been “ET TU, BRUTE?” It pierced Rebecca Mary's breast. “There, hush,
poor dear, poor dear, and rest. You'll need all your sleep,” she crooned
softly and brokenly. “Tomorrow morning I'll give you some beautiful
corn, and then—and then I'm going to take you to Mrs. Avery's boarder
and tell her the worst. I'm going to give you up, Thomas Jefferson; and
I'm the best friend you've got in the world! But I've got to, I've got
to—I've got to! It's been revealed to me in a dream. There was a man
once in the Bible, named Abraham, and there was his dearly beloved
little boy named Isaac. And now here's me named Rebecca Mary, and dearly
beloved you named Thomas Jefferson. Oh, I don't suppose you can
understand; I suppose you're asleep. You'll never know how it feels to
give up your dearly belovedest, but oh, oh, dear, you'll know how it
feels to be given up! You'll be one o' the blessed martyrs, Thomas
Jefferson—doesn't that comfort you a little speck? Oh, why don't you
wake up and be comforted?
“The Lord excused Abraham, after all. But this isn't the Lord, it's Mrs.
Avery's boarder. I'm afraid she isn't the Lord's kind—I'm afraid not,
Thomas Jefferson. I don't dare to let you hope; I've got to prepare you
for the worst.”
She caught up the big, white fellow with sudden, irresistible yearning
and sat up with him and rocked him back and forth in her arms. She began
a muffled, sad little tune like a wail. The words were terrible words.
“I'll hold you in my arms. I'll rock you—rock you—rock you. For
tomorrow, oh, to-MOR-row you—must—die! Aber-a-ham offered Isaac, and I-
MUST OFFER YOU.”
Over and over, then tenderly she lowered Thomas Jefferson to the shoe
box again.
When Aunt Olivia came up in the morning, vaguely alarmed because it was
so late and no Rebecca Mary stirring, she had news to tell. Someone
going by had told her something.
“Well, that woman's found her 'di'mond-stone,'—how are you feeling this
morning, child? It was in her pocket where she'd put her hand in and
felt round! So all that fuss for noth—”
Suddenly Aunt Olivia stopped, for without warning, out of a box at the
bedside stalked a great white rooster and flew to the foot board and
“crew”:
“Cock-a-doodle-do-ooo! It was glass that glittered in the grass, And all
the time I knew-oo-ooo!”
“My grief?” Aunt Olivia gasped.
The Cookbook Diary
Rebecca Mary decided to keep a diary. It was not an inspiration, though
it was rather like one in its suddenness. Of course she had always known
that Aunt Olivia kept a diary. When she was very small she had stretched
a-tiptoe and with little pointing forefinger counted rows and rows of
little black books that Aunt Olivia had “kept.” Each little black book
had its year-label pasted neatly on the back. Rebecca Mary breathed deep
breaths of awe, there were so many of them. There must be so much
weather in those little black books—so many pleasant days, rainy days,
storms, and snows!
It was Rebecca Mary who remembered that it was Tuesday, and that it had
showered a little Wednesday—shone Thursday—showered again on Friday.
Rebecca Mary was the jog to Aunt Olivia's memory. It gave her now, at
the beginning of her own diary career, an experienced feeling, as if she
knew already how to keep a diary. It made it seem a much simpler matter
to begin.
And then, of course, the minister's littlest little boy—really it was
the minister's littlest little boy who had started Rebecca Mary. He had
volunteered a peep into his own diary, and made whispered explanations
and suggestions. He let Rebecca Mary read some of the entries: “MUNDY,
plesent and good. TUSDY, rany and bad. WENSDY, sum plesent and not good
enuf to hirt. THIRSDY” but he had hastily withdrawn the book at
“Thirsdy,” and a tidal-wave of warm red blood had flowed up over his
little brown ears and in around all the little brown islands of his
freckles. So Rebecca Mary had begun hastily to talk of other things. For
the minister's littlest little boy had explained that the first
Statement in each entry referred to the weather and the second to the
deportment of the writer, and Rebecca Mary had remarked a sympathetic
resemblance between the two statements. She had caught a fleeting
glimpse of the weather part of “Thirsdy”—she could guess the rest.
