I
Emma Jane Perkins's new winter dress was a blue and green Scotch plaid
poplin, trimmed with narrow green velvet-ribbon and steel nail-heads.
She had a gray jacket of thick furry cloth with large steel buttons
up the front, a pair of green kid gloves, and a gray felt hat with an
encircling band of bright green feathers. The band began in front with
a bird's head and ended behind with a bird's tail, and angels could have
desired no more beautiful toilette. That was her opinion, and it was
shared to the full by Rebecca.
But Emma Jane, as Rebecca had once described her to Mr. Adam Ladd, was
a rich blacksmith's daughter, and she, Rebecca, was a little half-orphan
from a mortgaged farm “up Temperance way,” dependent upon her spinster
aunts for board, clothes, and schooling. Scotch plaid poplins were
manifestly not for her, but dark-colored woolen stuffs were, and
mittens, and last winter's coats and furs.
And how about hats? Was there hope in store for her there? she wondered,
as she walked home from the Perkins house, full of admiration for Emma
Jane's winter outfit, and loyally trying to keep that admiration free
from wicked envy. Her red-winged black hat was her second best, and
although it was shabby she still liked it, but it would never do for
church, even in Aunt Miranda's strange and never-to-be-comprehended
views of suitable raiment.
There was a brown felt turban in existence, if one could call it
existence when it had been rained on, snowed on, and hailed on for two
seasons; but the trimmings had at any rate perished quite off the face
of the earth, that was one comfort!
Emma Jane had said, rather indiscreetly, that at the village milliner's
at Milliken's Mills there was a perfectly elegant pink breast to be had,
a breast that began in a perfectly elegant solferino and terminated in a
perfectly elegant magenta; two colors much in vogue at that time. If
the old brown hat was to be her portion yet another winter, would Aunt
Miranda conceal its deficiencies from a carping world beneath the shaded
solferino breast? _Would_ she, that was the question?
Filled with these perplexing thoughts, Rebecca entered the brick house,
hung up her hood in the entry, and went into the dining-room.
Miss Jane was not there, but Aunt Miranda sat by the window with her lap
full of sewing things, and a chair piled with pasteboard boxes by her
side. In one hand was the ancient, battered, brown felt turban, and in
the other were the orange and black porcupine quills from Rebecca's last
summer's hat; from the hat of the summer before that, and the summer
before that, and so on back to prehistoric ages of which her childish
memory kept no specific record, though she was sure that Temperance and
Riverboro society did. Truly a sight to chill the blood of any eager
young dreamer who had been looking at gayer plumage!
Miss Sawyer glanced up for a second with a satisfied expression and then
bent her eyes again upon her work.
“If I was going to buy a hat trimming,” she said, “I couldn't select
anything better or more economical than these quills! Your mother had
them when she was married, and you wore them the day you come to the
brick house from the farm; and I said to myself then that they looked
kind of outlandish, but I've grown to like 'em now I've got used to 'em.
You've been here for goin' on two years and they've hardly be'n out
o'wear, summer or winter, more'n a month to a time! I declare they do
beat all for service! It don't seem as if your mother could 'a' chose
'em,--Aurelia was always such a poor buyer! The black spills are 'bout
as good as new, but the orange ones are gittin' a little mite faded and
shabby. I wonder if I couldn't dip all of 'em in shoe blackin'? It seems
real queer to put a porcupine into hat trimmin', though I declare I
don't know jest what the animiles are like, it's be'n so long sence
I looked at the pictures of 'em in a geography. I always thought their
quills stood out straight and angry, but these kind o' curls round some
at the ends, and that makes 'em stand the wind better. How do you like
'em on the brown felt?” she asked, inclining her head in a
discriminating attitude and poising them awkwardly on the hat with her
work-stained hand.
How did she like them on the brown felt indeed?
Miss Sawyer had not been looking at Rebecca, but the child's eyes were
flashing, her bosom heaving, and her cheeks glowing with sudden rage
and despair. All at once something happened. She forgot that she was
speaking to an older person; forgot that she was dependent; forgot
everything but her disappointment at losing the solferino breast,
remembering nothing but the enchanting, dazzling beauty of Emma Jane
Perkins's winter outfit; and suddenly, quite without warning, she burst
into a torrent of protest.
“I will _not_ wear those hateful porcupine quills again this winter! I
will not! It's wicked, _wicked_ to expect me to! Oh! How I wish there
never had been any porcupines in the world, or that all of them had died
before silly, hateful people ever thought of trimming hat with them!
