she'd been crying. She cries 'most every day."
"What for, I wonder? She lives alone, so there's nobody to be cross
to her," said Alice Robinson, who had troubles of her own.
"I guess it's the things that have happened in bygone days."
(Rebecca had an incurably literary style in conducting meetings, and
indulged unconsciously in nights of sentiment and rhetoric.) "Her
mother and father died and her brother embezzled and Aunt Jane thinks
that a gentleman played with her feelings and she's never been the
same since."
"'Played with her feelings!' What's that?" inquired the
unsentimental Emma Jane Perkins.
"Gave her hopes and then married another without saying so much as
'Boo,'" explained Rebecca.
"And there was a sister that did something dreadful, I don't exactly
know what," hinted Candace darkly; "but she lives out West and Miss
Roxy writes and writes to her, but she never answers."
"And she was the one Miss Rosy loved best of all," added Rebecca with
a tear in her voice. "I asked her yesterday why she didn't sit in
the kitchen with a window open and not in the little front entry
that'll hardly hold her rocking-chair. She said if anybody should
come any time suddenly she could get down the steps quicker to meet
them. She never comes down to any of us, and I know it's the sister
she means. Oh, dear!"
"Mother's awful sorry for her," was Persis's comment. "But
everybody's kind of lost sympathy for her because she lives so out of
creation, and it's so much work to get there."
"Well"--and Rebecca leaned toward the group confidentially--"I was
thinking about it night before last as I was leaning over the gate.
Now look the other way, girls, and don't laugh while I explain. All
of a sudden I thought the pieces of our quilt will be scraps of
dresses; why not take those that we, and all the other people, have
had the loveliest times in? We could put them everywhere but round
the edges, everywhere they'd touch Miss Roxy, I mean--on her neck and
shoulders and arms and waist and knees. It'd be a quilt of happiness
then; that's my idea!" And Rebecca waited with flushing cheeks and
downcast eyes for the verdict.
There was a breathless pause of half a minute. Emma Jane seldom
moved her mind in the presence of Rebecca, feeling that competition
was impossible; still she was the first to break the silence with her
customary ejaculation: "I think it would be perfectly elegant!"
Alice Robinson nodded her curly head responsively and said: '"Quilt
of Happiness!' It sounds lovely, if we don't have to tell anybody
grown up who would say it's silly."
"But can happiness strike _into_ anybody?" inquired Candace, who, as
the daughter of an Orthodox deacon, went to the foundation of things.
Rebecca was inclined to evade the direct question, inasmuch as her
cherished idea had no real basis save one of pure sentiment.
"I can't help feeling that if we just collect scraps of happiness,"
she said shyly, "and cut and stitch and tack happiness into the
quilt, all in secret, that Miss Roxy'd feel warmer in it, though, of
course, she'd never guess why."
"Well," answered Candace, a little unconvinced but generously
approving, "I think it couldn't do any harm to try."
"And there's just one person we might tell, for she'd understand and
help us get the right pieces without telling our secret, and that's
teacher." This suggestion from Persis Watson.
Rebecca clapped her hands delightedly.
"Now here comes the greatest piece of news, and I've been saving it
up till the end! I did tell Miss Dearborn, last evening. I couldn't
help it, because I couldn't be sure my idea wasn't foolish till one
other person had heard it--and what do you think she told me? She's
engaged to be married! Miss Dearborn's engaged to be married!"
This was chanted joyously while Rebecca skipped over the pine-needle
carpet in circles and waved her arms triumphantly.
A chorus of "Oh!" and "Ah!" and "Who to?" woke the echoes.
Rebecca sat down again cross-legged and proceeded to the telling of a
tale which from the beginning of the world has evoked the keenest joy
in the narrator and the most rapt attention from the audience.
"How did she happen to tell you first?" asked Persis with a spice of
envy in her tone.
"Just because I was there almost at the very identical minute when He
went away."
"Who? Her beau?" inquired Alice, blushing to the roots of her hair.
"Yes; and she'd never tell Mrs. Bangs a thing like _that_!" (Mrs.
Bangs was a lady of difficult temper with whom Miss Dearborn boarded
as painlessly as possible.) "Don't you know how you feel when you're
full to bursting with splendid news? That's how Miss Dearborn was.
Do you remember the tall gentleman that came from Hartford two
Saturday nights and went to meeting with her next day?"
