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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.08.01*END** +[Portions of this header are copyright (C) 2001 by Michael S. Hart +and may be reprinted only when these Etexts are free of all fees.] +[Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be used in any sales +of Project Gutenberg Etexts or other materials be they hardware or +software or any other related product without express permission.] + + + + + +Rebecca Mary + +by Annie Hamilton Donnell + + + + +Contents + +I. THE HUNDRED AND ONETH + +II. THE THOUSAND QUILT + +III. THE BIBLE DREAM + +IV. THE COOK-BOOK DIARY + +V. THE BEREAVEMENT + +VI. THE FEEL DOLL + +VII. THE PLUMMER KIND + +VIII. ARTICLE SEVEN + +IX. UN-PLUMMERED + + + + +The Hundred and Oneth + + + +Rebecca Mary took another stitch. Then another. "Ninety-sevvun, +ninety-eight," she counted aloud, her little pointed face gravely +intent. She waited the briefest possible space before she took +ninety-nine. It was getting very close to the Time now. "At the +hundred an' oneth," Rebecca Mary whispered. "It's almost it." +Her breath came quicker under her tight little dress. Between her +thin, light eyebrows a crease deepened anxiously. + +"Ninety--n-i-n-e," she counted, "one hun-der-ed"--it was so very +close now! The next stitch would be the hundred and oneth. Rebecca +Mary's face suddenly grew quite white. + +"I'll wait a m-minute," she decided; "I'm just a little scared. +When you've been lookin' head to the hundred and oneth so LONG and +you get the very next door to it, it scares you a little. I'll wait +until--oh, until Thomas Jefferson crows, before I sew the hundred +and oneth." + +Thomas Jefferson was prospecting under the currant bushes. Rebecca +Mary could see him distinctly, even with her nearsighted little +eyes, for Thomas Jefferson was snow-white. Once in a while he +stalked dignifiedly out of the bushes and crowed. He might do it +again any minute now. + +The great sheet billowed and floated round Rebecca Mary, scarcely +whiter than her face. She held her needle poised, waiting the +signal of Thomas Jefferson. At any ***[min--?]***min He was coming +out now! A fleck of snow-white was pricking the green of the +currant leaves. + +"He's out. Any minute he'll begin to cr--" He was already +beginning! The warning signals were out--chest expanding, neck +elongating, and great white wing aflap. + +"I'm just a little scared," breathed the child in the foam of the +sheet. Then Thomas Jefferson crowed. + +"Hundred and one!" Rebecca Mary cried out, clearly, courage born +within her at the crucial instant. The Time--the Time--had come. +She had taken her last stitch. + +"It's over," she panted. "It always was a-coming, and it's come. +I knew it would. When it's come, you don't feel quite so scared. +I'm glad it's over." + +She folded up the great sheet carefully, making all the edges meet +with painful precision. It took time. She had left the needle +sticking in the unfinished seam--in the hundred-and-oneth stitch-- +and close beside it was a tiny dot of red to "keep the place." + +"Rebecca! Rebecca Mary!" Aunt Olivia always called like that. +If there had been still another name--Rebecca Mary Something Else-- +she would have called: "Rebecca! Rebecca Mary! Rebecca Mary +Something Else!" + +"Yes'm; I'm here." + +"Where's 'here'?" sharply. + +"HERE--the grape-arbor, I mean." + +"Have you got your sheet?" + +"I--yes'm." + +"Is your stent 'most done?" + +Rebecca Mary rose slowly to her reluctant little feet, and with the +heavy sheet across her arm went to meet the sharp voice. At last +the Time had come. + +"Well?" Aunt Olivia was waiting for her answer. Rebecca Mary +groaned. Aunt Olivia would not think it was "well." + +"Well, Rebecca Mary Plummer, you came to fetch my answer, did you? +You got your stent 'most done?" Aunt Olivia's hands were extended +for the folded sheet. + +"I've got it DONE, Aunt 'Livia," answered little Rebecca Mary, +steadily. Her slender figure, in its quaint, scant dress, looked +braced as if to meet a shock. But Rebecca Mary was terribly afraid. + +"Every mite o' that seam? Then I guess you can't have done it very +well; that's what I guess! If it ain't done well, you'll have to +take it--" + +"Wait--please, won't you wait, Aunt 'Livia? I've got to say +something. I mean, I've got all the over-'n'-overing I'm ever going +to do done. THAT'S what's done. The hundred-and-oneth stitch was +my stent, and it's done. I'm not ever going to take the hundred +and twoth. I've decided." + +Understanding filtered drop by drop into Aunt Olivia's bewildered +brain. She gasped at the final drop. + +"Not ever going to take another stitch?" she repeated, with a +calmness that was awfuler than storm. + +"No'm." + +"You've decided?" + +"Yes'm." + +"May I ask when this--this state of mind began?" + +Rebecca Mary girded herself afresh. She had such need of recruiting +strength. + +"It's been coming on," she said. "I've felt it. I knew all the time +it was a-coming--and then it came." + +It seemed to be all there. Why must she say any more? But still +Aunt Olivia waited, and Rebecca Mary read grim displeasure in +capitals across the gray field of her face. The little figure +stiffened more and more. + +"I've over-'n'-overed 'leven sheets," the steady little voice went +on, because Aunt Olivia was waiting, and it must, "and you said I +did 'em pretty well. I tried to. I was going to do the other one +well, till you said there was going to be another dozen. I couldn't +BEAR another dozen, Aunt Olivia, so I decided to stop. When Thomas +Jefferson crowed I sewed the hundred-and-oneth stitch. That's all +there's ever a-going to be." + +Rebecca Mary stepped back a step or two, as if finishing a speech +and retiring from her audience. There was even the effect of a bow +in the sudden collapse of the stiff little body. It was Aunt +Olivia's turn now to respond--and Aunt Olivia responded: + +"You've had your say; now I'll have mine. Listen to me, Rebecca +Mary Plummer! Here's this sheet, and here's this needle in it. +When you get good and ready you can go on sewing. You won't have +anything to eat till you do. I've got through." + +The grim figure swept right-about face and tramped into the house as +though to the battle-roll of drums. Rebecca Mary stayed behind, +face to face with her fate. + +"She's a Plummer, so it'11 be SO," Rebecca Mary thought, with the +dull little thud of a weight falling into her heart. Rebecca Mary +was a Plummer too, but she did not think of that, unless the un- +swerving determination in her stout little heart was the unconscious +recognition of it. + +"I wonder"--her gaze wandered out towards the currant-bushes and +came to rest absently on Thomas Jefferson's big, white bulk--"I +wonder if it hurts very much." She meant, to starve. A long vista +of food-less days opened before her, and in their contemplation the +weight in her heart grew very heavy indeed. + +"We were GOING to have layer-cake for supper. I'm VERY fond of +layer-cake," Rebecca Mary sighed, "I suppose, though, after a few +weeks"--she shuddered--"I shall be glad to have ANYTHING--just +common things, like crackers and skim-milk. Perhaps I shall want to +eat a--horse. I've heard of folks--You get very unparticular when +you're starving." + +It was five o'clock. They WERE going to have supper at half past. +She could hear the tea things clinking in the house. She stole up +to a window. There was Aunt Olivia setting the layer-cake on the +table. It looked plump and rich, and it was sugared on top. + +"There's strawberry jam in between it," mused Rebecca Mary, +regretfully. "I wish it was apple jelly. I could bear it better if +it was apple jelly." But it was jam. And there was honey, too, to +eat with Aunt Olivia's little fluffy biscuits. How very fond +Rebecca Mary was of honey! + +Aunt Olivia stood in the kitchen doorway and rang the supper bell in +long, steady clangs just as usual. But no one responded just as +usual, and by the token she knew Rebecca Mary had not taken the +other stitch that lay between her and supper. + +"She's a Plummer," sighed Aunt Olivia, inwardly, unrealizing her own +Plummership, as little Rebecca Mary had unrealized hers. Each +recognized only the other's. The pity that both must be Plummers! + +Rebecca Mary stayed out of doors until bedtime. She made but one +confidant. + +"I've done it, Thomas Jefferson," she said, sadly. "You ought to be +sorry for me, because if you hadn't crowed I shouldn't have sewed +the hundred and oneth. But you're not really to BLAME," she added, +hastily, mindful of Thomas Jefferson's feelings. "I should have +done it sometime if you hadn't crowed. I knew it was coming. +I suppose now I shall have to starve. You'd think it was pretty +hard to starve, I guess, Thomas Jefferson." + +Thomas Jefferson made certain gloomy responses in his throat to the +effect that he was always starving; that any contributions on the +spot in the way of corn kernels, wheat grains, angleworms--any +little delicacies of the kind--would be welcome. And Rebecca Mary, +understanding, led the way to the corn bin. In the dark hours that +followed, the intimacy between the great white rooster and the +little white girl took on tenderer tones. + +At breakfast next morning--at dinner time--at supper--Rebecca Mary +absented herself from the house. Aunt Olivia set on the meals +regularly and waited with tightening heartstrings. It did not seem +to occur to her to eat her own portions. She tasted no morsel of +all the dainties she got together wistfully. At nightfall the +second day she began to feel real alarm. She put on her bonnet and +went to the minister's. He was rather a new minister, and the +Plummers had always required a good deal of time to make +acquaintance. But in the present stress of her need Aunt Olivia +did not stop to think of that. + +"You must come over and--and do something," she said, at the +conclusion of her strange little story. "It seems to me it's time +for the minister to step in." + +"What can I do, Miss Plummer?" the embarrassed young man ejaculated, +with a feeling of helplessness. + +"Talk to her," groaned Aunt Olivia, in her agony. "Tell her what +her duty is. Rebecca Mary might listen to the minister. All she's +got to do is to take just one stitch to show her submission. It +won't take but an instant. I've got supper all out on the kitchen +table--I don't care if it's ten o'clock at night!" + +"It isn't a case for the minister. It's a case for the Society for +the Prevention of Cruelty to Children!" fumed the minister's kind +little wife inwardly. And she stole away in the twilight to deal +with little Rebecca Mary herself. She came back to the minister by +and by, red-eyed and fierce. + +"You needn't go over; I've been. It won't do any good, Robert. +That poor, stiff-willed, set little thing is starving by inches!" + +"I think her aunt is, too!" + +"Well, perhaps--I can't help it, Robert, perhaps the--aunt--ought--to." + +"My dear!--Felicia!" + +"I told you I couldn't help it. She is so hungry, Robert! If you +had seen her--What do you think she was doing when I got there?" + +"Crying?" + +"Crying! She was laughing. _I_ cried. She sat there under some +grapevines watching a great white rooster eat his supper. His name, +I think, is Thomas Jefferson." + +"Yes, Thomas Jefferson," agreed the minister, with the assurance of +acquaintance. For Thomas Jefferson was one of his parishioners. + +"Well, she was laughing at him in the shakiest, hungriest little voice +you ever heard. 'Is it good?' she says. 'It LOOKS good.' He was +eating raw corn. 'If I could, I'd eat supper with you when you're +VERY hungry, you don't mind eating things raw.' Then she saw me." + +"Well?" + +"Well, I coaxed her, Robert. It didn't do any good. Tomorrow +somebody must go there and interfere." + +"She must be a remarkably strange child," the minister mused. +He was thinking of the holding-out powers of the three children he +had a half-ownership in. + +"I don't think Rebecca Mary IS a child, Robert. She must be fifty +years old, at the least. She and her aunt are about the same age. +Perhaps if her mother had lived, or she hadn't made so many sheets, +or learned to knit and darn and cook--" The minister's kind little +wife finished out her sentence with a sigh. She took up a little +garment in dire straits to be mended. It suggested things to the +minister. + +"Can Rhoda darn?" + +"RHODA!" + +"Or make sheets and bread and things?" + +"Robert, don't you feel well? Where is the pain?" But the laugh in +the pleasant blue eyes died out suddenly. Little Rebecca Mary lay +too heavy on the minister's wife's heart for mirth. + +Aunt Olivia went into Rebecca Mary's room in the middle of the night. +She had been in three times before. + +"She looks thinner than she did last time," Aunt Olivia murmured, +distressedly. "Tomorrow night--how long do children live without +eating? It's four meals now--four meals is a great many for a +little thin thing to go without!" Aunt Olivia had been without four +meals too; she would have been able to judge how it felt--if she had +remembered that part. She stood in her scant, long nightgown, +gazing down at the little sleeper. The veil was down and her heart +was in her eyes. + +Rebecca Mary threw out her arm and sighed. "It LOOKS good, Thomas +Jefferson," she murmured. "When you're VERY hungry you can eat +things raw." Suddenly the child sat up in bed, wide-eyed and wild. +She did not seem to see Aunt Olivia at all. + +"Once I ate a pie!" she cried. "It wasn't a whole one, but I should +eat a whole one now--I think I should eat the PLATE now." She swayed +back and forth weakly, awake and not awake. + +"Once I ate a layer-cake. There was jam in it. I wouldn't care if +it was apple jelly in it now--I'd LIKE apple jelly in it now. Once +I ate a pudding and a doughnut a-n-d--a--a--I think it was a horse. +I'd eat a horse now. Hush! Don't tell Aunt Olivia, but I'm going +to eat--to--e-at--Thom-as--Jeffer--" She swayed back on the pillows +again. Aunt Olivia shook her in an agony of fear--she was so white-- +she lay so still. + +"Rebecca! Rebecca Mary! Rebecca Mary PLUMMER!" Aunt Olivia +shrilled in her ear. "You get right out o' bed this minute and come +downstairs and eat your supper! It's high time you had something in +your stomach--I don't care if it's twelve o'clock. You get right +out o' bed REBECCA MARY!" + +Aunt Olivia had the limp little figure in her arms, shaking it +gently again and again. Rebecca's startled eyes flew open. In that +instant was born inspiration in the brain of Aunt Olivia. She thought +of an appeal to make. + +"Do you want ME to starve, too? Right here before your face and eyes? +I haven't eat a mouthful since you did, and I shan't till you DO." + +Rebecca Mary slid to the floor with a soft thud of little brown, +bare feet. Slow comprehension dawned in her eyes. "Are***[--]*** +did you say YOU was starving, too?" + +"Yes"--grimly. + +"Does it hurt you--too?" + +"Yes"--unsteadily. + +"VERY much?" + +"YES." + +"Why don't you eat something?" + +"Because you don't. I'm waiting for you to." + +"Shan't you ever?" + +"Not if you don't." + +Rebecca Mary caught her breath in a sob. "Shall I be--to blame?" +She was moving towards the door now. With an irresistible impulse +Aunt Olivia gathered her in her arms, and covered her lean little +face with kisses. + +"You poor little thing! You poor little thing! You poor little +thing!" over and over. + +Rebecca Mary gazed up into the softened face and read something +there. It took her breath away. She could not believe it without +further proof. + +"You don't--I don't suppose you LOVE me?" panted Rebecca Mary. +But Aunt Olivia was gone out of the room in a swirl of white +nightgown. + +"Everything's on the table," she called back from the stairs. +"I'm going to light a fire. You come right down. I think it's high +time--" her voice trailing out thinly. + +"She does," murmured Rebecca Mary, radiant of face. + +At half past twelve o'clock they both ate supper, both in their +scant, white nightgowns, both very hungry indeed. But before she +sat down in her old place at the table, Rebecca Mary went round to +Aunt Olivia's place and whispered something rather shyly in her ear. +She had been by herself in a corner of the room for a moment. + +"I've sewed the hundred and twoth," Rebecca Mary whispered. + + + + +The Thousand Quilt + + + +"Good afternoon," Rebecca Mary said, politely. + +The minister's wife was cutting little trousers out of big ones--the +minister's big ones. It was the old puzzle of how to steer clear of +the thin places. + +"Boys grow so!" sighed, tenderly, the minister's wife, over her work. +She had not heard the voice from the doorway. + +"Good afternoon"--again. + +It was a quaint little figure in tight red calico standing there. +It might easily have stepped down from some old picture on the wall. +Rebecca Mary had a bundle in her arms. It was so large that it +obscured breast and face, and only a pair of grave blue eyes, +presided over by thin, light brows, seemed visible to the minister's +wife. The trousers puzzle merged into this one. Now who could-- + +"Oh! Oh, it's Miss Plummer's little girl Rebecca," she said, cordially. + +"Rebecca Mary her NIECE," came, a little muffled, from behind the +great bundle. + +"Rebecca Mary's nie***--*** Oh, you mean Miss Plummer's niece, and +your whole name is that! But I suppose she calls you Rebecca or +Becky, for short? Walk in, Rebecca." + +But Rebecca Mary was struggling with the paralyzing vision of Aunt +Olivia calling her Becky. She had passed by the lesser wonder of +being called Rebecca without the Mary. + +"Oh no'm, indeed; Aunt 'Livia never shortens me," gently gasped the +child. And the minister's wife, measuring from the bundle down, +smiled to herself. There did not seem much room for shortening. + +"But walk in, dear--you're going to walk in? I hope you have come +to make me a little call?" + +Rebecca Mary struggled out of her paralysis. Here was occasion +for new embarrassment. For Rebecca Mary was honest. + +"N-o'm I mean, not a LITTLE call. I've come to spend the afternoon," +she said, slowly, "and I've brought my work." + +The bundle--the great bundle--was her work! She advanced into the +room and began carefully to unroll it. It was the turn of the +minister's wife to be paralyzed. She pushed forward a chair, and +the child sat down in it. + +"It's my Thousand Quilt that I'm making for Aunt 'Livia," explained +Rebecca Mary. "It's 'most done. There's a thousand pieces in it, +and I'm on the nine hundred and ninety-oneth. I thought proberly +you'd have some work, so I brought mine." + +"Yes, I see--" The minister's wife stood looking down at the tight +little red figure among the gorgeous waves of the Thousand Quilt. +They eddied and surged around it in dizzy reds and purples and +greens. She was conscious of being a little seasick, and for relief +she turned back to the puzzle of the little trousers. It had been +in her mind at first to express sorrow at Rhoda's being unfortunately +away--and the boys. Now she was glad she hadn't, for it was quite +plain enough that the visitor had not come to spend the afternoon +with the minister's children, but with the minister's wife. + +"It isn't she that's young--it's I," thought the minister's wife, +with kind, laughing eyes. "She's old enough to be my mother." +"How old are you, dear?" she added, aloud. + +"Me? I guess you mean Aunt 'Livia, don't you? It's Aunt 'Livia's +birthday I'm making it for, it's going to be a present. Once she +gave me a present on my birthday." + +Once!