"It is perfectly dreadful," sighed Rebecca when she read it aloud after
school. "Putting in 'one' all the time doesn't make it sound any more
like a book, and it looks silly besides."
"You say such queer things," objected Miss Dearborn. "I don't see what
makes you do it. Why did you put in anything so common as picking up
chips?"
"Because I was talking about 'household tasks' in the sentence before,
and it IS one of my household tasks. Don't you think calling supper
'one's evening meal' is pretty? and isn't 'bereft' a nice word?"
"Yes, that part of it does very well. It is the cat, the chips, and the
milk pail that I don't like."
"All right!" sighed Rebecca. "Out they go; Does the cow go too?"
"Yes, I don't like a cow in a composition," said the difficult Miss
Dearborn.
The Milltown trip had not been without its tragic consequences of a
small sort; for the next week Minnie Smellie's mother told Miranda
Sawyer that she'd better look after Rebecca, for she was given to
"swearing and profane language;" that she had been heard saying
something dreadful that very afternoon, saying it before Emma Jane and
Living Perkins, who only laughed and got down on all fours and chased
her.
Rebecca, on being confronted and charged with the crime, denied it
indignantly, and aunt Jane believed her.
"Search your memory, Rebecca, and try to think what Minnie overheard
you say," she pleaded. "Don't be ugly and obstinate, but think real
hard. When did they chase you up the road, and what were you doing?"
A sudden light broke upon Rebecca's darkness.
"Oh! I see it now," she exclaimed. "It had rained hard all the morning,
you know, and the road was full of puddles. Emma Jane, Living, and I
were walking along, and I was ahead. I saw the water streaming over the
road towards the ditch, and it reminded me of Uncle Tom's Cabin at
Milltown, when Eliza took her baby and ran across the Mississippi on
the ice blocks, pursued by the bloodhounds. We couldn't keep from
laughing after we came out of the tent because they were acting on such
a small platform that Eliza had to run round and round, and part of the
time the one dog they had pursued her, and part of the time she had to
pursue the dog. I knew Living would remember, too, so I took off my
waterproof and wrapped it round my books for a baby; then I shouted,
'MY GOD! THE RIVER!' just like that--the same as Eliza did in the play;
then I leaped from puddle to puddle, and Living and Emma Jane pursued
me like the bloodhounds. It's just like that stupid Minnie Smellie who
doesn't know a game when she sees one. And Eliza wasn't swearing when
she said 'My God! the river!' It was more like praying."
"Well, you've got no call to be prayin', any more than swearin', in the
middle of the road," said Miranda; "but I'm thankful it's no worse.
You're born to trouble as the sparks fly upward, an' I'm afraid you
allers will be till you learn to bridle your unruly tongue."
"I wish sometimes that I could bridle Minnie's," murmured Rebecca, as
she went to set the table for supper.
"I declare she IS the beatin'est child!" said Miranda, taking off her
spectacles and laying down her mending. "You don't think she's a leetle
mite crazy, do you, Jane?"
"I don't think she's like the rest of us," responded Jane thoughtfully
and with some anxiety in her pleasant face; "but whether it's for the
better or the worse I can't hardly tell till she grows up. She's got
the making of 'most anything in her, Rebecca has; but I feel sometimes
as if we were not fitted to cope with her."
"Stuff an' nonsense!" said Miranda "Speak for yourself. I feel fitted
to cope with any child that ever was born int' the world!"
"I know you do, Mirandy; but that don't MAKE you so," returned Jane
with a smile.
The habit of speaking her mind freely was certainly growing on Jane to
an altogether terrifying extent.