"Yes!" in chorus. "Was that him?" (Miss Dearborn spoke and taught
good English; but there are some things that human beings are
powerless to teach--or learn!)
"Yes. His name is Robert Hunt, and teacher says he's an
ab-so-lute-ly glorious man!"
"I didn't know there was any glorious men," said Persis. "I wisht
I'd looked at him harder in meetin'. When they goin' to be married?"
"Not till next summer, though he's pleaded for an early date.
(That's what she said.) She wants to teach here till the spring
term's over so's to buy her wedding clothes, and aren't you glad
we'll have her one more winter? Now, why doesn't somebody ask me
what my news is?"
"Gracious! Is there any more?" they cried.
"Of course! Or what has all this to do with our quilt? Miss
Dearborn just loved the idea of its being a quilt of happiness. She
kissed me lots of times, and then she got up and looked in the glass
and twirled herself round and held up her skirt and danced, and she
had on the dress we like best--the pink delaine with the moss
rosebuds on it--and she said, thinking it out as she went along:
'Rebecca, I've had so much happiness to-day I must give part of it
away! When Mr. Hunt asked me to marry him this afternoon, I had on
this dress. The waist is nearly worn out, but the skirt is as good
as new. It's got six breadths in it, and it'll make a beautiful
lining for Miss Roxy's quilt!' Then I said: 'Oh, that'll be lovely
if you can spare it; but, darling Miss Dearborn--excuse me for
speaking of it--they say that long ago a gentleman from Boston played
with Miss Roxy's feelings and that's partly the reason she's so
unhappy, and oughtn't you to be perfectly sure that Mr. Hunt isn't
playing with yours before you give away any clothes?"
"That was very thoughtful of you, Rebecca," commented Persis
approvingly. "And what did she say?"
"Oh! She fell into her rocking-chair and laughed and laughed till
the tears rolled down her cheeks. Then she stood up and took the
dress right off her back and kissed the waist of it and--"
Emma Jane's china-blue eyes were popping out of her head. Her mind
was hurrying to keep up with Rebecca's tale, but it seemed half a
league behind as she ejaculated: "Kissed her waist? Wha' for?"
Rebecca looked embarrassed, both at the interruption at the
high-water mark of her story and at the lack of comprehension. Also,
it was a difficult action to explain in words; one whose meaning was
to be felt with a blush and a heartbeat, but not dragged into the
open and enlarged upon in bald speech.
"Just think it over, Emma Jane, for I can't talk about it," she said.
"If you'd only read 'Ivanhoe,' as I wanted you to, or even 'Cora, the
Doctor's Wife' or 'The Pearl of Orr's Island,' you'd know lots more
about things."
"I know!" cried Candace triumphantly. "She'd had on the dress when
he asked her to marry him, and she loved it."
"I can see how she'd kiss him, but I'd never 'a' thought of her
kissin' a waist!" murmured Emma Jane obstinately.
"Well, she did!" Rebecca went on with heightened color. "She kissed
it more'n twenty times as quick as lightning and hung it up in the
closet, and then she laughed and cried some more and said: 'Oh,
Rebecca, if you only knew how sure I am that Mr. Hunt isn't playing
with my feelings; but I must tell him about your warning! Here,
dear,' she said, rolling the skirt into a bundle, 'you'll have to
piece the breadths to make them long enough, but feather-stitching
will cover the seams and, oh! I want to give it away right now when
it's just warm with gladness and let it go to poor Miss Roxy, who
hasn't got a splendid man to love her and take care of her like my
Robert!'--that's what she called him." Rebecca's voice broke; her
eyes glistened; her cheeks glowed.
Indeed, the little group of budding women all felt vague thumpings
and stirrings of something on the left side that had heretofore been
silent. "Well, I declare!" "How perfectly elegant!" "Isn't it
sweet of her!" "And now we've got our lining that's worried us the
most." "And it's just fallen from heaven like the manna in the
Bible!"
"And how wonderful to have a happiness lining all ready to put in our
happiness quilt, the first happiness quilt that ever was! It simply
must make a little difference in Miss Roxy's feelings!"
"And to think that we're the only ones in Riverboro to know that
teacher's engaged to be married! It'll be all over the village
to-morrow, and we knew it first! Oh, Rebecca, it's been the most
wonderful meeting we've ever had, and when we see a pink tape on your
pigtail again we'll run harder than ever!"
