woman-girl by the hand—no, it was pushing it as though the woman-girl
were loath to come.
“Come along,” urged the new Thought, laughingly. “Here she is—this is
Rebecca Mary. Rebecca Mary, this is YOU! You needn't be afraid of each
other, you two. Take a good long look and get acquainted.”
The woman-girl was tall and straight. She had Rebecca Mary's hair,
Rebecca Mary's eyes, mouth, little pointed chin. But not Rebecca Mary's
legs—unless the long skirts covered them. She was rather comely and
pleasant to look at. But Rebecca Mary tried not to look.
“She's got a lover—-some day she'll be getting married,” the new Thought
said more abruptly, startlingly, than grammatically. And then with a
little muffled cry Rebecca Mary put out her hands and pushed the woman-
girl away—back into the knothole whence she had come. The Thought, too,
for she had no room in her mind for thoughts like that.
“My aunt Olivia wouldn't allow me to think of you,” she explained in
dismissing them. “And,” with dignity she added, “neither would Rebecca
Mary.”
It was to be as the minister's wife had prophesied—there were to be not
even the three days of grace allowed by law when Rebecca Mary grew up.
Sitting there with her legs, her poor little unappreciated legs, the
innocent cause of the whole trouble, curled out of sight, Rebecca Mary
planned that there should be but one day of grace. She would allow one
day more to be a little girl in, and then she would grow up. But that
one day—Rebecca Mary got up hastily and went to find Aunt Olivia.
“Aunt Olivia,” she began, without preamble—Rebecca Mary never
preambled—“Aunt Olivia, may I have a holiday tomorrow?”
Aunt Olivia was rocking in her easy chair on the porch. It had taken her
sixty-two years to learn to sit in an easy chair and rock. Even now, and
she had been home from the hospital many months, she felt a little as
though the friendly birds that perched on the porch railing were
twittering tauntingly, “Plummer! Plummer! Plummer!—rocking in an easy
chair!”
“May I, Aunt Olivia?” It was an unusual occurrence for Rebecca Mary to
ask again so soon. But this was an unusual occurrence. Aunt Olivia's
thin face turned affectionately towards the child.
“School doesn't begin again tomorrow, does it?” she said in surprise.
Weren't all Rebecca Mary's days now holidays?
“Oh no—-no'm. But I mean may I skip my stents? And—and may I soak the
kettles and pans? Just tomorrow.”
“Just tomorrow,” repeated bewildered Aunt Olivia—“soak your—stents—”
“Because it's going to be a pretty busy day. It's going to be a—a
celebration,” Rebecca Mary said, softly. There was a strangely exalted
look on her face. Oddly enough she was not afraid that Aunt Olivia would
say no.
Aunt Olivia said yes. She did not ask any questions about the
celebration, on account of the exalted look. She could wait. But the
bewildered look stayed for a while on her thin face. Rebecca Mary was a
queer child, a queer child—but she was a dear child. Dearness atoned for
queerness in Aunt Olivia's creed.
The celebration began early the next morning before Aunt Olivia was up.
She lay in bed and heard it begin. Rebecca Mary out in the dewy garden
was singing at the top of her voice. Aunt Olivia had never heard her
sing like that before—not at the top. Her sweet, shrill voice sounded
rather unacquainted with such free heights as that, and the woman in the
bed wondered with a staid little smile if it did not make Rebecca Mary
feel as she felt when she sat in the easy chair rocking.
Rebecca Mary sang hymns mostly, but interspersed in her programme were
bits of Mother Goose set to original tunes—she had learned the Mother
Goose of the minister's Littlest Little Boy—and original bits set to
familiar tunes. It was a wild little orgy of song.
“My grief!” Aunt Olivia ejaculated under her breath; but she did not
mean her grief. Other people might think Rebecca Mary was crazy—not Aunt
Olivia. But yet she wondered a little and found it hard to wait.
