Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm | Page 9

solemnly, as he remounted
his perch; and as the stage rumbled down the village street between the
green maples, those who looked from their windows saw a little brown
elf in buff calico sitting primly on the back seat holding a great bouquet
tightly in one hand and a pink parasol in the other. Had they been
farsighted enough they might have seen, when the stage turned into the
side dooryard of the old brick house, a calico yoke rising and falling
tempestuously over the beating heart beneath, the red color coming and
going in two pale cheeks, and a mist of tears swimming in two brilliant
dark eyes.
Rebecca's journey had ended.
"There's the stage turnin' into the Sawyer girls' dooryard," said Mrs.
Perkins to her husband. "That must be the niece from up Temperance
way. It seems they wrote to Aurelia and invited Hannah, the oldest, but

Aurelia said she could spare Rebecca better, if 't was all the same to
Mirandy 'n' Jane; so it's Rebecca that's come. She'll be good comp'ny
for our Emma Jane, but I don't believe they'll keep her three months!
She looks black as an Injun what I can see of her; black and kind of
up-an-comin'. They used to say that one o' the Randalls married a
Spanish woman, somebody that was teachin' music and languages at a
boardin' school. Lorenzo was dark complected, you remember, and this
child is, too. Well, I don't know as Spanish blood is any real disgrace,
not if it's a good ways back and the woman was respectable."

II
REBECCA'S RELATIONS
They had been called the Sawyer girls when Miranda at eighteen, Jane
at twelve, and Aurelia at eight participated in the various activities of
village life; and when Riverboro fell into a habit of thought or speech,
it saw no reason for falling out of it, at any rate in the same century. So
although Miranda and Jane were between fifty and sixty at the time this
story opens, Riverboro still called them the Sawyer girls. They were
spinsters; but Aurelia, the youngest, had made what she called a
romantic marriage and what her sisters termed a mighty poor
speculation. "There's worse things than bein' old maids," they said;
whether they thought so is quite another matter.
The element of romance in Aurelia's marriage existed chiefly in the fact
that Mr. L. D. M. Randall had a soul above farming or trading and was
a votary of the Muses. He taught the weekly singing-school (then a
feature of village life) in half a dozen neighboring towns, he played the
violin and "called off" at dances, or evoked rich harmonies from church
melodeons on Sundays. He taught certain uncouth lads, when they were
of an age to enter society, the intricacies of contra dances, or the steps
of the schottische and mazurka, and he was a marked figure in all social
assemblies, though conspicuously absent from town-meetings and the
purely masculine gatherings at the store or tavern or bridge.
His hair was a little longer, his hands a little whiter, his shoes a little
thinner, his manner a trifle more polished, than that of his soberer
mates; indeed the only department of life in which he failed to shine
was the making of sufficient money to live upon. Luckily he had no
responsibilities; his father and his twin brother had died when he was

yet a boy, and his mother, whose only noteworthy achievement had
been the naming of her twin sons Marquis de Lafayette and Lorenzo de
Medici Randall, had supported herself and educated her child by
making coats up to the very day of her death. She was wont to say
plaintively, "I'm afraid the faculties was too much divided up between
my twins. L. D. M. is awful talented, but I guess M. D. L. would 'a' ben
the practical one if he'd 'a' lived."
"L. D. M. was practical enough to get the richest girl in the village,"
replied Mrs. Robinson.
"Yes," sighed his mother, "there it is again; if the twins could 'a'
married Aurelia Sawyer, 't would 'a' been all right. L. D. M. was
talented 'nough to GET Reely's money, but M. D. L. would 'a' ben
practical 'nough to have KEP' it."
Aurelia's share of the modest Sawyer property had been put into one
thing after another by the handsome and luckless Lorenzo de Medici.
He had a graceful and poetic way of making an investment for each
new son and daughter that blessed their union. "A birthday present for
our child, Aurelia," he would say,--"a little nest-egg for the future;" but
Aurelia once remarked in a moment of bitterness that the hen never
lived that could sit on those eggs and hatch anything out of them.
Miranda