Rebecca had now cut the bonds that bound her to the Riverboro district
school, and had been for a week a full-fledged pupil at the Wareham
Seminary, towards which goal she had been speeding ever since the
memorable day when she rode into Riverboro on the top of Uncle Jerry
Cobb's stagecoach, and told him that education was intended to be “the
making of her.”
She went to and fro, with Emma Jane and the other Riverboro boys and
girls, on the morning and evening trains that ran between the academy
town and Milliken's Mills.
The six days had passed like a dream!--a dream in which she sat in
corners with her eyes cast down; flushed whenever she was addressed;
stammered whenever she answered a question, and nearly died of heart
failure when subjected to an examination of any sort. She delighted
the committee when reading at sight from “King Lear,” but somewhat
discouraged them when she could not tell the capital of the United
States. She admitted that her former teacher, Miss Dearborn, might have
mentioned it, but if so she had not remembered it.
In these first weeks among strangers she passed for nothing but an
interesting-looking, timid, innocent, country child, never revealing,
even to the far-seeing Emily Maxwell, a hint of her originality,
facility, or power in any direction. Rebecca was fourteen, but so
slight, and under the paralyzing new conditions so shy, that she
would have been mistaken for twelve had it not been for her general
advancement in the school curriculum.
Growing up in the solitude of a remote farm house, transplanted to a
tiny village where she lived with two elderly spinsters, she was still
the veriest child in all but the practical duties and responsibilities
of life; in those she had long been a woman.
It was Saturday afternoon; her lessons for Monday were all learned and
she burst into the brick house sitting-room with the flushed face and
embarrassed mien that always foreshadowed a request. Requests were more
commonly answered in the negative than in the affirmative at the brick
house, a fact that accounted for the slight confusion in her demeanor.
“Aunt Miranda,” she began, “the fishman says that Clara Belle Simpson
wants to see me very much, but Mrs. Fogg can't spare her long at a time,
you know, on account of the baby being no better; but Clara Belle could
walk a mile up, and I a mile down the road, and we could meet at the
pink house half way. Then we could rest and talk an hour or so, and both
be back in time for our suppers. I've fed the cat; she had no appetite,
as it's only two o'clock and she had her dinner at noon, but she'll go
back to her saucer, and it's off my mind. I could go down cellar now
and bring up the cookies and the pie and doughnuts for supper before I
start. Aunt Jane saw no objection; but we thought I'd better ask you so
as to run no risks.”
Miranda Sawyer, who had been patiently waiting for the end of this
speech, laid down her knitting and raised her eyes with a half-resigned
expression that meant: Is there anything unusual in heaven or earth or
the waters under the earth that this child does not want to do? Will she
ever settle down to plain, comprehensible Sawyer ways, or will she to
the end make these sudden and radical propositions, suggesting at every
turn the irresponsible Randall ancestry?
“You know well enough, Rebecca, that I don't like you to be intimate
with Abner Simpson's young ones,” she said decisively. “They ain't fit
company for anybody that's got Sawyer blood in their veins, if it's ever
so little. I don't know, I'm sure, how you're goin' to turn out! The
fish peddler seems to be your best friend, without it's Abijah Flagg
that you're everlastingly talkin' to lately. I should think you'd
rather read some improvin' book than to be chatterin' with Squire Bean's
chore-boy!”
“He isn't always going to be a chore-boy,” explained Rebecca, “and
that's what we're considering. It's his career we talk about, and he
hasn't got any father or mother to advise him. Besides, Clara Belle kind
of belongs to the village now that she lives with Mrs. Fogg; and she
was always the best behaved of all the girls, either in school or
Sunday-school. Children can't help having fathers!”
“Everybody says Abner is turning over a new leaf, and if so, the
family'd ought to be encouraged every possible way,” said Miss Jane,
entering the room with her mending basket in hand.
“If Abner Simpson is turnin' over a leaf, or anythin' else in creation,
it's only to see what's on the under side!” remarked Miss Miranda
promptly. “Don't talk to me about new leaves! You can't change that kind
of a man; he is what he is, and you can't make him no different!”
“The grace of God can do consid'rable,” observed Jane piously.
“I ain't sayin' but it can if it sets out, but it has to begin early and
stay late on a man like Simpson.”
“Now, Mirandy, Abner ain't more'n forty! I don't know what the average
age for repentance is in men-folks, but when you think of what an awful
sight of 'em leaves it to their deathbeds, forty seems real kind
of young. Not that I've heard Abner has experienced religion, but
everybody's surprised at the good way he's conductin' this fall.”
“They'll be surprised the other way round when they come to miss their
firewood and apples and potatoes again,” affirmed Miranda.
