy of
+      Limerick and the pride of Riverboro, and I suppose has forgotten the
+      proper side on which to approach a cow if you wish to milk her. This now
+      unserviceable knowledge is neatly inclosed in the outgrown shell he threw
+      off two or three years ago. His gratitude to me knows no bounds, but&mdash;he
+      writes Latin letters to Emma Jane! But as Mr. Perkins said about drowning
+      the kittens (I now quote from myself at thirteen), &ldquo;It is the way of the
+      world and how things have to be!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, I have read the Thought Book all through, and when I want to make
+      Mr. Aladdin laugh, I shall show him my composition on the relative values
+      of punishment and reward as builders of character.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am not at all the same Rebecca today at sixteen that I was then, at
+      twelve and thirteen. I hope, in getting rid of my failings, that I haven't
+      scrubbed and rubbed so hard that I have taken the gloss off the poor
+      little virtues that lay just alongside of the faults; for as I read the
+      foolish doggerel and the funny, funny &ldquo;Remerniscences,&rdquo; I see on the whole
+      a nice, well-meaning, trusting, loving heedless little creature, that
+      after all I'd rather build on than outgrow altogether, because she is Me;
+      the Me that was made and born just a little different from all the rest of
+      the babies in my birthday year.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One thing is alike in the child and the girl. They both love to set
+      thoughts down in black and white; to see how they look, how they sound,
+      and how they make one feel when one reads them over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They both love the sound of beautiful sentences and the tinkle of rhyming
+      words, and in fact, of the three great R's of life, they adore Reading and
+      Riting, as much as they abhor 'Rithmetic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little girl in the old book is always thinking of what she is &ldquo;going
+      to be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Uncle Jerry Cobb spoiled me a good deal in this direction. I remember he
+      said to everybody when I wrote my verses for the flag-raising: &ldquo;Nary rung
+      on the ladder o' fame but that child'll climb if you give her time!&rdquo;&mdash;poor
+      Uncle Jerry! He will be so disappointed in me as time goes on. And still
+      he would think I have already climbed two rungs on the ladder, although it
+      is only a little Wareham ladder, for I am one of the &ldquo;Pilot&rdquo; editors, the
+      first &ldquo;girl editor&rdquo;&mdash;and I have taken a fifty dollar prize in
+      composition and paid off the interest on a twelve hundred dollar mortgage
+      with it.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;High is the rank we now possess,
+     But higher we shall rise;
+     Though what we shall hereafter be
+     Is hid from mortal eyes.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      This hymn was sung in meeting the Sunday after my election, and Mr.
+      Aladdin was there that day and looked across the aisle and smiled at me.
+      Then he sent me a sheet of paper from Boston the next morning with just
+      one verse in the middle of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She made the cleverest people quite ashamed; And ev'n the good with
+      inward envy groan, Finding themselves so very much exceeded, In their own
+      way by all the things that she did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Maxwell says it is Byron, and I wish I had thought of the last rhyme
+      before Byron did; my rhymes are always so common.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am too busy doing, nowadays, to give very much thought to being. Mr.
+      Aladdin was teasing me one day about what he calls my &ldquo;cast-off careers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What makes you aim at any mark in particular, Rebecca?&rdquo; he asked, looking
+      at Miss Maxwell and laughing. &ldquo;Women never hit what they aim at, anyway;
+      but if they shut their eyes and shoot in the air they generally find
+      themselves in the bull's eye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I think one reason that I have always dreamed of what I should be, when I
+      grew up, was, that even before father died mother worried about the
+      mortgage on the farm, and what would become of us if it were foreclosed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was hard on children to be brought up on a mortgage that way, but oh!
+      it was harder still on poor dear mother, who had seven of us then to think
+      of, and still has three at home to feed and clothe out of the farm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aunt Jane says I am young for my age, Aunt Miranda is afraid that I will
+      never really &ldquo;grow up,&rdquo; Mr. Aladdin says that I don't know the world any
+      better than the pearl inside of the oyster. They none of them know the
+      old, old thoughts I have, some of them going back years and years; for
+      they are never ones that I can speak about.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I remember how we children used to admire father, he was so handsome and
+      graceful and amusing, never cross like mother, or too busy to play with
+      us. He never did any work at home because he had to keep his hands nice
+      for playing the church melodeon, or the violin or piano for dances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mother used to say: &ldquo;Hannah and Rebecca, you must hull the strawberries,
+      your father cannot help.&rdquo; &ldquo;John, you must milk next year for I haven't the
+      time and it would spoil your father's hands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All the other men in Temperance village wore calico, or flannel shirts,
+      except on Sundays, but Father never wore any but white ones with starched
+      bosoms. He was very particular about them and mother used to stitch and
+      stitch on the pleats, and press and press the bosoms and collar and cuffs,
+      sometimes late at night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she was tired and thin and gray, with no time to sew on new dresses
+      for herself, and no time to wear them, because she was always taking care
+      of the babies; and father was happy and well and handsome. But we children
+      never thought much about it until once, after father had mortgaged the
+      farm, there was going to be a sociable in Temperance village. Mother could
+      not go as Jenny had whooping-cough and Mark had just broken his arm, and
+      when she was tying father's necktie, the last thing before he started, he
+      said: &ldquo;I wish, Aurelia, that you cared a little about YOUR appearance and
+      YOUR dress; it goes a long way with a man like me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mother had finished the tie, and her hands dropped suddenly. I looked at
+      her eyes and mouth while she looked at father and in a minute I was ever
+      so old, with a grown-up ache in my heart. It has always stayed there,
+      although I admired my handsome father and was proud of him because he was
+      so talented; but now that I am older and have thought about things, my
+      love for mother is different from what it used to be. Father was always
+      the favorite when we were little, he was so interesting, and I wonder
+      sometimes if we don't remember interesting people longer and better than
+      we do those who are just good and patient. If so it seems very cruel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As I look back I see that Miss Ross, the artist who brought me my pink
+      parasol from Paris, sowed the first seeds in me of ambition to do
+      something special. Her life seemed so beautiful and so easy to a child. I
+      had not been to school then, or read George Macdonald, so I did not know
+      that &ldquo;Ease is the lovely result of forgotten toil.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Ross sat out of doors and painted lovely things, and everybody said
+      how wonderful they were, and bought them straight away; and she took care
+      of a blind father and two brothers, and traveled wherever she wished. It
+      comes back to me now, that summer when I was ten and Miss Ross painted me
+      sitting by the mill-wheel while she talked to me of foreign countries!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other day Miss Maxwell read something from Browning's poems to the
+      girls of her literature class. It was about David the shepherd boy who
+      used to lie in his hollow watching one eagle &ldquo;wheeling slow as in sleep.&rdquo;
+       He used to wonder about the wide world that the eagle beheld, the eagle
+      that was stretching his wings so far up in the blue, while he, the poor
+      shepherd boy, could see only the &ldquo;strip twixt the hill and the sky;&rdquo; for
+      he lay in a hollow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I told Mr. Baxter about it the next day, which was the Saturday before I
+      joined the church. I asked him if it was wicked to long to see as much as
+      the eagle saw?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was never anybody quite like Mr. Baxter. &ldquo;Rebecca dear,&rdquo; he said,
+      &ldquo;it may be that you need not always lie in a hollow, as the shepherd boy
+      did; but wherever you lie, that little strip you see 'twixt the hill and
+      the sky' is able to hold all of earth and all of heaven, if only you have
+      the right sort of vision.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was a long, long time about &ldquo;experiencing religion.&rdquo; I remember Sunday
+      afternoons at the brick house the first winter after I went there; when I
+      used to sit in the middle of the dining-room as I was bid, silent and
+      still, with the big family Bible on my knees. Aunt Miranda had Baxter's
+      &ldquo;Saints' Rest,&rdquo; but her seat was by the window, and she at least could
+      give a glance into the street now and then without being positively
+      wicked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aunt Jane used to read the &ldquo;Pilgrim's Progress.&rdquo; The fire burned low; the
+      tall clock ticked, ticked, so slowly and steadily, that the pictures swam
+      before my eyes and I almost fell asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They thought by shutting everything else out that I should see God; but I
+      didn't, not once. I was so homesick for Sunnybook and John that I could
+      hardly learn my weekly hymns, especially the sad, long one beginning:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;My thoughts on awful subjects roll,
+     Damnation and the dead.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      It was brother John for whom I was chiefly homesick on Sunday afternoons,
+      because at Sunnybrook Farm father was dead and mother was always busy, and
+      Hannah never liked to talk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the next year the missionaries from Syria came to Riverboro; and at
+      the meeting Mr. Burch saw me playing the melodeon, and thought I was grown
+      up and a church member, and so he asked me to lead in prayer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I didn't dare to refuse, and when I prayed, which was just like thinking
+      out loud, I found I could talk to God a great deal easier than to Aunt
+      Miranda or even to Uncle Jerry Cobb. There were things I could say to Him
+      that I could never say to anybody else, and saying them always made me
+      happy and contented.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Mr. Baxter asked me last year about joining the church, I told him I
+      was afraid I did not understand God quite well enough to be a real member.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you don't quite understand God, Rebecca?&rdquo; he asked, smiling. &ldquo;Well,
+      there is something else much more important, which is, that He understands
+      you! He understands your feeble love, your longings, desires, hopes,
+      faults, ambitions, crosses; and that, after all, is what counts! Of course
+      you don't understand Him! You are overshadowed by His love, His power, His
+      benignity, His wisdom; that is as it should be! Why, Rebecca, dear, if you
+      could stand erect and unabashed in God's presence, as one who perfectly
+      comprehended His nature or His purposes, it would be sacrilege! Don't be
+      puzzled out of your blessed inheritance of faith, my child; accept God
+      easily and naturally, just as He accepts you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God never puzzled me, Mr. Baxter; it isn't that,&rdquo; I said; &ldquo;but the
+      doctrines do worry me dreadfully.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let them alone for the present,&rdquo; Mr Baxter said. &ldquo;Anyway, Rebecca, you
+      can never prove God; you can only find Him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then do you think I have really experienced religion, Mr. Baxter?&rdquo; I
+      asked. &ldquo;Am I the beginnings of a Christian?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are a dear child of the understanding God!&rdquo; Mr. Baxter said; &ldquo;and I
+      say it over to myself night and morning so that I can never forget it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      The year is nearly over and the next few months will be lived in the rush
+      and whirlwind of work that comes before graduation. The bell for
+      philosophy class will ring in ten minutes, and as I have been writing for
+      nearly two hours, I must learn my lesson going up the Academy hill. It
+      will not be the first time; it is a grand hill for learning! I suppose
+      after fifty years or so the very ground has become soaked with knowledge,
+      and every particle of air in the vicinity is crammed with useful
+      information.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I will put my book into my trunk (having no blessed haymow hereabouts) and
+      take it out again,&mdash;when shall I take it out again?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After graduation perhaps I shall be too grown up and too busy to write in
+      a Thought Book; but oh, if only something would happen worth putting down;
+      something strange; something unusual; something different from the things
+      that happen every day in Riverboro and Edgewood!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graduation will surely take me a little out of &ldquo;the hollow,&rdquo;&mdash;make me
+      a little more like the soaring eagle, gazing at the whole wide world
+      beneath him while he wheels &ldquo;slow as in sleep.&rdquo; But whether or not, I'll
+      try not to be a discontented shepherd, but remember what Mr. Baxter said,
+      that the little strip that I see &ldquo;twixt the hill and the sky&rdquo; is able to
+      hold all of earth and all of heaven, if only I have the eyes to see it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca Rowena Randall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wareham Female Seminary, December 187&mdash;.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Eleventh Chronicle. ABIJAH THE BRAVE AND THE FAIR EMMAJANE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;A warrior so bold and a maiden so bright
+     Conversed as they sat on the green.
+     They gazed at each other in tender delight.
+     Alonzo the brave was the name of the knight,
+     And the maid was the fair Imogene.
+
+     &ldquo;Alas!' said the youth, 'since tomorrow I go
+     To fight in a far distant land,
+     Your tears for my absence soon ceasing to flow,
+     Some other will court you, and you will bestow
+     On a wealthier suitor your hand.'
+
+     'Oh, hush these suspicions!' Fair Imogene said,
+     &ldquo;So hurtful to love and to me!
+     For if you be living, or if you be dead,
+     I swear by the Virgin that none in your stead
+     Shall the husband of Imogene be!'
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Ever since she was eight years old Rebecca had wished to be eighteen, but
+      now that she was within a month of that awe-inspiring and long-desired age
+      she wondered if, after all, it was destined to be a turning point in her
+      quiet existence. Her eleventh year, for instance, had been a real
+      turning-point, since it was then that she had left Sunnybrook Farm and
+      come to her maiden aunts in Riverboro. Aurelia Randall may have been
+      doubtful as to the effect upon her spinster sisters of the irrepressible
+      child, but she was hopeful from the first that the larger opportunities of
+      Riverboro would be the &ldquo;making&rdquo; of Rebecca herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next turning-point was her fourteenth year, when she left the district
+      school for the Wareham Female Seminary, then in the hey-day of its local
+      fame. Graduation (next to marriage, perhaps, the most thrilling episode in
+      the life of a little country girl) happened at seventeen, and not long
+      afterward her Aunt Miranda's death, sudden and unexpected, changed not
+      only all the outward activities and conditions of her life, but played its
+      own part in her development.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The brick house looked very homelike and pleasant on a June morning
+      nowadays with children's faces smiling at the windows and youthful
+      footsteps sounding through the halls; and the brass knocker on the
+      red-painted front door might have remembered Rebecca's prayer of a year
+      before, when she leaned against its sun-warmed brightness and whispered:
+      &ldquo;God bless Aunt Miranda; God bless the brick house that was; God bless the
+      brick house that's going to be!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All the doors and blinds were open to the sun and air as they had never
+      been in Miss Miranda Sawyer's time. The hollyhock bed that had been her
+      chief pride was never neglected, and Rebecca liked to hear the neighbors
+      say that there was no such row of beautiful plants and no such variety of
+      beautiful colors in Riverboro as those that climbed up and peeped in at
+      the kitchen windows where old Miss Miranda used to sit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now that the place was her very own Rebecca felt a passion of pride in its
+      smoothly mown fields, its carefully thinned-out woods, its blooming garden
+      spots, and its well-weeded vegetable patch; felt, too whenever she looked
+      at any part of it, a passion of gratitude to the stern old aunt who had
+      looked upon her as the future head of the family, as well as a passion of
+      desire to be worthy of that trust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It had been a very difficult year for a girl fresh from school: the death
+      of her aunt, the nursing of Miss Jane, prematurely enfeebled by the shock,
+      the removal of her own invalid mother and the rest of the little family
+      from Sunnybrook Farm. But all had gone smoothly; and when once the Randall
+      fortunes had taken an upward turn nothing seemed able to stop their
+      intrepid ascent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aurelia Randall renewed her youth in the companionship of her sister Jane
+      and the comforts by which her children were surrounded; the mortgage was
+      no longer a daily terror, for Sunnybrook had been sold to the new
+      railroad; Hannah, now Mrs. Will Melville, was happily situated; John, at
+      last, was studying medicine; Mark, the boisterous and unlucky brother, had
+      broken no bones for several months; while Jenny and Fanny were doing well
+      at the district school under Miss Libby Moses, Miss Dearborn's successor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't feel very safe,&rdquo; thought Rebecca, remembering all these
+      unaccustomed mercies as she sat on the front doorsteps, with her tatting
+      shuttle flying in and out of the fine cotton like a hummingbird. &ldquo;It's
+      just like one of those too beautiful July days that winds up with a
+      thundershower before night! Still, when you remember that the Randalls
+      never had anything but thunder and lightning, rain, snow, and hail, in
+      their family history for twelve or fifteen years, perhaps it is only
+      natural that they should enjoy a little spell of settled weather. If it
+      really turns out to BE settled, now that Aunt Jane and mother are strong
+      again I must be looking up one of what Mr. Aladdin calls my cast-off
+      careers.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;There comes Emma Jane Perkins through her front gate; she
+      will be here in a minute, and I'll tease her!&rdquo; and Rebecca ran in the door
+      and seated herself at the old piano that stood between the open windows in
+      the parlor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Peeping from behind the muslin curtains, she waited until Emma Jane was on
+      the very threshold and then began singing her version of an old ballad,
+      made that morning while she was dressing. The ballad was a great favorite
+      of hers, and she counted on doing telling execution with it in the present
+      instance by the simple subterfuge of removing the original hero and
+      heroine, Alonzo and Imogene, and substituting Abijah the Brave and the
+      Fair Emmajane, leaving the circumstances in the first three verses
+      unaltered, because in truth they seemed to require no alteration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her high, clear voice, quivering with merriment, floated through the
+      windows into the still summer air:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;'A warrior so bold and a maiden so bright
+     Conversed as they sat on the green.
+     They gazed at each other in tender delight.
+     Abijah the Brave was the name of the knight,
+     And the maid was the Fair Emmajane.'&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rebecca Randall, stop! Somebody'll hear you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, they won't&mdash;they're making jelly in the kitchen, miles away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;'Alas!' said the youth, since tomorrow I go
+     To fight in a far distant land,
+     Your tears for my absence soon ceasing to flow,
+     Some other will court you, and you will bestow
+     On a wealthier suitor your hand.'&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rebecca, you can't THINK how your voice carries! I believe mother can
+      hear it over to my house!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, if she can, I must sing the third verse, just to clear your
+      reputation from the cloud cast upon it in the second,&rdquo; laughed her
+      tormentor, going on with the song:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Oh, hush these suspicions!' Fair Emmajane said, 'So hurtful to love and
+      to me! For if you be living, or if you be dead, I swear, my Abijah, that
+      none in your stead, Shall the husband of Emmajane be!'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After ending the third verse Rebecca wheeled around on the piano stool and
+      confronted her friend, who was carefully closing the parlor windows:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Emma Jane Perkins, it is an ordinary Thursday afternoon at four o'clock
+      and you have on your new blue barege, although there is not even a church
+      sociable in prospect this evening. What does this mean? Is Abijah the
+      Brave coming at last?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know certainly, but it will be some time this week.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And of course you'd rather be dressed up and not seen, than seen when not
+      dressed up. Right, my Fair Emmajane; so would I. Not that it makes any
+      difference to poor me, wearing my fourth best black and white calico and
+      expecting nobody.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, well, YOU! There's something inside of you that does instead of
+      pretty dresses,&rdquo; cried Emma Jane, whose adoration of her friend had never
+      altered nor lessened since they met at the age of eleven. &ldquo;You know you
+      are as different from anybody else in Riverboro as a princess in a fairy
+      story. Libby Moses says they would notice you in Lowell, Massachusetts!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would they? I wonder,&rdquo; speculated Rebecca, rendered almost speechless by
+      this tribute to her charms. &ldquo;Well, if Lowell, Massachusetts, could see me,
+      or if you could see me, in my new lavender muslin with the violet sash, it
+      would die of envy, and so would you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I had been going to be envious of you, Rebecca, I should have died
+      years ago. Come, let's go out on the steps where it's shady and cool.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And where we can see the Perkins front gate and the road running both
+      ways,&rdquo; teased Rebecca, and then, softening her tone, she said: &ldquo;How is it
+      getting on, Emmy? Tell me what's happened since I've been in Brunswick.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing much,&rdquo; confessed Emma Jane. &ldquo;He writes to me, but I don't write
+      to him, you know. I don't dare to, till he comes to the house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are his letters still in Latin?&rdquo; asked Rebecca, with a twinkling eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no! Not now, because&mdash;well, because there are things you can't
+      seem to write in Latin. I saw him at the Masonic picnic in the grove, but
+      he won't say anything REAL to me till he gets more pay and dares to speak
+      to mother and father. He IS brave in all other ways, but I ain't sure
+      he'll ever have the courage for that, he's so afraid of them and always
+      has been. Just remember what's in his mind all the time, Rebecca, that my
+      folks know all about what his mother was, and how he was born on the
+      poor-farm. Not that I care; look how he's educated and worked himself up!
+      I think he's perfectly elegant, and I shouldn't mind if he had been born
+      in the bulrushes, like Moses.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane's every-day vocabulary was pretty much what it had been before
+      she went to the expensive Wareham Female Seminary. She had acquired a
+      certain amount of information concerning the art of speech, but in moments
+      of strong feeling she lapsed into the vernacular. She grew slowly in all
+      directions, did Emma Jane, and, to use Rebecca's favorite nautilus figure,
+      she had left comparatively few outgrown shells on the shores of &ldquo;life's
+      unresting sea.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Moses wasn't born in the bulrushes, Emmy dear,&rdquo; corrected Rebecca
+      laughingly. &ldquo;Pharaoh's daughter found him there. It wasn't quite as
+      romantic a scene&mdash;Squire Bean's wife taking little Abijah Flagg from
+      the poorhouse when his girl-mother died, but, oh, I think Abijah's
+      splendid! Mr. Ladd says Riverboro'll be proud of him yet, and I shouldn't
+      wonder, Emmy dear, if you had a three-story house with a cupola on it,
+      some day; and sitting down at your mahogany desk inlaid with garnets, you
+      will write notes stating that Mrs. Abijah Flagg requests the pleasure of
+      Miss Rebecca Randall's company to tea, and that the Hon. Abijah Flagg,
+      M.C., will call for her on his way from the station with a span of horses
+      and the turquoise carryall!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane laughed at the ridiculous prophecy, and answered: &ldquo;If I ever
+      write the invitation I shan't be addressing it to Miss Randall, I'm sure
+      of that; it'll be to Mrs.&mdash;&mdash;-&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't!&rdquo; cried Rebecca impetuously, changing color and putting her hand
+      over Emma Jane's lips. &ldquo;If you won't I'll stop teasing. I couldn't bear a
+      name put to anything, I couldn't, Emmy dear! I wouldn't tease you, either,
+      if it weren't something we've both known ever so long&mdash;something that
+      you have always consulted me about of your own accord, and Abijah too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't get excited,&rdquo; replied Emma Jane, &ldquo;I was only going to say you were
+      sure to be Mrs. Somebody in course of time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said Rebecca with a relieved sigh, her color coming back; &ldquo;if that's
+      all you meant, just nonsense; but I thought, I thought&mdash;I don't
+      really know just what I thought!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you thought something you didn't want me to think you thought,&rdquo;
+       said Emma Jane with unusual felicity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, it's not that; but somehow, today, I have been remembering things.
+      Perhaps it was because at breakfast Aunt Jane and mother reminded me of my
+      coming birthday and said that Squire Bean would give me the deed of the
+      brick house. That made me feel very old and responsible; and when I came
+      out on the steps this afternoon it was just as if pictures of the old
+      years were moving up and down the road. Everything is so beautiful today!
+      Doesn't the sky look as if it had been dyed blue and the fields painted
+      pink and green and yellow this very minute?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a perfectly elegant day!&rdquo; responded Emma Jane with a sigh. &ldquo;If only
+      my mind was at rest! That's the difference between being young and
+      grown-up. We never used to think and worry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed we didn't! Look, Emmy, there's the very spot where Uncle Jerry
+      Cobb stopped the stage and I stepped out with my pink parasol and my
+      bouquet of purple lilacs, and you were watching me from your bedroom
+      window and wondering what I had in mother's little hair trunk strapped on
+      behind. Poor Aunt Miranda didn't love me at first sight, and oh, how cross
+      she was the first two years! But now every hard thought I ever had comes
+      back to me and cuts like a knife!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was dreadful hard to get along with, and I used to hate her like
+      poison,&rdquo; confessed Emma Jane; &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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!'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lumps rose suddenly in Emma Jane's throat, and she put her arm around
+      Rebecca's waist as they sat together side by side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I do remember,&rdquo; she said in a choking voice. &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I remember you,&rdquo; continued Rebecca, &ldquo;being chased down the hill by
+      Jacob Moody, when we were being Daughters of Zion and you had been chosen
+      to convert him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I remember you, getting the flag back from Mr. Simpson; and how you
+      looked when you spoke your verses at the flag-raising.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I always thought that was an elegant composition of yours&mdash;that
+      farewell to the class,&rdquo; said Emma Jane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The strong tide bears us on, out of the little harbor of childhood into
+      the unknown seas,&rdquo; recalled Rebecca. &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane grew a deeper pink and her button-hole of a mouth quivered with
+      delicious excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was last year at the seminary, when he wrote me his first Latin letter
+      from Limerick Academy,&rdquo; she said in a half whisper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I remember,&rdquo; laughed Rebecca. &ldquo;You suddenly began the study of the dead
+      languages, and the Latin dictionary took the place of the crochet needle
+      in your affections. It was cruel of you never to show me that letter,
+      Emmy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know every word of it by heart,&rdquo; said the blushing Emma Jane, &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It depends upon Abijah's Latin and your pronunciation,&rdquo; teased Rebecca.
+      &ldquo;Go on; I will turn my eyes toward the orchard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Fair Emmajane, looking none too old still for the &ldquo;little harbor,&rdquo; but
+      almost too young for the &ldquo;unknown seas,&rdquo; gathered up her courage and
+      recited like a tremulous parrot the boyish love letter that had so fired
+      her youthful imagination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Vale, carissima, carissima puella!&rdquo; repeated Rebecca in her musical
+      voice. &ldquo;Oh, how beautiful it sounds! I don't wonder it altered your
+      feeling for Abijah! Upon my word, Emma Jane,&rdquo; she cried with a sudden
+      change of tone, &ldquo;if I had suspected for an instant that Abijah the Brave
+      had that Latin letter in him I should have tried to get him to write it to
+      me; and then it would be I who would sit down at my mahogany desk and ask
+      Miss Perkins to come to tea with Mrs. Flagg.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane paled and shuddered openly. &ldquo;I speak as a church member,
+      Rebecca,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;when I tell you I've always thanked the Lord that you
+      never looked at Abijah Flagg and he never looked at you. If either of you
+      ever had, there never would have been a chance for me, and I've always
+      known it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      II
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The romance alluded to in the foregoing chapter had been going on, so far
+      as Abijah Flagg's part of it was concerned, for many years, his affection
+      dating back in his own mind to the first moment that he saw Emma Jane
+      Perkins at the age of nine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Emma Jane had shown no sign of reciprocating his attachment until the last
+      three years, when the evolution of the chore-boy into the budding scholar
+      and man of affairs had inflamed even her somewhat dull imagination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Squire Bean's wife had taken Abijah away from the poorhouse, thinking that
+      she could make him of some little use in her home. Abbie Flagg, the
+      mother, was neither wise nor beautiful; it is to be feared that she was
+      not even good, and her lack of all these desirable qualities, particularly
+      the last one, had been impressed upon the child ever since he could
+      remember. People seemed to blame him for being in the world at all; this
+      world that had not expected him nor desired him, nor made any provision
+      for him. The great battle-axe of poorhouse opinion was forever leveled at
+      the mere little atom of innocent transgression, until he grew sad and shy,
+      clumsy, stiff, and self-conscious. He had an indomitable craving for love
+      in his heart and had never received a caress in his life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was more contented when he came to Squire Bean's house. The first year
+      he could only pick up chips, carry pine wood into the kitchen, go to the
+      post-office, run errands, drive the cows, and feed the hens, but every day
+      he grew more and more useful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His only friend was little Jim Watson, the storekeeper's son, and they
+      were inseparable companions whenever Abijah had time for play.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One never-to-be-forgotten July day a new family moved into the white
+      cottage between Squire Bean's house and the Sawyers'. Mr. Perkins had sold
+      his farm beyond North Riverboro and had established a blacksmith's shop in
+      the village, at the Edgewood end of the bridge. This fact was of no
+      special interest to the nine-year-old Abijah, but what really was of
+      importance, was the appearance of a pretty little girl of seven in the
+      front yard; a pretty little fat doll of a girl, with bright fuzzy hair,
+      pink cheeks, blue eyes, and a smile of almost bewildering continuity.
+      Another might have criticised it as having the air of being glued on, but
+      Abijah was already in the toils and never wished it to move.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day being the glorious Fourth and a holiday, Jimmy Watson came
+      over like David, to visit his favorite Jonathan. His Jonathan met him at
+      the top of the hill, pleaded a pressing engagement, curtly sent him home,
+      and then went back to play with his new idol, with whom he had already
+      scraped acquaintance, her parents being exceedingly busy settling the new
+      house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the noon dinner Jimmy again yearned to resume friendly relations,
+      and, forgetting his rebuff, again toiled up the hill and appeared
+      unexpectedly at no great distance from the Perkins premises, wearing the
+      broad and beaming smile of one who is confident of welcome.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His morning call had been officious and unpleasant and unsolicited, but
+      his afternoon visit could only be regarded as impudent, audacious, and
+      positively dangerous; for Abijah and Emma Jane were cosily playing house,
+      the game of all others in which it is particularly desirable to have two
+      and not three participants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that moment the nature of Abijah changed, at once and forever. Without
+      a pang of conscience he flew over the intervening patch of ground between
+      himself and his dreaded rival, and seizing small stones and larger ones,
+      as haste and fury demanded, flung them at Jimmy Watson, and flung and
+      flung, till the bewildered boy ran down the hill howling. Then he made a
+      &ldquo;stickin'&rdquo; door to the play-house, put the awed Emma Jane inside and
+      strode up and down in front of the edifice like an Indian brave. At such
+      an early age does woman become a distracting and disturbing influence in
+      man's career!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Time went on, and so did the rivalry between the poorhouse boy and the son
+      of wealth, but Abijah's chances of friendship with Emma Jane grew fewer
+      and fewer as they both grew older. He did not go to school, so there was
+      no meeting-ground there, but sometimes, when he saw the knot of boys and
+      girls returning in the afternoon, he would invite Elijah and Elisha, the
+      Simpson twins, to visit him, and take pains to be in Squire Bean's front
+      yard, doing something that might impress his inamorata as she passed the
+      premises.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Jimmy Watson was particularly small and fragile, Abijah generally chose
+      feats of strength and skill for these prearranged performances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes he would throw his hat up into the elm trees as far as he could
+      and, when it came down, catch it on his head. Sometimes he would walk on
+      his hands, with his legs wriggling in the air, or turn a double
+      somersault, or jump incredible distances across the extended arms of the
+      Simpson twins; and his bosom swelled with pride when the girls exclaimed,
+      &ldquo;Isn't he splendid!&rdquo; although he often heard his rival murmur scornfully,
+      &ldquo;SMARTY ALECK!&rdquo;&mdash;a scathing allusion of unknown origin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Squire Bean, although he did not send the boy to school (thinking, as he
+      was of no possible importance in the universe, it was not worth while
+      bothering about his education), finally became impressed with his ability,
+      lent him books, and gave him more time to study. These were all he needed,
+      books and time, and when there was an especially hard knot to untie,
+      Rebecca, as the star scholar of the neighborhood, helped him to untie it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he was sixteen he longed to go away from Riverboro and be something
+      better than a chore boy. Squire Bean had been giving him small wages for
+      three or four years, and when the time of parting came presented him with
+      a ten-dollar bill and a silver watch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Many a time had he discussed his future with Rebecca and asked her
+      opinion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was not strange, for there was nothing in human form that she could
+      not and did not converse with, easily and delightedly. She had ideas on
+      every conceivable subject, and would have cheerfully advised the minister
+      if he had asked her. The fishman consulted her when he couldn't endure his
+      mother-in-law another minute in the house; Uncle Jerry Cobb didn't part
+      with his river field until he had talked it over with Rebecca; and as for
+      Aunt Jane, she couldn't decide whether to wear her black merino or her
+      gray thibet unless Rebecca cast the final vote.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abijah wanted to go far away from Riverboro, as far as Limerick Academy,
+      which was at least fifteen miles; but although this seemed extreme,
+      Rebecca agreed, saying pensively: &ldquo;There IS a kind of magicness about
+      going far away and then coming back all changed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was precisely Abijah's unspoken thought. Limerick knew nothing of
+      Abbie Flagg's worthlessness, birth, and training, and the awful stigma of
+      his poorhouse birth, so that he would start fair. He could have gone to
+      Wareham and thus remained within daily sight of the beloved Emma Jane; but
+      no, he was not going to permit her to watch him in the process of
+      &ldquo;becoming,&rdquo; but after he had &ldquo;become&rdquo; something. He did not propose to
+      take any risks after all these years of silence and patience. Not he! He
+      proposed to disappear, like the moon on a dark night, and as he was, at
+      present, something that Mr. Perkins would by no means have in the family
+      nor Mrs. Perkins allow in the house, he would neither return to Riverboro
+      nor ask any favors of them until he had something to offer. Yes, sir. He
+      was going to be crammed to the eyebrows with learning for one thing,&mdash;useless
+      kinds and all,&mdash;going to have good clothes, and a good income.
+      Everything that was in his power should be right, because there would
+      always be lurking in the background the things he never could help&mdash;the
+      mother and the poorhouse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So he went away, and, although at Squire Bean's invitation he came back
+      the first year for two brief visits at Christmas and Easter, he was little
+      seen in Riverboro, for Mr. Ladd finally found him a place where he could
+      make his vacations profitable and learn bookkeeping at the same time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The visits in Riverboro were tantalizing rather than pleasant. He was
+      invited to two parties, but he was all the time conscious of his
+      shirt-collar, and he was sure that his &ldquo;pants&rdquo; were not the proper thing,
+      for by this time his ideals of dress had attained an almost unrealizable
+      height. As for his shoes, he felt that he walked on carpets as if they
+      were furrows and he were propelling a plow or a harrow before him. They
+      played Drop the Handkerchief and Copenhagen at the parties, but he had not
+      had the audacity to kiss Emma Jane, which was bad enough, but Jimmy had
+      and did, which was infinitely worse! The sight of James Watson's unworthy
+      and over-ambitious lips on Emma Jane's pink cheek almost destroyed his
+      faith in an overruling Providence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the parties were over he went back to his old room in Squire Bean's
+      shed chamber. As he lay in bed his thoughts fluttered about Emma Jane as
+      swallows circle around the eaves. The terrible sickness of hopeless
+      handicapped love kept him awake. Once he crawled out of bed in the night,
+      lighted the lamp, and looked for his mustache, remembering that he had
+      seen a suspicion of down on his rival's upper lip. He rose again half an
+      hour later, again lighted the lamp, put a few drops of oil on his hair,
+      and brushed it violently for several minutes. Then he went back to bed,
+      and after making up his mind that he would buy a dulcimer and learn to
+      play on it so that he would be more attractive at parties, and outshine
+      his rival in society as he had aforetime in athletics, he finally sank
+      into a troubled slumber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Those days, so full of hope and doubt and torture, seemed mercifully
+      unreal now, they lay so far back in the past&mdash;six or eight years, in
+      fact, which is a lifetime to the lad of twenty&mdash;and meantime he had
+      conquered many of the adverse circumstances that had threatened to cloud
+      his career.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abijah Flagg was a true child of his native State. Something of the same
+      timber that Maine puts into her forests, something of the same strength
+      and resisting power that she works into her rocks, goes into her sons and
+      daughters; and at twenty Abijah was going to take his fate in his hand and
+      ask Mr. Perkins, the rich blacksmith, if, after a suitable period of
+      probation (during which he would further prepare himself for his exalted
+      destiny), he might marry the fair Emma Jane, sole heiress of the Perkins
+      house and fortunes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      III
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was boy and girl love, calf love, perhaps, though even that may
+      develop into something larger, truer, and finer; but not so far away were
+      other and very different hearts growing and budding, each in its own way.
+      There was little Miss Dearborn, the pretty school teacher, drifting into a
+      foolish alliance because she did not agree with her stepmother at home;
+      there was Herbert Dunn, valedictorian of his class, dazzled by Huldah
+      Meserve, who like a glowworm &ldquo;shone afar off bright, but looked at near,
+      had neither heat nor light.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was sweet Emily Maxwell, less than thirty still, with most of her
+      heart bestowed in the wrong quarter. She was toiling on at the Wareham
+      school, living as unselfish a life as a nun in a convent; lavishing the
+      mind and soul of her, the heart and body of her, on her chosen work. How
+      many women give themselves thus, consciously and unconsciously; and,
+      though they themselves miss the joys and compensations of mothering their
+      own little twos and threes, God must be grateful to them for their
+      mothering of the hundreds which make them so precious in His regenerating
+      purposes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then there was Adam Ladd, waiting at thirty-five for a girl to grow a
+      little older, simply because he could not find one already grown who
+      suited his somewhat fastidious and exacting tastes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll not call Rebecca perfection,&rdquo; he quoted once, in a letter to Emily
+      Maxwell,&mdash;&ldquo;I'll not call her perfection, for that's a post, afraid to
+      move. But she's a dancing sprig of the tree next it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When first she appeared on his aunt's piazza in North Riverboro and
+      insisted on selling him a large quantity of very inferior soap in order
+      that her friends, the Simpsons, might possess a premium in the shape of a
+      greatly needed banquet lamp, she had riveted his attention. He thought all
+      the time that he enjoyed talking with her more than with any woman alive,
+      and he had never changed his opinion. She always caught what he said as if
+      it were a ball tossed to her, and sometimes her mind, as through it his
+      thoughts came back to him, seemed like a prism which had dyed them with
+      deeper colors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Adam Ladd always called Rebecca in his heart his little Spring. His
+      boyhood had been lonely and unhappy. That was the part of life he had
+      missed, and although it was the full summer of success and prosperity with
+      him now, he found his lost youth only in her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was to him&mdash;how shall I describe it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Do you remember an early day in May with budding leaf, warm earth,
+      tremulous air, and changing, willful sky&mdash;how new it seemed? How
+      fresh and joyous beyond all explaining?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Have you lain with half-closed eyes where the flickering of sunlight
+      through young leaves, the song of birds and brook and the fragrance of
+      wild flowers combined to charm your senses, and you felt the sweetness and
+      grace of nature as never before?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca was springtide to Adam's thirsty heart. She was blithe youth
+      incarnate; she was music&mdash;an Aeolian harp that every passing breeze
+      woke to some whispering little tune; she was a changing, iridescent
+      joy-bubble; she was the shadow of a leaf dancing across a dusty floor. No
+      bough of his thought could be so bare but she somehow built a nest in it
+      and evoked life where none was before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Rebecca herself?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had been quite unconscious of all this until very lately, and even now
+      she was but half awakened; searching among her childish instincts and her
+      girlish dreams for some Ariadne thread that should guide her safely
+      through the labyrinth of her new sensations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the moment she was absorbed, or thought she was, in the little love
+      story of Abijah and Emma Jane, but in reality, had she realized it, that
+      love story served chiefly as a basis of comparison for a possible one of
+      her own, later on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She liked and respected Abijah Flagg, and loving Emma Jane was a habit
+      contracted early in life; but everything that they did or said, or thought
+      or wrote, or hoped or feared, seemed so inadequate, so painfully short of
+      what might be done or said, or thought or written, or hoped or feared,
+      under easily conceivable circumstances, that she almost felt a disposition
+      to smile gently at the fancy of the ignorant young couple that they had
+      caught a glimpse of the great vision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was sitting under the sweet apple tree at twilight. Supper was over;
+      Mark's restless feet were quiet, Fanny and Jenny were tucked safely in
+      bed; her aunt and her mother were stemming currants on the side porch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A blue spot at one of the Perkins windows showed that in one vestal bosom
+      hope was not dead yet, although it was seven o'clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly there was the sound of a horse's feet coming up the quiet road;
+      plainly a steed hired from some metropolis like Milltown or Wareham, as
+      Riverboro horses when through with their day's work never disported
+      themselves so gayly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A little open vehicle came in sight, and in it sat Abijah Flagg. The wagon
+      was so freshly painted and so shiny that Rebecca thought that he must have
+      alighted at the bridge and given it a last polish. The creases in his
+      trousers, too, had an air of having been pressed in only a few minutes
+      before. The whip was new and had a yellow ribbon on it; the gray suit of
+      clothes was new, and the coat flourished a flower in its button-hole. The
+      hat was the latest thing in hats, and the intrepid swain wore a seal-ring
+      on the little finger of his right hand. As Rebecca remembered that she had
+      guided it in making capital G's in his copy-book, she felt positively
+      maternal, although she was two years younger than Abijah the Brave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He drove up to the Perkins gate and was so long about hitching the horse
+      that Rebecca's heart beat tumultuously at the thought of Emma Jane's heart
+      waiting under the blue barege. Then he brushed an imaginary speck off his
+      sleeve, then he drew on a pair of buff kid gloves, then he went up the
+      path, rapped at the knocker, and went in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not all the heroes go to the wars,&rdquo; thought Rebecca. &ldquo;Abijah has laid the
+      ghost of his father and redeemed the memory of his mother, for no one will
+      dare say again that Abbie Flagg's son could never amount to anything!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The minutes went by, and more minutes, and more. The tranquil dusk settled
+      down over the little village street and the young moon came out just
+      behind the top of the Perkins pine tree.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Perkins front door opened and Abijah the Brave came out hand in hand
+      with his Fair Emma Jane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They walked through the orchard, the eyes of the old couple following them
+      from the window, and just as they disappeared down the green slope that
+      led to the riverside the gray coat sleeve encircled the blue barege waist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebecca, quivering with instant sympathy and comprehension, hid her face
+      in her hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Emmy has sailed away and I am all alone in the little harbor,&rdquo; she
+      thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was as if childhood, like a thing real and visible, were slipping down
+      the grassy river banks, after Abijah and Emma Jane, and disappearing like
+      them into the moon-lit shadows of the summer night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am all alone in the little harbor,&rdquo; she repeated; &ldquo;and oh, I wonder, I
+      wonder, shall I be afraid to leave it, if anybody ever comes to carry me
+      out to sea!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+  <div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1375 ***</div>
+</body>
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+Project Gutenberg's Etext of New Chronicles of Rebecca by Wiggin
+#7 in our series by Kate Douglas Wiggin
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+New Chronicles of Rebecca
+
+by Kate Douglas Wiggin
+
+July, 1998  [Etext #1375]
+
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+Project Gutenberg's Etext of New Chronicles of Rebecca by Wiggin
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+
+NEW CHRONICLES OF REBECCA
+by Kate Douglas Wiggin
+
+CONTENTS
+
+First Chronicle
+Jack O'Lantern
+
+Second Chronicle
+Daughters of Zion
+
+Third Chronicle
+Rebecca's Thought Book
+
+Fourth Chronicle
+A Tragedy in Millinery
+
+Fifth Chronicle
+The Saving of the Colors
+
+Sixth Chronicle
+The State of Maine Girl
+
+Seventh Chronicle
+The Little Prophet
+
+Eighth Chronicle
+Abner Simpson's New Leaf
+
+Ninth Chronicle
+The Green Isle
+
+Tenth Chronicle
+Rebecca's Reminiscences
+
+Eleventh Chronicle
+Abijah the Brave and the Fair Emma Jane
+
+
+
+First Chronicle
+JACK O'LANTERN
+
+I
+
+Miss Miranda Sawyer's old-fashioned garden was the pleasantest
+spot in Riverboro on a sunny July morning. The rich color of the
+brick house gleamed and glowed through the shade of the elms and
+maples. Luxuriant hop-vines clambered up the lightning rods and
+water spouts, hanging their delicate clusters here and there in
+graceful profusion. Woodbine transformed the old shed and tool
+house to things of beauty, and the flower beds themselves were
+the prettiest and most fragrant in all the countryside. A row of
+dahlias ran directly around the garden spot,--dahlias scarlet,
+gold, and variegated. In the very centre was a round plot where
+the upturned faces of a thousand pansies smiled amid their
+leaves, and in the four corners were triangular blocks of sweet
+phlox over which the butterflies fluttered unceasingly. In the
+spaces between ran a riot of portulaca and nasturtiums, while in
+the more regular, shell-bordered beds grew spirea and
+gillyflowers, mignonette, marigolds, and clove pinks.
