The next day was Sunday, and in the quiet of the long afternoon Rebecca Mary read aloud again to Thomas Jefferson. It was from the little cookbook diary. Thomas Jefferson was pecking about the long gra.s.s of the orchard.
"Oh, listen!" cried Rebecca Mary, her eyes unwontedly shining. "Listen to this, Thomas Jefferson!
""SAt.u.r.dAY.--Wind northwest by Mrs. Tupper"s Weather vain. Something happened yesterday. Aunt Olivia didn"t say it, but she most did.
She came right out of her bedroom and I saw it in her face!
"Dear"--"darling,"--they were both there, and she was looking at me!
n.o.body EVER looked "dear" "darling" at me before. I suppose my mother would have. If I hadent had another mother I think I should like to have had Aunt Olivia.
""You feel that way more after you get akquainted. When I get VERY akquainted prehaps I shall tell Aunt Olivia. Its quear, I think, how it isent as easy to say some things as it is to think them. You can wright them easier too. I am glad Ime keeping a diary because I can wright about yesterday and what happenned. I shall read it to my grand children--to be continude.
""SUNDAY"--that"s today, Thomas Jefferson,--"SUNDAY.--This is yesterday continude, because there was too mutch for one day. Something else beutiful happenned. My Aunt Olivia said to me as folows, I have desided to pay you a weakly alowance of 10 cents a weak Rebecca Mary. And I never asked her to. And she never said anything about charging me for my sins. I was going to ask her but I found out she was poor. That was a mistake, she isent. She must be SOME well of I think for 10 cents seams a great deal to have of your own every weak. But I shant buy crimpers.
Ime going to buy a present for Aunt Olivia byamby. Ime very happy. I wish I knew how to spell hooray.""
Suddenly Rebecca Mary was on her feet, waving the cookbook jubilantly.
"Hoo-ray! Hoo-ray! Thomas Jefferson!" she shouted, surprising the gentle Sunday calm. She surprised Thomas Jefferson, too, but he was equal to the occasion--Thomas Jefferson was a gentleman.
"Hoo-ra-a-a-ay!" he crowed, splendidly, with a fine effect of clapping his hands.
This time there could be no doubt. This was applause.
The Bereavement
Thomas Jefferson was losing his appet.i.te. Even Aunt Olivia noticed it, but it did not worry her as it did Rebecca Mary.
"He"s always had as many appet.i.tes as a cat"s got lives--he"s got eight good ones left," she said, calmly.
But Rebecca Mary was not calm. It seemed to her that Thomas Jefferson was getting thinner every day.
"Oh, I can feel your bones!" she cried, in distress. "Your bones are coming through, you poor, dear Thomas Jefferson! Won"t you eat just one more kernel of corn--just this one for Rebecca Mary? I"d do it for you.
Shut your eyes and swallow it right down and you"ll never know it."
That day Thomas Jefferson listened to pleading, but not the next day--nor the next. He went about dispiritedly, and the last few times that he crowed it made Rebecca Mary cry. Even Aunt Olivia shook her head.
"I could do it better than that myself," she said, soberly.
Rebecca Mary hunted bugs and angleworms and arranged them temptingly in rows, but the big, white rooster pa.s.sed them by with a feeble peck or two. Bits of bread failed to tempt him, or even his favorite cooky crumbs. His eighth appet.i.te departed--his seventh, sixth, fifth, fourth.
"He lost his third one yesterday," lamented Rebecca Mary, "and today he"s lost his second. It"s pretty bad when he hasn"t only one left, Aunt Olivia."
"Pretty bad," nodded Aunt Olivia. She was stirring up a warm mush.
When Rebecca Mary had gone upstairs she took it to Thomas Jefferson and commanded him to eat. He was beyond coaxing--perhaps he needed commanding.
Rebecca Mary thought Aunt Olivia did not care, and it added a new sting to her pain. There was that time that Aunt Olivia said she wished the Lord hadn"t ever created roosters--Thomas Jefferson had just scratched up her pansy seeds. And the time when she wished Thomas Jefferson was dead; did she wish that now? Was she--was she glad he was going to be dead?
For Rebecca Mary had given up hope. She was not reconciled, but she was sure. She spent all her spare time with the big, gaunt, pitiful fellow, trying to make his last days easier. She knew he liked to have her with him.
"You do, don"t you, dear?" she said. She had never called him "dear"
before. She realized sadly that this was her last chance. "You do like to have me here, don"t you? You"d rather? Don"t try to crow--just nod your head a little if you do." And the big, white fellow"s head had nodded a little, she was sure. She put out her loving little brown hand and caressed it. "I knew you did, dear. Oh, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson, don"t die! PLEASE don"t--think of the good times we"ll have if you won"t! Think of the--the gra.s.shoppers--the bugs, Thomas Jefferson--the cookies! Won"t you think?--won"t you try to be a little bit hungry?"