Better let the curtain fall on “Thirsdy.” On her way home Rebecca Mary
decided to keep a diary herself. Her first day's record had been a good
deal like the “Mundy” of the minister's littlest little boy, only there
were more a's in the weather. After that, little by little, she branched
out into a certain originality—the Rebecca Mary sort. If she had not
been hampered by circumstances, it would have been easier to be
original. The most hampering circumstance was the cookbook itself, which
she was driven to use in her new undertaking. There was room on the
blank leaves and above and below the recipes for cake and pudding and
pie. The book was one Aunt Olivia had given her long ago to draw
impossible pictures in.
In the beginning Rebecca Mary tried pasting pieces of “empty” paper over
the pies and puddings and cakes, but the empty paper was too
transparent. In rather startling places things were liable to show
through.
As: “SUNDAY.—It rained a level teaspoonful. Aunt Olivia and I went to
church. The text was thou shalt not steal 1 cups of sour milk—” Rebecca
Mary got no farther than that. She was a little appalled at the result
thus far, and hastily turned a page and began again in a blank space
where no intrusive pudding could break through and corrupt. Thereafter
she wrote above and below the recipes and pasted no more thin veils over
them. It seemed safer.
Aunt Olivia, apparently oblivious to what was going on, yet saw and did
not disapprove. It was to be expected that the child should come into
her inheritance sometime, early or late. If early—well.
“It's the Plummer in her. All the Plummers have kept diaries,” Aunt
Olivia mused, knitting stolidly on while the child stooped painfully to
her self-imposed task. The quaint resemblance to herself at her own
diary-writing did not escape her, and she smiled a little in the Aunt
Olivia way that scarcely stirred her lips. Aunt Olivia smiled oftener
now when she looked at the child. She was “failing” a little, Plummerly.
Between the two of them, little Plummer and big, stretched of late a tie
woven of sheets and a gorgeous quilt of a thousand bits. It was not very
visible to the naked eye, but they were both rather shyly conscious that
it was there. They would never be quite so far apart again.
Rebecca Mary took her diary out to the haunts of Thomas Jefferson and
read aloud selections to him, with an odd, conscious little air, as
though she were graduating. The great white fellow was a sympathetic
auditor, if silence and extreme gravity count. Only once did he ever
make comments, and Rebecca Mary could never quite make up her mind
whether he laughed then or applauded. When a great white rooster
elongates his neck, crooks it ridiculously, flaps his wings and crows,
it's hard telling exactly what feeling prompts him. But Rebecca reasoned
from past experience and her faith in him—he had never laughed at her
before. It was applause. The especial entry which evoked it was the one
that first mentioned an allowance.
“'THURSDAY.—I think I'm going to—'” read Rebecca Mary slowly; and it was
significant that on this Thursday there was no weather. “'I havent
desided—I don't KNOW, but I think I'm going to ask Aunt Olivia to pay me
5 cents a weak. Rhoda says you call it an alowance, and I supose she
knows. She is the minnister's daughter. She has 10 cents a weak unless
shes bad and then she pays the minnister an alowance. He charges her 1
cent a sin and he gives it to somebody who is indignant—I think Rhoda
said indignant. Then I should think he would give it back to Rhoda. I
shant only ask Aunt Olivia for 5 cents—I think she will be more likely.
I havent desided but I THINK I shall ask her tomorrow after her knap.
After knaps you are more rested and maybe things don't look just as they
do before knaps.
“'FRIDAY.—I think Ide better wait untill tomorrow. Her knap was rather
short. Ive desided to say you needent alow but 4 if 5 is too mutch. If
she alows Im going to buy me some crimpers. Rhodas curls natchurally but
she says you can crimp it if it doesent. I have begun to look at myself
in the glass and it fritens me—I guess there ought to be a gh in that—to
see how homebly I am. I wonder if it doesent kind of scare Aunt Olivia.
