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

the snowy path through the pine woods at the back of the seminary, and coming out on a quiet village street, went directly to the large white house where Miss Maxwell lived. The maid-of-all-work answered her knock; she took off her hat and cape and hung them in the hall, put her rubber shoes and umbrella carefully in the corner, and then opened the door of paradise. Miss Maxwell’s sitting-room was lined on two sides with bookshelves, and Rebecca was allowed to sit before the fire and browse among the books to her heart’s delight for an hour or more. Then Miss Maxwell would come back from her class, and there would be a precious half hour of chat before Rebecca had to meet Emma Jane at the station and take the train for Riverboro, where her Saturdays and Sundays were spent, and where she was washed, ironed, mended, and examined, approved and reproved, warned and advised in quite sufficient quantity to last her the succeeding week.

On this Friday she buried her face in the blooming geraniums on Miss Maxwell’s plant-stand, selected Romola from one of the bookcases, and sank into a seat by the window with a sigh of infinite content, She glanced at the clock now and then, remembering the day on which she had been so immersed in David Copperfield that the Riverboro train had no place in her mind. The distracted Emma Jane had refused to leave without her, and had run from the station to look for her at Miss Maxwell’s. There was but one later train, and that went only to a place three miles the other side of Riverboro, so that the two girls appeared at their respective homes long after dark, having had a weary walk in the snow.

When she had read for half an hour she glanced out of the window and saw two figures issuing from the path through the woods. The knot of bright hair and the coquettish hat could belong to but one person; and her companion, as the couple approached, proved to be none other than Mr. Aladdin. Huldah was lifting her skirts daintily and picking safe stepping-places for the high-heeled shoes, her cheeks glowing, her eyes sparkling under the black and white veil.

Rebecca slipped from her post by the window to the rug before the bright fire and leaned her head on the seat of the great easy-chair. She was frightened at the storm in her heart; at the suddenness with which it had come on, as well as at the strangeness of an entirely new sensation. She felt all at once as if she could not bear to give up her share of Mr. Aladdin’s friendship to Huldah: Huldah so bright, saucy, and pretty; so gay and ready, and such good company! She had always joyfully admitted Emma Jane into the precious partnership, but perhaps unconsciously to herself she had realized that Emma Jane had never held anything but a secondary place in Mr. Aladdin’s regard; yet who was she herself, after all, that she could hope to be first?

Suddenly the door opened softly and somebody looked in, somebody who said: “Miss Maxwell told me I should find Miss Rebecca Randall here.”

Rebecca started at the sound and sprang to her feet, saying joyfully, “Mr. Aladdin! Oh! I knew you were in Wareham, and I was afraid you wouldn’t have time to come and see us.”

“Who is `us’? The aunts are not here, are they? Oh, you mean the rich blacksmith’s daughter, whose name I can never remember. Is she here?”

“Yes, and my room-mate,” answered Rebecca, who thought her own knell of doom had sounded, if he had forgotten Emma Jane’s name.

The light in the room grew softer, the fire crackled cheerily, and they talked of many things, until the old sweet sense of friendliness and familiarity crept back into Rebecca’s heart. Adam had not seen her for several months, and there was much to be learned about school matters as viewed from her own standpoint; he had already inquired concerning her progress from Mr. Morrison.

“Well, little Miss Rebecca,” he said, rousing himself at length, “I must be thinking of my drive to Portland. There is a meeting of railway directors there to-morrow, and I always take this opportunity of visiting the school and giving my valuable advice concerning its affairs, educational and financial.”

“It seems funny for you to be a school trustee,” said Rebecca contemplatively. “I can’t seem to make it fit.”

“You are a remarkably wise young person and I quite agree with you,” he answered; “the fact is,” he added soberly, “I accepted the trusteeship in memory of my poor little mother, whose last happy years were spent here.”

“That was a long time ago!”

“Let me see, I am thirty-two; only thirty-two, despite an occasional gray hair. My mother was married a month after she graduated, and she lived only until I was ten; yes, it is a long way back to my mother’s time here, though the school was fifteen or twenty years old then, I believe. Would you like to see my mother, Miss Rebecca?”

The girl took the leather case gently and opened it to find an innocent, pink-and-white daisy of a face, so confiding, so sensitive, that it went straight to the heart. It made Rebecca feel old, experienced, and maternal. She longed on the instant to comfort and strengthen such a tender young thing.

“Oh, what a sweet, sweet, flowery face!” she whispered softly.

“The flower had to bear all sorts of storms,” said Adam gravely. “The bitter weather of the world bent its slender stalk, bowed its head, and dragged it to the earth. I was only a child and could do nothing to protect and nourish it, and there was no one else to stand between it and trouble. Now I have success and money and power, all that would have kept her alive and happy, and it is too late. She died for lack of love and care, nursing and cherishing, and I can never forget it. All that has come to me seems now and then so useless, since I cannot share it with her!”

