Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

by Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

  III

  A DIFFERENCE IN HEARTS

  "I don' know as I cal'lated to be the makin' of any child," Miranda hadsaid as she folded Aurelia's letter and laid it in the light-standdrawer. "I s'posed, of course, Aurelia would send us the one we askedfor, but it's just like her to palm off that wild young one on somebodyelse."

  "You remember we said that Rebecca or even Jenny might come, in caseHannah couldn't," interposed Jane.

  "I know we did, but we hadn't any notion it would turn out that way,"grumbled Miranda.

  "She was a mite of a thing when we saw her three years ago," venturedJane; "she's had time to improve."

  "And time to grow worse!"

  "Won't it be kind of a privilege to put her on the right track?" askedJane timidly.

  "I don' know about the privilege part; it'll be considerable of achore, I guess. If her mother hain't got her on the right track by now,she won't take to it herself all of a sudden."

  This depressed and depressing frame of mind had lasted until theeventful day dawned on which Rebecca was to arrive.

  "If she makes as much work after she comes as she has before, we mightas well give up hope of ever gettin' any rest," sighed Miranda as shehung the dish towels on the barberry bushes at the side door.

  "But we should have had to clean house, Rebecca or no Rebecca," urgedJane; "and I can't see why you've scrubbed and washed and baked as youhave for that one child, nor why you've about bought out Watson's stockof dry goods."

  "I know Aurelia if you don't," responded Miranda. "I've seen her house,and I've seen that batch o' children, wearin' one another's clothes andnever carin' whether they had 'em on right sid' out or not; I know whatthey've had to live and dress on, and so do you. That child will likeas not come here with a passel o' things borrowed from the rest o' thefamily. She'll have Hannah's shoes and John's undershirts and Mark'ssocks most likely. I suppose she never had a thimble on her finger inher life, but she'll know the feelin' o' one before she's ben here manydays. I've bought a piece of unbleached muslin and a piece o' browngingham for her to make up; that'll keep her busy. Of course she won'tpick up anything after herself; she probably never see a duster, andshe'll be as hard to train into our ways as if she was a heathen."

  "She'll make a dif'rence," acknowledged Jane, "but she may turn outmore biddable 'n we think."

  "She'll mind when she's spoken to, biddable or not," remarked Mirandawith a shake of the last towel.

  Miranda Sawyer had a heart, of course, but she had never used it forany other purpose than the pumping and circulating of blood. She wasjust, conscientious, economical, industrious; a regular attendant atchurch and Sunday-school, and a member of the State Missionary andBible societies, but in the presence of all these chilly virtues youlonged for one warm little fault, or lacking that, one likable failing,something to make you sure she was thoroughly alive. She had never hadany education other than that of the neighborhood district school, forher desires and ambitions had all pointed to the management of thehouse, the farm, and the dairy. Jane, on the other hand, had gone to anacademy, and also to a boarding-school for young ladies; so hadAurelia; and after all the years that had elapsed there was still aslight difference in language and in manner between the elder and thetwo younger sisters.

  Jane, too, had had the inestimable advantage of a sorrow; not thenatural grief at the loss of her aged father and mother, for she hadbeen content to let them go; but something far deeper. She was engagedto marry young Tom Carter, who had nothing to marry on, it is true, butwho was sure to have, some time or other. Then the war broke out. Tomenlisted at the first call. Up to that time Jane had loved him with aquiet, friendly sort of affection, and had given her country a mildemotion of the same sort. But the strife, the danger, the anxiety ofthe time, set new currents of feeling in motion. Life became somethingother than the three meals a day, the round of cooking, washing,sewing, and church going. Personal gossip vanished from the villageconversation. Big things took the place of trifling ones,--sacredsorrows of wives and mothers, pangs of fathers and husbands,self-denials, sympathies, new desire to bear one another's burdens. Menand women grew fast in those days of the nation's trouble and danger,and Jane awoke from the vague dull dream she had hitherto called lifeto new hopes, new fears, new purposes. Then after a year's anxiety, ayear when one never looked in the newspaper without dread and sicknessof suspense, came the telegram saying that Tom was wounded; and withoutso much as asking Miranda's leave, she packed her trunk and started forthe South. She was in time to hold Tom's hand through hours of pain; toshow him for once the heart of a prim New England girl when it isablaze with love and grief; to put her arms about him so that he couldhave a home to die in, and that was all;--all, but it served.