--the minister's wife remembered Rhoda's birthdays and the boys'. +Taken altogether, such a host of little birthdays! But this little +old, old visitor seemed to have had but one. + +"My birthday is two days quicker than Aunt 'Livia's is," volunteered +the visitor, sociably. "We're 'most twins, you see. Aunt 'Livia +was fifty-six that time she gave me the present. She's agoing to be +fifty-nine when I give her this quilt--it's taken me ever since to +make it." + +The minister's wife looked up from her cutting. So Rebecca Mary was +only fifty-nine! + +"It's quite a long quilt," sighed Rebecca Mary. But pride woke in her +eyes as she gazed out on the splendors of the green and purple sea. +"A Thousand Quilt has so many stitches in it, but when you sew'em all +yourself--when you sew every single stitch--" The pride in Rebecca +Mary's grave blue eyes grew and grew. + +"Robert," the minister's wife said that night to the minister, "it's +an awful quilt, but you ought to have seen her eyes! It's taken her +three years to make it--maybe you wouldn't be proud yourself!" + +"Maybe YOU wouldn't, if Rhoda had made it." + +"RHODA! Robert, she sewed one square of patchwork once and it made +her sick. I had to put her to bed. Speaking of 'once' reminds me-- +once Rebecca Mary had a birthday present, Robert." She waited a little +anxiously for him to understand. The minister always understood, but +sometimes he made her wait. + +"Felicia, are you trying to make me cry?" he said, and she was +satisfied. She went across to him, as she always did when she +wanted to cry herself. The floor was strewn with the tiniest boy's +engine and cars, and she remembered, as she zigzagged among them, +that they had been one of his very last birthday presents. + +"It was--Robert, what do you think the present was? I'll give you +three guesses, but I advise you to guess a rooster." + +"Thomas Jefferson," murmured the minister, as one who was acquainted. + +"Yes, that is his name. How did you remember? She is very fond of +him--he is her intimatest friend, she says. So she is under great +obligations to her aunt. It's a large quilt, but it's none too +large to 'cover' Thomas Jefferson. I'm going to help her buy a +lining and cotton batting." + +"Cracked corn will make a good lining, but cotton bat--" + +"Robert, this is not a comedy! If you'd seen Rebecca Mary, and +the quilt, you'd call it a tragedy. You couldn't surprise me any +if you told me she'd quilted it herself!" + +Down the road from Aunt Olivia's farm, across its southern boundary +fence, romped and shouted all day long the Tony Trumbullses. No one, +except possibly their mother, was quite certain how many of them +there were; it was a dizzy process to take their census. They were +never still, in little brown bare limbs nor shrill voices. From sunup +to sundown the Tony Trumbullses raced and laughed. Certainly they +were happy. + +The minister's wife had not dared to tell her Caller of the afternoon +that the minister's children were down there shouting and racing with +the little Tony Trumbullses. Dear, no! --not after Rebecca Mary in +the course of conversation had said that Aunt Olivia did not countenance +the Tony Trumbullses. Rebecca Mary did not say "countenance," but it +meant that. + +"Her aunt won't let her play with them, Robert. And she'd like to-- +you needn't tell me Rebecca Mary wouldn't like to! I saw it in her +poor little solemn eyes. Besides, she said she asked her aunt once +to let her. Robert, aunts are cruel; I never knew it before. They've +no business bringing up little Rebecca Marys!" + +"My dear! Felicia!" But in the minister's eyes was agreement. + +Aunt Olivia took afternoon naps with punctilious regularity--Aunt +Olivia herself was punctilious regularity. At half past one, day +upon day, she hung out the dish towel, hung up her kitchen apron, +and walked with unswerving course into her bedroom. There, disposed +upon the dainty bed in rigid lines of unrest, she rested. The naps +were often long ones. + +A little after the afternoon that Rebecca Mary spent at the minister's +the birthday quilt was finished. The thousandth tiny piece was neatly +over-'n'-overed to its gorgeous expanse. But Rebecca Mary was not +content. She longed to make it complete. She wanted to surprise +Aunt 'Livia with it, as Aunt 'Livia on that momentous birthday of +her own had surprised her with the little fluff-ball of yellow down +that had grown into Thomas Jefferson. That had been such a beautiful +surprise, but this--Aunt 'Livia had seen the quilt so many, many times! +She had taught Rebecca Mary's stiff little fingers to set the first +stitches in it; she had made her rip out this purple square and that +pink-checked one, and this one and that one and that. Oh, Aunt 'Livia +was ACQUAINTED with the quilt! It would not be much of a surprise. + +But Rebecca Mary set her little pointed chin between her little brown +palms and pondered, and out of the pondering grew a plan so ambitious +and so daring that Rebecca Mary gasped in the throes of it. But she +held her ground and entertained it intrepidly. She even grew on +friendly terms with it in the end. Here was a way to surprise Aunt +'Livia; Rebecca Mary would do it! That it would entail an almost +endless amount of work did not daunt her: Rebecca Mary was a Plummer, +and Plummers were not to be daunted. The long vista of patient hours +of trying labor that the plan opened up before her set her blood +tingling like a warrior's on the eve of battle. What were long, +patient hours to a Plummer? Rebecca Mary girded up her loins and +went to meet them. + +Thereafter at Aunt Olivia's nap times Rebecca Mary disappeared. +Day upon day, week upon week, she stole quietly away when the door +of Aunt Olivia's bedroom shut. The first time she went oddly loaded +down with what would have appeared--if there had been any one for +it to "appear" to be a bundle of long sticks. She made two trips +into the unknown that first day. The second time the bundle looked +much like that one over which her grave blue eyes had peered at the +minister's wife when she went to spend the afternoon with her. + +It was spring when the mysterious disappearances began. It was +summer before Aunt Olivia woke up--not from her nap, but from her +inattention. Quite suddenly she came upon the realization that +Rebecca Mary was not about the house; nor about the grounds, for +she instituted prompt search. She went to all the child's odd +little haunts--the grapery, the orchard, the corn-house, even to +her own beloved back yard, full of sweet-scented hiding-nooks +dear to a child, but sacred ground to Aunt Olivia. Rebecca Mary +sometimes did her "stents" there as a special privilege; she might +be there now, unprivileged. Aunt Olivia's back yard was almost as +full of flowery delights to Rebecca Mary as it was to Aunt Olivia. + +The child was not there--not anywhere. Aunt Olivia sought for +Thomas Jefferson to inquire of him, but Thomas Jefferson was +missing too. She went the rounds again. Where could the child be? + +It was a hot, stinging day in late June when Aunt Olivia's +suspicions awoke. They had been long in rousing, but, once alert, +they developed rapidly into certainties. Her pale eyes glistened, +her thin nostrils dilated--Aunt Olivia's whole lean, sharp, +unemotional person put on suspicion. The child had gone to see +the Tony Trumbullses. + +"My land!" ejaculated Aunt Olivia, "after all my forbidding! And she +a Plummer!" She sat down suddenly as though a little faint. She had never known a Plummer to disobey before; it was a new experience. +It took time to get used to it, and she sat still a long time, rigid +and grim, on the edge of the chair. Then as suddenly as she had sat +down she got up. It could not be--she refused to entertain the +suspicion longer. Rebecca Mary had NOT gone there to that forbidden +place; she was in the garden somewhere. Aunt Olivia, a little stiff +as if from a chill, went once more in search of the child. + +"Rebecca! Rebecca Mary!" she called, at regular intervals. +Then sharply, "Rebecca Mary Plummer!" Her voice had thin cadences +of suspicion lurking in it against its will. + +But there seemed really no doubt. One by one incriminating circum- +stances occurred to Aunt Olivia. Rebecca Mary had longed to go so +much; the Tony Trumbullses, one at a time or in a tumultuous body, +had urged her so often; she herself had more than once caught the +child gazing wistfully, in passing by, at the bewildering, deafening, +frolics of the little Tony Trumbullses. Once Rebecca Mary had asked +to go barefoot, as they went. Once she had let out the tight little +braids in her neck and rumpled her thin little hair. Once Aunt Olivia +had come upon her PLAYING. The remembrance of it now tightened the +lines around Aunt Olivia's lips. The child had been running wildly +about the yard, shouting in a strange, excited, ridiculous way. +When Aunt Olivia in stern displeasure had demanded explanations, +she had run on recklessly, calling back over her shoulder: "Don't +stop me! I'm a Tony Trumbull!" + +"My land!" breathed Aunt Olivia, taking back the suspicion to her +breast. "After all my forbidding she's gone down there. She's BEEN +going down there dear knows how long. She's waited till I took my +naps an' then went. A PLUMMER!" + +There was really nowhere else she could have gone. She had never +wanted to go anywhere else, except to the minister's, and Rebecca +Mary was punctilious and would not think of going THERE again till +the minister's wife had returned her visit. + +But Aunt Olivia waited. As usual, she went to her room next day at +nap time and closed the door behind her. But when a little figure +slipped down the road towards the forbidden place a moment later, +she was watching behind her blinds. She was groaning as if in pain. + +The little figure began to run staidly. Aunt Olivia groaned again. +The child was in a hurry to get there--she couldn't wait to walk! +There was guilt in every motion of the little figure. + +"And she runs like a Plummer," groaned Aunt Olivia. + +The next day, and the next, Aunt Olivia watched behind her blinds. +The fourth day she put on her afternoon dress and followed the hurrying +little figure. Not at once--Aunt Olivia did not hurry. There was a +sad reluctance in every movement. It seemed a terrible thing to be +following Rebecca Mary--Rebecca Mary Plummer to a forbidden place. + +Afar off Aunt Olivia heard faintly the shoutings that always heralded +an approach to the Tony Trumbullses, and shuddered. The tumult kept +growing clearer; she thought she detected a wild, excited little +shout that might be Rebecca Mary's. Her thin lips set into a stern, +straight line. + +A splash of red caught Aunt Olivia's eye as she drew nearer the +joyous whirl of little children. Rebecca Mary wore a little tight +red dress. The coil seemed closing in about the child. + +Close to the southern boundary fence of Aunt Olivia's land stood +an old empty barn. It had been a place for storing surplus hay, +once, when there had been surplus hay. For many years now it had +been empty. As Aunt Olivia approached it she noticed that its great +sliding door was open. Strange, when for so long it had been shut! + +"If that old barn door ain't open!" breathed Aunt Olivia, stopping +in her astonishment. "I ain't seen it open before in these ten years. +Now, what I want to know is, who opened it? Likely as not those +screeching little wild Injuns." She strode across the stubby grass- +ground to the barn and peered into its cool, dim depths. Then Aunt +Olivia uttered a little, bewildered cry. Gradually the dimness took +on light and the whole startling picture within unfolded itself to +her astonished eyes. + +Rebecca Mary was quilting. She was stooping earnestly over a gay +expanse of purples and reds and greens. Her little tight red back +was towards Aunt Olivia; it looked bent and strained. Rebecca Mary's +eyes were very close to the gay expanse. + +Suddenly Rebecca Mary began to speak, and Aunt Olivia's widened +eyes discovered a great, white rooster pecking about under the quilt. +His big, snowy bulk stood out distinct in the shadow of it. + +"I'm glad we're 'most through. Aren't you, Thomas Jefferson? It's +been a pretty LONG quilt. You get sort of tired when you quilt a LONG +quilt. It makes your back creak when you unbend it; and when you +quilt in a barn, of course you can't see without squinching, and it +hurts your eyes to squinch." + +Silence again, except for the industrious peck-peck of the great +white rooster. Aunt Olivia stood very still. + +"You've been a great help, Thomas Jefferson," began again the voice +of Rebecca Mary, after a little. "I'm very much obliged to you, as +I've said before. I don't know what I should have done without you. +No, you needn't answer. I couldn't hear a word you said. You can't +hear with cotton in both o' your ears," Rebecca Mary sighed. There was no cotton in Aunt Olivia's ears to shut out the soft little sound. +"But of course you have to wear it in, on account o' your conscience. +It's conscience cotton, Thomas Jefferson. I've explained before, but +I don't know's you understood. It seems a little unpolite to wear +it in my ears, with you here keeping me comp'ny. I s'pose you think +it's un--unsociable. But Aunt Olivia doesn't allow me to 'sociate +with the Tony Trumbullses. Oh, Thomas Jefferson, I wish she'd allow +me to 'sociate!" + +Aunt Olivia found herself wishing she had conscience cotton in +both o' her ears. + +"They're such nice, cheerful little children! It makes you want to +go right over their fence and hollow too." Rebecca Mary pronounced +it "hollow" with careful precision. Aunt Olivia would not approve +of "holler." "And when you can't, you like to listen. But I s'posed +listening to them hollow would be 'sociating. So I put the cotton in." + +The joyous "hollowing" broke in waves of glee on Aunt Olivia's +eardrums. It seemed to be assaulting her heart. Oddly, now it +did not sound unmannerly and dreadful. It sounded nice and cheerful. +A Plummer, even, might be happy like that. + +"Cotton is a very strange ex--exper'ence, Thomas Jefferson," ran on +the little voice. "At first you 'most can't stand it, but you get +over the worst of it bymeby. Besides, we're getting 'most through now. +Ain't that splendid, Thomas Jefferson? And it's pretty lucky, too, +because Aunt 'Livia's birthday is getting very near. It--it almost +scares me. Doesn't it you? For I don't know how Aunt 'Livia looks +when she's pleased--you think she'll look pleased, don't you, Thomas +Jefferson? It's such a long quilt, and when you've sewed every stitch +yourself--" + +If Rebecca Mary had turned round then she would have seen how Aunt +Olivia looked when she was pleased. But the little figure at the +quilting-frame bent steadily to its task, only another soft sigh +stealing into Aunt Olivia's uncottoned ears. Thomas Jefferson pecked +his way towards the open door, and the lean figure there started back +guiltily; Aunt Olivia did not want to be recognized. + +"You there under the quilt, Thomas Jefferson?" The little voice +put on tenderness. "Because I'm a-going to tell you something. +Once Aunt 'Livia gave ME a birthday present and it was YOU. Such a +little mite of a yellow chicken! That's why I'm making the quilt +for Aunt 'Livia. It was three years ago; I've loved you ever since," +added Rebecca Mary, simply. + +For an instant Aunt Olivia stopped being a Plummer. A sob crept +into her throat. "Rebecca! Rebecca Mary! Rebecca Mary Plummer!" she +cried, involuntarily. Then she stepped back hastily, glad for the +cotton in Rebecca Mary's ears. For the surprise--she must not spoil +the child's hard-earned surprise. And, besides, Aunt Olivia wanted +to be surprised. + +It was a relief to get away. She could not look any longer at the +picture in the great cobwebby barn--the gorgeous quilt spread out +to its full extent, the empty scaffolds above Rebecca Mary stooping +to her work, Thomas Jefferson pecking about the floor. Aunt Olivia +was not old; through all the years ahead of her she would remember +that picture. + +She went straight to the southern boundary fence and looked across +at the jubilant little Tony Trumbullses. The one in a red dress +like Rebecca Mary's she singled out with a pointing finger. "YOU come +here," she called. "I won't hurt you; no need to look scairt. Do you +know who I am? I'm Rebecca Mary's aunt. You know who Rebecca Mary is, +don't you?" + +"Gracious!" shrilled the little red Tony Trumbull, which Aunt Olivia +took for yes. + +"Well, then, you know where I live. You see here--I want you all, +the whole kit o' you, to come to my house tomorrow morning to see +Rebecca Mary. I'm going to say it over again. Tomorrow morning, +to see Rebecca Mary!" setting apart the syllables with the pointing +finger. "You can play in my back yard," said Aunt Olivia, sublimely +unconscious of slang. + + + + +The Bible Dream + + + +Rebecca Mary sat on the kitchen steps, shelling peas and trying not +to listen. She had begun a hummy little tune to help out, but in the +interstices of rattling peas and the verses of the tune she could +distinctly hear some of the things Aunt Olivia and the Caller were +saying. This was one of the things: + +"She's offered a reward, but _I_ don't calculate there's much chance +she'll ever see it again." + +A sigh followed. The voice was the Caller's, the sigh Aunt Olivia's. + +"It's queer where it ever went to!" Aunt Olivia's voice. + +"Yes, it's all o' QUEER," the Caller's, with mysterious hints in it +that made Rebecca Mary, out on the doorsteps, shudder suddenly and +forget where she was in the tune. Oh, oh, dear, did they s'pose-- +they couldn't s'pose it had been STOLEN? + +Rebecca Mary's little hard brown hand stopped halfway to the pea-basket +and fell limply at her side on the doorstep. It made a little thud as +it fell. Rebecca Mary's horrified gaze wandered out into the glare of +sunshine where wandered Thomas Jefferson, stepping daintily, hunting +bugs. That was his day's work. Thomas Jefferson was a hard worker. + +The voices went on, but Rebecca Mary did not heed them now; she was +looking at Thomas Jefferson, but she did not see him. Not until--it +happened. On a sudden Thomas Jefferson, forgetful of dignity, made a +swoop for something that glittered in the grass. Then Rebecca Mary saw +him--then started to her feet with an inarticulate little cry, while in +her honest brown eyes the horror grew. Oh, oh, dear, what was that +Thomas Jefferson had swooped for? For a brief instant it had glittered +in the grass--Rebecca Mary knew in her soul that it had glittered. + +Thomas Jefferson stretched his sheeny neck, curved it ridiculously, +and crowed. It sounded like a crow of triumph; that was the way he +crowed when the bug had been a delicious one. + +The Caller was coming out, Aunt Olivia with her. Rebecca Mary could +hear the crackle of their starched skirts; Aunt Olivia's crackled +loudest. Rebecca Mary had always had a queer feeling that Aunt Olivia +herself was starched. There had never been a time when she could not +remember her carrying her head very stiffly and straight and never +bending her back. Nobody else in the world, Rebecca Mary reflected +proudly, could pick up a pin without bending. SHE couldn't, herself, +even after she had privately practiced a good deal. + +"Good afternoon, Rebecca Mary; you out here?" the Caller nodded +pleasantly. Folks had such queer ways of saying things. How could +you say good afternoon to anybody if she WASN'T here? + +"Didn't you hear Mrs. Dixey, Rebecca Mary? I guess you've forgot your +manners," came in Aunt Olivia's crisp tones. + +"Oh yes'm, I have. I mean I DID. Yes'm, thank you, I'm out here," +quavered Rebecca Mary. She was not afraid of the Caller and she had +never been afraid of Aunt Olivia, but the horror that was settling +round her heart made her clear little voice unsteady. Her eyes were +still following Thomas Jefferson on his mincing travels about the yard. +The sunshine was on his splendid white coat, but Rebecca Mary felt no +pride in him. + +"Ain't that the han'somest rooster! You ought to show him at the fair, +I declare! See how his feathers glisten in the sun!" + +"Thomas Jefferson belongs to Rebecca Mary," Aunt Olivia said, briefly. + "She raised him." + +"My! Well, he's han'some enough. Ain't it amusing how a nice-feeling +rooster like that will go stepping round as if he felt about too toppy +to live! He'd ought to wear diamonds." + +"Oh, oh, dear, please don't!" breathed Rebecca Mary, softly, but neither +of the women heard her. + +"Well, well, I must be going. I've made a regular visit. But I tell +John when I get away from home, it feels so good I STAY! 