“Clara Belle don't seem to have inherited from her father,” Jane
ventured again timidly. “No wonder Mrs. Fogg sets such store by the
girl. If it hadn't been for her, the baby would have been dead by now.”
“Perhaps tryin' to save it was interferin' with the Lord's will,” was
Miranda's retort.
“Folks can't stop to figure out just what's the Lord's will when a child
has upset a kettle of scalding water on to himself,” and as she spoke
Jane darned more excitedly. “Mrs. Fogg knows well enough she hadn't
ought to have left that baby alone in the kitchen with the stove, even
if she did see Clara Belle comin' across lots. She'd ought to have
waited before drivin' off; but of course she was afraid of missing the
train, and she's too good a woman to be held accountable.”
“The minister's wife says Clara Belle is a real--I can't think of the
word!” chimed in Rebecca. “What's the female of hero? Whatever it is,
that's what Mrs. Baxter called her!”
“Clara Belle's the female of Simpson; that's what she is,” Miss Miranda
asserted; “but she's been brought up to use her wits, and I ain't sayin'
but she used 'em.”
“I should say she did!” exclaimed Miss Jane; “to put that screaming,
suffering child in the baby-carriage and run all the way to the doctor's
when there wasn't a soul on hand to advise her! Two or three more such
actions would make the Simpson name sound consid'rable sweeter in this
neighborhood.”
“Simpson will always sound like Simpson to me!” vouchsafed the elder
sister, “but we've talked enough about 'em an' to spare. You can go
along, Rebecca; but remember that a child is known by the company she
keeps.”
“All right, Aunt Miranda; thank you!” cried Rebecca, leaping from the
chair on which she had been twisting nervously for five minutes. “And
how does this strike you? Would you be in favor of my taking Clara Belle
a company-tart?”
“Don't Mrs. Fogg feed the young one, now she's taken her right into the
family?”
“Oh, yes,” Rebecca answered, “she has lovely things to eat, and Mrs.
Fogg won't even let her drink skim milk; but I always feel that taking
a present lets the person know you've been thinking about them and are
extra glad to see them. Besides, unless we have company soon, those
tarts will have to be eaten by the family, and a new batch made; you
remember the one I had when I was rewarding myself last week? That was
queer--but nice,” she added hastily.
“Mebbe you could think of something of your own you could give away
without taking my tarts!” responded Miranda tersely; the joints of her
armor having been pierced by the fatally keen tongue of her niece, who
had insinuated that company-tarts lasted a long time in the brick house.
This was a fact; indeed, the company-tart was so named, not from any
idea that it would ever be eaten by guests, but because it was too good
for every-day use.
Rebecca's face crimsoned with shame that she had drifted into an
impolite and, what was worse, an apparently ungrateful speech.
“I didn't mean to say anything not nice, Aunt Miranda,” she stammered.
“Truly the tart was splendid, but not exactly like new, that's all. And
oh! I know what I can take Clara Belle! A few chocolate drops out of the
box Mr. Ladd gave me on my birthday.”
“You go down cellar and get that tart, same as I told you,” commanded
Miranda, “and when you fill it don't uncover a new tumbler of jelly;
there's some dried-apple preserves open that'll do. Wear your rubbers
and your thick jacket. After runnin' all the way down there--for your
legs never seem to be rigged for walkin' like other girls'--you'll set
down on some damp stone or other and ketch your death o' cold, an' your
Aunt Jane 'n' I'll be kep' up nights nursin' you and luggin' your meals
upstairs to you on a waiter.”
Here Miranda leaned her head against the back of her rocking
chair, dropped her knitting and closed her eyes wearily, for when the
immovable body is opposed by the irresistible force there is a certain
amount of jar and disturbance involved in the operation.
Rebecca moved toward the side door, shooting a questioning glance at
Aunt Jane as she passed. The look was full of mysterious suggestion and
was accompanied by an almost imperceptible gesture. Miss Jane knew that
certain articles were kept in the entry closet, and by this time she had
become sufficiently expert in telegraphy to know that Rebecca's unspoken
query meant: “_Could you permit the hat with the red wings, it being
Saturday, fine settled weather, and a pleasure excursion?_”
These confidential requests, though fraught with embarrassment when
Miranda was in the room, gave Jane much secret joy; there was something
about them that stirred her spinster heart--they were so gay, so
appealing, so un-Sawyer-, un-Riverboro-like. The longer Rebecca lived in
the brick house the more her Aunt Jane marveled at the child. What made
her so different from everybody else. Could it be that her graceless
popinjay of a father, Lorenzo de Medici Randall, had bequeathed her some
strange combination of gifts instead of fortune? Her eyes, her brows,
the color of her lips, the shape of her face, as well as her ways and
words, proclaimed her a changeling in the Sawyer tribe; but what an
enchanting changeling; bringing wit and nonsense and color and delight
into the gray monotony of the dragging years!
