"Guess what I"ve got for ye, Rebecky?"
No throb of prophetic soul warned Rebecca of her approaching doom.
"Nodhead apples?" she sparkled, looking as bright and rosy and satin-skinned as an apple herself.
"No; guess again."
"A flowering geranium?"
"Guess again!"
"Nuts? Oh! I can"t, Bijah; I"m just going to Milliken"s Mills on an errand, and I"m afraid of missing Mrs. Perkins. Show me quick! Is it really for me, or for Aunt Miranda?"
"Reely for you, I guess!" and he opened the large brown paper bag and drew from it the remains of a water-soaked hat!
They WERE remains, but there was no doubt of their nature and substance.
They had clearly been a hat in the past, and one could even suppose that, when resuscitated, they might again a.s.sume their original form in some near and happy future.
Miss Miranda, full of curiosity, joined the group in the side entry at this dramatic moment.
"Well, I never!" she exclaimed. "Where, and how under the canopy, did you ever?"
"I was working on the dam at Union Falls yesterday," chuckled Abijah, with a pleased glance at each of the trio in turn, "an" I seen this little bunnit skippin" over the water jest as Becky does over the road.
It"s shaped kind o" like a boat, an" gorry, ef it wa"nt sailin" jest like a boat! Where hev I seen that kind of a bristlin" plume?" thinks I."
("Where indeed!" thought Rebecca stormily.)
"Then it come to me that I"d drove that plume to school and drove it to meetin" and drove it to the Fair an"drove it most everywheres on Becky.
So I reached out a pole an" ketched it fore it got in amongst the logs an" come to any damage, an" here it is! The hat"s pa.s.sed in its checks, I guess; looks kind as if a wet elephant had stepped on it; but the plume"s bout"s good as new! I reely fetched the hat beck for the sake o"
the plume."
"It was real good of you, "Bijah, an" we"re all of us obliged to you,"
said Miranda, as she poised the hat on one hand and turned it slowly with the other.
"Well, I do say," she exclaimed, "and I guess I"ve said it before, that of all the wearing" plumes that ever I see, that one"s the wearin"est!
Seems though it just wouldn"t give up. Look at the way it"s held Mis"
Cobb"s dye; it"s about as brown"s when it went int" the water."
"Dyed, but not a mite dead," grinned Abijah, who was somewhat celebrated for his puns.
"And I declare," Miranda continued, "when you think o" the fuss they make about ostriches, killin" em off by hundreds for the sake o" their feathers that"ll string out and spoil in one hard rainstorm,--an" all the time lettin" useful porcupines run round with their quills on, why I can"t hardly understand it, without milliners have found out jest how good they do last, an" so they won"t use em for trimmin". "Bijah"s right; the hat ain"t no more use, Rebecca, but you can buy you another this mornin"--any color or shape you fancy--an" have Miss Morton sew these brown quills on to it with some kind of a buckle or a bow, jest to hide the roots. Then you"ll be fixed for another season, thanks to "Bijah."
Uncle Jerry and Aunt Sarah Cobb were made acquainted before very long with the part that destiny, or Abijah Flagg, had played in Rebecca"s affairs, for, accompanied by the teacher, she walked to the old stage driver"s that same afternoon. Taking off her new hat with the venerable tr.i.m.m.i.n.g, she laid it somewhat ostentatiously upside down on the kitchen table and left the room, dimpling a little more than usual.
Uncle Jerry rose from his seat, and, crossing the room, looked curiously into the hat and found that a circular paper lining was neatly pinned in the crown, and that it bore these lines, which were read aloud with great effect by Miss Dearborn, and with her approval were copied in the Thought Book for the benefit of posterity:
"It was the bristling porcupine, As he stood on his native heath, He said, "I"ll pluck me some immortelles And make me up a wreath. For tho"
I may not live myself To more than a hundred and ten, My quills will last till crack of doom, And maybe after then. They can be colored blue or green Or orange, brown, or red, But often as they may be dyed They never will be dead." And so the bristling porcupine As he stood on his native heath, Said, I think I"ll pluck me some immmortelles And make me up a wreath."
"R.R.R."
Fifth Chronicle. THE SAVING OF THE COLORS
I
Even when Rebecca had left school, having attained the great age of seventeen and therefore able to look back over a past incredibly long and full, she still reckoned time not by years, but by certain important occurrences.
There was the year her father died; the year she left Sunnybrook Farm to come to her aunts in Riverboro; the year Sister Hannah became engaged; the year little Mira died; the year Abijah Flagg ceased to be Squire Bean"s ch.o.r.e-boy, and astounded Riverboro by departing for Limerick Academy in search of an education; and finally the year of her graduation, which, to the mind of seventeen, seems rather the culmination than the beginning of existence.
Between these epoch-making events certain other happenings stood out in bold relief against the gray of dull daily life.