+
+Back of the barn and encroaching on the edge of the hay field was
+a grove of sweet clover whose white feathery tips fairly bent
+under the assaults of the bees, while banks of aromatic mint and
+thyme drank in the sunshine and sent it out again into the summer
+air, warm, and deliciously odorous.
+
+The hollyhocks were Miss Sawyer's pride, and they grew in a
+stately line beneath the four kitchen windows, their tapering
+tips set thickly with gay satin circlets of pink or lavender or
+crimson.
+
+"They grow something like steeples," thought little Rebecca
+Randall, who was weeding the bed, "and the flat, round flowers
+are like rosettes; but steeples wouldn't be studded with
+rosettes, so if you were writing about them in a composition
+you'd have to give up one or the other, and I think I'll give up
+the steeples:--
+
+Gay little hollyhock
+Lifting your head,
+Sweetly rosetted
+Out from your bed.
+
+It's a pity the hollyhock isn't really little, instead of
+steepling up to the window top, but I can't say, 'Gay TALL
+hollyhock.' . . . I might have it 'Lines to a Hollyhock in May,'
+for then it would be small; but oh, no! I forgot; in May it
+wouldn't be blooming, and it's so pretty to say that its head is
+'sweetly rosetted' . . . I wish the teacher wasn't away; she
+would like 'sweetly rosetted,' and she would like to hear me
+recite 'Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!' that I
+learned out of Aunt Jane's Byron; the rolls come booming out of
+it just like the waves at the beach. . . . I could make nice
+compositions now, everything is blooming so, and it's so warm and
+sunny and happy outdoors. Miss Dearborn told me to write
+something in my thought book every single day, and I'll begin
+this very night when I go to bed."
+
+Rebecca Rowena Randall, the little niece of the brick-house
+ladies, and at present sojourning there for purposes of board,
+lodging, education, and incidentally such discipline and
+chastening as might ultimately produce moral excellence,--Rebecca
+Randall had a passion for the rhyme and rhythm of poetry. From
+her earliest childhood words had always been to her what dolls
+and toys are to other children, and now at twelve she amused
+herself with phrases and sentences and images as her schoolmates
+played with the pieces of their dissected puzzles. If the heroine
+of a story took a "cursory glance" about her "apartment," Rebecca
+would shortly ask her Aunt Jane to take a "cursory glance" at her
+oversewing or hemming; if the villain "aided and abetted" someone
+in committing a crime, she would before long request the pleasure
+of "aiding and abetting" in dishwashing or bedmaking. Sometimes
+she used the borrowed phrases unconsciously; sometimes she
+brought them into the conversation with an intense sense of
+pleasure in their harmony or appropriateness; for a beautiful
+word or sentence had the same effect upon her imagination as a
+fragrant nosegay, a strain of music, or a brilliant sunset.
+
+"How are you gettin' on, Rebecca Rowena?" called a peremptory
+voice from within.
+
+"Pretty good, Aunt Miranda; only I wish flowers would ever come
+up as thick as this pigweed and plantain and sorrel. What MAKES
+weeds be thick and flowers be thin?--I just happened to be
+stopping to think a minute when you looked out."
+
+"You think considerable more than you weed, I guess, by
+appearances. How many times have you peeked into that humming
+bird's nest? Why don't you work all to once and play all to once,
+like other folks?"
+
+"I don't know," the child answered, confounded by the question,
+and still more by the apparent logic back of it. "I don't know,
+Aunt Miranda, but when I'm working outdoors such a Saturday
+morning as this, the whole creation just screams to me to stop it
+and come and play."
+
+"Well, you needn't go if it does!" responded her aunt sharply.
+"It don't scream to me when I'm rollin' out these doughnuts, and
+it wouldn't to you if your mind was on your duty."
+
+Rebecca's little brown hands flew in and out among the weeds as
+she thought rebelliously: "Creation WOULDN'T scream to Aunt
+Miranda; it would know she wouldn't come.
+
+Scream on, thou bright and gay creation, scream!
+'Tis not Miranda that will hear thy cry!
+
+Oh, such funny, nice things come into my head out here by myself,
+I do wish I could run up and put them down in my thought book
+before I forget them, but Aunt Miranda wouldn't like me to leave
+off weeding:--
+
+Rebecca was weeding the hollyhock bed
+When wonderful thoughts came into her head.
+Her aunt was occupied with the rolling pin
+And the thoughts of her mind were common and thin.
+
+That wouldn't do because it's mean to Aunt Miranda, and anyway it
+isn't good. I MUST crawl under the syringa shade a minute, it's
+so hot, and anybody has to stop working once in a while, just to
+get their breath, even if they weren't making poetry.
+
+Rebecca was weeding the hollyhock bed When marvelous thoughts
+came into her head. Miranda was wielding the rolling pin And
+thoughts at such times seemed to her as a sin.
+
+How pretty the hollyhock rosettes look from down here on the
+sweet, smelly ground!
+
+"Let me see what would go with rosetting. AIDING AND ABETTING,
+PETTING, HEN-SETTING, FRETTING,--there's nothing very nice, but I
+can make fretting' do.
+
+Cheered by Rowena's petting,
+The flowers are rosetting,
+But Aunt Miranda's fretting
+Doth somewhat cloud the day."
+
+Suddenly the sound of wagon wheels broke the silence and then a
+voice called out--a voice that could not wait until the feet that
+belonged to it reached the spot: "Miss Saw-YER! Father's got to
+drive over to North Riverboro on an errand, and please can
+Rebecca go, too, as it's Saturday morning and vacation besides?"
+
+Rebecca sprang out from under the syringa bush, eyes flashing
+with delight as only Rebecca's eyes COULD flash, her face one
+luminous circle of joyous anticipation. She clapped her grubby
+hands, and dancing up and down, cried: "May I, Aunt Miranda--can
+I, Aunt Jane--can I, Aunt Miranda-Jane? I'm more than half
+through the bed."
+
+"If you finish your weeding tonight before sundown I s'pose you
+can go, so long as Mr. Perkins has been good enough to ask you,"
+responded Miss Sawyer reluctantly. "Take off that gingham apron
+and wash your hands clean at the pump. You ain't be'n out o' bed
+but two hours an' your head looks as rough as if you'd slep' in
+it. That comes from layin' on the ground same as a caterpillar.
+Smooth your hair down with your hands an' p'r'aps Emma Jane can
+braid it as you go along the road. Run up and get your
+second-best hair ribbon out o' your upper drawer and put on your
+shade hat. No, you can't wear your coral chain--jewelry ain't
+appropriate in the morning.  How long do you cal'late to be gone,
+Emma Jane?"
+
+"I don't know. Father's just been sent for to see about a sick
+woman over to North Riverboro.  She's got to go to the poor
+farm."
+
+This fragment of news speedily brought Miss Sawyer, and her
+sister Jane as well, to the door, which commanded a view of Mr.
+Perkins and his wagon. Mr. Perkins, the father of Rebecca's bosom
+friend, was primarily a blacksmith, and secondarily a selectman
+and an overseer of the poor, a man therefore possessed of wide
+and varied information.
+
+"Who is it that's sick?" inquired Miranda.
+
+"A woman over to North Riverboro."
+
+"What's the trouble?"
+
+"Can't say."
+
+"Stranger?'
+
+"Yes, and no; she's that wild daughter of old Nate Perry that
+used to live up towards Moderation.  You remember she ran away to
+work in the factory at Milltown and married a do--nothin' fellow
+by the name o' John Winslow?"
+
+"Yes; well, where is he? Why don't he take care of her?"
+
+"They ain't worked well in double harness. They've been rovin'
+round the country, livin' a month here and a month there wherever
+they could get work and house-room. They quarreled a couple o'
+weeks ago and he left her. She and the little boy kind o' camped
+out in an old loggin' cabin back in the woods and she took in
+washin' for a spell; then she got terrible sick and ain't
+expected to live."
+
+"Who's been nursing her?" inquired Miss Jane.
+
+"Lizy Ann Dennett, that lives nearest neighbor to the cabin; but
+I guess she's tired out bein' good Samaritan. Anyways, she sent
+word this mornin' that nobody can't seem to find John Winslow;
+that there ain't no relations, and the town's got to be
+responsible, so I'm goin' over to see how the land lays. Climb
+in, Rebecca. You an' Emmy Jane crowd back on the cushion an' I'll
+set forrard.  That's the trick! Now we're off!"
+
+"Dear, dear!" sighed Jane Sawyer as the sisters walked back into
+the brick house. "I remember once seeing Sally Perry at meeting.
+She was a handsome girl, and I'm sorry she's come to grief."
+
+"If she'd kep' on goin' to meetin' an' hadn't looked at the men
+folks she might a' be'n earnin' an honest livin' this minute,"
+said Miranda. "Men folks are at the bottom of everything wrong in
+this world," she continued, unconsciously reversing the verdict
+of history.
+
+"Then we ought to be a happy and contented community here in
+Riverboro," replied Jane, "as there's six women to one man."
+
+"If 't was sixteen to one we'd be all the safer," responded
+Miranda grimly, putting the doughnuts in a brown crock in the
+cellar-way and slamming the door.
+
+
+II
+
+The Perkins horse and wagon rumbled along over the dusty country
+road, and after a discreet silence, maintained as long as human
+flesh could endure, Rebecca remarked sedately:
+
+"It's a sad errand for such a shiny morning, isn't it, Mr.
+Perkins?"
+
+"Plenty o' trouble in the world, Rebecky, shiny mornin's an'
+all," that good man replied. "If you want a bed to lay on, a roof
+over your head, an' food to eat, you've got to work for em. If I
+hadn't a' labored early an' late, learned my trade, an' denied
+myself when I was young, I might  a' be'n a pauper layin' sick in
+a loggin' cabin, stead o' bein' an overseer o' the poor an'
+selectman drivin' along to take the pauper to the poor farm."
+
+"People that are mortgaged don't have to go to the poor farm, do
+they, Mr. Perkins?" asked Rebecca, with a shiver of fear as she
+remembered her home farm at Sunnybrook and the debt upon it; a
+debt which had lain like a shadow over her childhood.
+
+"Bless your soul, no; not unless they fail to pay up; but Sal
+Perry an' her husband hadn't got fur enough along in life to BE
+mortgaged. You have to own something before you can mortgage it."
+
+Rebecca's heart bounded as she learned that a mortgage
+represented a certain stage in worldly prosperity.
+
+"Well," she said, sniffing in the fragrance of the new-mown hay
+and growing hopeful as she did so; "maybe the sick woman will be
+better such a beautiful day, and maybe the husband will come back
+to make it up and say he's sorry, and sweet content will reign in
+the humble habitation that was once the scene of poverty, grief,
+and despair. That's how it came out in a story I'm reading."
+
+"I hain't noticed that life comes out like stories very much,"
+responded the pessimistic blacksmith, who, as Rebecca privately
+thought, had read less than half a dozen books in his long and
+prosperous career.
+
+A drive of three or four miles brought the party to a patch of
+woodland where many of the tall pines had been hewn the previous
+winter. The roof of a ramshackle hut was outlined against a
+background of young birches, and a rough path made in hauling the
+logs to the main road led directly to its door.
+
+As they drew near the figure of a woman approached--Mrs. Lizy Ann
+Dennett, in a gingham dress, with a calico apron over her head.
+
+"Good morning, Mr. Perkins," said the woman, who looked tired and
+irritable. "I'm real glad you come right over, for she took worse
+after I sent you word, and she's dead."
+
+Dead! The word struck heavily and mysteriously on the children's
+ears. Dead! And their young lives, just begun, stretched on and
+on, all decked, like hope, in living green. Dead! And all the
+rest of the world reveling in strength. Dead! With all the
+daisies and buttercups waving in the fields and the men heaping
+the mown grass into fragrant cocks or tossing it into heavily
+laden carts.  Dead! With the brooks tinkling after the summer
+showers, with the potatoes and corn blossoming, the birds singing
+for joy, and every little insect humming and chirping, adding its
+note to the blithe chorus of warm, throbbing life.
+
+"I was all alone with her. She passed away suddenly jest about
+break o' day," said Lizy Ann Dennett.
+
+"Her soul passed upward to its God Just at the break of day."
+
+These words came suddenly into Rebecca's mind from a tiny chamber
+where such things were wont to lie quietly until something
+brought them to the surface. She could not remember whether she
+had heard them at a funeral or read them in the hymn book or made
+them up "out of her own head," but she was so thrilled with the
+idea of dying just as the dawn was breaking that she scarcely
+heard Mrs. Dennett's conversation.
+
+"I sent for Aunt Beulah Day, an' she's be'n here an' laid her
+out," continued the long suffering Lizy Ann. "She ain't got any
+folks, an' John Winslow ain't never had any as far back as I can
+remember. She belongs to your town and you'll have to bury her
+and take care of Jacky--that's the boy. He's seventeen months
+old, a bright little feller, the image o' John, but I can't keep
+him another day. I'm all wore out; my own baby's sick, mother's
+rheumatiz is extry bad, and my husband's comin' home tonight from
+his week's work. If he finds a child o' John Winslow's under his
+roof I can't say what would happen; you'll have to take him back
+with you to the poor farm."
+
+"I can't take him up there this afternoon," objected Mr. Perkins.
+
+"Well, then, keep him over Sunday yourself; he's good as a
+kitten. John Winslow'll hear o' Sal's death sooner or later,
+unless he's gone out of the state altogether, an' when he knows
+the boy's at the poor farm, I kind o' think he'll come and claim
+him. Could you drive me over to the village to see about the
+coffin, and would you children be afraid to stay here alone for a
+spell?" she asked, turning to the girls.
+
+"Afraid?" they both echoed uncomprehendingly.
+
+Lizy Ann and Mr. Perkins, perceiving that the fear of a dead
+presence had not entered the minds of Rebecca or Emma Jane, said
+nothing, but drove off together, counseling them not to stray far
+away from the cabin and promising to be back in an hour.
+
+There was not a house within sight, either looking up or down the
+shady road, and the two girls stood hand in hand, watching the
+wagon out of sight; then they sat down quietly under a tree,
+feeling all at once a nameless depression hanging over their gay
+summer-morning spirits.
+
+It was very still in the woods; just the chirp of a grasshopper
+now and then, or the note of a bird, or the click of a
+far-distant mowing machine.
+
+"We're WATCHING!" whispered Emma Jane. "They watched with Gran'pa
+Perkins, and there was a great funeral and two ministers. He left
+two thousand dollars in the bank and a store full of goods, and a
+paper thing you could cut tickets off of twice a year, and they
+were just like money."
+
+"They watched with my little sister Mira, too," said Rebecca.
+"You remember when she died, and I went home to Sunnybrook Farm?
+It was winter time, but she was covered with evergreen and white
+pinks, and there was singing."
+
+"There won't be any funeral or ministers or singing here, will
+there? Isn't that awful?"
+
+"I s'pose not; and oh, Emma Jane, no flowers either. We might get
+those for her if there's nobody else to do it."
+
+"Would you dare put them on to her?" asked Emma Jane, in a hushed
+voice.
+
+"I don't know; I can't tell; it makes me shiver, but, of course,
+we COULD do it if we were the only friends she had. Let's look
+into the cabin first and be perfectly sure that there aren't any. 
+Are you afraid?"
+
+"N-no; I guess not. I looked at Gran'pa Perkins, and he was just
+the same as ever."
+
+At the door of the hut Emma Jane's courage suddenly departed. She
+held back shuddering and refused either to enter or look in.
+Rebecca shuddered too, but kept on, drawn by an insatiable
+curiosity about life and death, an overmastering desire to know
+and feel and understand the mysteries of existence, a hunger for
+knowledge and experience at all hazards and at any cost.
+
+Emma Jane hurried softly away from the felt terrors of the cabin,
+and after two or three minutes of utter silence Rebecca issued
+from the open door, her sensitive face pale and woe-begone, the
+ever-ready tears raining down her cheeks. She ran toward the edge
+of the wood, sinking down by Emma Jane's side, and covering her
+eyes, sobbed with excitement:
+
+"Oh, Emma Jane, she hasn't got a flower, and she's so tired and
+sad-looking, as if she'd been hurt and hurt and never had any
+good times, and there's a weeny, weeny baby side of her. Oh, I
+wish I hadn't gone in!"
+
+Emma Jane blenched for an instant. "Mrs. Dennett never said THERE
+WAS TWO DEAD ONES! ISN'T THAT DREADFUL? But," she continued, her
+practical common sense coming to the rescue, "you've been in once
+and it's all over; it won't be so bad when you take in the
+flowers because you'll be used to it. The goldenrod hasn't begun
+to bud, so there's nothing to pick but daisies. Shall I make a
+long rope of them, as I did for the schoolroom?"
+
+"Yes," said Rebecca, wiping her eyes and still sobbing. "Yes,
+that's the prettiest, and if we put it all round her like a
+frame, the undertaker couldn't be so cruel as to throw it away,
+even if she is a pauper, because it will look so beautiful. From
+what the Sunday school lessons say, she's only asleep now, and
+when she wakes up she'll be in heaven."
+
+"THERE'S ANOTHER PLACE," said Emma Jane, in an orthodox and
+sepulchral whisper, as she took her ever-present ball of crochet
+cotton from her pocket and began to twine the whiteweed blossoms
+into a rope.
+
+"Oh, well!" Rebecca replied with the easy theology that belonged
+to her temperament. "They simply couldn't send her DOWN THERE
+with that little weeny baby. Who'd take care of it?  You know
+page six of the catechism says the only companions of the wicked
+after death are their father the devil and all the other evil
+angels; it wouldn't be any place to bring up a baby."
+
+"Whenever and wherever she wakes up, I hope she won't know that
+the big baby is going to the poor farm. I wonder where he is?"
+
+"Perhaps over to Mrs. Dennett's house. She didn't seem sorry a
+bit, did she?"
+
+"No, but I suppose she's tired sitting up and nursing a stranger.
+Mother wasn't sorry when Gran'pa Perkins died; she couldn't be,
+for he was cross all the time and had to be fed like a child. 
+Why ARE you crying again, Rebecca?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know, I can't tell, Emma Jane! Only I don't want to
+die and have no funeral or singing and nobody sorry for me! I
+just couldn't bear it!"
+
+"Neither could I," Emma Jane responded sympathetically; "but
+p'r'aps if we're real good and die young before we have to be
+fed, they will be sorry. I do wish you could write some poetry
+for her as you did for Alice Robinson's canary bird, only still
+better, of course, like that you read me out of your thought
+book."
+
+"I could, easy enough," exclaimed Rebecca, somewhat consoled by
+the idea that her rhyming faculty could be of any use in such an
+emergency. "Though I don't know but it would be kind of bold to
+do it. I'm all puzzled about how people get to heaven after
+they're buried. I can't understand it a bit; but if the poetry is
+on her, what if that should go, too? And how could I write
+anything good enough to be read out loud in heaven?"
+
+"A little piece of paper couldn't get to heaven; it just
+couldn't," asserted Emma Jane decisively. "It would be all blown
+to pieces and dried up. And nobody knows that the angels can read
+writing, anyway."
+
+"They must be as educated as we are, and more so, too," agreed
+Rebecca. "They must be more than just dead people, or else why
+should they have wings? But I'll go off and write something while
+you finish the rope; it's lucky you brought your crochet cotton
+and I my lead pencil."
+
+In fifteen or twenty minutes she returned with some lines written
+on a scrap of brown wrapping paper. Standing soberly by Emma
+Jane, she said, preparing to read them aloud: "They're not good;
+I was afraid your father'd come back before I finished, and the
+first verse sounds exactly like the funeral hymns in the church
+book. I couldn't call her Sally Winslow; it didn't seem nice when
+I didn't know her and she is dead, so I thought if I said friend'
+it would show she had somebody to be sorry.
+
+"This friend of ours has died and gone
+From us to heaven to live.
+If she has sinned against Thee, Lord,
+We pray Thee, Lord, forgive.
+
+"Her husband runneth far away
+And knoweth not she's dead.
+Oh, bring him back--ere tis too late--
+To mourn beside her bed.
+
+"And if perchance it can't be so,
+Be to the children kind;
+The weeny one that goes with her,
+The other left behind."
+
+"I think that's perfectly elegant!" exclaimed Emma Jane, kissing
+Rebecca fervently. "You are the smartest girl in the whole State
+of Maine, and it sounds like a minister's prayer. I wish we could
+save up and buy a printing machine. Then I could learn to print
+what you write and we'd be partners like father and Bill Moses.
+Shall you sign it with your name like we do our school
+compositions?"
+
+"No," said Rebecca soberly. "I certainly shan't sign it, not
+knowing where it's going or who'll read it. I shall just hide it
+in the flowers, and whoever finds it will guess that there wasn't
+any minister or singing, or gravestone, or anything, so somebody
+just did the best they could."
+
+
+III
+
+The tired mother with the "weeny baby" on her arm lay on a long
+carpenter's bench, her earthly journey over, and when Rebecca
+stole in and placed the flowery garland all along the edge of the
+rude bier, death suddenly took on a more gracious and benign
+aspect. It was only a child's sympathy and intuition that
+softened the rigors of the sad moment, but poor, wild Sal
+Winslow, in her frame of daisies, looked as if she were missed a
+little by an unfriendly world; while the weeny baby, whose heart
+had fallen asleep almost as soon as it had learned to beat, the
+weeny baby, with Emma Jane's nosegay of buttercups in its tiny
+wrinkled hand, smiled as if it might have been loved and longed
+for and mourned.
+
+"We've done all we can now without a minister," whispered
+Rebecca. "We could sing, God is ever good' out of the Sunday
+school song book, but I'm afraid somebody would hear us and think
+we were gay and happy. What's that?"
+
+A strange sound broke the stillness; a gurgle, a yawn, a merry
+little call. The two girls ran in the direction from which it
+came, and there, on an old coat, in a clump of goldenrod bushes,
+lay a child just waking from a refreshing nap.
+
+"It's the other baby that Lizy Ann Dennett told about!" cried
+Emma Jane.
+
+"Isn't he beautiful!" exclaimed Rebecca. "Come straight to me!"
+and she stretched out her arms.
+
+The child struggled to its feet, and tottered, wavering, toward
+the warm welcome of the voice and eyes. Rebecca was all mother,
+and her maternal instincts had been well developed in the large
+family in which she was next to the eldest. She had always
+confessed that there were perhaps a trifle too many babies at
+Sunnybrook Farm, but, nevertheless, had she ever heard it, she
+would have stood loyally by the Japanese proverb: "Whether
+brought forth upon the mountain or in the field, it matters
+nothing; more than a treasure of one thousand ryo a baby precious
+is."
+
+"You darling thing!" she crooned, as she caught and lifted the
+child. "You look just like a Jack-o'-lantern."
+
+The boy was clad in a yellow cotton dress, very full and stiff.
+His hair was of such a bright gold, and so sleek and shiny, that
+he looked like a fair, smooth little pumpkin. He had wide blue
+eyes full of laughter, a neat little vertical nose, a neat little
+horizontal mouth with his few neat little teeth showing very
+plainly, and on the whole Rebecca's figure of speech was not so
+wide of the mark.
+
+"Oh, Emma Jane! Isn't he too lovely to go to the poor farm? If
+only we were married we could keep him and say nothing and nobody
+would know the difference! Now that the Simpsons have gone away
+there isn't a single baby in Riverboro, and only one in Edgewood.
+It's a perfect shame, but I can't do anything; you remember Aunt
+Miranda wouldn't let me have the Simpson baby when I wanted to
+borrow her just for one rainy Sunday."
+
+"My mother won't keep him, so it's no use to ask her; she says
+most every day she's glad we're grown up, and she thanks the Lord
+there wasn't but two of us."
+
+"And Mrs. Peter Meserve is too nervous," Rebecca went on, taking
+the village houses in turn; "and Mrs. Robinson is too neat."
+
+"People don't seem to like any but their own babies," observed
+Emma Jane.
+
+"Well, I can't understand it," Rebecca answered. "A baby's a
+baby, I should think, whose ever it is! Miss Dearborn is coming
+back Monday; I wonder if she'd like it? She has nothing to do out
+of school, and we could borrow it all the time!"
+
+"I don't think it would seem very genteel for a young lady like
+Miss Dearborn, who 'boards round,' to take a baby from place to
+place," objected Emma Jane.
+
+"Perhaps not," agreed Rebecca despondently, "but I think if we
+haven't got any--any--PRIVATE babies in Riverboro we ought to
+have one for the town, and all have a share in it.  We've got a
+town hall and a town lamp post and a town watering trough. Things
+are so uneven!  One house like mine at Sunnybrook, brimful of
+children, and the very next one empty! The only way to fix them
+right would be to let all the babies that ever are belong to all
+the grown-up people that ever are,--just divide them up, you
+know, if they'd go round. Oh, I have a thought! Don't you believe
+Aunt Sarah Cobb would keep him? She carries flowers to the
+graveyard every little while, and once she took me with her.
+There's a marble cross, and it says: SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF
+SARAH ELLEN, BELOVED CHILD OF SARAH AND JEREMIAH COBB, AGED 17
+MONTHS. Why, that's another reason; Mrs. Dennett says this one is
+seventeen months. There's five of us left at the farm without me,
+but if we were only nearer to Riverboro, how quick mother would
+let in one more!"
+
+"We might see what father thinks, and that would settle it," said
+Emma Jane. "Father doesn't think very sudden, but he thinks awful
+strong. If we don't bother him, and find a place ourselves for
+the baby, perhaps he'll be willing. He's coming now; I hear the
+wheels."
+
+Lizy Ann Dennett volunteered to stay and perform the last rites
+with the undertaker, and Jack-o'-lantern, with his slender
+wardrobe tied in a bandanna handkerchief, was lifted into the
+wagon by the reluctant Mr. Perkins, and jubilantly held by
+Rebecca in her lap. Mr. Perkins drove off as speedily as
+possible, being heartily sick of the whole affair, and thinking
+wisely that the little girls had already seen and heard more than
+enough of the seamy side of life that morning.
+
+Discussion concerning Jack-o'-lantern's future was prudently
+deferred for a quarter of an hour, and then Mr. Perkins was
+mercilessly pelted with arguments against the choice of the poor
+farm as a place of residence for a baby.
+
+"His father is sure to come back some time, Mr. Perkins," urged
+Rebecca. "He couldn't leave this beautiful thing forever; and if
+Emma Jane and I can persuade Mrs. Cobb to keep him a little
+while, would you care?"
+
+No; on reflection Mr. Perkins did not care. He merely wanted a
+quiet life and enough time left over from the public service to
+attend to his blacksmith's shop; so instead of going home over
+the same road by which they came he crossed the bridge into
+Edgewood and dropped the children at the long lane which led to
+the Cobb house.
+
+Mrs. Cobb, "Aunt Sarah" to the whole village, sat by the window
+looking for Uncle Jerry, who would soon be seen driving the noon
+stage to the post office over the hill. She always had an eye out
+for Rebecca, too, for ever since the child had been a passenger
+on Mr. Cobb's stagecoach, making the eventful trip from her home
+farm to the brick house in Riverboro in his company, she had been
+a constant visitor and the joy of the quiet household. Emma Jane,
+too, was a well-known figure in the lane, but the strange baby
+was in the nature of a surprise--a surprise somewhat modified by
+the fact that Rebecca was a dramatic personage and more liable to
+appear in conjunction with curious outriders, comrades, and
+retainers than the ordinary Riverboro child.  She had run away
+from the too stern discipline of the brick house on one occasion,
+and had been persuaded to return by Uncle Jerry. She had escorted
+a wandering organ grinder to their door and begged a lodging for
+him on a rainy night; so on the whole there was nothing amazing
+about the coming procession.
+
+The little party toiled up to the hospitable door, and Mrs. Cobb
+came out to meet them.
+
+Rebecca was spokesman. Emma Jane's talent did not lie in eloquent
+speech, but it would have been a valiant and a fluent child
+indeed who could have usurped Rebecca's privileges and tendencies
+in this direction, language being her native element, and words
+of assorted sizes springing spontaneously to her lips.
+
+"Aunt Sarah, dear," she said, plumping Jack-o'-lantern down on
+the grass as she pulled his dress over his feet and smoothed his
+hair becomingly, "will you please not say a word till I get
+through-- as it's very important you should know everything
+before you answer yes or no? This is a baby named Jacky Winslow,
+and I think he looks like a Jack-o'-lantern. His mother has just
+died over to North Riverboro, all alone, excepting for Mrs. Lizy
+Ann Dennett, and there was another little weeny baby that died
+with her, and Emma Jane and I put flowers around them and did the
+best we could. The father--that's John Winslow--quarreled with
+the mother--that was Sal Perry on the Moderation Road--and ran
+away and left her. So he doesn't know his wife and the weeny baby
+are dead. And the town has got to bury them because they can't
+find the father right off quick, and Jacky has got to go to the
+poor farm this afternoon. And it seems an awful shame to take him
+up to that lonesome place with those old people that can't amuse
+him, and if Emma Jane and Alice Robinson and I take most all the
+care of him we thought perhaps you and Uncle Jerry would keep him
+just for a little while. You've got a cow and a turn-up bedstead,
+you know," she hurried on insinuatingly, "and there's hardly any
+pleasure as cheap as more babies where there's ever been any
+before, for baby carriages and trundle beds and cradles don't
+wear out, and there's always clothes left over from the old baby
+to begin the new one on. Of course, we can collect enough things
+to start Jacky, so he won't be much trouble or expense; and
+anyway, he's past the most troublesome age and you won't have to
+be up nights with him, and he isn't afraid of anybody or
+anything, as you can see by his just sitting there laughing and
+sucking his thumb, though he doesn't know what's going to become
+of him. And he's just seventeen months old like dear little Sarah
+Ellen in the graveyard, and we thought we ought to give you the
+refusal of him before he goes to the poor farm, and what do you
+think about it? Because it's near my dinner time and Aunt Miranda
+will keep me in the whole afternoon if I'm late, and I've got to
+finish weeding the hollyhock bed before sundown."
+
+IV
+
+Mrs. Cobb had enjoyed a considerable period of reflection during
+this monologue, and Jacky had not used the time unwisely,
+offering several unconscious arguments and suggestions to the
+matter under discussion; lurching over on the greensward and
+righting himself with a chuckle, kicking his bare feet about in
+delight at the sunshine and groping for his toes with arms too
+short to reach them, the movement involving an entire upsetting
+of equilibrium followed by more chuckles.
+
+Coming down the last of the stone steps, Sarah Ellen's mother
+regarded the baby with interest and sympathy.
+
+"Poor little mite!" she said; "that doesn't know what he's lost
+and what's going to happen to him.  Seems to me we might keep him
+a spell till we're sure his father's deserted him for good. Want
+to come to Aunt Sarah, baby?"
+
+Jack-o'-lantern turned from Rebecca and Emma Jane and regarded
+the kind face gravely; then he held out both his hands and Mrs.
+Cobb, stooping, gathered him like a harvest. Being lifted into
+her arms, he at once tore her spectacles from her nose and
+laughed aloud. Taking them from him gently, she put them on
+again, and set him in the cushioned rocking chair under the lilac
+bushes beside the steps. Then she took one of his soft hands in
+hers and patted it, and fluttered her fingers like birds before
+his eyes, and snapped them like castanets, remembering all the
+arts she had lavished upon "Sarah Ellen, aged seventeen months,"
+years and years ago.
+
+Motherless baby and babyless mother,
+Bring them together to love one another.
+
+Rebecca knew nothing of this couplet, but she saw clearly enough
+that her case was won.
+
+"The boy must be hungry; when was he fed last?" asked Mrs. Cobb.
+"Just stay a second longer while I get him some morning's milk;
+then you run home to your dinners and I'll speak to Mr. Cobb this
+afternoon. Of course, we can keep the baby for a week or two till
+we see what happens.  Land! He ain't goin' to be any more trouble
+than a wax doll! I guess he ain't been used to much attention,
+and that kind's always the easiest to take care of."
+
+At six o'clock that evening Rebecca and Emma Jane flew up the
+hill and down the lane again, waving their hands to the dear old
+couple who were waiting for them in the usual place, the back
+piazza where they had sat so many summers in a blessed
+companionship never marred by an unloving word.
+
+"Where's Jacky?" called Rebecca breathlessly, her voice always
+outrunning her feet.
+
+"Go up to my chamber, both of you, if you want to see," smiled
+Mrs. Cobb, "only don't wake him up."
+
+The girls went softly up the stairs into Aunt Sarah's room.
+There, in the turn-up bedstead that had been so long empty, slept
+Jack-o'-lantern, in blissful unconsciousness of the doom he had
+so lately escaped. His nightgown and pillow case were clean and
+fragrant with lavender, but they were both as yellow as saffron,
+for they had belonged to Sarah Ellen.
+
+"I wish his mother could see him!" whispered Emma Jane.
+
+"You can't tell; it's all puzzly about heaven, and perhaps she
+does," said Rebecca, as they turned reluctantly from the
+fascinating scene and stole down to the piazza.
+
+It was a beautiful and a happy summer that year, and every day it
+was filled with blissful plays and still more blissful duties. On
+the Monday after Jack-o'-lantern's arrival in Edgewood Rebecca
+founded the Riverboro Aunts Association. The Aunts were Rebecca,
+Emma Jane, Alice Robinson, and Minnie Smellie, and each of the
+first three promised to labor for and amuse the visiting baby for
+two days a week, Minnie Smellie, who lived at some distance from
+the Cobbs, making herself responsible for Saturday afternoons.
+
+Minnie Smellie was not a general favorite among the Riverboro
+girls, and it was only in an unprecedented burst of magnanimity
+that they admitted her into the rites of fellowship, Rebecca
+hugging herself secretly at the thought, that as Minnie gave only
+the leisure time of one day a week, she could not be called a
+"full" Aunt. There had been long and bitter feuds between the two
+children during Rebecca's first summer in Riverboro, but since
+Mrs. Smellie had told her daughter that one more quarrel would
+invite a punishment so terrible that it could only be hinted at
+vaguely, and Miss Miranda Sawyer had remarked that any niece of
+hers who couldn't get along peaceable with the neighbors had
+better go back to the seclusion of a farm where there weren't
+any, hostilities had been veiled, and a suave and diplomatic
+relationship had replaced the former one, which had been wholly
+primitive, direct, and barbaric. Still, whenever Minnie Smellie,
+flaxen-haired, pink-nosed, and ferret-eyed, indulged in fluent
+conversation, Rebecca, remembering the old fairy story, could
+always see toads hopping out of her mouth. It was really very
+unpleasant, because Minnie could never see them herself; and what
+was more amazing, Emma Jane perceived nothing of the sort, being
+almost as blind, too, to the diamonds that fell continually from
+Rebecca's lips; but Emma Jane's strong point was not her
+imagination.
+
+A shaky perambulator was found in Mrs. Perkins's wonderful attic;
+shoes and stockings were furnished by Mrs. Robinson; Miss Jane
+Sawyer knitted a blanket and some shirts; Thirza Meserve, though
+too young for an aunt, coaxed from her mother some dresses and
+nightgowns, and was presented with a green paper certificate
+allowing her to wheel Jacky up and down the road for an hour
+under the superintendence of a full Aunt. Each girl, under the
+constitution of the association, could call Jacky "hers" for two
+days in the week, and great, though friendly, was the rivalry
+between them, as they washed, ironed, and sewed for their adored
+nephew.
+
+If Mrs. Cobb had not been the most amiable woman in the world she
+might have had difficulty in managing the aunts, but she always
+had Jacky to herself the earlier part of the day and after dusk
+at night. 
+
+Meanwhile Jack-o'-lantern grew healthier and heartier and jollier
+as the weeks slipped away.  Uncle Jerry joined the little company
+of worshipers and slaves, and one fear alone stirred in all their
+hearts; not, as a sensible and practical person might imagine,
+the fear that the recreant father might never return to claim his
+child, but, on the contrary, that he MIGHT do so!
+
+October came at length with its cheery days and frosty nights,
+its glory of crimson leaves and its golden harvest of pumpkins
+and ripened corn. Rebecca had been down by the Edgewood side of
+the river and had come up across the pastures for a good-night
+play with Jacky. Her literary labors had been somewhat
+interrupted by the joys and responsibilities of vice-motherhood,
+and the thought book was less frequently drawn from its hiding
+place under the old haymow in the barn chamber.
+
+Mrs. Cobb stood behind the screen door with her face pressed
+against the wire netting, and Rebecca could see that she was
+wiping her eyes.
+
+All at once the child's heart gave one prophetic throb and then
+stood still. She was like a harp that vibrated with every wind of
+emotion, whether from another's grief or her own.
+
+She looked down the lane, around the curve of the stone wall, red
+with woodbine, the lane that would meet the stage road to the
+station. There, just mounting the crown of the hill and about to
+disappear on the other side, strode a stranger man, big and tall,
+with a crop of reddish curly hair showing from under his straw
+hat. A woman walked by his side, and perched on his shoulder,
+wearing his most radiant and triumphant mien, as joyous in
+leaving Edgewood as he had been during every hour of his sojourn
+there--rode Jack-o'-lantern!
+
+Rebecca gave a cry in which maternal longing and helpless,
+hopeless jealousy strove for supremacy. Then, with an impetuous
+movement she started to run after the disappearing trio.
+
+Mrs. Cobb opened the door hastily, calling after her, "Rebecca,
+Rebecca, come back here! You mustn't follow where you haven't any
+right to go. If there'd been anything to say or do, I'd a' done
+it."
+
+"He's mine! He's mine!" stormed Rebecca. "At least he's yours and
+mine!"
+
+"He's his father's first of all," faltered Mrs. Cobb; "don't
+let's forget that; and we'd ought to be glad and grateful that
+John Winslow's come to his senses an' remembers he's brought a
+child into the world and ought to take care of it. Our loss is
+his gain and it may make a man of him. Come in, and we'll put
+things away all neat before your Uncle Jerry gets home."
+
+Rebecca sank in a pitiful little heap on Mrs. Cobb's bedroom
+floor and sobbed her heart out. "Oh, Aunt Sarah, where shall we
+get another Jack-o'-lantern, and how shall I break it to Emma
+Jane?  What if his father doesn't love him, and what if he
+forgets to strain the milk or lets him go without his nap? That's
+the worst of babies that aren't private--you have to part with
+them sooner or later!"
+
+"Sometimes you have to part with your own, too," said Mrs. Cobb
+sadly; and though there were lines of sadness in her face there
+was neither rebellion nor repining, as she folded up the sides of
+the turn-up bedstead preparatory to banishing it a second time to
+the attic. "I shall miss Sarah Ellen now more'n ever. Still,
+Rebecca, we mustn't feel to complain. It's the Lord that giveth
+and the Lord that taketh away: Blessed be the name of the Lord."
+
+
+
+Second Chronicle
+DAUGHTERS OF ZION
+
+I
+
+Abijah Flagg was driving over to Wareham on an errand for old
+Squire Winship, whose general chore-boy and farmer's assistant he
+had been for some years.
+
+He passed Emma Jane Perkins's house slowly, as he always did. She
+was only a little girl of thirteen and he a boy of fifteen or
+sixteen, but somehow, for no particular reason, he liked to see
+the sun shine on her thick braids of reddish-brown hair. He
+admired her china-blue eyes too, and her amiable, friendly
+expression. He was quite alone in the world, and he always
+thought that if he had anybody belonging to him he would rather
+have a sister like Emma Jane Perkins than anything else within
+the power of Providence to bestow. When she herself suggested
+this relationship a few years later he cast it aside with scorn,
+having changed his mind in the interval--but that story belongs
+to another time and place.
+
+Emma Jane was not to be seen in garden, field, or at the window,
+and Abijah turned his gaze to the large brick house that came
+next on the other side of the quiet village street. It might have
+been closed for a funeral. Neither Miss Miranda nor Miss Jane
+Sawyer sat at their respective windows knitting, nor was Rebecca
+Randall's gypsy face to be discerned. Ordinarily that will-o'-the
+wispish little person could be seen, heard, or felt wherever she
+was.
+
+"The village must be abed, I guess," mused Abijah, as he neared
+the Robinsons' yellow cottage, where all the blinds were closed
+and no sign of life showed on porch or in shed. "No, 't aint,
+neither," he thought again, as his horse crept cautiously down
+the hill, for from the direction of the Robinsons' barn chamber
+there floated out into the air certain burning sentiments set to
+the tune of "Antioch." The words, to a lad brought up in the
+orthodox faith, were quite distinguishable:
+
+"Daughter of Zion, from the dust,
+Exalt thy fallen head!"
+
+Even the most religious youth is stronger on first lines than
+others, but Abijah pulled up his horse and waited till he caught
+another familiar verse, beginning:
+
+"Rebuild thy walls, thy bounds enlarge,
+And send thy heralds forth."
+
+"That's Rebecca carrying the air, and I can hear Emma Jane's
+alto."
+
+"Say to the North,
+Give up thy charge,
+And hold not back, O South,
+And hold not back, O South," etc.
+
+"Land! ain't they smart, seesawin' up and down in that part they
+learnt in singin' school! I wonder what they're actin' out,
+singin' hymn-tunes up in the barn chamber? Some o' Rebecca's
+doins, I'll be bound! Git dap, Aleck!"
+
+Aleck pursued his serene and steady trot up the hills on the
+Edgewood side of the river, till at length he approached the
+green Common where the old Tory Hill meeting-house stood, its
+white paint and green blinds showing fair and pleasant in the
+afternoon sun. Both doors were open, and as Abijah turned into
+the Wareham road the church melodeon pealed out the opening bars
+of the Missionary Hymn, and presently a score of voices sent the
+good old tune from the choir-loft out to the dusty road:
+
+"Shall we whose souls are lighted
+With Wisdom from on high,
+Shall we to men benighted
+The lamp of life deny?" 
+
+"Land!" exclaimed Abijah under his breath. "They're at it up
+here, too! That explains it all.  There's a missionary meeting at
+the church, and the girls wa'n't allowed to come so they held one
+of their own, and I bate ye it's the liveliest of the two."
+
+Abijah Flagg's shrewd Yankee guesses were not far from the truth,
+though he was not in possession of all the facts. It will be
+remembered by those who have been in the way of hearing Rebecca's
+experiences in Riverboro, that the Rev. and Mrs. Burch, returned
+missionaries from the Far East, together with some of their
+children, "all born under Syrian skies," as they always explained
+to interested inquirers, spent a day or two at the brick house,
+and gave parlor meetings in native costume.
+
+These visitors, coming straight from foreign lands to the little
+Maine village, brought with them a nameless enchantment to the
+children, and especially to Rebecca, whose imagination always
+kindled easily. The romance of that visit had never died in her
+heart, and among the many careers that dazzled her youthful
+vision was that of converting such Syrian heathen as might
+continue in idol worship after the Burches' efforts in their
+behalf had ceased. She thought at the age of eighteen she might
+be suitably equipped for storming some minor citadel of
+Mohammedanism; and Mrs. Burch had encouraged her in the idea,
+not, it is to be feared, because Rebecca showed any surplus of
+virtue or Christian grace, but because her gift of language, her
+tact and sympathy, and her musical talent seemed to fit her for
+the work.
+
+It chanced that the quarterly meeting of the Maine Missionary
+Society had been appointed just at the time when a letter from
+Mrs. Burch to Miss Jane Sawyer suggested that Rebecca should form
+a children's branch in Riverboro. Mrs. Burch's real idea was that
+the young people should save their pennies and divert a gentle
+stream of financial aid into the parent fund, thus learning early
+in life to be useful in such work, either at home or abroad.
