didn't you? Well, did you know how suddent it was? He'd never hed a
sick day in his life, so we hed no hopes of ever gettin' red of him;
though there wa'n't a worse husband nor father nor neighbor in Bixby.
His mother hed consid'able better 'a' named him Cain than Abel, but
you can't never tell by lookin' at little mites o' bald-headed,
red-faced things in cradles whether they're going to turn out Abels
or Cains. Well, he'd refused to buy a ticket to the Readin', and he
never would let his wife join the club; but about half-past six
o'clock the very night o' the entertainment he eat a hearty supper of
brown bread and pork and beans, got up and took his hat, kicked the
dog and the cat and cuffed the children, which he'd done every night
and mornin' faithful for twelve years, went out the side door and
expired right there on the rubber door-mat where Mis' Bennett would
have to step on him to get out; and it'll be easier for a camel to
get through the needle's eye than for him to git int' the Kingdom,
that's all I've got to say, and I'm a woman o' few words!
"Nobody knew what Vilruvias was called away for till after the
Readin', so there wa'n't no excitement at the entertainment. The
author said afterwards when the committee was givin' her a colation
(it was an elegant one, too--lemon pie and jelly cake and marble cake
and caraway cookies, and root beer and lemonade) that if she had
known it she should 'a' ben afraid it was a bad sign.'
"'Not if you'd ever hed Abel Bennett for a neighbor,' said Si; and he
was about right, though it sounds hard to say it, and he didn't but
jest a few times!
"No, I ain't said much about the Readin' itself, for ef you're on a
committee you're too busy to listen to anything that goes on. The
author looked pretty and appeared pretty; she got on first-rate with
Mis' Stevens, and gave her a book, with writin' in the front of it,
that Mis' Stevens keeps on her marble-top table in the parlor. Si
says ef Mis' Stevens ever wants to dispose of it the writin' will
spoil the trade, but I tell him the author meant all right, and Mis'
Stevens is too well off to sell a present that was give to her,
anyway. The audience was real pleased with the author, and she said
they was awful easy to read to, and awful quick at takin' a joke; but
I told her it wa'n't no ordinary State o' Maine audience she hed in
Bixby: a place that has its three churches and two settled ministers
and four college graduates, an' a Readin' Club an' a High School and
a drinkin' fountain! She said no, she couldn't expect to meet with
such folks everywhere, but the remembrance of hevin' once enjoyed
sech advantages would keep her up when she was hevin' hard times in
other places. I thought that was real modest and pretty of her.
"She wa'n't no great reader, as I say, and she wa'n't no great writer
for that matter, and I can't hardly see why they should make a fuss
over her in the cities. Her stories might 'a' happened anywhere,
most; they never did happen, I s'pose, but they sounded so natural
and likely that it couldn't 'a' ben much work to write 'em down. I
declare if she'd 'a' ben here this afternoon and took down what we've
said, 'twould 'a' ben 'bout as good as what she read that night. I
wouldn't wonder if I could write a couple of books a year jest like
hers, but I don't s'pose it pays so well as goin' out by the day
sewin', an', as Si says, we're in this world for a livin', not for
notoriety.
"The next mornin' the committee went to the deepot to see the author
off, and the four young men ushers was there, too, with the biggest
and about the hombliest boquet I ever set eyes on! I don't hardly
know how she could 'a' took it in her hand without changin' color. I
got there first, and I was glad I did, for the deepot master hed
forgot and laid out that old fly-paper all over the benches in the
waitin'-room, and I hed a chance to yank it out o' sight and dust
down the stove-pipe before she come in. Mis' Stevens looked real
smilin' for once, and asked her to come back and make her a visit
when it was cooler weather and her hired girl was over the
whoopin'-cough.
"Mr. Hobson was there, and he handed her an envelope with two
railroad tickets to Portland inside of it. It was just like him to
buy the tickets and put 'em in an envelope; the other minister would
'a' counted the dollar and seventeen cents into her hand--and just as
she was gettin' on the train the president of the Readin' Club
stepped up and presented her with an album that hed the photographs
of all the members pasted in it.
"Si says it ain't the handsomest club in the United States, even when
it gets its best clothes on; but that's nothin' but a man's way of
runnin' down women's clubs. We ain't all good lookin', to be sure,
and most of the pictures was taken in country daguerreon saloons,
where they don't flatter folks up much. I did kind o' wish Lowisy
Burrage hed hed her new glasses and Aurelia Hanson her waved front
piece before they was taken, but the author was too tickled for
anything to git such a handsome present, and she said so; and says
the president of the club to her, 'You ain't a mite tickleder'n we be
to give it to you!' Then the train went off, the author lookin' back
from the platform, the committee wavin' their handkerchiefs, and Mr.