  It carried her through weary months of nursing--nursing of othersoldiers for Tom's dear sake; it sent her home a better woman; andthough she had never left Riverboro in all the years that lay between,and had grown into the counterfeit presentment of her sister and of allother thin, spare, New England spinsters, it was something of acounterfeit, and underneath was still the faint echo of that wildheart-beat of her girlhood. Having learned the trick of beating andloving and suffering, the poor faithful heart persisted, although itlived on memories and carried on its sentimental operations mostly insecret.

  "You're soft, Jane," said Miranda once; "you allers was soft, and youallers will be. If 't wa'n't for me keeping you stiffened up, I b'lieveyou'd leak out o' the house into the dooryard."

  It was already past the appointed hour for Mr. Cobb and his coach to belumbering down the street.

  "The stage ought to be here," said Miranda, glancing nervously at thetall clock for the twentieth time. "I guess everything 's done. I'vetacked up two thick towels back of her washstand and put a mat underher slop-jar; but children are awful hard on furniture. I expect wesha'n't know this house a year from now."

  Jane's frame of mind was naturally depressed and timorous, having beenaffected by Miranda's gloomy presages of evil to come. The onlydifference between the sisters in this matter was that while Mirandaonly wondered how they could endure Rebecca, Jane had flashes ofinspiration in which she wondered how Rebecca would endure them. It wasin one of these flashes that she ran up the back stairs to put a vaseof apple blossoms and a red tomato-pincushion on Rebecca's bureau.

  The stage rumbled to the side door of the brick house, and Mr. Cobbhanded Rebecca out like a real lady passenger. She alighted with greatcircumspection, put the bunch of faded flowers in her aunt Miranda'shand, and received her salute; it could hardly be called a kiss withoutinjuring the fair name of that commodity.

  "You needn't 'a' bothered to bring flowers," remarked that gracious andtactful lady; "the garden 's always full of 'em here when it comestime."

  Jane then kissed Rebecca, giving a somewhat better imitation of thereal thing than her sister. "Put the trunk in the entry, Jeremiah, andwe'll get it carried upstairs this afternoon," she said.

  "I'll take it up for ye now, if ye say the word, girls."

  "No, no; don't leave the horses; somebody'll be comin' past, and we cancall 'em in."

  "Well, good-by, Rebecca; good-day, Mirandy 'n' Jane. You've got alively little girl there. I guess she'll be a first-rate companykeeper."

  Miss Sawyer shuddered openly at the adjective "lively" as applied to achild; her belief being that though children might be seen, ifabsolutely necessary, they certainly should never be heard if she couldhelp it. "We're not much used to noise, Jane and me," she remarkedacidly.

  Mr. Cobb saw that he had taken the wrong tack, but he was too unused toargument to explain himself readily, so he drove away, trying to thinkby what safer word than "lively" he might have described hisinteresting little passenger.

  "I'll take you up and show you your room, Rebecca," Miss Miranda said."Shut the mosquito nettin' door tight behind you, so 's to keep theflies out; it ain't flytime yet, but I want you to start right; takeyour passel along with ye and then you won't have to come down for it;alw
ays make your head save your heels. Rub your feet on that braidedrug; hang your hat and cape in the entry there as you go past."

  "It's my best hat," said Rebecca

  "Take it upstairs then and put it in the clothes-press; but I shouldn't'a' thought you'd 'a' worn your best hat on the stage."

  "It's my only hat," explained Rebecca. "My every-day hat wasn't goodenough to bring. Fanny's going to finish it."

  "Lay your parasol in the entry closet."

  "Do you mind if I keep it in my room, please? It always seems safer."

  "There ain't any thieves hereabouts, and if there was, I guess theywouldn't make for your sunshade, but come along. Remember to always goup the back way; we don't use the front stairs on account o' thecarpet; take care o' the turn and don't ketch your foot; look to yourright and go in. When you've washed your face and hands and brushedyour hair you can come down, and by and by we'll unpack your trunk andget you settled before supper. Ain't you got your dress on hind sid'foremost?"

