Long ago when I used to watch Miss Ross painting the old mill at
Sunnybrook I thought I would be a painter, for Miss Ross went to Paris
France where she bought my bead purse and pink parasol and I thought
I would like to see a street with beautiful bright-colored things
sparkling and hanging in the store windows.
Then when the missionaries from Syria came to stay at the brick house
Mrs. Burch said that after I had experienced religion I must learn music
and train my voice and go out to heathen lands and save souls, so I
thought that would be my career. But we girls tried to have a branch and
be home missionaries and it did not work well. Emma Jane's father would
not let her have her birthday party when he found out what she had done
and Aunt Jane sent me up to Jake Moody's to tell him we did not mean
to be rude when we asked him to go to meeting more often. He said all
right, but just let him catch that little dough-faced Perkins young one
in his yard once more and she'd have reason to remember the call, which
was just as rude and impolite as our trying to lead him to a purer and a
better life.
Then Uncle Jerry and Mr. Aladdin and Miss Dearborn liked my
compositions, and I thought I'd better be a writer, for I must be
something the minute I'm seventeen, or how shall we ever get the
mortgage off the farm? But even that hope is taken away from me now,
for Uncle Jerry made fun of my story Lancelot Or The Parted Lovers and I
have decided to be a teacher like Miss Dearborn.
The pathetic announcement of a change in the career and life purposes of
Rebecca was brought about by her reading the grown-up story to Mr. and
Mrs. Jeremiah Cobb after supper in the orchard. Uncle Jerry was the
person who had maintained all along that Riverboro people would not make
a story; and Lancelot or The Parted Lovers was intended to refute that
assertion at once and forever; an assertion which Rebecca regarded
(quite truly) as untenable, though why she certainly never could have
explained. Unfortunately Lancelot was a poor missionary, quite unfitted
for the high achievements to which he was destined by the youthful
novelist, and Uncle Jerry, though a stage-driver and no reading man, at
once perceived the flabbiness and transparency of the Parted Lovers the
moment they were held up to his inspection.
“You see Riverboro people _will_ make a story!” asserted Rebecca
triumphantly as she finished her reading and folded the paper. “And it
all came from my noticing the river drivers' tracks by the roadside, and
wondering about them; and wondering always makes stories; the minister
says so.”
“Ye-es,” allowed Uncle Jerry reflectively, tipping his chair back
against the apple tree and forcing his slow mind to violent and
instantaneous action, for Rebecca was his pride and joy; a person, in
his opinion, of superhuman talent, one therefore to be “whittled into
shape” if occasion demanded.
“It's a Riverboro story, sure enough, because you've got the river
and the bridge and the hill and the drivers all right there in it; but
there's something awful queer 'bout it; the folks don't act Riverboro,
and don't talk Riverboro, cordin' to my notions. I call it a reg'lar
book story.”
“But,” objected Rebecca, “the people in Cinderella didn't act like us,
and you thought that was a beautiful story when I told it to you.”
“I know,” replied Uncle Jerry, gaining eloquence in the heat of
argument. “They didn't act like us, but 't any rate they acted like
'emselves! Somehow they was all of a piece. Cinderella was a little too
good, mebbe, and the sisters was most too thunderin' bad to live on the
face o' the earth, and that fayry old lady that kep' the punkin' coach
up her sleeve--well, anyhow, you jest believe that punkin' coach, rats,
mice, and all, when you're hearin' 'bout it, 'fore ever you stop to
think it ain't so.
“I don' know how tis, but the folks in that Cinderella story seem to
match together somehow; they're all pow'ful onlikely--the prince feller
with the glass slipper, and the hull bunch; but jest the same you kind
o' gulp 'em all down in a lump. But land, Rebecky, nobody'd swaller that
there village maiden o' your'n, and as for what's-his-name Littlefield,
that come out o' them bushes, such a feller never 'd 'a' be'n _in_
bushes! No, Rebecky, you're the smartest little critter there is in this
township, and you beat your Uncle Jerry all holler when it comes to
usin' a lead pencil, but I say that ain't no true Riverboro story! Look
at the way they talk! What was that 'bout being _'betrothed'?_”
“Betrothed is a genteel word for engaged to be married,” explained the
crushed and chastened author; and it was fortunate the doting old man
did not notice her eyes in the twilight, or he might have known that
tears were not far away.
“Well, that's all right, then; I'm as ignorant as Cooper's cow when
it comes to the dictionary. How about what's-his-name callin' the girl
'Naysweet'?”
“I thought myself that sounded foolish,:” confessed Rebecca; “but it's
what the Doctor calls Cora when he tries to persuade her not to quarrel
with his mother who comes to live with them. I know they don't say it in
Riverboro or Temperance, but I thought perhaps it was Boston talk.”
“Well, it ain't!” asserted Mr. Cobb decisively. “I've druv Boston men
up in the stage from Milltown many's the time, and none of 'em ever
said Naysweet to me, nor nothin'like it. They talked like folks, every
mother's son of 'em! If I'd 'a' had that what's-his-name on the
'hurricane deck' o' the stage and he tried any naysweetin' on me, I'd
'a' pitched him into the cornfield, side o' the road. I guess you ain't
growed up enough for that kind of a story, Rebecky, for your poetry
can't be beat in York County, that's sure, and your compositions are
good enough to read out loud in town meetin' any day!”
Rebecca brightened up a little and bade the old couple her usual
affectionate good night, but she descended the hill in a saddened mood.
When she reached the bridge the sun, a ball of red fire, was setting
behind Squire Bean's woods. As she looked, it shone full on the broad,
still bosom of the river, and for one perfect instant the trees on the
shores were reflected, all swimming in a sea of pink. Leaning over the
rail, she watched the light fade from crimson to carmine, from carmine
to rose, from rose to amber, and from amber to gray. Then withdrawing
Lancelot or the Parted Lovers from her apron pocket, she tore the pages
into bits and dropped them into the water below with a sigh.
“Uncle Jerry never said a word about the ending!” she thought; “and that
was so nice!”
And she was right; but while Uncle Jerry was an illuminating critic when
it came to the actions and language of his Riverboro neighbors, he had
no power to direct the young mariner when she “followed the gleam,” and
used her imagination.