The Flag-Raising | Page 6

of weariness; it was not the
fear of a strange place, for she adored new places and new sensations; it
was because of some curious blending of uncomprehended emotions
that Rebecca stood her beloved pink sunshade in the corner, tore off her
best hat, flung it on the bureau with the porcupine quills on the under
side, and stripping down the dimity spread, precipitated herself into the
middle of the bed and pulled the counterpane over her head. In a
moment the door opened with a clatter of the latch. Knocking was a
refinement quite unknown in Riverboro, and if it had been heard of, it
would never have been wasted on a child. Miss Miranda entered, and as
her eye wandered about the vacant room, it fell upon a white and
tempestuous ocean of counterpane, an ocean breaking into strange
movements of wave and crest and billow. "Rebecca!" The tone in
which the word was voiced gave it all the effect of having been shouted
from the housetops. A dark ruffled head and two frightened eyes
appeared above the dimity spread. "What are you layin' on your good
bed in the daytime for, messin' up the feathers, and dirtyin' the
comforter with your dusty boots?" Rebecca rose guiltily. There seemed
no excuse to make. Her offense was beyond explanation or apology.
"I'm sorry, Aunt Mirandy-something came over me; I don't know
what." "Well, if it comes over you very soon again we'll have to find
out what 't is. Spread your bed up smooth this minute, for 'Bijah Flagg's
bringin' your trunk upstairs, and I wouldn't let him see such a
cluttered-up room for anything; he'd tell it all over town." When Mr.
Cobb had put up his horses that night he carried a kitchen chair to the
side of his wife, who was sitting on the back porch.
"I brought a little Randall girl down on the stage from Maplewood
to-day, mother. She's related to the Sawyer girls an' is goin' to live with

'em," he said, as he sat down and began to whittle. "She's Aurelia's
child, the sister that ran away with Susan Randall's son just before we
come here to live."
"How old a child?"
"Bout ten, or somewhere along there, an' small for her age; but land!
she might be a hundred to hear her talk! She kept me jumpin' tryin' to
answer her! Of all the queer children I ever come across she's the
queerest. She ain't no beauty--her face is all eyes; but if she ever grows
up to them eyes an' fills out a little she'll make folks stare. Land,
mother! I wish 't you could 'a' heard her talk." "I don't see what she had
to talk about, a child like that, to a stranger," replied Mrs. Cobb.
"Stranger or no stranger, 't would n't make no difference to her. She'd
talk to a pump or a grindstone; she'd talk to herself ruther 'n keep still."
"What did she talk about? "Blamed if I can repeat any of it. She kept
me so surprised I didn't have my wits about me. She had a little pink
sunshade--it kind o' looked like a doll's umberella, 'n' she clung to it
like a burr to a woolen stockin'. I advised her to open it up--the sun was
so hot; but she said no, 't would fade, an' she tucked it under her dress.
'It's the dearest thing in life to me,' says she, 'but it's a dreadful care.'
Them's the very words, an' it's all the words I remember. 'It's the
dearest thing in life to me, but it's an awful care!'"--here Mr.Cobb
laughed aloud as he tipped his chair back against the side of the house.
"There was another thing, but I can't get it right exactly. She was talkin'
'bout the circus parade an' the snake charmer in a gold chariot, an' says
she, 'She was so beautiful beyond compare, Mr. Cobb, that it made you
have lumps in your throat to look at her.' She'll be comin' over to see
you, mother, an' you can size her up for yourself, I don' know how
she'll git on with Mirandy Sawyer-- poor little soul!" This doubt was
more or less openly expressed in Riverboro, which, however, had two
opinions on the subject; one that it was a most generous thing in the
Sawyer girls to take one of Aurelia's children to educate, the other that
the education would be bought at a price wholly out of proportion to its
real value. Rebecca's first letters to her mother would seem to indicate
that she cordially coincided with the latter view of the situation,

II
REBECCA'S POINT OF VIEW
DEAR MOTHER,--I am safely here. My dress was not much tumbled
and Aunt Jane helped