Rebecca Mary knew what it was to be hungry and not be able to eat, but to be able to eat and not be hungry--this was away and beyond her experience. The sad puzzle of it she could not solve.
One day the minister had a rather surprising summons to perform his priestly functions. The summoner was Rebecca Mary. She appeared like a sombre little shadow in his sunny sermon room. The minister"s wife ushered her in, and in the brief instant of opening the door and announcing her name flashed him a warning glance. He had been acquainted so long with her glances that he was able to interpret this one with considerable accuracy. "All right," he glanced back. No, he would not smile--yes, he would remember that it was Rebecca Mary.
"Do what she asks you," flashed the minister"s wife"s glance.
"All right," flashed the minister. Then the door closed.
"Thomas Jefferson is dying," Rebecca Mary began, hurriedly. "I came to see if you"d come."
In spite of himself the minister gasped. Then, as the situation dawned clearly upon him, his mouth corners began--in spite of themselves--to curve upward. But in time he remembered the minister"s wife, and drew them back to their centres of gravity. He waited a little. It was safer.
"Aunt Olivia isn"t at home and I"m glad. She doesn"t care. Perhaps she would laugh. Oh, I know," appealed Rebecca Mary, piteously, "I know he"s a rooster! It isn"t because I don"t know--but he"s FOLKS to me! You needn"t do anything but just smooth his feathers a little and say the Lord bless you. I thought perhaps you"d come and do that. _I_ could, but I wanted you to, because you"re a minister. I thought--I thought perhaps you"d try and forget he"s a rooster."
"I will," the minister said, gently. Now his lips were quite grave. He took Rebecca Mary"s hand and went with her.
"He"s a good man," murmured the minister"s wife, watching them go. She had known he would go.
"He was one of my parishioners," the minister was saying for the comforting of Rebecca Mary. Unconsciously he used the past tense, as one speaks of those close to death. It was well enough, for already big, gaunt, white Thomas Jefferson was in the past tense.
Rebecca Mary chronicled the sad event in her diary:
"Tomas Jefferson pa.s.sed away at ten minutes of three this afternoon blessed are them that die in the Lord. The minnister did not get here in time. I wish I had asked him to run for he is a very good minnister and would have. He helped me berry him in the cold cold ground and we sang a him. I dident ask him to pray because he was only a rooster, but he was folks to me. I loved him. It is very lonesome. I dred wakening up tomorrow because he always crowed under my window. The Lord gaveth and the Lord has taken away."
This last Rebecca Mary erased once, but she wrote it again after a moment"s thought. For, she reasoned, it was the Lord part of Aunt Olivia which had given Thomas Jefferson to her. In the primitive little creed of Rebecca Mary every one had a Lord part, but some people"s was very small. Not Aunt Olivia"s--she had never gauged Aunt Olivia"s Lord part; it would not have been consistent with her ideas of loyalty.
It was very lonely, as Rebecca Mary had known it would be. At best her life had never been overfull of companionships, and the sudden taking-off--it seemed sudden, as all deaths do--of Thomas Jefferson was hard to bear. Strange how blank a s.p.a.ce one great, white rooster can leave behind him!
The yard and the orchard seemed full of blank s.p.a.ces, though in a way Thomas Jefferson"s soul seemed to frequent his old beloved haunts.
Rebecca Mary could not see it pecking daintily about, but she felt it was there.
"His soul isn"t dead," she persisted, gently. She clung to the comfort of that. And one morning she thought she heard again Thomas Jefferson"s old, cheery greeting to the sunrise. The sound she thought she heard woke her instantly. Was it Thomas Jefferson"s soul crowing?
"Aunt Olivia isent sorry," chronicled the diary, sadly. "Prehaps shes glad. Once she wished the Lord had forgot to create roosters. But she was ever kind to Tomas Jefferson, considdering the seeds he scrached up.
That was his besittingest sin and I know he is sorry now. I wish Aunt Olivia was sorry."
Nothing was ever said between the two about Rebecca Mary"s loss, but Aunt Olivia recognized the keenness of it to the child. She worried a little about it; it reminded her of that other time of worry when Rebecca Mary and she had nearly starved. Sheets and roosters--there were so many worries in the world.
That other time she went to the minister, this time to the minister"s wife. One afternoon she went and carried her work.
"You know about children," she began, without loss of time. "What happens when they lose their appet.i.te over a dead rooster?"
"Thomas Jefferson?" breathed the minister"s wife, softly.