They curl round and tickle my ear! They blow against my cheek and sting
it like needles! They do look outlandish, you said so yourself a minute
ago. Nobody ever had any but only just me! The only porcupine was made
into the only quills for me and nobody else! I wish instead of sticking
_out_ of the nasty beasts, that they stuck _into_ them, same as they do
into my cheek! I suffer, suffer, suffer, wearing them and hating them,
and they will last forever and forever, and when I'm dead and can't help
myself, somebody'll rip them out of my last year's hat and stick them
on my head, and I'll be buried in them! Well, when _I_ am buried _they_
will be, that's one good thing! Oh, if I ever have a child I'll let her
choose her own feathers and not make her wear ugly things like pigs'
bristles and porcupine quills!”
With this lengthy tirade Rebecca vanished like a meteor, through the
door and down the street, while Miranda Sawyer gasped for breath, and
prayed to Heaven to help her understand such human whirlwinds as this
Randall niece of hers.
This was at three o'clock, and at half-past three Rebecca was kneeling
on the rag carpet with her head in her aunt's apron, sobbing her
contrition.
“Oh! Aunt Miranda, do forgive me if you can. It's the only time I've
been bad for months! You know it is! You know you said last week I
hadn't been any trouble lately. Something broke inside of me and came
tumbling out of my mouth in ugly words! The porcupine quills make me
feel just as a bull does when he sees a red cloth; nobody understands
how I suffer with them!”
Miranda Sawyer had learned a few lessons in the last two years, lessons
which were making her (at least on her “good days”) a trifle kinder, and
at any rate a juster woman than she used to be. When she alighted on the
wrong side of her four-poster in the morning, or felt an extra touch of
rheumatism, she was still grim and unyielding; but sometimes a curious
sort of melting process seemed to go on within her, when her whole bony
structure softened, and her eyes grew less vitreous. At such moments
Rebecca used to feel as if a superincumbent iron pot had been lifted off
her head, allowing her to breath freely and enjoy the sunshine.
“Well,” she said finally, after staring first at Rebecca and then at the
porcupine quills, as if to gain some insight into the situation, “well,
I never, sence I was born int' the world, heerd such a speech as you've
spoke, an' I guess there probably never was one. You'd better tell the
minister what you said and see what he thinks of his prize Sunday-school
scholar. But I'm too old and tired to scold and fuss, and try to train
you same as I did at first. You can punish yourself this time, like
you used to. Go fire something down the well, same as you did your pink
parasol! You've apologized and we won't say no more about it today, but
I expect you to show by extry good conduct how sorry you be! You care
altogether too much about your looks and your clothes for a child, and
you've got a temper that'll certainly land you in state's prison some o'
these days!”
Rebecca wiped her eyes and laughed aloud. “No, no, Aunt Miranda, it
won't, really! That wasn't temper; I don't get angry with _people_; but
only, once in a long while, with things; like those,--cover them up
quick before I begin again! I'm all right! Shower's over, sun's out!”
Miss Miranda looked at her searchingly and uncomprehendingly. Rebecca's
state of mind came perilously near to disease, she thought.
“Have you seen me buyin' any new bunnits, or your Aunt Jane?” she asked
cuttingly. “Is there any particular reason why you should dress better
than your elders? You might as well know that we're short of cash just
now, your Aunt Jane and me, and have no intention of riggin' you out
like a Milltown fact'ry girl.”
“Oh-h!” cried Rebecca, the quick tears starting again to her eyes and
the color fading out of her cheeks, as she scrambled up from her knees
to a seat on the sofa beside her aunt. “Oh-h! How ashamed I am! Quick,
sew those quills on to the brown turban while I'm good! If I can't stand
them I'll make a neat little gingham bag and slip over them!”
And so the matter ended, not as it customarily did, with cold words on
Miss Miranda's part and bitter feelings on Rebecca's, but with a gleam
of mutual understanding.
Mrs. Cobb, who was a master hand at coloring, dipped the offending
quills in brown dye and left them to soak in it all night, not only
making them a nice warm color, but somewhat weakening their rocky
spines, so that they were not quite as rampantly hideous as before, in
Rebecca's opinion.
Then Mrs. Perkins went to her bandbox in the attic and gave Miss
Dearborn some pale blue velvet, with which she bound the brim of the
brown turban and made a wonderful rosette, out of which the porcupine's
defensive armor sprang, buoyantly and gallantly, like the plume of Henry
of Navarre.
Rebecca was resigned, if not greatly comforted, but she had grace enough
to conceal her feelings, now that she knew economy was at the root
of some of her aunt's decrees in matters of dress; and she managed to
forget the solferino breast, save in sleep, where a vision of it had a
way of appearing to her, dangling from the ceiling, and dazzling her
so with its rich color that she used to hope the milliner would sell it
that she might never be tempted with it when she passed the shop window.
One day, not long afterward, Miss Miranda borrowed Mr. Perkins's horse
and wagon and took Rebecca with her on a drive to Union, to see about
some sausage meat and head cheese. She intended to call on Mrs. Cobb,
order a load of pine wood from Mr. Strout on the way, and leave some
rags for a rug with old Mrs. Pease, so that the journey could be made
as profitable as possible, consistent with the loss of time and the wear
and tear on her second-best black dress.