There was frost in the air, but a bright cheery sun, as Rebecca walked
decorously out of the brick house yard. Emma Jane Perkins was away over
Sunday on a visit to a cousin in Moderation; Alice Robinson and Candace
Milliken were having measles, and Riverboro was very quiet. Still, life
was seldom anything but a gay adventure to Rebecca, and she started
afresh every morning to its conquest. She was not exacting; the Asmodean
feat of spinning a sand heap into twine was, poetically speaking, always
in her power, so the mile walk to the pink-house gate, and the tryst
with freckled, red-haired Clara Belle Simpson, whose face Miss Miranda
said looked like a raw pie in a brick oven, these commonplace incidents
were sufficiently exhilarating to brighten her eye and quicken her step.
As the great bare horse-chestnut near the pink-house gate loomed into
view, the red linsey-woolsey speck going down the road spied the
blue linsey-woolsey speck coming up, and both specks flew over the
intervening distance and, meeting, embraced each other ardently,
somewhat to the injury of the company-tart.
“Didn't it come out splendidly?” exclaimed Rebecca. “I was so afraid
the fishman wouldn't tell you to start exactly at two, or that one of us
would walk faster than the other; but we met at the very spot! It was a
very uncommon idea, wasn't it? Almost romantic!”
“And what do you think?” asked Clara Belle proudly. “Look at this! Mrs.
Fogg lent me her watch to come home by!”
“Oh, Clara Belle, how wonderful! Mrs. Fogg gets kinder and kinder to
you, doesn't she? You're not homesick any more, are you?”
“No-o; not really; only when I remember there's only little Susan to
manage the twins; though they're getting on real well without me. But I
kind of think, Rebecca, that I'm going to be given away to the Foggs for
good.”
“Do you mean adopted?”
“Yes; I think father's going to sign papers. You see we can't tell how
many years it'll be before the poor baby outgrows its burns, and Mrs.
Fogg'll never be the same again, and she must have somebody to help
her.”
“You'll be their real daughter, then, won't you, Clara Belle? And
Mr. Fogg is a deacon, and a selectman, and a road commissioner, and
everything splendid.”
“Yes; I'll have board, and clothes, and school, and be named Fogg, and”
(here her voice sank to an awed whisper) “the upper farm if I should
ever get married; Miss Dearborn told me that herself, when she was
persuading me not to mind being given away.”
“Clara Belle Simpson!” exclaimed Rebecca in a transport. “Who'd have
thought you'd be a female hero and an heiress besides? It's just like
a book story, and it happened in Riverboro. I'll make Uncle Jerry Cobb
allow there _can_ be Riverboro stories, you see if I don't.”
“Of course I know it's all right,” Clara Belle replied soberly. “I'll
have a good home and father can't keep us all; but it's kind of dreadful
to be given away, like a piano or a horse and carriage!”
Rebecca's hand went out sympathetically to Clara Belle's freckled paw.
Suddenly her own face clouded and she whispered:
“I'm not sure, Clara Belle, but I'm given away too--do you s'pose I
am? Poor father left us in debt, you see. I thought I came away from
Sunnybrook to get an education and then help pay off the mortgage; but
mother doesn't say anything about my coming back, and our family's one
of those too-big ones, you know, just like yours.”
“Did your mother sign papers to your aunts?'
“If she did I never heard anything about it; but there's something
pinned on to the mortgage that mother keeps in the drawer of the
bookcase.”
“You'd know it if 'twas adoption papers; I guess you're just lent,”
Clara Belle said cheeringly. “I don't believe anybody'd ever give _you_
away! And, oh! Rebecca, father's getting on so well! He works on Daly's
farm where they raise lots of horses and cattle, too, and he breaks all
the young colts and trains them, and swaps off the poor ones, and drives
all over the country. Daly told Mr. Fogg he was splendid with stock,
and father says it's just like play. He's sent home money three Saturday
nights.”
“I'm so glad!” exclaimed Rebecca sympathetically. “Now your mother'll
have a good time and a black silk dress, won't she?”
