New Chronicles of Rebecca | Page 3

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NEW CHRONICLES OF REBECCA by Kate Douglas Wiggin
CONTENTS
First Chronicle Jack O'Lantern
Second Chronicle Daughters of Zion
Third Chronicle Rebecca's Thought Book
Fourth Chronicle A Tragedy in Millinery

Fifth Chronicle The Saving of the Colors
Sixth Chronicle The State of Maine Girl
Seventh Chronicle The Little Prophet
Eighth Chronicle Abner Simpson's New Leaf
Ninth Chronicle The Green Isle
Tenth Chronicle Rebecca's Reminiscences
Eleventh Chronicle Abijah the Brave and the Fair Emma Jane

First Chronicle JACK O'LANTERN
I
Miss Miranda Sawyer's old-fashioned garden was the pleasantest spot
in Riverboro on a sunny July morning. The rich color of the brick
house gleamed and glowed through the shade of the elms and maples.
Luxuriant hop-vines clambered up the lightning rods and water spouts,
hanging their delicate clusters here and there in graceful profusion.
Woodbine transformed the old shed and tool house to things of beauty,
and the flower beds themselves were the prettiest and most fragrant in
all the countryside. A row of dahlias ran directly around the garden
spot,--dahlias scarlet, gold, and variegated. In the very centre was a
round plot where the upturned faces of a thousand pansies smiled amid
their leaves, and in the four corners were triangular blocks of sweet
phlox over which the butterflies fluttered unceasingly. In the spaces
between ran a riot of portulaca and nasturtiums, while in the more
regular, shell-bordered beds grew spirea and gillyflowers, mignonette,
marigolds, and clove pinks.
Back of the barn and encroaching on the edge of the hay field was a
grove of sweet clover whose white feathery tips fairly bent under the
assaults of the bees, while banks of aromatic mint and thyme drank in

the sunshine and sent it out again into the summer air, warm, and
deliciously odorous.
The hollyhocks were Miss Sawyer's pride, and they grew in a stately
line beneath the four kitchen windows, their tapering tips set thickly
with gay satin circlets of pink or lavender or crimson.
"They grow something like steeples," thought little Rebecca Randall,
who was weeding the bed, "and the flat, round flowers are like rosettes;
but steeples wouldn't be studded with rosettes, so if you were writing
about them in a composition you'd have to give up one or the other, and
I think I'll give up the steeples:--
Gay little hollyhock Lifting your head, Sweetly rosetted Out from your
bed.
It's a pity the hollyhock isn't really little, instead of steepling up to the
window top, but I can't say, 'Gay TALL hollyhock.' . . . I might have it
'Lines to a Hollyhock in May,' for then it would be small; but oh, no! I
forgot; in May it wouldn't be blooming, and it's so pretty to say that its
head is 'sweetly rosetted' . . . I wish the teacher wasn't away; she would
like 'sweetly rosetted,' and she would like to hear me recite 'Roll on,
thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!' that I learned out of Aunt Jane's
Byron; the rolls come booming out of it just like the waves at the
beach. . . . I could make nice compositions now, everything is
blooming so, and it's so warm and sunny and happy outdoors. Miss
Dearborn told me to write something in my thought book every single
day, and I'll begin this very night when I go to bed."
Rebecca Rowena Randall, the little niece of the brick-house ladies, and
at present sojourning there for purposes of board, lodging, education,
and incidentally such discipline and chastening as might ultimately
produce moral excellence,--Rebecca Randall had a passion for the
rhyme and rhythm of poetry. From her earliest childhood words had
always been to her what dolls and toys are to other children, and now at
twelve she