These and a dozen other excited comments fell from the girls' lips as
they made their way home from the pine-grove meeting.
The collecting of the happiness pieces did not turn out to be a task
of insuperable difficulty. The children themselves furnished a
goodly number. There were some scraps of Rebecca's pink gingham, her
first dress of the color she adored but had never hitherto possessed,
having worn out her sister Hannah's clothes ever since she was born.
Emma Jane gave bits of her Scotch plaid poplin, called the handsomest
dress ever worn in Riverboro's younger set. There were squares from
frocks in which Persis and Candace had received school prizes and
Alice Robinson had worn in tableaux. Alice was always in tableaux on
account of her pink-and-white skin and golden hair, and was always
cast for "the angel," although she had a most uncertain disposition.
The minister's wife, confidentially consulted, had contributed the
full sleeves and shoulder cape of the dress she "appeared bride in"
the Sunday after her wedding.
"I had to walk up the aisle and sit in my pew all alone that summer,
Rebecca, and I was only seventeen," she said. "Sometimes I thought
it would be nice to be married to just a man that belonged to me
only, and have him sit beside me in meeting; but then I remembered
how grateful I ought to be that my husband belonged to God."
Aunt Jane gave two squares of the cherry-colored glacé silk that she
wore when she danced with the Governor of Maine at an inauguration
ball at Augusta.
Aunt Miranda never knew that the quilt had any sentimental notions
worked into it or she would have thrown cold water on the entire
proposition; but in her ignorance she looked over her piece-bag one
rainy afternoon with Rebecca. Suddenly she chanced upon a bit of
dun-colored stuff that resembled hair-cloth in texture.
"There!" she exclaimed. "That was the best dress I ever had! It
wore me like iron! I put two braids on the bottom of it the fourth
year and new under-arm pieces the next spring, and I believe it
lasted me nine seasons. I never had so much comfort out of anything
as that dress! It's a pleasure to look back upon!"
"Did you look nice in it, Aunt Miranda?" Rebecca inquired with
interest.
"I don' know's I ever noticed," her aunt replied absent-mindedly. "I
know it covered me up, an' that's what dresses are for, I guess."
"Can I have a piece of it and one of your gray cashmere, too?" asked
Rebecca; and as she put it in her sewing basket she thought: "I
wonder if Aunt Miranda never came any closer to happiness than that!"
V
I am afraid that from an artistic standpoint the quilt of happiness
was not a very handsome one. The idea having been the most important
thing in the working-out of the design, every conceivable kirjd of
stuff had been employed--calico, gingham, silk, poplin, percale,
alpaca, Henrietta cloth, delaine, velveteen, challie, and cashmere;
but the squares had been combined with such loving care that the
effect was gay and attractive, if a little bizarre.
At any rate, the very angels themselves might have been pleased to
look down on the five bright heads--yellow, chestnut, auburn, and
brown--that bent every day over their self-imposed task!
There were five lame middle fingers aching from the pressure of brass
thimbles, and five forefingers pricked wkh needle marks, but there
were no complaints.
Rebecca's energy flagged now and then, for long and monotonous tasks
were not her strong point; and, if it had not been a quilt of
happiness, her share in it might never have been accomplished. It
was just a little girl's dream--rainbow-tinted, fanciful, baseless;
but it danced in and out of the patchwork squares like a vagrant
summer breeze, and somehow it danced through the heart, too, ripening
and sweetening it.
And at last, in late November, there came a day of days when, in an
empty chamber at Emma Jane's house (Miranda Sawyer had refused to
have the girls bringing in dirt and carrying it up and down the
stairs of the brick house), Mrs. Perkins and Aunt Jane stretched the
quilt into its frame, suspended on the backs of four wooden chairs.
Miss Dearborn, who grew prettier every day and came from the
post-office in the afternoons all smiles and beams and dimples, had
made the happiness lining herself and featherstitched the seams.
Mrs. Perkins, whose father had been a storekeeper, leaving her
enormous riches in the shape of new goods, brought from her attic her
contribution of rolls of sheet wadding.
Now the outside, the wadding, and the lining were held carefully in
place by hands that were moist with excitement and responsibility,
and the tacking of the three smoothly together with bright-colored
worsteds proved to be the most difficult task that the girls had yet
confronted.