'I don't get +away any too often,' I says, 'and I guess I've earnt the right.' Well, +I must be going if I'm ever going to! Good-bye, Miss Plummer--good-bye, +Rebecca Mary. All is, I hope Mis' Avery's boarder'11 find her diamond, +don't you? But I don't calculate she will. Well, good afternoon. She +hadn't ought to have wore the ring, when she knew it was loose in the +setting like that. Some folks are just that careless! Well--" + +But Rebecca Mary did not hear the rest of the Caller's leave-taking. +She had slipped away to Thomas Jefferson out in the sun. + +"Oh, come here--come here with me!" she cried, intensely. "Come out +behind the barn where we can talk. I've got to say something to you +that's awful! I've GOT to, you've got to listen, Thomas Jefferson." + +It was still and terribly hot in the treeless glare behind the barn, +but it was all in the day's work to Thomas Jefferson. Behind the barn +was a beautiful place for bugs. + +"Listen! Oh, you poor dear, you've got to listen!" Rebecca Mary cried. +"You've got to stop hunting for bugs--and don't you dare to crow! +If you crow, Thomas Jefferson, it will break my heart. I don't +s'pose you know what you've done--I don't know as you'vedone it--but +there's something awful happened. Oh, Thomas Jefferson, it glittered-- +I saw it glitter!" Suddenly Rebecca Mary stooped and gathered Thomas +Jefferson into her arms. She held him with a passionate clasp against +her flat little calico breast. He was HERS. He was all the intimate +friend she had ever had. He had been her little downy baby and slept in +her hand. She had fed him and watched him grow and been proud of him. +He was her all. + +"Oh, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson, what was it that glittered in +the grass? Tell me and I'll believe you. Say it was a little piece +o' glass and I'll put you down and go get you some corn, and we'll +never speak of it again. But don't look at me like that--don't look +at me like that! You look--GUILTY!" + +She rocked him in her arms. In her soul she knew what it was that had +glittered. But in Thomas Jefferson's soul--oh, they could not blame +Thomas Jefferson! + +"You haven't got any soul, poor dear; poor dear, you haven't got any +soul, and you can't be guilty without a soul. They couldn't-- +hang--you." Her voice sank to the merest whisper. She tightened +her clasp on the great, soft body and smoothed the soft feathers +with a tender, tremulous little hand. + +"The Lord didn't put anything in you but a stomach and a--a gizzard. +He left your soul out and you're not to blame for that. I don't blame +you, Thomas Jefferson, and of course the Lord don't. But Mrs. Avery's +boarder--oh, oh, dear, I'm afraid Mrs. Avery's boarder will! You +mustn't tell--I mean I mustn't. Nobody must know what it was that +glittered in the grass. Do you want to be--searched? + +"You know 'xactly where she sat over to this house yesterday morning, +when she went by--and how she said you were too sweet for anything-- +and how she flew her hand round with--with IT on it. You know as well +as I do. And it was loose, the di'mond-stone was loose. We didn't +either of us know that. We're not to blame if things are loose, and +you're not to blame for not having any soul. But oh, oh, dear, how +dreadfully it makes us both feel! You'd better give up crowing, Thomas +Jefferson; I feel just as if you'd let it out if you crew." + +At tea Rebecca Mary played with her spoon, while her berries swam, +untasted, in their yellow sea of cream. Aunt Olivia remonstrated. + +"Why don't you eat your supper, child?" she asked, sharply. Rebecca +Mary was always glad when she said child instead of Rebecca Mary, for +then the sharpness did not cut. She was feeling now for the glasses +up in her thin gray hair. Aunt Olivia could see everything through +those glasses and it made Rebecca Mary tremble to think--oh, oh, dear, +suppose she should see the secret hidden in Rebecca Mary's soul! It +seemed as if Aunt Olivia trained the glasses directly upon the corner +where the secret glittered in the gra--was hidden in Rebecca Mary's +troubled little soul. But this is what Aunt Olivia said: + +"It's your stomach. What you need is a good dose of camomile tea to +tone you up. I didn't give you any this spring, for a wonder. Now you +go right up to bed and I'll set some to steeping. Does it hurt you any?" + +"Oh yes'm," murmured Rebecca Mary, sadly, but she meant her soul and +Aunt Olivia meant her stomach. She mounted the steep stairs to her +little eavesdropping room and slipped her small spare body out of her clothes into her scant little nightgown. It was rather a relief to go +to bed. If she could have been sure that Thomas Jefferson--but, no, +Thomas Jefferson was not in bed. As Rebecca Mary lay and waited for +her camomile tea she was certain she could hear him stepping about +under the window. Once he came directly under and "crew," and then +Rebecca Mary hid her head in the pillow for he was letting it out. + +"Cock-a-doodle-do--ooo, did-you-see-me-swoo-oo-OOP-it-up?" crowed +Thomas Jefferson, under the window. Rebecca Mary with her eyes +pillow-deep could see him stretching his neck and letting it out. +It seemed to her everybody could hear him--Aunt Olivia downstairs, +steeping camomile 'blows, and Mrs. Avery's boarder across the fields. + +"Aunt Olivia," whispered Rebecca Mary, while she sipped her bitter +tea a little later, "how much - I suppose precious things cost a +great deal, don't they?" + +"My grief!" Aunt Olivia set down the bowl and felt of Rebecca Mary's +temples, then of her wrists. The child was out of her head. + +"Di'mond-stones like--like that boarder's--I suppose those cost a +great deal? As much as--how much as, Aunt Olivia?" + +"My grief, don't you worry about any di'mond-stones! YOU haven't +lost any. What you'll lose will be your health, if you don't swallow +down the rest o' this tea and go right to sleep like a good girl! +No, no, I'm not going to answer any questions. Drink this; swallow +it down." + +Rebecca Mary swallowed it down, but she did not go right to sleep +like a good girl. She lay on the hard little bed and thought of many +things, or of one thing many times. Over and over, wearily, drearily, +until the sin of Thomas Jefferson became her sin. She adopted it. + +When at last she dropped to sleep it was to dream a Bible dream. +Usually Rebecca Mary liked to dream Bible dreams, but not this one. +This one was different. This one was of Abraham and Isaac. She thought +she was right there and saw Abraham build the little altar and offer +up--no, it wasn't Isaac! It was Thomas Jefferson. And the Abraham in +her dream was turning into HER. The flowing white robes were dwindling +to a little scant white nightgown. She stood a little way off and saw +herself offering up Thomas Jefferson. It was a dreadful dream. + +The night was a perfectly black one, the kind that Rebecca Mary was +afraid of . It was the only thing in the world she had ever been +afraid of--a black night. But after the dream she got up stealthily +and slipped through the blackness, out to Thomas Jefferson. It was +only out to the little lean-to shed, but it seemed a very long way to +Rebecca Mary. The blackness pressed up against her, she put out her +little, trembling hands and pushed through it. + +"Thomas Jefferson! Thomas Jefferson!" she called softly. But he was a +sound sleeper, she remembered; she would have to find him and wake him. +In the darkness she felt about on Thomas Jefferson's perch for Thomas +Jefferson . When the little groping hand came upon something very soft +and warm, the other hand went up to join it, and together they lifted +Thomas Jefferson down. He gave a protesting croak, and then, because he +was acquainted with the clasp of the two small hands, and night or day +liked it, he went back to his interrupted dreams and said not another +word. Thomas Jefferson had never dreamed a Bible dream--never heard of +Abraham or Isaac, had no soul to be disquieted. + +With her burden against her breast Rebecca Mary pushed back through +the darkness, up to the black little room under the eaves. She felt +about for her little carpet-covered shoe box and gently crowded the +great white bulk into it. Then she crept back into bed and lay on the +outer edge with her loving, light little hand on Thomas Jefferson's +feathers. The trouble in her burdened soul poured itself out. + +"Oh, Thomas Jefferson," she whispered down to the heap of soft +feathers, "I'm going to smooth you this way all night for tomorrow +you die!" Her voice even in a whisper had a solemn, inspired note. +"There's no other way; you'll have to make up your mind to be +willing. It's going to break my heart, and, oh, I'm afraid it will +break yours! I'm afraid it will kill us both!" + +Thomas Jefferson uttered a mournful little croaky sound that might +have been "ET TU, BRUTE?" It pierced Rebecca Mary's breast. "There, +hush, poor dear, poor dear, and rest. You'll need all your sleep," +she crooned softly and brokenly. "Tomorrow morning I'll give you +some beautiful corn, and then--and then I'm going to take you to Mrs. +Avery's boarder and tell her the worst. I'm going to give you up, +Thomas Jefferson; and I'm the best friend you've got in the world! +But I've got to, I've got to--I've got to! It's been revealed to me +in a dream. There was a man once in the Bible, named Abraham, and +there was his dearly beloved little boy named Isaac. And now here's +me named Rebecca Mary, and dearly beloved you named Thomas Jefferson. +Oh, I don't suppose you can understand; I suppose you're asleep. +You'll never know how it feels to give up your dearly belovedest, but +oh, oh, dear, you'll know how it feels to be given up! You'll be +one o' the blessed martyrs, Thomas Jefferson--doesn't that comfort +you a little speck? Oh, why don't you wake up and be comforted? + +"The Lord excused Abraham, after all. But this isn't the Lord, it's +Mrs. Avery's boarder. I'm afraid she isn't the Lord's kind--I'm +afraid not, Thomas Jefferson. I don't dare to let you hope; I've +got to prepare you for the worst." + +She caught up the big, white fellow with sudden, irresistible +yearning and sat up with him and rocked him back and forth in her arms. +She began a muffled, sad little tune like a wail. The words were +terrible words. + +"I'll hold you in my arms. I'll rock you--rock you--rock you. For +tomorrow, oh, to-MOR-row you--must--die! Aber-a-ham offered Isaac, +and _I_ -MUST OFFER YOU." + +Over and over, then tenderly she lowered Thomas Jefferson to the +shoe box again. + +When Aunt Olivia came up in the morning, vaguely alarmed because +it was so late and no Rebecca Mary stirring, she had news to tell. +Someone going by had told her something. + +"Well, that woman's found her 'di'mond-stone,'--how are you feeling +this morning, child? It was in her pocket where she'd put her hand +in and felt round! So all that fuss for noth--" + +Suddenly Aunt Olivia stopped, for without warning, out of a box at +the bedside stalked a great white rooster and flew to the foot board +and "crew": + + + "Cock-a-doodle-do-ooo! + It was glass that glittered in the grass, + And all the time I knew-oo-ooo!" + +"My grief?" Aunt Olivia gasped. + + + + +The Cookbook Diary + + + +Rebecca Mary decided to keep a diary. It was not an inspiration, +though it was rather like one in its suddenness. Of course she had +always known that Aunt Olivia kept a diary. When she was very small +she had stretched a-tiptoe and with little pointing forefinger counted +rows and rows of little black books that Aunt Olivia had "kept." +Each little black book had its year-label pasted neatly on the back. +Rebecca Mary breathed deep breaths of awe, there were so many of them. +There must be so much weather in those little black books--so many +pleasant days, rainy days, storms, and snows! + +It was Rebecca Mary who remembered that it was Tuesday, and that it +had showered a little Wednesday--shone Thursday--showered again on +Friday. Rebecca Mary was the jog to Aunt Olivia's memory. It gave +her now, at the beginning of her own diary career, an experienced +feeling, as if she knew already how to keep a diary. It made it seem +a much simpler matter to begin. + +And then, of course, the minister's littlest little boy--really it +was the minister's littlest little boy who had started Rebecca Mary. +He had volunteered a peep into his own diary, and made whispered +explanations and suggestions. He let Rebecca Mary read some of the +entries: "MUNDY, plesent and good. TUSDY, rany and bad. WENSDY, +sum plesent and not good enuf to hirt. THIRSDY " but he had hastily +withdrawn the book at "Thirsdy," and a tidal-wave of warm red blood +had flowed up over his little brown ears and in around all the little +brown islands of his freckles. So Rebecca Mary had begun hastily to +talk of other things. For the minister's littlest little boy had +explained that the first Statement in each entry referred to the +weather and the second to the deportment of the writer, and Rebecca +Mary had remarked a sympathetic resemblance between the two statements. +She had caught a fleeting glimpse of the weather part of "Thirsdy"-- +she could guess the rest. Better let the curtain fall on "Thirsdy." +On her way home Rebecca Mary decided to keep a diary herself. Her +first day's record had been a good deal like the "Mundy" of the +minister's littlest little boy, only there were more a's in the +weather. After that, little by little, she branched out into a certain +originality--the Rebecca Mary sort. If she had not been hampered by +circumstances, it would have been easier to be original. The most +hampering circumstance was the cookbook itself, which she was driven +to use in her new undertaking. There was room on the blank leaves and +above and below the recipes for cake and pudding and pie. The book was +one Aunt Olivia had given her long ago to draw impossible pictures in. + +In the beginning Rebecca Mary tried pasting pieces of "empty" paper +over the pies and puddings and cakes, but the empty paper was too +transparent. In rather startling places things were liable to show +through. + +As: "SUNDAY.--It rained a level teaspoonful. Aunt Olivia and I went +to church. The text was thou shalt not steal 1 cups of sour milk--" +Rebecca Mary got no farther than that. She was a little appalled at +the result thus far, and hastily turned a page and began again in a blank space where no intrusive pudding could break through and corrupt. +Thereafter she wrote above and below the recipes and pasted no more +thin veils over them. It seemed safer. + +Aunt Olivia, apparently oblivious to what was going on, yet saw and +did not disapprove. It was to be expected that the child should come into her inheritance sometime, early or late. If early--well. + +"It's the Plummer in her. All the Plummers have kept diaries," Aunt +Olivia mused, knitting stolidly on while the child stooped painfully +to her self-imposed task. The quaint resemblance to herself at her +own diary-writing did not escape her, and she smiled a little in the +Aunt Olivia way that scarcely stirred her lips. Aunt Olivia smiled +oftener now when she looked at the child. She was "failing" a little, +Plummerly. Between the two of them, little Plummer and big, stretched +of late a tie woven of sheets and a gorgeous quilt of a thousand bits. +It was not very visible to the naked eye, but they were both rather +shyly conscious that it was there. They would never be quite so far +apart again. + +Rebecca Mary took her diary out to the haunts of Thomas Jefferson and +read aloud selections to him, with an odd, conscious little air, as +though she were graduating. The great white fellow was a sympathetic +auditor, if silence and extreme gravity count. Only once did he ever +make comments, and Rebecca Mary could never quite make up her mind +whether he laughed then or applauded. When a great white rooster +elongates his neck, crooks it ridiculously, flaps his wings and crows, +it's hard telling exactly what feeling prompts him. But Rebecca +reasoned from past experience and her faith in him--he had never +laughed at her before. It was applause. The especial entry which +evoked it was the one that first mentioned an allowance. + +"'THURSDAY.--I think I'm going to--'" read Rebecca Mary slowly; and it +was significant that on this Thursday there was no weather. "'I havent +desided--I don't KNOW, but I think I'm going to ask Aunt Olivia to pay +me 5 cents a weak. Rhoda says you call it an alowance, and I supose +she knows. She is the minnister's daughter. She has 10 cents a weak +unless shes bad and then she pays the minnister an alowance. He charges +her 1 cent a sin and he gives it to somebody who is indignant--I think +Rhoda said indignant. Then I should think he would give it back to +Rhoda. I shant only ask Aunt Olivia for 5 cents--I think she will be +more likely. I havent desided but I THINK I shall ask her tomorrow +after her knap. After knaps you are more rested and maybe things dont +look just as they do before knaps. + +"'FRIDAY.--I think Ide better wait untill tomorrow. Her knap was +rather short. Ive desided to say you needent alow but 4 if 5 is too +mutch. If she alows Im going to buy me some crimpers. Rhodas curls +natchurally but she says you can crimp it if it doesent. I have begun +to look at myself in the glass and it fritens me--I guess there ought +to be a gh in that--to see how homebly I am. I wonder if it doesent +kind of scare Aunt Olivia. Prehaps if I was pretty like Rhoda she +would call me darling and dear instead of Rebecca Mary. I dont blame +her mutch because I LOOK like Rebecca Mary. + +"'SATURDAY.--I think Sunday will be the best time to ask her, just +after she gets home from meeting and has rolled her bonnet strings up, +espesialy if the minnister preaches on the Lord lovething a cheerful +giver. I am hopeing he will. If I dont get the crimpers Ime going to +give up looking in the glass. For I think Ime growing homeblyer right +along. Theres something the matter with my nose. Rhodas doesent run +up hill. I never thought about noses before. Aunt Olivias is a little +quear too but I like it became its Aunt Olivias nose. I wish I knew if +Aunt Olivia liked mine. I wish we were better akquainted. + +"'SUNDAY.--I wish the Lord had created mine curly because I dont dass +to ask Aunt Olivia. I don't dass to, so there. It scares my throat. +I supose its because aunts arnt mothers--seems as if youd dass to ask +your MOTHER. I hate to be scart on acount of being a Plummer. Im +afraid Im the only Plummer that ever was--'" + +The reading suddenly stopped here. This was Sunday, and the last entry +was fresh from Rebecca Mary's pencil. + +"Thomas Jefferson!" stormed Rebecca Mary, in a little gust of passion, +"don't you ever TELL I was scared! As long as you live!--cross your +heart!--oh, I wish I hadn't read that part to you! You're a Plummer +too, and you never were scared, and you can't understand--" + +The diary was clutched to Rebecca Mary's little flat breast, and with a +swirl of starched Sunday skirts the child was gone. She went straight +to Aunt Olivia. Red spots of shame flamed in both sallow little cheeks; +resolution sat astride her little uphill nose. She could not bear to +go, but it was easier than being ashamed. The pointing fingers of all +the Plummers pushed her on. Go she must, or be a coward. Long ago-- +it seemed long to Rebecca Mary--she had stood up straight and stanch +and refused to make any more sheets. Was that little girl who had +dared, THIS little girl who was afraid? Should that little girl be +ashamed of this one? + +"Aunt Olivia," steadily, though Rebecca Mary's heart was pounding +hard-- "Aunt Olivia, are--are you well off?" + +She had not meant to begin like that, but afterwards she was glad that +she had. + +"My grief!" Aunt Olivia ejaculated in her surprise. What would the +child ask next? "Am I well off? If you mean rich, no, I ain't." + +"Oh! Then you're--why, I didn't think about your being poor! +I shouldn't have thought of asking--that makes a great difference. +I never thought of THAT!" + +She was off before Aunt Olivia had fully recovered her breath, and +the stumping of her heavy little shoes going upstairs was the only +distinctly audible sound. In her own room Rebecca Mary stopped, +panting. + +Oh, I'm glad I didn't get as far as ASKING!" she breathed aloud. +"I never thought about her being poor--of course then I wouldn't ask!" + +But she squared her shoulders and stood up, straight and unashamed. +For she had vindicated herself. She had been ready to ask. She could +look that other little girl of the sheets in the face. The Other +Little Girl was there, coming to meet her as she advanced to the +little looking glass above the table. But Rebecca Mary waved her +back peremptorily. + +"Go right back!" she said. "I only came to tell you I wasn't a coward +--that's all. Good-bye. For I'm not coming any more. You're sorry +I'm homely, and I'm sorry you are, but it doesn't do any good for us +to look at each other and groan. It will make us unsatisfied. So I +shall turn you back to the wall--good-bye." + +But for a very ***?