+
+The girls themselves, however, read into her letter no such
+modest participation in the conversion of the world, and wishing
+to effect an organization without delay, they chose an afternoon
+when every house in the village was vacant, and seized upon the
+Robinsons' barn chamber as the place of meeting.
+
+Rebecca, Alice Robinson, Emma Jane Perkins, Candace Milliken, and
+Persis Watson, each with her hymn book, had climbed the ladder
+leading to the haymow a half hour before Abijah Flagg had heard
+the strains of "Daughters of Zion" floating out to the road.
+Rebecca, being an executive person, had carried, besides her hymn
+book, a silver call-bell and pencil and paper. An animated
+discussion regarding one of two names for the society, The Junior
+Heralds or The Daughters of Zion, had resulted in a unanimous
+vote for the latter, and Rebecca had been elected president at an
+early stage of the meeting. She had modestly suggested that Alice
+Robinson, as the granddaughter of a missionary to China, would be
+much more eligible.
+
+"No," said Alice, with entire good nature, "whoever is ELECTED
+president, you WILL be, Rebecca--you're that kind--so you might
+as well have the honor; I'd just as lieves be secretary, anyway."
+
+"If you should want me to be treasurer, I could be, as well as
+not," said Persis Watson suggestively; "for you know my father
+keeps china banks at his store--ones that will hold as much as
+two dollars if you will let them. I think he'd give us one if I
+happen to be treasurer."
+
+The three principal officers were thus elected at one fell swoop
+and with an entire absence of that red tape which commonly
+renders organization so tiresome, Candace Milliken suggesting
+that perhaps she'd better be vice-president, as Emma Jane Perkins
+was always so bashful.
+
+"We ought to have more members," she reminded the other girls,
+"but if we had invited them the first day they'd have all wanted
+to be officers, especially Minnie Smellie, so it's just as well
+not to ask them till another time. Is Thirza Meserve too little
+to join?"
+
+"I can't think why anybody named Meserve should have called a
+baby Thirza," said Rebecca, somewhat out of order, though the
+meeting was carried on with small recognition of parliamentary
+laws. "It always makes me want to say:
+
+Thirza Meserver
+Heaven preserve her!
+Thirza Meserver
+Do we deserve her?
+
+She's little, but she's sweet, and absolutely without guile. I
+think we ought to have her."
+
+"Is 'guile' the same as 'guilt?" inquired Emma Jane Perkins.
+
+"Yes," the president answered; "exactly the same, except one is
+written and the other spoken language." (Rebecca was rather good
+at imbibing information, and a master hand at imparting it!) 
+"Written language is for poems and graduations and occasions like
+this--kind of like a best Sunday-go-to-meeting dress that you
+wouldn't like to go blueberrying in for fear of getting it
+spotted."
+
+"I'd just as 'lieves get 'guile' spotted as not," affirmed the
+unimaginative Emma Jane. "I think it's an awful foolish word; but
+now we're all named and our officers elected, what do we do
+first? It's easy enough for Mary and Martha Burch; they just play
+at missionarying because their folks work at it, same as Living
+and I used to make believe be blacksmiths when we were little."
+
+"It must be nicer missionarying in those foreign places," said
+Persis, "because on 'Afric's shores and India's plains and other
+spots where Satan reigns' (that's father's favorite hymn) there's
+always a heathen bowing down to wood and stone. You can take away
+his idols if he'll let you and give him a bible and the
+beginning's all made. But who'll we begin on? Jethro Small?"
+
+"Oh, he's entirely too dirty, and foolish besides!" exclaimed
+Candace. "Why not Ethan Hunt? He swears dreadfully."
+
+"He lives on nuts and is a hermit, and it's a mile to his camp
+through the thick woods; my mother'll never let me go there,"
+objected Alice. "There's Uncle Tut Judson."
+
+"He's too old; he's most a hundred and deaf as a post,"
+complained Emma Jane. "Besides, his married daughter is a
+Sabbath-school teacher--why doesn't she teach him to behave? I
+can't think of anybody just right to start on!"
+
+"Don't talk like that, Emma Jane," and Rebecca's tone had a tinge
+of reproof in it. "We are a copperated body named the Daughters
+of Zion, and, of course, we've got to find something to do. 
+Foreigners are the easiest; there's a Scotch family at North
+Riverboro, an English one in Edgewood, and one Cuban man at
+Millkin's Mills."
+
+"Haven't foreigners got any religion of their own?" inquired
+Persis curiously.
+
+"Ye-es, I s'pose so; kind of a one; but foreigners' religions are
+never right--ours is the only good one." This was from Candace,
+the deacon's daughter.
+
+"I do think it must be dreadful, being born with a religion and
+growing up with it, and then finding out it's no use and all your
+time wasted!" Here Rebecca sighed, chewed a straw, and looked
+troubled.
+
+"Well, that's your punishment for being a heathen," retorted
+Candace, who had been brought up strictly.
+
+"But I can't for the life of me see how you can help being a
+heathen if you're born in Africa," persisted Persis, who was well
+named.
+
+"You can't." Rebecca was clear on this point. "I had that all out
+with Mrs. Burch when she was visiting Aunt Miranda. She says they
+can't help being heathen, but if there's a single mission station
+in the whole of Africa, they're accountable if they don't go
+there and get saved."
+
+"Are there plenty of stages and railroads?" asked Alice; "because
+there must be dreadfully long distances, and what if they
+couldn't pay the fare?"
+
+"That part of it is so dreadfully puzzly we mustn't talk about
+it, please," said Rebecca, her sensitive face quivering with the
+force of the problem. Poor little soul! She did not realize that
+her superiors in age and intellect had spent many a sleepless
+night over that same "accountability of the heathen."
+
+"It's too bad the Simpsons have moved away," said Candace. "It's
+so seldom you can find a real big wicked family like that to
+save, with only Clara Belle and Susan good in it."
+
+"And numbers count for so much," continued Alice. "My grandmother
+says if missionaries can't convert about so many in a year the
+Board advises them to come back to America and take up some other
+work."
+
+"I know," Rebecca corroborated; "and it's the same with
+revivalists. At the Centennial picnic at North Riverboro, a
+revivalist sat opposite to Mr. Ladd and Aunt Jane and me, and he
+was telling about his wonderful success in Bangor last winter.
+He'd converted a hundred and thirty in a month, he said, or about
+four and a third a day. I had just finished fractions, so I asked
+Mr. Ladd how the third of a man could be converted. He laughed
+and said it was just the other way; that the man was a third
+converted. Then he explained that if you were trying to convince
+a person of his sin on a Monday, and couldn't quite finish by
+sundown, perhaps you wouldn't want to sit up all night with him,
+and perhaps he wouldn't want you to; so you'd begin again on
+Tuesday, and you couldn't say just which day he was converted,
+because it would be two thirds on Monday and one third on
+Tuesday."
+
+"Mr. Ladd is always making fun, and the Board couldn't expect any
+great things of us girls, new beginners," suggested Emma Jane,
+who was being constantly warned against tautology by her teacher.
+"I think it's awful rude, anyway, to go right out and try to
+convert your neighbors; but if you borrow a horse and go to
+Edgewood Lower Corner, or Milliken's Mills, I s'pose that makes
+it Foreign Missions."
+
+"Would we each go alone or wait upon them with a committee, as
+they did when they asked Deacon Tuttle for a contribution for the
+new hearse?" asked Persis.
+
+"Oh! We must go alone," decided Rebecca; "it would be much more
+refined and delicate. Aunt Miranda says that one man alone could
+never get a subscription from Deacon Tuttle, and that's the
+reason they sent a committee. But it seems to me Mrs. Burch
+couldn't mean for us to try and convert people when we're none of
+us even church members, except Candace. I think all we can do is
+to persuade them to go to meeting and Sabbath school, or give
+money for the hearse, or the new horse sheds. Now let's all think
+quietly for a minute or two who's the very most heathenish and
+reperrehensiblest person in Riverboro."
+
+After a very brief period of silence the words "Jacob Moody" fell
+from all lips with entire accord.
+
+"You are right," said the president tersely; "and after singing
+hymn number two hundred seventy four, to be found on the
+sixty-sixth page, we will take up the question of persuading Mr.
+Moody to attend divine service or the minister's Bible class, he
+not having been in the meeting-house for lo! these many years.
+
+'Daughter of Zion, the power that hath saved thee
+Extolled with the harp and the timbrel should be.'
+
+"Sing without reading, if you please, omitting the second stanza.
+Hymn two seventy four, to be found on the sixty-sixth page of the
+new hymn book or on page thirty two of Emma Jane Perkins's old
+one."
+
+II
+
+It is doubtful if the Rev. Mr. Burch had ever found in Syria a
+person more difficult to persuade than the already
+"gospel-hardened" Jacob Moody of Riverboro.
+
+Tall, gaunt, swarthy, black-bearded--his masses of grizzled,
+uncombed hair and the red scar across his nose and cheek added to
+his sinister appearance. His tumble-down house stood on a rocky
+bit of land back of the Sawyer pasture, and the acres of his farm
+stretched out on all sides of it. He lived alone, ate alone,
+plowed, planted, sowed, harvested alone, and was more than
+willing to die alone, "unwept, unhonored, and unsung." The road
+that bordered upon his fields was comparatively little used by
+any one, and notwithstanding the fact that it was thickly set
+with chokecherry trees and blackberry bushes it had been for
+years practically deserted by the children.  Jacob's Red
+Astrakhan and Granny Garland trees hung thick with apples, but no
+Riverboro or Edgewood boy stole them; for terrifying accounts of
+the fate that had overtaken one urchin in times agone had been
+handed along from boy to boy, protecting the Moody fruit far
+better than any police patrol.
+
+Perhaps no circumstances could have extenuated the old man's
+surly manners or his lack of all citizenly graces and virtues;
+but his neighbors commonly rebuked his present way of living and
+forgot the troubled past that had brought it about: the
+sharp-tongued wife, the unloving and disloyal sons, the
+daughter's hapless fate, and all the other sorry tricks that
+fortune had played upon him--at least that was the way in which
+he had always regarded his disappointments and griefs.
+
+This, then, was the personage whose moral rehabilitation was to
+be accomplished by the Daughters of Zion. But how?
+
+"Who will volunteer to visit Mr. Moody?" blandly asked the
+president.
+
+VISIT MR. MOODY! It was a wonder the roof of the barn chamber did
+not fall; it did, indeed echo the words and in some way make them
+sound more grim and satirical.
+
+"Nobody'll volunteer, Rebecca Rowena Randall, and you know it,"
+said Emma Jane.
+
+"Why don't we draw lots, when none of us wants to speak to him
+and yet one of us must?"
+
+This suggestion fell from Persis Watson, who had been pale and
+thoughtful ever since the first mention of Jacob Moody. (She was
+fond of Granny Garlands; she had once met Jacob; and, as to what
+befell, well, we all have our secret tragedies!)
+
+"Wouldn't it be wicked to settle it that way?"
+
+"It's gamblers that draw lots."
+
+"People did it in the Bible ever so often."
+
+"It doesn't seem nice for a missionary meeting."
+
+These remarks fell all together upon the president's bewildered
+ear the while (as she always said in compositions)--"the while"
+she was trying to adjust the ethics of this unexpected and
+difficult dilemma.
+
+"It is a very puzzly question," she said thoughtfully. "I could
+ask Aunt Jane if we had time, but I suppose we haven't. It
+doesn't seem nice to draw lots, and yet how can we settle it
+without? We know we mean right, and perhaps it will be. Alice,
+take this paper and tear off five narrow pieces, all different
+lengths."
+
+At this moment a voice from a distance floated up to the
+haymow--a voice saying plaintively: "Will you let me play with
+you, girls? Huldah has gone to ride, and I'm all alone."
+
+It was the voice of the absolutely-without-guile Thirza Meserve,
+and it came at an opportune moment.
+
+"If she is going to be a member," said Persis, "why not let her
+come up and hold the lots? She'd be real honest and not favor
+anybody."
+
+It seemed an excellent idea, and was followed up so quickly that
+scarcely three minutes ensued before the guileless one was
+holding the five scraps in her hot little palm, laboriously
+changing their places again and again until they looked exactly
+alike and all rather soiled and wilted.
+
+"Come, girls, draw!" commanded the president. "Thirza, you
+mustn't chew gum at a missionary meeting, it isn't polite nor
+holy. Take it out and stick it somewhere till the exercises are
+over."
+
+The five Daughters of Zion approached the spot so charged with
+fate, and extended their trembling hands one by one. Then after a
+moment's silent clutch of their papers they drew nearer to one
+another and compared them. 
+
+Emma Jane Perkins had drawn the short one, becoming thus the
+destined instrument for Jacob Moody's conversion to a more seemly
+manner of life!
+
+She looked about her despairingly, as if to seek some painless
+and respectable method of self-destruction.
+
+"Do let's draw over again," she pleaded. "I'm the worst of all of
+us. I'm sure to make a mess of it till I kind o' get trained in."
+
+Rebecca's heart sank at this frank confession, which only
+corroborated her own fears.
+
+"I'm sorry, Emmy, dear," she said, "but our only excuse for
+drawing lots at all would be to have it sacred. We must think of
+it as a kind of a sign, almost like God speaking to Moses in the
+burning bush."
+
+"Oh, I WISH there was a burning bush right here!" cried the
+distracted and recalcitrant missionary.  "How quick I'd step into
+it without even stopping to take off my garnet ring!"
+
+"Don't be such a scare-cat, Emma Jane!" exclaimed Candace
+bracingly. "Jacob Moody can't kill you, even if he has an awful
+temper. Trot right along now before you get more frightened.
+Shall we go cross lots with her, Rebecca, and wait at the pasture
+gate? Then whatever happens Alice can put it down in the minutes
+of the meeting."
+
+In these terrible crises of life time gallops with such
+incredible velocity that it seemed to Emma Jane only a breath
+before she was being dragged through the fields by the other
+Daughters of Zion, the guileless little Thirza panting in the
+rear.
+
+At the entrance to the pasture Rebecca gave her an impassioned
+embrace, and whispering, "WHATEVER YOU DO, BE CAREFUL HOW YOU
+LEAD UP," lifted off the top rail and pushed her through the
+bars. Then the girls turned their backs reluctantly on the
+pathetic figure, and each sought a tree under whose friendly
+shade she could watch, and perhaps pray, until the missionary
+should return from her field of labor.
+
+Alice Robinson, whose compositions were always marked 96 or
+97,--100 symbolizing such perfection as could be attained in the
+mortal world of Riverboro,--Alice, not only Daughter, but Scribe
+of Zion, sharpened her pencil and wrote a few well-chosen words
+of introduction, to be used when the records of the afternoon had
+been made by Emma Jane Perkins and Jacob Moody.
+
+Rebecca's heart beat tumultuously under her gingham dress. She
+felt that a drama was being enacted, and though unfortunately she
+was not the central figure, she had at least a modest part in it.
+The short lot had not fallen to the properest Daughter, that she
+quite realized; yet would any one of them succeed in winning
+Jacob Moody's attention, in engaging him in pleasant
+conversation, and finally in bringing him to a realization of his
+mistaken way of life? She doubted, but at the same moment her
+spirits rose at the thought of the difficulties involved in the
+undertaking.
+
+Difficulties always spurred Rebecca on, but they daunted poor
+Emma Jane, who had no little thrills of excitement and wonder and
+fear and longing to sustain her lagging soul. That her interview
+was to be entered as "minutes" by a secretary seemed to her the
+last straw. Her blue eyes looked lighter than usual and had the
+glaze of china saucers; her usually pink cheeks were pale, but
+she pressed on, determined to be a faithful Daughter of Zion, and
+above all to be worthy of Rebecca's admiration and respect.
+
+"Rebecca can do anything," she thought, with enthusiastic
+loyalty, "and I mustn't be any stupider than I can help, or
+she'll choose one of the other girls for her most intimate
+friend." So, mustering all her courage, she turned into Jacob
+Moody's dooryard, where he was chopping wood.
+
+"It's a pleasant afternoon, Mr. Moody," she said in a polite but
+hoarse whisper, Rebecca's words, "LEAD UP! LEAD UP! ringing in
+clarion tones through her brain.
+
+Jacob Moody looked at her curiously. "Good enough, I guess," he
+growled; "but I don't never have time to look at afternoons."
+
+Emma Jane seated herself timorously on the end of a large log
+near the chopping block, supposing that Jacob, like other hosts,
+would pause in his tasks and chat.
+
+"The block is kind of like an idol," she thought; "I wish I could
+take it away from him, and then perhaps he'd talk."
+
+At this moment Jacob raised his axe and came down on the block
+with such a stunning blow that Emma Jane fairly leaped into the
+air.
+
+"You'd better look out, Sissy, or you'll git chips in the eye!"
+said Moody, grimly going on with his work.
+
+The Daughter of Zion sent up a silent prayer for inspiration, but
+none came, and she sat silent, giving nervous jumps in spite of
+herself whenever the axe fell upon the log Jacob was cutting.
+
+Finally, the host became tired of his dumb visitor, and leaning
+on his axe he said, "Look here, Sis, what have you come for?
+What's your errant? Do you want apples? Or cider? Or what? Speak
+out, or GIT out, one or t'other."
+
+Emma Jane, who had wrung her handkerchief into a clammy ball,
+gave it a last despairing wrench, and faltered: "Wouldn't you
+like--hadn't you better--don't you think you'd ought to be more
+constant at meeting and Sabbath school?"
+
+Jacob's axe almost dropped from his nerveless hand, and he
+regarded the Daughter of Zion with unspeakable rage and disdain.
+Then, the blood mounting in his face, he gathered himself
+together, and shouted: "You take yourself off that log and out o'
+this dooryard double-quick, you imperdent sanct'omus young one!
+You just let me ketch Bill Perkins' child trying to teach me
+where I shall go, at my age! Scuttle, I tell ye! And if I see
+your pious cantin' little mug inside my fence ag'in on sech a
+business I'll chase ye down the hill or set the dog on ye! SCOOT,
+I TELL YE!"
+
+Emma Jane obeyed orders summarily, taking herself off the log,
+out the dooryard, and otherwise scuttling and scooting down the
+hill at a pace never contemplated even by Jacob Moody, who stood
+regarding her flying heels with a sardonic grin.
+
+Down she stumbled, the tears coursing over her cheeks and
+mingling with the dust of her flight; blighted hope, shame, fear,
+rage, all tearing her bosom in turn, till with a hysterical
+shriek she fell over the bars and into Rebecca's arms
+outstretched to receive her. The other Daughters wiped her eyes
+and supported her almost fainting form, while Thirza, thoroughly
+frightened, burst into sympathetic tears, and refused to be
+comforted.
+
+No questions were asked, for it was felt by all parties that Emma
+Jane's demeanor was answering them before they could be framed.
+
+"He threatened to set the dog on me!" she wailed presently, when,
+as they neared the Sawyer pasture, she was able to control her
+voice. "He called me a pious, cantin' young one, and said he'd
+chase me out o' the dooryard if I ever came again! And he'll tell
+my father--I know he will, for he hates him like poison."
+
+All at once the adult point of view dawned upon Rebecca. She
+never saw it until it was too obvious to be ignored. Had they
+done wrong in interviewing Jacob Moody? Would Aunt Miranda be
+angry, as well as Mr. Perkins?
+
+"Why was he so dreadful, Emmy?" she questioned tenderly. "What
+did you say first? How did you lead up to it?"
+
+Emma Jane sobbed more convulsively, and wiped her nose and eyes
+impartially as she tried to think.
+
+"I guess I never led up at all; not a mite. I didn't know what
+you meant. I was sent on an errant, and I went and done it the
+best I could! (Emma Jane's grammar always lapsed in moments of
+excitement.) And then Jake roared at me like Squire Winship's
+bull. . . . And he called my face a mug. . . . You shut up that
+secretary book, Alice Robinson! If you write down a single word
+I'll never speak to you again. . . . And I don't want to be a
+member' another minute for fear of drawing another short lot.
+I've got enough of the Daughters or Zion to last me the rest o'
+my life!  I don't care who goes to meetin' and who don't."
+
+The girls were at the Perkins's gate by this time, and Emma Jane
+went sadly into the empty house to remove all traces of the
+tragedy from her person before her mother should come home from
+the church.
+
+The others wended their way slowly down the street, feeling that
+their promising missionary branch had died almost as soon as it
+had budded.
+
+"Goodby," said Rebecca, swallowing lumps of disappointment and
+chagrin as she saw the whole inspiring plan break and vanish into
+thin air like an iridescent bubble. "It's all over and we won't
+ever try it again. I'm going in to do overcasting as hard as I
+can, because I hate that the worst.  Aunt Jane must write to Mrs.
+Burch that we don't want to be home missionaries. Perhaps we're
+not big enough, anyway. I'm perfectly certain it's nicer to
+convert people when they're yellow or brown or any color but
+white; and I believe it must be easier to save their souls than
+it is to make them go to meeting."
+
+
+
+Third Chronicle
+REBECCA'S THOUGHT BOOK
+
+I
+
+The "Sawyer girls'" barn still had its haymow in Rebecca's time,
+although the hay was a dozen years old or more, and, in the
+opinion of the occasional visiting horse, sadly juiceless and
+wanting in flavor. It still sheltered, too, old Deacon Israel
+Sawyer's carryall and mowing-machine, with his pung, his sleigh,
+and a dozen other survivals of an earlier era, when the broad
+acres of the brick house went to make one of the finest farms in
+Riverboro.
+
+There were no horses or cows in the stalls nowadays; no pig
+grunting comfortably of future spare ribs in the sty; no hens to
+peck the plants in the cherished garden patch. The Sawyer girls
+were getting on in years, and, mindful that care once killed a
+cat, they ordered their lives with the view of escaping that
+particular doom, at least, and succeeded fairly well until
+Rebecca's advent made existence a trifle more sensational.
+
+Once a month for years upon years, Miss Miranda and Miss Jane had
+put towels over their heads and made a solemn visit to the barn,
+taking off the enameled cloth coverings (occasionally called
+"emmanuel covers" in Riverboro), dusting the ancient implements,
+and sometimes sweeping the heaviest of the cobwebs from the
+corners, or giving a brush to the floor.
+
+Deacon Israel's tottering ladder still stood in its accustomed
+place, propped against the haymow, and the heavenly stairway
+leading to eternal glory scarcely looked fairer to Jacob of old
+than this to Rebecca. By means of its dusty rounds she mounted,
+mounted, mounted far away from time and care and maiden aunts,
+far away from childish tasks and childish troubles, to the barn
+chamber, a place so full of golden dreams, happy reveries, and
+vague longings, that, as her little brown hands clung to the
+sides of the ladder and her feet trod the rounds cautiously in
+her ascent, her heart almost stopped beating in the sheer joy of
+anticipation.
+
+Once having gained the heights, the next thing was to unlatch the
+heavy doors and give them a gentle swing outward. Then, oh, ever
+new Paradise! Then, oh, ever lovely green and growing world! For
+Rebecca had that something in her soul that
+
+"Gives to seas and sunset skies The unspent beauty of surprise."
+
+At the top of Guide Board hill she could see Alice Robinson's
+barn with its shining weather vane, a huge burnished fish that
+swam with the wind and foretold the day to all Riverboro. The
+meadow, with its sunny slopes stretching up to the pine woods,
+was sometimes a flowing sheet of shimmering grass,
+sometimes--when daisies and buttercups were blooming--a vision of
+white and gold. Sometimes the shorn stubble would be dotted with
+"the happy hills of hay," and a little later the rock maple on
+the edge of the pines would stand out like a golden ball against
+the green; its neighbor, the sugar maple, glowing beside it,
+brave in scarlet.
+
+It was on one of these autumn days with a wintry nip in the air
+that Adam Ladd (Rebecca's favorite "Mr. Aladdin"), after
+searching for her in field and garden, suddenly noticed the open
+doors of the barn chamber, and called to her. At the sound of his
+vice she dropped her precious diary, and flew to the edge of the
+haymow. He never forgot the vision of the startled little
+poetess, book in one mittened hand, pencil in the other, dark
+hair all ruffled, with the picturesque addition of an occasional
+glade of straw, her cheeks crimson, her eyes shining.
+
+"A Sappho in mittens!" he cried laughingly, and at her eager
+question told her to look up the unknown lady in the school
+encyclopedia, when she was admitted to the Female Seminary at
+Wareham.
+
+Now, all being ready, Rebecca went to a corner of the haymow, and
+withdrew a thick blank-book with mottled covers. Out of her
+gingham apron pocket came a pencil, a bit of rubber, and some
+pieces of brown paper; then she seated herself gravely on the
+floor, and drew an inverted soapbox nearer to her for a table.
+
+The book was reverently opened, and there was a serious reading
+of the extracts already carefully copied therein. Most of them
+were apparently to the writer's liking, for dimples of pleasure
+showed themselves now and then, and smiles of obvious delight
+played about her face; but once in a while there was a knitting
+of the brows and a sigh of discouragement, showing that the
+artist in the child was not wholly satisfied.
+
+Then came the crucial moment when the budding author was
+supposedly to be racked with the throes of composition; but
+seemingly there were no throes. Other girls could wield the
+darning or crochet or knitting needle, and send the tatting
+shuttle through loops of the finest cotton; hemstitch, oversew,
+braid hair in thirteen strands, but the pencil was never obedient
+in their fingers, and the pen and ink-pot were a horror from
+early childhood to the end of time.
+
+Not so with Rebecca; her pencil moved as easily as her tongue,
+and no more striking simile could possibly be used. Her
+handwriting was not Spencerian; she had neither time, nor
+patience, it is to be feared, for copybook methods, and her
+unformed characters were frequently the despair of her teachers;
+but write she could, write she would, write she must and did, in
+season and out; from the time she made pothooks at six, till now,
+writing was the easiest of all possible tasks; to be indulged in
+as solace and balm when the terrors of examples in least common
+multiple threatened to dethrone the reason, or the rules of
+grammar loomed huge and unconquerable in the near horizon.
+
+As to spelling, it came to her in the main by free grace, and not
+by training, and though she slipped at times from the beaten
+path, her extraordinary ear and good visual memory kept her from
+many or flagrant mistakes. It was her intention, especially when
+saying her prayers at night, to look up all doubtful words in her
+small dictionary, before copying her Thoughts into the sacred
+book for the inspiration of posterity; but when genius burned
+with a brilliant flame, and particularly when she was in the barn
+and the dictionary in the house, impulse as usual carried the
+day.
+
+There sits Rebecca, then, in the open door of the Sawyers barn
+chamber--the sunset door. How many a time had her grandfather,
+the good deacon, sat just underneath in his tipped-back chair,
+when Mrs. Israel's temper was uncertain, and the serenity of the
+barn was in comforting contrast to his own fireside!
+
+The open doors swinging out to the peaceful landscape, the solace
+of the pipe, not allowed in the "settin'-room"--how beautifully
+these simple agents have ministered to the family peace in days
+agone! "If I hadn't had my barn and my store BOTH, I couldn't
+never have lived in holy matrimony with Maryliza!" once said Mr.
+Watson feelingly.
+
+But the deacon, looking on his waving grass fields, his tasseling
+corn and his timber lands, bright and honest as were his eyes,
+never saw such visions as Rebecca. The child, transplanted from
+her home farm at Sunnybrook, from the care of the overworked but
+easy-going mother, and the companionship of the scantily fed,
+scantily clothed, happy-go-lucky brothers and sisters--she had
+indeed fallen on shady days in Riverboro. The blinds were closed
+in every room of the house but two, and the same might have been
+said of Miss Miranda's mind and heart, though Miss Jane had a few
+windows opening to the sun, and Rebecca already had her
+unconscious hand on several others. Brickhouse rules were rigid
+and many for a little creature so full of life, but Rebecca's gay
+spirit could not be pinioned in a strait jacket for long at a
+time; it escaped somehow and winged its merry way into the
+sunshine and free air; if she were not allowed to sing in the
+orchard, like the wild bird she was, she could still sing in the
+cage, like the canary.
+
+II
+
+If you had opened the carefully guarded volume with the mottled
+covers, you would first have seen a wonderful title page,
+constructed apparently on the same lines as an obituary, or the
+inscription on a tombstone, save for the quantity and variety of
+information contained in it. Much of the matter would seem to the
+captious critic better adapted to the body of the book than to
+the title page, but Rebecca was apparently anxious that the
+principal personages in her chronicle should be well described at
+the outset.
+
+She seems to have had a conviction that heredity plays its part
+in the evolution of genius, and her belief that the world will be
+inspired by the possession of her Thoughts is too artless to be
+offensive. She evidently has respect for rich material confided
+to her teacher, and one can imagine Miss Dearborn's woe had she
+been confronted by Rebecca's chosen literary executor and bidden
+to deliver certain "Valuable Poetry and Thoughts," the property
+of posterity "unless carelessly destroyed."
+
+THOUGHT BOOK of Rebecca Rowena Randall
+Really of Sunnybrook Farm
+But temporily of The Brick House Riverboro.
+Own niece of Miss Miranda and Jane Sawyer
+Second of seven children of her father, Mr. L. D. M. Randall
+(Now at rest in Temperance cemmetary and there will be a monument
+as soon as we pay off the mortgage on the farm)
+Also of her mother Mrs. Aurelia Randall
+
+In case of Death the best of these Thoughts
+May be printed in my Remerniscences
+For the Sunday School Library at Temperance, Maine
+Which needs more books fearfully
+And I hereby
+Will and Testament them to Mr. Adam Ladd
+Who bought 300 cakes of soap from me
+And thus secured a premium
+A Greatly Needed Banquet Lamp
+For my friends the Simpsons.
+He is the only one that incourages
+My writing Remerniscences and
+My teacher Miss Dearborn will
+Have much valuable Poetry and Thoughts
+To give him unless carelessly destroyed.
+
+The pictures are by the same hand that
+Wrote the Thoughts.
+
+IT IS NOT NOW DECIDED WHETHER REBECCA ROWENA RANDALL WILL BE A
+PAINTER OR AN AUTHOR, BUT AFTER HER DEATH IT WILL BE KNOWN WHICH
+SHE HAS BEEN, IF ANY.
+
+FINIS
+
+From the title page, with its wealth of detail, and its
+unnecessary and irrelevant information, the book ripples on like
+a brook, and to the weary reader of problem novels it may have
+something of the brook's refreshing quality.
+
+OUR DIARIES May, 187--
+
+All the girls are keeping a diary because Miss Dearborn was very
+much ashamed when the school trustees told her that most of the
+girls' and all of the boys' compositions were disgraceful, and
+must be improved upon next term. She asked the boys to write
+letters to her once a week instead of keeping a diary, which they
+thought was girlish like playing with dolls. The boys thought it
+was dreadful to have to write letters every seven days, but she
+told them it was not half as bad for them as it was for her who
+had to read them.
+
+To make my diary a little different I am going to call it a
+THOUGHT Book (written just like that, with capitals). I have
+thoughts that I never can use unless I write them down, for Aunt
+Miranda always says, Keep your thoughts to yourself. Aunt Jane
+lets me tell her some, but does not like my queer ones and my
+true thoughts are mostly queer. Emma Jane does not mind hearing
+them now and then, and that is my only chance.
+
+If Miss Dearborn does not like the name Thought Book I will call
+it Remerniscences (written just like that with a capital R).
+Remerniscences are things you remember about yourself and write
+down in case you should die. Aunt Jane doesn't like to read any
+other kind of books but just lives of interesting dead people and
+she says that is what Longfellow (who was born in the state of
+Maine and we should be very proud of it and try to write like
+him) meant in his poem:
+
+"Lives of great men all remind us
+We should make our lives sublime,
+And departing, leave behind us
+Footprints on the sands of time."
+
+I know what this means because when Emma Jane and I went to the
+beach with Uncle Jerry Cobb we ran along the wet sand and looked
+at the shapes our boots made, just as if they were stamped in
+wax. Emma Jane turns in her left foot (splayfoot the boys call
+it, which is not polite) and Seth Strout had just patched one of
+my shoes and it all came out in the sand pictures. When I learned
+The Psalm of Life for Friday afternoon speaking I thought I
+shouldn't like to leave a patched footprint, nor have Emma Jane's
+look crooked on the sands of time, and right away I thought Oh! 
+What a splendid thought for my Thought Book when Aunt Jane buys
+me a fifteen-cent one over to Watson's store.
+
+* * * * * * * * * * * * *
+
+REMERNISCENCES
+
+June, 187--
+
+I told Aunt Jane I was going to begin my Remerniscences, and she
+says I am full young, but I reminded her that Candace Milliken's
+sister died when she was ten, leaving no footprints whatever, and
+if I should die suddenly who would write down my Remerniscences?
+Aunt Miranda says the sun and moon would rise and set just the
+same, and it was no matter if they didn't get written down, and
+to go up attic and find her piece-bag; but I said it would, as
+there was only one of everybody in the world, and nobody else
+could do their remerniscensing for them. If I should die tonight
+I know now who would describe me right. Miss Dearborn would say
+one thing and brother John another. Emma Jane would try to do me
+justice, but has no words; and I am glad Aunt Miranda never takes
+the pen in hand.
+
+My dictionary is so small it has not many genteel words in it,
+and I cannot find how to spell Remerniscences, but I remember
+from the cover of Aunt Jane's book that there was an "s" and a
+"c" close together in the middle of it, which I thought foolish
+and not needful.
+
+All the girls like their dairies very much, but Minnie Smellie
+got Alice Robinson's where she had hid it under the school wood
+pile and read it all through. She said it was no worse than
+reading anybody's composition, but we told her it was just like
+peeking through a keyhole, or listening at a window, or opening a
+bureau drawer. She said she didn't look at it that way, and I
+told her that unless her eyes got unscealed she would never leave
+any kind of a sublime footprint on the sands of time. I told her
+a diary was very sacred as you generally poured your deepest
+feelings into it expecting nobody to look at it but yourself and
+your indulgent heavenly Father who seeeth all things.
+
+Of course it would not hurt Persis Watson to show her diary
+because she has not a sacred plan and this is the way it goes,
+for she reads it out loud to us:
+
+"Arose at six this morning--(you always arise in a diary but you
+say get up when you talk about it). Ate breakfast at half past
+six. Had soda biscuits, coffee, fish hash and doughnuts. Wiped
+the dishes, fed the hens and made my bed before school. Had a
+good arithmetic lesson, but went down two in spelling. At half
+past four played hide and coop in the Sawyer pasture. Fed hens
+and went to bed at eight."
+
+She says she can't put in what doesn't happen, but as I don't
+think her diary is interesting she will ask her mother to have
+meat hash instead of fish, with pie when the doughnuts give out,
+and she will feed the hens before breakfast to make a change. We
+are all going now to try and make something happen every single
+day so the diaries won't be so dull and the footprints so common.
+
+* * * * * * * * * * * * *
+
+AN UNCOMMON THOUGHT
+
+July 187--
+
+We dug up our rosecakes today, and that gave me a good
+Remerniscence. The way you make rose cakes is, you take the
+leaves of full blown roses and mix them with a little cinnamon
+and as much brown sugar as they will give you, which is never
+half enough except Persis Watson, whose affectionate parents let
+her go to the barrel in their store. Then you do up little bits
+like sedlitz powders, first in soft paper and then in brown, and
+bury them in the ground and let them stay as long as you possibly
+can hold out; then dig them up and eat them. Emma Jane and I
+stick up little signs over the holes in the ground with the date
+we buried them and when they'll be done enough to dig up, but we
+can never wait. When Aunt Jane saw us she said it was the first
+thing for children to learn,--not to be impatient,--so when I
+went to the barn chamber I made a poem.
+
+IMPATIENCE
+
+We dug our rose cakes up oh! all too soon. 
+Twas in the orchard just at noon. 
+Twas in a bright July forenoon. 
+Twas in the sunny afternoon. 
+Twas underneath the harvest moon.
+
+It was not that way at all; it was a foggy morning before school,
+and I should think poets could never possibly get to heaven, for
+it is so hard to stick to the truth when you are writing poetry. 
+Emma Jane thinks it is nobody's business when we dug the
+rosecakes up. I like the line about the harvest moon best, but it
+would give a wrong idea of our lives and characters to the people
+that read my Thoughts, for they would think we were up late
+nights, so I have fixed it like this:
+
+IMPATIENCE
+
+We dug our rose cakes up oh! all too soon,
+We thought their sweetness would be such a boon.
+We ne'er suspicioned they would not be done
+After three days of autumn wind and sun.
+Why did we from the earth our treasures draw?
+Twas not for fear that rat or mole might naw,
+An aged aunt doth say impatience was the reason,
+She says that youth is ever out of season.
+
+That is just as Aunt Jane said it, and it gave me the thought for
+the poem which is rather uncommon.
+
+* * * * * * * * * * * * *
+
+A DREADFUL QUESTION
+
+September, 187--
+
+WHICH HAS BEEN THE MOST BENEFERCENT INFLUENCE ON CHARACTER--
+PUNISHMENT OR REWARD?
+
+This truly dreadful question was given us by Dr. Moses when he
+visited school today. He is a School Committee; not a whole one
+but I do not know the singular number of him. He told us we could
+ask our families what they thought, though he would rather we
+wouldn't, but we must write our own words and he would hear them
+next week.
+
+After he went out and shut the door the scholars were all plunged
+in gloom and you could have heard a pin drop. Alice Robinson
+cried and borrowed my handkerchief, and the boys looked as if the
+schoolhouse had been struck by lightning. The worst of all was
+poor Miss Dearborn, who will lose her place if she does not make
+us better scholars soon, for Dr. Moses has a daughter all ready
+to put right in to the school and she can board at home and save
+all her wages. Libby Moses is her name.
+
+Miss Dearborn stared out the window, and her mouth and chin shook
+like Alice Robinson's, for she knew, ah! all to well, what the
+coming week would bring forth.
+
+Then I raised my hand for permission to speak, and stood up and
+said: "Miss Dearborn, don't you mind! Just explain to us what
+benefercent' means and we'll write something real interesting;
+for all of us know what punishment is, and have seen others get
+rewards, and it is not so bad a subject as some." And Dick Carter
+whispered, "GOOD ON YOUR HEAD, REBECCA!" which mean he was sorry
+for her too, and would try his best, but has no words.
+
+Then teacher smiled and said benefercent meant good or healthy
+for anybody, and would all rise who thought punishment made the
+best scholars and men and women; and everybody sat stock still.
+
+And then she asked all to stand who believed that rewards
+produced the finest results, and there was a mighty sound like
+unto the rushing of waters, but really was our feet scraping the
+floor, and the scholars stood up, and it looked like an army,
+though it was only nineteen, because of the strong belief that
+was in them. Then Miss Dearborn laughed and said she was thankful
+for every whipping she had when she was a child, and Living
+Perkins said perhaps we hadn't got to the thankful age, or
+perhaps her father hadn't used a strap, and she said oh! no, it
+was her mother with the open hand; and Dick Carter said he
+wouldn't call that punishment, and Sam Simpson said so too.
+
+I am going to write about the subject in my Thought Book first,
+and when I make it into a composition, I can leave out anything
+about the family or not genteel, as there is much to relate about
+punishment not pleasant or nice and hardly polite.
+
+* * * * * * * * * * * * *  
+
+PUNISHMENT
+
+Punishment is a very puzzly thing, but I believe in it when
+really deserved, only when I punish myself it does not always
+turn out well. When I leaned over the new bridge, and got my
+dress all paint, and Aunt Sarah Cobb couldn't get it out, I had
+to wear it spotted for six months which hurt my pride, but was
+right. I stayed at home from Alice Robinson's birthday party for
+a punishment, and went to the circus next day instead, but
+Alice's parties are very cold and stiff, as Mrs. Robinson makes
+the boys stand on newspapers if they come inside the door, and
+the blinds are always shut, and Mrs. Robinson tells me how bad
+her liver complaint is this year. So I thought, to pay for the
+circus and a few other things, I ought to get more punishment,
+and I threw my pink parasol down the well, as the mothers in the
+missionary books throw their infants to the crocodiles in the
+Ganges river. But it got stuck in the chain that holds the
+bucket, and Aunt Miranda had to get Abijah Flagg to take out all
+the broken bits before we could ring up water.
+
+I punished myself this way because Aunt Miranda said that unless
+I improved I would be nothing but a Burden and a Blight.
+
+There was an old man used to go by our farm carrying a lot of
+broken chairs to bottom, and mother used to say--"Poor man! His
+back is too weak for such a burden!" and I used to take him out a
+doughnut, and this is the part I want to go into the
+Remerniscences. Once I told him we were sorry the chairs were so
+heavy, and he said THEY DIDN'T SEEM SO HEAVY WHEN HE HAD ET THE
+DOUGHNUT. This does not mean that the doughnut was heavier than
+the chairs which is what brother John said, but it is a beautiful
+thought and shows how the human race should have sympathy, and
+help bear burdens.
+
+I know about a Blight, for there was a dreadful east wind over at
+our farm that destroyed all the little young crops just out of
+the ground, and the farmers called it the Blight. And I would
+rather be hail, sleet, frost, or snow than a Blight, which is
+mean and secret, and which is the reason I threw away the dearest
+thing on earth to me, the pink parasol that Miss Ross brought me
+from Paris, France. I have also wrapped up my bead purse in three
+papers and put it away marked not to be opened till after my
+death unless needed for a party.
+
+I must not be Burden, I must not be Blight,
+The angels in heaven would weep at the sight.
+
+ * * * * * * * * * * * *
+
+REWARDS
+
+A good way to find out which has the most benefercent effect
+would be to try rewards on myself this next week and write my
+composition the very last day, when I see how my character is. It
+is hard to find rewards for yourself, but perhaps Aunt Jane and
+some of the girls would each give me one to help out. I could
+carry my bead purse to school every day, or wear my coral chain a
+little while before I go to sleep at night. I could read Cora or
+the Sorrows of a Doctor's Wife a little oftener, but that's all
+the rewards I can think of. I fear Aunt Miranda would say they
+are wicked but oh! if they should turn out benefercent how glad
+and joyful life would be to me! A sweet and beautiful character,
+beloved by my teacher and schoolmates, admired and petted by my
+aunts and neighbors, yet carrying my bead purse constantly, with
+perhaps my best hat on Wednesday afternoons, as well as Sundays!
+
+* * * * * * * * * * * * *
+
+A GREAT SHOCK
+
+The reason why Alice Robinson could not play was, she was being
+punished for breaking her mother's blue platter. Just before
+supper my story being finished I went up Guide Board hill to see
+how she was bearing up and she spoke to me from her window. She
+said she did not mind being punished because she hadn't been for
+a long time, and she hoped it would help her with her
+composition. She thought it would give her thoughts, and
+tomorrow's the last day for her to have any. This gave me a good
+idea and I told her to call her father up and beg him to beat her
+violently. It would hurt, I said, but perhaps none of the other
+girls would have a punishment like that, and her composition
+would be all different and splendid. I would borrow Aunt
+Miranda's witchhayzel and pour it on her wounds like the
+Samaritan in the Bible.
+
+I went up again after supper with Dick Carter to see how it
+turned out. Alice came to the window and Dick threw up a note
+tied to a stick. I had written: "DEMAND YOUR PUNISHMENT TO THE
+FULL. BE BRAVE LIKE DOLORES' MOTHER IN THE Martyrs of Spain."
