Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Kate Douglas Wiggin [primary phonics .TXT] 📗

and the green stuffed bird on top of the what-not, so the children wouldn’t ask to play with them. Brother Milliken’s coming over to see Mr. Burch about business, and I shouldn’t wonder if Brother and Sister Cobb happened in. Don’t go down cellar, I’ll be there in a minute to do the running.”

Miranda and Jane exchanged glances.

“Ain’t she the beatin’est creetur that ever was born int’ the world!” exclaimed Miranda; “but she can turn off work when she’s got a mind to!”

At quarter past five everything was ready, and the neighbors, those at least who were within sight of the brick house (a prominent object in the landscape when there were no leaves on the trees), were curious almost to desperation. Shades up in both parlors! Shades up in the two south bedrooms! And fires—if human vision was to be relied on—fires in about every room. If it had not been for the kind offices of a lady who had been at the meeting, and who charitably called in at one or two houses and explained the reason of all this preparation, there would have been no sleep in many families.

The missionary party arrived promptly, and there were but two children, seven or eight having been left with the brethren in Portland, to diminish traveling expenses. Jane escorted them all upstairs, while Miranda watched the cooking of the supper; but Rebecca promptly took the two little girls away from their mother, divested them of their wraps, smoothed their hair, and brought them down to the kitchen to smell the beans.

There was a bountiful supper, and the presence of the young people robbed it of all possible stiffness. Aunt Jane helped clear the table and put away the food, while Miranda entertained in the parlor; but Rebecca and the infant Burches washed the dishes and held high carnival in the kitchen, doing only trifling damage—breaking a cup and plate that had been cracked before, emptying a silver spoon with some dishwater out of the back door (an act never permitted at the brick house), and putting coffee grounds in the sink. All evidences of crime having been removed by Rebecca, and damages repaired in all possible cases, the three entered the parlor, where Mr. and Mrs. Cobb and Deacon and Mrs. Milliken had already appeared.

It was such a pleasant evening! Occasionally they left the heathen in his blindness bowing down to wood and stone, not for long, but just to give themselves (and him) time enough to breathe, and then the Burches told strange, beautiful, marvelous things. The two smaller children sang together, and Rebecca, at the urgent request of Mrs. Burch, seated herself at the tinkling old piano and gave “Wild roved an Indian girl, bright Alfarata” with considerable spirit and style.

At eight o’clock she crossed the room, handed a palm-leaf fan to her aunt Miranda, ostensibly that she might shade her eyes from the lamplight; but it was a piece of strategy that gave her an opportunity to whisper, “How about cookies?”

“Do you think it’s worth while?” sibilated Miss Miranda in answer.

“The Perkinses always do.”

“All right. You know where they be.”

Rebecca moved quietly towards the door, and the young Burches cataracted after her as if they could not bear a second’s separation. In five minutes they returned, the little ones bearing plates of thin caraway wafers,—hearts, diamonds, and circles daintily sugared, and flecked with caraway seed raised in the garden behind the house. These were a specialty of Miss Jane’s, and Rebecca carried a tray with six tiny crystal glasses filled with dandelion wine, for which Miss Miranda had been famous in years gone by. Old Deacon Israel had always had it passed, and he had bought the glasses himself in Boston. Miranda admired them greatly, not only for their beauty but because they held so little. Before their advent the dandelion wine had been served in sherry glasses.

As soon as these refreshments—commonly called a “colation” in Riverboro—had been genteelly partaken of, Rebecca looked at the clock, rose from her chair in the children’s corner, and said cheerfully, “Come! time for little missionaries to be in bed!”

Everybody laughed at this, the big missionaries most of all, as the young people shook hands and disappeared with Rebecca.

XX A CHANGE OF HEART

That niece of yours is the most remarkable girl I have seen in years,” said Mr. Burch when the door closed.

“She seems to be turnin’ out smart enough lately, but she’s consid’able heedless,” answered Miranda, “an’ most too lively.”

“We must remember that it is deficient, not excessive vitality, that makes the greatest trouble in this world,” returned Mr. Burch.

“She’d make a wonderful missionary,” said Mrs. Burch; “with her voice, and her magnetism, and her gift of language.”

“If I was to say which of the two she was best adapted for, I’d say she’d make a better heathen,” remarked Miranda curtly.

“My sister don’t believe in flattering children,” hastily interpolated Jane, glancing toward Mrs. Burch, who seemed somewhat shocked, and was about to open her lips to ask if Rebecca was not a “professor.”

Mrs. Cobb had been looking for this question all the evening and dreading some allusion to her favorite as gifted in prayer. She had taken an instantaneous and illogical dislike to the Rev. Mr. Burch in the afternoon because he called upon Rebecca to “lead.” She had seen the pallor creep into the girl’s face, the hunted look in her eyes, and the trembling of the lashes on her cheeks, and realized the ordeal through which she was passing. Her prejudice against the minister had relaxed under his genial talk and presence, but feeling that Mrs. Burch was about to tread on dangerous ground, she hastily asked her if one had to change cars many times going from Riverboro to Syria. She felt that it was not a particularly appropriate question, but it served her turn.