Hobson 'n' the four ushers swingin' their hats at her.
"All in all it was 'bout the most successful entertainment we ever
bed here to Bixby, and we made forty dollars clear, though the land
knows we put work enough into it to make seventy-five! There's one
thing certain, wherever that author goes readin' she won't find any
place that'll do the thing up in the same style as the Winter Night
Club did when it entertained her at Bixby!
"Must you go so soon, Mis' Strout? Well, it's ben real nice to see
you and hear all the news from Milliken's Mills."
THE QUILT OF HAPPINESS
I
Riverboro, that generally assumed an indifferent and semi-recumbent
attitude when it observed strangers, sat up and took notice the
moment that Rebecca Rowena Randall arrived on the noon stage from
up-country and alighted at the brick house on the main street of the
village. Mrs. Perkins, the nearest neighbor, with her only daughter,
Emma Jane, palpitating with interest beside her, watched the cautious
descent of the little passenger from the stage and the particularly
tempestuous tweak she gave her headgear as her feet touched the
earth. Then they watched with equal interest the lifting of her hair
trunk from the back of the stage by Jerry Cobb; the appearance of
Miss Jane on the stone steps; and well at the rear, the tall, grim
figure of Miranda Sawyer.
Mrs. Perkins could see Miranda's greeting in the shape of a bony
finger directing the child to wipe her dusty feet on the mat; then
the screen door of the brick house slammed behind her, and Rebecca
was a member of the brick-house family and a citizen of Riverboro.
"Poor little mite!" sighed Mrs. Perkins.
"Can I go over and see her now?" asked Emma Jane, already cherishing
hopes of intimacy.
"Of course you can't!" responded her mother briskly. "Do you s'pose
Mirandy wants the house full o' comp'ny the minute Rebecca gits
there?"
"Just me wouldn't make it full," objected Emma Jane.
"It takes precious few to make a house too full to please Mirandy
Sawyer!" and Mrs. Perkins resumed her seat at the window overlooking
the river. "You can keep an eye on the gate, an' if they let her
ou'doors again to-night you can run over and scrape acquaintance, if
you want to."
Now Rebecca's vivid little personality had been somewhat obscured in
the big family of children at Sunnybrook Farm, but in Riverboro it
had the effect of a Roman candle suddenly bursting among the lesser
fireworks on a Fourth-of-July evening. She was extraordinarily
gregarious and within a year knew everybody on both sides of the
river. "Anybody'll do for Rebecca so long's it's folks!" grumbled
her Aunt Miranda. "This street is gen'ally chock-full o' young ones
nowadays, and Rebecca's always eggin' 'em on to somethin' new. When
she asks me if she can borrer the silver call bell an' I see her
makin' off with a lead pencil an' paper, I always suspicion she's
organizin' somethin'."
Miranda was right. There had been a positive epidemic of
organizations in Riverboro's "younger set" in the last few months.
Most of them had died an early, though natural, death, while others
had been put out of existence by unfeeling parents and guardians.
Miss Dearborn, the village teacher, was really the inspiring force
behind the first one. Feeling a lack of com- mon purpose in the
district school, she had proposed a club for general improvement and
public service of some sort. In order to develop initiative and
executive ability, she asked the older girls and boys to meet alone
to draft a constitution and choose a name. She was somewhat confused
when they issued from their executive session quickly and firmly
entitled The Jolly Jumpers, and learned that the officers were to be
selected, not for intellectual or moral superiority, but according to
the height that they were able to jump over a broomstick. This
unintentionally athletic society still had its healthful and noisy
meetings now and again, although it never fulfilled Miss Dearborn's
ambitions.
The Guild of Ministering Sisters could not find anybody who desired
its ministrations, but one or two secret societies were in a
flourishing condition, notably The Bouncers. Mr. Perkins, the local
blacksmith, had a way of saying to the young people, when they had
interrupted his horse-shoeing long enough: "Now clear out, young
ones, or I'll bounce ye!" The idea of this picturesquely named
society was that, if any member should be caught cheating in games or
lessons, fibbing or tale-bearing, or in other misdemeanors of equal
magnitude, he--or she--would find a card on desk, or in hat, with
this neatly printed phrase on it:
YOU ARE HEREBY BOUNCED
The shame and terror of this card oppressed the most callous boy,
and, his mind reverting to the last sin that he had committed and
wondering how it could have been found out, he promptly turned over a
new leaf in order to be reinstated in good society.