Rebecca Mary washed the breakfast cup and plates, but put the pans and
kettles to soak, and hurried away to her play. There was so much playing
to be done before the sun set on her opportunity. She had made a little
programme on a slip of paper, with approximate times allotted to each
item. As:
Tree climbing... 1 hr. (Do not tare anything) Mud pies... 1 hr. and 1/2.
(Do not get anything muddy) Tea party... 2 hrs. (Do not break anything)
Skipping... 1/2 hr.
Rebecca Mary had written 1 hr. at first opposite skipping, but it had
rather appalled her to think of skipping for so long a period of time,
and, with a sense of being already out of breath, she had hurriedly
erased the 1 and substituted 1/2. Underneath she had written, (“Do not
tip over anything”). All the items had cautionary parentheses underneath
them, for Rebecca Mary did not wish the celebration to injure
“anything.” Not this last day, when all the days of all the years before
it, that had gone to make up her little girlhood, nothing had been torn
or muddied or tipped over.
Rebecca Mary had never climbed trees, had never made mud pies, never had
tea parties, nor skipped. It was with rather a hesitating step that she
went forward to meet them all. She was even a little awed. But she went.
No item on her programme was omitted.
From her rocker on the porch Aunt Olivia watched proceedings with quiet
patience. It was a good vantage point—she could see nearly all of the
celebration. The tree Rebecca Mary climbed was on the edge of the old
orchard next to Aunt Olivia, and there was a providential little rift
through the shrubbery and vines that intervened. This part of the
programme she could see almost too clearly, for it must be confessed
that this part startled Aunt Olivia out of her calm. It—it was so
unexpected. She stopped rocking and leaned forward in her chair to peer
more sharply. What was the child—“She's climbing a tree!” breathed Aunt
Olivia in undisguised astonishment. Even as she breathed it, there came
to her faintly the snapping of twigs and flutter of leaves. Then all was
quite still, but she could discern with her pair of trusty Plummer eyes
two long legs gently dangling.
If Aunt Olivia had known, Rebecca Mary, too, was startled. It—it was so
strange an experience. She was not in the least afraid—it was a mental
start rather than a physical one. When she had reached the limb set down
in her programme she sat on it in a little daze of bewildered delight.
She liked it!
“Why, why, it's nice!” Rebecca Mary breathed. Her turn had come for
undisguised astonishment. The leaves all about her nodded to her and
stroked her cheeks and hair and hands. They whispered things into her
ears. They were such friendly little leaves!
Nothing looked quite the same up there. It was a little as if she were
in a new world, and she felt odd thrills of pride, as probably people
who had discovered countries and rivers and north poles felt. Through a
rift in the leaves she could see with her good Plummer eyes a swaying
spot of brown and white that was Aunt Olivia rocking. Suddenly Rebecca
Mary experienced a pang of remorse that she had wasted so many
opportunities like this—that this was her only one. She wished she had
put 2 hrs. instead of 1 hr. over against “Tree climbing,” but it was too
late now. She had borrowed Aunt Olivia's open-faced gold watch to serve
as timekeeper, and promptly at the expiration of the 1 hr. she slid down
through the crackling twigs and friendly leaves to the old world below.
She did not allow herself to look back, but she could not help the sigh.
It was going to be harder to grow up than she had thought it would be.
The mud pies she made with conscientious care as Rhoda, the minister's
little girl, had said she used to make them. She made rows and rows of
them and set them in the sun to bake. There were raisin stones in them
all and crimped edges around them. It did not take nearly all the 1 hr.
and 1/2, so she made another and still another batch. When the time was
up she did not sigh, but she had had rather a good time. How many mud
pies she HADN'T made in all those years that were to end today!
Olivicia and the little white cat went to the tea party. Rebecca Mary
thought of inviting Aunt Olivia—she got as far as the porch steps, but
no farther. She caught a glimpse of her own legs and shrank back
sensitively. They seemed to have grown since she measured them against
the woodshed wall. Rebecca Mary felt the contrast between her legs and
the tea party. Aunt Olivia never knew how near she had come to being
invited to take part in the celebration, at Article III. on the
programme.