Prehaps if I was pretty like Rhoda she would call me darling and dear
instead of Rebecca Mary. I dont blame her mutch because I LOOK like
Rebecca Mary.
“'SATURDAY.—I think Sunday will be the best time to ask her, just after
she gets home from meeting and has rolled her bonnet strings up,
espesialy if the minnister preaches on the Lord lovething a cheerful
giver. I am hopeing he will. If I dont get the crimpers Ime going to
give up looking in the glass. For I think Ime growing homeblyer right
along. Theres something the matter with my nose. Rhodas doesent run up
hill. I never thought about noses before. Aunt Olivias is a little quear
too but I like it became its Aunt Olivias nose. I wish I knew if Aunt
Olivia liked mine. I wish we were better akquainted.
“'SUNDAY.—I wish the Lord had created mine curly because I dont dass to
ask Aunt Olivia. I don't dass to, so there. It scares my throat. I
supose its because aunts arnt mothers—seems as if youd dass to ask your
MOTHER. I hate to be scart on acount of being a Plummer. Im afraid Im
the only Plummer that ever was—'”
The reading suddenly stopped here. This was Sunday, and the last entry
was fresh from Rebecca Mary's pencil.
“Thomas Jefferson!” stormed Rebecca Mary, in a little gust of passion,
“don't you ever TELL I was scared! As long as you live!—cross your
heart!—oh, I wish I hadn't read that part to you! You're a Plummer too,
and you never were scared, and you can't understand—”
The diary was clutched to Rebecca Mary's little flat breast, and with a
swirl of starched Sunday skirts the child was gone. She went straight to
Aunt Olivia. Red spots of shame flamed in both sallow little cheeks;
resolution sat astride her little uphill nose. She could not bear to go,
but it was easier than being ashamed. The pointing fingers of all the
Plummers pushed her on. Go she must, or be a coward. Long ago—it seemed
long to Rebecca Mary—she had stood up straight and stanch and refused to
make any more sheets. Was that little girl who had dared, THIS little
girl who was afraid? Should that little girl be ashamed of this one?
“Aunt Olivia,” steadily, though Rebecca Mary's heart was pounding
hard—“Aunt Olivia, are—are you well off?”
She had not meant to begin like that, but afterwards she was glad that
she had.
“My grief!” Aunt Olivia ejaculated in her surprise. What would the child
ask next? “Am I well off? If you mean rich, no, I ain't.”
“Oh! Then you're—why, I didn't think about your being poor! I shouldn't
have thought of asking—that makes a great difference. I never thought of
THAT!”
She was off before Aunt Olivia had fully recovered her breath, and the
stumping of her heavy little shoes going upstairs was the only
distinctly audible sound. In her own room Rebecca Mary stopped, panting.
“Oh, I'm glad I didn't get as far as ASKING!” she breathed aloud. “I
never thought about her being poor—of course then I wouldn't ask!”
But she squared her shoulders and stood up, straight and unashamed. For
she had vindicated herself. She had been ready to ask. She could look
that other little girl of the sheets in the face. The Other Little Girl
was there, coming to meet her as she advanced to the little looking
glass above the table. But Rebecca Mary waved her back peremptorily.
“Go right back!” she said. “I only came to tell you I wasn't a
coward—that's all. Good-bye. For I'm not coming any more. You're sorry
I'm homely, and I'm sorry you are, but it doesn't do any good for us to
look at each other and groan. It will make us unsatisfied. So I shall
turn you back to the wall—good-bye.”
But for a very [long] instant they looked sadly into each other's little
lean brown-yellow faces. It was a brief ceremony of farewell. “Good-
bye,” smiled Rebecca Mary, bravely. And the lips of The Other Little
Girl moved as though saying it too. The Other Little Girl smiled. And
neither of them knew that just then she was beautiful.
Aunt Olivia was trying to meet her own courage test. She had been trying
a good many days. Duty—stern, unswerving duty—bade her inspect Rebecca
Mary's little cookbook diary. Should she not know—ought she not to know
the thoughts that were brewing in the child's mind? How else could she
bring her up properly?