The success of the month of June had been a club called The Pantry
Rioters. Romeo Smith, a dimpled, wide-mouthed, freckle-faced boy was
the founder, and the first members were all of the (then) superior
sex. The girls, however, discovered the general intentions of the
club, and Rebecca drafted such an engaging constitution and by-laws
that the boys chivalrously widened the gates of membership. Rebecca,
whose eligibility as an active member did not admit a shadow of
doubt, was constrained to decline all but honorary connection with
The Pantry Rioters; and those who knew the discipline of the brick
house admitted the wisdom of her decision. "But oh, how I could riot
if only I wasn't being fed and clothed and slept and schooled by Aunt
Miranda!" thought Rebecca passionately, as she carefully copied the
by-laws of The Pantry Rioters:
"1. No member shall riot in anybody's else pantry but his own.
"2. No member shall attack the swing-shelf or wire netting box in the
cellar as being too easy and not risky enough, and not a pantry
anyway.
"3. No member shall be greedy or really thievish, nor shall he nibble
or take away anything that is needed for the next meal, if he knows
it; this being not nice, besides making trouble all round.
"4. Any member who does a rioting act of great daring right under the
eye of the enemy shall be allowed to wear a red button to school.
"5. Any member who is caught in the act of rioting and reprimanded,
and so forth, shall wear a blue button to school and describe all the
circumstances, however painful, at a meeting of the club, where he
will receive comfort and sympathy.
"6. Any little titbit subtracted from the pantry may be shared with
another member, thus removing any suspicion of evil from rioting; the
idea being to show that a person could take a tart, doughnut, frosted
cake, or spoonful of preserves at any time if only he was not so good
and honest."
Oh, how delicious were the last school days of the June term when The
Pantry Rioters first came into being! Who could forget the morning
when Romeo Smith arrived at school flushed and panting and took his
place in the line within one minute of being tardy? And there, in
the button-hole of his coat lapel, gleamed the red badge of courage,
the button covered by the girls with scarlet ribbon, but never worn
before!
At ten o'clock Miss Dearborn remarked: "Romeo Smith is well prepared
with his lessons and is behaving himself with perfect propriety,
except for a perpetual grin, for which I can see no reason. However,
as many of the scholars cannot help staring at him, I would ask him
please to remove the red button he is wearing and place it in his
vest pocket."
In the reading lesson when Sam Simpson came to the phrase, "The spy
gave a paltry excuse," he read it, "pantry excuse," and there was
such a flood of laughter let loose in the schoolroom that Miss
Dearborn was obliged to say: "Did no one ever mistake a word before?
It is not polite to make fun of another scholar. You may be the next
one yourself."
And then, after school, to hear from Romeo's lips that his mother, in
passing out of the pantry with a colander full of fresh doughnuts
under her left arm, had paused to lean from the window and speak to
her husband; whereupon Romeo, with magnificent audacity--grandmother
in adjacent kitchen, mother holding pan, and father outside
window--had seized a hot doughnut and, mindful of the red button, had
further tempted fate by taking the knife from the cheese plate and
carving off a piece two inches wide! With this rich booty, avoiding
the safe side door, he went through the living-room, passing a
visiting aunt and two younger brothers of highly suspicious
disposition, and sped to school in time to avoid the tardy mark.
"How perfectly elegant!" ejaculated Emma Jane Perkins.
"Where is the doughnut?" asked Rebecca, mindful of the sixth by-law.
"I had nowheres to keep it but under my hat, so I et it up; but you
can see the place where it was." And Romeo exhibited the shiny
circular spot on the top of his head where the hot doughnut had lain.
II
School had been closed for two weeks now, and one afternoon Rebecca
leaned over her gate and surveyed the landscape. Emma Jane Perkins
was watching from her doorway, and Alice Robinson from hers, while
several other girls were concealed behind board-piles or clumps of
trees, waiting for the hour of play to arrive. Suddenly all hearts
leaped with gladness, for Rebecca was seen to remove the brown ribbon
from one of her braids and put it in her apron pocket, and to
substitute a piece of bright pink, legal tape.
"What are you doing to your hair, Rebecca?" asked Aunt Jane, coming
to the door unexpectedly.
"Changing one of my ribbons, Aunt Jane."
"What for, child?"
"Well, it's a secret, Aunt Jane, but I don't mind telling you a
little bit: it's a signal. I can't fire a cannon or build a bonfire
on the heights, so this is just a way of telling the girls I've got
an idea."