There was a week's work in all this, and two or three afternoons when
the binding of the four long sides was done; but, by dint of
perseverance, the last stitch was put into the quilt on the day
before Christmas, when Aunt Jane had prophesied New Year's as the
nearest possible date of completion. The girls gazed at their work
with uncontrollable admiration and reverence.
"I'm sick to death of it!" exclaimed Rebecca. "I love it to
distraction, and I never want to see another as long as I live! How
can anybody make 'em for fun? I could hug it, I'm so fond of it, and
slap it, I'm so tired of it!" And the girls echoed her sentiments,
though in less picturesque and vigorous language.
"If we give it to her to-day, she'll have something to be thankful
for on Christmas Day," the girls decided. "We'll have to lug it up
together, and let Rebecca go in with it, while we stay out in the
road and wait."
"Don't say 'lug,' and let's go after dark," Rebecca suggested. "I
believe I can open the door and put it down softly in, the entry with
our letter; then I won't get thanked all by myself, which wouldn't be
fair; and we can take turns going up to-morrow to hear what she says."
"Mother's going to send her a big plate of dinner," said Alice.
"Oh, joy!" And Rebecca took out the pink tape from her apron pocket
and tied it on a pigtail.
"What is it?" the girls asked breathlessly in chorus.
"Why, once there was a very important paper that had to be sent to a
certain king by one of his1 generals, and he stationed messengers ten
miles apart all along the road from his camp to the king's palace.
One man galloped for ten miles, got off his hot, steaming charger and
handed the message to another man, who was all ready and waiting on a
fresh horse. He galloped on to the next man, and so on. We'll do
the same with Miss Roxy's dinner, each of us making believe it's
horseback, and running like mad to give the basket to the next one.
Then it'll get there piping hot!"
Christmas Eve fell cold and bleak, with a north wind and an uncertain
moon. The girls put on mittens and hoods and, starting at six
o'clock, whem it was quite dark, they carried the quilt as they
walked, Indian file, along the frozen road. They met no one, just as
they had planned, for as the affair had begun in secrecy, so it was
hoped to end it. That was half the fun.
The Simpson cottage, with its yard completely filled with ramshackle
vehicles and cast-off implements of every sort, was lighted by the
effulgence of the tall banquet lamp that Rebecca and Emma Jane had
earned as a premium for selling soap. It was the joy and pride of
the Simpsons, although as drawing-room furniture it was accompanied
only by a battered pine table and three rickety wooden chairs.
The girls admired its glow in passing, but kept on the dark side of
the road and went stealthily by to avoid being hailed by Clara Belle
Simpson. Midway up the lane four of them stayed behind a clump of
young pines while Rebecca went on alone, staggering under the weight
of the precious quilt.
It was cold and the teeth of the "waiters" chattered, but by dint of
walking round and round the trees they succeeded in keeping fairly
comfortable, as their blood was circulating with incredible rapidity
and they were palpitating with excitement.
Soon Rebecca came running lightly down the lane. "Wait till we get
into the road," she whispered, "and I'll tell you all, though
everything went just right. Now come close and keep walking. I
looked through the kitchen window and saw a lamp burning on the
table, but nobody there. Then I opened the front door softly and
went in on tiptoe, thinking Miss Roxy was upstairs or down cellar,
and that I'd put the quilt on a chair with our letter. But the door
was open into the kitchen chamber and I could see her there asleep.
She hadn't gone to bed for good, I guess, because she wasn't
undressed. She was lying there with her gray shawl and a black
jacket over her shoulders, and her father's soldier coat over her
feet. Then I had an idea!"
"Of course!" they laughed in chorus.
"So I crept in like a mouse, lifted off the coat and jacket ver-y
softly, and spread the quilt over her!"
Here Rebecca's emotion quite overcame her. She stopped still in the
road and clasped her hands dramatically, while the girls listened
with devouring eagerness.
"Oh!" she said under her breath. "If only you had all been there!
The quilt was beautiful beyond compare! Miss Roxy looked like a
queen in it, spread all over everything--so big, so thick, so rich
and bright! Her face was as white as her hair, and her eyes were
shut tight. I tiptoed out, so afraid she'd wake up and have to thank
nie. But it seemed to me I must go back once, to see if she had
moved, and take one last look; so I crept round to the back and
peeped in the window. Just then she put out her hand and I thought
she'd feel something strange and open her eyes, but she didn't. She
just pulled it up round her neck; then she snuggled down into it the
way you do when you know you're going to sleep that instant minute
and have a lovely dream. And then the moon came out and shone on her
face, so I can't be perfectly certain, though I was looking hard, but
I think, I really do think, that she smiled."