Rhoda had had tea parties unnumbered, like the sands of the sea. She had
described them fluently, so Rebecca Mary was not as one in the dark. She
knew how to cut the bread and the cake into tiny dice, and the cookies
into tiny rounds. She knew how to make the cambric tea and to arrange
the jelly and flowers. But Rhoda had forgotten to tell her how to make a
rose pie—how to select two large rose leaves for upper and under crust,
and to fill in the pie between them with pink and white rose petals and
sugar in alternate layers. Press until “done.” Why had Rhoda forgotten?
It seemed a pity that there was no rose pie at Rebecca Mary's tea
party—and no time left to make one.
“Will you take sugar in your tea, Olivicia?” Rebecca Mary asked, shyly.
She sat on the ground with her legs drawn under her out of sight, but
there were little warm spots in her cheeks. She had not expected to
be—ashamed. If there had been a knothole anywhere, she thought to
herself, the Thought of Growing Up would have come out of it and
confronted her and reminded her of her legs.
“Will you help yourself to the bread? Won't you have another cookie?”
She left nothing out, and gradually the strangeness wore away. It got
gradually to be a good time. “How many tea parties,” thought Rebecca
Mary, “there might have been!”
Rebecca Mary was skipping, when the minister's wife came to call on Aunt
Olivia. It was the minister's wife who discovered it. Aunt Olivia caught
the indrawing of her breath and saw her face. Then Aunt Olivia
discovered it, and a delicate color overspread her thin cheeks and rose
to her temples. Now what was the child—
“Rhoda is a great skipper,” the minister's wife said, hurriedly. But it
was the wrong thing—she knew it was the wrong thing.
“Rebecca Mary is having a—celebration,” hurried Aunt Olivia; but she
wished she had not, for it seemed like trying to excuse Rebecca Mary.
She, too, had said the wrong thing.
“How pleasant it is out here!” tried again the minister's wife.
“Yes, it's cool,” Aunt Olivia agreed, gratefully. After that the things
they said were right things. The fantastic little figure down there in
the orchard, skipping wildly, determinedly, was in none of them. Both of
them felt it to be safer. But the minister's wife's gaze dwelt on the
skipping figure and followed it through its amazing mazes, in spite of
the minister's wife.
“I couldn't have helped it, Robert,” she said. “Not if you'd been there
preaching 'Thou shalt not' to me! You would have looked too, while you
were preaching. You can't imagine, sitting there at that desk, what the
temptation was—Robert, you don't suppose Rebecca Mary has gone crazy?”
“Felicia! You frighten me!”
“No, I don't suppose either. But it was certainly very strange. It was
almost ALARMING, Robert. And she didn't know how at all. I wanted to go
down and show her!”
“It seems to me”—the minister spoke impressively “that it is not Rebecca
Mary who has gone crazy—”
“Why, the idea! Haven't I made it plain?” laughed she. “I'll speak in A
B C's then. Rebecca Mary was SKIPPING, Robert—skipping skipping.”
“Then it's Rebecca Mary,” the minister murmured.
“That's what I'm afraid—didn't I say so? Or else it's her second
childhood—”
“First, you mean. If THAT'S it, don't let's say a word, dear—don't
breathe, Felicia, for fear we'll stop it.”
“Dear child!” the minister's wife said, tenderly. “I wish I'd gone down
there and shown her how. And I'd have told her—Robert, I'd have told her
how to climb a tree! Don't tell the parish.”
The day was to end at sunset, from sunrise to sunset, Rebecca Mary had
decreed. The last article on her crumpled little programme was, “Saying
Good-by to Olivicia(Don't cry).” It was going to be the most difficult
thing of all the articles. Olivicia had existed so short a time
comparatively—it might not have been as difficult if there had always
been an Olivicia. “Or it might have been harder,” Rebecca Mary said. She
went towards that article with reluctant feet. But it had to come.