*** instant they looked sadly into each other's +little lean brown-yellow faces. It was a brief ceremony of farewell. +"Good-bye," smiled Rebecca Mary, bravely. And the lips of The Other +Little Girl moved as though saying it too. The Other Little Girl +smiled. And neither of them knew that just then she was beautiful. + +Aunt Olivia was trying to meet her own courage test. She had been +trying a good many days. Duty--stern, unswerving duty--bade her +inspect Rebecca Mary's little cookbook diary. Should she not know-- +ought she not to know the thoughts that were brewing in the child's +mind? How else could she bring her up properly? + +"Read it," Duty said," find out. Are you afraid?" + +"I'm ashamed," groaned Aunt Olivia. "Do you think Rebecca Mary would +read my diary?" + +"Is Rebecca Mary bringing you up?" + +Aunt Olivia sometimes thought so. The puzzle that she had begun to +try to solve when Rebecca Mary's white, death-struck mother had laid +her baby in Aunt Olivia's unaccustomed arms was getting a little more +difficult every day. Some days Aunt Olivia wondered if she ought to +give it up. Oh, this bringing up--this bringing up of little children! + +"If I must," groaned Aunt Olivia, and got as far as taking the +little diary in her hands. But she got no farther. She laid it +gently down again. + +"I can't," she said, firmly, but she could not look Duty in the face +as she said it. She had always listened to Duty before. + +"You know you ought to--" + +"Yes, I know, but I can't! It seems a shameful thing to do. I'm sure +I've tried often enough--you know I've tried--" + +"I know--that was good practice. Now stop trying and read it!" + +Aunt Olivia flamed up. "I tell you I won't! It's a shameful thing. +If I found Rebecca Mary reading one of my diaries, I should send her +to bed--" + +"Read hers and go to bed yourself. It's your duty to read it. +When you bring up a child--" + +"I never will again!" + +Aunt Olivia read it, with the relentless grip of Duty holding her +to the task. But flame spots crept up through the sallow of her thin +cheeks and made what atonement they could. + +It did not take long, though some of the pages she read twice. +The weatherless week, when Rebecca Mary had put off her "asking" +from day to day, Aunt Olivia went back to the third time. When she +closed the little book it was not a Plummer face she lifted it to +and laid it against for the space of a breath--a Plummer face would +not have been wet. + +Then she Whirled upon Duty. "Well, I've done it--I hope you're +satisfied!" + +"It had to be done," calm Duty responded. "If you think it will +make you feel any better, you can send yourself to bed." + +"I'm going to," sighed Aunt Olivia, slipping away to her room. +A strange little yearning was upon her to hunt up Rebecca Mary and +call her darling and dear. But in her heart she knew she should +not have the courage to do it. Here was another Plummer coward! + +"Why are some people made like me?" she thought--"so it kills 'em to +say anything anyways tenderish. Seems to be too much for their vocal +organs--they'd rather do a week's washing!" + +Other thoughts came to Aunt Olivia as she lay on her bed, doing her +whimsical penance for violating the sanctity of the little old +cookbook. She was not comfortable. It was a hard bed--nothing was +soft of Aunt Olivia's. She moved about on it uneasily. + +"When they're dead, we're willing enough to say tenderish things to +'em," her musings ran. "We wish we HAD then. I suppose if Rebecca +Mary was--" + +She got no farther for the sudden horror that was upon her--that sent +her to her feet and to the door. But there she stopped in the blessed +relief that drifted in to her on a child's laugh. Somewhere out there +Rebecca Mary was laughing in her subdued, sweet way. A cracked, shrill +crow followed--Thomas Jefferson was laughing too. + +Rebecca Mary was not dead. There was time to say a "tenderish" +thing to her before she lay--before that. Aunt Olivia shut her eyes +resolutely to the vision that had intruded upon her musings. It was +Rebecca Mary who was laughing somewhere out there that she wanted to see. + +The next day was Sunday, and in the quiet of the long afternoon Rebecca +Mary read aloud again to Thomas Jefferson. It was from the little +cookbook diary. Thomas Jefferson was pecking about the long grass of +the orchard. + +"0h, listen!" cried Rebecca Mary, her eyes unwontedly shining. "Listen +to this, Thomas Jefferson! + +"'SATURDAY.--Wind northwest by Mrs. Tupper's Weather vain. Something +happened yesterday. Aunt Olivia didn't say it, but she most did. +She came right out of her bedroom and I saw it in her face! "Dear"-- +"darling,"--they were both there, and she was looking at me! Nobody +EVER looked "dear" "darling" at me before. I suppose my mother would +have. If I hadent had another mother I think I should like to have +had Aunt Olivia. + +"'You feel that way more after you get akquainted. When I get VERY +akquainted prehaps I shall tell Aunt Olivia. Its quear, I think, how +it isent as easy to say some things as it is to think them. You can +wright them easier too. I am glad Ime keeping a diary because I can +wright about yesterday and what happenned. I shall read it to my grand +children--to be continude. + +"'SUNDAY'--that's today, Thomas Jefferson,--'SUNDAY.--This is yesterday +continude, because there was too mutch for one day. Something else +beutiful happenned. My Aunt Olivia said to me as folows, I have +desided to pay you a weakly alowance of 10 cents a weak Rebecca Mary. +And I never asked her to. And she never said anything about charging +me for my sins. I was going to ask her but I found out she was poor. +That was a mistake, she isent. She must be SOME well of I think for +10 cents seams a great deal to have of your own every weak. But I +shant buy crimpers. Ime going to buy a present for Aunt Olivia byamby. +Ime very happy. I wish I knew how to spell hooray.'" + +Suddenly Rebecca Mary was on her feet, waving the cookbook jubilantly. + +"Hoo-ray! Hoo-ray! Thomas Jefferson!" she shouted, surprising the +gentle Sunday calm. She surprised Thomas Jefferson, too, but he was +equal to the occasion--Thomas Jefferson was a gentleman. + +"Hoo-ra-a-a-ay!" he crowed, splendidly, with a fine effect of clapping +his hands. + +This time there could be no doubt. This was applause. + + + + +The Bereavement + + + +Thomas Jefferson was losing his appetite. Even Aunt Olivia noticed +it, but it did not worry her as it did Rebecca Mary. + +"He's always had as many appetites as a cat's got lives--he's got +eight good ones left," she said, calmly. + +But Rebecca Mary was not calm. It seemed to her that Thomas Jefferson +was getting thinner every day. + +"Oh, I can feel your bones!" she cried, in distress. "Your bones are +coming through, you poor, dear Thomas Jefferson! Won't you eat just +one more kernel of corn--just this one for Rebecca Mary? I'd do it +for you. Shut your eyes and swallow it right down and you'll never +know it." + +That day Thomas Jefferson listened to pleading, but not the next day-- +nor the next. He went about dispiritedly, and the last few times that +he crowed it made Rebecca Mary cry. Even Aunt Olivia shook her head. + +"I could do it better than that myself," she said, soberly. + +Rebecca Mary hunted bugs and angleworms and arranged them temptingly +in rows, but the big, white rooster passed them by with a feeble peck +or two. Bits of bread failed to tempt him, or even his favorite +cooky crumbs. His eighth appetite departed--his seventh, sixth, +fifth, fourth. + +"He lost his third one yesterday," lamented Rebecca Mary, "and today +he's lost his second. It's pretty bad when he hasn't only one left, +Aunt Olivia." + +"Pretty bad," nodded Aunt Olivia. She was stirring up a warm mush. +When Rebecca Mary had gone upstairs she took it to Thomas Jefferson +and commanded him to eat. He was beyond coaxing--perhaps he needed +commanding. + +Rebecca Mary thought Aunt Olivia did not care, and it added a new +sting to her pain. There was that time that Aunt Olivia said she +wished the Lord hadn't ever created roosters--Thomas Jefferson had +just scratched up her pansy seeds. And the time when she wished Thomas +Jefferson was dead; did she wish that now? Was she--was she glad he was +going to be dead? + +For Rebecca Mary had given up hope. She was not reconciled, but she +was sure. She spent all her spare time with the big, gaunt, pitiful +fellow, trying to make his last days easier. She knew he liked to +have her with him. + +"You do, don't you, dear?" she said. She had never called him "dear" +before. She realized sadly that this was her last chance. "You do +like to have me here, don't you? You'd rather? Don't try to crow-- +just nod your head a little if you do." And the big, white fellow's +head had nodded a little, she was sure. She put out her loving little +brown hand and caressed it. "I knew you did, dear. Oh, Thomas +Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson, don't die! PLEASE don't--think of the +good times we'll have if you won't! Think of the--the grasshoppers-- +the bugs, Thomas Jefferson--the cookies! Won't you think?--won't you +try to be a little bit hungry?" + +Rebecca Mary knew what it was to be hungry and not be able to eat, +but to be able to eat and not be hungry--this was away and beyond her +experience. The sad puzzle of it she could not solve. + +One day the minister had a rather surprising summons to perform his +priestly functions. The summoner was Rebecca Mary. She appeared like +a sombre little shadow in his sunny sermon room. The minister's wife +ushered her in, and in the brief instant of opening the door and +announcing her name flashed him a warning glance. He had been +acquainted so long with her glances that he was able to interpret this +one with considerable accuracy. "All right," he glanced back. No, he +would not smile--yes, he would remember that it was Rebecca Mary. + +"Do what she asks you," flashed the minister's wife's glance. + +"All right," flashed the minister. Then the door closed. + +"Thomas Jefferson is dying," Rebecca Mary began, hurriedly. "I came +to see if you'd come." + +In spite of himself the minister gasped. Then, as the situation dawned +clearly upon him, his mouth corners began--in spite of themselves--to +curve upward. But in time he remembered the minister's wife, and drew +them back to their centres of gravity. He waited a little. It was safer. + +"Aunt Olivia isn't at home and I'm glad. She doesn't care. Perhaps +she would laugh. Oh, I know," appealed Rebecca Mary, piteously, +"I know he's a rooster! It isn't because I don't know--but he's FOLKS +to me! You needn't do anything but just smooth his feathers a little +and say the Lord bless you. I thought perhaps you'd come and do that. +_I_ could, but I wanted you to, because you're a minister. I thought-- +I thought perhaps you'd try and forget he's a rooster." + +"I will," the minister said, gently. Now his lips were quite grave. +He took Rebecca Mary's hand and went with her. + +"He's a good man," murmured the minister's wife, watching them go. +She had known he would go. + +"He was one of my parishioners," the minister was saying for the +comforting of Rebecca Mary. Unconsciously he used the past tense, as +one speaks of those close to death. It was well enough, for already +big, gaunt, white Thomas Jefferson was in the past tense. + +Rebecca Mary chronicled the sad event in her diary: + +"Tomas Jefferson passed away at ten minutes of three this afternoon +blessed are them that die in the Lord. The minnister did not get +here in time. I wish I had asked him to run for he is a very good +minnister and would have. He helped me berry him in the cold cold +ground and we sang a him. I dident ask him to pray because he was +only a rooster, but he was folks to me. I loved him. It is very +lonesome. I dred wakening up tomorrow because he always crowed under +my window. The Lord gaveth and the Lord has taken away." + +This last Rebecca Mary erased once, but she wrote it again after a +moment's thought. For, she reasoned, it was the Lord part of Aunt +Olivia which had given Thomas Jefferson to her. In the primitive +little creed of Rebecca Mary every one had a Lord part, but some +people's was very small. Not Aunt Olivia's--she had never gauged Aunt +Olivia's Lord part; it would not have been consistent with her ideas +of loyalty. + +It was very lonely, as Rebecca Mary had known it would be. At best +her life had never been overfull of companionships, and the sudden +taking-off--it seemed sudden, as all deaths do--of Thomas Jefferson +was hard to bear. Strange how blank a space one great, white rooster +can leave behind him! + +The yard and the orchard seemed full of blank spaces, though in a way +Thomas Jefferson's soul seemed to frequent his old beloved haunts. +Rebecca Mary could not see it pecking daintily about, but she felt it +was there. + +"His soul isn't dead," she persisted, gently. She clung to the +comfort of that. And one morning she thought she heard again Thomas +Jefferson's old, cheery greeting to the sunrise. The sound she thought +she heard woke her instantly. Was it Thomas Jefferson's soul crowing? + +"Aunt Olivia isent sorry," chronicled the diary, sadly. "Prehaps shes +glad. Once she wished the Lord had forgot to create roosters. But she +was ever kind to Tomas Jefferson, considdering the seeds he scrached +up. That was his besittingest sin and I know he is sorry now. I wish +Aunt Olivia was sorry." + +Nothing was ever said between the two about Rebecca Mary's loss, but +Aunt Olivia recognized the keenness of it to the child. She worried +a little about it; it reminded her of that other time of worry when +Rebecca Mary and she had nearly starved. Sheets and roosters--there +were so many worries in the world. + +That other time she went to the minister, this time to the minister's +wife. One afternoon she went and carried her work. + +"You know about children," she began, without loss of time. "What +happens when they lose their appetite over a dead rooster?" + +"Thomas Jefferson?" breathed the minister's wife, softly. + +"Yes--he's dead and buried, and she's mourning for him. I set three +tarts on for dinner today, and I set three tarts AWAY after dinner. +Rebecca Mary is fond of tarts. What should you do if it was Rhoda?" + +"Oh---Rhoda--why, I think I should get her another rooster, or a cat +or something, to get her mind off. But Rhoda isn't Rebecca Mary--" + +Aunt Olivia folded up her work. She got up briskly. + +"They've got a white rooster down to the Trumbullses'," she said. +"I guess I better go right down now; Tony Trumbull is liable to +be at home just before supper. I'm very much obliged to you for +your advice." + +"Did I advise her?" murmured the minister's wife, watching the resolute +swing of Aunt Olivia's skirts as she strode away. "I was going to tell +her that what would cure my Rhoda might not cure Rebecca Mary. Well, I +hope it will work," but she was sure it wouldn't. She had grown a +little acquainted with Rebecca Mary. + +It was the new, white rooster crowing, instead of the soul of Thomas +Jefferson. Rebecca Mary found out after she had dressed and gone +downstairs. Soon after that she appeared in the kitchen doorway with +an armful of snowy feathers. Aunt Olivia, over her muffin pans, eyed +her with secret delight. The cure was working sooner than she had +dared to expect. + +"This is the Tony Trumbullses' rooster; if I hurry I guess I can +carry him back before breakfast," Rebecca Mary said from the doorway. +"I'll run, Aunt Olivia." + +"Carry him back!" Aunt Olivia's muffin spoon dropped into the bowl +of creamy batter. One look at Rebecca Mary convinced her that the +cure had not begun to work. Imperceptibly she stiffened. "He ain't +anybody's but mine. I've bought him," she explained, briefly. +"You set him down and feed him with these crumbs--he ain't human if +he don't like cloth-o'-gold cake." + +But the child in the doorway, after gently releasing the great fellow, +drew away quietly. The second look at her face convinced Aunt Olivia +that the cure would never work. + +"You feed him, please, Aunt Olivia," Rebecca Mary said; "I--couldn't. +I'll stir the muffins up." + +Nothing further was ever said about keeping the Tony Trumbull rooster. +He pecked about the place in unrestrained freedom until the morning +work was done, and then Aunt Olivia carried him home in her apron. + +"I concluded not to keep him--he'd likely be homesick," she said, +with a qualm of conscience; for the big, white fellow had certainly +shown no signs of homesickness. But she could not explain and reveal +the secret places of Rebecca Mary's heart. Aunt Olivia, too, had her +ideas of loyalty. + +In the diary there occurred brief mention of the episode: "The Tony +Trumbull rooster has been here. I could eat him--that's how I feel +about the Tony Trumbull rooster. + +"I never could have eatten Tomas Jefferson but once and then it would +have broken my heart but I was starveing. Aunt Olivia took him back." + +Thomas Jefferson's grave was kept green. Rebecca Mary took her stents +down into the orchard and sat beside it, sadly stitching. She kept it +heaped with wild flowers and poppies from her own rows. Aunt Olivia's +flowers she never touched. The bitterness of Aunt Olivia's not being +sorry--perhaps being glad--rankled in her sore little soul. It would +have helped--oh yes, it would have helped. + +Aunt Olivia worried on. It seemed to her that all Rebecca Mary's +meals in one meal would not have kept a kitten alive--and that reminded +her. She would try a kitten. The minister's wife had said a rooster +or a cat. A white kitten, she decided, though she could scarcely have +told why. + +The kitten was better, but it was not a cure. Rebecca Mary took the +little creature to her breast and told it her grief for Thomas +Jefferson and cried her Thomas Jefferson tears into its soft, white +fur. In that way, at any rate, it was a success. + +"Maybe I shall love you some day," she whispered, "but I can't yet, +while Thomas Jefferson is fresh. He's all I have room for. He was my +intimate friend--when your intimate friend is dead you can't love +anybody else right away." But she apologized to the little cat gently +--she felt that an apology was due it. + +"You see how it is, little, white cat," she said. "I shall have to ask +you to wait. But if I ever have a second love, I promise it will be +you. You're a great DEAL comfortinger than that Tony Trumbull rooster! +I could love you this minute if I had never loved Thomas Jefferson. +Do you feel like waiting?" + +The little, white cat waited. And Aunt Olivia waited. She made +tempting dishes for Rebecca Mary's meals, and put a ruffle into her +nightgown neck and sleeves--Rebecca Mary had always yearned for +ruffles. + +"I don't believe she sees 'em. She don't know they're there," groaned +Aunt Olivia, impotently. "She don't see anything but Thomas Jefferson, +and I don't know as she ever will!" + +But Rebecca Mary saw the ruffles and fluted them between her brown +little fingers admiringly. She tried once or twice to go and thank +Aunt Olivia, and got as far as her bedroom door. But the bitterness in +her heart stayed her hand from turning the knob. If Aunt Olivia had +only known that being sorry was the right thing to do! Strangely +enough, though Rebecca Mary's view of the matter never occurred to Aunt +Olivia, she came by and by to being sorry on her own account. Perhaps +she had been all