This was a new Mr. Aladdin, and Rebecca’s heart gave a throb of sympathy and comprehension. This explained the tired look in his eyes, the look that peeped out now and then, under all his gay speech and laughter.

“I’m so glad I know,” she said, “and so glad I could see her just as she was when she tied that white muslin hat under her chin and saw her yellow curls and her sky-blue eyes in the glass. Mustn’t she have been happy! I wish she could have been kept so, and had lived to see you grow up strong and good. My mother is always sad and busy, but once when she looked at John I heard her say, `He makes up for everything.’ That’s what your mother would have thought about you if she had lived, and perhaps she does as it is.”

“You are a comforting little person, Rebecca,” said Adam, rising from his chair.

As Rebecca rose, the tears still trembling on her lashes, he looked at her suddenly as with new vision.

“Good-by!” he said, taking her slim brown hands in his, adding, as if he saw her for the first time, “Why, little Rose-Red-Snow-White is making way for a new girl! Burning the midnight oil and doing four years’ work in three is supposed to dull the eye and blanch the cheek, yet Rebecca’s eyes are bright and she has a rosy color! Her long braids are looped one on the other so that they make a black letter U behind, and they are tied with grand bows at the top! She is so tall that she reaches almost to my shoulder. This will never do in the world! How will Mr. Aladdin get on without his comforting little friend! He doesn’t like grown-up young ladies in long trains and wonderful fine clothes; they frighten and bore him!”

“Oh, Mr. Aladdin!” cried Rebecca eagerly, taking his jest quite seriously; “I am not fifteen yet, and it will be three years before I’m a young lady; please don’t give me up until you have to!”

“I won’t; I promise you that,” said Adam. “Rebecca,” he continued, after a moment’s pause, “who is that young girl with a lot of pretty red hair and very citified manners? She escorted me down the hill; do you know whom I mean?”

“It must be Huldah Meserve; she is from Riverboro.”

Adam put a finger under Rebecca’s chin and looked into her eyes; eyes as soft, as clear, as unconscious, and childlike as they had been when she was ten. He remembered the other pair of challenging blue ones that had darted coquettish glances through half-dropped lids, shot arrowy beams from under archly lifted brows, and said gravely, “Don’t form yourself on her, Rebecca; clover blossoms that grow in the fields beside Sunnybrook mustn’t be tied in the same bouquet with gaudy sunflowers; they are too sweet and fragrant and wholesome.”

XXIII THE HILL DIFFICULTY

The first happy year at Wareham, with its widened sky-line, its larger vision, its greater opportunity, was over and gone. Rebecca had studied during the summer vacation, and had passed, on her return in the autumn, certain examinations which would enable her, if she carried out the same programme the next season, to complete the course in three instead of four years. She came off with no flying colors,—that would have been impossible in consideration of her inadequate training; but she did wonderfully well in some of the required subjects, and so brilliantly in others that the average was respectable. She would never have been a remarkable scholar under any circumstances, perhaps, and she was easily out-stripped in mathematics and the natural sciences by a dozen girls, but in some inexplicable way she became, as the months went on, the foremost figure in the school. When she had entirely forgotten the facts which would enable her to answer a question fully and conclusively, she commonly had some original theory to expound; it was not always correct, but it was generally unique and sometimes amusing. She was only fair in Latin or French grammar, but when it came to translation, her freedom, her choice of words, and her sympathetic understanding of the spirit of the text made her the delight of her teachers and the despair of her rivals.

“She can be perfectly ignorant of a subject,’ said Miss Maxwell to Adam Ladd, “but entirely intelligent the moment she has a clue. Most of the other girls are full of information and as stupid as sheep.”

Rebecca’s gifts had not been discovered save by the few, during the first year, when she was adjusting herself quietly to the situation. She was distinctly one of the poorer girls; she had no fine dresses to attract attention, no visitors, no friends in the town. She had more study hours, and less time, therefore, for the companionship of other girls, gladly as she would have welcomed the gayety of that side of school life. Still, water will find its own level in some way, and by the spring of the second year she had naturally settled into the same sort of leadership which had been hers in the smaller community of Riverboro. She was unanimously elected assistant editor of the Wareham School Pilot, being the first girl to assume that enviable, though somewhat arduous and thankless position, and when her maiden number went to the Cobbs, uncle Jerry and aunt Sarah could hardly eat or sleep for pride.

“She’ll always get votes,” said Huldah Meserve, when discussing the election, “for whether she knows anything or not, she looks as if she did, and whether she’s capable of filling an office or not, she looks