The bureau drawer was all ready. Rebecca Mary had lined it with
something white and soft and sweetened it with dried rose petals spiced
in the century-old Plummer way. It bore rather grewsome resemblance to
Olivicia's coffin, but it was not grewsome to Rebecca Mary. She laid the
doll in it with the tender little swinging motion mothers use in laying
down their tiny sleepers.
“There, there the-re!” crooned Rebecca Mary, softly, brooding over the
beautiful being. “You'll rest there sweetly after your mother is grown
up. And you'll try not to miss her, won't you? You'll understand,
Olivicia?—oh, Olivicia!” But she did not cry. Her eyes were very bright.
For several minutes she stood there stooped over painfully, gazing down
into the cof—the bureau drawer, wherein lay peaceful Olivicia. She was
saying good-bye in her heart—she never said it aloud.
“Dear,” very softly indeed, “you are sure you understand? Everybody has
to grow up, dear. It—it hurts, but you have to. I mean I'VE got to. I
wouldn't so soon if it wasn't for my legs. But they keep right on
growing—they're awful, dear!—I can't stop 'em. Olivicia, lie right there
and be thankful you're a doll! But I wish you could open your eyes and
look at me just once more.”
Rebecca Mary shut the drawer gently. It was over—no, she would say one
thing more to the beautiful being in there. She bent to the keyhole.
“Olivicia!” she called in a tender whisper, “I shall be right here
nights. We shan't be far away from each other.”
But it would not be like lying in each other's arms—oh, not at all like
that. Rebecca Mary caught her breath; it was perilously like a sob. Then
she girded up her loins and went away to meet her fate—the common fate
of all.
She was very tired. The day had been a strain upon her that was
beginning now to tell. To put all one's childhood into one day—that is
not easy.
Article VI. was the last. In a way, it was a rest to Rebecca Mary, for
it entailed merely a visit to the woodshed. She could sit quietly on the
floor opposite the knothole and wait for the Thoughts. If the Thought of
Growing Up came out tonight, she would say: “Oh, well, you may stay—you
needn't go back. I'm not any glad to see you, but I'm ready. I suppose I
shall get used to you.”
What Thoughts came out of the knothole to Rebecca Mary she never told to
any one. It was nearly dark when she went away, planting her feet
firmly, holding her head straight—Rebecca Mary Plummer. She went to find
Aunt Olivia and tell her. On the way, she stopped to get Aunt Olivia's
shawl, for it was getting chilly out on the porch. Significantly the
first thing Rebecca Mary did after she began to grow up was to get the
shawl and lay it over Aunt Olivia's spare shoulders. The second thing
was to bend to the scant gray hair and lightly rub it with her cheek. It
was a Rebecca Mary kiss.
Out in front of the rocking chair, still straight and firm, she told
Aunt Olivia.
“It's over—I think I put everything in,” she said. “I thought you ought
to know, so I came to tell you. I'm ready to grow up.”
After all, if Rebecca Mary had known, her “programme” had not ended with
Article VI. Here was another. Take the pencil in your steady little
fingers, Rebecca Mary, and write:
Article VII.—Growing up. (Do not break Aunt Olivia's heart.)
Un-Plummered
Aunt Olivia sighed. It was the third time since she had begun to let
Rebecca Mary down. The third sigh was the longest one. Oh, this letting
down of children who would grow up!
“I won't do it!” Aunt Olivia rebelled, fiercely, but she took up her
scissors again at Duty's nudge.
“You don't want people laughing at her, do you?” Duty said, sensibly.
“Well, then, rip out that hem and face up that skirt and stop sighing.
What can't be cured must be endur—”
“I'm ripping it out,” Aunt Olivia interrupted, crisply. But Duty was not
to be silenced.