"I should think they might guess that, any time, without your decking
yourself out like a horse at a cattle fair," smiled Aunt Jane.
Rebecca laughed and shook her long braids. "But it's such a nice,
ladylike, romantic way of signaling, Aunt Jane!"
"Well, maybe it is; but take it off before you come in the house,
won't you?"
"As if I wouldn't, Aunt Jane? And, anyway, my idea is new, but it
joins on to something you and Aunt Miranda know about already--Miss
Roxy's quilt."
"Oh!" sighed Miss Jane comfortably. "If it's nothing worse than that
I won't worry."
"It's a beautiful idea!" and Rebecca glowed. "The girls will love
it, and Miss Dearborn, and the minister's wife; and you would, too,
but I mustn't show partiality between you and Aunt Miranda. The
mothers will think it's silly, so it's got to be kept secret."
"I don't know. They all approved of your making extra patchwork, and
if you're any happier to put your work together so that it will
amount to something, and if you want to give it away, why, it's all
to your credit, and it doesn't cost any one family much. You'd
better give up the notion of quilting it, Rebecca."
"Oh, why, Aunt Jane?"
"Because you five girls could never finish it by cold weather. I'll
put it in the frame for you and teach you how to 'tack' it."
"We all know how to quilt," objected Rebecca.
"Yes, but you don't know what it is to take those thousands of little
stitches all in even rows. You can't break your thread, or make
knots, or pucker the quilt; and the part near the edges of the frame
is very hard to do neatly. Have you chosen your pattern?"
"No, we'll choose the pattern this afternoon. We've looked at all
the spare bedroom quilts there are in Riverboro. There's Mrs.
Perkins's 'Goose Chase,' and Mrs. Robinson's 'Church Steps,' Mrs.
Milliken's 'Rising Sun,' Mrs. Watson's 'Job's Troubles,' Mrs.
Meserve's 'Duck's Foot in the Mud,' and--"
Miss Jane put her fingers in her ears. "Goodness gracious, Rebecca,
how you do run on! I hope you don't forget your Aunt Miranda's
'Johnny Round the Corner'; but don't you girls fly too high or you'll
come down heavy. You can get gay, pretty pieces and put four in a
square and then join your squares corner to corner with plain ones in
between. Perhaps Mrs. Perkins will have some new goods to help you
out, and that'll set off the patchwork. Now, it's four o'clock and
you can go and play, Rebecca."
Rebecca sped like an arrow shot from a bow, Emma Jane sped
contemporaneously; Alice Robinson, Candace Milliken, and Persis
Watson appeared as suddenly as if they had been concealed in
woodchuck holes.
Miss Jane looked wistfully after the five slim little figures
disappearing with arms about one another's waists and heads close
together. "A child makes a wonderful difference," she thought. "I
don't know what Aurelia's other children are like, but I can't think
how she could part with Rebecca, even to get her educated! Anyhow
it's put the sun back into the sky for me!"
III
Old Miss Roxanna Lyman lived half a mile up the river road and an
eighth of a mile up a lane that led from it and stopped at her
dooryard. Why the house was ever built there was a mystery. If you
were a stranger in Riverboro and were walking up to play with the
Simpson children and found everybody away from home, and had spied
high-bush blueberries a little farther on, and chokecherry trees in
full bearing in a green lane, that you had never noticed before, and
had strayed along the grass-grown road that had known hardly a wagon
wheel for years, you would finally have passed an obscuring clump of
trees and come suddenly upon Miss Roxy's little black house.
At least that was what Rebecca did. The door was open, andsitting in
a rocking-chair in the tiny entry was, as Rebecca reported to Miss
Jane later, "the very most sorrowfullest old lady any one had ever
seen." No one could have told her age. She was slight and spare;
she was huddled in a gray shawl; the wrinkles in her face--wrinkles
of pain, anxiety, grief, poverty, and foreboding--fairly made a
lattice-work on the skin. You knew by looking at her that no one had
gone out from the black house in the morning and no one was coming
back to it at night.
Rebecca had heard of her and instantly asked: "Are you Miss Roxy
Lyman? Please excuse me for stumbling right into your dooryard. I
didn't see there was one till I was in it."
"Yes. I'm Roxy Lyman," said the old lady in a voice that trembled
with surprise and suggested the rarity of callers. "Won't you set
down a spell?"
Rebecca needed no second invitation to embark on a new experience.