“Read it,” Duty said, “find out. Are you afraid?”
“I'm ashamed,” groaned Aunt Olivia. “Do you think Rebecca Mary would
read my diary?”
“Is Rebecca Mary bringing you up?”
Aunt Olivia sometimes thought so. The puzzle that she had begun to try
to solve when Rebecca Mary's white, death-struck mother had laid her
baby in Aunt Olivia's unaccustomed arms was getting a little more
difficult every day. Some days Aunt Olivia wondered if she ought to give
it up. Oh, this bringing up—this bringing up of little children!
“If I must,” groaned Aunt Olivia, and got as far as taking the little
diary in her hands. But she got no farther. She laid it gently down
again.
“I can't,” she said, firmly, but she could not look Duty in the face as
she said it. She had always listened to Duty before.
“You know you ought to—”
“Yes, I know, but I can't! It seems a shameful thing to do. I'm sure
I've tried often enough—you know I've tried—”
“I know—that was good practice. Now stop trying and read it!”
Aunt Olivia flamed up. “I tell you I won't! It's a shameful thing. If I
found Rebecca Mary reading one of my diaries, I should send her to bed—”
“Read hers and go to bed yourself. It's your duty to read it. When you
bring up a child—”
“I never will again!”
Aunt Olivia read it, with the relentless grip of Duty holding her to the
task. But flame spots crept up through the sallow of her thin cheeks and
made what atonement they could.
It did not take long, though some of the pages she read twice. The
weatherless week, when Rebecca Mary had put off her “asking” from day to
day, Aunt Olivia went back to the third time. When she closed the little
book it was not a Plummer face she lifted it to and laid it against for
the space of a breath—a Plummer face would not have been wet.
Then she Whirled upon Duty. “Well, I've done it—I hope you're
satisfied!”
“It had to be done,” calm Duty responded. “If you think it will make you
feel any better, you can send yourself to bed.”
“I'm going to,” sighed Aunt Olivia, slipping away to her room. A strange
little yearning was upon her to hunt up Rebecca Mary and call her
darling and dear. But in her heart she knew she should not have the
courage to do it. Here was another Plummer coward!
“Why are some people made like me?” she thought—“so it kills 'em to say
anything anyways tenderish. Seems to be too much for their vocal
organs—they'd rather do a week's washing!”
Other thoughts came to Aunt Olivia as she lay on her bed, doing her
whimsical penance for violating the sanctity of the little old cookbook.
She was not comfortable. It was a hard bed—nothing was soft of Aunt
Olivia's. She moved about on it uneasily.
“When they're dead, we're willing enough to say tenderish things to
'em,” her musings ran. “We wish we HAD then. I suppose if Rebecca Mary
was—”
She got no farther for the sudden horror that was upon her—that sent her
to her feet and to the door. But there she stopped in the blessed relief
that drifted in to her on a child's laugh. Somewhere out there Rebecca
Mary was laughing in her subdued, sweet way. A cracked, shrill crow
followed—Thomas Jefferson was laughing too.
Rebecca Mary was not dead. There was time to say a “tenderish” thing to
her before she lay—before that. Aunt Olivia shut her eyes resolutely to
the vision that had intruded upon her musings. It was Rebecca Mary who
was laughing somewhere out there that she wanted to see.
The next day was Sunday, and in the quiet of the long afternoon Rebecca
Mary read aloud again to Thomas Jefferson. It was from the little
cookbook diary. Thomas Jefferson was pecking about the long grass of the
orchard.
“Oh, listen!” cried Rebecca Mary, her eyes unwontedly shining. “Listen
to this, Thomas Jefferson!
“'SATURDAY.—Wind northwest by Mrs. Tupper's Weather vain. Something
happened yesterday. Aunt Olivia didn't say it, but she most did. She
came right out of her bedroom and I saw it in her face!
“Dear”—“darling,”—they were both there, and she was looking at me!
Nobody EVER looked “dear” “darling” at me before. I suppose my mother
would have. If I hadent had another mother I think I should like to have
had Aunt Olivia.