+
+She threw down an answer, and it was: "YOU JUST BE LIKE DOLORES'
+MOTHER YOURSELF IF YOU'RE SO SMART!" Then she stamped away from
+the window and my feelings were hurt, but Dick said perhaps she
+was hungry, and that made her cross. And as Dick and I turned to
+go out of the yard we looked back and I saw something I can never
+forget. (The Great Shock) Mrs. Robinson was out behind the barn
+feeding the turkies. Mr. Robinson came softly out of the side
+door in the orchard and looking everywheres around he stepped to
+the wire closet and took out a saucer of cold beans with a
+pickled beet on top, and a big piece of blueberry pie. Then he
+crept up the back stairs and we could see Alice open her door and
+take in the supper.
+
+Oh! What will become of her composition, and how can she tell
+anything of the benefercent effects of punishment, when she is
+locked up by one parent, and fed by the other? I have forgiven
+her for the way she snapped me up for, of course, you couldn't
+beg your father to beat you when he was bringing you blueberry
+pie. Mrs. Robinson makes a kind that leaks out a thick purple
+juice into the plate and needs a spoon and blacks your mouth, but
+is heavenly.
+
+* * * * * * * * * * * * *
+
+A DREAM
+
+The week is almost up and very soon Dr. Moses will drive up to
+the school house like Elijah in the chariot and come in to hear
+us read. There is a good deal of sickness among us. Some of the
+boys are not able to come to school just now, but hope to be
+about again by Monday, when Dr. Moses goes away to a convention.
+It is a very hard composition to write, somehow. Last night I
+dreamed that the river was ink and I kept dipping into it and
+writing with a penstalk made of a young pine tree. I sliced great
+slabs of marble off the side of one of the White Mountains, the
+one you see when going to meeting, and wrote on those. Then I
+threw them all into the falls, not being good enough for Dr.
+Moses.
+
+Dick Carter had a splendid boy to stay over Sunday. He makes the
+real newspaper named The Pilot published by the boys at Wareham
+Academy. He says when he talks about himself in writing he calls
+himself "we," and it sounds much more like print, besides
+conscealing him more.
+
+Example: Our hair was measured this morning and has grown two
+inches since last time . . . . We have a loose tooth that
+troubles us very much . . . Our inkspot that we made by
+negligence on our only white petticoat we have been able to
+remove with lemon and milk. Some of our petticoat came out with
+the spot.
+
+I shall try it in my composition sometime, for of course I shall
+write for the Pilot when I go to Wareham Seminary. Uncle Jerry
+Cobb says that I shall, and thinks that in four years I might
+rise to be editor if they ever have girls.
+
+I have never been more good than since I have been rewarding
+myself steady, even to asking Aunt Miranda kindly to offer me a
+company jelly tart, not because I was hungry, but for an
+experement I was trying, and would explain to her sometime.
+
+She said she never thought it was wise to experement with your
+stomach, and I said, with a queer thrilling look, it was not my
+stomach but my soul, that was being tried. Then she gave me the
+tart and walked away all puzzled and nervous.
+
+The new minister has asked me to come and see him any Saturday
+afternoon as he writes poetry himself, but I would rather not ask
+him about this composition.
+
+Ministers never believe in rewards, and it is useless to hope
+that they will. We had the wrath of God four times in sermons
+this last summer, but God cannot be angry all the time,--nobody
+could, especially in summer; Mr. Baxter is different and calls
+his wife dear which is lovely and the first time I ever heard it
+in Riverboro. Mrs. Baxter is another kind of people too, from
+those that live in Temperance. I like to watch her in meeting and
+see her listen to her husband who is young and handsome for a
+minister; it gives me very queer and uncommon feelings, when they
+look at each other, which they always do when not otherwise
+engaged.
+
+She has different clothes from anybody else. Aunt Miranda says
+you must think only of two things: will your dress keep you warm
+and will it wear well and there is nobody in the world to know
+how I love pink and red and how I hate drab and green and how I
+never wear my hat with the black and yellow porkupine quills
+without wishing it would blow into the river.
+
+Whene'er I take my walks abroad How many quills I see. But as
+they are not porkupines They never come to me.
+
+COMPOSITION
+
+WHICH HAS THE MOST BENEFERCENT EFFECT ON THE CHARACTER,
+PUNISHMENT OR REWARD?
+
+By
+
+Rebecca Rowena Randall
+
+(This copy not corrected by Miss Dearborn yet.)
+
+We find ourselves very puzzled in approaching this truly great
+and national question though we have tried very ernestly to
+understand it, so as to show how wisely and wonderfully our dear
+teacher guides the youthful mind, it being her wish that our
+composition class shall long be remembered in Riverboro Centre.
+
+We would say first of all that punishment seems more
+benefercently needed by boys than girls.  Boys' sins are very
+violent, like stealing fruit, profane language, playing truant,
+fighting, breaking windows, and killing innocent little flies and
+bugs. If these were not taken out of them early in life it would
+be impossible for them to become like our martyred president,
+Abraham Lincoln.
+
+Although we have asked everybody on our street, they think boys'
+sins can only be whipped out of them with a switch or strap,
+which makes us feel very sad, as boys when not sinning the
+dreadful sins mentioned above seem just as good as girls, and
+never cry when switched, and say it does not hurt much.
+
+We now approach girls, which we know better, being one. Girls
+seem better than boys because their sins are not so noisy and
+showy. They can disobey their parents and aunts, whisper in
+silent hour, cheat in lessons, say angry things to their
+schoolmates, tell lies, be sulky and lazy, but all these can be
+conducted quite ladylike and genteel, and nobody wants to strap
+girls because their skins are tender and get black and blue very
+easily.
+
+Punishments make one very unhappy and rewards very happy, and one
+would think when one is happy one would behave the best. We were
+acquainted with a girl who gave herself rewards every day for a
+week, and it seemed to make her as lovely a character as one
+could wish; but perhaps if one went on for years giving rewards
+to onesself one would become selfish. One cannot tell, one can
+only fear.
+
+If a dog kills a sheep we should whip him straight away, and on
+the very spot where he can see the sheep, or he will not know
+what we mean, and may forget and kill another. The same is true
+of the human race. We must be firm and patient in punishing, no
+matter how much we love the one who has done wrong, and how
+hungry she is. It does no good to whip a person with one hand and
+offer her a pickled beet with the other. This confuses her mind,
+and she may grow up not knowing right from wrong. (The striking
+example of the pickled beet was removed from the essay by the
+refined but ruthless Miss Dearborn, who strove patiently, but
+vainly, to keep such vulgar images out of her pupils' literary
+efforts.)
+
+We now respectfully approach the Holy Bible and the people in the
+Bible were punished the whole time, and that would seem to make
+it right. Everybody says Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth;  but
+we think ourself, that the Lord is a better punisher than we are,
+and knows better how and when to do it having attended to it ever
+since the year B.C. while the human race could not know about it
+till 1492 A.D., which is when Columbus discovered America.
+
+We do not believe we can find out all about this truly great and
+national subject till we get to heaven, where the human race,
+strapped and unstrapped, if any, can meet together and laying
+down their harps discuss how they got there.
+
+And we would gently advise boys to be more quiet and genteel in
+conduct and try rewards to see how they would work. Rewards are
+not all like the little rosebud merit cards we receive on
+Fridays, and which boys sometimes tear up and fling scornfully to
+the breeze when they get outside, but girls preserve carefully in
+an envelope.
+
+Some rewards are great and glorious, for boys can get to be
+governor or school trustee or road commissioner or president,
+while girls can only be wife and mother. But all of us can have
+the ornament of a meek and lowly spirit, especially girls, who
+have more use for it than boys.
+
+R.R.R.
+
+* * * * * * * * * * * * 
+
+STORIES AND PEOPLE
+
+October, 187--
+
+There are people in books and people in Riverboro, and they are
+not the same kind. They never talk of chargers and palfreys in
+the village, nor say How oft and Methinks, and if a Scotchman out
+of Rob Roy should come to Riverboro and want to marry one of us
+girls we could not understand him unless he made motions; though
+Huldah Meserve says if a nobleman of high degree should ask her
+to be his,--one of vast estates with serfs at his bidding,--she
+would be able to guess his meaning in any language.
+
+Uncle Jerry Cobb thinks that Riverboro people would not make a
+story, but I know that some of them would.
+
+Jack-o'-lantern, though only a baby, was just like a real story
+if anybody had written a piece about him: How his mother was dead
+and his father ran away and Emma Jane and I got Aunt Sarah Cobb
+to keep him so Mr. Perkins wouldn't take him to the poor farm;
+and about our lovely times with him that summer, and our dreadful
+loss when his father remembered him in the fall and came to take
+him away; and how Aunt Sarah carried the trundle bed up attic
+again and Emma Jane and I heard her crying and stole away.
+
+Mrs. Peter Meserve says Grandpa Sawyer was a wonderful hand at
+stories before his spirit was broken by grandmother. She says he
+was the life of the store and tavern when he was a young man,
+though generally sober, and she thinks I take after him, because
+I like compositions better than all the other lessons; but mother
+says I take after father, who always could say everything nicely
+whether he had anything to say or not; so methinks I should be
+grateful to both of them.  They are what is called ancestors and
+much depends upon whether you have them or not. The Simpsons have
+not any at all. Aunt Miranda says the reason everybody is so
+prosperous around here is because their ancestors were all first
+settlers and raised on burnt ground. This should make us very
+proud.
+
+Methinks and methought are splendid words for compositions. Miss
+Dearborn likes them very much, but Alice and I never bring them
+in to suit her. Methought means the same as I thought, but sounds
+better. Example: If you are telling a dream you had about your
+aged aunt:
+
+Methought I heard her say
+My child you have so useful been
+You need not sew today.
+
+This is a good example one way, but too unlikely, woe is me!
+
+This afternoon I was walking over to the store to buy molasses,
+and as I came off the bridge and turned up the hill, I saw lots
+and lots of heelprints in the side of the road, heelprints with
+little spike holes in them.
+
+"Oh! The river drivers have come from up country," I thought,
+"and they'll be breaking the jam at our falls tomorrow." I looked
+everywhere about and not a man did I see, but still I knew I was
+not mistaken for the heelprints could not lie. All the way over
+and back I thought about it, though unfortunately forgetting the
+molasses, and Alice Robinson not being able to come out, I took
+playtime to write a story. It is the first grown-up one I ever
+did, and is intended to be like Cora the Doctor's Wife, not like
+a school composition. It is written for Mr. Adam Ladd, and people
+like him who live in Boston, and is the printed kind you get
+money for, to pay off a mortgage.
+
+* * * * * * * * * * * * *
+
+LANCELOT OR THE PARTED LOVERS
+
+A beautiful village maiden was betrothed to a stallwart river
+driver, but they had high and bitter words and parted, he to weep
+into the crystal stream as he drove his logs, and she to sigh and
+moan as she went about her round of household tasks.
+
+At eventide the maiden was wont to lean over the bridge and her
+tears also fell into the foaming stream; so, though the two
+unhappy lovers did not know it, the river was their friend, the
+only one to whom they told their secrets and wept into.
+
+The months crept on and it was the next July when the maiden was
+passing over the bridge and up the hill. Suddenly she spied
+footprints on the sands of time.
+
+"The river drivers have come again!" she cried, putting her hand
+to her side for she had a slight heart trouble like Cora and Mrs.
+Peter Meserve, that doesn't kill.
+
+"They HAVE come indeed; ESPECIALLY ONE YOU KNOW," said a voice,
+and out from the alder bushes sprung Lancelot Littlefield, for
+that was the lover's name and it was none other than he. His hair
+was curly and like living gold. His shirt, white of flannel, was
+new and dry, and of a handsome color, and as the maiden looked at
+him she could think of nought but a fairy prince.
+
+"Forgive," she mermered, stretching out her waisted hands.
+
+"Nay, sweet," he replied. "'Tis I should say that to you," and
+bending gracefully on one knee he kissed the hem of her dress. It
+was a rich pink gingham check, ellaborately ornamented with white
+tape trimming.
+
+Clasping each other to the heart like Cora and the Doctor, they
+stood there for a long while, till they heard the rumble of
+wheels on the bridge and knew they must disentangle.
+
+The wheels came nearer and verily! it was the maiden's father.
+
+"Can I wed with your fair daughter this very moon," asked
+Lancelot, who will not be called his whole name again in this
+story.
+
+"You may," said the father, "for lo! she has been ready and
+waiting for many months." This he said not noting how he was
+shaming the maiden, whose name was Linda Rowenetta.
+
+Then and there the nuptial day was appointed and when it came,
+the marriage knot was tied upon the river bank where first they
+met; the river bank where they had parted in anger, and where
+they had again scealeld their vows and clasped each other to the
+heart. And it was very low water that summer, and the river
+always thought it was because no tears dropped into it but so
+many smiles that like sunshine they dried it up.
+
+R.R.R.
+
+Finis
+
+* * * * * * * * * * * *
+
+CAREERS
+
+November, 187--
+
+Long ago when I used to watch Miss Ross painting the old mill at
+Sunnybrook I thought I would be a painter, for Miss Ross went to
+Paris France where she bought my bead purse and pink parasol and
+I thought I would like to see a street with beautiful
+bright-colored things sparkling and hanging in the store windows.
+
+Then when the missionaries from Syria came to stay at the brick
+house Mrs. Burch said that after I had experienced religion I
+must learn music and train my voice and go out to heathen lands
+and save souls, so I thought that would be my career. But we
+girls tried to have a branch and be home missionaries and it did
+not work well. Emma Jane's father would not let her have her
+birthday party when he found out what she had done and Aunt Jane
+sent me up to Jake Moody's to tell him we did not mean to be rude
+when we asked him to go to meeting more often. He said all right,
+but just let him catch that little dough-faced Perkins young one
+in his yard once more and she'd have reason to remember the call,
+which was just as rude and impolite as our trying to lead him to
+a purer and a better life.
+
+Then Uncle Jerry and Mr. Aladdin and Miss Dearborn liked my
+compositions, and I thought I'd better be a writer, for I must be
+something the minute I'm seventeen, or how shall we ever get the
+mortgage off the farm? But even that hope is taken away from me
+now, for Uncle Jerry made fun of my story Lancelot Or The Parted
+Lovers and I have decided to be a teacher like Miss Dearborn.
+
+The pathetic announcement of a change in the career and life
+purposes of Rebecca was brought about by her reading the grown-up
+story to Mr. and Mrs. Jeremiah Cobb after supper in the orchard.
+Uncle Jerry was the person who had maintained all along that
+Riverboro people would not make a story; and Lancelot or The
+Parted Lovers was intended to refute that assertion at once and
+forever; an assertion which Rebecca regarded (quite truly) as
+untenable, though why she certainly never could have explained.
+Unfortunately Lancelot was a poor missionary, quite unfitted for
+the high achievements to which he was destined by the youthful
+novelist, and Uncle Jerry, though a stage-driver and no reading
+man, at once perceived the flabbiness and transparency of the
+Parted Lovers the moment they were held up to his inspection.
+
+"You see Riverboro people WILL make a story!" asserted Rebecca
+triumphantly as she finished her reading and folded the paper.
+"And it all came from my noticing the river drivers' tracks by
+the roadside, and wondering about them; and wondering always
+makes stories; the minister says so."
+
+"Ye-es," allowed Uncle Jerry reflectively, tipping his chair back
+against the apple tree and forcing his slow mind to violent and
+instantaneous action, for Rebecca was his pride and joy; a
+person, in his opinion, of superhuman talent, one therefore to be
+"whittled into shape" if occasion demanded.
+
+"It's a Riverboro story, sure enough, because you've got the
+river and the bridge and the hill and the drivers all right there
+in it; but there's something awful queer bout it; the folks don't
+act Riverboro, and don't talk Riverboro, cordin' to my notions. I
+call it a reg'lar book story."
+
+"But," objected Rebecca, "the people in Cinderella didn't act
+like us, and you thought that was a beautiful story when I told
+it to you."
+
+"I know," replied Uncle Jerry, gaining eloquence in the heat of
+argument. "They didn't act like us, but 't any rate they acted
+like 'emselves! Somehow they was all of a piece. Cinderella was a
+little too good, mebbe, and the sisters was most too thunderin'
+bad to live on the face o' the earth, and that fayry old lady
+that kep' the punkin' coach up her sleeve--well, anyhow, you jest
+believe that punkin' coach, rats, mice, and all, when you're
+hearin' bout it, fore ever you stop to think it ain't so.
+
+"I don' know how tis, but the folks in that Cinderella story seem
+to match together somehow; they're all pow'ful onlikely--the
+prince feller with the glass slipper, and the hull bunch; but
+jest the same you kind o' gulp em all down in a lump. But land,
+Rebecky, nobody'd swaller that there village maiden o' your'n,
+and as for what's-his-name Littlefield, that come out o' them
+bushes, such a feller never 'd a' be'n IN bushes! No, Rebecky,
+you're the smartest little critter there is in this township, and
+you beat your Uncle Jerry all holler when it comes to usin' a
+lead pencil, but I say that ain't no true Riverboro story! Look
+at the way they talk! What was that' bout being BETROTHED'?"
+
+"Betrothed is a genteel word for engaged to be married,"
+explained the crushed and chastened author; and it was fortunate
+the doting old man did not notice her eyes in the twilight, or he
+might have known that tears were not far away.
+
+"Well, that's all right, then; I'm as ignorant as Cooper's cow
+when it comes to the dictionary.  How about what's-his-name
+callin' the girl 'Naysweet'?"
+
+"I thought myself that sounded foolish,:" confessed Rebecca; "but
+it's what the Doctor calls Cora when he tries to persuade her not
+to quarrel with his mother who comes to live with them. I know
+they don't say it in Riverboro or Temperance, but I thought
+perhaps it was Boston talk."
+
+"Well, it ain't!" asserted Mr. Cobb decisively. "I've druv Boston
+men up in the stage from Milltown many's the time, and none of em
+ever said Naysweet to me, nor nothin'like it. They talked like
+folks, every mother's son of em! If I'd a' had that
+what's-his-name on the harricane deck' o' the stage and he tried
+any naysweetin' on me, I'd a' pitched him into the cornfield,
+side o' the road. I guess you ain't growed up enough for that
+kind of a story, Rebecky, for your poetry can't be beat in York
+County, that's sure, and your compositions are good enough to
+read out loud in town meetin' any day!"
+
+Rebecca brightened up a little and bade the old couple her usual
+affectionate good night, but she descended the hill in a saddened
+mood. When she reached the bridge the sun, a ball of red fire,
+was setting behind Squire Bean's woods. As she looked, it shone
+full on the broad, still bosom of the river, and for one perfect
+instant the trees on the shores were reflected, all swimming in a
+sea of pink. Leaning over the rail, she watched the light fade
+from crimson to carmine, from carmine to rose, from rose to
+amber, and from amber to gray. Then withdrawing Lancelot or the
+Parted Lovers from her apron pocket, she tore the pages into bits
+and dropped them into the water below with a sigh.
+
+"Uncle Jerry never said a word about the ending!" she thought;
+"and that was so nice!"
+
+And she was right; but while Uncle Jerry was an illuminating
+critic when it came to the actions and language of his Riverboro
+neighbors, he had no power to direct the young mariner when she
+"followed the gleam," and used her imagination.
+
+OUR SECRET SOCIETY
+
+November, 187--
+
+Our Secret society has just had a splendid picnic in Candace
+Milliken's barn.
+
+Our name is the B.O.S.S., and not a single boy in the village has
+been able to guess it. It means Braid Over Shoulder Society, and
+that is the sign. All the members wear one of their braids over
+the right shoulder in front; the president's tied with red ribbon
+(I am the president) and all the rest tied with blue.
+
+To attract the attention of another member when in company or at
+a public place we take the braid between the thumb and little
+finger and stand carelessly on one leg. This is the Secret Signal
+and the password is Sobb (B.O.S.S. spelled backwards) which was
+my idea and is thought rather uncommon.
+
+One of the rules of the B.O.S.S. is that any member may be
+required to tell her besetting sin at any meeting, if asked to do
+so by a majority of the members.
+
+This was Candace Milliken's idea and much opposed by everybody,
+but when it came to a vote so many of the girls were afraid of
+offending Candace that they agreed because there was nobody
+else's father and mother who would let us picnic in their barn
+and use their plow, harrow, grindstone, sleigh, carryall, pung,
+sled, and wheelbarrow, which we did and injured hardly anything.
+
+They asked me to tell my besetting sin at the very first meeting,
+and it nearly killed me to do it because it is such a common
+greedy one. It is that I can't bear to call the other girls when
+I have found a thick spot when we are out berrying in the summer
+time.
+
+After I confessed, which made me dreadfully ashamed, every one of
+the girls seemed surprised and said they had never noticed that
+one but had each thought of something very different that I would
+be sure to think was my besetting sin. Then Emma Jane said that
+rather than tell hers she would resign from the Society and miss
+the picnic. So it made so much trouble that Candace gave up. We
+struck out the rule from the constitution and I had told my sin
+for nothing.
+
+The reason we named ourselves the B.O.S.S. is that Minnie Smellie
+has had her head shaved after scarlet fever and has no braid, so
+she can't be a member.
+
+I don't want her for a member but I can't be happy thinking she
+will feel slighted, and it takes away half the pleasure of
+belonging to the Society myself and being president.
+
+That, I think, is the principal trouble about doing mean and
+unkind things; that you can't do wrong and feel right, or be bad
+and feel good. If you only could you could do anything that came
+into your mind yet always be happy.
+
+Minnie Smellie spoils everything she comes into but I suppose we
+other girls must either have our hair shaved and call ourselves
+The Baldheadians or let her be some kind of a special officer in
+the B.O.S.S.
+
+She might be the B.I.T.U.D. member (Braid in the Upper Drawer),
+for there is where Mrs. Smellie keeps it now that it is cut off.
+
+WINTER THOUGHTS
+
+March, 187--
+
+It is not such a cold day for March and I am up in the barn
+chamber with my coat and hood on and Aunt Jane's waterproof and
+my mittens.
+
+After I do three pages I am going to hide away this book in the
+haymow till spring.
+
+Perhaps they get made into icicles on the way but I do not seem
+to have any thoughts in the winter time. The barn chamber is full
+of thoughts in warm weather. The sky gives them to me, and the
+trees and flowers, and the birds, and the river; but now it is
+always gray and nipping, the branches are bare and the river is
+frozen.
+
+It is too cold to write in my bedroom but while we still kept an
+open fire I had a few thoughts, but now there is an air-tight
+stove in the dining room where we sit, and we seem so close
+together, Aunt Miranda, Aunt Jane and I that I don't like to
+write in my book for fear they will ask me to read out loud my
+secret thoughts.
+
+I have just read over the first part of my Thought Book and I
+have outgrown it all, just exactly as I have outgrown my last
+year's drab cashmere.
+
+It is very queer how anybody can change so fast in a few months,
+but I remember that Emma Jane's cat had kittens the day my book
+was bought at Watson's store. Mrs. Perkins kept the prettiest
+white one, Abijah Flagg drowning all the others.
+
+It seems strange to me that cats will go on having kittens when
+they know what becomes of them!  We were very sad about it, but
+Mrs. Perkins said it was the way of the world and how things had
+to be.
+
+I cannot help being glad that they do not do the same with
+children, or John and Jenny Mira Mark and me would all have had
+stones tied to our necks and been dropped into the deepest part
+of Sunny Brook, for Hannah and Fanny are the only truly handsome
+ones in the family.
+
+Mrs. Perkins says I dress up well, but never being dressed up it
+does not matter much. At least they didn't wait to dress up the
+kittens to see how they would improve, before drowning them, but
+decided right away.
+
+Emma Jane's kitten that was born the same day this book was is
+now quite an old cat who knows the way of the world herself, and
+how things have to be, for she has had one batch of kittens
+drowned already.
+
+So perhaps it is not strange that my Thought Book seems so
+babyish and foolish to me when I think of all I have gone through
+and the millions of things I have learned, and how much better I
+spell than I did ten months ago.
+
+My fingers are cold through the mittens, so good-bye dear Thought
+Book, friend of my childhood, now so far far behind me!
+
+I will hide you in the haymow where you'll be warm and cosy all
+the long winter and where nobody can find you again in the summer
+time but your affectionate author,
+
+Rebecca Rowena Randall.
+
+
+
+Fourth Chronicle
+A TRAGEDY IN MILLINERY
+
+I
+
+Emma Jane Perkins's new winter dress was a blue and green Scotch
+plaid poplin, trimmed with narrow green velvet-ribbon and steel
+nail-heads. She had a gray jacket of thick furry cloth with large
+steel buttons up the front, a pair of green kid gloves, and a
+gray felt hat with an encircling band of bright green feathers.
+The band began in front with a bird's head and ended behind with
+a bird's tail, and angels could have desired no more beautiful
+toilette. That was her opinion, and it was shared to the full by
+Rebecca.
+
+But Emma Jane, as Rebecca had once described her to Mr. Adam
+Ladd, was a rich blacksmith's daughter, and she, Rebecca, was a
+little half-orphan from a mortgaged farm "up Temperance way,"
+dependent upon her spinster aunts for board, clothes, and
+schooling. Scotch plaid poplins were manifestly not for her, but
+dark-colored woolen stuffs were, and mittens, and last winter's
+coats and furs.
+
+And how about hats? Was there hope in store for her there? she
+wondered, as she walked home from the Perkins house, full of
+admiration for Emma Jane's winter outfit, and loyally trying to
+keep that admiration free from wicked envy. Her red-winged black
+hat was her second best, and although it was shabby she still
+liked it, but it would never do for church, even in Aunt
+Miranda's strange and never-to-be-comprehended views of suitable
+raiment.
+
+There was a brown felt turban in existence, if one could call it
+existence when it had been rained on, snowed on, and hailed on
+for two seasons; but the trimmings had at any rate perished quite
+off the face of the earth, that was one comfort!
+
+Emma Jane had said, rather indiscreetly, that at the village
+milliner's at Milliken's Mills there was a perfectly elegant pink
+breast to be had, a breast that began in a perfectly elegant
+solferino and terminated in a perfectly elegant magenta; two
+colors much in vogue at that time. If the old brown hat was to be
+her portion yet another winter, would Aunt Miranda conceal its
+deficiencies from a carping world beneath the shaded solferino
+breast? WOULD she, that was the question?
+
+Filled with these perplexing thoughts, Rebecca entered the brick
+house, hung up her hood in the entry, and went into the
+dining-room.
+
+Miss Jane was not there, but Aunt Miranda sat by the window with
+her lap full of sewing things, and a chair piled with pasteboard
+boxes by her side. In one hand was the ancient, battered, brown
+felt turban, and in the other were the orange and black porcupine
+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 hateful porcupine 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 breath freely 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
+the plume of Henry of Navarre.
+
+Rebecca was resigned, if not greatly comforted, but she had grace
+enough to conceal her feelings, now that she knew economy was at
+the root of some of her aunt's decrees in matters of dress; and
+she managed to forget the solferino breast, save in sleep, where
+a vision of it had a way of appearing to her, dangling from the
+ceiling, and dazzling her so with its rich color that she used to
+hope the milliner would sell it that she might never be tempted
+with it when she passed the shop window.
+
+One day, not long afterward, Miss Miranda borrowed Mr. Perkins's
+horse and wagon and took Rebecca with her on a drive to Union, to
+see about some sausage meat and head cheese. She intended to call
+on Mrs. Cobb, order a load of pine wood from Mr. Strout on the
+way, and leave some rags for a rug with old Mrs. Pease, so that
+the journey could be made as profitable as possible, consistent
+with the loss of time and the wear and tear on her second-best
+black dress.
+
+The red-winged black hat was forcibly removed from Rebecca's head
+just before starting, and the nightmare turban substituted.
+
+"You might as well begin to wear it first as last," remarked
+Miranda, while Jane stood in the side door and sympathized
+secretly with Rebecca.
+
+"I will!" said Rebecca, ramming the stiff turban down on her head
+with a vindictive grimace, and snapping the elastic under her
+long braids; "but it makes me think of what Mr. Robinson said
+when the minister told him his mother-in-law would ride in the
+same buggy with him at his wife's funeral."
+
+"I can't see how any speech of Mr. Robinson's, made years an'
+years ago, can have anything to do with wearin' your turban down
+to Union," said Miranda, settling the lap robe over her knees.
+
+"Well, it can; because he said: Have it that way, then, but it'll
+spile the hull blamed trip for me!'"
+
+Jane closed the door suddenly, partly because she experienced a
+desire to smile (a desire she had not felt for years before
+Rebecca came to the brick house to live), and partly because she
+had no wish to overhear what her sister would say when she took
+in the full significance of Rebecca's anecdote, which was a
+favorite one with Mr. Perkins.
+
+It was a cold blustering day with a high wind that promised to
+bring an early fall of snow. The trees were stripped bare of
+leaves, the ground was hard, and the wagon wheels rattled noisily
+over the thank-you-ma'ams.
+
+"I'm glad I wore my Paisley shawl over my cloak," said Miranda.
+"Be you warm enough, Rebecca? Tie that white rigolette tighter
+round your neck. The wind fairly blows through my bones. I most
+wish t we'd waited till a pleasanter day, for this Union road is
+all up hill or down, and we shan't get over the ground fast, it's
+so rough. Don't forget, when you go into Scott's, to say I want
+all the trimmin's when they send me the pork, for mebbe I can try
+out a little mite o' lard. The last load o' pine's gone turrible
+quick; I must see if "Bijah Flagg can't get us some cut-rounds at
+the mills, when he hauls for Squire Bean next time. Keep your
+mind on your drivin', Rebecca, and don't look at the trees and
+the sky so much. It's the same sky and same trees that have been
+here right along. Go awful slow down this hill and walk the hoss
+over Cook's Brook bridge, for I always suspicion it's goin' to
+break down under me, an' I shouldn't want to be dropped into that
+fast runnin' water this cold day. It'll be froze stiff by this
+time next week.  Hadn't you better get out and lead"--
+
+The rest of the sentence was very possibly not vital, but at any
+rate it was never completed, for in the middle of the bridge a
+fierce gale of wind took Miss Miranda's Paisley shawl and blew it
+over her head. The long heavy ends whirled in opposite directions
+and wrapped themselves tightly about her wavering bonnet. Rebecca
+had the whip and the reins, and in trying to rescue her
+struggling aunt could not steady her own hat, which was suddenly
+torn from her head and tossed against the bridge rail, where it
+trembled and flapped for an instant.
+
+"My hat! Oh! Aunt Miranda, my hateful hat!" cried Rebecca, never
+remembering at the instant how often she had prayed that the
+"fretful porcupine" might some time vanish in this violent
+manner, since it refused to die a natural death.
+
+She had already stopped the horse, so, giving her aunt's shawl
+one last desperate twitch, she slipped out between the wagon
+wheels, and darted in the direction of the hated object, the loss
+of which had dignified it with a temporary value and importance.
+
+The stiff brown turban rose in the air, then dropped and flew
+along the bridge; Rebecca pursued; it danced along and stuck
+between two of the railings; Rebecca flew after it, her long
+braids floating in the wind.
+
+"Come back"! Come back! Don't leave me alone with the team. I
+won't have it! Come back, and leave your hat!"
+
+Miranda had at length extricated herself from the submerging
+shawl, but she was so blinded by the wind, and so confused that
+she did not measure the financial loss involved in her commands.
+
+Rebecca heard, but her spirit being in arms, she made one more
+mad scramble for the vagrant hat, which now seemed possessed with
+an evil spirit, for it flew back and forth, and bounded here and
+there, like a living thing, finally distinguishing itself by
+blowing between the horse's front and hind legs, Rebecca trying
+to circumvent it by going around the wagon, and meeting it on the
+other side.
+
+It was no use; as she darted from behind the wheels the wind gave
+the hat an extra whirl, and scurrying in the opposite direction
+it soared above the bridge rail and disappeared into the rapid
+water below.
+
+"Get in again!" cried Miranda, holding on her bonnet. "You done
+your best and it can't be helped, I only wish't I'd let you wear
+your black hat as you wanted to; and I wish't we'd never come
+such a day! The shawl has broke the stems of the velvet geraniums
+in my bonnet, and the wind has blowed away my shawl pin and my
+back comb. I'd like to give up and turn right back this minute,
+but I don't like to borrer Perkins's hoss again this month. When
+we get up in the woods you can smooth your hair down and tie the
+rigolette over your head and settle what's left of my bonnet;
+it'll be an expensive errant, this will!"
+
+ * * * * * * * * * * * *
+
+II
+
+It was not till next morning that Rebecca's heart really began
+its song of thanksgiving. Her Aunt Miranda announced at
+breakfast, that as Mrs. Perkins was going to Milliken's Mills,
+Rebecca might go too, and buy a serviceable hat.
+
+"You mustn't pay over two dollars and a half, and you mustn't get
+the pink bird without Mrs. Perkins says, and the milliner says,
+that it won't fade nor moult. Don't buy a light-colored felt
+because you'll get sick of it in two or three years same as you
+did the brown one. I always liked the shape of the brown one, and
+you'll never get another trimmin' that'll wear like them quills."
+
+"I hope not!" thought Rebecca.
+
+"If you had put your elastic under your chin, same as you used
+to, and not worn it behind because you think it's more grown-up
+an' fash'onable, the wind never'd a' took the hat off your head,
+and you wouldn't a' lost it; but the mischief's done and you can
+go right over to Mis' Perkins now, so you won't miss her nor keep
+her waitin'. The two dollars and a half is in an envelope side o'
+the clock."
+
+Rebecca swallowed the last spoonful of picked-up codfish on her
+plate, wiped her lips, and rose from her chair happier than the
+seraphs in Paradise.
+
+The porcupine quills had disappeared from her life, and without
+any fault or violence on her part.  She was wholly innocent and
+virtuous, but nevertheless she was going to have a new hat with
+the solferino breast, should the adored object prove, under
+rigorous examination, to be practically indestructible.
+
+"Whene'er I take my walks abroad,
+How many hats I'll see;
+But if they're trimmed with hedgehog quills
+They'll not belong to me!"
+
+So she improvised, secretly and ecstatically, as she went towards
+the side entry.
+
+"There's 'Bijah Flagg drivin' in," said Miss Miranda, going to
+the window. "Step out and see what he's got, Jane; some passel
+from the Squire, I guess. It's a paper bag and it may be a
+punkin, though he wouldn't wrop up a punkin, come to think of it!
+Shet the dinin' room door, Jane; it's turrible drafty. Make
+haste, for the Squire's hoss never stan's still a minute cept
+when he's goin'!"
+
+Abijah Flagg alighted and approached the side door with a grin.
+
+"Guess what I've got for ye, Rebecky?"
+
+No throb of prophetic soul warned Rebecca of her approaching
+doom.
+
+"Nodhead apples?" she sparkled, looking as bright and rosy and
+satin-skinned as an apple herself.
+
+"No; guess again."
+
+"A flowering geranium?"
+
+"Guess again!"
+
+"Nuts? Oh! I can't, " Bijah; I'm just going to Milliken's Mills
+on an errand, and I'm afraid of missing Mrs. Perkins. Show me
+quick! Is it really for me, or for Aunt Miranda?
+
+"Reely for you, I guess!" and he opened the large brown paper bag
+and drew from it the remains of a water-soaked hat!
+
+They WERE remains, but there was no doubt of their nature and
+substance. They had clearly been a hat in the past, and one could
+even suppose that, when resuscitated, they might again assume
+their original form in some near and happy future.
+
+Miss Miranda, full of curiosity, joined the group in the side
+entry at this dramatic moment.
+
+"Well, I never!" she exclaimed. "Where, and how under the canopy,
+did you ever?"
+
+"I was working on the dam at Union Falls yesterday," chuckled
+Abijah, with a pleased glance at each of the trio in turn, "an' I
+seen this little bunnit skippin' over the water jest as Becky
+does over the road. It's shaped kind o' like a boat, an' gorry,
+ef it wa'nt sailin' jest like a boat! Where hev I seen that kind
+of a bristlin' plume?' thinks I."
+
+("Where indeed!" thought Rebecca stormily.)
+
+"Then it come to me that I'd drove that plume to school and drove
+it to meetin' and drove it to the Fair an'drove it most
+everywheres on Becky. So I reached out a pole an' ketched it fore
+it got in amongst the logs an' come to any damage, an' here it
+is! The hat's passed in its checks, I guess; looks kind as if a
+wet elephant had stepped on it; but the plume's bout's good as
+new! I reely fetched the hat beck for the sake o' the plume."
+
+"It was real good of you, 'Bijah, an' we're all of us obliged to
+you," said Miranda, as she poised the hat on one hand and turned
+it slowly with the other.
+
+"Well, I do say," she exclaimed, "and I guess I've said it
+before, that of all the wearing' plumes that ever I see, that
+one's the wearin'est! Seems though it just wouldn't give up. Look
+at the way it's held Mis' Cobb's dye; it's about as brown's when
+it went int' the water."
+
+"Dyed, but not a mite dead," grinned Abijah, who was somewhat
+celebrated for his puns.
+
+"And I declare," Miranda continued, "when you think o' the fuss
+they make about ostriches, killin'  em off by hundreds for the
+sake o' their feathers that'll string out and spoil in one hard
+rainstorm,--an' all the time lettin' useful porcupines run round
+with their quills on, why I can't hardly understand it, without
+milliners have found out jest how good they do last, an' so they
+won't use  em for trimmin'. 'Bijah's right; the hat ain't no more
+use, Rebecca, but you can buy you another this mornin'--any color
+or shape you fancy--an' have Miss Morton sew these brown quills
+on to it with some kind of a buckle or a bow, jest to hide the
+roots. Then you'll be fixed for another season, thanks to
+'Bijah."
+
+Uncle Jerry and Aunt Sarah Cobb were made acquainted before very
+long with the part that destiny, or Abijah Flagg, had played in
+Rebecca's affairs, for, accompanied by the teacher, she walked to
+the old stage driver's that same afternoon. Taking off her new
+hat with the venerable trimming, she laid it somewhat
+ostentatiously upside down on the kitchen table and left the
+room, dimpling a little more than usual.
+
+Uncle Jerry rose from his seat, and, crossing the room, looked
+curiously into the hat and found that a circular paper lining was
+neatly pinned in the crown, and that it bore these lines, which
+were read aloud with great effect by Miss Dearborn, and with her
+approval were copied in the Thought Book for the benefit of
+posterity:
+
+"It was the bristling porcupine, As he stood on his native heath,
+He said, I'll pluck me some immortelles And make me up a wreath.
+For tho' I may not live myself To more than a hundred and ten, My
+quills will last till crack of doom, And maybe after then. They
+can be colored blue or green Or orange, brown, or red, But often
+as they may be dyed They never will be dead.' And so the
+bristling porcupine As he stood on his native heath, Said, I
+think I'll pluck me some immmortelles And make me up a wreath.'
+
+R.R.R."
+
+
+
+Fifth Chronicle
+THE SAVING OF THE COLORS
+
+I
+
+Even when Rebecca had left school, having attained the great age
+of seventeen and therefore able to look back over a past
+incredibly long and full, she still reckoned time not by years,
+but by certain important occurrences.
+
+There was the year her father died; the year she left Sunnybrook
+Farm to come to her aunts in Riverboro; the year Sister Hannah
+became engaged; the year little Mira died; the year Abijah Flagg
+ceased to be Squire Bean's chore-boy, and astounded Riverboro by
+departing for Limerick Academy in search of an education; and
+finally the year of her graduation, which, to the mind of
+seventeen, seems rather the culmination than the beginning of
+existence.
+
+Between these epoch-making events certain other happenings stood
+out in bold relief against the gray of dull daily life.
+
+There was the day she first met her friend of friends, "Mr.
+Aladdin," and the later, even more radiant one when he gave her
+the coral necklace. There was the day the Simpson family moved
+away from Riverboro under a cloud, and she kissed Clara Belle
+fervently at the cross-roads, telling her that she would always
+be faithful. There was the visit of the Syrian missionaries to
+the brick house. That was a bright, romantic memory, as strange
+and brilliant as the wonderful little birds' wings and breasts
+that the strangers brought from the Far East. She remembered the
+moment they asked her to choose some for herself, and the rapture
+with which she stroked the beautiful things as they lay on the
+black haircloth sofa. Then there was the coming of the new
+minister, for though many were tried only one was chosen; and
+finally there was the flag-raising, a festivity that thrilled
+Riverboro and Edgewood society from centre to circumference, a
+festivity that took place just before she entered the Female
+Seminary at Wareham and said good-by to kind Miss Dearborn and
+the village school.
+
+There must have been other flag-raisings in history,--even the
+persons most interested in this particular one would grudgingly
+have allowed that much,--but it would have seemed to them
+improbable that any such flag-raising as theirs, either in
+magnitude of conception or brilliancy of actual performance,
+could twice glorify the same century. Of some pageants it is
+tacitly admitted that there can be no duplicates, and the
+flag-raising at Riverboro Centre was one of these; so that it is
+small wonder if Rebecca chose it as one of the important dates in
+her personal almanac.
+
+The new minister's wife was the being, under Providence, who had
+conceived the germinal idea of the flag.
+
+At this time the parish had almost settled down to the trembling
+belief that they were united on a pastor. In the earlier time a
+minister was chosen for life, and if he had faults, which was a
+probably enough contingency, and if his congregation had any,
+which is within the bounds of possibility, each bore with the
+other (not quite without friction), as old-fashioned husbands and
+wives once did, before the easy way out of the difficulty was
+discovered, or at least before it was popularized.
+
+The faithful old parson had died after thirty years' preaching,
+and perhaps the newer methods had begun to creep in, for it
+seemed impossible to suit the two communities most interested in
+the choice.
+
+The Rev. Mr. Davis, for example, was a spirited preacher, but
+persisted in keeping two horses in the parsonage stable, and in
+exchanging them whenever he could get faster ones. As a parochial
+visitor he was incomparable, dashing from house to house with
+such speed that he could cover the parish in a single afternoon.
+This sporting tendency, which would never have been remarked in a
+British parson, was frowned upon in a New England village, and
+Deacon Milliken told Mr. Davis, when giving him what he alluded
+to as his "walking papers," that they didn't want the Edgewood
+church run by hoss power!
+
+The next candidate pleased Edgewood, where morning preaching was
+held, but the other parish, which had afternoon service, declined
+to accept him because he wore a wig--an ill-matched, crookedly
+applied wig.
+
+Number three was eloquent but given to gesticulation, and Mrs.
+Jere Burbank, the president of the Dorcas Society, who sat in a
+front pew, said she couldn't bear to see a preacher scramble
+round the pulpit hot Sundays.
+
+Number four, a genial, handsome man, gifted in prayer, was found
+to be a Democrat. The congregation was overwhelmingly Republican
+in its politics, and perceived something ludicrous, if not
+positively blasphemous, in a Democrat preaching the gospel.
+("Ananias and Beelzebub'll be candidatin' here, first thing we
+know!" exclaimed the outraged Republican nominee for district
+attorney.)
+
+Number five had a feeble-minded child, which the hiring committee
+prophesied, would always be standing in the parsonage front yard,
+making talk for the other denominations.
+
+Number six was the Rev. Judson Baxter, the present incumbent; and
+he was voted to be as near perfection as a minister can be in
+this finite world. His young wife had a small income of her own,
+a distinct and unusual advantage, and the subscription committee
+hoped that they might not be eternally driving over the country
+to get somebody's fifty cents that had been over-due for eight
+months, but might take their onerous duties a little more easily.
+
+"It does seem as if our ministers were the poorest lot!"