“I don't know,” sighed Clara Belle, and her voice was grave. “Ever since
I can remember she's just washed and cried and cried and washed. Miss
Dearborn has been spending her vacation up to Acreville, you know,
and she came yesterday to board next door to Mrs. Fogg's. I heard them
talking last night when I was getting the baby to sleep--I couldn't
help it, they were so close--and Miss Dearborn said mother doesn't like
Acreville; she says nobody takes any notice of her, and they don't give
her any more work. Mrs. Fogg said, well, they were dreadful stiff and
particular up that way and they liked women to have wedding rings.”
“Hasn't your mother got a wedding ring?” asked Rebecca, astonished.
“Why, I thought everybody _had_ to have them, just as they do sofas and
a kitchen stove!”
“I never noticed she didn't have one, but when they spoke I remembered
mother's hands washing and wringing, and she doesn't wear one, I know.
She hasn't got any jewelry, not even a breast-pin.”
“Well,” and Rebecca's tone was somewhat censorious, “your father's been
so poor perhaps he couldn't afford breast-pins, but I should have
thought he'd have given your mother a wedding ring when they were
married; that's the time to do it, right at the very first.”
“They didn't have any real church dress-up wedding,” explained Clara
Belle extenuatingly. “You see the first mother, mine, had the big boys
and me, and then she died when we were little. Then after a while this
mother came to housekeep, and she stayed, and by and by she was Mrs.
Simpson, and Susan and the twins and the baby are hers, and she and
father didn't have time for a regular wedding in church. They don't have
veils and bridesmaids and refreshments round here like Miss Dearborn's
sister did.”
“Do they cost a great deal--wedding rings?” asked Rebecca thoughtfully.
“They're solid gold, so I s'pose they do. If they were cheap we might
buy one. I've got seventy-four cents saved up; how much have you?”
“Fifty-three,” Clara Belle responded, in a depressing tone; “and anyway
there are no stores nearer than Milltown. We'd have to buy it secretly,
for I wouldn't make father angry, or shame his pride, now he's got
steady work; and mother would know I had spent all my savings.”
Rebecca looked nonplussed. “I declare,” she said, “I think the Acreville
people must be perfectly horrid not to call on your mother only because
she hasn't got any jewelry. You wouldn't dare tell your father what Miss
Dearborn heard, so he'd save up and buy the ring?”
“No; I certainly would not!” and Clara Belle's lips closed tightly and
decisively.
Rebecca sat quietly for a few moments, then she exclaimed jubilantly:
“I know where we could get it! From Mr. Aladdin, and then I needn't tell
him who it's for! He's coming to stay over tomorrow with his aunt, and
I'll ask him to buy a ring for us in Boston. I won't explain anything,
you know; I'll just say I need a wedding ring.”
“That would be perfectly lovely,” replied Clara Belle, a look of hope
dawning in her eyes; “and we can think afterwards how to get it over to
mother. Perhaps you could send it to father instead, but I wouldn't dare
to do it myself. You won't tell anybody, Rebecca?”
“Cross my heart!” Rebecca exclaimed dramatically; and then with a
reproachful look, “you know I couldn't repeat a sacred secret like
that! Shall we meet next Saturday afternoon, and I tell you what's
happened?--Why, Clara Belle, isn't that Mr. Ladd watering his horse at
the foot of the hill this very minute? It is; and he's driven up from
Milltown stead of coming on the train from Boston to Edgewood. He's all
alone, and I can ride home with him and ask him about the ring right
away!”
Clara Belle kissed Rebecca fervently, and started on her homeward
walk, while Rebecca waited at the top of the long hill, fluttering her
handkerchief as a signal.
“Mr. Aladdin! Mr. Aladdin!” she cried, as the horse and wagon came
nearer.
Adam Ladd drew up quickly at the sound of the eager young voice.
“Well, well; here is Rebecca Rowena fluttering along the highroad like a
red-winged blackbird! Are you going to fly home, or drive with me?”
Rebecca clambered into the carriage, laughing and blushing with delight
at his nonsense and with joy at seeing him again.
“Clara Belle and I were just talking about you this minute, and I'm so
glad you came this way, for there's something very important to ask you
about,” she began, rather breathlessly.
“No doubt,” laughed Adam Ladd, who had become, in the course of his
acquaintance with Rebecca, a sort of high court of appeals; “I hope the
premium banquet lamp doesn't smoke as it grows older?”
“Now, Mr. Aladdin, you _will_ not remember nicely. Mr. Simpson swapped
off the banquet lamp when he was moving the family to Acreville; it's
not the lamp at all, but once, when you were here last time, you said
you'd make up your mind what you were going to give me for Christmas.”
“Well,” and “I do remember that much quite nicely.”
“Well, is it bought?”
“No, I never buy Christmas presents before Thanksgiving.”