“You ought to have done it before,” dictatorially. “You've known all
along that Rebecca Mary was growing up.”
Aunt Olivia, like the proverbial worm, turned.
“I didn't know till Rebecca Mary told me,” she retorted; then the
rebellion died out of her thin face and tenderness came and took its
place. Aunt Olivia was thinking of the time when Rebecca Mary told her.
She gazed past Duty, past the skirt across her knees, out through the
porch vines, and saw Rebecca Mary coming to tell her. She saw the shawl
the child was bringing, felt it laid on her shoulders, and something
else laid on her hair, soft and smooth like a little, lean, brown cheek.
The memory was so pleasant that Aunt Olivia closed her eyes to make it
stay. When she opened them some one was coming along the path, but it
was not Rebecca Mary.
“Good afternoon!” some one said. Aunt Olivia stiffened into a Plummer
again with hurried embarrassment. She did not recognize the voice nor
the pleasant young face that followed it through the vines.
“It's Rebecca Mary's aunt, isn't it?” The stranger smiled. “I should
know it by the family resemblance.”
“We're both Plummers,” Aunt Olivia answered, gravely. “Won't you come up
on the porch and take a seat?”
“No, I'll sit down here on the steps—I'd rather. I think I'll sit on the
lowest step for I've come on a very humble errand! I'm Rebecca Mary's
teacher.”
“Oh!” It was all Aunt Olivia could manage, for a sudden horror had come
upon her. She had a distinct remembrance of being at the Tony
Trumbullses when the school teacher came to call.
“It's—it's rather hard to say it.” The young person on the lowest step
laughed nervously. “I'd a good deal rather not. But I think so much of
Rebecca Mary—”
The horror grew in Aunt Olivia's soul. It was something terribly like
that the Tony Trumbullses' teacher had said. And like this:
“It hurts—there! But I made up my mind it was my duty to come up here
and say it, and so I've come. I'm sorry to have to say—”
“Don't!” ejaculated Aunt Olivia, trembling on her Plummer pedestal. For
she was laboring with the impulse to refuse to listen to this intruder,
to drive her away—to say: “I won't believe a word you say! You may as
well go home.”
“Hoity-toity!” breathed Duty in her ear. It saved her.
“Well?” she said, gently. “Go on.”
“I'm sorry to say I can't teach Rebecca Mary any more, Miss Plummer.
That's what I came to tell you—”
This was awful—awful! But hot rebellion rose in Aunt Olivia's heart.
There was some mistake—it was some other Rebecca Mary this person meant.
She would never believe it was HERS—the Plummer one!
“Because I've taught her all I know. There! Do you wonder I chose the
lowest step to sit on? But it's the truth, honest,” the little teacher
laughed girlishly, but there were shame spots on her cheeks—“Rebecca
Mary is the smartest scholar I've got, and I've taught her all I know.”
In her voice there was confession to having taught Rebecca Mary a little
more than that. The shame spots flickered in a halo of humble honesty.
“She's been from Percentage through the arithmetic four times—Rebecca
Mary's splendid in arithmetic. And she knows the geography and grammar
by heart.”
The look on Aunt Olivia's face! The transition from horror to pride was
overwhelming, transfiguring.
“Rebecca Mary's smart,” added the honest one on the doorstep. “I think
she ought to have a chance. There! That's all I came for, so I'll be
going. Only, I don't suppose—you don't think you'll have to tell Rebecca
Mary, do you? About—about me, I mean?”
“No, I don't,” Aunt Olivia assured her, warmly. Her thin, lined hand met
and held for a moment the small, plump one—long enough to say, “You're a
good girl—I like you,” in its own way. The little teacher went away in
some sort comforted for having taught Rebecca Mary all she knew. She
even hummed a relieved little tune on her way home, because of the
pleasant tingle in the hand that Rebecca Mary's aunt had squeezed. After
all, no matter how much you dreaded doing it, it was better to tell the
truth.