+complained Mrs. Robinson. "If their salary is two months
+behindhand they begin to be nervous! Seems as though they might
+lay up a little before they come here, and not live from hand to
+mouth so! The Baxters seem quite different, and I only hope they
+won't get wasteful and run into debt. They say she keeps the
+parlor blinds open bout half the time, and the room is lit up so
+often evenin's that the neighbors think her and Mr. Baxter must
+set in there. It don't seem hardly as if it could be so, but Mrs.
+Buzzell says tis, and she says we might as well say good-by to
+the parlor carpet, which is church property, for the Baxters are
+living all over it!"
+
+This criticism was the only discordant note in the chorus of
+praise, and the people gradually grew accustomed to the open
+blinds and the overused parlor carpet, which was just completing
+its twenty-fifth year of honest service.
+
+Mrs. Baxter communicated her patriotic idea of a new flag to the
+Dorcas Society, proposing that the women should cut and make it
+themselves.
+
+"It may not be quite as good as those manufactured in the large
+cities," she said, "but we shall be proud to see our home-made
+flag flying in the breeze, and it will mean all the more to the
+young voters growing up, to remember that their mothers made it
+with their own hands."
+
+"How would it do to let some of the girls help?" modestly asked
+Miss Dearborn, the Riverboro teacher. "We might choose the best
+sewers and let them put in at least a few stitches, so that they
+can feel they have a share in it."
+
+"Just the thing!" exclaimed Mrs. Baxter. "We can cut the stripes
+and sew them together, and after we have basted on the white
+stars the girls can apply them to the blue ground. We must have
+it ready for the campaign rally, and we couldn't christen it at a
+better time than in this presidential year."
+
+II
+
+In this way the great enterprise was started, and day by day the
+preparations went forward in the two villages.
+
+The boys, as future voters and fighters, demanded an active share
+in the proceedings, and were organized by Squire Bean into a fife
+and drum corps, so that by day and night martial but most
+inharmonious music woke the echoes, and deafened mothers felt
+their patriotism oozing out at the soles of their shoes.
+
+Dick Carter was made captain, for his grandfather had a gold
+medal given him by Queen Victoria for rescuing three hundred and
+twenty-six passengers from a sinking British vessel. Riverboro
+thought it high time to pay some graceful tribute to Great
+Britain in return for her handsome conduct to Captain Nahum
+Carter, and human imagination could contrive nothing more
+impressive than a vicarious share in the flag raising.
+
+Living Perkins tried to be happy in the ranks, for he was offered
+no official position, principally, Mrs. Smellie observed, because
+"his father's war record wa'nt clean." "Oh, yes! Jim Perkins went
+to the war," she continued. "He hid out behind the hencoop when
+they was draftin', but they found him and took him along. He got
+into one battle, too, somehow or nother, but he run away from it.
+He was allers cautious, Jim was; if he ever see trouble of any
+kind comin' towards him, he was out o' sight fore it got a chance
+to light. He said eight dollars a month, without bounty, wouldn't
+pay HIM to stop bullets for. He wouldn't fight a skeeter, Jim
+wouldn't, but land! we ain't to war all the time, and he's a good
+neighbor and a good blacksmith."
+
+Miss Dearborn was to be Columbia and the older girls of the two
+schools were to be the States.  Such trade in muslins and red,
+white, and blue ribbons had never been known since "Watson kep'
+store," and the number of brief white petticoats hanging out to
+bleach would have caused the passing stranger to imagine
+Riverboro a continual dancing school.
+
+Juvenile virtue, both male and female, reached an almost
+impossible height, for parents had only to lift a finger and say,
+"you shan't go to the flag raising!" and the refractory spirit at
+once armed itself for new struggles toward the perfect life.
+
+Mr. Jeremiah Cobb had consented to impersonate Uncle Sam, and was
+to drive Columbia and the States to the "raising" on the top of
+his own stage. Meantime the boys were drilling, the ladies were
+cutting and basting and stitching, and the girls were sewing on
+stars; for the starry part of the spangled banner was to remain
+with each of them in turn until she had performed her share of
+the work.
+
+It was felt by one and all a fine and splendid service indeed to
+help in the making of the flag, and if Rebecca was proud to be of
+the chosen ones, so was her Aunt Jane Sawyer, who had taught her
+all her delicate stitches.
+
+On a long-looked-for afternoon in August the minister's wife
+drove up to the brick house door, and handed out the great piece
+of bunting to Rebecca, who received it in her arms with as much
+solemnity as if it had been a child awaiting baptismal rites.
+
+"I'm so glad!" she sighed happily. "I thought it would never come
+my turn!"
+
+"You should have had it a week ago, but Huldah Meserve upset the
+ink bottle over her star, and we had to baste on another one. You
+are the last, though, and then we shall sew the stars and stripes
+together, and Seth Strout will get the top ready for hanging.
+Just think, it won't be many days before you children will be
+pulling the rope with all your strength, the band will be
+playing, the men will be cheering, and the new flag will go
+higher and higher, till the red, white, and blue shows against
+the sky!"
+
+Rebecca's eyes fairly blazed. "Shall I fell on' my star, or
+buttonhole it?" she asked.
+
+"Look at all the others and make the most beautiful stitches you
+can, that's all. It is your star, you know, and you can even
+imagine it is your state, and try and have it the best of all. If
+everybody else is trying to do the same thing with her state,
+that will make a great country, won't it?"
+
+Rebecca's eyes spoke glad confirmation of the idea. "My star, my
+state!" she repeated joyously.  "Oh, Mrs. Baxter, I'll make such
+fine stitches you'll think the white grew out of the blue!"
+
+The new minister's wife looked pleased to see her spark kindle a
+flame in the young heart. "You can sew so much of yourself into
+your star," she went on in the glad voice that made her so
+winsome, "that when you are an old lady you can put on your specs
+and find it among all the others. Good-by! Come up to the
+parsonage Saturday afternoon; Mr. Baxter wants to see you."
+
+"Judson, help that dear little genius of a Rebecca all you can!"
+she said that night, when they were cosily talking in their
+parlor and living "all over" the parish carpet. "I don't know
+what she may, or may not, come to, some day; I only wish she were
+ours! If you could have seen her clasp the flag tight in her arms
+and put her cheek against it, and watched the tears of feeling
+start in her eyes when I told her that her star was her state! I
+kept whispering to myself, Covet not thy neighbor's child!'"
+
+Daily at four o'clock Rebecca scrubbed her hands almost to the
+bone, brushed her hair, and otherwise prepared herself in body,
+mind, and spirit for the consecrated labor of sewing on her star.
+All the time that her needle cautiously, conscientiously formed
+the tiny stitches she was making rhymes "in her head," her
+favorite achievement being this:
+
+"Your star, my star, all our stars together, They make the dear
+old banner proud To float in the bright fall weather."
+
+There was much discussion as to which of the girls should
+impersonate the State of Maine, for that was felt to be the
+highest honor in the gift of the committee.
+
+Alice Robinson was the prettiest child in the village, but she
+was very shy and by no means a general favorite.
+
+Minnie Smellie possessed the handsomest dress and a pair of white
+slippers and open-work stockings that nearly carried the day.
+Still, as Miss Delia Weeks well said, she was so stupid that if
+she should suck her thumb in the very middle of the exercises
+nobody'd be a dite surprised!
+
+Huldah Meserve was next voted upon, and the fact that if she were
+not chosen her father might withdraw his subscription to the
+brass band fund was a matter for grave consideration.
+
+"I kind o' hate to have such a giggler for the State of Maine;
+let her be the Goddess of Liberty," proposed Mrs. Burbank, whose
+patriotism was more local than national.
+
+"How would Rebecca Randall do for Maine, and let her speak some
+of her verses?" suggested the new minister's wife, who, could she
+have had her way, would have given all the prominent parts to
+Rebecca, from Uncle Sam down.
+
+So, beauty, fashion, and wealth having been tried and found
+wanting, the committee discussed the claims of talent, and it
+transpired that to the awe-stricken Rebecca fell the chief plum
+in the pudding. It was a tribute to her gifts that there was no
+jealousy or envy among the other girls; they readily conceded her
+special fitness for the role.
+
+Her life had not been pressed down full to the brim of pleasures,
+and she had a sort of distrust of joy in the bud. Not until she
+saw it in full radiance of bloom did she dare embrace it. She had
+never read any verse but Byron, Felicia Hemans, bits of "Paradise
+Lost," and the selections in the school readers, but she would
+have agreed heartily with the poet who said:
+
+"Not by appointment do we meet delight And joy; they heed not our
+expectancy; But round some corner in the streets of life They on
+a sudden clasp us with a smile."
+
+For many nights before the raising, when she went to her bed she
+said to herself, after she had finished her prayers: "It can't be
+true that I'm chosen for the State of Maine! It just CAN'T be
+true! Nobody could be good ENOUGH, but oh, I'll try to be as good
+as I can! To be going to Wareham Seminary next week and to be the
+State of Maine too! Oh! I must pray HARD to God to keep me meek
+and humble!"
+
+III
+
+The flag was to be raised on a Tuesday, and on the previous
+Sunday it became known to the children that Clara Belle Simpson
+was coming back from Acreville, coming to live with Mrs. Fogg and
+take care of the baby, called by the neighborhood boys "the Fogg
+horn," on account of his excellent voice production.
+
+Clara Belle was one of Miss Dearborn's original flock, and if she
+were left wholly out of the festivities she would be the only
+girl of suitable age to be thus slighted; it seemed clear to the
+juvenile mind, therefore, that neither she nor her descendants
+would ever recover from such a blow. But, under all the
+circumstances, would she be allowed to join in the procession?
+Even Rebecca, the optimistic, feared not, and the committee
+confirmed her fears by saying that Abner Simpson's daughter
+certainly could not take any prominent part in the ceremony, but
+they hoped that Mrs. Fogg would allow her to witness it.
+
+When Abner Simpson, urged by the town authorities, took his wife
+and seven children away from Riverboro to Acreville, just over
+the border in the next county, Riverboro went to bed leaving its
+barn and shed doors unfastened, and drew long breaths of
+gratitude to Providence.
+
+Of most winning disposition and genial manners, Mr. Simpson had
+not that instinctive comprehension of property rights which
+renders a man a valuable citizen.
+
+Squire Bean was his nearest neighbor, and he conceived the novel
+idea of paying Simpson five dollars a year not to steal from him,
+a method occasionally used in the Highlands in the early days.
+
+The bargain was struck, and adhered to religiously for a
+twelve-month, but on the second of January Mr. Simpson announced
+the verbal contract as formally broken.
+
+"I didn't know what I was doin' when I made it, Squire," he
+urged. "In the first place, it's a slur on my reputation and an
+injury to my self-respect. Secondly, it's a nervous strain on me;
+and thirdly, five dollars don't pay me!"
+
+Squire Bean was so struck with the unique and convincing nature
+of these arguments that he could scarcely restrain his
+admiration, and he confessed to himself afterward, that unless
+Simpson's mental attitude could be changed he was perhaps a
+fitter subject for medical science than the state prison.
+
+Abner was a most unusual thief, and conducted his operations with
+a tact and neighborly consideration none too common in the
+profession. He would never steal a man's scythe in haying-time,
+nor his fur lap-robe in the coldest of the winter. The picking of
+a lock offered no attractions to him; "he wa'n't no burglar," he
+would have scornfully asserted. A strange horse and wagon hitched
+by the roadside was the most flagrant of his thefts; but it was
+the small things--the hatchet or axe on the chopping-block, the
+tin pans sunning at the side door, a stray garment bleaching on
+the grass, a hoe, rake, shovel, or a bag of early potatoes, that
+tempted him most sorely; and these appealed to him not so much
+for their intrinsic value as because they were so excellently
+adapted to swapping. The swapping was really the enjoyable part
+of the procedure, the theft was only a sad but necessary
+preliminary; for if Abner himself had been a man of sufficient
+property to carry on his business operations independently, it is
+doubtful if he would have helped himself so freely to his
+neighbor's goods.
+
+Riverboro regretted the loss of Mrs. Simpson, who was useful in
+scrubbing, cleaning, and washing, and was thought to exercise
+some influence over her predatory spouse. There was a story of
+their early married life, when they had a farm; a story to the
+effect that Mrs. Simpson always rode on every load of hay that
+her husband took to Milltown, with the view of keeping him sober
+through the day. After he turned out of the country road and
+approached the metropolis, it was said that he used to bury the
+docile lady in the load. He would then drive on to the scales,
+have the weight of the hay entered in the buyer's book, take his
+horses to the stable for feed and water, and when a favorable
+opportunity offered he would assist the hot and panting Mrs.
+Simpson out of the side or back of the rack, and gallantly brush
+the straw from her person. For this reason it was always asserted
+that Abner Simpson sold his wife every time he went to Milltown,
+but the story was never fully substantiated, and at all events it
+was the only suspected blot on meek Mrs. Simpson's personal
+reputation.
+
+As for the Simpson children, they were missed chiefly as familiar
+figures by the roadside; but Rebecca honestly loved Clara Belle,
+notwithstanding her Aunt Miranda's opposition to the intimacy.
+Rebecca's "taste for low company" was a source of continual
+anxiety to her aunt.
+
+"Anything that's human flesh is good enough for her!" Miranda
+groaned to Jane. "She'll ride with the rag-sack-and-bottle
+peddler just as quick as she would with the minister; she always
+sets beside the St. Vitus' dance young one at Sabbath school; and
+she's forever riggin' and onriggin' that dirty Simpson baby! She
+reminds me of a puppy that'll always go to everybody that'll have
+him!"
+
+It was thought very creditable to Mrs. Fogg that she sent for
+Clara Belle to live with her and go to school part of the year.
+
+"She'll be useful" said Mrs. Fogg, "and she'll be out of her
+father's way, and so keep honest; though she's no awful hombly
+I've no fears for her. A girl with her red hair, freckles, and
+cross-eyes can't fall into no kind of sin, I don't believe."
+
+Mrs. Fogg requested that Clara Belle should be started on her
+journey from Acreville by train and come the rest of the way by
+stage, and she was disturbed to receive word on Sunday that Mr.
+Simpson had borrowed a "good roader" from a new acquaintance, and
+would himself drive the girl from Acreville to Riverboro, a
+distance of thirty-five miles. That he would arrive in their
+vicinity on the very night before the flag-raising was thought by
+Riverboro to be a public misfortune, and several residents
+hastily determined to deny themselves a sight of the festivities
+and remain watchfully on their own premises.
+
+On Monday afternoon the children were rehearsing their songs at
+the meeting-house. As Rebecca came out on the broad wooden steps
+she watched Mrs. Peter Meserve's buggy out of sight, for in
+front, wrapped in a cotton sheet, lay the previous flag. After a
+few chattering good-bys and weather prophecies with the other
+girls, she started on her homeward walk, dropping in at the
+parsonage to read her verses to the minister.
+
+He welcomed her gladly as she removed her white cotton gloves
+(hastily slipped on outside the door, for ceremony) and pushed
+back the funny hat with the yellow and black porcupine quills--
+the hat with which she made her first appearance in Riverboro
+society.
+
+"You've heard the beginning, Mr. Baxter; now will you please tell
+me if you like the last verse?" she asked, taking out her paper.
+"I've only read it to Alice Robinson, and I think perhaps she can
+never be a poet, though she's a splendid writer. Last year when
+she was twelve she wrote a birthday poem to herself, and she made
+natal' rhyme with Milton,.' which, of course, it wouldn't. I
+remember every verse ended:
+
+'This is my day so natal
+And I will follow Milton.'
+
+Another one of hers was written just because she couldn't help
+it, she said. This was it:
+
+'Let me to the hills away,
+Give me pen and paper;
+I'll write until the earth will sway
+The story of my Maker.'"
+
+The minister could scarcely refrain from smiling, but he
+controlled himself that he might lose none of Rebecca's quaint
+observations. When she was perfectly at ease, unwatched and
+uncriticised, she was a marvelous companion.
+
+"The name of the poem is going to be My Star,'" she continued,
+"and Mrs. Baxter gave me all the ideas, but somehow there's a
+kind of magicness when they get into poetry, don't you think so?"
+(Rebecca always talked to grown people as if she were their age,
+or, a more subtle and truer distinction, as if they were hers.)
+
+"It has often been so remarked, in different words," agreed the
+minister.
+
+"Mrs. Baxter said that each star was a state, and if each state
+did its best we should have a splendid country. Then once she
+said that we ought to be glad the war is over and the States are
+all at peace together; and I thought Columbia must be glad, too,
+for Miss Dearborn says she's the mother of all the States. So I'm
+going to have it end like this: I didn't write it, I just sewed
+it while I was working on my star:
+
+For it's your star, my star, all the stars together,
+That make our country's flag so proud
+To float in the bright fall weather.
+Northern stars,Southern stars, stars of the East and West,
+Side by side they lie at peace
+On the dear flag's mother-breast."
+
+"'Oh! many are the poets that are sown by nature,'" thought the
+minister, quoting Wordsworth to himself. "And I wonder what
+becomes of them! That's a pretty idea, little Rebecca, and I
+don't know whether you or my wife ought to have the more praise.
+What made you think of the stars lying on the flag's
+mother-breast'? Where did you get that word?"
+
+"Why" (and the young poet looked rather puzzled), "that's the way
+it is; the flag is the whole country--the mother--and the stars
+are the states. The stars had to lie somewhere: 'LAP' nor 'ARMS'
+wouldn't sound well with West,' so, of course, I said 'BREAST,'"
+Rebecca answered, with some surprise at the question; and the
+minister put his hand under her chin and kissed her softly on the
+forehead when he said good-by at the door.
+
+IV
+
+Rebecca walked rapidly along in the gathering twilight, thinking
+of the eventful morrow.
+
+As she approached the turning on the left called the old Milltown
+road, she saw a white horse and wagon, driven by a man with a
+rakish, flapping, Panama hat, come rapidly around the turn and
+disappear over the long hills leading down to the falls. There
+was no mistaking him; there never was another Abner Simpson, with
+his lean height, his bushy reddish hair, the gay cock of his hat,
+and the long piratical, upturned mustaches, which the boys used
+to say were used as hat-racks by the Simpson children at night..
+The old Milltown road ran past Mrs. Fogg's house, so he must have
+left Clara Belle there, and Rebecca's heart glowed to think that
+her poor little friend need not miss the raising.
+
+She began to run now, fearful of being late for supper, and
+covered the ground to the falls in a brief time. As she crossed
+the bridge she again saw Abner Simpson's team, drawn up at the
+watering trough.
+
+Coming a little nearer, with the view of inquiring for the
+family, her quick eye caught sight of something unexpected. A
+gust of wind blew up a corner of a linen lap-robe in the back of
+the wagon, and underneath it she distinctly saw the white-sheeted
+bundle that held the flag; the bundle with a tiny, tiny spot of
+red bunting peeping out at one corner. It is true she had eaten,
+slept, dreamed red, white, and blue for weeks, but there was no
+mistaking the evidence of her senses; the idolized flag, longed
+for, worked for, sewed for, that flag was in the back of Abner
+Simpson's wagon, and if so, what would become of the raising?
+
+Acting on blind impulse, she ran toward the watering-trough,
+calling out in her clear treble: "Mr. Simpson! Oh, Mr. Simpson,
+will you let me ride a piece with you and hear all about Clara
+Belle?  I'm going part way over to the Centre on an errand." (So
+she was; a most important errand,--to recover the flag of her
+country at present in the hands of the foe!)
+
+Mr. Simpson turned round in his seat and cried heartily, "Certain
+sure I will!" for he liked the fair sex, young and old, and
+Rebecca had always been a prime favorite with him. "Climb right
+in!  How's everybody? Glad to see ye! The folks talk bout ye from
+sun-up to sun-down, and Clara Belle can't hardly wait for a sight
+of ye!"
+
+Rebecca scrambled up, trembling and pale with excitement. She did
+not in the least know what was going to happen, but she was sure
+that the flag, when in the enemy's country, must be at least a
+little safer with the State of Maine sitting on top of it!
+
+Mr. Simpson began a long monologue about Acreville, the house he
+lived in, the pond in front of it, Mrs. Simpson's health, and
+various items of news about the children, varied by reports of
+his personal misfortunes. He put no questions, and asked no
+replies, so this gave the inexperienced soldier a few seconds to
+plan a campaign. There were three houses to pass; the Browns' at
+the corner, the Millikens', and the Robinsons' on the brow of the
+hill. If Mr. Robinson were in the front yard she might tell Mr.
+Simpson she wanted to call there and ask Mr. Robinson to hold the
+horse's head while she got out of the wagon. Then she might fly
+to the back before Mr. Simpson could realize the situation, and
+dragging out the precious bundle, sit on it hard, while Mr.
+Robinson settled the matter of ownership with Mr. Simpson.
+
+This was feasible, but it meant a quarrel between the two men,
+who held an ancient grudge against each other, and Mr. Simpson
+was a valiant fighter as the various sheriffs who had attempted
+to arrest him could cordially testify. It also meant that
+everybody in the village would hear of the incident and poor
+Clara Belle be branded again as the child of a thief.
+
+Another idea danced into her excited brain; such a clever one she
+could hardly believe it hers. She might call Mr. Robinson to the
+wagon, and when he came close to the wheels she might say, "all
+of a sudden": "Please take the flag out of the back of the wagon,
+Mr. Robinson. We have brought it here for you to keep overnight."
+Mr. Simpson might be so surprised that he would give up his prize
+rather than be suspected of stealing.
+
+But as they neared the Robinsons' house there was not a sign of
+life to be seen; so the last plan, ingenious though it was, was
+perforce abandoned.
+
+The road now lay between thick pine woods with no dwelling in
+sight. It was growing dusk and Rebecca was driving along the
+lonely way with a person who was generally called Slippery
+Simpson.
+
+Not a thought of fear crossed her mind, save the fear of bungling
+in her diplomacy, and so losing the flag. She knew Mr. Simpson
+well, and a pleasanter man was seldom to be met. She recalled an
+afternoon when he came home and surprised the whole school
+playing the Revolutionary War in his helter-skelter dooryard, and
+the way in which he had joined the British forces and
+impersonated General Burgoyne had greatly endeared him to her.
+The only difficulty was to find proper words for her delicate
+mission, for, of course, if Mr. Simpson's anger were aroused, he
+would politely push her out of the wagon and drive away with the
+flag. Perhaps if she led the conversation in the right direction
+an opportunity would present itself. She well remembered how Emma
+Jane Perkins had failed to convert Jacob Moody, simply because
+she failed to "lead up" to the delicate question of his manner of
+life. Clearing her throat nervously, she began: "Is it likely to
+be fair tomorrow?"
+
+"Guess so; clear as a bell. What's on foot; a picnic?"
+
+"No; we're to have a grand flag-raising!" ("That is," she
+thought, "if we have any flag to raise!")
+
+"That so? Where?"
+
+"The three villages are to club together and have a rally, and
+raise the flag at the Centre. There'll be a brass band, and
+speakers, and the Mayor of Portland, and the man that will be
+governor if he's elected, and a dinner in the Grange Hall, and we
+girls are chosen to raise the flag."
+
+"I want to know! That'll be grand, won't it?" (Still not a sign
+of consciousness on the part of Abner.)
+
+"I hope Mrs. Fogg will take Clara Belle, for it will be splendid
+to look at! Mr. Cobb is going to be Uncle Sam and drive us on the
+stage. Miss Dearborn--Clara Belle's old teacher, you know--is
+going to be Columbia; the girls will be the States of the Union,
+and oh, Mr. Simpson, I am the one to be the State of Maine!"
+(This was not altogether to the point, but a piece of information
+impossible to conceal.)
+
+Mr. Simpson flourished the whipstock and gave a loud, hearty
+laugh. Then he turned in his seat and regarded Rebecca curiously.
+"You're kind of small, hain't ye, for so big a state as this
+one?" he asked.
+
+"Any of us would be too small," replied Rebecca with dignity,
+"but the committee asked me, and I am going to try hard to do
+well."
+
+The tragic thought that there might be no occasion for anybody to
+do anything, well or ill, suddenly overcame her here, and putting
+her hand on Mr. Simpson's sleeve, she attacked the subject
+practically and courageously.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Simpson, dear Mr. Simpson, it's such a mortifying
+subject I can't bear to say anything about it, but please give us
+back our flag! Don't, DON'T take it over to Acreville, Mr.
+Simpson!  We've worked so long to make it, and it was so hard
+getting the money for the bunting! Wait a minute, please; don't
+be angry, and don't say no just yet, till I explain more. It'll
+be so dreadful for everybody to get there tomorrow morning and
+find no flag to raise, and the band and the mayor all
+disappointed, and the children crying, with their muslin dresses
+all bought for nothing!  O dear Mr. Simpson, please don't take
+our flag away from us!"
+
+The apparently astonished Abner pulled his mustaches and
+exclaimed: "But I don't know what you're drivin' at! Who's got
+yer flag? I hain't!"
+
+Could duplicity, deceit, and infamy go any further, Rebecca
+wondered, and her soul filling with righteous wrath, she cast
+discretion to the winds and spoke a little more plainly, bending
+her great swimming eyes on the now embarrassed Abner, who looked
+like an angle-worm, wriggling on a pin.
+
+"Mr. Simpson, how can you say that, when I saw the flag in the
+back of your wagon myself, when you stopped to water the horse?
+It's wicked of you to take it, and I cannot bear it!" (Her voice
+broke now, for a doubt of Mr. Simpson's yielding suddenly
+darkened her mind.) "If you keep it, you'll have to keep me, for
+I won't be parted from it! I can't fight like the boys, but I can
+pinch and scratch, and I WILL scratch, just like a panther--I'll
+lie right down on my star and not move, if I starve to death!"
+
+"Look here, hold your hosses n' don't cry till you git something
+to cry for!" grumbled the outraged Abner, to whom a clue had just
+come; and leaning over the wagon-back he caught hold of a corner
+of white sheet and dragged up the bundle, scooping off Rebecca's
+hat in the process, and almost burying her in bunting.
+
+She caught the treasure passionately to her heart and stifled her
+sobs in it, while Abner exclaimed:  "I swan to man, if that
+hain't a flag! Well, in that case you're good n' welcome to it!
+Land! I seen that bundle lyin' in the middle o' the road and I
+says to myself, that's somebody's washin' and I'd better pick it
+up and leave it at the post-office to be claimed; n' all the time
+it was a flag!"
+
+This was a Simpsonian version of the matter, the fact being that
+a white-covered bundle lying on the Meserves' front steps had
+attracted his practiced eye, and slipping in at the open gate he
+had swiftly and deftly removed it to his wagon on general
+principles; thinking if it were clean clothes it would be
+extremely useful, and in any event there was no good in passing
+by something flung into your very arms, so to speak. He had had
+no leisure to examine the bundle, and indeed took little interest
+in it. Probably he stole it simply from force of habit, and
+because there was nothing else in sight to steal, everybody's
+premises being preternaturally tidy and empty, almost as if his
+visit had been expected!
+
+Rebecca was a practical child, and it seemed to her almost
+impossible that so heavy a bundle should fall out of Mrs.
+Meserve's buggy and not be noticed; but she hoped that Mr.
+Simpson was telling the truth, and she was too glad and grateful
+to doubt anyone at the moment.
+
+"Thank you, thank you ever so much, Mr. Simpson. You're the
+nicest, kindest, politest man I ever knew, and the girls will be
+so pleased you gave us back the flag, and so will the Dorcas
+Society; they'll be sure to write you a letter of thanks; they
+always do."
+
+"Tell em not to bother bout any thanks," said Simpson, beaming
+virtuously. "But land! I'm glad  twas me that happened to see
+that bundle in the road and take the trouble to pick it up."
+(Jest to think of it's bein' a flag!" he thought; "if ever there
+was a pesky, wuthless thing to trade off,  twould be a great,
+gormin' flag like that!")
+
+"Can I get out now, please?" asked Rebecca. "I want to go back,
+for Mrs. Meserve will be dreadfully nervous when she finds out
+she dropped the flag, and she has heart trouble."
+
+"No, you don't," objected Mr. Simpson gallantly, turning the
+horse. "Do you think I'd let a little creeter like you lug that
+great heavy bundle? I hain't got time to go back to Meserve's,
+but I'll take you to the corner and dump you there, flag n' all,
+and you can get some o' the men-folks to carry it the rest o' the
+way. You'll wear it out, huggin' it so!"
+
+"I helped make it and I adore it!" said Rebecca, who was in a
+high-pitched and grandiloquent mood. "Why don't YOU like it? It's
+your country's flag."
+
+Simpson smiled an indulgent smile and looked a trifle bored at
+these frequent appeals to his extremely rusty higher feelings.
+
+"I don' know's I've got any partic'lar int'rest in the country,"
+he remarked languidly. "I know I don't owe nothin' to it, nor own
+nothin' in it!"
+
+"You own a star on the flag, same as everybody," argued Rebecca,
+who had been feeding on patriotism for a month; "and you own a
+state, too, like all of us!"
+
+"Land! I wish't I did! or even a quarter section!" sighed Mr.
+Simpson, feeling somehow a little more poverty-stricken and
+discouraged than usual.
+
+As they approached the corner and the watering-trough where four
+cross-roads met, the whole neighborhood seemed to be in evidence,
+and Mr. Simpson suddenly regretted his chivalrous escort of
+Rebecca; especially when, as he neared the group, an excited
+lady, wringing her hands, turned out to be Mrs. Peter Meserve,
+accompanied by Huldah, the Browns, Mrs. Milliken, Abijah Flagg,
+and Miss Dearborn.
+
+"Do you know anything about the new flag, Rebecca?" shrieked Mrs.
+Meserve, too agitated, at the moment, to notice the child's
+companion.
+
+"It's right here in my lap, all safe," responded Rebecca
+joyously.
+
+"You careless, meddlesome young one, to take it off my steps
+where I left it just long enough to go round to the back and hunt
+up my door-key! You've given me a fit of sickness with my weak
+heart, and what business was it of yours? I believe you think you
+OWN the flag! Hand it over to me this minute!"
+
+Rebecca was climbing down during this torrent of language, but as
+she turned she flashed one look of knowledge at the false
+Simpson, a look that went through him from head to foot, as if it
+were carried by electricity.
+
+He had not deceived her after all, owing to the angry chatter of
+Mrs. Meserve. He had been handcuffed twice in his life, but no
+sheriff had ever discomfited him so thoroughly as this child. 
+Fury mounted to his brain, and as soon as she was safely out from
+between the wheels he stood up in the wagon and flung the flag
+out in the road in the midst of the excited group.
+
+"Take it, you pious, passimonious, cheese-parin', hair-splittin',
+back-bitin', flag-raisin' crew!" he roared. "Rebecca never took
+the flag; I found it in the road, I say!"
+
+"You never, no such a thing!" exclaimed Mrs. Meserve. "You found
+it on the doorsteps in my garden!"
+
+"Mebbe twas your garden, but it was so chock full o' weeks I
+THOUGHT twas the road," retorted Abner. "I vow I wouldn't a'
+given the old rag back to one o' YOU, not if you begged me on
+your bended knees! But Rebecca's a friend o' my folks and can do
+with her flag's she's a mind to, and the rest o' ye can go to
+thunder-- n' stay there, for all I care!"
+
+So saying, he made a sharp turn, gave the gaunt white horse a
+lash and disappeared in a cloud of dust, before the astonished
+Mr. Brown, the only man in the party, had a thought of detaining
+him.
+
+"I'm sorry I spoke so quick, Rebecca," said Mrs. Meserve, greatly
+mortified at the situation. "But don't you believe a word that
+lyin' critter said! He did steal it off my doorstep, and how did
+you come to be ridin' and consortin' with him! I believe it would
+kill your Aunt Miranda if she should hear about it!"
+
+The little school-teacher put a sheltering arm round Rebecca as
+Mr. Brown picked up the flag and dusted and folded it.
+
+"I'm willing she should hear about it," Rebecca answered. "I
+didn't do anything to be ashamed of!  I saw the flag in the back
+of Mr. Simpson's wagon and I just followed it. There weren't any
+men or any Dorcases to take care of it and so it fell to me! You
+wouldn't have had me let it out of my sight, would you, and we
+going to raise it tomorrow morning?"
+
+"Rebecca's perfectly right, Mrs. Meserve!" said Miss Dearborn
+proudly. "And it's lucky there was somebody quick-witted enough
+to ride and consort' with Mr. Simpson! I don't know what the
+village will think, but seems to me the town clerk might write
+down in his book, THIS DAY THE STATE OF MAINE SAVED THE FLAG!'"
+
+
+
+Sixth Chronicle
+THE STATE O' MAINE GIRL
+
+I
+
+The foregoing episode, if narrated in a romance, would
+undoubtedly have been called "The Saving of the Colors," but at
+the nightly conversazione in Watson's store it was alluded to as
+the way little Becky Randall got the flag away from Slippery
+Simpson.
+
+Dramatic as it was, it passed into the limbo of half-forgotten
+things in Rebecca's mind, its brief importance submerged in the
+glories of the next day.
+
+There was a painful prelude to these glories. Alice Robinson came
+to spend the night with Rebecca, and when the bedroom door closed
+upon the two girls, Alice announced here intention of "doing up"
+Rebecca's front hair in leads and rags, and braiding the back in
+six tight, wetted braids.
+
+Rebecca demurred. Alice persisted.
+
+"Your hair is so long and thick and dark and straight," she said,
+"that you'll look like an Injun!"
+
+"I am the State of Maine; it all belonged to the Indians once,"
+Rebecca remarked gloomily, for she was curiously shy about
+discussing her personal appearance.
+
+"And your wreath of little pine-cones won't set decent without
+crimps," continued Alice.
+
+Rebecca glanced in the cracked looking-glass and met what she
+considered an accusing lack of beauty, a sight that always either
+saddened or enraged her according to circumstances; then she sat
+down resignedly and began to help Alice in the philanthropic work
+of making the State of Maine fit to be seen at the raising.
+
+Neither of the girls was an expert hairdresser, and at the end of
+an hour, when the sixth braid was tied, and Rebecca had given one
+last shuddering look in the mirror, both were ready to weep with
+fatigue.
+
+The candle was blown out and Alice soon went to sleep, but
+Rebecca tossed on her pillow, its goose-feathered softness all
+dented by the cruel lead knobs and the knots of twisted rags. She
+slipped out of bed and walked to and fro, holding her aching head
+with both hands. Finally she leaned on the window-sill, watching
+the still weather-vane on Alice's barn and breathing in the
+fragrance of the ripening apples, until her restlessness subsided
+under the clear starry beauty of the night.
+
+At six in the morning the girls were out of bed, for Alice could
+hardly wait until Rebecca's hair was taken down, she was so eager
+to see the result of her labors.
+
+The leads and rags were painfully removed, together with much
+hair, the operation being punctuated by a series of squeaks,
+squeals, and shrieks on the part of Rebecca and a series of
+warnings from Alice, who wished the preliminaries to be kept
+secret from the aunts, that they might the more fully appreciate
+the radiant result.
+
+Then came the unbraiding, and then--dramatic moment--the "combing
+out;" a difficult, not to say impossible process, in which the
+hairs that had resisted the earlier stages almost gave up the
+ghost.
+
+The long front strands had been wound up from various angles and
+by various methods, so that, when released, they assumed the
+strangest, most obstinate, most unexpected attitudes. When the
+comb was dragged through the last braid, the wild, tortured,
+electric hairs following, and then rebounding from it in a
+bristling, snarling tangle. Massachusetts gave one encompassing
+glance at the State o' Maine's head, and announced her intention
+of going home to breakfast! She was deeply grieved at the result
+of her attempted beautifying, but she felt that meeting Miss
+Miranda Sawyer at the morning meal would not mend matters in the
+least, so slipping out of the side door, she ran up Guide Board
+hill as fast as her legs could carry her.
+
+The State o' Maine, deserted and somewhat unnerved, sat down
+before the glass and attacked her hair doggedly and with set
+lips, working over it until Miss Jane called her to breakfast;
+then, with a boldness born of despair, she entered the dining
+room, where her aunts were already seated at table. To "draw
+fire" she whistled, a forbidden joy, which only attracted more
+attention, instead of diverting it. There was a moment of silence
+after the grotesque figure was fully taken in; then came a moan
+from Jane and a groan from Miranda.
+
+"What have you done to yourself?" asked Miranda sternly.
+
+"Made an effort to be beautiful and failed!" jauntily replied
+Rebecca, but she was too miserable to keep up the fiction. "Oh,
+Aunt Miranda, don't scold. I'm so unhappy! Alice and I rolled up
+my hair to curl it for the raising. She said it was so straight I
+looked like an Indian!"
+
+"Mebbe you did," vigorously agreed Miranda, "but 't any rate you
+looked like a Christian Injun,  'n' now you look like a heathen
+Injun; that's all the difference I can see. What can we do with
+her, Jane, between this and nine o'clock?"
+
+"We'll all go out to the pump just as soon as we're through
+breakfast," answered Jane soothingly. "We can accomplish
+consid'rable with water and force."
+
+Rebecca nibbled her corn-cake, her tearful eyes cast on her plate
+and her chin quivering.
+
+"Don't you cry and red your eyes up," chided Miranda quite
+kindly; "the minute you've eat enough run up and get your brush
+and comb and meet us at the back door."
+
+"I wouldn't care myself how bad I looked," said Rebecca, "but I
+can't bear to be so homely that I shame the State of Maine!"
+
+Oh, what an hour followed this plaint! Did any aspirant for
+literary or dramatic honors ever pass to fame through such an
+antechamber of horrors? Did poet of the day ever have his head so
+maltreated? To be dipped in the rain-water tub, soused again and
+again; to be held under the spout and pumped on; to be rubbed
+furiously with rough roller towels; to be dried with hot
+flannels! And is it not well-nigh incredible that at the close of
+such an hour the ends of the long hair should still stand out
+straight, the braids having been turned up two inches by Alice,
+and tied hard in that position with linen thread?
+
+"Get out the skirt-board, Jane," cried Miranda, to whom
+opposition served as a tonic, "and move that flat-iron on to the
+front o' the stove. Rebecca, set down in that low chair beside
+the board, and Jane, you spread out her hair on it and cover it
+up with brown paper. Don't cringe, Rebecca; the worst's over, and
+you've borne up real good! I'll be careful not to pull your hair
+nor scorch you, and oh, HOW I'd like to have Alice Robinson
+acrost my knee and a good strip o' shingle in my right hand!
+There, you're all ironed out and your Aunt Jane can put on your
+white dress and braid your hair up again good and tight. Perhaps
+you won't be the hombliest of the states, after all; but when I
+see you comin' in to breakfast I said to myself: I guess if Maine
+looked like that, it wouldn't never a' been admitted into the
+Union!'"
+
+When Uncle Sam and the stagecoach drew up to the brick house with
+a grand swing and a flourish, the goddess of Liberty and most of
+the States were already in their places on the "harricane deck."
+
+Words fail to describe the gallant bearing of the horses, their
+headstalls gayly trimmed and their harnesses dotted with little
+flags. The stage windows were hung in bunting, and from within
+beamed Columbia, looking out from the bright frame as if proud of
+her freight of loyal children. Patriotic streamers floated from
+whip, from dash-board and from rumble, and the effect of the
+whole was something to stimulate the most phlegmatic voter.
+
+Rebecca came out on the steps and Aunt Jane brought a chair to
+assist in the ascent. Miss Dearborn peeped from the window, and
+gave a despairing look at her favorite.
+
+What had happened to her? Who had dressed her? Had her head been
+put through a wringing-machine? Why were her eyes red and
+swollen? Miss Dearborn determined to take her behind the trees in
+the pine grove and give her some finishing touches; touches that
+her skillful fingers fairly itched to bestow.
+
+The stage started, and as the roadside pageant grew gayer and
+gayer, Rebecca began to brighten and look prettier, for most of
+her beautifying came from within. The people, walking, driving,
+or standing on their doorsteps, cheered Uncle Sam's coach with
+its freight of gossamer-muslined, fluttering-ribboned girls, and
+just behind, the gorgeously decorated haycart, driven by Abijah
+Flagg, bearing the jolly but inharmonious fife-and-drum corps.
+
+Was ever such a golden day! Such crystal air! Such mellow
+sunshine! Such a merry Uncle Sam!
+
+The stage drew up at an appointed spot near a pine grove, and
+while the crowd was gathering, the children waited for the hour
+to arrive when they should march to the platform; the hour toward
+which they seemed to have been moving since the dawn of creation.
+
+As soon as possible Miss Dearborn whispered to Rebecca: "Come
+behind the trees with me; I want to make you prettier!"
+
+Rebecca thought she had suffered enough from that process already
+during the last twelve hours, but she put out an obedient hand
+and the two withdrew.
+
+Now Miss Dearborn was, I fear, a very indifferent teacher. Dr.
+Moses always said so, and Libbie Moses, who wanted her school,
+said it was a pity she hadn't enjoyed more social advantages in
+her youth. Libbie herself had taken music lessons in Portland;
+and spent a night at the Profile House in the White Mountains,
+and had visited her sister in Lowell, Massachusetts. These
+experiences gave her, in her own mind, and in the mind of her
+intimate friends, a horizon so boundless that her view of
+smaller, humbler matters was a trifle distorted.
+
+Miss Dearborn's stock in trade was small, her principal virtues
+being devotion to children and ability to gain their love, and a
+power of evolving a schoolroom order so natural, cheery, serene,
+and peaceful that it gave the beholder a certain sense of being
+in a district heaven. She was poor in arithmetic and weak in
+geometry, but if you gave her a rose, a bit of ribbon, and a
+seven-by-nine looking-glass she could make herself as pretty as a
+pink in two minutes.
+
+Safely sheltered behind the pines, Miss Dearborn began to
+practice mysterious feminine arts. She flew at Rebecca's tight
+braids, opened the strands and rebraided them loosely; bit and
+tore the red, white, and blue ribbon in two and tied the braids
+separately. Then with nimble fingers she pulled out little
+tendrils of hair behind the ears and around the nape of the neck.
+After a glance of acute disapproval directed at the stiff balloon
+skirt she knelt on the ground and gave a strenuous embrace to
+Rebecca's knees, murmuring, between her hugs, "Starch must be
+cheap at the brick house!"
+
+This particular line of beauty attained, there ensued great
+pinchings of ruffles, her fingers that could never hold a ferrule
+nor snap children's ears being incomparable fluting-irons.
+
+Next the sash was scornfully untied and tightened to suggest
+something resembling a waist. The chastened bows that had been
+squat, dowdy, spiritless, were given tweaks, flirts, bracing
+little pokes and dabs, till, acknowledging a master hand, they
+stood up, piquant, pert, smart, alert!
+
+Pride of bearing was now infused into the flattened lace at the
+neck, and a pin (removed at some sacrifice from her own toilette)
+was darned in at the back to prevent any cowardly lapsing. The
+short white cotton gloves that called attention to the tanned
+wrist and arms were stripped off and put in her own pocket. Then
+the wreath of pine-cones was adjusted at a heretofore unimagined
+angle, the hair was pulled softly into a fluffy frame, and
+finally, as she met Rebecca's grateful eyes she gave her two
+approving, triumphant kisses. In a second the sensitive face
+lighted into happiness; pleased dimples appeared in the cheeks,
+the kissed mouth was as red as a rose, and the little fright that
+had walked behind the pine-tree stepped out on the other side
+Rebecca the lovely.
+
+As to the relative value of Miss Dearborn's accomplishments, the
+decision must be left to the gentle reader; but though it is
+certain that children should be properly grounded in mathematics,
+no heart of flesh could bear to hear Miss Dearborn's methods
+vilified who had seen her patting, pulling, squeezing Rebecca
+from ugliness into beauty.