“'You feel that way more after you get akquainted. When I get VERY
akquainted prehaps I shall tell Aunt Olivia. Its quear, I think, how it
isent as easy to say some things as it is to think them. You can wright
them easier too. I am glad Ime keeping a diary because I can wright
about yesterday and what happenned. I shall read it to my grand
children—to be continude.
“'SUNDAY'—that's today, Thomas Jefferson,—'SUNDAY.—This is yesterday
continude, because there was too mutch for one day. Something else
beutiful happenned. My Aunt Olivia said to me as folows, I have desided
to pay you a weakly alowance of 10 cents a weak Rebecca Mary. And I
never asked her to. And she never said anything about charging me for my
sins. I was going to ask her but I found out she was poor. That was a
mistake, she isent. She must be SOME well of I think for 10 cents seams
a great deal to have of your own every weak. But I shant buy crimpers.
Ime going to buy a present for Aunt Olivia byamby. Ime very happy. I
wish I knew how to spell hooray.'”
Suddenly Rebecca Mary was on her feet, waving the cookbook jubilantly.
“Hoo-ray! Hoo-ray! Thomas Jefferson!” she shouted, surprising the gentle
Sunday calm. She surprised Thomas Jefferson, too, but he was equal to
the occasion—Thomas Jefferson was a gentleman.
“Hoo-ra-a-a-ay!” he crowed, splendidly, with a fine effect of clapping
his hands.
This time there could be no doubt. This was applause.
The Bereavement
Thomas Jefferson was losing his appetite. Even Aunt Olivia noticed it,
but it did not worry her as it did Rebecca Mary.
“He's always had as many appetites as a cat's got lives—he's got eight
good ones left,” she said, calmly.
But Rebecca Mary was not calm. It seemed to her that Thomas Jefferson
was getting thinner every day.
“Oh, I can feel your bones!” she cried, in distress. “Your bones are
coming through, you poor, dear Thomas Jefferson! Won't you eat just one
more kernel of corn—just this one for Rebecca Mary? I'd do it for you.
Shut your eyes and swallow it right down and you'll never know it.”
That day Thomas Jefferson listened to pleading, but not the next day—nor
the next. He went about dispiritedly, and the last few times that he
crowed it made Rebecca Mary cry. Even Aunt Olivia shook her head.
“I could do it better than that myself,” she said, soberly.
Rebecca Mary hunted bugs and angleworms and arranged them temptingly in
rows, but the big, white rooster passed them by with a feeble peck or
two. Bits of bread failed to tempt him, or even his favorite cooky
crumbs. His eighth appetite departed—his seventh, sixth, fifth, fourth.
“He lost his third one yesterday,” lamented Rebecca Mary, “and today
he's lost his second. It's pretty bad when he hasn't only one left, Aunt
Olivia.”
“Pretty bad,” nodded Aunt Olivia. She was stirring up a warm mush. When
Rebecca Mary had gone upstairs she took it to Thomas Jefferson and
commanded him to eat. He was beyond coaxing—perhaps he needed
commanding.
Rebecca Mary thought Aunt Olivia did not care, and it added a new sting
to her pain. There was that time that Aunt Olivia said she wished the
Lord hadn't ever created roosters—Thomas Jefferson had just scratched up
her pansy seeds. And the time when she wished Thomas Jefferson was dead;
did she wish that now? Was she—was she glad he was going to be dead?
For Rebecca Mary had given up hope. She was not reconciled, but she was
sure. She spent all her spare time with the big, gaunt, pitiful fellow,
trying to make his last days easier. She knew he liked to have her with
him.
“You do, don't you, dear?” she said. She had never called him “dear”
before. She realized sadly that this was her last chance. “You do like
to have me here, don't you? You'd rather? Don't try to crow—just nod
your head a little if you do.” And the big, white fellow's head had
nodded a little, she was sure. She put out her loving little brown hand
and caressed it. “I knew you did, dear. Oh, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas
Jefferson, don't die! PLEASE don't—think of the good times we'll have if
you won't! Think of the—the grasshoppers—the bugs, Thomas Jefferson—the
cookies! Won't you think?—won't you try to be a little bit hungry?”