She sank down on the step, flung her hat on the grass and pushed the
hair back from her warm forehead. "I'm Rebecca Rowena Randall," she
explained fluently. "My home is at Sunnybrook Farm, up Temperance
way, but I'm living with my two Aunt Sawyers at the brick house so's
to get educated. There's no education in Temperance, just plain
teaching, and only a few months a year. Sometimes we didn't have any
lessons at all, because when there were big boys it took all
teacher's time to make them behave. Down here Miss Dearborn can
manage a big boy as easy as anything, so of course we have nothing to
do but learn."
This was only the natural beginning of a cataract of conversation,
and the acquaintance between Rebecca and Miss Roxy Lyman was now well
started. Rebecca proceeded to open her mind on a dozen subjects of
passionate interest to herself. Clasping her knees with her hands,
she rippled on in a way never permitted at the brick house.
"I like the way your house is set," she said; "side end to the road,
looking down over the fields and seeing the river flowing-ways. I
think a black house with vines growing over it is nice too; a white
one is always so stare-y. The river's splendid company, don't you
think so?"
"It's all I have," was the reply. "I don't look at it much nowadays."
"I get tired of looking at the same old hat, but I never get used to
the old river somehow; but perhaps it isn't quite enough company all
by itself. Of course there's the trees."
"They ain't leaved out the year round," said Miss Roxy.
"No-o-o. But you're sure they _will_ 'leave out.'" All this time
Rebecca had stolen little side glances at Miss Roxy. "I suppose you
read when you're not doing house-work?" she ventured.
"I've read all my books over and over so I just set an' think!" And
Miss Roxy's eyes wandered from Rebecca, as if she had already
outlived the experience of meeting a new face and hearing a new voice.
"Well, all I was going to say is," said Rebecca, rising to her feet
at this warning signal, "that there was a very sick lady, sick and
lame and old, that lived half a mile from our farm, and mother always
had me go over and tell her the news once or twice a week. Mother
says everybody ought to know what's going on, or they get lonesome.
I've come away from that lady so I think I'd better take you in her
place if you'd like to have me. There's such a lot happens down our
way--awfully interesting things, too--that I could reel it off by the
yard this minute, only you seem tired. And I've got two books of my
own to lend you, so I'll come soon again if Aunt Miranda'll let me.
Shall I?"
Rebecca's demeanor and tone were modest and innocent, but Miss Roxy
felt herself in the grip of a master hand and feebly assented. "I
don't mind if you do," she said, making an effort, and bringing her
eyes back to the quaint, vivid little creature standing in front of
her on the greensward. "Mebbe you'd liven me up."
"Oh, I would!" And Rebecca's tone was full of confidence. "Aunt
Miranda says I'd stir up a cemetery; but that isn't a compliment.
She doesn't like being stirred up; but I'd be real careful with you,
being a stranger and not very well! Good-bye!" And Rebecca flew
down the lane, her long, dark braids flying out behind her; while
Miss Roxy, in spite of herself, rose to her feet by the rocking-chair
and watched the child out of sight.
IV
There were many meetings after that. Sometimes Rebecca took one of
the other girls and they carried a bouquet of wild flowers to put in
a tumbler on the kitchen table, or some apples or berries or nuts
that they had picked on the road; but it was easy to see that one
caller at a time was all that Miss Roxy fancied. She had very little
to eat and very little fuel, though she was known to receive ten
dollars a month from a nephew in Salem, so that Riverboro was
comfortably sure that she could not starve; and as for firewood, the
same nephew had a load, all sawed and split, deposited in her shed
twice a year. These mercies gave assurance of existence if not of
luxury; and, anyway, Riverboro could not waste its time over an
incurably sad, cold, strange, silent woman like Roxanna Lyman, even
if her family had been one of the best in former years.
Once Rebecca had knocked at Miss Roxy's door without receiving any
answer and, peeping into the window of the downstairs chamber where
she slept, had seen her lying on her bed with the gray shawl round
her shoulders and a man's military coat over her feet. Like
lightning the thought flashed through the child's mind: "Why not make
a quilt for Miss Roxy?"
Patchwork had to be sewed, day in and day out, as was the custom.
There were never enough sheets to oversew, and needlework was a
Christian duty; therefore, patchwork--in and out of season. It was
cheap, too. Nobody would mind if she and the other girls did extra
work, begged their own pieces, and gave away the result for a
Thanksgiving or Christmas present. The matter had been put before
mothers and aunts, accepted, and scraps already collected. It only
remained to choose the design.
So far so good; but that was not why Rebecca had tied pink tape on
one of her pigtails--not at all! The mere notion of the quilt, a
secret from all the village save the families involved--this had
enchanted the five girls from the beginning; but something else was
unfolded in the pine-grove meeting.