along, underneath her disquietude for Rebecca Mary's +sorrow. Perhaps when she thought how quiet it had grown mornings, and +what a good chance there was now for a supplementary nap, she was being +sorry. When she remembered that she need not buy wheat now and yellow +corn, and that the cookies would last longer--perhaps then she was +sorry. But she did not know it. It seemed to come upon her with the +nature of a surprise on one especial day. She had been working her +un-"scrached," untrampled flower-beds. + +"My grief!" she ejaculated, suddenly, as if just aware of it. +"I declare I believe I miss him, too! I believe to my soul I'd +like to hear him crow--I wouldn't mind if he came strutting in here!" +And "in here" was Aunt Olivia's beloved garden of flowers. Surely she +was being sorry now! + +It was the next day that Rebecca Mary's bitterness was sweetened-- +that she began to be cured. She and the little, white cat went down +together to Thomas Jefferson's resting place. When they went home-- +and they went soon--Rebecca Mary got her diary and began to write in +it with eager haste. Her sombre little face had lighted up with some +inner gladness, like relief: + +"Shes been there and put some lavvender on and pinks. I mean Aunt +Olivia. And shes the very fondest of her pinks and lavvender. So she +must have loved Tomas Jefferson. Shes sorry. Shes sorry. Shes sorry. +And Ime so glad." + +Rebecca Mary caught up the little, white cat and cried her first tear +of joy on its neck. Then she wrote again: + +"Now there are two morners instead of one. Two morners seams so mutch +lovinger than only one. I know he must feal better. I think he must +have been hurt before and so was I. I wish I dass tell Aunt Olivia how +glad I am shes sorry." + +But she told only the little, white cat. The Plummer mantle of +reticence had fallen too heavily on her narrow little shoulders. +What she longed to do she did not "dass." But that evening in her +little ruffled nightgown she went to Aunt Olivia's room and thanked +her for the ruffles. + +"They're beautiful," she murmured, in a small agony of shyness. +"I think it was very kind of you to ruffle me--I've always wanted +to be. Thank you very much." And then she had scurried away on +her bare feet to the safe retreat of her own room under the eaves. +Aunt Olivia, left behind, was unconsciously relieved at not having +to respond. She was glad the child had discovered the ruffles and +was pleased. It was a good sign. + +"I'll mix up some pancakes in the morning," Aunt Olivia said, +complacently. "Pancakes may help along. Rebecca Mary is fond +of 'em." + +The pinks and the fragrant lavender appeared to have established +a certain unspoken comradeship between the two "morners" of Thomas +Jefferson. Thereafter Rebecca Mary went about comforted, and Aunt +Olivia relieved. The little, white cat purred about the skirts of +one and the stubbed-out toes of the other in cheerful content. + +"Well?" the minister's wife queried, in a moment of social intercourse +after church. She and Aunt Olivia walked down the aisle together. + +"She's getting over it--or beginning to," nodded Aunt Olivia. +"That other rooster didn't work, but I think the little cat is +going to. She hugs it." + +"Good! But she still mourns Thomas Jef--" + +"Of course!" Aunt Olivia interposed, rather crisply. "You couldn't +expect her to get over it all in a minute. He was a remarkable +rooster." + +"She misses him, herself," inwardly smiled the minister's little wife. +Whether by virtue of her relationship to the minister or by her own +virtue, she had learned to read human nature with a degree of accuracy. + +"I looked at myself in the glass tonight," confessed Rebecca Mary's +diary, "but it was on acount of the rufles. I think Ime not quite so +homebly in rufles. I think Aunt Olivia was kind to rufle me. I should +like to ware this night gown in the day time. I wish folks did." + +The pencil slipped out of Rebecca Mary's fingers and rolled on the +floor, to the undoing of the little, white cat, who had gone to bed in +his basket. Rebecca Mary caught him up as he darted after the pencil, +and hugged him in an odd little ecstasy. She felt oddly happy. + +"You little, white cat!" she cried, muffledly, her face in his thick +coat, "you've waited and waited, but I think I'm going to love you now +--you needn't wait any more." + + + + +The Feel Doll + + + +The minister uttered a suppressed note of warning as solid little +steps sounded in the hall. It was he who threw a hasty covering +over the doll. The minister's wife sewed on undisturbedly. She +did worse than that. + +"Come here, Rhoda," she called, "and tell me which you like +better, three tucks or five in this petticoat?" + +"Five," promptly, upon inspection. Rhoda pulled away the +concealing cover and regarded the stolid doll with tilted head. +"She's 'nough like my Pharaoh's Daughter to be a blood relation," +she remarked. "She's got the Pharaoh complexion." + +"Spoken like MY daughter!" laughed the minister. "But I thought +new dolls in this house were always surprises. And here's Mrs. +Minister making doll petticoats out in the open!" + +"This is Rebecca Mary's--I'm dressing a doll for Rebecca Mary, +Robert. She's eleven years old and never had a doll! Rhoda's ten +and has had-- How many dolls have you had, Rhoda?" + +"Gracious! Why, Pharaoh's Daughter, an' Caiapha, an' Esther the +Beautiful Queen, an' the Children of Israel--five o' them--an' +Mrs. Job, an'--" + +"Never mind the rest, dear. You hear, Robert? Do you think Rhoda +would be alive now if she'd never had a doll?" + +The minister pondered the question. "Maybe not, maybe not," he +decided; "but possibly the dolls would have been." + +"Don't make me smile, Robert. I'm trying to make you cry. If +Rebecca Mary were sixty instead of eleven I should dress her a +doll." + +"Then why not one for Miss Olivia?" + +"I may dress her one," undauntedly, "if I find out she never had +one in her life." + +"She never did." The minister's voice was positive. "And for that +reason, dear, aren't you afraid she would not approve of Rebecca +Mary's having one? Isn't it rather a delicate mat--" + +"Don't, Robert, don't discourage me. It's going to be such a +beautiful doll! And you needn't tell me that poor little eleven- +year-old woman-child won't hold out her empty arms for it. Robert, you're a minister; would it be wrong to give it to her STRAIGHT?" + +"Straight, dear?" + +"Yes; without saying anything to her aunt Olivia. Tell me. +Rhoda's gone. Say it as--as liberally as you can." + +The minister for answer swept doll, petticoat, and minister's +wife into his arms, and kissed them all impartially. + +"Think if it were Rhoda," she pleaded. + +"And you were 'Aunt Olivia'? You ask me to think such hard +things, dear! If I could stop being a minister long enough--" + +"Stop?" she laughed; but she knew she meant keep on. With a sigh +she burrowed a little deeper in his neck. "Then I'll ask Aunt +Olivia first," she said. + +She went back to her tucking. Only once more did she mention +Rebecca Mary. The once was after she had come downstairs from +tucking the children into bed. She stood in the doorway with the +look in her face that mothers have after doing things like that. +The minister loved that look. + +"Robert, nights when I kiss the children--you knew when you married +me that I was foolish--I kiss little lone Rebecca Mary, too. I began +the day Thomas Jefferson died--I went to the Rebecca-Mary-est +window and threw her a kiss. I went tonight. Don't say a word; +you knew when you married me." + +Aunt Olivia received the resplendent doll in silence. Plummer +honesty and Plummer politeness were at variance. Plummer politeness said: "Thank her. For goodness' sake, aren't you going to thank +the minister's wife?" But Plummer honesty, grim and yieldless, +said, "You can't thank her, because you're not thankful." So Aunt +Olivia sat silent, with her resplendent doll across her knees. + +"For Rebecca Mary," the minister's wife was saying, in rather a +halting way. "I dressed it for her. I thought perhaps she never--" + +"She never," said Aunt Olivia, briefly. Strange that at that particular +instant she should remember a trifling incident in the child's +far-off childhood. The incident had to do with a little, white +nightgown rolled tightly and pinned together. She had found Rebecca +Mary in her little waist and petticoat cuddling it in bed. + +"It's a dollie. Please 'sh, Aunt Olivia, or you'll wake her up!" +the child had whispered, in an agony. "Oh, you're not agoing to +turn her back to a nightgown? Don't unpin her, Aunt Olivia--it +will kill her! I'll name her after you if you'll let her stay." + +"Get up and take your clothes off." Strange Aunt Olivia should +remember at this particular instant; should remember, too, that +the pin had been a little rusty and came out hard. Rebecca Mary +had slid out of bed obediently, but there had been a look on her +little brown face as of one bereaved. She had watched the pin +come out, and the nightgown unroll, in stricken silence. When it +hung released and limp over Aunt Olivia's arm she had given one +little cry: + +"She's dead!" + +The minister's wife was talking hurriedly. Her voice seemed a +good way off; it had the effect of coming nearer and growing +louder as Aunt Olivia stepped back across the years. + +"Of course you are to do as you think best about giving it to her," +the minister's wife said, unwillingly. This came of being a minister's wife! "But I think--I have always thought--that little girls ought-- +I mean Rhoda ought--to have dolls to cuddle. It seems part of their--her--inheritance." This was hard work! If Miss Olivia +would not sit there looking like that--. + +"As if I'd done something unkind!" thought the gentle little mother, indignantly. She got up presently and went away. But Aunt Olivia, +with the doll hanging unhealthily over her arm, followed her to +the door. There was something the Plummer honesty insisted upon Aunt Olivia's saying. She said it reluctantly: + +"I think I ought to tell you that I've never believed in dolls. +I've always thought they were a waste of time and kept children +from learning to do useful things. I've brought Rebecca Mary up +according to my best light." + +"Worst darkness!" thought the minister's wife, hotly. + +"She's never had a doll. I never had one. I got along. I could +make butter when I was seven. So perhaps you'd better take the +doll--" + +"No, no! Please keep it, Miss Olivia, and if you should ever change +your mind--I mean perhaps sometime--good-bye. It's a beautiful day, isn't it?" + +Aunt Olivia took it up into the guest chamber and laid it in an +empty bureau drawer. She closed the drawer hastily. She did not +feel as duty-proof as she had once felt, before things had happened--softening things that had pulled at her heartstrings and weakened her. The quilt on the guest chamber bed was one of the +things; she would not look at it now. And the sheets under the quilt--and the grave of Thomas Jefferson that she could see from +the guest chamber window. Aunt Olivia was terribly beset with the temptation to take the doll out to Rebecca Mary in the garden. + +"Are you going to do it?" demanded Duty, confronting her. "Are +you going to give up all your convictions now? Rebecca Mary's in +her twelfth year-pretty late to begin to humor her. I thought +you didn't believe in humoring." + +"I unpinned the nightgown," parried Aunt Olivia, on the defensive. +"I never let her make another one." + +"But you're weakening now. You want to let her have THIS doll." + +"It seems like part of--of her inheritance." + +"Lock that drawer!" + +Aunt Olivia turned the key unhappily. It was not that her "convictions" had changed--it was her heart. + +She went up at odd times and looked at the doll the minister's wife +had dressed. She had an unaccountable, uncomfortable feeling that +it was lying there in its coffin--that Rebecca Mary would have said, "She's dead." + +It was a handsome doll. Aunt Olivia was not acquainted with dolls, +but she acknowledged that. She admired it unwillingly. She liked +its clothes--the minister's wife had not spared any pains. She had +not stinted in tucks nor ruffles. + +Once Aunt Olivia took it out and turned it over in her hands with +critical intent, but there was nothing to criticise. It was a +beautiful doll. She held it with a curious, shy tenderness. But +that time she did not sit down with it. It was the next time. + +The rocker was so near the bureau, and Aunt Olivia was tired--and +the doll was already in her arms. She only sat down. For a minute +she sat quite straight and unrelaxed, then she settled back a +little--a little more. The doll lay heavily against her, its +flaxen head touching her breast. After the manner of high-bred +dolls, its eyes drooped sleepily. + +Aunt Olivia began to rock--a gentle sway back and forth. She was +sixty, but this was the first time she had ever rocked a chi--a doll. +So she rocked for a little, scarcely knowing it. When she found out, +a wave of soft pink dyed her face and flowed upward redly to her hair. + +"Well!" Duty jibed, mocking her. + +"Don't say a word!" cried poor Aunt Olivia. "I'll put her right back." + +"What good will that do?" + +"I'll lock her in." + +"You've locked her in before." + +"I'11--I'11 hide the key." + +"Where you can find it! Think again." + +Aunt Olivia thrust the doll back into its coffin with unsteady hands. The red in her face had faded to a faint, abiding pink. She locked +the drawer and drew out the key. She strode to the window and flung +it out with a wide sweep of her arm. + +The minister's wife, ignorant of the results of her kind little +experiment, resolved to question Rebecca Mary the next time she +came on an errand. She would do it with extreme caution. + +"I'll just feel round," she said. "I want to know if her aunt's given +it to her. You think she must have, don't you, Robert? By this time? Why, it was six weeks ago I carried it over! It was such a nice, friendly little doll! By this time they would be such friends-- +if her aunt gave it to her. Robert, you think--" + +"I think it's going to rain," the minister said. But he kissed her +to make it easier. + +Rebecca Mary came over to bring Aunt Olivia's rule for parson-cake +that the minister's wife had asked for. + +"Come in, Rebecca Mary," the minister's wife said, cordially. +"Don't you want to see the new dress Rhoda's doll is going to have? +I suppose you could make your doll's dress yourself?" It seemed +a hard thing to say. Feeling round was not pleasant. + +"P'haps I could, but she doesn't wear dresses," Rebecca Mary +answered, gravely. + +"No?" This was puzzling. "Her clothes don't come off, I suppose?" +Then it could not be the nice, friendly doll. + +"No'm. Nor they don't go on, either. She isn't a feel doll." + +"A--what kind did you say, dear?" The minister's wife paused in +her work interestedly. Distinctly, Miss Olivia had not given her +THE doll; but this doll--"I don't think I quite understood, +Rebecca Mary." + +"No'm; it's a little hard. She isn't a FEEL doll, I said. I never +had a feel one. Mine hasn't any body, just a soul. But she's a +great comfort." + +"Robert," appealed the minister's wife, helplessly. This was a case +for the minister--a case of souls. + +"Tell us some more about her, Rebecca Mary," the minister urged, +gently. But there was helplessness, too, in his eyes. + +"Why, that's all!" returned Rebecca Mary, in surprise. "Of course +I can't dress her or undress her or take her out calling. But +it's a great comfort to rock her soul to sleep." + +"Call Rhoda," murmured the wife to the minister; but Rhoda was +already there. She volunteered prompt explanation. There was no +hesitation in Rhoda's face. + +"She means a make believe doll. Don't you, Rebecca Mary?" + +"Yes," Rebecca Mary assented; "that's her other name, I suppose, +but I never called her by it." + +"What did you call her?" demanded practical Rhoda. "What's her +name mean?" + +"Rhoda!"--hastily, from the minister's wife. This seemed like +sacrilege. But Rhoda's clear, blue eyes were fixed upon Rebecca +Mary; she had not heard her mother's warning little word. + +A shy color spread thinly over the lean little face of Rebecca +Mary. For the space of a breath or two she hesitated. + +"Her name's--Felicia," then, softly. + +"Robert"--the children had gone out together; the minister's +wife's eyes were unashamedly wet--" Robert, I wish you were a--a +sheriff instead of a minister. Because I think I would make a +better sheriff's wife. Do you know what I would make you do?" + +The minister could guess. + +"I'd make you ARREST that woman, Robert!" + +"Felicia!" But she saw willingness to be a sheriff come into his +own eyes and stop there briefly. + +"Don't call me 'Felicia' while I feel as wicked as this! Oh, +Robert, to think she named her little soul-doll after me!" + +"It's a beautiful name." + +Suddenly the wickedness was over. She laughed unsteadily. + +"It wouldn't be a good name for a sheriff's wife, would it?" she said. +"So I'll stay by my own minister." + +One day close upon this time Aunt Olivia came abruptly upon +Rebecca Mary in the grape arbor. She was sitting in her little +rocking chair, swaying back and forth slowly. She did not see +Aunt Olivia. What was she was crooning half under her breath? + + "Oh, hush, oh, hush, my dollie; + Don't worry any more, + For Rebecca Mary 'n' the angels + Are watching o'er, + ---O'er 'n' o'er 'n' o'er." + +The same words over and over--growing perhaps a little softer and +tenderer. Rebecca Mary's arm was crooked as though a little +flaxen head lay in the bend of it. Rebecca Mary's brooding little +face was gazing downward intently at her empty arm. Quite +suddenly it came upon Aunt Olivia that she had seen the child +rocking like this before--that she must have seen her often. + + "Rebecca Mary 'n' the angels + Are watching o'er," + +sang on the crooning little voice in Aunt Olivia's ears. + +The doll in its coffin upstairs; down here Rebecca Mary rocking +her empty arms. The two thoughts flashed into Aunt Olivia's mind +and welded into one. All her vacillations and Duty's sharp +reminders occurred to her clearly. She had thought that at last +she was proof against temptation, but she had not thought of +this. She was not prepared for Rebecca Mary, here in her little +rocking chair, rocking her little soul-doll to sleep. + +The angels were used to watching o'er, but Aunt Olivia could not +bear it. She went away with a strange, unaccustomed ache in her +throat. The minister's wife would not have wanted her arrested +then. + +Aunt Olivia tiptoed away as though Rebecca Mary had said, "'Sh!" +She was remembering, as she went, the brief, sweet moment when +she had sat like that and rocked, with the doll the minister's +wife dressed, in her arms. It seemed to establish a new link of +kinship between her and Rebecca Mary. + +She ran plump into Duty. + +"Oh!" she gasped. She was a little stunned. Aunt Olivia's Duty +was solid. + +"I know where you've been. I tried get there in time." + +"You're too late," Aunt Olivia said, firmly, "Don't stop me; +there's something I must do before it gets too dark. It's six +o'clock now." + +"Wait!" commanded Duty. "Are you crazy? You don't mean--" + +"Go back there and look at that child--and hear what she's +singing! Stay long enough to take it all in--don't hurry." + +But Duty barred her way, grim and stern. + +Palely she put up both her hands and thrust it aside. She did not +once look back at it. + +Already it was dusky under the guest chamber window. She had to +stoop and peer and feel in the long tangle of grass. She kept on +patiently with the Plummer kind of patience that never gave up. +She was eager and smiling, as though something pleasant were at +the end of the peering and stooping and feeling. + +Aunt Olivia was hunting for a key. + + + + +The Plummer Kind + + + +The doll's name was Olivicia. + +Rebecca Mary had evolved the name from her inner consciousness +and her intense gratitude to Aunt Olivia and the minister's wife. +She had put Aunt Olivia first with instinctive loyalty, though in +the secret little closet of her soul she had longed to call the +beautiful being Felicia, intact and sweet. She did not know the +meaning of Felicia, but she knew that the doll, as it lay in the +loving cradle of her arms, gazing upward with changeless +placidity and graciousness, looked as one should look whose name +was Felicia. Greater compliment than this Rebecca Mary could not +have paid the minister's wife. + +"Olivicia," she had placed the being on the sill of the attic +window, stood confronting, addressing it: "Olivicia, it's coming- +-it is very near to! Sit there and listen and smile--oh yes, +smile, SMILE. I don't wonder! I would too, only I'm too glad. +When you're TOO glad you can't smile. I've been waiting for it to +come. Olivicia, seems as if I'd been waiting a thousan' years. +You're so young, you've only lived such little while, of course I +don't expect you understand the deep-downness inside o' me when I +think--" + +The address fluttered and came to a standstill here. Rebecca Mary +was suddenly minded that Olivicia was in the dark; must be +enlightened before she could smile understandingly. + +"Why, you poor dear!