+
+The young superintendent of district schools was a witness of the
+scene, and when later he noted the children surrounding Columbia
+as bees a honeysuckle, he observed to Dr. Moses: "She may not be
+much of a teacher, but I think she'd be considerable of a wife!"
+and subsequent events proved that he meant what he said!
+
+II
+
+Now all was ready; the moment of fate was absolutely at hand; the
+fife-and-drum corps led the way and the States followed; but what
+actually happened Rebecca never knew; she lived through the hours
+in a waking dream. Every little detail was a facet of light that
+reflected sparkles, and among them all she was fairly dazzled.
+The brass band played inspiring strains; the mayor spoke
+eloquently on great themes; the people cheered; then the rope on
+which so much depended was put into the children's hands, they
+applied superhuman strength to their task, and the flag mounted,
+mounted, smoothly and slowly, and slowly unwound and stretched
+itself until its splendid size and beauty were revealed against
+the maples and pines and blue New England sky.
+
+Then after cheers upon cheers and after a patriotic chorus by the
+church choirs, the State of Maine mounted the platform, vaguely
+conscious that she was to recite a poem, though for the life of
+her she could not remember a single word.
+
+"Speak up loud and clear, Rebecky," whispered Uncle Sam in the
+front row, but she could scarcely hear her own voice when,
+tremblingly, she began her first line. After that she gathered
+strength and the poem "said itself," while the dream went on.
+
+She saw Adam Ladd leaning against a tree; Aunt Jane and Aunt
+Miranda palpitating with nervousness; Clara Belle Simpson gazing
+cross-eyed but adoring from a seat on the side; and in the far,
+far distance, on the very outskirts of the crowd, a tall man
+standing in a wagon--a tall, loose-jointed man with red upturned
+mustaches, and a gaunt white horse headed toward the Acreville
+road.
+
+Loud applause greeted the state of Maine, the slender little
+white-clad figure standing on the mossy boulder that had been
+used as the centre of the platform. The sun came up from behind a
+great maple and shone full on the star-spangled banner, making it
+more dazzling than ever, so that its beauty drew all eyes upward.
+
+Abner Simpson lifted his vagrant shifting gaze to its softy
+fluttering folds and its splendid massing of colors, thinking:
+
+"I don't know's anybody'd ought to steal a flag--the thunderin'
+idjuts seem to set such store by it, and what is it, anyway?
+Nothin; but a sheet o' buntin!"
+
+Nothing but a sheet of bunting? He looked curiously at the rapt
+faces of the mothers, their babies asleep in their arms; the
+parted lips and shining eyes of the white-clad girls; at Cap'n
+Lord, who had been in Libby prison , and Nat Strout, who had left
+an arm at Bull Run; at the friendly, jostling crowd of farmers,
+happy, eager, absorbed, their throats ready to burst with cheers.
+Then the breeze served, and he heard Rebecca's clear voice
+saying:
+
+"For it's your star, my star, all the stars together,
+That make our country's flag so proud
+To float in the bright fall weather!"
+
+"Talk about stars! She's got a couple of em right in her head,"
+thought Simpson. . . . "If I ever seen a young one like that
+lyin; on anybody's doorstep I'd hook her quicker'n a wink, though
+I've got plenty to home, the Lord knows! And I wouldn't swap her
+off neither. . . . Spunky little creeter, too; settin; up in the
+wagon lookin' bout's big as a pint o' cider, but keepin' right
+after the goods! . . . I vow I'm bout sick o' my job! Never WITH
+the crowd, allers JEST on the outside, s if I wa'n't as good's
+they be! If it paid well, mebbe I wouldn't mind, but they're so
+thunderin' stingy round here, they don't leave anything decent
+out for you to take from em, yet you're reskin' your liberty n'
+reputation jest the same! . . . Countin' the poor pickin's n' the
+time I lose in jail I might most's well be done with it n' work
+out by the day, as the folks want me to; I'd make bout's much n'
+I don't know's it would be any harder!"
+
+He could see Rebecca stepping down from the platform, while his
+own red-headed little girl stood up on her bench, waving her hat
+with one hand, her handkerchief with the other, and stamping with
+both feet.
+
+Now a man sitting beside the mayor rose from his chair and Abner
+heard him call:
+
+"Three cheers for the women who made the flag!"
+
+"HIP, HIP, HURRAH!"
+
+"Three cheers for the State of Maine!"
+
+"HIP, HIP, HURRAH!"
+
+"Three cheers for the girl that saved the flag from the hands of
+the enemy!"
+
+"HIP, HIP, HURRAH! HIP, HIP, HURRAH!"
+
+It was the Edgewood minister, whose full, vibrant voice was of
+the sort to move a crowd. His words rang out into the clear air
+and were carried from lip to lip. Hands clapped, feet stamped,
+hats swung, while the loud huzzahs might almost have wakened the
+echoes on old Mount Ossipee.
+
+The tall, loose-jointed man sat down in the wagon suddenly and
+took up the reins.
+
+"They're gettin' a little mite personal, and I guess it's bout
+time for you to be goin', Simpson!"
+
+The tone was jocular, but the red mustaches drooped, and the
+half-hearted cut he gave to start the white mare on her homeward
+journey showed that he was not in his usual devil-may-care mood.
+
+"Durn his skin!" he burst out in a vindictive undertone, as the
+mare swung into her long gait. "It's a lie! I thought twas
+somebody's wash! I hain't an enemy!"
+
+While the crowd at the raising dispersed in happy family groups
+to their picnics in the woods; while the Goddess of Liberty,
+Uncle Sam, Columbia, and the proud States lunched grandly in the
+Grange hall with distinguished guests and scarred veterans of two
+wars, the lonely man drove, and drove, and drove through silent
+woods and dull, sleepy villages, never alighting to replenish his
+wardrobe or his stock of swapping material.
+
+At dusk he reached a miserable tumble-down house on the edge of a
+pond.
+
+The faithful wife with the sad mouth and the habitual look of
+anxiety in her faded eyes came to the door at the sound of wheels
+and went doggedly to the horse-shed to help him unharness.
+
+"You didn't expect to see me back tonight, did ye?" he asked
+satirically; "leastwise not with this same horse? Well, I'm here!
+You needn't be scairt to look under the wagon seat, there hain't
+nothin' there, not even my supper, so I hope you're suited for
+once! No, I guess I hain't goin' to be an angel right away,
+neither. There wa'n't nothin' but flags layin' roun' loose down
+Riverboro way, n' whatever they say, I hain't sech a hound as to
+steal a flag!"
+
+It was natural that young Riverboro should have red, white, and
+blue dreams on the night after the new flag was raised. A
+stranger thing, perhaps, is the fact that Abner Simpson should
+lie down on his hard bed with the flutter of bunting before his
+eyes, and a whirl of unaccustomed words in his mind.
+
+"For it's your star, my star, all our stars together."
+
+"I'm sick of goin' it alone," he thought; "I guess I'll try the
+other road for a spell;" and with that he fell asleep.
+
+
+
+Seventh Chronicle
+THE LITTLE PROPHET
+
+I
+
+"I guess York County will never get red of that Simpson crew!"
+exclaimed Miranda Sawyer to Jane. "I thought when the family
+moved to Acreville we'd seen the last of em, but we ain't! The
+big, cross-eyed, stutterin' boy has got a place at the mills in
+Maplewood; that's near enough to come over to Riverboro once in a
+while of a Sunday mornin' and set in the meetin' house starin' at
+Rebecca same as he used to do, only it's reskier now both of em
+are older. Then Mrs. Fogg must go and bring back the biggest girl
+to help her take care of her baby,--as if there wa'n't plenty of
+help nearer home! Now I hear say that the youngest twin has come
+to stop the summer with the Cames up to Edgewood Lower Corner."
+
+"I thought two twins were always the same age," said Rebecca,
+reflectively, as she came into the kitchen with the milk pail.
+
+"So they be," snapped Miranda, flushing and correcting herself.
+"But that pasty-faced Simpson twin looks younger and is smaller
+than the other one. He's meek as Moses and the other one is as
+bold as a brass kettle; I don't see how they come to be twins;
+they ain't a mite alike."
+
+"Elijah was always called the fighting twin' at school," said
+Rebecca, "and Elisha's other name was Nimbi-Pamby; but I think
+he's a nice little boy, and I'm glad he has come back. He won't
+like living with Mr. Came, but he'll be almost next door to the
+minister's, and Mrs. Baxter is sure to let him play in her
+garden."
+
+"I wonder why the boy's stayin' with Cassius Came," said Jane.
+"To be sure they haven't got any of their own, but the child's
+too young to be much use."
+
+"I know why," remarked Rebecca promptly, "for I heard all about
+it over to Watson's when I was getting the milk. Mr. Came traded
+something with Mr. Simpson two years ago and got the best of the
+bargain, and Uncle Jerry says he's the only man that ever did,
+and he ought to have a monument put up to him. So Mr. Came owes
+Mr. Simpson money and won't pay it, and Mr. Simpson said he'd
+send over a child and board part of it out, and take the rest in
+stock--a pig or a calf or something."
+
+"That's all stuff and nonsense," exclaimed Miranda; "nothin' in
+the world but store-talk. You git a clump o' men-folks settin'
+round Watson's stove, or out on the bench at the door, an'
+they'll make up stories as fast as their tongues can wag. The man
+don't live that's smart enough to cheat Abner Simpson in a trade,
+and who ever heard of anybody's owin' him money? Tain't
+supposable that a woman like Mrs. Came would allow her husband to
+be in debt to a man like Abner Simpson. It's a sight likelier
+that she heard that Mrs. Simpson was ailin' and sent for the boy
+so as to help the family along. She always had Mrs. Simpson to
+wash for her once a month, if you remember Jane?"
+
+There are some facts so shrouded in obscurity that the most
+skillful and patient investigator cannot drag them into the light
+of day. There are also (but only occasionally) certain motives,
+acts, speeches, lines of conduct, that can never be wholly and
+satisfactorily explained, even in a village post-office or on the
+loafers' bench outside the tavern door.
+
+Cassius Came was a close man, close of mouth and close of purse;
+and all that Riverboro ever knew as to the three months' visit of
+the Simpson twin was that it actually occurred. Elisha, otherwise
+Nimbi-Pamby, came; Nimbi-Pamby stayed; and Nimbi-Pamby, when he
+finally rejoined his own domestic circle, did not go empty-handed
+(so to speak), for he was accompanied on his homeward travels by
+a large, red, bony, somewhat truculent cow, who was tied on
+behind the wagon, and who made the journey a lively and eventful
+one by her total lack of desire to proceed over the road from
+Edgewood to Acreville. But that, the cow's tale, belongs to
+another time and place, and the coward's tale must come first;
+for Elisha Simpson was held to be sadly lacking in the manly
+quality of courage.
+
+It was the new minister's wife who called Nimbi-Pamby the Little
+Prophet. His full name was Elisha Jeremiah Simpson, but one
+seldom heard it at full length, since, if he escaped the ignominy
+of Nimbi-Pamby, Lishe was quite enough for an urchin just in his
+first trousers and those assumed somewhat prematurely. He was "
+Lishe," therefore, to the village, but the Little Prophet to the
+young minister's wife.
+
+Rebecca could see the Cames' brown farmhouse from Mrs. Baxter's
+sitting-room window. The little-traveled road with strips of
+tufted green between the wheel tracks curled dustily up to the
+very doorstep, and inside the screen door of pink mosquito
+netting was a wonderful drawn-in rug, shaped like a half pie,
+with "Welcome" in saffron letters on a green ground.
+
+Rebecca liked Mrs. Cassius Came, who was a friend of her Aunt
+Miranda's and one of the few persons who exchanged calls with
+that somewhat unsociable lady. The Came farm was not a long walk
+from the brick house, for Rebecca could go across the fields when
+haying-time was over, and her delight at being sent on an errand
+in that direction could not be measured, now that the new
+minister and his wife had grown to be such a resource in her
+life. She liked to see Mrs. Came shake the Welcome rug, flinging
+the cheery word out into the summer sunshine like a bright
+greeting to the day. She liked to see her go to the screen door a
+dozen times in a morning, open it a crack and chase an imaginary
+fly from the sacred precincts within. She liked to see her come
+up the cellar steps into the side garden, appearing mysteriously
+as from the bowels of the earth, carrying a shining pan of milk
+in both hands, and disappearing through the beds of hollyhocks
+and sunflowers to the pig-pen or the hen-house.
+
+Rebecca was not fond of Mr. Came, and neither was Mrs. Baxter,
+nor Elisha, for that matter; in fact Mr. Came was rather a
+difficult person to grow fond of, with his fiery red beard, his
+freckled skin, and his gruff way of speaking; for there were no
+children in the brown house to smooth the creases from his
+forehead or the roughness from his voice.
+
+II
+
+The new minister's wife was sitting under the shade of her great
+maple early one morning, when she first saw the Little Prophet. A
+tiny figure came down the grass-grown road leading a cow by a
+rope. If it had been a small boy and a small cow, a middle-sized
+boy and an ordinary cow, or a grown man and a big cow, she might
+not have noticed them; but it was the combination of an
+infinitesimal boy and a huge cow that attracted her attention.
+She could not guess the child's years, she only knew that he was
+small for his age, whatever it was.
+
+The cow was a dark red beast with a crumpled horn, a white star
+on her forehead, and a large surprised sort of eye. She had, of
+course, two eyes, and both were surprised, but the left one had
+an added hint of amazement in it by virtue of a few white hairs
+lurking accidentally in the centre of the eyebrow.
+
+The boy had a thin sensitive face and curtly brown hair, short
+trousers patched on both knees, and a ragged straw hat on the
+back of his head. He pattered along behind the cow, sometimes
+holding the rope with both hands, and getting over the ground in
+a jerky way, as the animal left him no time to think of a smooth
+path for bare feet.
+
+The Came pasture was a good half-mile distant, and the cow seemed
+in no hurry to reach it; accordingly she forsook the road now and
+then, and rambled in the hollows, where the grass was sweeter to
+her way of thinking. She started on one of these exploring
+expeditions just as she passed the minister's great maple, and
+gave Mrs. Baxter time to call out to the little fellow, "Is that
+your cow?"
+
+Elisha blushed and smiled, and tried to speak modestly, but there
+was a quiver of pride in his voice as he answered suggestively:
+
+"It's--nearly my cow."
+
+"How is that?" asked Mrs. Baxter.
+
+"Why, Mr. Came says when I drive her twenty-nine more times to
+pasture thout her gettin' her foot over the rope or thout my
+bein' afraid, she's goin' to be my truly cow. Are you fraid of
+cows?"
+
+"Ye-e-es," Mrs. Baxter confessed, "I am, just a little. You see,
+I am nothing but a woman, and boys can't understand how we feel
+about cows."
+
+"I can! They're awful big things, aren't they?"
+
+"Perfectly enormous! I've always thought a cow coming towards you
+one of the biggest things in the world."
+
+"Yes; me, too. Don't let's think about it. Do they hook people so
+very often?"
+
+"No indeed, in fact one scarcely ever hears of such a case."
+
+"If they stepped on your bare foot they'd scrunch it, wouldn't
+they?"
+
+"Yes, but you are the driver; you mustn't let them do that; you
+are a free-will boy, and they are nothing but cows."
+
+"I know; but p'raps there is free-will cows, and if they just
+WOULD do it you couldn't help being scrunched, for you mustn't
+let go of the rope nor run, Mr. Came says.
+
+"No, of course that would never do."
+
+"Where you used to live did all the cows go down into the boggy
+places when you drove em to pasture, or did some walk in the
+road?"
+
+"There weren't any cows or any pastures where I used to live;
+that's what makes me so foolish; why does your cow need a rope?"
+
+"She don't like to go to pasture, Mr. Came says. Sometimes she'd
+druther stay to home, and so when she gets part way she turns
+round and comes backwards."
+
+"Dear me!" thought Mrs. Baxter, "what becomes of this boy-mite if
+the cow has a spell of going backwards?--Do you like to drive
+her?" she asked.
+
+"N-no, not erzackly; but you see, it'll be my cow if I drive her
+twenty-nine more times thout her gettin' her foot over the rope
+and thout my bein' afraid," and a beaming smile gave a transient
+brightness to his harassed little face. "Will she feed in the
+ditch much longer?" he asked. "Shall I say Hurrap'? That's what
+Mr. Came says-- HURRAP!' like that, and it means to hurry up."
+
+It was rather a feeble warning that he sounded and the cow fed on
+peacefully. The little fellow looked up at the minister's wife
+confidingly, and then glanced back at the farm to see if Cassius
+Came were watching the progress of events.
+
+"What shall we do next?" he asked.
+
+Mrs. Baxter delighted in that warm, cosy little 'WE;' it took her
+into the firm so pleasantly. She was a weak prop indeed when it
+came to cows, but all the courage in her soul rose to arms when
+Elisha said, "What shall WE do next?" She became alert,
+ingenious, strong, on the instant.
+
+"What is the cow's name?" she asked, sitting up straight in the
+swing-chair.
+
+"Buttercup; but she don't seem to know it very well. She ain't a
+mite like a buttercup."
+
+"Never mind; you must shout 'Buttercup!' at the top of your
+voice, and twitch the rope HARD; then I'll call, 'Hurrap!' with
+all my might at the same moment. And if she starts quickly we
+mustn't run nor seem frightened!"
+
+They did this; it worked to a charm, and Mrs. Baxter looked
+affectionately after her Little Prophet as the cow pulled him
+down Tory Hill.
+
+The lovely August days wore on. Rebecca was often at the
+parsonage and saw Elisha frequently, but Buttercup was seldom
+present at their interviews, as the boy now drove her to the
+pasture very early in the morning, the journey thither being one
+of considerable length and her method of reaching the goal being
+exceedingly roundabout.
+
+Mr. Came had pointed out the necessity of getting her into the
+pasture at least a few minutes before she had to be taken out
+again at night, and though Rebecca didn't like Mr. Came, she saw
+the common sense of this remark. Sometimes Mrs. Baxter and
+Rebecca caught a glimpse of the two at sundown, as they returned
+from the pasture to the twilight milking, Buttercup chewing her
+peaceful cud, her soft white bag of milk hanging full, her
+surprised eye rolling in its accustomed "fine frenzy." The
+frenzied roll did not mean anything, they used to assure Elisha;
+but if it didn't, it was an awful pity she had to do it, Rebecca
+thought; and Mrs. Baxter agreed. To have an expression of eye
+that meant murder, and yet to be a perfectly virtuous and
+well-meaning animal, this was a calamity indeed.
+
+Mrs. Baxter was looking at the sun one evening as it dropped like
+a ball of red fire into Wilkins's woods, when the Little Prophet
+passed.
+
+"It's the twenty-ninth night," he called joyously.
+
+"I am so glad," she answered, for she had often feared some
+accident might prevent his claiming the promised reward. "Then
+tomorrow Buttercup will be your own cow?"
+
+"I guess so. That's what Mr. Came said. He's off to Acreville
+now, but he'll be home tonight, and father's going to send my new
+hat by him. When Buttercup's my own cow I wish I could change her
+name and call her Red Rover, but p'r'aps her mother wouldn't like
+it. When she b'longs to me, mebbe I won't be so fraid of gettin'
+hooked and scrunched, because she'll know she's mine, and she'll
+go better. I haven't let her get snarled up in the rope one
+single time, and I don't show I'm afraid, do I?"
+
+"I should never suspect it for an instant," said Mrs. Baxter
+encouragingly. "I've often envied you your bold, brave look!"
+
+Elisha appeared distinctly pleased. "I haven't cried, either,
+when she's dragged me over the pasture bars and peeled my legs.
+Bill Petes's little brother Charlie says he ain't afraid of
+anything, not even bears. He says he would walk right up close
+and cuff em if they dared to yip; but I ain't like that! He ain't
+scared of elephants or tigers or lions either; he says they're
+all the same as frogs or chickens to him!"
+
+Rebecca told her Aunt Miranda that evening that it was the
+Prophet's twenty-ninth night, and that the big red cow was to be
+his on the morrow.
+
+"Well, I hope it'll turn out that way," she said. "But I ain't a
+mite sure that Cassius Came will give up that cow when it comes
+to the point. It won't be the first time he's tried to crawl out
+of a bargain with folks a good deal bigger than Lisha, for he's
+terrible close, Cassius is. To be sure he's stiff in his joints
+and he's glad enough to have a boy to take the cow to the pasture
+in summer time, but he always has hired help when it comes
+harvestin'. So Lisha'll be no use from this on; and I dare say
+the cow is Abner Simpson's anyway. If you want a walk tonight, I
+wish you'd go up there and ask Mis' Came if she'll lend me an'
+your Aunt Jane half her yeast-cake. Tell her we'll pay it back
+when we get ours a Saturday. Don't you want to take Thirza
+Meserve with you? She's alone as usual while Huldy's entertainin'
+beaux on the side porch. Don't stay too long at the parsonage!"
+
+III
+
+Rebecca was used to this sort of errand, for the whole village of
+Riverboro would sometimes be rocked to the very centre of its
+being by simultaneous desire for a yeast-cake. As the nearest
+repository was a mile and a half distant, as the yeast-cake was
+valued at two cents and wouldn't keep, as the demand was
+uncertain, being dependent entirely on a fluctuating desire for
+"riz bread," the storekeeper refused to order more than three
+yeast-cakes a day at his own risk. Sometimes they remained on his
+hands a dead loss; sometimes eight or ten persons would "hitch
+up" and drive from distant farms for the coveted article, only to
+be met with the flat, "No, I'm all out o' yeast-cake; Mis'
+Simmons took the last; mebbe you can borry half o' hern, she
+hain't much of a bread-eater."
+
+So Rebecca climbed the hills to Mrs. Came's, knowing that her
+daily bread depended on the successful issue of the call.
+
+Thirza was barefooted, and tough as her little feet were, the
+long walk over the stubble fields tired her. When they came
+within sight of the Came barn, she coaxed Rebecca to take a short
+cut through the turnips growing in long, beautifully weeded rows.
+
+"You know Mr. Came is awfully cross, Thirza, and can't bear
+anybody to tread on his crops or touch a tree or a bush that
+belongs to him. I'm kind of afraid, but come along and mind you
+step softly in between the rows and hold up your petticoat, so
+you can't possibly touch the turnip plants. I'll do the same.
+Skip along fast, because then we won't leave any deep
+footprints."
+
+The children passed safely and noiselessly along, their pleasure
+a trifle enhanced by the felt dangers of their progress. Rebecca
+knew that they were doing no harm, but that did not prevent her
+hoping to escape the gimlet eye of Mr. Came.
+
+As they neared the outer edge of the turnip patch they paused
+suddenly, petticoats in air.
+
+A great clump of elderberry bushes hid them from the barn, but
+from the other side of the clump came the sound of conversation:
+the timid voice of the Little Prophet and the gruff tones of
+Cassius Came.
+
+Rebecca was afraid to interrupt, and too honest to wish to
+overhear. She could only hope the man and the boy would pass on
+to the house as they talked, so she motioned to the paralyzed
+Thirza to take two more steps and stand with her behind the
+elderberry bushes. But no! In a moment they heard Mr. Came drag a
+stool over beside the grindstone as he said:
+
+"Well, now Elisha Jeremiah, we'll talk about the red cow. You say
+you've drove her a month, do ye? And the trade between us was
+that if you could drive her a month, without her getting the rope
+over her foot and without bein' afraid, you was to have her.
+That's straight, ain't it?"
+
+The Prophet's face burned with excitement, his gingham shirt rose
+and fell as if he were breathing hard, but he only nodded assent
+and said nothing.
+
+"Now," continued Mr. Came, "have you made out to keep the rope
+from under her feet?"
+
+"She ain't got t-t-tangled up one s-single time," said Elisha,
+stuttering in his excitement, but looking up with some courage
+from his bare toes, with which he was assiduously threading the
+grass.
+
+"So far, so good. Now bout bein' afraid. As you seem so certain
+of gettin' the cow, I suppose you hain't been a speck scared, hev
+you? Honor bright, now!"
+
+"I--I--not but just a little mite. I"--
+
+"Hold up a minute. Of course you didn't SAY you was afraid, and
+didn't SHOW you was afraid, and nobody knew you WAS afraid, but
+that ain't the way we fixed it up. You was to call the cow your'n
+if you could drive her to the pasture for a month without BEIN'
+afraid. Own up square now, hev you be'n afraid?"
+
+A long pause, then a faint, "Yes."
+
+"Where's your manners?"
+
+"I mean yes, sir."
+
+"How often? If it hain't be'n too many times mebbe I'll let ye
+off, though you're a reg'lar girl-boy, and'll be runnin' away
+from the cat bimeby. Has it be'n--twice?"
+
+"Yes," and the Little Prophet's voice was very faint now, and had
+a decided tear in it.
+
+"Yes what?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Has it be'n four times?"
+
+"Y-es, sir." More heaving of the gingham shirt.
+
+"Well, you AIR a thunderin' coward! How many times? Speak up
+now."
+
+More digging of the bare toes in the earth, and one premonitory
+tear drop stealing from under the downcast lids, then,--
+
+"A little, most every day, and you can keep the cow," wailed the
+Prophet, as he turned abruptly and fled behind the shed, where he
+flung himself into the green depths of a tansy bed, and gave
+himself up to unmanly sobs.
+
+Cassius Came gave a sort of shamefaced guffaw at the abrupt
+departure of the boy, and went on into the house, while Rebecca
+and Thirza made a stealthy circuit of the barn and a polite and
+circumspect entrance through the parsonage front gate.
+
+Rebecca told the minister's wife what she could remember of the
+interview between Cassius Came and Elisha Simpson, and
+tender-hearted Mrs. Baxter longed to seek and comfort her Little
+Prophet sobbing in the tansy bed, the brand of coward on his
+forehead, and what was much worse, the fear in his heart that he
+deserved it.
+
+Rebecca could hardly be prevented from bearding Mr. Came and
+openly espousing the cause of Elisha, for she was an impetuous,
+reckless, valiant creature when a weaker vessel was attacked or
+threatened unjustly.
+
+Mrs. Baxter acknowledged that Mr. Came had been true, in a way,
+to his word and bargain, but she confessed that she had never
+heard of so cruel and hard a bargain since the days of Shylock,
+and it was all the worse for being made with a child.
+
+Rebecca hurried home, her visit quite spoiled and her errand
+quite forgotten till she reached the brick house door, where she
+told her aunts, with her customary picturesqueness of speech,
+that she would rather eat buttermilk bread till she died than
+partake of food mixed with one of Mr. Came's yeast-cakes; that it
+would choke her, even in the shape of good raised bread.
+
+"That's all very fine, Rebecky," said her Aunt Miranda, who had a
+pin-prick for almost every bubble; "but don't forget there's two
+other mouths to feed in this house, and you might at least give
+your aunt and me the privilege of chokin' if we feel to want to!"
+
+IV
+
+Mrs. Baxter finally heard from Mrs. Came, through whom all
+information was sure to filter if you gave it time, that her
+husband despised a coward, that he considered Elisha a regular
+mother's-apron-string boy, and that he was "learnin'" him to be
+brave.
+
+Bill Peters, the hired man, now drove Buttercup to pasture,
+though whenever Mr. Came went to Moderation or Bonnie Eagle, as
+he often did, Mrs. Baxter noticed that Elisha took the hired
+man's place. She often joined him on these anxious expeditions,
+and, a like terror in both their souls, they attempted to train
+the red cow and give her some idea of obedience.
+
+"If she only wouldn't look at us that way we would get along real
+nicely with her, wouldn't we?" prattled the Prophet, straggling
+along by her side; "and she is a splendid cow; she gives
+twenty-one quarts a day, and Mr. Came says it's more'n half
+cream."
+
+The minister's wife assented to all this, thinking that if
+Buttercup would give up her habit of turning completely round in
+the road to roll her eyes and elevate her white-tipped eyebrow,
+she might indeed be an enjoyable companion; but in her present
+state of development her society was not agreeable, even did she
+give sixty-one quarts of milk a day. Furthermore, when Mrs.
+Baxter discovered that she never did any of these reprehensible
+things with Bill Peters, she began to believe cows more
+intelligent creatures than she had supposed them to be, and she
+was indignant to think Buttercup could count so confidently on
+the weakness of a small boy and a timid woman.
+
+One evening, when Buttercup was more than usually exasperating,
+Mrs. Baxter said to the Prophet, who was bracing himself to keep
+from being pulled into a wayside brook where Buttercup loved to
+dabble, "Elisha, do you know anything about the superiority of
+mind over matter?"
+
+No, he didn't, though it was not a fair time to ask the question,
+for he had sat down in the road to get a better purchase on the
+rope.
+
+"Well, it doesn't signify. What I mean is that we can die but
+once, and it is a glorious thing to die for a great principle.
+Give me that rope. I can pull like an ox in my present frame of
+mind. You run down on the opposite side of the brook, take that
+big stick wade right in--you are barefooted,--brandish the stick,
+and, if necessary, do more than brandish. I would go myself, but
+it is better she should recognize you as her master, and I am in
+as much danger as you are, anyway. She may try to hook you, of
+course, but you must keep waving the stick,--die brandishing,
+Prophet, that's the idea! She may turn and run for me, in which
+case I shall run too; but I shall die running, and the minister
+can bury us under our favorite sweet-apple tree!"
+
+The Prophet's soul was fired by the lovely lady's eloquence.
+Their spirits mounted simultaneously, and they were flushed with
+a splendid courage in which death looked a mean and paltry thing
+compared with vanquishing that cow. She had already stepped into
+the pool, but the Prophet waded in towards her, moving the alder
+branch menacingly. She looked up with the familiar roll of the
+eye that had done her such good service all summer, but she
+quailed beneath the stern justice and the new valor of the
+Prophet's gaze.
+
+In that moment perhaps she felt ashamed of the misery she had
+caused the helpless mite. At any rate, actuated by fear,
+surprise, or remorse, she turned and walked back into the road
+without a sign of passion or indignation, leaving the boy and the
+lady rather disappointed at their easy victory. To be prepared
+for a violent death and receive not even a scratch made them fear
+that they might possibly have overestimated the danger.
+
+They were better friends than ever after that, the young
+minister's wife and the forlorn little boy from Acreville, sent
+away from home he knew not why, unless it were that there was
+little to eat there and considerably more at the Cash Cames', as
+they were called in Edgewood. Cassius was familiarly known as
+Uncle Cash, partly because there was a disposition in Edgewood to
+abbreviate all Christian names, and partly because the old man
+paid cash, and expected to be paid cash, for everything.
+
+The late summer grew into autumn, and the minister's great maple
+flung a flaming bough of scarlet over Mrs. Baxter's swing-chair.
+Uncle Cash found Elisha very useful at picking up potatoes and
+apples, but the boy was going back to his family as soon as the
+harvesting was over.
+
+One Friday evening Mrs. Baxter and Rebecca, wrapped in shawls and
+"fascinators," were sitting on Mrs. Came's front steps enjoying
+the sunset. Rebecca was in a tremulous state of happiness, for
+she had come directly from the Seminary at Wareham to the
+parsonage, and as the minister was absent at a church conference,
+she was to stay the night with Mrs. Baxter and go with her to
+Portland next day.
+
+They were to go to the Islands, have ice cream for luncheon, ride
+on a horse-car, and walk by the Longfellow house, a programme
+that so unsettled Rebecca's never very steady mind that she
+radiated flashes and sparkles of joy, making Mrs. Baxter wonder
+if flesh could be translucent, enabling the spirit-fires within
+to shine through?
+
+Buttercup was being milked on the grassy slope near the shed
+door. As she walked to the barn, after giving up her pailfuls of
+yellow milk, she bent her neck and snatched a hasty bite from a
+pile of turnips lying temptingly near. In her haste she took more
+of a mouthful than would be considered good manners even among
+cows, and as she disappeared in the barn door they could see a
+forest of green tops hanging from her mouth, while she painfully
+attempted to grind up the mass of stolen material without
+allowing a single turnip to escape.
+
+It grew dark soon afterward and they went into the house to see
+Mrs. Came's new lamp lighted for the first time, to examine her
+last drawn-in rug (a wonderful achievement produced entirely from
+dyed flannel petticoats), and to hear the doctor's wife play "Oft
+in the Still Night," on the dulcimer.
+
+As they closed the sitting-room door opening on the piazza facing
+the barn, the women heard the cow coughing and said to one
+another: "Buttercup was too greedy, and now she has indigestion."
+
+Elisha always went to bed at sundown, and Uncle Cash had gone to
+the doctor's to have his hand dressed, for he had hurt it is some
+way in the threshing-machine. Bill Peters, the hired man, came in
+presently and asked for him, saying that the cow coughed more and
+more, and it must be that something was wrong, but he could not
+get her to open her mouth wide enough for him to see anything.
+"She'd up an' die ruther 'n obleege anybody, that tarnal, ugly
+cow would!" he said.
+
+When Uncle Cash had driven into the yard, he came in for a
+lantern, and went directly out to the barn. After a half-hour or
+so, in which the little party had forgotten the whole occurrence,
+he came in again.
+
+"I'm blamed if we ain't goin' to lose that cow," he said. "Come
+out, will ye, Hannah, and hold the lantern? I can't do anything
+with my right hand in a sling, and Bill is the stupidest critter
+in the country."
+
+Everybody went out to the barn accordingly, except the doctor's
+wife, who ran over to her house to see if her brother Moses had
+come home from Milltown, and could come and take a hand in the
+exercises.
+
+Buttercup was in a bad way; there was no doubt of it. Something,
+one of the turnips, presumably, had lodged in her throat, and
+would move neither way, despite her attempts to dislodge it. Her
+breathing was labored, and her eyes bloodshot from straining and
+choking. Once or twice they succeeded in getting her mouth partly
+open, but before they could fairly discover the cause of trouble
+she had wrested her head away.
+
+"I can see a little tuft of green sticking straight up in the
+middle," said Uncle Cash, while Bill Peters and Moses held a
+lantern on each side of Buttercup's head; "but, land! It's so far
+down, and such a mite of a thing, I couldn't git it, even if I
+could use my right hand. S'pose you try, Bill."
+
+Bill hemmed and hawed, and confessed he didn't care to try.
+Buttercup's grinders were of good size and excellent quality, and
+he had no fancy for leaving his hand within her jaws. He said he
+was no good at that kind of work, but that he would help Uncle
+Cash hold the cow's head; that was just as necessary, and
+considerable safer.
+
+Moses was more inclined to the service of humanity, and did his
+best, wrapping his wrist in a cloth, and making desperate but
+ineffectual dabs at the slippery green turnip-tops in the
+reluctantly opened throat. But the cow tossed her head and
+stamped her feet and switched her tail and wriggled from under
+Bill's hands, so that it seemed altogether impossible to reach
+the seat of the trouble.
+
+Uncle Cash was in despair, fuming and fretting the more because
+of his own crippled hand.
+
+"Hitch up, Bill,:" he said, "and, Hannah, you drive over to
+Milliken's Mills for the horse-doctor. I know we can git out that
+turnip if we can hit on the right tools and somebody to manage em
+right; but we've got to be quick about it or the critter'll choke
+to death, sure! Your hand's so clumsy, Mose, she thinks her
+time's come when she feels it in her mouth, and your fingers are
+so big you can't ketch holt o' that green stuff thout its
+slippin'!"
+
+"Mine ain't big; let me try," said a timid voice, and turning
+round, they saw little Elisha Simpson, his trousers pulled on
+over his night-shirt, his curly hair ruffled, his eyes vague with
+sleep.
+
+Uncle Cash gave a laugh of good-humored derision. "You--that's
+afraid to drive a cow to pasture? No, sir; you hain't got sand
+enough for this job, I guess!"
+
+Buttercup just then gave a worse cough than ever, and her eyes
+rolled in her head as if she were giving up the ghost.
+
+"I'd rather do it than see her choke to death!" cried the boy, in
+despair.
+
+"Then, by ginger, you can try it, sonny!" said Uncle Cash. "Now
+this time we'll tie her head up. Take it slow, and make a good
+job of it."
+
+Accordingly they pried poor Buttercup's jaws open to put a wooden
+gag between them, tied her head up, and kept her as still as they
+could while the women held the lanterns.
+
+"Now, sonny, strip up your sleeve and reach as fur down's you
+can! Wind your little fingers in among that green stuff stickin'
+up there that ain't hardly big enough to call green stuff, give
+it a twist, and pull for all you're worth. Land! What a skinny
+little pipe stem!"
+
+The Little Prophet had stripped up his sleeve. It was a slender
+thing, his arm; but he had driven the red cow all summer, borne
+her tantrums, protected her from the consequences of her own
+obstinacy, taking (as he thought) a future owner's pride in her
+splendid flow of milk--grown fond of her, in a word, and now she
+was choking to death. A skinny little pipe stem is capable of a
+deal at such a time, and only a slender hand and arm could have
+done the work.
+
+Elisha trembled with nervousness, but he made a dexterous and
+dashing entrance into the awful cavern of Buttercup's mouth;
+descended upon the tiny clump of green spills or spikes, wound
+his little fingers in among them as firmly as he could, and then
+gave a long, steady, determined pull with all the strength in
+this body. That was not so much in itself, to be sure, but he
+borrowed a good deal more from some reserve quarter, the location
+of which nobody knows anything about, but upon which everybody
+draws in time of need.
+
+Such a valiant pull you would never have expected of the Little
+Prophet. Such a pull it was that, to his own utter amazement, he
+suddenly found himself lying flat on his back on the barn floor
+with a very slippery something in his hand, and a fair-sized but
+rather dilapidated turnip at the end of it.
+
+"That's the business!" cried Moses.
+
+"I could 'a' done it as easy as nothin' if my arm had been a
+leetle mite smaller," said Bill Peters.
+
+"You're a trump, sonny!" exclaimed Uncle Cash, as he helped Moses
+untie Buttercup's head and took the gag out.
+
+"You're a trump, Lisha, and, by ginger, the cow's your'n; only
+don't you let your blessed pa drink none of her cream!"
+
+The welcome air rushed into Buttercup's lungs and cooled her
+parched, torn throat. She was pretty nearly spent, poor thing,
+and bent her head (rather gently for her) over the Little
+Prophet's shoulder as he threw his arms joyfully about her neck,
+and whispered, "You're my truly cow now, ain't you, Buttercup?"
+
+"Mrs. Baxter, dear," said Rebecca, as they walked home to the
+parsonage together under the young harvest moon; "there are all
+sorts of cowards, aren't there, and don't you think Elisha is one
+of the best kind."
+
+"I don't quite know what to think about cowards, Rebecca Rowena,"
+said the minister's wife hesitatingly. "The Little Prophet is the
+third coward I have known in my short life who turned out to be a
+hero when the real testing time came. Meanwhile the heroes
+themselves--or the ones that were taken for heroes--were always
+busy doing something, or being somewhere, else."
+
+
+
+Eighth Chronicle
+ABNER SIMPSON'S NEW LEAF
+
+Rebecca had now cut the bonds that bound her to the Riverboro
+district school, and had been for a week a full-fledged pupil at
+the Wareham Seminary, towards which goal she had been speeding
+ever since the memorable day when she rode into Riverboro on the
+top of Uncle Jerry Cobb's stagecoach, and told him that education
+was intended to be "the making of her."
+
+She went to and fro, with Emma Jane and the other Riverboro boys
+and girls, on the morning and evening trains that ran between the
+academy town and Milliken's Mills.
+
+The six days had passed like a dream!--a dream in which she sat
+in corners with her eyes cast down; flushed whenever she was
+addressed; stammered whenever she answered a question, and nearly
+died of heart failure when subjected to an examination of any
+sort. She delighted the committee when reading at sight from
+"King Lear," but somewhat discouraged them when she could not
+tell the capital of the United States. She admitted that her
+former teacher, Miss Dearborn, might have mentioned it, but if so
+she had not remembered it.
+
+In these first weeks among strangers she passed for nothing but
+an interesting-looking, timid, innocent, country child, never
+revealing, even to the far-seeing Emily Maxwell, a hint of her
+originality, facility, or power in any direction. Rebecca was
+fourteen, but so slight, and under the paralyzing new conditions
+so shy, that she would have been mistaken for twelve had it not
+been for her general advancement in the school curriculum.
+
+Growing up in the solitude of a remote farm house, transplanted
+to a tiny village where she lived with two elderly spinsters, she
+was still the veriest child in all but the practical duties and
+responsibilities of life; in those she had long been a woman.
+
+It was Saturday afternoon; her lessons for Monday were all
+learned and she burst into the brick house sitting-room with the
+flushed face and embarrassed mien that always foreshadowed a
+request. Requests were more commonly answered in the negative
+than in the affirmative at the brick house, a fact that accounted
+for the slight confusion in her demeanor.
+
+"Aunt Miranda," she began, "the fishman says that Clara Belle
+Simpson wants to see me very much, but Mrs. Fogg can't spare her
+long at a time, you know, on account of the baby being no better;
+but Clara Belle could walk a mile up, and I a mile down the road,
+and we could meet at the pink house half way. Then we could rest
+and talk an hour or so, and both be back in time for our suppers.
+I've fed the cat; she had no appetite, as it's only two o'clock
+and she had her dinner at noon, but she'll go back to her saucer,
+and it's off my mind. I could go down cellar now and bring up the
+cookies and the pie and doughnuts for supper before I start. Aunt
+Jane saw no objection; but we thought I'd better ask you so as to
+run no risks."
+
+Miranda Sawyer, who had been patiently waiting for the end of
+this speech, laid down her knitting and raised her eyes with a
+half-resigned expression that meant: Is there anything unusual in
+heaven or earth or the waters under the earth that this child
+does not want to do? Will she ever settle down to plain,
+comprehensible Sawyer ways, or will she to the end make these
+sudden and radical propositions, suggesting at every turn the
+irresponsible Randall ancestry?
+
+"You know well enough, Rebecca, that I don't like you to be
+intimate with Abner Simpson's young ones," she said decisively.
+"They ain't fit company for anybody that's got Sawyer blood in
+their veins, if it's ever so little. I don't know, I'm sure, how
+you're goin' to turn out! The fish peddler seems to be your best
+friend, without it's Abijah Flagg that you're everlastingly
+talkin' to lately. I should think you'd rather read some
+improvin' book than to be chatterin' with Squire Bean's
+chore-boy!"
+
+"He isn't always going to be a chore-boy," explained Rebecca,
+"and that's what we're considering. It's his career we talk
+about, and he hasn't got any father or mother to advise him.
+Besides, Clara Belle kind of belongs to the village now that she
+lives with Mrs. Fogg; and she was always the best behaved of all
+the girls, either in school or Sunday-school. Children can't help
+having fathers!"
+
+"Everybody says Abner is turning over a new leaf, and if so, the
+family'd ought to be encouraged every possible way," said Miss
+Jane, entering the room with her mending basket in hand.
+
+"If Abner Simpson is turnin' over a leaf, or anythin' else in
+creation, it's only to see what's on the under side!" remarked
+Miss Miranda promptly. "Don't talk to me about new leaves! You
+can't change that kind of a man; he is what he is, and you can't
+make him no different!"
+
+"The grace of God can do consid'rable," observed Jane piously.
+
+"I ain't sayin' but it can if it sets out, but it has to begin
+early and stay late on a man like Simpson."
+
+"Now, Mirandy, Abner ain't more'n forty! I don't know what the
+average age for repentance is in men-folks, but when you think of
+what an awful sight of em leaves it to their deathbeds, forty
+seems real kind of young. Not that I've heard Abner has
+experienced religion, but everybody's surprised at the good way
+he's conductin' this fall."