“Then, _dear_ Mr. Aladdin, would you buy me something different,
something that I want to give away, and buy it a little sooner than
Christmas?”
“That depends. I don't relish having my Christmas presents given away.
I like to have them kept forever in little girls' bureau drawers, all
wrapped in pink tissue paper; but explain the matter and perhaps I'll
change my mind. What is it you want?”
“I need a wedding ring dreadfully,” said Rebecca, “but it's a sacred
secret.”
Adam Ladd's eyes flashed with surprise and he smiled to himself with
pleasure. Had he on his list of acquaintances, he asked himself, a
person of any age or sex so altogether irresistible and unique as this
child? Then he turned to face her with the merry teasing look that made
him so delightful to young people.
“I thought it was perfectly understood between us,” he said, “that if
you could ever contrive to grow up and I were willing to wait, that I
was to ride up to the brick house on my snow white”--
“Coal black,” corrected Rebecca, with a sparkling eye and a warning
finger.
“Coal black charger; put a golden circlet on your lily white finger,
draw you up behind me on my pillion”--
“And Emma Jane, too,” Rebecca interrupted.
“I think I didn't mention Emma Jane,” argued Mr. Aladdin. “Three on a
pillion is very uncomfortable. I think Emma Jane leaps on the back of a
prancing chestnut, and we all go off to my castle in the forest.”
“Emma Jane never leaps, and she'd be afraid of a prancing chestnut,”
objected Rebecca.
“Then she shall have a gentle cream-colored pony; but now, without any
explanation, you ask me to buy you a wedding ring, which shows
plainly that you are planning to ride off on a snow white--I mean coal
black--charger with somebody else.”
Rebecca dimpled and laughed with joy at the nonsense. In her prosaic
world no one but Adam Ladd played the game and answered the fool
according to his folly. Nobody else talked delicious fairy-story twaddle
but Mr. Aladdin.
“The ring isn't for _me!_” she explained carefully. “You know very well
that Emma Jane nor I can't be married till we're through Quackenbos's
Grammar, Greenleaf's Arithmetic, and big enough to wear long trails and
run a sewing machine. The ring is for a friend.”
“Why doesn't the groom give it to his bride himself?”
“Because he's poor and kind of thoughtless, and anyway she isn't a bride
any more; she has three step and three other kind of children.”
Adam Ladd put the whip back in the socket thoughtfully, and then stooped
to tuck in the rug over Rebecca's feet and his own. When he raised his
head again he asked: “Why not tell me a little more, Rebecca? I'm safe!”
Rebecca looked at him, feeling his wisdom and strength, and above all
his sympathy. Then she said hesitatingly: “You remember I told you all
about the Simpsons that day on your aunt's porch when you bought the
soap because I told you how the family were always in trouble and how
much they needed a banquet lamp? Mr. Simpson, Clara Belle's father, has
always been very poor, and not always very good,--a little bit
_thievish_, you know--but oh, so pleasant and nice to talk to! And now
he's turning over a new leaf. And everybody in Riverboro liked Mrs.
Simpson when she came here a stranger, because they were sorry for her
and she was so patient, and such a hard worker, and so kind to the
children. But where she lives now, though they used to know her when she
was a girl, they're not polite to her and don't give her scrubbing and
washing; and Clara Belle heard our teacher say to Mrs. Fogg that the
Acreville people were stiff, and despised her because she didn't wear a
wedding ring, like all the rest. And Clara Belle and I thought if they
were so mean as that, we'd love to give her one, and then she'd be
happier and have more work; and perhaps Mr. Simpson if he gets along
better will buy her a breast-pin and earrings, and she'll be fitted out
like the others. I know Mrs. Peter Meserve is looked up to by everybody
in Edgewood on account of her gold bracelets and moss agate necklace.”
Adam turned again to meet the luminous, innocent eyes that glowed under
the delicate brows and long lashes, feeling as he had more than once
felt before, as if his worldly-wise, grown-up thoughts had been bathed
in some purifying spring.
“How shall you send the ring to Mrs. Simpson?” he asked, with interest.
“We haven't settled yet; Clara Belle's afraid to do it, and thinks I
could manage better. Will the ring cost much? Because, of course, if it
does, I must ask Aunt Jane first. There are things I have to ask Aunt
Miranda, and others that belong to Aunt Jane.”
“It costs the merest trifle. I'll buy one and bring it to you, and we'll
consult about it; but I think as you're great friends with Mr. Simpson
you'd better send it to him in a letter, letters being your strong
point! It's a present a man ought to give his own wife, but it's worth
trying, Rebecca. You and Clara Belle can manage it between you, and I'll
stay in the background where nobody will see me.”