--why, you don't know what it is that's +coming and that's near to! It's the--city, Olivicia," enlightened +Rebecca Mary, gently, to insure against shock. "Aunt Olivia's +going--to--the--city." + +In Rebecca Mary's dreamings it had always been THE city. It did +not need local habitation and a name; enough that it had streets +upon streets, houses upon houses upon houses, a dazzling swirl of +men, women, and little children--noise, glitter, glory. In her +dreamings the city was something so wondrous and grand that +Heaven might have been its name. The streets upon streets were +not paved with gold, of course--of course she knew they were not +paved with gold! But in spite of herself she knew that she would +be disappointed if they did not shine. + +Aunt Olivia had said it that morning. At breakfast--quite matter- +of-factly. Think of saying it matter-of-factly! + +"I'm going to the city soon, Rebecca Mary," she had said, between +sips of her tea. "Perhaps by Friday week, but I haven't set the +day, really. There's a good deal to do." + +Rebecca Mary had been helping do it all day. Now it was nearly +time for the pageant of red and gold in the west that Rebecca +Mary loved, and she had come up here with the beautiful being to +watch it through the tiny panes of the attic window, but more to +ease the aching rapture in her soul by speech. She must say it +out loud. The city--the city--to the city of streets and houses +and men and wonders upon wonders! + +Olivicia had come in the capacity of calm listener; for nothing +excited Olivicia. + +"I," Aunt Olivia had said, but Aunt Olivia usually said "I." +There was no discouragement in that to Rebecca Mary. It did not +for a moment occur to her that "I" did not mean "we." + +The valise they had got down from its cobwebby niche was roomy; +it would hold enough for two. Rebecca Mary knew that, because she +had packed it so many times in her dreamings. She wished Aunt +Olivia would let her pack it now. She knew just where she would +put everything--her best dress and Aunt Olivia's (for of course +they would wear their second-bests), their best hats and shoes +and gloves. Their nightgowns she would roll tightly and put in +one end, for it doesn't hurt nightgowns to be rolled tightly. Of +course she would not put anything heavy, like hair brushes and +shoes and things, on top of anything--unless it was the +nightgowns, for it doesn't hurt-- + +"Oh, Olivicia--oh, Olivicia, how I hope she'll say, 'Rebecca +Mary, you may pack the valise'! I could do it with my eyes shut, +I've done it so many, many times!" + +But Aunt Olivia did not say it. One day and then another went by +without her saying it, and then one morning Rebecca Mary knew by +the plump, well-fed aspect of the valise that it was packed. Aunt +Olivia had packed it in the night. + +There was no one else in the room when Rebecca Mary made her +disappointing little discovery. She went over to the plump valise +and prodded it gently with her finger. But it is so difficult to +tell in that way whether your own best dress, your own best hat, +best shoes, best gloves, are in there. Rebecca Mary hurried +upstairs and looked in her closet and in her "best" bureau +drawer. + +They were not there! In her relief she caught up the beautiful +being and strained her hard, lifeless little body to her own warm +breast. If she had not been Rebecca Mary, she would have danced +about the room. + +"Oh, I'm so relieved, Olivicia!" she laughed, softly. "If they're +not up here, THEY'RE DOWN THERE. They've got to be somewhere. +They're in that valise--valise--vali-i-ise!" + +Rebecca Mary had never been to a city, and within her remembrance +Aunt Olivia had never been. Curiosity was not a Plummer trait, +hence Rebecca Mary had never asked many questions about the +remote period before her own advent into Aunt Olivia's life. The +same Plummer restraint kept her now from asking questions. There +was nothing to do but wait, but the waiting was illumined by her +joyous anticipations. + +Oddly enough, Aunt Olivia seemed to have no anticipations--at +least joyous ones. Her, thin, grave face may even have looked a +little thinner and graver, IF Rebecca Mary had thought to +notice." + +The night the lean old valise took on plumpness, Aunt Olivia went +often into Mary's little room. Many of the times she came out +very shortly with the child's "best" things trailing from her +arms, but once or twice she stayed rather long--long enough to +stand beside a little white bed and look down on a flushed little +face. A pair of wide-open eyes watched her smilingly from the +pillows, but they were not Rebecca Mary's eyes, and Olivicia was +altogether trustworthy. + +An odd thing happened--but O1ivicia never told. Why should she +publish abroad that she had lain there and seen Aunt Olivia bend +once--bend twice--over Rebecca Mary and kiss her? + +Softly, patiently, very wearily, Aunt Olivia went in and out. The +things she brought out in her arms she folded carefully and +packed, but not in the lank old valise. She put them all with +tender painstaking into a quaint little carpetbag. When the work +was done she set the bag away out of sight, and went about +packing her own things in the old valise. + +The day before, she had been to see the minister and the +minister's wife. She called for them both, and sat down gravely +and made her proposition. It was startling only because of the +few words it took to make it. Otherwise it was very pleasant, and +the minister and the minister's wife received it with nods and +smiles. + +"Of course, Miss Olivia--why, certainly!" smiled and nodded the +minister. + +"Why, it will be delightful--and Rhoda will be so pleased!" +nodded and smiled the minister's wife. But after their caller had +gone she faced the minister with indignant eyes. + +"Why did you let her?" she demanded. "Why did you spoil it all by +that?" + +"Because she was Miss Olivia," he answered, gently. + +"Yes--yes, I suppose so," reluctantly; "but, anyway, you needn't +have let her do it in advance. Actually it made me blush, +Robert!" + +The minister rubbed his cheeks tentatively. "Made me, too," he +admitted, "but I respect Miss Olivia so much--" + +The minister's wife tacked abruptly to her other source of +indignation. + +"Why doesn't she TAKE Rebecca Mary? Robert, wait! You know it +isn't because--You know better!" + +"It isn't because, dear--I know better," he hurried, assuringly. +The minister was used to her little indignations and loved them +for being hers. They were harmless, too, and wont to have a good +excuse for being. This one, now--the minister in his heart +wondered that Miss Olivia did not take Rebecca Mary. + +"It would be such a treat. Robert, you think what a treat it +would be to Rebecca Mary!" + +"Still, dear--" + +"I don't want to be still! I want Rebecca Mary to have that +treat!" But she kissed him in token of being willing to drop it +there--it was her usual token--and ran away to get a little room +ready. There was not a device known to the minister's wife that +she did not use to make that room pleasant. + +"Shall I take your pincushion, Rhoda?" Rhoda had come up to help. + +"Yes," eagerly, "and I'll write Welcome with the pins." + +"And the little fan to put on the wall--the pink one?" + +"Yes, yes; let me spread it out, mamma!" + +"That's grand. Now if we only had a pink quilt--" + +"I 'only have' one!" laughed Rhoda, hurrying after it. + +The whole little room when they left, like the pins in the +pincushion, spelled "WELCOME." + +Aunt Olivia got up earlier than usual one day and went about the +house for a survey. The valise and the little carpetbag she +carried downstairs and out on to the front steps. Her face was +whitened as if by a long night's vigil. When she called Rebecca +Mary it was with a voice strained hoarse. The beautiful being +Olivicia watched her with intent, unwinking gaze. Could it be +Olivicia understood? + +"Hurry and dress, Rebecca Mary; there's a good deal to do," Aunt +Olivia said at the door. She did not go in. "Yes, in your second- +best--don't you see I've put it out. You can wear that every day +now, till--for a while." Something in the voice startled Rebecca +Mary out of her subdued ecstasy and sent her down to breakfast +with a nameless fear tugging at her heart. + +"You're going to stay at the minister's--I've paid your board in +advance," Aunt Olivia said, monotonously, as if it were her +lesson. She did not look at Rebecca Mary. "I've put in your long- +sleeve aprons so you can help do up the dishes. There's plenty of +handkerchiefs to last. You mustn't forget your rubbers when it's +wet, or to make up your bed yourself. I don't want you to make +the minister's wife any more trouble than you can help." + +The lesson went monotonously on, but Rebecca Mary scarcely heard. +She had heard the first sentence--her sentence, poor child! +"You're going to stay at the minister's--stay at the minister's-- +stay at the minister's." It said itself over and over again in +her ears. In her need for somebody to lean on, her startled gaze +sought the beautiful being across the room in agonized appeal. + +But Olivicia was staring smilingly at Aunt Olivia. ET TU, +OLIVICIA! + +If Rebecca Mary had noticed, there was an appealing, wistful look +in Aunt Olivia's eyes too, in odd contrast to the firm lips that +moved steadily on with their lesson: + +"You can walk to school with Rhoda, you'll enjoy that. You've +never had folks to walk with. And you can stay with her, only you +mustn't forget your stents. I've put in some towels to hem. Maybe +the minister's wife has got something; if so, hem hers first. +You'll be like one o' the family, and they're nice folks, but I +want you to keep right on being a Plummer." + +Years afterwards Rebecca Mary remembered the dizzy dance of the +bottles in the caster--they seemed to join hands and sway and +swing about their silver circlet and how Aunt Olivia's buttons +marched and countermarched up and down Aunt Olivia's alpaca +dress. She did not look above the buttons--she did not dare to. +If she was to keep right on being a Plummer, she must not cry. + +"That's all," she heard through the daze and dizziness, "except +that I can't tell when I'll be back. It--ain't decided. Likely I +shan't be able--there won't be much chance to write, and you +needn't expect me to. No need to write me either. That's +all, I guess." + +The stage that came for Aunt Olivia dropped the little carpetbag +and Rebecca Mary at the minister's. In the brief interval between +the start and the dropping, Rebecca Mary sat, stiff and numb, on +the edge of the high seat and gazed out unfamiliarly at the +familiar landmarks they lurched past. At any other time the +knowledge that she was going to the minister's to stay--to live-- +would have filled her with staid joy. At any other time--but THIS +time only a dull ache filled her little dreary world. Everything +seemed to ache--the munching cows in the Trumbull pasture, the +cats on the doorsteps, the dog loping along beside the stage, the +stage driver's stooping old back. Aunt Olivia was going to the +city--Rebecca Mary wasn't going to the city. There was no room in +the world for anything but that and the ache. + +Rebecca Mary's indignation was not born till night. Then, lying +in the dainty bed under Rhoda's pink quilt, her mood changed. +Until then she had only been disappointed. But then she sat up +suddenly and said bitter things about Aunt Olivia. + +"She's gone to have a good time all to herself--and she might +have taken me. She didn't, she didn't, and she might've. She +wanted all the good time herself! She didn't want me to have +any!" + +"Rebecca Mary!--did you speak, dear?" It was the gentle voice of +the minister's wife outside the door. Rebecca Mary's red little +hands unwrung and dropped on the pink quilt. + +"No'm, I did--I mean yes'm, I didn't--I mean--" + +"You don't feel sick? There isn't anything the matter, dear?" + +"No'm--oh, yes'm, yes'm!" for there was something the matter. It +was Aunt Olivia. But she must not say it--must not cry--must keep +right on being a Plummer. + +"Robert, I didn't go in--I couldn't," the minister's wife said, +back in the cheery sitting room. "I suppose you think I'd have +gone in and comforted her, taken her right in my arms and +comforted her the Rhoda way, but I didn't." + +"No?" The minister's voice was a little vague on account of the +sermon on his knees. + +"I seemed to know--something told me right through that door-- +that she'd rather I wouldn't. Robert, if the child is homesick, +it's a different kind of homesickness." + +"The Plummer kind," he suggested. The minister was coming to. + +"Yes, the Plummer kind, I suppose, Plummers are such--such +PLUMMERY persons, Robert!" + +Upstairs under the pink quilt the rigid little figure relaxed +just enough to admit of getting out of bed and fumbling in the +little carpetbag. With her diary in her hand--for Aunt Olivia had +remembered her diary--Rebecca Mary went to the window and sat +down. She had to hold the cookbook up at a painful angle and peer +at it sharply, for the moonlight that filtered into the little +room through the vines was dim and soft. + +"Aunt Olivia has gone to the city and I haven't," painfully +traced Rebecca Mary. "She wanted the good time all to herself. I +shall never forgive Aunt Olivia the Lord have mercy on her." Then +Rebecca Mary went back to bed. She dreamed that the cars ran off +the track and they brought Aunt Olivia's pieces home to her. In +the dreadful dream she forgave Aunt Olivia. + +It was very pleasant at the minister's and the minister's wife's. +Rebecca Mary felt the warmth and pleasantness of it in every +fibre of her body and soul. But she was not happy nor warm. She +thought it was indignation against Aunt Olivia--she did not know +she was homesick. She did not know why she went to the old home +every day after school and wandered through Aunt Olivia's flower +garden, and sat with little brown chin palm-deep on the +doorsteps. Gradually the indignation melted out of existence and +only the homesickness was left. It sat on her small, lean face +like a little spectre. It troubled the minister's wife. + +"What can we do, Robert?" she asked. + +"What?" he echoed; for the minister, too, was troubled. + +"She wanders about like a little lost soul. When she plays with +the children it's only the outside of her that plays." + +"Only the outside," he nodded. + +"Last night I went in, Robert, and--and tried the Rhoda way. I +think she liked it, but it didn't comfort her. I am sure now +that it is homesickness, Robert." They were both sure, but the +grim little spectre sat on, undaunted by all their kindnesses. + +"When thy father and thy mother forsake the," wrote Rebecca Mary +in the cookbook diary, "and thy Aunt Olivia for I know it means +and thy Aunt Olivia then the Lord will take the up, but I dont +feal as if anyboddy had taken me up. The ministers wife did once +but of course she had to put me down again rite away. She is a +beutiful person and I love her but she is differunt from thy +father and thy mother and thy Aunt Olivia. Ide rather have Aunt +Olivia take me up than to have the Lord." + +It was when she shut the battered little book this time that +Rebecca Mary remembered one or two things that had happened the +morning Aunt Olivia went away. It was queer how she HADN'T +remembered them before. + +She remembered that Aunt Olivia had taken her sharp little face +between her own hands and looked down wistfully at it--wistfully, +Rebecca Mary remembered now, though she did not call it by that +name. She remembered Aunt Olivia had said, "You needn't hem +anything unless it's for the minister's wife--never mind the +towels I put in." That was almost the last thing she had said. +She had put her head out of the stage door to say it. Rebecca +Mary had hemmed a towel each day. There were but two left, and +she resolved to hem both of those tomorrow. A sudden little +longing was born within her for more towels to hem for Aunt +Olivia. + +It was nearly three weeks after Rebecca Mary's entrance into the +minister's family when the letter came. It was directed to +Rebecca Mary, and lay on her plate when she came home from +school. + +"Oh, look, you've got a letter, Rebecca Mary!" heralded Rhoda, +joyfully. Then her face fell, for maybe the letter would say Aunt +Olivia was coming home. + +"Is it from your aunt Olivia?" she asked, anxiously. + +"No," Rebecca Mary said, in slow surprise. "The writing isn't, +anyway, and the name is another one--" + +"Oh! Oh! Maybe she's got mar--" + +"Rhoda!" cautioned the minister. + +This is the letter Rebecca Mary read: + +"Dear Rebecca Mary,--You see I know your name from your aunt. She +talked about you all the time, but I am writing you of my own +accord. She does not know it. I think you will like to know that +at last we are feeling very hopeful about your aunt. We have been +very anxious since the operation, she had so little strength to +rally with. But now if she keeps on as well as this you will have +her home again in a little while. The doctors say three weeks. +She is the patientest patient in the ward. +Yours very truly, +Sara Ellen Nesbitt, Nurse" +Ward A, Emmons Hospital + +That was the letter. Rebecca Mary's face grew a little whiter at +every line of it. At every line understanding grew clearer, till +at the end she knew it all. She gave a little cry, and ran out of +the room. Love and remorse and sympathy fought for first place in +her laboring little breast. In the next few minutes she lived so +long a time and thought so many thoughts! But above everything +else towered joy that Aunt Olivia was coming home. + +Rebecca Mary's eyes blazed with pride at being a Plummer. This +kind of courage was the Plummer kind. The child's lank little +figure seemed to grow taller and straighter. She held up her head +splendidly and exulted. She felt like going up on the minister's +housetop and proclaiming: "She's my aunt Olivia! She's mine! She's +mine--I'm a Plummer, too! All o' you listen, she's my aunt Olivia, +and she's coming home!" + +Suddenly the child flung out her arms towards the south where +Aunt Olivia was. And though she stood quite still, something +within her seemed to spring away and go hurrying through the +clear air. + +"I shouldn't suppose Aunt Olivia would ever forgive me, but she's +Aunt Olivia and she will," wrote Rebecca Mary that night, her +small, dark face full of a solemn peace--it seemed so long since +she had been full of peace before. She wrote on eagerly: + +"When she gets home Ime going to hug her I can't help it if it +wont be keeping right on." + + + + +Article Seven + + + +Rebecca Mary measured them. Against the woodshed wall, with +chalk--it was not altogether an easy thing to do. The result +startled her. With rather unsteady little fingers she measured +from chalk mark to floor again, to make sure it was as bad as +that. It was even a little worse. + +"Oh," sighed Rebecca Mary, "to think they belong to me--to think +they're hitched on!" She gazed down at them with scorn and was +ashamed of them. She tried to conceal their length with her brief +skirts; but when she straightened up, there they were again, as +long