Here Rebecca stopped suddenly, turned her head away and swallowed a
lump that appeared unexpectedly in her throat.
Emma Jane, who adored her, pressed her arm fondly but
uncomprehendingly.
"You are the queerest!" she exclaimed. "I never saw anybody before
who cried when she was pleased!"
Rebecca, all smiles again, dashed away the coming tear.
"I've told you before, Emma Jane," she said," that you'd know lots of
things if only you'd read books. 'Cora, the Doctor's Wife' and 'The
Pearl of Orr's Island' always cried when they were happy. I feel as
if laughs and cries came out of the same spot inside of me!"
Rebecca was right and the moon told the truth. Miss Roxy had smiled,
and she had dreamed. Dreams were rare occurrences in her experience,
for her nights were as drab and colorless as her days. The dream
carried her so far into the past that she was a child again; and the
something warm that she felt about her neck was her sister's arm--the
sister she loved best of all.
MATT MILLIKEN'S IMPROVEMENTS
The teacher of the Riverboro district school sat behind her desk,
correcting compositions. The twenty-eight pupils, varying in age
from four to fifteen, had departed, and Undine Berry had opened the
windows wide in order that the last trace of them should be
dispersed. Each separate pupil was a clean, healthy, country girl or
boy, but collectively they exhaled an odor of muddy shoes and
rubbers, lead and slate pencils, concealed doughnuts or cookies,
peppermint lozenges, boxes of angleworms for bait, and other
necessary accompaniments to the acquisition of knowledge.
There was room for occasional discouragement on the part of a
district school-teacher in a small Maine village. Out of Undine's
twenty-eight there were nine to be taught their "letters." There was
a group struggling in arithmetic from fractions to percentage; there
were toilers in the labyrinths of grammar, but Undine's task to-day
was more than usually exasperating, for the superintendent had put a
new plan in operation with a view of obtaining better results in the
way of compositions.
"If the children understand fully what they read, Miss Berry, they
will be better able to write freely, when the occasion comes. For
next week's compositions, Miss Berry, instead of calling upon them
for creative work, give them fifteen minutes without previous notice,
and ask them to write from memory any verses they have read or
recited this term. You will then discover the influence of certain
poems upon their imagination and be able to tell how correctly they
can recall them for you."
The acid test had been applied that day, and the disheveled results
were on the desk in front of the teacher, whose glance was directed
to the few lines contributed by a certain freckle-faced Tommy Mixter,
who was perhaps the sharpest and most active thorn in Miss Berry's
tender flesh. Tommy's half-hour of agonized effort had produced this
brief and inspired result:
Lines to a Frinjed Water Foul
I tear her teetered end side down!
Dear Teacher.
This is all I can remember of it though I liked the peace when Jim
Thompson resited it. TOMMY.
Undine Berry had no sense of humor, or this gem would have given her
sufficient joy to last through the afternoon; she was only irritated
that such dullness could exist in any human being. Had not the
stirring lines of "Old Ironsides" been recited on three successive
Fridays? Had not Jim Thompson roared, "Aye! tear her tattered ensign
down!" with appropriate gestures and been loudly applauded? Had she
not explained what an ensign was, and that "Ay" was pronounced like
"I" and "Aye" like "A"?
The teacher glanced out of the window now and then, noting in the
distance a little cottage covered with vines and a somewhat-too-stout
young man working in a flower garden. Some of the fragrant products
of his growing were in a tumbler on her desk at the present moment,
having been plucked by his own hand, tied neatly with twine,
protected by a portion of the Lewiston _Journal_, and sent by the
hand of the aforesaid Tommy, whose outward mien was respectful, but
who declared in secret conclave that Matt Milliken was "stuck on
teacher."
Undine herself was distinctly aware of this fact, but she was so
discreet, so impartial, in her treatment of Riverboro's masculine
eligibles--above all, so uncertain of her own attitude in this
particular matter--that the coupling of her name with that of Matt
Milliken had never been heard, even by the school committee.