Aunt Olivia hummed no relieved little tune. The pride in her heart
battled with the Dread there and went down. Aunt Olivia did not call the
Dread by any other name. It was Duty who dared.
Confronting Aunt Olivia: “I suppose you know what it means? I suppose
you know it means you've got to give Rebecca Mary a chance? When are you
going to send her away to school?”
“Oh—don't!” pleaded Aunt Olivia. “You don't give me any time. There's no
need of hurry—”
“I'm still a Plummer, if you're not,” broke in Duty, with ironic
sharpness. “The Plummers were never afraid to look their duty in the
face.”
“I'm—I'm looking at you,” groaned Aunt Olivia, climbing painfully back
on to her pedestal. “Go ahead and say it. I'm ready—only I guess you've
forgot how long I've had Rebecca Mary. When you've brought a child up—”
“I brought her up myself,” calmly. “I ought to know. She wouldn't have
been Rebecca Mary, would she, if I hadn't been right on hand? Who was it
taught her to sew patchwork before she was four years old? And make
sheets—and beds—and bread? Who was it kept her from being a little
tomboy like the minister's girl? Who taught her to walk instead of run,
and eat with her fork, and be a lady? Who was it—”
“Oh, you—you!” sighed Aunt Olivia, trembling for her balance. “You did
'em all. I never could've alone.”
“Then”—Duty was justly complacent—“Then perhaps you'll be willing to
leave Rebecca Mary's going away to school to me. She must go at once, as
soon as you can get her read—”
Aunt Olivia tumbled off. She did not wait to pick herself up before she
turned upon this Duty that delighted in torturing her.
“You better get her ready yourself! You better let her down and make her
some nightgowns and count her pocket-handkerchiefs! You think you can do
anything—no, I'M talking now! I guess it's my turn. I guess I've waited
long enough. Maybe you brought Rebecca Mary up, but I'm not going to
leave it to you whether she'd ought to go away to school. She's my
Rebecca Mary, isn't she? Well? It's me that loves her, isn't it—not you?
If I can't love her and stay a Plummer, then I'll—love her. I'm going to
leave it to the minister.”
The minister was a little embarrassed. The wistful look in Aunt Olivia's
eyes said, “Say no” so plainly. And he knew he must say yes—the
minister's Duty was imperative, too.
“If she can't get any more good out of the school here—” he began.
“She can't,” said Aunt Olivia's Duty for her. “The teacher says she
can't. Rebecca Mary's smart.” Then Duty, too, was proud of Rebecca Mary!
“I know she is,” said the minister, heartily. “My Rhoda—you ought to
hear my Rhoda set her up. She thinks Rebecca Mary knows more than the
teacher does.”
“Rhoda's smart, too,” breathed Duty in Aunt Olivia's ear.
“So you see, dear Miss Olivia, the child would make good use of any
advantage—”
“You mean I ought to send her away? Well, I'm ready to—I said I'd leave
it to you. Where shall I send her? If there was only—I don't suppose
there's some place near to? Children go home Friday nights sometimes,
don't they?”
“There is no school near enough for that, I'm afraid,” the minister
said, gently. He could not bear the look in Miss Olivia's eyes.
“It hurt,” he told his wife afterwards. “I wish she hadn't asked me,
Felicia.”
“I know, dear, but it's the penalty of being a minister. Ministers'
hearts ought to be coated with—with asbestos or something, so the looks
in people's eyes wouldn't burn through. I'm glad she didn't ask ME!”
“It will nearly kill them both,” ran on the minister's thoughts, aloud.
“You know how it was when Miss Olivia was at the hospital.”
“Robert!”—the minister's wife's tone was reproachful—“you're talking in
the future tense! You said 'will.' Then you advised her to send Rebecca
Mary away!”
“Guilty,” pleaded the minister. “What else could I do?”
“You could have offered to teach her yourself”—with prompt inspiration.
“Oh, Robert, why didn't you?”