+
+"They'll be surprised the other way round when they come to miss
+their firewood and apples and potatoes again," affirmed Miranda.
+
+"Clara Belle don't seem to have inherited from her father," Jane
+ventured again timidly. "No wonder Mrs. Fogg sets such store by
+the girl. If it hadn't been for her, the baby would have been
+dead by now."
+
+"Perhaps tryin' to save it was interferin' with the Lord's will,"
+was Miranda's retort.
+
+"Folks can't stop to figure out just what's the Lord's will when
+a child has upset a kettle of scalding water on to himself," and
+as she spoke Jane darned more excitedly. "Mrs. Fogg knows well
+enough she hadn't ought to have left that baby alone in the
+kitchen with the stove, even if she did see Clara Belle comin'
+across lots. She'd ought to have waited before drivin' off; but
+of course she was afraid of missing the train, and she's too good
+a woman to be held accountable."
+
+"The minister's wife says Clara Belle is a real--I can't think of
+the word!" chimed in Rebecca. "What's the female of hero?
+Whatever it is, that's what Mrs. Baxter called her!"
+
+"Clara Belle's the female of Simpson; that's what she is," Miss
+Miranda asserted; "but she's been brought up to use her wits, and
+I ain't sayin' but she used em."
+
+"I should say she did!" exclaimed Miss Jane; "to put that
+screaming, suffering child in the baby-carriage and run all the
+way to the doctor's when there wasn't a soul on hand to advise
+her! Two or three more such actions would make the Simpson name
+sound consid'rable sweeter in this neighborhood."
+
+"Simpson will always sound like Simpson to me!" vouchsafed the
+elder sister, "but we've talked enough about em an' to spare. You
+can go along, Rebecca; but remember that a child is known by the
+company she keeps."
+
+"All right, Aunt Miranda; thank you!" cried Rebecca, leaping from
+the chair on which she had been twisting nervously for five
+minutes. "And how does this strike you? Would you be in favor of
+my taking Clara Belle a company-tart?"
+
+"Don't Mrs. Fogg feed the young one, now she's taken her right
+into the family?"
+
+"Oh, yes," Rebecca answered, "she has lovely things to eat, and
+Mrs. Fogg won't even let her drink skim milk; but I always feel
+that taking a present lets the person know you've been thinking
+about them and are extra glad to see them. Besides, unless we
+have company soon, those tarts will have to be eaten by the
+family, and a new batch made; you remember the one I had when I
+was rewarding myself last week? That was queer--but nice," she
+added hastily.
+
+"Mebbe you could think of something of your own you could give
+away without taking my tarts!" responded Miranda tersely; the
+joints of her armor having been pierced by the fatally keen
+tongue of her niece, who had insinuated that company-tarts lasted
+a long time in the brick house. This was a fact; indeed, the
+company-tart was so named, not from any idea that it would ever
+be eaten by guests, but because it was too good for every-day
+use.
+
+Rebecca's face crimsoned with shame that she had drifted into an
+impolite and, what was worse, an apparently ungrateful speech.
+
+"I didn't mean to say anything not nice, Aunt Miranda," she
+stammered. "Truly the tart was splendid, but not exactly like
+new, that's all. And oh! I know what I can take Clara Belle! A
+few chocolate drops out of the box Mr. Ladd gave me on my
+birthday."
+
+"You go down cellar and get that tart, same as I told you,"
+commanded Miranda, "and when you fill it don't uncover a new
+tumbler of jelly; there's some dried-apple preserves open that'll
+do. Wear your rubbers and your thick jacket. After runnin' all
+the way down there--for your legs never seem to be rigged for
+walkin' like other girls'--you'll set down on some damp stone or
+other and ketch your death o' cold, an' your Aunt Jane n' I'll be
+kep' up nights nursin' you and luggin' your meals upstairs to you
+on a waiter."
+
+ Here Miranda leaned her head against the back of her rocking
+chair, dropped her knitting and closed her eyes wearily, for when
+the immovable body is opposed by the irresistible force there is
+a certain amount of jar and disturbance involved in the
+operation.
+
+Rebecca moved toward the side door, shooting a questioning glance
+at Aunt Jane as she passed. The look was full of mysterious
+suggestion and was accompanied by an almost imperceptible
+gesture. Miss Jane knew that certain articles were kept in the
+entry closet, and by this time she had become sufficiently expert
+in telegraphy to know that Rebecca's unspoken query meant: "COULD
+YOU PERMIT THE HAT WITH THE RED WINGS, IT BEING SATURDAY, FINE
+SETTLED WEATHER, AND A PLEASURE EXCURSION?"
+
+These confidential requests, though fraught with embarrassment
+when Miranda was in the room, gave Jane much secret joy; there
+was something about them that stirred her spinster heart--they
+were so gay, so appealing, so un-Sawyer-, un-Riverboro-like. The
+longer Rebecca lived in the brick house the more her Aunt Jane
+marveled at the child. What made her so different from everybody
+else. Could it be that her graceless popinjay of a father,
+Lorenzo de Medici Randall, had bequeathed her some strange
+combination of gifts instead of fortune? Her eyes, her brows, the
+color of her lips, the shape of her face, as well as her ways and
+words, proclaimed her a changeling in the Sawyer tribe; but what
+an enchanting changeling; bringing wit and nonsense and color and
+delight into the gray monotony of the dragging years!
+
+There was frost in the air, but a bright cheery sun, as Rebecca
+walked decorously out of the brick house yard. Emma Jane Perkins
+was away over Sunday on a visit to a cousin in Moderation; Alice
+Robinson and Candace Milliken were having measles, and Riverboro
+was very quiet. Still, life was seldom anything but a gay
+adventure to Rebecca, and she started afresh every morning to its
+conquest. She was not exacting; the Asmodean feat of spinning a
+sand heap into twine was, poetically speaking, always in her
+power, so the mile walk to the pink-house gate, and the tryst
+with freckled, red-haired Clara Belle Simpson, whose face Miss
+Miranda said looked like a raw pie in a brick oven, these
+commonplace incidents were sufficiently exhilarating to brighten
+her eye and quicken her step.
+
+As the great bare horse-chestnut near the pink-house gate loomed
+into view, the red linsey-woolsey speck going down the road spied
+the blue linsey-woolsey speck coming up, and both specks flew
+over the intervening distance and, meeting, embraced each other
+ardently, somewhat to the injury of the company-tart.
+
+"Didn't it come out splendidly?" exclaimed Rebecca. "I was so
+afraid the fishman wouldn't tell you to start exactly at two, or
+that one of us would walk faster than the other; but we met at
+the very spot! It was a very uncommon idea, wasn't it? Almost
+romantic!"
+
+"And what do you think?" asked Clara Belle proudly. "Look at
+this! Mrs. Fogg lent me her watch to come home by!"
+
+"Oh, Clara Belle, how wonderful! Mrs. Fogg gets kinder and kinder
+to you, doesn't she? You're not homesick any more, are you?"
+
+"No-o; not really; only when I remember there's only little Susan
+to manage the twins; though they're getting on real well without
+me. But I kind of think, Rebecca, that I'm going to be given away
+to the Foggs for good."
+
+"Do you mean adopted?"
+
+"Yes; I think father's going to sign papers. You see we can't
+tell how many years it'll be before the poor baby outgrows its
+burns, and Mrs. Fogg'll never be the same again, and she must
+have somebody to help her."
+
+"You'll be their real daughter, then, won't you, Clara Belle? And
+Mr. Fogg is a deacon, and a selectman, and a road commissioner,
+and everything splendid."
+
+"Yes; I'll have board, and clothes, and school, and be named
+Fogg, and "(here her voice sank to an awed whisper) "the upper
+farm if I should ever get married; Miss Dearborn told me that
+herself, when she was persuading me not to mind being given
+away."
+
+"Clara Belle Simpson!" exclaimed Rebecca in a transport. "Who'd
+have thought you'd be a female hero and an heiress besides? It's
+just like a book story, and it happened in Riverboro. I'll make
+Uncle Jerry Cobb allow there CAN be Riverboro stories, you see if
+I don't."
+
+"Of course I know it's all right," Clara Belle replied soberly.
+"I'll have a good home and father can't keep us all; but it's
+kind of dreadful to be given away, like a piano or a horse and
+carriage!"
+
+Rebecca's hand went out sympathetically to Clara Belle's freckled
+paw. Suddenly her own face clouded and she whispered:
+
+"I'm not sure, Clara Belle, but I'm given away too--do you s'pose
+I am? Poor father left us in debt, you see. I thought I came away
+from Sunnybrook to get an education and then help pay off the
+mortgage; but mother doesn't say anything about my coming back,
+and our family's one of those too-big ones, you know, just like
+yours."
+
+"Did your mother sign papers to your aunts?'
+
+"If she did I never heard anything about it; but there's
+something pinned on to the mortgage that mother keeps in the
+drawer of the bookcase."
+
+"You'd know it if twas adoption papers; I guess you're just
+lent," Clara Belle said cheeringly. "I don't believe anybody'd
+ever give YOU away! And, oh! Rebecca, father's getting on so
+well! He works on Daly's farm where they raise lots of horses and
+cattle, too, and he breaks all the young colts and trains them,
+and swaps off the poor ones, and drives all over the country.
+Daly told Mr. Fogg he was splendid with stock, and father says
+it's just like play. He's sent home money three Saturday nights."
+
+"I'm so glad!" exclaimed Rebecca sympathetically. "Now your
+mother'll have a good time and a black silk dress, won't she?"
+
+"I don't know," sighed Clara Belle, and her voice was grave.
+"Ever since I can remember she's just washed and cried and cried
+and washed. Miss Dearborn has been spending her vacation up to
+Acreville, you know, and she came yesterday to board next door to
+Mrs. Fogg's. I heard them talking last night when I was getting
+the baby to sleep--I couldn't help it, they were so close-- and
+Miss Dearborn said mother doesn't like Acreville; she says nobody
+takes any notice of her, and they don't give her any more work.
+Mrs. Fogg said, well, they were dreadful stiff and particular up
+that way and they liked women to have wedding rings."
+
+"Hasn't your mother got a wedding ring?" asked Rebecca,
+astonished. "Why, I thought everybody HAD to have them, just as
+they do sofas and a kitchen stove!"
+
+"I never noticed she didn't have one, but when they spoke I
+remembered mother's hands washing and wringing, and she doesn't
+wear one, I know. She hasn't got any jewelry, not even a
+breast-pin."
+
+"Rebecca's tone was somewhat censorious, "your father's been so
+poor perhaps he couldn't afford breast-pins, but I should have
+thought he'd have given your mother a wedding ring when they were
+married; that's the time to do it, right at the very first."
+
+"They didn't have any real church dress-up wedding," explained
+Clara Belle extenuatingly. "You see the first mother, mine, had
+the big boys and me, and then she died when we were little. Then
+after a while this mother came to housekeep, and she stayed, and
+by and by she was Mrs. Simpson, and Susan and the twins and the
+baby are hers, and she and father didn't have time for a regular
+wedding in church. They don't have veils and bridesmaids and
+refreshments round here like Miss Dearborn's sister did."
+
+"Do they cost a great deal--wedding rings?" asked Rebecca
+thoughtfully. "They're solid gold, so I s'pose they do. If they
+were cheap we might buy one. I've got seventy-four cents saved
+up; how much have you?"
+
+"Fifty-three," Clara Belle responded, in a depressing tone; "and
+anyway there are no stores nearer than Milltown. We'd have to buy
+it secretly, for I wouldn't make father angry, or shame his
+pride, now he's got steady work; and mother would know I had
+spent all my savings."
+
+Rebecca looked nonplussed. "I declare," she said, "I think the
+Acreville people must be perfectly horrid not to call on your
+mother only because she hasn't got any jewelry. You wouldn't dare
+tell your father what Miss Dearborn heard, so he'd save up and
+buy the ring?"
+
+"No; I certainly would not!" and Clara Belle's lips closed
+tightly and decisively.
+
+Rebecca sat quietly for a few moments, then she exclaimed
+jubilantly: "I know where we could get it! From Mr. Aladdin, and
+then I needn't tell him who it's for! He's coming to stay over
+tomorrow with his aunt, and I'll ask him to buy a ring for us in
+Boston. I won't explain anything, you know; I'll just say I need
+a wedding ring."
+
+"That would be perfectly lovely," replied Clara Belle, a look of
+hope dawning in her eyes; "and we can think afterwards how to get
+it over to mother. Perhaps you could send it to father instead,
+but I wouldn't dare to do it myself. You won't tell anybody,
+Rebecca?"
+
+"Cross my heart!" Rebecca exclaimed dramatically; and then with a
+reproachful look, "you know I couldn't repeat a sacred secret
+like that! Shall we meet next Saturday afternoon, and I tell you
+what's happened?--Why, Clara Belle, isn't that Mr. Ladd watering
+his horse at the foot of the hill this very minute? It is; and
+he's driven up from Milltown stead of coming on the train from
+Boston to Edgewood. He's all alone, and I can ride home with him
+and ask him about the ring right away!"
+
+Clara Belle kissed Rebecca fervently, and started on her homeward
+walk, while Rebecca waited at the top of the long hill,
+fluttering her handkerchief as a signal.
+
+"Mr. Aladdin! Mr. Aladdin!" she cried, as the horse and wagon
+came nearer.
+
+Adam Ladd drew up quickly at the sound of the eager young voice.
+
+"Well, well; here is Rebecca Rowena fluttering along the highroad
+like a red-winged blackbird! Are you going to fly home, or drive
+with me?"
+
+Rebecca clambered into the carriage, laughing and blushing with
+delight at his nonsense and with joy at seeing him again.
+
+"Clara Belle and I were just talking about you this minute, and
+I'm so glad you came this way, for there's something very
+important to ask you about," she began, rather breathlessly.
+
+"No doubt," laughed Adam Ladd, who had become, in the course of
+his acquaintance with Rebecca, a sort of high court of appeals;
+"I hope the premium banquet lamp doesn't smoke as it grows
+older?"
+
+"Now, Mr. Aladdin, you WILL not remember nicely. Mr. Simpson
+swapped off the banquet lamp when he was moving the family to
+Acreville; it's not the lamp at all, but once, when you were here
+last time, you said you'd make up your mind what you were going
+to give me for Christmas."
+
+"Well," and "I do remember that much quite nicely."
+
+"Well, is it bought?"
+
+"No, I never buy Christmas presents before Thanksgiving."
+
+"Then, DEAR Mr. Aladdin, would you buy me something different,
+something that I want to give away, and buy it a little sooner
+than Christmas?"
+
+"That depends. I don't relish having my Christmas presents given
+away. I like to have them kept forever in little girls' bureau
+drawers, all wrapped in pink tissue paper; but explain the matter
+and perhaps I'll change my mind. What is it you want?"
+
+"I need a wedding ring dreadfully," said Rebecca, "but it's a
+sacred secret."
+
+Adam Ladd's eyes flashed with surprise and he smiled to himself
+with pleasure. Had he on his list of acquaintances, he asked
+himself, a person of any age or sex so altogether irresistible
+and unique as this child? Then he turned to face her with the
+merry teasing look that made him so delightful to young people.
+
+"I thought it was perfectly understood between us," he said,
+"that if you could ever contrive to grow up and I were willing to
+wait, that I was to ride up to the brick house on my snow
+white"--
+
+"Coal black," corrected Rebecca, with a sparkling eye and a
+warning finger.
+
+"Coal black charger; put a golden circlet on your lily white
+finger, draw you up behind me on my pillion"--
+
+"And Emma Jane, too," Rebecca interrupted.
+
+"I think I didn't mention Emma Jane," argued Mr. Aladdin. "Three
+on a pillion is very uncomfortable. I think Emma Jane leaps on
+the back of a prancing chestnut, and we all go off to my castle
+in the forest."
+
+"Emma Jane never leaps, and she'd be afraid of a prancing
+chestnut," objected Rebecca.
+
+"Then she shall have a gentle cream-colored pony; but now,
+without any explanation, you ask me to buy you a wedding ring,
+which shows plainly that you are planning to ride off on a snow
+white -- I mean coal black--charger with somebody else."
+
+Rebecca dimpled and laughed with joy at the nonsense. In her
+prosaic world no one but Adam Ladd played the game and answered
+the fool according to his folly. Nobody else talked delicious
+fairy-story twaddle but Mr. Aladdin.
+
+"The ring isn't for ME!" she explained carefully. "You know very
+well that Emma Jane nor I can't be married till we're through
+Quackenbos's Grammar, Greenleaf's Arithmetic, and big enough to
+wear long trails and run a sewing machine. The ring is for a
+friend."
+
+"Why doesn't the groom give it to his bride himself?"
+
+"Because he's poor and kind of thoughtless, and anyway she isn't
+a bride any more; she has three step and three other kind of
+children."
+
+Adam Ladd put the whip back in the socket thoughtfully, and then
+stooped to tuck in the rug over Rebecca's feet and his own. When
+he raised his head again he asked: "Why not tell me a little
+more, Rebecca? I'm safe!"
+
+Rebecca looked at him, feeling his wisdom and strength, and above
+all his sympathy. Then she said hesitatingly: "You remember I
+told you all about the Simpsons that day on your aunt's porch
+when you bought the soap because I told you how the family were
+always in trouble and how much they needed a banquet lamp? Mr.
+Simpson, Clara Belle's father, has always been very poor, and not
+always very good,--a little bit THIEVISH, you know--but oh, so
+pleasant and nice to talk to! And now he's turning over a new
+leaf. And everybody in Riverboro liked Mrs. Simpson when she came
+here a stranger, because they were sorry for her and she was so
+patient, and such a hard worker, and so kind to the children. But
+where she lives now, though they used to know her when she was a
+girl, they're not polite to her and don't give her scrubbing and
+washing; and Clara belle heard our teacher say to Mrs. Fogg that
+the Acreville people were stiff, and despised her because she
+didn't wear a wedding ring, like all the rest. And Clara Belle
+and I thought if they were so mean as that, we'd love to give her
+one, and then she'd be happier and have more work; and perhaps
+Mr. Simpson if he gets along better will buy her a breast-pin and
+earrings, and she'll be fitted out like the others. I know Mrs.
+Peter Meserve is looked up to by everybody in Edgewood on account
+of her gold bracelets and moss agate necklace."
+
+Adam turned again to meet the luminous, innocent eyes that glowed
+under the delicate brows and long lashes, feeling as he had more
+than once felt before, as if his worldly-wise, grown-up thoughts
+had been bathed in some purifying spring.
+
+"How shall you send the ring to Mrs. Simpson?" he asked, with
+interest.
+
+"We haven't settled yet; Clara Belle's afraid to do it, and
+thinks I could manage better. Will the ring cost much? Because,
+of course, if it does, I must ask Aunt Jane first. There are
+things I have to ask Aunt Miranda, and others that belong to Aunt
+Jane."
+
+"It costs the merest trifle. I'll buy one and bring it to you,
+and we'll consult about it; but I think as you're great friends
+with Mr. Simpson you'd better send it to him in a letter, letters
+being your strong point! It's a present a man ought to give his
+own wife, but it's worth trying, Rebecca. You and Clara Belle can
+manage it between you, and I'll stay in the background where
+nobody will see me."
+
+
+
+Ninth Chronicle
+THE GREEN ISLE
+
+Many a green isle needs must be
+In the deep sea of misery,
+Or the mariner, worn and wan,
+Never thus could voyage on
+Day and night and night and day,
+Drifting on his weary way.
+
+Shelley
+
+Meantime in these frosty autumn days life was crowded with events
+in the lonely Simpson house at Acreville.
+
+The tumble-down dwelling stood on the edge of Pliney's Pond; so
+called because old Colonel Richardson left his lands to be
+divided in five equal parts, each share to be chosen in turn by
+one of his five sons, Pliny, the eldest, having priority of
+choice.
+
+Pliny Richardson, having little taste for farming, and being
+ardently fond of fishing, rowing, and swimming, acted up to his
+reputation of being "a little mite odd," and took his whole
+twenty acres in water--hence Pliny's Pond.
+
+The eldest Simpson boy had been working on a farm in Cumberland
+County for two years. Samuel, generally dubbed "see-saw," had
+lately found a humble place in a shingle mill and was partially
+self-supporting. Clara Belle had been adopted by the Foggs; thus
+there were only three mouths to fill, the capacious ones of
+Elijah and Elisha, the twin boys, and of lisping, nine-year-old
+Susan, the capable houseworker and mother's assistant, for the
+baby had died during the summer; died of discouragement at having
+been born into a family unprovided with food or money or love or
+care, or even with desire for, or appreciation of, babies.
+
+There was no doubt that the erratic father of the house had
+turned over a new leaf. Exactly when he began, or how, or why, or
+how long he would continue the praiseworthy process,--in a word
+whether there would be more leaves turned as the months went
+on,--Mrs. Simpson did not know, and it is doubtful if any
+authority lower than that of Mr. Simpson's Maker could have
+decided the matter. He had stolen articles for swapping purposes
+for a long time, but had often avoided detection, and always
+escaped punishment until the last few years. Three fines imposed
+for small offenses were followed by several arrests and two
+imprisonments for brief periods, and he found himself wholly out
+of sympathy with the wages of sin. Sin itself he did not
+especially mind, but the wages thereof were decidedly unpleasant
+and irksome to him. He also minded very much the isolated
+position in the community which had lately become his; for he was
+a social being and would ALMOST rather not steal from a neighbor
+than have him find it out and cease intercourse! This feeling was
+working in him and rendering him unaccountably irritable and
+depressed when he took his daughter over to Riverboro at the time
+of the great flag-raising.
+
+There are seasons of refreshment, as well as seasons of drought,
+in the spiritual, as in the natural world, and in some way or
+other dews and rains of grace fell upon Abner Simpson's heart
+during that brief journey. Perhaps the giving away of a child
+that he could not support had made the soil of his heart a little
+softer and readier for planting than usual; but when he stole the
+new flag off Mrs. Peter Meserve's doorsteps, under the impression
+that the cotton-covered bundle contained freshly washed clothes,
+he unconsciously set certain forces in operation.
+
+It will be remembered that Rebecca saw an inch of red bunting
+peeping from the back of his wagon, and asked the pleasure of a
+drive with him. She was no daughter of the regiment, but she
+proposed to follow the flag. When she diplomatically requested
+the return of the sacred object which was to be the glory of the
+"raising" next day, and he thus discovered his mistake, he was
+furious with himself for having slipped into a disagreeable
+predicament; and later, when he unexpectedly faced a detachment
+of Riverboro society at the cross-roads, and met not only their
+wrath and scorn, but the reproachful, disappointed glance of
+Rebecca's eyes, he felt degraded as never before.
+
+The night at the Centre tavern did not help matters, nor the
+jolly patriotic meeting of the three villages at the flag-raising
+next morning. He would have enjoyed being at the head and front
+of the festive preparations, but as he had cut himself off from
+all such friendly gatherings, he intended at any rate to sit in
+his wagon on the very outskirts of the assembled crowd and see
+some of the gayety; for, heaven knows, he had little enough, he
+who loved talk, and song, and story, and laughter, and
+excitement.
+
+The flag was raised, the crowd cheered, the little girl to whom
+he had lied, the girl who was impersonating the State of Maine,
+was on the platform "speaking her piece," and he could just
+distinguish some of the words she was saying:
+
+"For it's your star, my star, all the stars together,
+That makes our country's flag so proud
+To float in the bright fall weather."
+
+Then suddenly there was a clarion voice cleaving the air, and he
+saw a tall man standing in the centre of the stage and heard him
+crying: "THREE CHEERS FOR THE GIRL THAT SAVED THE FLAG FROM THE
+HANDS OF THE ENEMY!"
+
+He was sore and bitter enough already; lonely, isolated enough;
+with no lot nor share in the honest community life; no hand to
+shake, no neighbor's meal to share; and this unexpected public
+arraignment smote him between the eyes. With resentment newly
+kindled, pride wounded, vanity bleeding, he flung a curse at the
+joyous throng and drove toward home, the home where he would find
+his ragged children and meet the timid eyes of a woman who had
+been the loyal partner of his poverty and disgraces.
+
+It is probable that even then his (extremely light) hand was
+already on the "new leaf." The angels, doubtless, were not
+especially proud of the matter and manner of his reformation, but
+I dare say they were glad to count him theirs on any terms, so
+difficult is the reformation of this blind and foolish world!
+They must have been; for they immediately flung into his very lap
+a profitable, and what is more to the point, an interesting and
+agreeable situation where money could be earned by doing the very
+things his nature craved. There were feats of daring to be
+performed in sight of admiring and applauding stable boys; the
+horses he loved were his companions; he was OBLIGED to "swap,"
+for Daly, his employer, counted on him to get rid of all
+undesirable stock; power and responsibility of a sort were given
+him freely, for Daly was no Puritan, and felt himself amply
+capable of managing any number of Simpsons; so here were
+numberless advantages within the man's grasp, and wages besides!
+
+Abner positively felt no temptation to steal; his soul expanded
+with pride, and the admiration and astonishment with which he
+regarded his virtuous present was only equaled by the disgust
+with which he contemplated his past; not so much a vicious past,
+in his own generous estimation of it, as a "thunderin' foolish"
+one.
+
+Mrs. Simpson took the same view of Abner's new leaf as the
+angels. She was thankful for even a brief season of honesty
+coupled with the Saturday night remittance; and if she still
+washed and cried and cried and washed, as Clara Belle had always
+seen her, it was either because of some hidden sorrow, or because
+her poor strength seemed all at once to have deserted her.
+
+Just when employment and good fortune had come to the
+step-children, and her own were better fed and clothed than ever
+before, the pain that had always lurked, constant but dull, near
+her tired heart, grew fierce and triumphantly strong; clutching
+her in its talons, biting, gnawing, worrying, leaving her each
+week with slighter powers of resistance. Still hope was in the
+air and a greater content than had ever been hers was in her
+eyes; a content that came near to happiness when the doctor
+ordered her to keep her bed and sent for Clara Belle. She could
+not wash any longer, but there was the ever new miracle of the
+Saturday night remittance for household expenses.
+
+"Is your pain bad today, mother," asked Clara Belle, who, only
+lately given away, was merely borrowed from Mrs. Fogg for what
+was thought to be a brief emergency.
+
+"Well, there, I can't hardly tell, Clara Belle," Mrs. Simpson
+replied, with a faint smile. "I can't seem to remember the pain
+these days without it's extra bad. The neighbors are so kind;
+Mrs. Little has sent me canned mustard greens, and Mrs. Benson
+chocolate ice cream and mince pie; there's the doctor's drops to
+make me sleep, and these blankets and that great box of eatables
+from Mr. Ladd; and you here to keep me comp'ny! I declare I'm
+kind o' dazed with comforts. I never expected to see sherry wine
+in this house. I ain't never drawed the cork; it does me good
+enough jest to look at Mr. Ladd's bottle settin' on the
+mantel-piece with the fire shinin' on the brown glass."
+
+Mr. Simpson had come to see his wife and had met the doctor just
+as he was leaving the house.
+
+"She looks awful bad to me. Is she goin' to pull through all
+right, same as the last time?" he asked the doctor nervously.
+
+"She's going to pull right through into the other world," the
+doctor answered bluntly; "and as there don't seem to be anybody
+else to take the bull by the horns, I'd advise you, having made
+the woman's life about as hard and miserable as you could, to try
+and help her to die easy!"
+
+Abner, surprised and crushed by the weight of this verbal
+chastisement, sat down on the doorstep, his head in his hands,
+and thought a while solemnly. Thought was not an operation he was
+wont to indulge in, and when he opened the gate a few minutes
+later and walked slowly toward the barn for his horse, he looked
+pale and unnerved. It is uncommonly startling, first to see
+yourself in another man's scornful eyes, and then, clearly, in
+your own.
+
+Two days later he came again, and this time it was decreed that
+he should find Parson Carll tying his piebald mare at the post.
+
+Clara Belle's quick eye had observed the minister as he alighted
+from his buggy, and, warning her mother, she hastily smoothed the
+bedclothes, arranged the medicine bottles, and swept the hearth.
+
+"Oh! Don't let him in!" wailed Mrs. Simpson, all of a flutter at
+the prospect of such a visitor. "Oh, dear! They must think over
+to the village that I'm dreadful sick, or the minister wouldn't
+never think of callin'! Don't let him in, Clara Belle! I'm afraid
+he will say hard words to me, or pray to me; and I ain't never
+been prayed to since I was a child! Is his wife with him?"
+
+"No; he's alone; but father's just drove up and is hitching at
+the shed door."
+
+"That's worse than all!" and Mrs. Simpson raised herself feebly
+on her pillows and clasped her hands in despair. "You mustn't let
+them two meet, Clara Belle, and you must send Mr. Carll away;
+your father wouldn't have a minister in the house, nor speak to
+one, for a thousand dollars!"
+
+"Be quiet, mother! Lie down! It'll be all right! You'll only fret
+yourself into a spell! The minister's just a good man; he won't
+say anything to frighten you. Father's talking with him real
+pleasant, and pointing the way to the front door."
+
+The parson knocked and was admitted by the excited Clara Belle,
+who ushered him tremblingly into the sickroom, and then betook
+herself to the kitchen with the children, as he gently requested
+her.
+
+Abner Simpson, left alone in the shed, fumbled in his vest pocket
+and took out an envelope which held a sheet of paper and a tiny
+packet wrapped in tissue paper. The letter had been read once
+before and ran as follows:
+
+Dear Mr. Simpson:
+
+This is a secret letter. I heard that the Acreville people
+weren't nice to Mrs. Simpson because she didn't have any wedding
+ring like all the others.
+
+I know you've always been poor, dear Mr. Simpson, and troubled
+with a large family like ours at the farm; but you really ought
+to have given Mrs. Simpson a ring when you were married to her,
+right at the very first; for then it would have been over and
+done with, as they are solid gold and last forever. And probably
+she wouldn't feel like asking you for one, because ladies are
+just like girls, only grown up, and I know I'd be ashamed to beg
+for jewelry when just board and clothes cost so much. So I send
+you a nice, new wedding ring to save your buying, thinking you
+might get Mrs. Simpson a bracelet or eardrops for Christmas. It
+did not cost me anything, as it was a secret present from a
+friend.
+
+I hear Mrs. Simpson is sick, and it would be a great comfort to
+her while she is in bed and has so much time to look at it. When
+I had the measles Emma Jane Perkins lent me her mother's garnet
+ring, and it helped me very much to put my wasted hand outside
+the bedclothes and see the ring sparkling.
+
+Please don't be angry with me, dear Mr. Simpson, because I like
+you so much and am so glad you are happy with the horses and
+colts; and I believe now perhaps you DID think the flag was a
+bundle of washing when you took it that day; so no more from your
+Trusted friend, Rebecca Rowena Randall.
+
+Simpson tore the letter slowly and quietly into fragments and
+scattered the bits on the woodpile, took off his hat, and
+smoothed his hair; pulled his mustaches thoughtfully,
+straightened his shoulders, and then, holding the tiny packet in
+the palm of his hand, he went round to the front door, and having
+entered the house stood outside the sickroom for an instant,
+turned the knob and walked softly in.
+
+Then at last the angels might have enjoyed a moment of unmixed
+joy, for in that brief walk from shed to house Abner Simpson;'s
+conscience waked to life and attained sufficient strength to
+prick and sting, to provoke remorse, to incite penitence, to do
+all sorts of divine and beautiful things it was meant for, but
+had never been allowed to do.
+
+Clara Belle went about the kitchen quietly, making preparations
+for the children's supper. She had left Riverboro in haste, as
+the change for the worse in Mrs. Simpson had been very sudden,
+but since she had come she had thought more than once of the
+wedding ring. She had wondered whether Mr. Ladd had bought it for
+Rebecca, and whether Rebecca would find means to send it to
+Acreville; but her cares had been so many and varied that the
+subject had now finally retired to the background of her mind.
+
+The hands of the clock crept on and she kept hushing the strident
+tones of Elijah and Elisha, opening and shutting the oven door to
+look at the corn bread, advising Susan as to her dishes, and
+marveling that the minister stayed so long.
+
+At last she heard a door open and close and saw the old parson
+come out, wiping his spectacles, and step into the buggy for his
+drive to the village.
+
+Then there was another period of suspense, during which the house
+was as silent as the grave, and presently her father came into
+the kitchen, greeted the twins and Susan, and said to Clara
+Belle: "Don't go in there yet!" jerking his thumb towards Mrs.
+Simpson's room; "she's all beat out and she's just droppin' off
+to sleep. I'll send some groceries up from the store as I go
+along. Is the doctor makin' a second call tonight?"
+
+"Yes; he'll be here pretty soon, now," Clara Belle answered,
+looking at the clock.
+
+"All right. I'll be here again tomorrow, soon as it's light, and
+if she ain't picked up any I'll send word back to Daly, and stop
+here with you for a spell till she's better."
+
+It was true; Mrs. Simpson was "all beat out." It had been a time
+of excitement and stress, and the poor, fluttered creature was
+dropping off into the strangest sleep--a sleep made up of waking
+dreams. The pain, that had encompassed her heart like a band of
+steel, lessened its cruel pressure, and finally left her so
+completely that she seemed to see it floating above her head;
+only that it looked no longer like a band of steel, but a golden
+circle.
+
+The frail bark in which she had sailed her life voyage had been
+rocking on a rough and tossing ocean, and now it floated, floated
+slowly into smoother waters.
+
+As long as she could remember, her boat had been flung about in
+storm and tempest, lashed by angry winds, borne against rocks,
+beaten, torn, buffeted. Now the waves had subsided; the sky was
+clear; the sea was warm and tranquil; the sunshine dried the
+tattered sails; the air was soft and balmy.
+
+And now, for sleep plays strange tricks, the bark disappeared
+from the dream, and it was she, herself, who was floating,
+floating farther and farther away; whither she neither knew nor
+cared; it was enough to be at rest, lulled by the lapping of the
+cool waves.
+
+Then there appeared a green isle rising from the sea; an isle so
+radiant and fairy-like that her famished eyes could hardly
+believe its reality; but it was real, for she sailed nearer and
+nearer to its shores, and at last her feet skimmed the shining
+sands and she floated through the air as disembodied spirits
+float, till she sank softly at the foot of a spreading tree.
+
+Then she saw the green isle was a flowering isle. Every shrub and
+bush was blooming; the trees were hung with rosy garlands, and
+even the earth was carpeted with tiny flowers. The rare
+fragrances, the bird songs, soft and musical, the ravishment of
+color, all bore down upon her swimming senses at once, taking
+them captive so completely that she remembered no past, was
+conscious of no present, looked forward to no future. She seemed
+to leave the body and the sad, heavy things of the body. The
+humming in her ears ceased, the light faded, the birds songs grew
+fainter and more distant, the golden circle of pain receded
+farther and farther until it was lost to view; even the flowering
+island gently drifted away, and all was peace and silence.
+
+It was time for the doctor now, and Clara Belle, too anxious to
+wait longer, softly turned the knob of her mother's door and
+entered the room. The glow of the open fire illumined the darkest
+side of the poor chamber. There were no trees near the house, and
+a full November moon streamed in at the unblinded, uncurtained
+windows, lighting up the bare interior--the unpainted floor, the
+gray plastered walls, and the white counterpane.
+
+Her mother lay quite still, her head turned and drooping a little
+on the pillow. Her left hand was folded softly up against her
+breast, the fingers of the right partly covering it, as if
+protecting something precious.
+
+Was it the moonlight that made the patient brow so white, and
+where were the lines of anxiety and pain? The face of the mother
+who had washed and cried and cried and washed was as radiant as
+if the closed eye were beholding heavenly visions.
+
+"Something must have cured her!" thought Clara Belle, awed and
+almost frightened by the whiteness and the silence.
+
+She tiptoed across the floor to look more closely at the still,
+smiling shape, and bending over it saw, under the shadow of the
+caressing right hand, a narrow gold band gleaming on the
+work-stained finger.
+
+"Oh, the ring came, after all!" she said in a glad whisper, "and
+perhaps it was that that made her better!"
+
+She put her hand on her mother's gently. A terrified shiver, a
+warning shudder, shook the girl from head to foot at the chilling
+touch. A dread presence she had never met before suddenly took
+shape. It filled the room; stifled the cry on her lips; froze her
+steps to the floor, stopped the beating of her heart.
+
+Just then the door opened.
+
+"Oh, doctor! Come quick!" she sobbed, stretching out her hand for
+help, and then covering her eyes. "Come close! Look at mother! Is
+she better--or is she dead?"
+
+The doctor put one hand on the shoulder of the shrinking child,
+and touched the woman with the other.
+
+"She is better!" he said gently, "and she is dead."
+
+
+
+Tenth Chronicle
+REBECCA'S REMINISCENCES
+
+Rebecca was sitting by the window in her room at the Wareham
+Female Seminary. She was alone, as her roommate, Emma Jane
+Perkins, was reciting Latin down below in some academic vault of
+the old brick building.
+
+A new and most ardent passion for the classics had been born in
+Emma Jane's hitherto unfertile brain, for Abijah Flagg, who was
+carrying off all the prizes at Limerick Academy, had written her
+a letter in Latin, a letter which she had been unable to
+translate for herself, even with the aid of a dictionary, and
+which she had been apparently unwilling that Rebecca, her bosom
+friend, confidant, and roommate, should render into English.
+
+An old-fashioned Female Seminary, with its allotment of one
+medium-sized room to two medium sized young females, gave small
+opportunities for privacy by night or day, for neither the double
+washstand, nor the thus far unimagined bathroom, nor even indeed
+the humble and serviceable screen, had been realized, in these
+dark ages of which I write. Accordingly, like the irrational
+ostrich, which defends itself by the simple process of not
+looking at its pursuers, Emma Jane had kept her Latin letter in
+her closed hand, in her pocket, or in her open book, flattering
+herself that no one had noticed her pleased bewilderment at its
+only half-imagined contents.
+
+All the fairies were not present at Rebecca's cradle. A goodly
+number of them telegraphed that they were previously engaged or
+unavoidably absent from town. The village of Temperance, Maine,
+where Rebecca first saw the light, was hardly a place on its own
+merits to attract large throngs of fairies. But one dear old
+personage who keeps her pocket full of Merry Leaves from the
+Laughing Tree, took a fancy to come to the little birthday party;
+and seeing so few of her sister-fairies present, she dowered the
+sleeping baby more richly than was her wont, because of its
+apparent lack of wealth in other directions. So the child grew,
+and the Merry Leaves from the Laughing Tree rustled where they
+hung from the hood of her cradle, and, being fairy leaves, when
+the cradle was given up they festooned themselves on the
+cribside, and later on blew themselves up to the ceilings at
+Sunnybook Farm and dangled there, making fun for everybody. They
+never withered, even at the brick house in Riverboro, where the
+air was particularly inimical to fairies, for Miss Miranda Sawyer
+would have scared any ordinary elf out of her seventeen senses.
+They followed Rebecca to Wareham, and during Abijah Flagg's Latin
+correspondence with Emma Jane they fluttered about that young
+person's head in such a manner that Rebecca was almost afraid
+that she would discover them herself, although this is something,
+as a matter of fact, that never does happen.
+
+A week had gone by since the Latin missive had been taken from
+the post-office by Emma Jane, and now, by means of much midnight
+oil-burning, by much cautious questioning of Miss Maxwell, by
+such scrutiny of the moods and tenses of Latin verbs as wellnigh
+destroyed her brain tissue, she had mastered its romantic
+message. If it was conventional in style, Emma Jane never
+suspected it. If some of the similes seemed to have been culled
+from the Latin poets, and some of the phrases built up from Latin
+exercises, Emma Jane was neither scholar nor critic; the similes,
+the phrases, the sentiments, when finally translated and written
+down in black-and-white English, made, in her opinion, the most
+convincing and heart-melting document ever sent through the
+mails:
+
+Mea cara Emma:
+
+Cur audeo scribere ad te epistulam? Es mihi dea! Semper es in mea
+anima. Iterum et iterum es cum me in somnis. Saepe video tuas
+capillos auri, tuos pulchros oculos similes caelo, tuas genas,
+quasi rubentes rosas in nive. Tua vox est dulcior quam cantus
+avium aut murmur rivuli in montibus.
+
+Cur sum ego tam miser et pauper et indignus, et tu tam dulcis et
+bona et nobilis?
+
+Si cogitabis de me ero beatus. Tu es sola puella quam amo, et
+semper eris. Alias puellas non amavi. Forte olim amabis me, sed
+sum indignus. Sine te sum miser, cum tu es prope mea vita omni
+est goddamn.
+
+Vale, carissima, carissima puella!
+
+De tuo fideli servo A.F.
+
+My dear Emma:
+
+Why dare I write to you a letter? You are to me a goddess! Always
+you are in my heart. Again and again you are with me in dreams.
+Often I see your locks of gold, your beautiful eyes like the sky,
+your cheeks, as red roses in snow. Your voice is sweeter than the
+singing of birds or the murmur of the stream in the mountains.
+
+Why am I so wretched and poor and unworthy, and you so sweet and
+good and noble?
+
+If you will think of me I shall be happy. You are the only girl
+that I love and always will be. Other girls I have not loved.
+Perhaps sometime you will love me, but I am unworthy. Without
+you, I am wretched, when you are near my life is all joy.
+
+Farewell, dearest, dearest girl!
+
+From your faithful slave A.F.
+
+Emma Jane knew the letter by heart in English. She even knew it
+in Latin, only a few days before a dead language to her, but now
+one filled with life and meaning. From beginning to end the
+epistle had the effect upon her as of an intoxicating elixir.
+Often, at morning prayers, or while eating her rice pudding at
+the noon dinner, or when sinking off to sleep at night, she heard
+a voice murmuring in her ear, "Vale, carissima, carissima
+puella!" As to the effect on her modest, countrified little heart
+of the phrases in which Abijah stated she was a goddess and he
+her faithful slave, that quite baffles description; for it lifted
+her bodily out of the scenes in which she moved, into a new,
+rosy, ethereal atmosphere in which even Rebecca had no place.
+
+Rebecca did not know this, fortunately; she only suspected, and
+waited for the day when Emma Jane would pour out her confidences,
+as she always did, and always would until the end of time. At the
+present moment she was busily employed in thinking about her own
+affairs. A shabby composition book with mottled board covers lay
+open on the table before her, and sometimes she wrote in it with
+feverish haste and absorption, and sometimes she rested her chin
+in the cup of her palm, and with the pencil poised in the other
+hand looked dreamily out on the village, its huddle of roofs and
+steeples all blurred into positive beauty by the fast-falling
+snowflakes.
+
+It was the middle of December and the friendly sky was softly
+dropping a great white mantle of peace and good-will over the
+little town, making all ready within and without for the Feast o'
+the Babe.
+
+The main street, that in summer was made dignified by its
+splendid avenue of shade trees, now ran quiet and white between
+rows of stalwart trunks, whose leafless branches were all hanging
+heavy under their dazzling burden.
+
+The path leading straight up the hill to the Academy was broken
+only by the feet of the hurrying, breathless boys and girls who
+ran up and down, carrying piles of books under their arms; books
+which they remembered so long as they were within the four walls
+of the recitation room, and which they eagerly forgot as soon as
+they met one another in the living, laughing world, going up and
+down the hill.
+
+"It's very becoming to the universe, snow is!" though Rebecca,
+looking out of the window dreamily. "Really there's little to
+choose between the world and heaven when a snowstorm is going on.