  Rebecca drew her chin down and looked at the row of smoked pearlbuttons running up and down the middle of her flat little chest.

  "Hind side foremost? Oh, I see! No, that's all right. If you have sevenchildren you can't keep buttonin' and unbuttonin' 'em all thetime--they have to do themselves. We're always buttoned up in front atour house. Mira's only three, but she's buttoned up in front, too."

  Miranda said nothing as she closed the door, but her looks were at onceequivalent to and more eloquent than words.

  Rebecca stood perfectly still in the centre of the floor and lookedabout her. There was a square of oilcloth in front of each article offurniture and a drawn-in rug beside the single four poster, which wascovered with a fringed white dimity counterpane.

  Everything was as neat as wax, but the ceilings were much higher thanRebecca was accustomed to. It was a north room, and the window, whichwas long and narrow, looked out on the back buildings and the barn.

  It was not the room, which was far more comfortable than Rebecca's ownat the farm, nor the lack of view, nor yet the long journey, for shewas not conscious of weariness; it was not the fear of a strange place,for she loved new places and courted new sensations; it was because ofsome curious blending of uncomprehended emotions that Rebecca stood hersunshade in the corner, tore off her best hat, flung it on the bureauwith the porcupine quills on the under side, and stripping down thedimity spread, precipitated herself into the middle of the bed andpulled the counterpane over her head.

  In a moment the door opened quietly. Knocking was a refinement quiteunknown in Riverboro, and if it had been heard of would never have beenwasted on a child.

  Miss Miranda entered, and as her eye wandered about the vacant room, itfell upon a white and tempestuous ocean of counterpane, an oceanbreaking into strange movements of wave and crest and billow.

  "REBECCA!"

  The tone in which the word was voiced gave it all the effect of havingbeen shouted from the housetops.

  A dark ruffled head and two frightened eyes appeared above the dimityspread.

  "What are you layin' on your good bed in the daytime for, messin' upthe feathers, and dirtyin' the pillers with your dusty boots?"

  Rebecca rose guiltily. There seemed no excuse to make. Her offense wasbeyond 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 'sbringin' your trunk upstairs, and I wouldn't let him see such acluttered-up room for anything; he'd tell it all over town."

  When Mr. Cobb had put up his horses that night he carried a kitchenchair to the side of his wife, who was sitting on the back porch.

  "I brought a little Randall girl down on the stage from Maplewoodto-day, mother. She's kin to the Sawyer girls an' is goin' to live with'em," he said, as he sat down and began to whittle. "She's thatAurelia's child, the one that ran away with Susan Randall's son justbefore 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 kep' me jumpin' tryin' toanswer her! Of all the queer children I ever come across she's thequeerest. She ain't no beauty--her face is all eyes; but if she evergrows 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 astranger," replied Mrs. Cobb.

  "Stranger or no stranger, 't wouldn't make no difference to her. She'dtalk to a pump or a grind-stun; she'd talk to herself ruther 'n keepstill."

  "What did she talk about?"

  "Blamed if I can repeat any of it. She kep' me so surprised I didn'thave my wits about me. She had a little pink sunshade--it kind o'looked like a doll's amberill, 'n' she clung to it like a burr to awoolen stockin'. I advised her to open it up--the sun was so hot; butshe said no, 't would fade, an' she tucked it under her dress. 'It'sthe 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 thedearest thing in life to me, but it's an awful care!' "--here Mr. Cobblaughed aloud as he tipped his chair back against the side of thehouse. "There was another thing, but I can't get it right exactly. Shewas talkin' 'bout the circus parade an' the snake charmer in a goldchariot, 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 becomin' over to see you, mother, an' you can size her up for yourself. Idon' 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 mostgenerous thing in the Sawyer girls to take one of Aurelia's children toeducate, the other that the education would be bought at a price whollyout of proportion to its intrinsic value.

  Rebecca's first letters to her mother would seem to indicate that shecordially coincided with the latter view of the situation.