The red-winged black hat was forcibly removed from Rebecca's head just
before starting, and the nightmare turban substituted.
“You might as well begin to wear it first as last,” remarked Miranda,
while Jane stood in the side door and sympathized secretly with Rebecca.
“I will!” said Rebecca, ramming the stiff turban down on her head with a
vindictive grimace, and snapping the elastic under her long braids; “but
it makes me think of what Mr. Robinson said when the minister told him
his mother-in-law would ride in the same buggy with him at his wife's
funeral.”
“I can't see how any speech of Mr. Robinson's, made years an' years ago,
can have anything to do with wearin' your turban down to Union,” said
Miranda, settling the lap robe over her knees.
“Well, it can; because he said: Have it that way, then, but it'll spile
the hull blamed trip for me!'”
Jane closed the door suddenly, partly because she experienced a desire
to smile (a desire she had not felt for years before Rebecca came to
the brick house to live), and partly because she had no wish to overhear
what her sister would say when she took in the full significance of
Rebecca's anecdote, which was a favorite one with Mr. Perkins.
It was a cold blustering day with a high wind that promised to bring an
early fall of snow. The trees were stripped bare of leaves, the
ground was hard, and the wagon wheels rattled noisily over the
thank-you-ma'ams.
“I'm glad I wore my Paisley shawl over my cloak,” said Miranda. “Be you
warm enough, Rebecca? Tie that white rigolette tighter round your neck.
The wind fairly blows through my bones. I most wish 't we'd waited till
a pleasanter day, for this Union road is all up hill or down, and we
shan't get over the ground fast, it's so rough. Don't forget, when you
go into Scott's, to say I want all the trimmin's when they send me the
pork, for mebbe I can try out a little mite o' lard. The last load o'
pine's gone turrible quick; I must see if 'Bijah Flagg can't get us some
cut-rounds at the mills, when he hauls for Squire Bean next time. Keep
your mind on your drivin', Rebecca, and don't look at the trees and the
sky so much. It's the same sky and same trees that have been here right
along. Go awful slow down this hill and walk the hoss over Cook's Brook
bridge, for I always suspicion it's goin' to break down under me, an' I
shouldn't want to be dropped into that fast runnin' water this cold day.
It'll be froze stiff by this time next week. Hadn't you better get out
and lead”--
The rest of the sentence was very possibly not vital, but at any rate
it was never completed, for in the middle of the bridge a fierce gale
of wind took Miss Miranda's Paisley shawl and blew it over her head. The
long heavy ends whirled in opposite directions and wrapped themselves
tightly about her wavering bonnet. Rebecca had the whip and the reins,
and in trying to rescue her struggling aunt could not steady her own
hat, which was suddenly torn from her head and tossed against the bridge
rail, where it trembled and flapped for an instant.
“My hat! Oh! Aunt Miranda, my hateful hat!” cried Rebecca, never
remembering at the instant how often she had prayed that the “fretful
porcupine” might some time vanish in this violent manner, since it
refused to die a natural death.
She had already stopped the horse, so, giving her aunt's shawl one last
desperate twitch, she slipped out between the wagon wheels, and darted
in the direction of the hated object, the loss of which had dignified it
with a temporary value and importance.
The stiff brown turban rose in the air, then dropped and flew along the
bridge; Rebecca pursued; it danced along and stuck between two of the
railings; Rebecca flew after it, her long braids floating in the wind.
“Come back! Come back! Don't leave me alone with the team. I won't have
it! Come back, and leave your hat!”
Miranda had at length extricated herself from the submerging shawl, but
she was so blinded by the wind, and so confused that she did not measure
the financial loss involved in her commands.
Rebecca heard, but her spirit being in arms, she made one more mad
scramble for the vagrant hat, which now seemed possessed with an evil
spirit, for it flew back and forth, and bounded here and there, like
a living thing, finally distinguishing itself by blowing between the
horse's front and hind legs, Rebecca trying to circumvent it by going
around the wagon, and meeting it on the other side.
It was no use; as she darted from behind the wheels the wind gave the
hat an extra whirl, and scurrying in the opposite direction it soared
above the bridge rail and disappeared into the rapid water below.
“Get in again!” cried Miranda, holding on her bonnet. “You done your
best and it can't be helped, I only wish't I'd let you wear your black
hat as you wanted to; and I wish't we'd never come such a day! The shawl
has broke the stems of the velvet geraniums in my bonnet, and the wind
has blowed away my shawl pin and my back comb. I'd like to give up and
turn right back this minute, but I don't like to borrer Perkins's hoss
again this month. When we get up in the woods you can smooth your hair
down and tie the rigolette over your head and settle what's left of my
bonnet; it'll be an expensive errant, this will!”
* * * * *