as ever. She sat down suddenly on the shed floor and drew +them up underneath her. That was temporarily a relief. "If I sit +here world without end nobody'll see 'em," grimly smiled Rebecca +Mary. + +It was her legs Rebecca Mary measured against the woodshed wall. +It was her legs she was ashamed of. No wonder the minister's wife +had said to the minister going home from meeting, with Rebecca +Mary behind them unawares,--no wonder she had said, "Robert, HAVE +you noticed Rebecca Mary's legs?" + +Rebecca Mary had not heard the reply of the minister, for of +course she had gone away then. If she had stayed she would have +heard him say, with exaggerated prudery, "Felicia! My dear! Were +you alluding to Rebecca Mary's limbs?" for the minister wickedly +remembered inadvertent occasions when he himself had called legs +legs. + +"LEGS," the minister's wife repeated, calmly--"Rebecca Mary's are +too long for limbs. Robert, that child will grow up one of these +days!" + +"They all do," sighed the minister. "It's human nature, dear. +You'll be telling me next that there's something the matter with +Rhoda's--legs." + +The minister's wife gazed thoughtfully ahead at a little trio +fast approaching the vanishing point. Her eyes grew a little +wistful. + +"There is now, perhaps, but I haven't noticed--I won't look!" she +murmured. "And, anyway, Robert, Rhoda will give us a little time +to get used to it in. But Rebecca Mary isn't the Rhoda kind--I +don't believe Rebecca Mary will give us even three days of +grace!" + +"I always supposed Rebecca Mary was born that way--grown up," the +minister remarked, tucking a gloved hand comfortably close under +his arm. "I wouldn't let it worry me, dear." + +"Oh, I don't--not worry, really," she said, smiling--"only her +legs startled me a little today. If she were mine, I should let +her dresses down." + +"If she were Rhod--" + +"She isn't, she's Rebecca Mary. Probably if I were Miss Olivia I +would let Rhoda's down!" And she knew she would. + +Rebecca Mary on the woodshed floor sat and thought "deep-down" +thoughts. Her eyes were fixed dreamily on a big knothole before +her, and the thoughts seemed to come out of it and stand before +her, demanding imperiously to be thought. One after another--a +relentless procession. + +"Think me," the first one had commanded. "I'm the Thought of +Growing Up. I saw you measuring your legs, and I concluded it was +time for me to introduce myself. I had to come some time, didn't +I?" + +"Oh yes," breathed Rebecca Mary, sadly. "I don't suppose I could +expect you to stay in there always; but--but I'm not very glad +to see you. You needn't have come so SUDDEN," she added, with +gentle resentment. + +The Thought of Growing Up crept into her mind and nestled down +there. As thoughts go, it was not an unkind one. + +"You'll get used to me sometime and like me," it said, +comfortingly. But Rebecca Mary knew better. She drove it out. + +Why must legs keep on growing and unwelcome Thoughts come out of +knotholes? Why could not little girls keep on sewing stents and +learning arithmetic and carrying beautiful doll-beings to bed? +Why had the Lord created little girls like this--this growing +kind? + +"If I had made the world," began Rebecca Mary--but stopped in a +hurry. The irreverence of presuming to make a better world than +the Lord shamed her. + +"I suppose He knew best, but if He'd ever been a little girl--" +This was worse than the other. Rebecca Mary hastily dismissed the +world and its Maker from her musings for fear of further +irreverences. + +One Thought came out of the knothole, illustrated. It was leading +a tall woman-girl by the hand--no, it was pushing it as though +the woman-girl were loath to come. + +"Come along," urged the new Thought, laughingly. "Here she is-- +this is Rebecca Mary. Rebecca Mary, this is YOU! You needn't be +afraid of each other, you two. Take a good long look and get +acquainted." + +The woman-girl was tall and straight. She had Rebecca Mary's +hair, Rebecca Mary's eyes, mouth, little pointed chin. But not +Rebecca Mary's legs--unless the long skirts covered them. She was +rather comely and pleasant to look at. But Rebecca Mary tried not +to look. + +"She's got a lover---some day she'll be getting married," the new +Thought said more abruptly, startlingly, than grammatically. And +then with a little muffled cry Rebecca Mary put out her hands and +pushed the woman-girl away--back into the knothole whence she had +come. The Thought, too, for she had no room in her mind for +thoughts like that. + +"My aunt Olivia wouldn't allow me to think of you," she explained +in dismissing them. "And," with dignity she added, "neither would +Rebecca Mary." + +It was to be as the minister's wife had prophesied--there were to +be not even the three days of grace allowed by law when Rebecca +Mary grew up. Sitting there with her legs, her poor little +unappreciated legs, the innocent cause of the whole trouble, +curled out of sight, Rebecca Mary planned that there should be +but one day of grace. She would allow one day more to be a little +girl in, and then she would grow up. But that one day--Rebecca +Mary got up hastily and went to find Aunt Olivia. + +"Aunt Olivia," she began, without preamble--Rebecca Mary never +preambled--"Aunt Olivia, may I have a holiday tomorrow?" + +Aunt Olivia was rocking in her easy chair on the porch. It had +taken her sixty-two years to learn to sit in an easy chair and +rock. Even now, and she had been home from the hospital many +months, she felt a little as though the friendly birds that +perched on the porch railing were twittering tauntingly, "Plummer! +Plummer! Plummer!--rocking in an easy chair!" + +"May I, Aunt Olivia?" It was an unusual occurrence for Rebecca +Mary to ask again so soon. But this was an unusual occurrence. +Aunt Olivia's thin face turned affectionately towards the child. + +"School doesn't begin again tomorrow, does it?" she said in +surprise. Weren't all Rebecca Mary's days now holidays? + +"Oh no---no'm. But I mean may I skip my stents? And--and may I +soak the kettles and pans? Just tomorrow." + +"Just tomorrow," repeated bewildered Aunt Olivia--" soak your-- +stents--" + +"Because it's going to be a pretty busy day. It's going to be a-- +a celebration," Rebecca Mary said, softly. There was a strangely +exalted look on her face. Oddly enough she was not afraid that +Aunt Olivia would say no. + +Aunt Olivia said yes. She did not ask any questions about the +celebration, on account of the exalted look. She could wait. But +the bewildered look stayed for a while on her thin face. Rebecca +Mary was a queer child, a queer child--but she was a dear child. +Dearness atoned for queerness in Aunt Olivia's creed. + +The celebration began early the next morning before Aunt Olivia +was up. She lay in bed and heard it begin. Rebecca Mary out in +the dewy garden was singing at the top of her voice. Aunt Olivia +had never heard her sing like that before--not at the top. Her +sweet, shrill voice sounded rather unacquainted with such free +heights as that, and the woman in the bed wondered with a staid +little smile if it did not make Rebecca Mary feel as she felt +when she sat in the easy chair rocking. + +Rebecca Mary sang hymns mostly, but interspersed in her programme +were bits of Mother Goose set to original tunes--she had learned +the Mother Goose of the minister's Littlest Little Boy--and +original bits set to familiar tunes. It was a wild little orgy of +song. + +"My grief!" Aunt Olivia ejaculated under her breath; but she did +not mean her grief. Other people might think Rebecca Mary was +crazy--not Aunt Olivia. But yet she wondered a little and found +it hard to wait. + +Rebecca Mary washed the breakfast cup and plates, but put the +pans and kettles to soak, and hurried away to her play. There was +so much playing to be done before the sun set on her opportunity. +She had made a little programme on a slip of paper, with +approximate times allotted to each item. As: + + Tree climbing...1 hr. + (Do not tare anything) + Mud pies ...1 hr. and 1/2. + (Do not get anything muddy) + Tea party...2 hrs. + (Do not break anything) + Skipping...1/2 hr. + +Rebecca Mary had written 1 hr. at first opposite skipping, but it +had rather appalled her to think of skipping for so long a period +of time, and, with a sense of being already out of breath, she +had hurriedly erased the 1 and substituted 1/2. Underneath she had +written, (" Do not tip over anything"). All the items had +cautionary parentheses underneath them, for Rebecca Mary did not +wish the celebration to injure "anything." Not this last day, +when all the days of all the years before it, that had gone to +make up her little girlhood, nothing had been torn or muddied or +tipped over. + +Rebecca Mary had never climbed trees, had never made mud pies, +never had tea parties, nor skipped. It was with rather a +hesitating step that she went forward to meet them all. She was +even a little awed. But she went. No item on her programme was +omitted. + +>From her rocker on the porch Aunt Olivia watched proceedings with +quiet patience. It was a good vantage point--she could see nearly +all of the celebration. The tree Rebecca Mary climbed was on the +edge of the old orchard next to Aunt Olivia, and there was a +providential little rift through the shrubbery and vines that +intervened. This part of the programme she could see almost too +clearly, for it must be confessed that this part startled Aunt +Olivia out of her calm. It--it was so unexpected. She stopped +rocking and leaned forward in her chair to peer more sharply. +What was the child--"She's climbing a tree!" breathed Aunt +Olivia in undisguised astonishment. Even as she breathed it, there +came to her faintly the snapping of twigs and flutter of leaves. +Then all was quite still, but she could discern with her pair of +trusty Plummer eyes two long legs gently dangling. + +If Aunt Olivia had known, Rebecca Mary, too, was startled. It--it +was so strange an experience. She was not in the least afraid--it +was a mental start rather than a physical one. When she had +reached the limb set down in her programme she sat on it in a +little daze of bewildered delight. She liked it! + +"Why, why, it's nice!" Rebecca Mary breathed. Her turn had come +for undisguised astonishment. The leaves all about her nodded to +her and stroked her cheeks and hair and hands. They whispered +things into her ears. They were such friendly little leaves! + +Nothing looked quite the same up there. It was a little as if she +were in a new world, and she felt odd thrills of pride, as +probably people who had discovered countries and rivers and north +poles felt. Through a rift in the leaves she could see with her +good Plummer eyes a swaying spot of brown and white that was Aunt +Olivia rocking. Suddenly Rebecca Mary experienced a pang of +remorse that she had wasted so many opportunities like this--that +this was her only one. She wished she had put 2 hrs. instead of 1 +hr. over against "Tree climbing," but it was too late now. She +had borrowed Aunt Olivia's open-faced gold watch to serve as +timekeeper, and promptly at the expiration of the 1 hr. she slid +down through the crackling twigs and friendly leaves to the old +world below. She did not allow herself to look back, but she +could not help the sigh. It was going to be harder to grow up +than she had thought it would be. + +The mud pies she made with conscientious care as Rhoda, the +minister's little girl, had said she used to make them. She made +rows and rows of them and set them in the sun to bake. There were +raisin stones in them all and crimped edges around them . It did +not take nearly all the 1 hr. and 1/2, so she made another and +still another batch. When the time was up she did not sigh, but +she had had rather a good time. How many mud pies she HADN'T made +in all those years that were to end today! + +Olivicia and the little white cat went to the tea party. Rebecca +Mary thought of inviting Aunt Olivia--she got as far as the porch +steps, but no farther. She caught a glimpse of her own legs and +shrank back sensitively. They seemed to have grown since she +measured them against the woodshed wall. Rebecca Mary felt the +contrast between her legs and the tea party. Aunt Olivia never +knew how near she had come to being invited to take part in the +celebration, at Article III. on the programme. + +Rhoda had had tea parties unnumbered, like the sands of the sea. +She had described them fluently, so Rebecca Mary was not as one +in the dark. She knew how to cut the bread and the cake into tiny +dice, and the cookies into tiny rounds. She knew how to make the +cambric tea and to arrange the jelly and flowers. But Rhoda had +forgotten to tell her how to make a rose pie--how to select two +large rose leaves for upper and under crust, and to fill in the +pie between them with pink and white rose petals and sugar in +alternate layers. Press until "done." Why had Rhoda forgotten? It +seemed a pity that there was no rose pie at Rebecca Mary's tea +party--and no time left to make one. + +"Will you take sugar in your tea, Olivicia?" Rebecca Mary asked, +shyly. She sat on the ground with her legs drawn under her out of +sight, but there were little warm spots in her cheeks. She had +not expected to be--ashamed. If there had been a knothole +anywhere, she thought to herself, the Thought of Growing Up would +have come out of it and confronted her and reminded her of her +legs. + +"Will you help yourself to the bread? Won't you have another +cookie?" She left nothing out, and gradually the strangeness wore +away. It got gradually to be a good time. "How many tea parties," +thought Rebecca Mary, "there might have been!" + +Rebecca Mary was skipping, when the minister's wife came to call +on Aunt Olivia. It was the minister's wife who discovered it. +Aunt Olivia caught the indrawing of her breath and saw her face. +Then Aunt Olivia discovered it, and a delicate color overspread +her thin cheeks and rose to her temples. Now what was the child-- + +"Rhoda is a great skipper," the minister's wife said, hurriedly. +But it was the wrong thing--she knew it was the wrong thing. + +"Rebecca Mary is having a--celebration," hurried Aunt Olivia; but +she wished she had not, for it seemed like trying to excuse +Rebecca Mary. She, too, had said the wrong thing. + +"How pleasant it is out here!" tried again the minister's wife. + +"Yes, it's cool," Aunt Olivia agreed, gratefully. After that the +things they said were right things. The fantastic little figure +down there in the orchard, skipping wildly, determinedly, was in +none of them. Both of them felt it to be safer. But the +minister's wife's gaze dwelt on the skipping figure and followed +it through its amazing mazes, in spite of the minister's wife. + +"I couldn't have helped it, Robert," she said. "Not if you'd been +there preaching 'Thou shalt not' to me! You would have looked +too, while you were preaching. You can't imagine, sitting there +at that desk, what the temptation was--Robert, you don't suppose +Rebecca Mary has gone crazy?" + +"Felicia! You frighten me!" + +"No, _I_ don't suppose either. But it was certainly very strange. +It was almost ALARMING, Robert. And she didn't know how at all. I +wanted to go down and show her!" + +"It seems to me"--the minister spoke impressively "that it is not +Rebecca Mary who has gone crazy--" + +"Why, the idea! Haven't I made it plain?" laughed she. "I'll +speak in A B C's then. Rebecca Mary was SKIPPING, Robert - +skipping skipping." + +"Then it's Rebecca Mary," the minister murmured. + +"That's what I'm afraid--didn't I say so? Or else it's her second +childhood--" + +"First, you mean. If THAT'S it, don't let's say a word, dear-- +don't breathe, Felicia, for fear we'll stop it." + +"Dear child!" the minister's wife said, tenderly. "I wish I'd +gone down there and shown her how. And I'd have told her--Robert, +I'd have told her how to climb a tree! Don't tell the parish." + +The day was to end at sunset, from sunrise to sunset, Rebecca +Mary had decreed. The last article on her crumpled little +programme was, "Saying Good-by to Olivicia(Don't cry)." It was +going to be the most difficult thing of all the articles. +Olivicia had existed so short a time comparatively--it might not +have been as difficult if there had always been an Olivicia. "Or +it might have been harder," Rebecca Mary said. She went towards +that article with reluctant feet. But it had to come. + +The bureau drawer was all ready. Rebecca Mary had lined it with +something white and soft and sweetened it with dried rose petals +spiced in the century-old Plummer way. It bore rather grewsome +resemblance to Olivicia's coffin, but it was not grewsome to +Rebecca Mary. She laid the doll in it with the tender little +swinging motion mothers use in laying down their tiny sleepers. + +"There, there the-re!" crooned Rebecca Mary, softly, brooding +over the beautiful being. "You'll rest there sweetly after your +mother is grown up. And you'll try not to miss her, won't you? +You'll understand, Olivicia?--oh, Olivicia!" But she did not cry. +Her eyes were very bright. For several minutes she stood there +stooped over painfully, gazing down into the cof--the bureau +drawer, wherein lay peaceful Olivicia. She was saying good-bye in +her heart--she never said it aloud. + +"Dear," very softly indeed, "you are sure you understand? +Everybody has to grow up, dear. It--it hurts, but you have to. I +mean I'VE got to. I wouldn't so soon if it wasn't for my legs. +But they keep right on growing--they're awful, dear!--I can't +stop 'em. Olivicia, lie right there and be thankful you're a doll! +But I wish you could open your eyes and look at me just once +more." + +Rebecca Mary shut the drawer gently. It was over--no, she would +say one thing more to the beautiful being in there. She bent to +the keyhole. + +"Olivicia!" she called in a tender whisper, "I shall be right +here nights. We shan't be far away from each other." + +But it would not be like lying in each other's arms--oh, not at +all like that. Rebecca Mary caught her breath; it was perilously +like a sob. Then she girded up her loins and went away to meet +her fate--the common fate of all. + +She was very tired. The day had been a strain upon her that was +beginning now to tell. To put all one's childhood into one day-- +that is not easy. + +Article VI. was the last. In a way, it was a rest to Rebecca +Mary, for it entailed merely a visit to the woodshed. She could +sit quietly on the floor opposite the knothole and wait for the +Thoughts. If the Thought of Growing Up came out tonight, she +would say: "Oh, well, you may stay--you needn't go back. I'm not +any glad to see you, but I'm ready. I suppose I shall get used to +you." + +What Thoughts came out of the knothole to Rebecca Mary she never +told to any one. It was nearly dark when she went away, planting +her feet firmly, holding her head straight--Rebecca Mary Plummer. +She went to find Aunt Olivia and tell her. On the way, she +stopped to get Aunt Olivia's shawl, for it was getting chilly out +on the porch. Significantly the first thing Rebecca Mary did +after she began to grow up was to get the shawl and lay it over +Aunt Olivia's spare shoulders. The second thing was to bend to +the scant gray hair and lightly rub it with her cheek. It was a +Rebecca Mary kiss. + +Out in front of the rocking chair, still straight and firm, she +told Aunt Olivia. + +"It's over--I think I put everything in," she said. "I thought +you ought to know, so I came to tell you. I'm ready to grow up." + +After all, if Rebecca Mary had known, her "programme" had not +ended with Article VI. Here was another. Take the pencil in your +steady little fingers, Rebecca Mary, and write: + +Article VII.