There was the day she first met her friend of friends, "Mr. Aladdin,"
and the later, even more radiant one when he gave her the coral necklace. There was the day the Simpson family moved away from Riverboro under a cloud, and she kissed Clara Belle fervently at the cross-roads, telling her that she would always be faithful. There was the visit of the Syrian missionaries to the brick house. That was a bright, romantic memory, as strange and brilliant as the wonderful little birds" wings and b.r.e.a.s.t.s that the strangers brought from the Far East. She remembered the moment they asked her to choose some for herself, and the rapture with which she stroked the beautiful things as they lay on the black haircloth sofa. Then there was the coming of the new minister, for though many were tried only one was chosen; and finally there was the flag-raising, a festivity that thrilled Riverboro and Edgewood society from centre to circ.u.mference, a festivity that took place just before she entered the Female Seminary at Wareham and said good-by to kind Miss Dearborn and the village school.
There must have been other flag-raisings in history,--even the persons most interested in this particular one would grudgingly have allowed that much,--but it would have seemed to them improbable that any such flag-raising as theirs, either in magnitude of conception or brilliancy of actual performance, could twice glorify the same century. Of some pageants it is tacitly admitted that there can be no duplicates, and the flag-raising at Riverboro Centre was one of these; so that it is small wonder if Rebecca chose it as one of the important dates in her personal almanac.
The new minister"s wife was the being, under Providence, who had conceived the germinal idea of the flag.
At this time the parish had almost settled down to the trembling belief that they were united on a pastor. In the earlier time a minister was chosen for life, and if he had faults, which was a probably enough contingency, and if his congregation had any, which is within the bounds of possibility, each bore with the other (not quite without friction), as old-fashioned husbands and wives once did, before the easy way out of the difficulty was discovered, or at least before it was popularized.
The faithful old parson had died after thirty years" preaching, and perhaps the newer methods had begun to creep in, for it seemed impossible to suit the two communities most interested in the choice.
The Rev. Mr. Davis, for example, was a spirited preacher, but persisted in keeping two horses in the parsonage stable, and in exchanging them whenever he could get faster ones. As a parochial visitor he was incomparable, dashing from house to house with such speed that he could cover the parish in a single afternoon. This sporting tendency, which would never have been remarked in a British parson, was frowned upon in a New England village, and Deacon Milliken told Mr. Davis, when giving him what he alluded to as his "walking papers," that they didn"t want the Edgewood church run by hoss power!
The next candidate pleased Edgewood, where morning preaching was held, but the other parish, which had afternoon service, declined to accept him because he wore a wig--an ill-matched, crookedly applied wig.
Number three was eloquent but given to gesticulation, and Mrs. Jere Burbank, the president of the Dorcas Society, who sat in a front pew, said she couldn"t bear to see a preacher scramble round the pulpit hot Sundays.
Number four, a genial, handsome man, gifted in prayer, was found to be a Democrat. The congregation was overwhelmingly Republican in its politics, and perceived something ludicrous, if not positively blasphemous, in a Democrat preaching the gospel. ("Ananias and Beelzebub"ll be candidatin" here, first thing we know!" exclaimed the outraged Republican nominee for district attorney.)
Number five had a feeble-minded child, which the hiring committee prophesied, would always be standing in the parsonage front yard, making talk for the other denominations.
Number six was the Rev. Judson Baxter, the present inc.u.mbent; and he was voted to be as near perfection as a minister can be in this finite world. His young wife had a small income of her own, a distinct and unusual advantage, and the subscription committee hoped that they might not be eternally driving over the country to get somebody"s fifty cents that had been over-due for eight months, but might take their onerous duties a little more easily.
"It does seem as if our ministers were the poorest lot!" complained Mrs.
Robinson. "If their salary is two months behindhand they begin to be nervous! Seems as though they might lay up a little before they come here, and not live from hand to mouth so! The Baxters seem quite different, and I only hope they won"t get wasteful and run into debt.
They say she keeps the parlor blinds open bout half the time, and the room is lit up so often evenin"s that the neighbors think her and Mr.
Baxter must set in there. It don"t seem hardly as if it could be so, but Mrs. Buzzell says tis, and she says we might as well say good-by to the parlor carpet, which is church property, for the Baxters are living all over it!"
This criticism was the only discordant note in the chorus of praise, and the people gradually grew accustomed to the open blinds and the overused parlor carpet, which was just completing its twenty-fifth year of honest service.
Mrs. Baxter communicated her patriotic idea of a new flag to the Dorcas Society, proposing that the women should cut and make it themselves.
"It may not be quite as good as those manufactured in the large cities,"
she said, "but we shall be proud to see our home-made flag flying in the breeze, and it will mean all the more to the young voters growing up, to remember that their mothers made it with their own hands."