Rebecca Mary | Page 6

was eating raw corn. 'If I could, I'd eat supper with you when you're VERY hungry, you don't mind eating things raw.' Then she saw me."
"Well?"
"Well, I coaxed her, Robert. It didn't do any good. Tomorrow somebody must go there and interfere."
"She must be a remarkably strange child," the minister mused. He was thinking of the holding-out powers of the three children he had a half-ownership in.
"I don't think Rebecca Mary IS a child, Robert. She must be fifty years old, at the least. She and her aunt are about the same age. Perhaps if her mother had lived, or she hadn't made so many sheets, or learned to knit and darn and cook--" The minister's kind little wife finished out her sentence with a sigh. She took up a little garment in dire straits to be mended. It suggested things to the minister.
"Can Rhoda darn?"
"RHODA!"
"Or make sheets and bread and things?"
"Robert, don't you feel well? Where is the pain?" But the laugh in the pleasant blue eyes died out suddenly. Little Rebecca Mary lay too heavy on the minister's wife's heart for mirth.
Aunt Olivia went into Rebecca Mary's room in the middle of the night. She had been in three times before.
"She looks thinner than she did last time," Aunt Olivia murmured, distressedly. "Tomorrow night--how long do children live without eating? It's four meals now--four meals is a great many for a little thin thing to go without!" Aunt Olivia had been without four meals too; she would have been able to judge how it felt--if she had remembered that part. She stood in her scant, long nightgown, gazing down at the little sleeper. The veil was down and her heart was in her eyes.
Rebecca Mary threw out her arm and sighed. "It LOOKS good, Thomas Jefferson," she murmured. "When you're VERY hungry you can eat things raw." Suddenly the child sat up in bed, wide-eyed and wild. She did not seem to see Aunt Olivia at all.
"Once I ate a pie!" she cried. "It wasn't a whole one, but I should eat a whole one now--I think I should eat the PLATE now." She swayed back and forth weakly, awake and not awake.
"Once I ate a layer-cake. There was jam in it. I wouldn't care if it was apple jelly in it now--I'd LIKE apple jelly in it now. Once I ate a pudding and a doughnut a-n-d--a--a--I think it was a horse. I'd eat a horse now. Hush! Don't tell Aunt Olivia, but I'm going to eat--to--e-at--Thom-as--Jeffer--" She swayed back on the pillows again. Aunt Olivia shook her in an agony of fear--she was so white-- she lay so still.
"Rebecca! Rebecca Mary! Rebecca Mary PLUMMER!" Aunt Olivia shrilled in her ear. "You get right out o' bed this minute and come downstairs and eat your supper! It's high time you had something in your stomach--I don't care if it's twelve o'clock. You get right out o' bed REBECCA MARY!"
Aunt Olivia had the limp little figure in her arms, shaking it gently again and again. Rebecca's startled eyes flew open. In that instant was born inspiration in the brain of Aunt Olivia. She thought of an appeal to make.
"Do you want ME to starve, too? Right here before your face and eyes? I haven't eat a mouthful since you did, and I shan't till you DO."
Rebecca Mary slid to the floor with a soft thud of little brown, bare feet. Slow comprehension dawned in her eyes. "Are***[--]*** did you say YOU was starving, too?"
"Yes"--grimly.
"Does it hurt you--too?"
"Yes"--unsteadily.
"VERY much?"
"YES."
"Why don't you eat something?"
"Because you don't. I'm waiting for you to."
"Shan't you ever?"
"Not if you don't."
Rebecca Mary caught her breath in a sob. "Shall I be--to blame?" She was moving towards the door now. With an irresistible impulse Aunt Olivia gathered her in her arms, and covered her lean little face with kisses.
"You poor little thing! You poor little thing! You poor little thing!" over and over.
Rebecca Mary gazed up into the softened face and read something there. It took her breath away. She could not believe it without further proof.
"You don't--I don't suppose you LOVE me?" panted Rebecca Mary. But Aunt Olivia was gone out of the room in a swirl of white nightgown.
"Everything's on the table," she called back from the stairs. "I'm going to light a fire. You come right down. I think it's high time--" her voice trailing out thinly.
"She does," murmured Rebecca Mary, radiant of face.
At half past twelve o'clock they both ate supper, both in their scant, white nightgowns, both very hungry indeed. But before she sat down in her old place at the table, Rebecca Mary went round to Aunt Olivia's place and whispered something rather shyly in her ear. She had been by herself in a corner of the room for a