Rebecca Mary | Page 7

moment.
"I've sewed the hundred and twoth," Rebecca Mary whispered.

The Thousand Quilt

"Good afternoon," Rebecca Mary said, politely.
The minister's wife was cutting little trousers out of big ones--the minister's big ones. It was the old puzzle of how to steer clear of the thin places.
"Boys grow so!" sighed, tenderly, the minister's wife, over her work. She had not heard the voice from the doorway.
"Good afternoon"--again.
It was a quaint little figure in tight red calico standing there. It might easily have stepped down from some old picture on the wall. Rebecca Mary had a bundle in her arms. It was so large that it obscured breast and face, and only a pair of grave blue eyes, presided over by thin, light brows, seemed visible to the minister's wife. The trousers puzzle merged into this one. Now who could--
"Oh! Oh, it's Miss Plummer's little girl Rebecca," she said, cordially.
"Rebecca Mary her NIECE," came, a little muffled, from behind the great bundle.
"Rebecca Mary's nie***--*** Oh, you mean Miss Plummer's niece, and your whole name is that! But I suppose she calls you Rebecca or Becky, for short? Walk in, Rebecca."
But Rebecca Mary was struggling with the paralyzing vision of Aunt Olivia calling her Becky. She had passed by the lesser wonder of being called Rebecca without the Mary.
"Oh no'm, indeed; Aunt 'Livia never shortens me," gently gasped the child. And the minister's wife, measuring from the bundle down, smiled to herself. There did not seem much room for shortening.
"But walk in, dear--you're going to walk in? I hope you have come to make me a little call?"
Rebecca Mary struggled out of her paralysis. Here was occasion for new embarrassment. For Rebecca Mary was honest.
"N-o'm I mean, not a LITTLE call. I've come to spend the afternoon," she said, slowly, "and I've brought my work."
The bundle--the great bundle--was her work! She advanced into the room and began carefully to unroll it. It was the turn of the minister's wife to be paralyzed. She pushed forward a chair, and the child sat down in it.
"It's my Thousand Quilt that I'm making for Aunt 'Livia," explained Rebecca Mary. "It's 'most done. There's a thousand pieces in it, and I'm on the nine hundred and ninety-oneth. I thought proberly you'd have some work, so I brought mine."
"Yes, I see--" The minister's wife stood looking down at the tight little red figure among the gorgeous waves of the Thousand Quilt. They eddied and surged around it in dizzy reds and purples and greens. She was conscious of being a little seasick, and for relief she turned back to the puzzle of the little trousers. It had been in her mind at first to express sorrow at Rhoda's being unfortunately away--and the boys. Now she was glad she hadn't, for it was quite plain enough that the visitor had not come to spend the afternoon with the minister's children, but with the minister's wife.
"It isn't she that's young--it's I," thought the minister's wife, with kind, laughing eyes. "She's old enough to be my mother." "How old are you, dear?" she added, aloud.
"Me? I guess you mean Aunt 'Livia, don't you? It's Aunt 'Livia's birthday I'm making it for, it's going to be a present. Once she gave me a present on my birthday."
Once!--the minister's wife remembered Rhoda's birthdays and the boys'. Taken altogether, such a host of little birthdays! But this little old, old visitor seemed to have had but one.
"My birthday is two days quicker than Aunt 'Livia's is," volunteered the visitor, sociably. "We're 'most twins, you see. Aunt 'Livia was fifty-six that time she gave me the present. She's agoing to be fifty-nine when I give her this quilt--it's taken me ever since to make it."
The minister's wife looked up from her cutting. So Rebecca Mary was only fifty-nine!
"It's quite a long quilt," sighed Rebecca Mary. But pride woke in her eyes as she gazed out on the splendors of the green and purple sea. "A Thousand Quilt has so many stitches in it, but when you sew'em all yourself--when you sew every single stitch--" The pride in Rebecca Mary's grave blue eyes grew and grew.
"Robert," the minister's wife said that night to the minister, "it's an awful quilt, but you ought to have seen her eyes! It's taken her three years to make it--maybe you wouldn't be proud yourself!"
"Maybe YOU wouldn't, if Rhoda had made it."
"RHODA! Robert, she sewed one square of patchwork once and it made her sick. I had to put her to bed. Speaking of 'once' reminds me-- once Rebecca Mary had a birthday present, Robert." She waited a little anxiously for him to understand. The minister always understood, but sometimes he made her wait.
"Felicia, are you trying to make me cry?" he said, and she was satisfied. She went across to him, as she