--Growing up. (Do not break Aunt Olivia's heart.) + + + + +Un-Plummered + + + +Aunt Olivia sighed. It was the third time since she had begun to +let Rebecca Mary down. The third sigh was the longest one. Oh, this +letting down of children who would grow up! + +"I won't do it!" Aunt Olivia rebelled, fiercely, but she took up her +scissors again at Duty's nudge. + +"You don't want people laughing at her, do you?" Duty said, sensibly. +"Well, then, rip out that hem and face up that skirt and stop sighing. +What can't be cured must be endur--" + +"I'm ripping it out," Aunt Olivia interrupted, crisply. But Duty +was not to be silenced. + +"You ought to have done it before," dictatorially. "You've known +all along that Rebecca Mary was growing up." + +Aunt Olivia, like the proverbial worm, turned. + +"I didn't know till Rebecca Mary told me," she retorted; then the +rebellion died out of her thin face and tenderness came and took +its place. Aunt Olivia was thinking of the time when Rebecca Mary +told her. She gazed past Duty, past the skirt across her knees, out +through the porch vines, and saw Rebecca Mary coming to tell her. +She saw the shawl the child was bringing, felt it laid on her +shoulders, and something else laid on her hair, soft and smooth +like a little, lean, brown cheek. The memory was so pleasant +that Aunt Olivia closed her eyes to make it stay. When she opened +them some one was coming along the path, but it was not Rebecca Mary. + +"Good afternoon!" some one said. Aunt Olivia stiffened into a +Plummer again with hurried embarrassment. She did not recognize +the voice nor the pleasant young face that followed it through +the vines. + +"It's Rebecca Mary's aunt, isn't it?" The stranger smiled. "I should +know it by the family resemblance." + +"We're both Plummers," Aunt Olivia answered, gravely. "Won't you come +up on the porch and take a seat?" + +"No, I'll sit down here on the steps--I'd rather. I think I'll sit +on the lowest step for I've come on a very humble errand! I'm Rebecca +Mary's teacher." + +"Oh!" It was all Aunt Olivia could manage, for a sudden horror had +come upon her. She had a distinct remembrance of being at the Tony +Trumbullses when the school teacher came to call. + +"It's--it's rather hard to say it." The young person on the lowest +step laughed nervously. "I'd a good deal rather not. But I think so +much of Rebecca Mary--" + +The horror grew in Aunt Olivia's soul. It was something terribly +like that the Tony Trumbullses' teacher had said. And like this: + +"It hurts--there! But I made up my mind it was my duty to come up +here and say it, and so I've come. I'm sorry to have to say--" + +"Don't!" ejaculated Aunt Olivia, trembling on her Plummer pedestal. +For she was laboring with the impulse to refuse to listen to this +intruder, to drive her away--to say: "I won't believe a word you say! +You may as well go home." + +"Hoity-toity!" breathed Duty in her ear. It saved her. + +"Well?" she said, gently. "Go on." + +"I'm sorry to say I can't teach Rebecca Mary any more, Miss Plummer. That's what I came to tell you--" + +This was awful--awful! But hot rebellion rose in Aunt Olivia's heart. There was some mistake--it was some other Rebecca Mary this person +meant. She would never believe it was HERS--the Plummer one! + +"Because I've taught her all I know. There! Do you wonder I chose +the lowest step to sit on? But it's the truth, honest," the +little teacher laughed girlishly, but there were shame spots on +her cheeks--"Rebecca Mary is the smartest scholar I've got, and +I've taught her all I know." In her voice there was confession to +having taught Rebecca Mary a little more than that. The shame +spots flickered in a halo of humble honesty. + +"She's been from Percentage through the arithmetic four times-- +Rebecca Mary's splendid in arithmetic. And she knows the +geography and grammar by heart." + +The look on Aunt Olivia's face! The transition from horror to +pride was overwhelming, transfiguring. + +"Rebecca Mary's smart," added the honest one on the doorstep. +"_I_ think she ought to have a chance. There! That's all I came +for, so I'll be going. Only, I don't suppose--you don't think +you'll have to tell Rebecca Mary, do you? About--about me, I mean?" + +"No, I don't," Aunt Olivia assured her, warmly. Her thin, lined +hand met and held for a moment the small, plump one--long enough +to say, "You're a good girl--I like you," in its own way. The +little teacher went away in some sort comforted for having taught +Rebecca Mary all she knew. She even hummed a relieved little tune +on her way home, because of the pleasant tingle in the hand that +Rebecca Mary's aunt had squeezed. After all, no matter how much +you dreaded doing it, it was better to tell the truth. + +Aunt Olivia hummed no relieved little tune. The pride in her +heart battled with the Dread there and went down. Aunt Olivia did +not call the Dread by any other name. It was Duty who dared. + +Confronting Aunt Olivia: "I suppose you know what it means? +I suppose you know it means you've got to give Rebecca Mary a +chance? When are you going to send her away to school?" + +"Oh--don't!" pleaded Aunt Olivia. "You don't give me any time. +There's no need of hurry--" + +"I'm still a Plummer, if you're not," broke in Duty, with ironic +sharpness. "The Plummers were never afraid to look their duty in +the face." + +"I'm--I'm looking at you," groaned Aunt Olivia, climbing painfully +back on to her pedestal. "Go ahead and say it. I'm ready--only I +guess you've forgot how long I've had Rebecca Mary. When you've +brought a child up--" + +"I brought her up myself," calmly. "I ought to know. She wouldn't +have been Rebecca Mary, would she, if I hadn't been right on hand? +Who was it taught her to sew patchwork before she was four years old? +And make sheets--and beds--and bread? Who was it kept her from being +a little tomboy like the minister's girl? Who taught her to walk +instead of run, and eat with her fork, and be a lady? Who was it--" + +"Oh, you--you!" sighed Aunt Olivia, trembling for her balance. +"You did 'em all. I never could've alone." + +"Then"--Duty was justly complacent--"Then perhaps you'll be willing +to leave Rebecca Mary's going away to school to me. She must go at +once, as soon as you can get her read--" + +Aunt Olivia tumbled off. She did not wait to pick herself up before +she turned upon this Duty that delighted in torturing her. + +"You better get her ready yourself! You better let her down and make +her some nightgowns and count her pocket-handkerchiefs! You think +you can do anything--no, I'M talking now! I guess it's my turn. +I guess I've waited long enough. Maybe you brought Rebecca Mary up, +but I'm not going to leave it to you whether she'd ought to go away +to school. She's my Rebecca Mary, isn't she? Well? It's me that +loves her, isn't it--not you? If I can't love her and stay a Plummer, then I'll--love her. I'm going to leave it to the minister." + +The minister was a little embarrassed. The wistful look in Aunt +Olivia's eyes said, "Say no" so plainly. And he knew he must say +yes--the minister's Duty was imperative, too. + +"If she can't get any more good out of the school here--" he began. + +"She can't," said Aunt Olivia's Duty for her. "The teacher says +she can't. Rebecca Mary's smart." Then Duty, too, was proud of +Rebecca Mary! + +"I know she is," said the minister, heartily. "My Rhoda--you +ought to hear my Rhoda set her up. She thinks Rebecca Mary knows +more than the teacher does." + +"Rhoda's smart, too," breathed Duty in Aunt Olivia's ear. + +"So you see, dear Miss Olivia, the child would make good use of +any advantage--" + +"You mean I ought to send her away? Well, I'm ready to--I said +I'd leave it to you. Where shall I send her? If there was only +--I don't suppose there's some place near to? Children go home +Friday nights sometimes, don't they?" + +"There is no school near enough for that, I'm afraid," the +minister said, gently. He could not bear the look in Miss +Olivia's eyes. + +"It hurt," he told his wife afterwards. "I wish she hadn't asked +me, Felicia." + +"I know, dear, but it's the penalty of being a minister. Ministers' +hearts ought to be coated with--with asbestos or something, so the +looks in people's eyes wouldn't burn through. I'm glad she didn't +ask ME!" + +"It will nearly kill them both," ran on the minister's thoughts, aloud. +"You know how it was when Miss Olivia was at the hospital." + +"Robert!"--the minister's wife's tone was reproachful--" you're +talking in the future tense! You said 'will.' Then you advised +her to send Rebecca Mary away!" + +"Guilty," pleaded the minister. "What else could I do?" + +"You could have offered to teach her yourself"--with prompt +inspiration. "Oh, Robert, why didn't you?" + +"Felicia!--my dear!"--for the minister was modest. + +"You know plenty for two Rebecca Marys," she triumphed. "Didn't +you appropriate all the honors at college, you selfish boy!" + +"It's too late now, dear." But the minister's eyes thanked her, +and the big clasp of his arms. A minister may be mortal. + +"Maybe it is and maybe it isn't," spoke the minister's wife, in +riddles. "We'll wait and see." + +"But, Felicia--but, dear, they're both them Plummers." + +"Maybe they are and maybe they aren't," laughed she. + +That night Aunt Olivia told Rebecca Mary--after she went to bed, +quite calmly: + +"Rebecca Mary, how would you like to go away to school? For I'm +going to send you, my dear." + +"'Away--to school--my dear!'" echoed Rebecca Mary, sitting +upright in bed. Her slight figure stretched up rigid and +preternaturally tall in the dim light. + +"Yes; the minister advises it--I left it to him. He thinks you +ought to have advantages." Aunt Olivia slipped down suddenly beside +the little rigid figure and touched it rather timidly. She felt a +little in awe of the Rebecca Mary who knew more than her teacher did. + +"They all seem to think you're--smart, my dear," Aunt Olivia said, +and she would scarcely have believed it could be so hard to say it. +For the life of her she could not keep the pride from pricking through +her tone. The wild temptation to sell her Plummer birthright for +a kiss assailed her. But she groped in the dimness for Duty's cool +touch and found it. In the Plummer code of laws it was writ, "Thou +shalt not kiss." + +"I'm going right to work to make you some new nightgowns," Aunt +Olivia added, hastily. "I think I shall make them plain," for it +was in the nature of a reinforcement to her courage to leave off +the ruffles. + +Rebecca Mary's eyes shone like stars in the dark little room. +The child thought she was glad to be going away to school. + +"Shall I study algebra and Latin?" she demanded. + +"I suppose so--that'll be what you go for." + +"And French--not FRENCH?" + +"Likely." + +Rebecca Mary fell back on the pillows to grasp it. But she was +presently up again. + +"And that thing that tells about the air and--and gassy things? +And the one that tells about your bones?" + +Aunt Olivia did not recognize chemistry, but she knew bones. +She sighed gently. + +"Oh yes; I suppose you'll find out just how you're put together, +and likely it'll scare you so you won't ever dare to breathe deep +again. Maybe learning like that is important--I suppose the +minister knows." + +"The minister knows everything," Rebecca Mary said, solemnly. +"If you let me go away to school, I'll try to learn to know as +much as he does, Aunt Olivia. You don't--you don't think he'd mind, +do you?" + +In the dark Aunt Olivia smiled. The small person there on the +pillows was, after all, a child. Rebecca Mary had not grown up, +after all! + +"He won't mind," promised Aunt Olivia for the minister. She went +away presently and cut out Rebecca Mary's new nightgowns. She sat +and stitched them, far into the night, and stitched her sad +little bodings in, one by one. Already desolation gripped Aunt +Olivia's heart. + +Rebecca Mary's dreams that night were marvelous ones. She dreamed +she saw herself in a glass after she had learned all the things +there were to learn, and she looked like the minister! When she +spoke, her voice sounded deep and sweet like the minister's voice. +Somewhere a voice like the minister's wife's seemed to be calling +"Robert! Robert!" + +"Yes?" answered Rebecca Mary, and woke up. + +There were many preparations to make. The days sped by busily, +and to Rebecca Mary full of joyous expectancy. Aunt Olivia made +no moan. She worked steadily over the plain little outfit and +thrust her Dreads away with resolute courage, to wait until +Rebecca Mary was gone. Time enough then. + +"You're doing right--that ought to comfort you," encouraged Duty, +kindly. + +"Clear out!" was what Aunt Olivia cried out, sharply, in answer. +"You've done enough--this is all your work! Don't stand there +hugging yourself. YOU'RE not going to miss Rebecca Mary--" + +"I shall miss her," Duty murmured. "I was awake all night, too, +dreading it. You didn't know, but I was there." + +The last day, when it came, seemed a little--a good deal--like +that other day when Aunt Olivia went away, only it was the other +way about this time. Rebecca Mary was going away on this day. +The things packed snugly in the big valise were her things; it was +she, Rebecca Mary, who would unpack them in a wondrous, strange +place. It was Rebecca Mary the minister's wife and Rhoda came to +bid good-bye. + +Aunt Olivia went to the station in the stage with the child. +She did not speak much on the way, but sat firmly straight and +smiled. Duty had told her the last thing to smile. But Duty had +not trusted her; unseen and uninvited, Duty had slipped into the +jolting old vehicle between Aunt Olivia and Rebecca Mary. + +"She isn't the Plummer she was once," sighed Duty. + +But at the little station, in those few final moments, two Plummers, +an old one and a young one, waited quietly together. Neither of them +broke down nor made ado. Duty retired in palpable chagrin. + +"Good-bye, my dear," Aunt Olivia said, steadily, though her lips +were white. + +"Good-bye, Aunt Olivia," Rebecca Mary Plummer said, steadily. +"I'm very MUCH obliged to you for sending me." + +"You're--welcome. Don't forget to wear your rubbers. I put in +some liniment in case you need it--don't get any in your eyes." + +Outside on the platform Aunt Olivia sought and found Rebecca +Mary's window and stood beside it till the train started. Through +the dusty pane their faces looked oddly unfamiliar to each other, +and the two pairs of eyes that gazed out and in had a startled +wistfulness in them that no Plummer eyes should have. If Duty had +staid-- + +The train shook itself, gave a jerk or two, and plunged down the +shining rails. Aunt Olivia watched it out of sight, then turned +patiently to meet her loneliness. The Dreads came flocking back +to her as if she had beckoned to them. For now was the time. + +The letters Rebecca Mary wrote were formally correct and brief. +There was no homesickness in them. It was pleasant at the school, +that book about bones was going to be very interesting. Aunt +Olivia was not to worry about the rubbers, and Rebecca Mary would +never forget to air her clothes when they came from the wash. +Yes, she had aired the nightgown that Aunt Olivia ironed the last +thing. No, she hadn't needed any liniment yet, but she wouldn't +get any in her eyes. + +Aunt Olivia's letters were to the point and calm, as though Duty +stood peering over her shoulder as she wrote. She was glad +Rebecca Mary liked the bones, but she was a little surprised. +She was glad about the rubbers and the wash; she was glad there had +been no need yet for the liniment. It was a good thing to rub on +a sore throat. The minister's wife had been over with her work +she said Rhoda missed Rebecca Mary. Yes, the little, white cat +was well--no, she hadn't caught any mice. The calla lily had two +buds, the Northern Spy tree was not going to bear very well. + +"Robert, I've been to see Miss Olivia," the minister's wife said +at tea. + +"Yes?" The minister waited. He knew it was coming. + +"She was knitting stockings for Rebecca Mary. Robert, she sat +there and smiled till I had to come home to cry!" + +"My dear!--do you want me to cry, too?" + +"I'm a-going to," sniffed Rhoda. "I feel it coming." + +"She is so lonely, Robert! It would break your heart to see her +smile. How do I know she is? Oh no--no, she didn't say she was! +But I saw her eyes and she let the little, white cat get up in +her lap!" + +"Proof enough," the minister said, gently. + +Between the two of them--the child at school and Aunt Olivia at +home--letters came and went for six weeks. Aunt Olivia wrote six, +Rebecca Mary six. All the letters were terse and brief and +unemotional. Weather, bones, little white cats, liniment-- +everything in them but loneliness or love. Rebecca Mary began all +hers "Dear Aunt Olivia," and ended them all "Respectfully your +niece, Rebecca Mary Plummer." + +"Dear Rebecca Mary," began Aunt Olivia's. "Your aff. aunt, Olivia +Plummer," they closed. Yet both their hearts were breaking. Some +hearts break quicker than others; Plummer hearts hold out +splendidly, but in the end-- + +In the end Aunt Olivia went to see the minister and was closeted +with him for a little. The minister's wife could hear them talking-- +mostly the minister--but she could not hear what they said. + +"It's come," she nodded, sagely. "I was sure it would. That's +what the little, white cat purred when she rubbed against my skirts, +'She can't stand it much longer. She doesn't sleep nights nor eat +days--she's giving out.' Poor Miss Olivia!--but I can't understand +Rebecca Mary." + +"It's the Plummer in her," the little, white cat would have purred. +"You wait!" + +Aunt Olivia turned back at the minister's study door. "Then you +will?" she said, eagerly. "You're perfectly willing to? I don't +want to feel--" + +"You needn't feel," the minister smiled. "I'm more than willing. +I'm delighted. But in the matter of--er--remuneration, I cannot +let you--" + +"You needn't let me," smiled Miss Olivia; "I'll do it without." +She was gently radiant. Her pitifully thin face, so transfigured, +touched the big heart of the minister. He went to his window and +watched the slight figure hurry away. He would scarcely have been +surprised to see it turn down the road that led towards the +railway station. + +"Oh, Robert!" It was the minister's wife at his elbow. "You dear +boy, I know you've promised! You needn't tell me a thing--didn't +I suggest it in the first place? Dear Miss Olivia--I'm so glad, +Robert! So are you glad, you minister!" But they were neither of +them thinking of little, stubbed-out shoes that would be easier +to buy. + +Aunt Olivia turned down the station road the next morning, in the +swaying old stage. Her eager gaze never left the plodding horses, +as if by looking at them she could make them go faster. + +"They're pretty slow, aren't they?" she said. + +"Slow--THEM? Well, I guess you weren't never a stage horse!" +chuckled the old man at the reins. + +"No," admitted Aunt Olivia, "I never was, but I know I'd go +faster today." + +At the Junction, halfway to Rebecca Mary, she descended alertly +from the train and crossed the platform. She must wait here, they +told her, an hour and twenty minutes. On the other side of the +station a train was just slowing up, and she stood a moment to +scan idly the thin stream of people that trickled from the cars. +There were old women--did any of them, she wondered, feel as happy +as she did? There were tall children, too. There was one--Aunt Olivia +started a little and fumbled in her soft hair, under the roses in +her bonnet brim, for her glasses. There was one tall child--she was +coming this way--she was coming fast--she was running! Her arms +were out-- + +"Aunt Olivia! Aunt Olivia!" the Tall Child was crying out, +joyously, "Oh, Aunt Olivia!" + +"Rebecca Mary!--my dear, my dear!" + +They were in each other's arms. The roses on Aunt Olivia's bonnet +brim slipped to one side--the two of them, not Plummers any more, but a +common, glad old woman and a common, glad, tall child, were kissing +each other as though they would never stop. The stream of people +reached them and flowed by on either side. Trains came and went, +and still they stood like that. + +"Hoity-toity!" muttered Aunt Olivia's Duty, and slipped past with +the stream. A Plummer to the end, what use to stay any longer there? + +"I was coming home," cried Rebecca Mary. "I couldn't bear it +another minute!" + +"I was coming after you--my dear, my DEAR, _I_ couldn't bear it +another minute!" + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg Etext of Rebecca Mary, by Annie Hamilton Donnell + |