+I feel as if I ought to look at it every minute. I wish I could
+get over being greedy, but it still seems to me at sixteen as if
+there weren't waking hours enough in the day, and as if somehow I
+were pressed for time and continually losing something. How well
+I remember mother's story about me when I was four. It was at
+early breakfast on the farm, but I called all meals dinner' then,
+and when I had finished I folded up my bib and sighed: O, dear!
+Only two more dinners, play a while and go to bed!' This was at
+six in the morning--lamplight in the kitchen, snowlight outside!
+
+Powdery, powdery, powdery snow,
+Making things lovely wherever you go!
+Merciful, merciful, merciful snow,
+Masking the ugliness hidden below.
+
+Herbert made me promise to do a poem for the January 'Pilot,' but
+I mustn't take the snow as a subject; there has been too great
+competition among the older poets!" And with that she turned in
+her chair and began writing again in the shabby book, which was
+already three quarters filled with childish scribblings,
+sometimes in pencil, and sometimes in violet ink with carefully
+shaded capital letters.
+
+* * * * * * * * * * * *
+
+Squire Bean has had a sharp attack of rheumatism and Abijah Flagg
+came back from Limerick for a few days to nurse him. One morning
+the Burnham sisters from North Riverboro came over to spend the
+day with Aunt Miranda, and Abijah went down to put up their
+horse. ("'Commodatin' 'Bijah" was his pet name when we were all
+young.)
+
+He scaled the ladder to the barn chamber--the dear old ladder
+that used to be my safety valve!--and pitched down the last
+forkful of grandfather's hay that will ever be eaten by any
+visiting horse. They WILL be delighted to hear that it is all
+gone; they have grumbled at it for years and years.
+
+What should Abijah find at the bottom of the heap but my Thought
+Book, hidden there two or three years ago and forgotten!
+
+When I think of what it was to me, the place it filled in my
+life, the affection I lavished on it, I wonder that I could
+forget it, even in all the excitement of coming to Wareham to
+school. And that gives me "an uncommon thought" as I used to say!
+It is this: that when we finish building an air castle we seldom
+live in it after all; we sometimes even forget that we ever
+longed to! Perhaps we have gone so far as to begin another castle
+on a higher hilltop, and this is so beautiful,-- especially while
+we are building, and before we live in it!--that the first one
+has quite vanished from sight and mind, like the outgrown shell
+of the nautilus that he casts off on the shore and never looks at
+again. (At least I suppose he doesn't; but perhaps he takes one
+backward glance, half-smiling, half-serious, just as I am doing
+at my old Thought Book, and says, "WAS THAT MY SHELL! GOODNESS
+GRACIOUS! HOW DID I EVER SQUEEZE MYSELF INTO IT!"
+
+That bit about the nautilus sounds like an extract from a school
+theme, or a "Pilot" editorial, or a fragment of one of dear Miss
+Maxwell's lectures, but I think girls of sixteen are principally
+imitations of the people and things they love and admire; and
+between editing the "Pilot," writing out Virgil translations,
+searching for composition subjects, and studying rhetorical
+models, there is very little of the original Rebecca Rowena about
+me at the present moment; I am just a member of the graduating
+class in good and regular standing. We do our hair alike, dress
+alike as much as possible, eat and drink alike, talk alike,--I am
+not even sure that we do not think alike; and what will become of
+the poor world when we are all let loose upon it on the same day
+of June? Will life, real life, bring our true selves back to us?
+Will love and duty and sorrow and trouble and work finally wear
+off the "school stamp" that has been pressed upon all of us until
+we look like rows of shining copper cents fresh from the mint?
+
+Yet there must be a little difference between us somewhere, or
+why does Abijah Flagg write Latin letters to Emma Jane, instead
+of to me? There is one example on the other side of the
+argument,--Abijah Flagg. He stands out from all the rest of the
+boys like the Rock of Gibraltar in the geography pictures. Is it
+because he never went to school until he was sixteen? He almost
+died of longing to go, and the longing seemed to teach him more
+than going. He knew his letters, and could read simple things,
+but it was I who taught him what books really meant when I was
+eleven and he thirteen. We studied while he was husking corn or
+cutting potatoes for seed, or shelling beans in the Squire's
+barn. His beloved Emma Jane didn't teach him; her father wold not
+have let her be friends with a chore-boy! It was I who found him
+after milking-time, summer nights, suffering, yes dying, of Least
+Common Multiple and Greatest Common Divisor; I who struck the
+shackles from the slave and told him to skip it all and go on to
+something easier, like Fractions, Percentage, and Compound
+Interest, as I did myself. Oh! How he used to smell of the cows
+when I was correcting his sums on warm evenings, but I don't
+regret it, for he is now the joy of Limerick and the pride of
+Riverboro, and I suppose has forgotten the proper side on which
+to approach a cow if you wish to milk her. This now unserviceable
+knowledge is neatly inclosed in the outgrown shell he threw off
+two or three years ago. His gratitude to me knows no bounds,
+but--he writes Latin letters to Emma Jane! But as Mr. Perkins
+said about drowning the kittens (I now quote from myself at
+thirteen), "It is the way of the world and how things have to
+be!"
+
+Well, I have read the Thought Book all through, and when I want
+to make Mr. Aladdin laugh, I shall show him my composition on the
+relative values of punishment and reward as builders of
+character.
+
+I am not at all the same Rebecca today at sixteen that I was
+then, at twelve and thirteen. I hope, in getting rid of my
+failings, that I haven't scrubbed and rubbed so hard that I have
+taken the gloss off the poor little virtues that lay just
+alongside of the faults; for as I read the foolish doggerel and
+the funny, funny "Remerniscences," I see on the whole a nice,
+well-meaning, trusting, loving heedless little creature, that
+after all I'd rather build on than outgrow altogether, because
+she is Me; the Me that was made and born just a little different
+from all the rest of the babies in my birthday year.
+
+One thing is alike in the child and the girl. They both love to
+set thoughts down in black and white; to see how they look, how
+they sound, and how they make one feel when one reads them over.
+
+They both love the sound of beautiful sentences and the tinkle of
+rhyming words, and in fact, of the three great R's of life, they
+adore Reading and Riting, as much as they abhor "Rithmetic.
+
+The little girl in the old book is always thinking of what she is
+"going to be."
+
+Uncle Jerry Cobb spoiled me a good deal in this direction. I
+remember he said to everybody when I wrote my verses for the
+flag-raising: "Nary rung on the ladder o' fame but that child'll
+climb if you give her time!"--poor Uncle Jerry! He will be so
+disappointed in me as time goes on. And still he would think I
+have already climbed two rungs on the ladder, although it is only
+a little Wareham ladder, for I am one of the "Pilot" editors, the
+first "girl editor"--and I have taken a fifty dollar prize in
+composition and paid off the interest on a twelve hundred dollar
+mortgage with it.
+
+"High is the rank we now possess,
+But higher we shall rise;
+Though what we shall hereafter be
+Is hid from mortal eyes."
+
+This hymn was sung in meeting the Sunday after my election, and
+Mr. Aladdin was there that day and looked across the aisle and
+smiled at me. Then he sent me a sheet of paper from Boston the
+next morning with just one verse in the middle of it.
+
+"She made the cleverest people quite ashamed;
+And ev'n the good with inward envy groan,
+Finding themselves so very much exceeded,
+In their own way by all the things that she did."
+
+Miss Maxwell says it is Byron, and I wish I had thought of the
+last rhyme before Byron did; my rhymes are always so common.
+
+I am too busy doing, nowadays, to give very much thought to
+being. Mr. Aladdin was teasing me one day about what he calls my
+"cast-off careers."
+
+"What makes you aim at any mark in particular, Rebecca?" he
+asked, looking at Miss Maxwell and laughing. "Women never hit
+what they aim at, anyway; but if they shut their eyes and shoot
+in the air they generally find themselves in the bull's eye."
+
+I think one reason that I have always dreamed of what I should
+be, when I grew up, was, that even before father died mother
+worried about the mortgage on the farm, and what would become of
+us if it were foreclosed.
+
+It was hard on children to be brought up on a mortgage that way,
+but oh! it was harder still on poor dear mother, who had seven of
+us then to think of, and still has three at home to feed and
+clothe out of the farm.
+
+Aunt Jane says I am young for my age, Aunt Miranda is afraid that
+I will never really "grow up," Mr. Aladdin says that I don't know
+the world any better than the pearl inside of the oyster. They
+none of them know the old, old thoughts I have, some of them
+going back years and years; for they are never ones that I can
+speak about.
+
+I remember how we children used to admire father, he was so
+handsome and graceful and amusing, never cross like mother, or
+too busy to play with us. He never did any work at home because
+he had to keep his hands nice for playing the church melodeon, or
+the violin or piano for dances.
+
+Mother used to say: "Hannah and Rebecca, you must hull the
+strawberries, your father cannot help." "John, you must milk next
+year for I haven't the time and it would spoil your father's
+hands."
+
+All the other men in Temperance village wore calico, or flannel
+shirts, except on Sundays, but Father never wore any but white
+ones with starched bosoms. He was very particular about them and
+mother used to stitch and stitch on the pleats, and press and
+press the bosoms and collar and cuffs, sometimes late at night.
+
+Then she was tired and thin and gray, with no time to sew on new
+dresses for herself, and no time to wear them, because she was
+always taking care of the babies; and father was happy and well
+and handsome. But we children never thought much about it until
+once, after father had mortgaged the farm, there was going to be
+a sociable in Temperance village. Mother could not go as Jenny
+had whooping-cough and Mark had just broken his arm, and when she
+was tying father's necktie, the last thing before he started, he
+said: "I wish, Aurelia, that you cared a little about YOUR
+appearance and YOUR dress; it goes a long way with a man like
+me."
+
+Mother had finished the tie, and her hands dropped suddenly. I
+looked at her eyes and mouth while she looked at father and in a
+minute I was ever so old, with a grown-up ache in my heart. It
+has always stayed there, although I admired my handsome father
+and was proud of him because he was so talented; but now that I
+am older and have thought about things, my love for mother is
+different from what it used to be. Father was always the favorite
+when we were little, he was so interesting, and I wonder
+sometimes if we don't remember interesting people longer and
+better than we do those who are just good and patient. If so it
+seems very cruel.
+
+As I look back I see that Miss Ross, the artist who brought me my
+pink parasol from Paris, sowed the first seeds in me of ambition
+to do something special. Her life seemed so beautiful and so easy
+to a child. I had not been to school then, or read George
+Macdonald, so I did not know that "Ease is the lovely result of
+forgotten toil."
+
+Miss Ross sat out of doors and painted lovely things, and
+everybody said how wonderful they were, and bought them straight
+away; and she took care of a blind father and two brothers, and
+traveled wherever she wished. It comes back to me now, that
+summer when I was ten and Miss Ross painted me sitting by the
+mill-wheel while she talked to me of foreign countries!
+
+The other day Miss Maxwell read something from Browning's poems
+to the girls of her literature class. It was about David the
+shepherd boy who used to lie in his hollow watching one eagle
+"wheeling slow as in sleep." He used to wonder about the wide
+world that the eagle beheld, the eagle that was stretching his
+wings so far up in the blue, while he, the poor shepherd boy,
+could see only the "strip twixt the hill and the sky;" for he lay
+in a hollow.
+
+I told Mr. Baxter about it the next day, which was the Saturday
+before I joined the church. I asked him if it was wicked to long
+to see as much as the eagle saw?
+
+There was never anybody quite like Mr. Baxter. "Rebecca dear," he
+said, "it may be that you need not always lie in a hollow, as the
+shepherd boy did; but wherever you lie, that little strip you see
+'twixt the hill and the sky' is able to hold all of earth and all
+of heaven, if only you have the right sort of vision."
+
+I was a long, long time about "experiencing religion." I remember
+Sunday afternoons at the brick house the first winter after I
+went there; when I used to sit in the middle of the dining-room
+as I was bid, silent and still, with the big family Bible on my
+knees. Aunt Miranda had Baxter's "Saints' Rest," but her seat was
+by the window, and she at least could give a glance into the
+street now and then without being positively wicked.
+
+Aunt Jane used to read the "Pilgrim's Progress." The fire burned
+low; the tall clock ticked, ticked, so slowly and steadily, that
+the pictures swam before my eyes and I almost fell asleep.
+
+They thought by shutting everything else out that I should see
+God; but I didn't, not once. I was so homesick for Sunnybook and
+John that I could hardly learn my weekly hymns, especially the
+sad, long one beginning:
+
+"My thoughts on awful subjects roll,
+Damnation and the dead."
+
+It was brother John for whom I was chiefly homesick on Sunday
+afternoons, because at Sunnybrook Farm father was dead and mother
+was always busy, and Hannah never liked to talk.
+
+Then the next year the missionaries from Syria came to Riverboro;
+and at the meeting Mr. Burch saw me playing the melodeon, and
+thought I was grown up and a church member, and so he asked me to
+lead in prayer.
+
+I didn't dare to refuse, and when I prayed, which was just like
+thinking out loud, I found I could talk to God a great deal
+easier than to Aunt Miranda or even to Uncle Jerry Cobb. There
+were things I could say to Him that I could never say to anybody
+else, and saying them always made me happy and contented.
+
+When Mr. Baxter asked me last year about joining the church, I
+told him I was afraid I did not understand God quite well enough
+to be a real member.
+
+"So you don't quite understand God, Rebecca?' he asked, smiling.
+"Well, there is something else much more important, which is,
+that He understands you! He understands your feeble love, your
+longings, desires, hopes, faults, ambitions, crosses; and that,
+after all, is what counts! Of course you don't understand Him!
+You are overshadowed by His love, His power, His benignity, His
+wisdom; that is as it should be! Why, Rebecca, dear, if you could
+stand erect and unabashed in God's presence, as one who perfectly
+comprehended His nature or His purposes, it would be sacrilege!
+Don't be puzzled out of your blessed inheritance of faith, my
+child; accept God easily and naturally, just as He accepts you!"
+
+"God never puzzled me, Mr. Baxter; it isn't that," I said; "but
+the doctrines do worry me dreadfully."
+
+"Let them alone for the present," Mr Baxter said. "Anyway,
+Rebecca, you can never prove God; you can only find Him!"
+
+"Then do you think I have really experienced religion, Mr.
+Baxter?" I asked. "Am I the beginnings of a Christian?"
+
+"You are a dear child of the understanding God!" Mr. Baxter said;
+and I say it over to myself night and morning so that I can never
+forget it.
+
+* * * * * * * * * * * * *
+
+The year is nearly over and the next few months will be lived in
+the rush and whirlwind of work that comes before graduation. The
+bell for philosophy class will ring in ten minutes, and as I have
+been writing for nearly two hours, I must learn my lesson going
+up the Academy hill. It will not be the first time; it is a grand
+hill for learning! I suppose after fifty years or so the very
+ground has become soaked with knowledge, and every particle of
+air in the vicinity is crammed with useful information.
+
+I will put my book into my trunk (having no blessed haymow
+hereabouts) and take it out again,-- when shall I take it out
+again?
+
+After graduation perhaps I shall be too grown up and too busy to
+write in a Thought Book; but oh, if only something would happen
+worth putting down; something strange; something unusual;
+something different from the things that happen every day in
+Riverboro and Edgewood!
+
+Graduation will surely take me a little out of "the
+hollow,"--make me a little more like the soaring eagle, gazing at
+the whole wide world beneath him while he wheels "slow as in
+sleep." But whether or not, I'll try not to be a discontented
+shepherd, but remember what Mr. Baxter said, that the little
+strip that I see " twixt the hill and the sky" is able to hold
+all of earth and all of heaven, if only I have the eyes to see
+it. Rebecca Rowena Randall. Wareham Female Seminary, December
+187--.
+
+
+
+Eleventh Chronicle
+ABIJAH THE BRAVE AND THE FAIR EMMAJANE
+
+I
+
+"A warrior so bold and a maiden so bright
+Conversed as they sat on the green.
+They gazed at each other in tender delight.
+Alonzo the brave was the name of the knight,
+And the maid was the fair Imogene.
+
+"Alas!' said the youth, 'since tomorrow I go
+To fight in a far distant land,
+Your tears for my absence soon ceasing to flow,
+Some other will court you, and you will bestow
+On a wealthier suitor your hand.'
+
+'Oh, hush these suspicions!' Fair Imogene said,
+"So hurtful to love and to me!
+For if you be living, or if you be dead,
+I swear by the Virgin that none in your stead
+Shall the husband of Imogene be!'
+
+Ever since she was eight years old Rebecca had wished to be
+eighteen, but now that she was within a month of that
+awe-inspiring and long-desired age she wondered if, after all, it
+was destined to be a turning point in her quiet existence. Her
+eleventh year, for instance, had been a real turning-point, since
+it was then that she had left Sunnybrook Farm and come to her
+maiden aunts in Riverboro. Aurelia Randall may have been doubtful
+as to the effect upon her spinster sisters of the irrepressible
+child, but she was hopeful from the first that the larger
+opportunities of Riverboro would be the "making" of Rebecca
+herself.
+
+The next turning-point was her fourteenth year, when she left the
+district school for the Wareham Female Seminary, then in the
+hey-day of its local fame. Graduation (next to marriage, perhaps,
+the most thrilling episode in the life of a little country girl)
+happened at seventeen, and not long afterward her Aunt Miranda's
+death, sudden and unexpected, changed not only all the outward
+activities and conditions of her life, but played its own part in
+her development.
+
+The brick house looked very homelike and pleasant on a June
+morning nowadays with children's faces smiling at the windows and
+youthful footsteps sounding through the halls; and the brass
+knocker on the red-painted front door might have remembered
+Rebecca's prayer of a year before, when she leaned against its
+sun-warmed brightness and whispered: "God bless Aunt Miranda; God
+bless the brick house that was; God bless the brick house that's
+going to be!"
+
+All the doors and blinds were open to the sun and air as they had
+never been in Miss Miranda Sawyer's time. The hollyhock bed that
+had been her chief pride was never neglected, and Rebecca liked
+to hear the neighbors say that there was no such row of beautiful
+plants and no such variety of beautiful colors in Riverboro as
+those that climbed up and peeped in at the kitchen windows where
+old Miss Miranda used to sit.
+
+Now that the place was her very own Rebecca felt a passion of
+pride in its smoothly mown fields, its carefully thinned-out
+woods, its blooming garden spots, and its well-weeded vegetable
+patch; felt, too whenever she looked at any part of it, a passion
+of gratitude to the stern old aunt who had looked upon her as the
+future head of the family, as well as a passion of desire to be
+worthy of that trust.
+
+It had been a very difficult year for a girl fresh from school:
+the death of her aunt, the nursing of Miss Jane, prematurely
+enfeebled by the shock, the removal of her own invalid mother and
+the rest of the little family from Sunnybrook Farm. But all had
+gone smoothly; and when once the Randall fortunes had taken an
+upward turn nothing seemed able to stop their intrepid ascent.
+
+Aurelia Randall renewed her youth in the companionship of her
+sister Jane and the comforts by which her children were
+surrounded; the mortgage was no longer a daily terror, for
+Sunnybrook had been sold to the new railroad; Hannah, now Mrs.
+Will Melville, was happily situated; John, at last, was studying
+medicine; Mark, the boisterous and unlucky brother, had broken no
+bones for several months; while Jenny and Fanny were doing well
+at the district school under Miss Libby Moses, Miss Dearborn's
+successor.
+
+"I don't feel very safe," thought Rebecca, remembering all these
+unaccustomed mercies as she sat on the front doorsteps, with her
+tatting shuttle flying in and out of the fine cotton like a
+hummingbird. "It's just like one of those too beautiful July days
+that winds up with a thundershower before night! Still, when you
+remember that the Randalls never had anything but thunder and
+lightning, rain, snow, and hail, in their family history for
+twelve or fifteen years, perhaps it is only natural that they
+should enjoy a little spell of settled weather. If it really
+turns out to BE settled, now that Aunt Jane and mother are strong
+again I must be looking up one of what Mr. Aladdin calls my
+cast-off careers."--There comes Emma Jane Perkins through her
+front gate; she will be here in a minute, and I'll tease her!"
+and Rebecca ran in the door and seated herself at the old piano
+that stood between the open windows in the parlor.
+
+Peeping from behind the muslin curtains, she waited until Emma
+Jane was on the very threshold and then began singing her version
+of an old ballad, made that morning while she was dressing. The
+ballad was a great favorite of hers, and she counted on doing
+telling execution with it in the present instance by the simple
+subterfuge of removing the original hero and heroine, Alonzo and
+Imogene, and substituting Abijah the Brave and the Fair Emmajane,
+leaving the circumstances in the first three verses unaltered,
+because in truth they seemed to require no alteration.
+
+Her high, clear voice, quivering with merriment, floated through
+the windows into the still summer air:
+
+"'A warrior so bold and a maiden so bright
+Conversed as they sat on the green.
+They gazed at each other in tender delight.
+Abijah the Brave was the name of the knight,
+And the maid was the Fair Emmajane.'"
+
+"Rebecca Randall, stop! Somebody'll hear you!"
+
+"No, they won't--they're making jelly in the kitchen, miles
+away."
+
+"'Alas!' said the youth, since tomorrow I go
+To fight in a far distant land,
+Your tears for my absence soon ceasing to flow,
+Some other will court you, and you will bestow
+On a wealthier suitor your hand.'"
+
+"Rebecca, you can't THINK how your voice carries! I believe
+mother can hear it over to my house!"
+
+"Then, if she can, I must sing the third verse, just to clear
+your reputation from the cloud cast upon it in the second,"
+laughed her tormentor, going on with the song:
+
+"'Oh, hush these suspicions!' Fair Emmajane said,
+'So hurtful to love and to me! 
+For if you be living, or if you be dead,
+I swear, my Abijah, that none in your stead,
+Shall the husband of Emmajane be!'"
+
+After ending the third verse Rebecca wheeled around on the piano
+stool and confronted her friend, who was carefully closing the
+parlor windows:--
+
+"Emma Jane Perkins, it is an ordinary Thursday afternoon at four
+o'clock and you have on your new blue barege, although there is
+not even a church sociable in prospect this evening. What does
+this mean? Is Abijah the Brave coming at last?"
+
+"I don't know certainly, but it will be some time this week."
+
+"And of course you'd rather be dressed up and not seen, than seen
+when not dressed up. Right, my Fair Emmajane; so would I. Not
+that it makes any difference to poor me, wearing my fourth best
+black and white calico and expecting nobody.
+
+"Oh, well, YOU! There's something inside of you that does instead
+of pretty dresses," cried Emma Jane, whose adoration of her
+friend had never altered nor lessened since they met at the age
+of eleven. "You know you are as different from anybody else in
+Riverboro as a princess in a fairy story. Libby Moses says they
+would notice you in Lowell, Massachusetts!"
+
+"Would they? I wonder," speculated Rebecca, rendered almost
+speechless by this tribute to her charms. "Well, if Lowell,
+Massachusetts, could see me, or if you could see me, in my new
+lavender muslin with the violet sash, it would die of envy, and
+so would you!"
+
+"If I had been going to be envious of you, Rebecca, I should have
+died years ago. Come, let's go out on the steps where it's shady
+and cool."
+
+"And where we can see the Perkins front gate and the road running
+both ways," teased Rebecca, and then, softening her tone, she
+said: "How is it getting on, Emmy? Tell me what's happened since
+I've been in Brunswick."
+
+"Nothing much," confessed Emma Jane. "He writes to me, but I
+don't write to him, you know. I don't dare to, till he comes to
+the house."
+
+"Are his letters still in Latin?" asked Rebecca, with a twinkling
+eye.
+
+"Oh, no! Not now, because--well, because there are things you
+can't seem to write in Latin. I saw him at the Masonic picnic in
+the grove, but he won't say anything REAL to me till he gets more
+pay and dares to speak to mother and father. He IS brave in all
+other ways, but I ain't sure he'll ever have the courage for
+that, he's so afraid of them and always has been. Just remember
+what's in his mind all the time, Rebecca, that my folks know all
+about what his mother was, and how he was born on the poor-farm.
+Not that I care; look how he's educated and worked himself up! I
+think he's perfectly elegant, and I shouldn't mind if he had been
+born in the bulrushes, like Moses."
+
+Emma Jane's every-day vocabulary was pretty much what it had been
+before she went to the expensive Wareham Female Seminary. She had
+acquired a certain amount of information concerning the art of
+speech, but in moments of strong feeling she lapsed into the
+vernacular. She grew slowly in all directions, did Emma Jane,
+and, to use Rebecca's favorite nautilus figure, she had left
+comparatively few outgrown shells on the shores of "life's
+unresting sea."
+
+"Moses wasn't born in the bulrushes, Emmy dear," corrected
+Rebecca laughingly. "Pharaoh's daughter found him there. It
+wasn't quite as romantic a scene--Squire Bean's wife taking
+little Abijah Flagg from the poorhouse when his girl-mother died,
+but, oh, I think Abijah's splendid! Mr. Ladd says Riverboro'll be
+proud of him yet, and I shouldn't wonder, Emmy dear, if you had a
+three-story house with a cupola on it, some day; and sitting down
+at your mahogany desk inlaid with garnets, you will write notes
+stating that Mrs. Abijah Flagg requests the pleasure of Miss
+Rebecca Randall's company to tea, and that the Hon. Abijah Flagg,
+M.C., will call for her on his way from the station with a span
+of horses and the turquoise carryall!"
+
+Emma Jane laughed at the ridiculous prophecy, and answered: "If I
+ever write the invitation I shan't be addressing it to Miss
+Randall, I'm sure of that; it'll be to Mrs.-----"
+
+"Don't!" cried Rebecca impetuously, changing color and putting
+her hand over Emma Jane's lips. "If you won't I'll stop teasing.
+I couldn't bear a name put to anything, I couldn't, Emmy dear! I
+wouldn't tease you, either, if it weren't something we've both
+known ever so long--something that you have always consulted me
+about of your own accord, and Abijah too."
+
+"Don't get excited," replied Emma Jane, "I was only going to say
+you were sure to be Mrs. Somebody in course of time."
+
+"Oh," said Rebecca with a relieved sigh, her color coming back;
+"if that's all you meant, just nonsense; but I thought, I
+thought--I don't really know just what I thought!"
+
+"I think you thought something you didn't want me to think you
+thought," said Emma Jane with unusual felicity.
+
+"No, it's not that; but somehow, today, I have been remembering
+things. Perhaps it was because at breakfast Aunt Jane and mother
+reminded me of my coming birthday and said that Squire Bean would
+give me the deed of the brick house. That made me feel very old
+and responsible; and when I came out on the steps this afternoon
+it was just as if pictures of the old years were moving up and
+down the road. Everything is so beautiful today! Doesn't the sky
+look as if it had been dyed blue and the fields painted pink and
+green and yellow this very minute?"
+
+"It's a perfectly elegant day!" responded Emma Jane with a sigh.
+"If only my mind was at rest! That's the difference between being
+young and grown-up. We never used to think and worry."
+
+"Indeed we didn't!" Look, Emmy, there's the very spot where Uncle
+Jerry Cobb stopped the stage and I stepped out with my pink
+parasol and my bouquet of purple lilacs, and you were watching me
+from your bedroom window and wondering what I had in mother's
+little hair trunk strapped on behind. Poor Aunt Miranda didn't
+love me at first sight, and oh, how cross she was the first two
+years! But now every hard thought I ever had comes back to me and
+cuts like a knife!"
+
+"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 excitement.
+
+"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 crochet needle 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 love
+letter 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 feeling for Abijah! Upon my word, Emma Jane," she
+cried with a sudden change of tone, "if I had suspected for an
+instant that Abijah the Brave had that Latin letter in him I
+should have tried to get him to write it to me; and then it would
+be I who would sit down at my mahogany desk and ask Miss Perkins
+to come to tea with Mrs. Flagg."
+
+Emma Jane paled and shuddered openly. "I speak as a church
+member, Rebecca," she said, "when I tell you I've always thanked
+the Lord that you never looked at Abijah Flagg and he never
+looked at you. If either of you ever had, there never would have
+been a chance for me, and I've always known it!"
+
+II
+
+The romance alluded to in the foregoing chapter had been going
+on, so far as Abijah Flagg's part of it was concerned, for many
+years, his affection dating back in his own mind to the first
+moment that he saw Emma Jane Perkins at the age of nine.
+
+Emma Jane had shown no sign of reciprocating his attachment until
+the last three years, when the evolution of the chore-boy into
+the budding scholar and man of affairs had inflamed even her
+somewhat dull imagination.
+
+Squire Bean's wife had taken Abijah away from the poorhouse,
+thinking that she could make him of some little use in her home.
+Abbie Flagg, the mother, was neither wise nor beautiful; it is to
+be feared that she was not even good, and her lack of all these
+desirable qualities, particularly the last one, had been
+impressed upon the child ever since he could remember. People
+seemed to blame him for being in the world at all; this world
+that had not expected him nor desired him, nor made any provision
+for him. The great battle-axe of poorhouse opinion was forever
+leveled at the mere little atom of innocent transgression, until
+he grew sad and shy, clumsy, stiff, and self-conscious. He had an
+indomitable craving for love in his heart and had never received
+a caress in his life.
+
+He was more contented when he came to Squire Bean's house. The
+first year he could only pick up chips, carry pine wood into the
+kitchen, go to the post-office, run errands, drive the cows, and
+feed the hens, but every day he grew more and more useful.
+
+His only friend was little Jim Watson, the storekeeper's son, and
+they were inseparable companions whenever Abijah had time for
+play.
+
+One never-to-be-forgotten July day a new family moved into the
+white cottage between Squire Bean's house and the Sawyers'. Mr.
+Perkins had sold his farm beyond North Riverboro and had
+established a blacksmith's shop in the village, at the Edgewood
+end of the bridge. This fact was of no special interest to the
+nine-year-old Abijah, but what really was of importance, was the
+appearance of a pretty little girl of seven in the front yard; a
+pretty little fat doll of a girl, with bright fuzzy hair, pink
+cheeks, blue eyes, and a smile of almost bewildering continuity.
+Another might have criticised it as having the air of being glued
+on, but Abijah was already in the toils and never wished it to
+move.
+
+The next day being the glorious Fourth and a holiday, Jimmy
+Watson came over like David, to visit his favorite Jonathan. His
+Jonathan met him at the top of the hill, pleaded a pressing
+engagement, curtly sent him home, and then went back to play with
+his new idol, with whom he had already scraped acquaintance, her
+parents being exceedingly busy settling the new house.
+
+After the noon dinner Jimmy again yearned to resume friendly
+relations, and, forgetting his rebuff, again toiled up the hill
+and appeared unexpectedly at no great distance from the Perkins
+premises, wearing the broad and beaming smile of one who is
+confident of welcome.
+
+His morning call had been officious and unpleasant and
+unsolicited, but his afternoon visit could only be regarded as
+impudent, audacious, and positively dangerous; for Abijah and
+Emma Jane were cosily playing house, the game of all others in
+which it is particularly desirable to have two and not three
+participants.
+
+At that moment the nature of Abijah changed, at once and forever.
+Without a pang of conscience he flew over the intervening patch
+of ground between himself and his dreaded rival, and seizing
+small stones and larger ones, as haste and fury demanded, flung
+them at Jimmy Watson, and flung and flung, till the bewildered
+boy ran down the hill howling. Then he made a "stickin'" door to
+the play-house, put the awed Emma Jane inside and strode up and
+down in front of the edifice like an Indian brave. At such an
+early age does woman become a distracting and disturbing
+influence in man's career!
+
+Time went on, and so did the rivalry between the poorhouse boy
+and the son of wealth, but Abijah's chances of friendship with
+Emma Jane grew fewer and fewer as they both grew older. He did
+not go to school, so there was no meeting-ground there, but
+sometimes, when he saw the knot of boys and girls returning in
+the afternoon, he would invite Elijah and Elisha, the Simpson
+twins, to visit him, and take pains to be in Squire Bean's front
+yard, doing something that might impress his inamorata as she
+passed the premises.
+
+As Jimmy Watson was particularly small and fragile, Abijah
+generally chose feats of strength and skill for these prearranged
+performances.
+
+Sometimes he would throw his hat up into the elm trees as far as
+he could and, when it came down, catch it on his head. Sometimes
+he would walk on his hands, with his legs wriggling in the air,
+or turn a double somersault, or jump incredible distances across
+the extended arms of the Simpson twins; and his bosom swelled
+with pride when the girls exclaimed, "Isn't he splendid!"
+although he often heard his rival murmur scornfully, "SMARTY
+ALECK!"--a scathing allusion of unknown origin.
+
+Squire Bean, although he did not send the boy to school
+(thinking, as he was of no possible importance in the universe,
+it was not worth while bothering about his education), finally
+became impressed with his ability, lent him books, and gave him
+more time to study. These were all he needed, books and time, and
+when there was an especially hard knot to untie, Rebecca, as the
+star scholar of the neighborhood, helped him to untie it.
+
+When he was sixteen he longed to go away from Riverboro and be
+something better than a chore boy. Squire Bean had been giving
+him small wages for three or four years, and when the time of
+parting came presented him with a ten-dollar bill and a silver
+watch.
+
+Many a time had he discussed his future with Rebecca and asked
+her opinion.
+
+This was not strange, for there was nothing in human form that
+she could not and did not converse with, easily and delightedly.
+She had ideas on every conceivable subject, and would have
+cheerfully advised the minister if he had asked her. The fishman
+consulted her when he couldn't endure his mother-in-law another
+minute in the house; Uncle Jerry Cobb didn't part with his river
+field until he had talked it over with Rebecca; and as for Aunt
+Jane, she couldn't decide whether to wear her black merino or her
+gray thibet unless Rebecca cast the final vote.
+
+Abijah wanted to go far away from Riverboro, as far as Limerick
+Academy, which was at least fifteen miles; but although this
+seemed extreme, Rebecca agreed, saying pensively: "There IS a
+kind of magicness about going far away and then coming back all
+changed."
+
+This was precisely Abijah's unspoken thought. Limerick knew
+nothing of Abbie Flagg's worthlessness, birth, and training, and
+the awful stigma of his poorhouse birth, so that he would start
+fair. He could have gone to Wareham and thus remained within
+daily sight of the beloved Emma Jane; but no, he was not going to
+permit her to watch him in the process of "becoming," but after
+he had "become" something. He did not propose to take any risks
+after all these years of silence and patience. Not he! He
+proposed to disappear, like the moon on a dark night, and as he
+was, at present, something that Mr. Perkins would by no means
+have in the family nor Mrs. Perkins allow in the house, he would
+neither return to Riverboro nor ask any favors of them until he
+had something to offer. Yes, sir. He was going to be crammed to
+the eyebrows with learning for one thing,--useless kinds and
+all,--going to have good clothes, and a good income. Everything
+that was in his power should be right, because there would always
+be lurking in the background the things he never could help--the
+mother and the poorhouse.
+
+So he went away, and, although at Squire Bean's invitation he
+came back the first year for two brief visits at Christmas and
+Easter, he was little seen in Riverboro, for Mr. Ladd finally
+found him a place where he could make his vacations profitable
+and learn bookkeeping at the same time.
+
+The visits in Riverboro were tantalizing rather than pleasant. He
+was invited to two parties, but he was all the time conscious of
+his shirt-collar, and he was sure that his "pants" were not the
+proper thing, for by this time his ideals of dress had attained
+an almost unrealizable height. As for his shoes, he felt that he
+walked on carpets as if they were furrows and he were propelling
+a plow or a harrow before him. They played Drop the Handkerchief
+and Copenhagen at the parties, but he had not had the audacity to
+kiss Emma Jane, which was bad enough, but Jimmy had and did,
+which was infinitely worse! The sight of James Watson's unworthy
+and over-ambitious lips on Emma Jane's pink cheek almost
+destroyed his faith in an overruling Providence.
+
+After the parties were over he went back to his old room in
+Squire Bean's shed chamber. As he lay in bed his thoughts
+fluttered about Emma Jane as swallows circle around the eaves.
+The terrible sickness of hopeless handicapped love kept him
+awake. Once he crawled out of bed in the night, lighted the lamp,
+and looked for his mustache, remembering that he had seen a
+suspicion of down on his rival's upper lip. He rose again half an
+hour later, again lighted the lamp, put a few drops of oil on his
+hair, and brushed it violently for several minutes. Then he went
+back to bed, and after making up his mind that he would buy a
+dulcimer and learn to play on it so that he would be more
+attractive at parties, and outshine his rival in society as he
+had aforetime in athletics, he finally sank into a troubled
+slumber.
+
+Those days, so full of hope and doubt and torture, seemed
+mercifully unreal now, they lay so far back in the past--six or
+eight years, in fact, which is a lifetime to the lad of
+twenty--and meantime he had conquered many of the adverse
+circumstances that had threatened to cloud his career.
+
+Abijah Flagg was a true child of his native State. Something of
+the same timber that Maine puts into her forests, something of
+the same strength and resisting power that she works into her
+rocks, goes into her sons and daughters; and at twenty Abijah was
+going to take his fate in his hand and ask Mr. Perkins, the rich
+blacksmith, if, after a suitable period of probation (during
+which he would further prepare himself for his exalted destiny),
+he might marry the fair Emma Jane, sole heiress of the Perkins
+house and fortunes.
+
+III
+
+This was boy and girl love, calf love, perhaps, though even that
+may develop into something larger, truer, and finer; but not so
+far away were other and very different hearts growing and
+budding, each in its own way. There was little Miss Dearborn, the
+pretty school teacher, drifting into a foolish alliance because
+she did not agree with her stepmother at home; there was Herbert
+Dunn, valedictorian of his class, dazzled by Huldah Meserve, who
+like a glowworm "shone afar off bright, but looked at near, had
+neither heat nor light."
+
+There was sweet Emily Maxwell, less than thirty still, with most
+of her heart bestowed in the wrong quarter. She was toiling on at
+the Wareham school, living as unselfish a life as a nun in a
+convent; lavishing the mind and soul of her, the heart and body
+of her, on her chosen work. How many women give themselves thus,
+consciously and unconsciously; and, though they themselves miss
+the joys and compensations of mothering their own little twos and
+threes, God must be grateful to them for their mothering of the
+hundreds which make them so precious in His regenerating
+purposes.
+
+Then there was Adam Ladd, waiting at thirty-five for a girl to
+grow a little older, simply because he could not find one already
+grown who suited his somewhat fastidious and exacting tastes.
+
+"I'll not call Rebecca perfection," he quoted once, in a letter
+to Emily Maxwell,--"I'll not call her perfection, for that's a
+post, afraid to move. But she's a dancing sprig of the tree next
+it."
+
+When first she appeared on his aunt's piazza in North Riverboro
+and insisted on selling him a large quantity of very inferior
+soap in order that her friends, the Simpsons, might possess a
+premium in the shape of a greatly needed banquet lamp, she had
+riveted his attention. He thought all the time that he enjoyed
+talking with her more than with any woman alive, and he had never
+changed his opinion. She always caught what he said as if it were
+a ball tossed to her, and sometimes her mind, as through it his
+thoughts came back to him, seemed like a prism which had dyed
+them with deeper colors.
+
+Adam Ladd always called Rebecca in his heart his little Spring.
+His boyhood had been lonely and unhappy. That was the part of
+life he had missed, and although it was the full summer of
+success and prosperity with him now, he found his lost youth only
+in her.
+
+She was to him--how shall I describe it?
+
+Do you remember an early day in May with budding leaf, warm
+earth, tremulous air, and changing, willful sky--how new it
+seemed? How fresh and joyous beyond all explaining?
+
+Have you lain with half-closed eyes where the flickering of
+sunlight through young leaves, the song of birds and brook and
+the fragrance of wild flowers combined to charm your senses, and
+you felt the sweetness and grace of nature as never before?
+
+Rebecca was springtide to Adam's thirsty heart. She was blithe
+youth incarnate; she was music--an Aeolian harp that every
+passing breeze woke to some whispering little tune; she was a
+changing, iridescent joy-bubble; she was the shadow of a leaf
+dancing across a dusty floor. No bough of his thought could be so
+bare but she somehow built a nest in it and evoked life where
+none was before.
+
+And Rebecca herself?
+
+She had been quite unconscious of all this until very lately, and
+even now she was but half awakened; searching among her childish
+instincts and her girlish dreams for some Ariadne thread that
+should guide her safely through the labyrinth of her new
+sensations.
+
+For the moment she was absorbed, or thought she was, in the
+little love story of Abijah and Emma Jane, but in reality, had
+she realized it, that love story served chiefly as a basis of
+comparison for a possible one of her own, later on.
+
+She liked and respected Abijah Flagg, and loving Emma Jane was a
+habit contracted early in life; but everything that they did or
+said, or thought or wrote, or hoped or feared, seemed so
+inadequate, so painfully short of what might be done or said, or
+thought or written, or hoped or feared, under easily conceivable
+circumstances, that she almost felt a disposition to smile gently
+at the fancy of the ignorant young couple that they had caught a
+glimpse of the great vision.
+
+She was sitting under the sweet apple tree at twilight. Supper
+was over; Mark's restless feet were quiet, Fanny and Jenny were
+tucked safely in bed; her aunt and her mother were stemming
+currants on the side porch.
+
+A blue spot at one of the Perkins windows showed that in one
+vestal bosom hope was not dead yet, although it was seven
+o'clock.
+
+Suddenly there was the sound of a horse's feet coming up the
+quiet road; plainly a steed hired from some metropolis like
+Milltown or Wareham, as Riverboro horses when through with their
+day's work never disported themselves so gayly.
+
+A little open vehicle came in sight, and in it sat Abijah Flagg.
+The wagon was so freshly painted and so shiny that Rebecca
+thought that he must have alighted at the bridge and given it a
+last polish. The creases in his trousers, too, had an air of
+having been pressed in only a few minutes before. The whip was
+new and had a yellow ribbon on it; the gray suit of clothes was
+new, and the coat flourished a flower in its button-hole. The hat
+was the latest thing in hats, and the intrepid swain wore a
+seal-ring on the little finger of his right hand. As Rebecca
+remembered that she had guided it in making capital G's in his
+copy-book, she felt positively maternal, although she was two
+years younger than Abijah the Brave.
+
+He drove up to the Perkins gate and was so long about hitching
+the horse that Rebecca's heart beat tumultuously at the thought
+of Emma Jane's heart waiting under the blue barege. Then he
+brushed an imaginary speck off his sleeve, then he drew on a pair
+of buff kid gloves, then he went up the path, rapped at the
+knocker, and went in.
+
+"Not all the heroes go to the wars," thought Rebecca. "Abijah has
+laid the ghost of his father and redeemed the memory of his
+mother, for no one will dare say again that Abbie Flagg's son
+could never amount to anything!"
+
+The minutes went by, and more minutes, and more. The tranquil
+dusk settled down over the little village street and the young
+moon came out just behind the top of the Perkins pine tree.
+
+The Perkins front door opened and Abijah the Brave came out hand
+in hand with his Fair Emma Jane.
+
+They walked through the orchard, the eyes of the old couple
+following them from the window, and just as they disappeared down
+the green slope that led to the riverside the gray coat sleeve
+encircled the blue barege waist.
+
+Rebecca, quivering with instant sympathy and comprehension, hid
+her face in her hands.
+
+"Emmy has sailed away and I am all alone in the little harbor,"
+she thought.
+
+It was as if childhood, like a thing real and visible, were
+slipping down the grassy river banks, after Abijah and Emma Jane,
+and disappearing like them into the moon-lit shadows of the
+summer night.
+
+"I am all alone in the little harbor," she repeated; "and oh, I
+wonder, I wonder, shall I be afraid to leave it, if anybody ever
+comes to carry me out to sea!"
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg Etext of New Chronicles of Rebecca
+
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