Rebecca Mary knew what it was to be hungry and not be able to eat, but
to be able to eat and not be hungry—this was away and beyond her
experience. The sad puzzle of it she could not solve.
One day the minister had a rather surprising summons to perform his
priestly functions. The summoner was Rebecca Mary. She appeared like a
sombre little shadow in his sunny sermon room. The minister's wife
ushered her in, and in the brief instant of opening the door and
announcing her name flashed him a warning glance. He had been acquainted
so long with her glances that he was able to interpret this one with
considerable accuracy. “All right,” he glanced back. No, he would not
smile—yes, he would remember that it was Rebecca Mary.
“Do what she asks you,” flashed the minister's wife's glance.
“All right,” flashed the minister. Then the door closed.
“Thomas Jefferson is dying,” Rebecca Mary began, hurriedly. “I came to
see if you'd come.”
In spite of himself the minister gasped. Then, as the situation dawned
clearly upon him, his mouth corners began—in spite of themselves—to
curve upward. But in time he remembered the minister's wife, and drew
them back to their centres of gravity. He waited a little. It was safer.
“Aunt Olivia isn't at home and I'm glad. She doesn't care. Perhaps she
would laugh. Oh, I know,” appealed Rebecca Mary, piteously, “I know he's
a rooster! It isn't because I don't know—but he's FOLKS to me! You
needn't do anything but just smooth his feathers a little and say the
Lord bless you. I thought perhaps you'd come and do that. I could, but I
wanted you to, because you're a minister. I thought—I thought perhaps
you'd try and forget he's a rooster.”
“I will,” the minister said, gently. Now his lips were quite grave. He
took Rebecca Mary's hand and went with her.
“He's a good man,” murmured the minister's wife, watching them go. She
had known he would go.
“He was one of my parishioners,” the minister was saying for the
comforting of Rebecca Mary. Unconsciously he used the past tense, as one
speaks of those close to death. It was well enough, for already big,
gaunt, white Thomas Jefferson was in the past tense.
Rebecca Mary chronicled the sad event in her diary:
“Tomas Jefferson passed away at ten minutes of three this afternoon
blessed are them that die in the Lord. The minnister did not get here in
time. I wish I had asked him to run for he is a very good minnister and
would have. He helped me berry him in the cold cold ground and we sang a
him. I dident ask him to pray because he was only a rooster, but he was
folks to me. I loved him. It is very lonesome. I dred wakening up
tomorrow because he always crowed under my window. The Lord gaveth and
the Lord has taken away.”
This last Rebecca Mary erased once, but she wrote it again after a
moment's thought. For, she reasoned, it was the Lord part of Aunt Olivia
which had given Thomas Jefferson to her. In the primitive little creed
of Rebecca Mary every one had a Lord part, but some people's was very
small. Not Aunt Olivia's—she had never gauged Aunt Olivia's Lord part;
it would not have been consistent with her ideas of loyalty.
It was very lonely, as Rebecca Mary had known it would be. At best her
life had never been overfull of companionships, and the sudden taking-
off—it seemed sudden, as all deaths do—of Thomas Jefferson was hard to
bear. Strange how blank a space one great, white rooster can leave
behind him!
The yard and the orchard seemed full of blank spaces, though in a way
Thomas Jefferson's soul seemed to frequent his old beloved haunts.
Rebecca Mary could not see it pecking daintily about, but she felt it
was there.
“His soul isn't dead,” she persisted, gently. She clung to the comfort
of that. And one morning she thought she heard again Thomas Jefferson's
old, cheery greeting to the sunrise. The sound she thought she heard
woke her instantly. Was it Thomas Jefferson's soul crowing?
“Aunt Olivia isent sorry,” chronicled the diary, sadly. “Prehaps shes
glad. Once she wished the Lord had forgot to create roosters. But she
was ever kind to Tomas Jefferson, considdering the seeds he scrached up.
That was his besittingest sin and I know he is sorry now. I wish Aunt
Olivia was sorry.”