Deacon Milliken, meantime, said to Miss Sawyer, “Mirandy, do you know who Rebecky reminds me of?”

“I can guess pretty well,” she replied.

“Then you’ve noticed it too! I thought at first, seein’ she favored her father so on the outside, that she was the same all through; but she ain’t, she’s like your father, Israel Sawyer.”

“I don’t see how you make that out,” said Miranda, thoroughly astonished.

“It struck me this afternoon when she got up to give your invitation in meetin’. It was kind o’ cur’ous, but she set in the same seat he used to when he was leader o’ the Sabbath-school. You know his old way of holdin’ his chin up and throwin’ his head back a leetle when he got up to say anything? Well, she done the very same thing; there was more’n one spoke of it.”

The callers left before nine, and at that hour (an impossibly dissipated one for the brick house) the family retired for the night. As Rebecca carried Mrs. Burch’s candle upstairs and found herself thus alone with her for a minute, she said shyly, “Will you please tell Mr. Burch that I’m not a member of the church? I didn’t know what to do when he asked me to pray this afternoon. I hadn’t the courage to say I had never done it out loud and didn’t know how. I couldn’t think; and I was so frightened I wanted to sink into the floor. It seemed bold and wicked for me to pray before all those old church members and make believe I was better than I really was; but then again, wouldn’t God think I was wicked not to be willing to pray when a minister asked me to?”

The candle light fell on Rebecca’s flushed, sensitive face. Mrs. Burch bent and kissed her good-night. “Don’t be troubled,” she said. “I’ll tell Mr. Burch, and I guess God will understand.”

 

Rebecca waked before six the next morning, so full of household cares that sleep was impossible. She went to the window and looked out; it was still dark, and a blustering, boisterous day.

“Aunt Jane told me she should get up at half past six and have breakfast at half past seven,” she thought; “but I daresay they are both sick with their colds, and aunt Miranda will be fidgety with so many in the house. I believe I’ll creep down and start things for a surprise.”

She put on a wadded wrapper and slippers and stole quietly down the tabooed front stairs, carefully closed the kitchen door behind her so that no noise should waken the rest of the household, busied herself for a half hour with the early morning routine she knew so well, and then went back to her room to dress before calling the children.

Contrary to expectation, Miss Jane, who the evening before felt better than Miranda, grew worse in the night, and was wholly unable to leave her bed in the morning. Miranda grumbled without ceasing during the progress of her hasty toilet, blaming everybody in the universe for the afflictions she had borne and was to bear during the day; she even castigated the Missionary Board that had sent the Burches to Syria, and gave it as her unbiased opinion that those who went to foreign lands for the purpose of saving heathen should stay there and save ‘em, and not go gallivantin’ all over the earth with a passel o’ children, visitin’ folks that didn’t want ‘em and never asked ‘em.

Jane lay anxiously and restlessly in bed with a feverish headache, wondering how her sister could manage without her.

Miranda walked stiffly through the dining-room, tying a shawl over her head to keep the draughts away, intending to start the breakfast fire and then call Rebecca down, set her to work, and tell her, meanwhile, a few plain facts concerning the proper way of representing the family at a missionary meeting.

She opened the kitchen door and stared vaguely about her, wondering whether she had strayed into the wrong house by mistake.

The shades were up, and there was a roaring fire in the stove; the teakettle was singing and bubbling as it sent out a cloud of steam, and pushed over its capacious nose was a half sheet of note paper with “Compliments of Rebecca” scrawled on it. The coffee pot was scalding, the coffee was measured out in a bowl, and broken eggshells for the settling process were standing near. The cold potatoes and corned beef were in the wooden tray, and “Regards of Rebecca” stuck on the chopping knife. The brown loaf was out, the white loaf was out, the toast rack was out, the doughnuts were out, the milk was skimmed, the butter had been brought from the dairy.

Miranda removed the shawl from her head and sank into the kitchen rocker, ejaculating under her breath, “She is the beatin’est child! I declare she’s all Sawyer!”

The day and the evening passed off with credit and honor to everybody concerned, even to Jane, who had the discretion to recover instead of growing worse and acting as a damper to the general enjoyment. The Burches left with lively regrets, and the little missionaries, bathed in tears, swore eternal friendship with Rebecca, who pressed into their hands at parting a poem composed before breakfast.

TO MARY AND MARTHA BURCH

Born under Syrian skies, ‘Neath hotter suns than ours; The children grew and bloomed, Like little tropic flowers.

When they first saw the light, ‘T was in a heathen land. Not Greenland’s icy mountains, Nor India’s coral strand,

But some mysterious country Where men are nearly black And where of true religion, There is a painful lack.

Then let us haste in helping The Missionary Board, Seek dark-skinned unbelievers, And teach them of their Lord. Rebecca Rowena Randall.

 

It can readily be seen that this visit of the returned missionaries to Riverboro was