Chapter II: Part 2

And then, of course, the minister's littlest little boy—really it was the minister's littlest little boy who had started Rebecca Mary. He had volunteered a peep into his own diary, and made whispered explanations and suggestions. He let Rebecca Mary read some of the entries: “MUNDY, plesent and good. TUSDY, rany and bad. WENSDY, sum plesent and not good enuf to hirt. THIRSDY” but he had hastily withdrawn the book at “Thirsdy,” and a tidal-wave of warm red blood had flowed up over his little brown ears and in around all the little brown islands of his freckles. So Rebecca Mary had begun hastily to talk of other things. For the minister's littlest little boy had explained that the first Statement in each entry referred to the weather and the second to the deportment of the writer, and Rebecca Mary had remarked a sympathetic resemblance between the two statements. She had caught a fleeting glimpse of the weather part of “Thirsdy”—she could guess the rest. Better let the curtain fall on “Thirsdy.” On her way home Rebecca Mary decided to keep a diary herself. Her first day's record had been a good deal like the “Mundy” of the minister's littlest little boy, only there were more a's in the weather. After that, little by little, she branched out into a certain originality—the Rebecca Mary sort. If she had not been hampered by circumstances, it would have been easier to be original. The most hampering circumstance was the cookbook itself, which she was driven to use in her new undertaking. There was room on the blank leaves and above and below the recipes for cake and pudding and pie. The book was one Aunt Olivia had given her long ago to draw impossible pictures in.

In the beginning Rebecca Mary tried pasting pieces of “empty” paper over the pies and puddings and cakes, but the empty paper was too transparent. In rather startling places things were liable to show through.

As: “SUNDAY.—It rained a level teaspoonful. Aunt Olivia and I went to church. The text was thou shalt not steal 1 cups of sour milk—” Rebecca Mary got no farther than that. She was a little appalled at the result thus far, and hastily turned a page and began again in a blank space where no intrusive pudding could break through and corrupt. Thereafter she wrote above and below the recipes and pasted no more thin veils over them. It seemed safer.

Aunt Olivia, apparently oblivious to what was going on, yet saw and did not disapprove. It was to be expected that the child should come into her inheritance sometime, early or late. If early—well.

“It's the Plummer in her. All the Plummers have kept diaries,” Aunt Olivia mused, knitting stolidly on while the child stooped painfully to her self-imposed task. The quaint resemblance to herself at her own diary-writing did not escape her, and she smiled a little in the Aunt Olivia way that scarcely stirred her lips. Aunt Olivia smiled oftener now when she looked at the child. She was “failing” a little, Plummerly. Between the two of them, little Plummer and big, stretched of late a tie woven of sheets and a gorgeous quilt of a thousand bits. It was not very visible to the naked eye, but they were both rather shyly conscious that it was there. They would never be quite so far apart again.

Rebecca Mary took her diary out to the haunts of Thomas Jefferson and read aloud selections to him, with an odd, conscious little air, as though she were graduating. The great white fellow was a sympathetic auditor, if silence and extreme gravity count. Only once did he ever make comments, and Rebecca Mary could never quite make up her mind whether he laughed then or applauded. When a great white rooster elongates his neck, crooks it ridiculously, flaps his wings and crows, it's hard telling exactly what feeling prompts him. But Rebecca reasoned from past experience and her faith in him—he had never laughed at her before. It was applause. The especial entry which evoked it was the one that first mentioned an allowance.

“'THURSDAY.—I think I'm going to—'” read Rebecca Mary slowly; and it was significant that on this Thursday there was no weather. “'I havent desided—I don't KNOW, but I think I'm going to ask Aunt Olivia to pay me 5 cents a weak. Rhoda says you call it an alowance, and I supose she knows. She is the minnister's daughter. She has 10 cents a weak unless shes bad and then she pays the minnister an alowance. He charges her 1 cent a sin and he gives it to somebody who is indignant—I think Rhoda said indignant. Then I should think he would give it back to Rhoda. I shant only ask Aunt Olivia for 5 cents—I think she will be more likely. I havent desided but I THINK I shall ask her tomorrow after her knap. After knaps you are more rested and maybe things don't look just as they do before knaps.

“'FRIDAY.—I think Ide better wait untill tomorrow. Her knap was rather short. Ive desided to say you needent alow but 4 if 5 is too mutch. If she alows Im going to buy me some crimpers. Rhodas curls natchurally but she says you can crimp it if it doesent. I have begun to look at myself in the glass and it fritens me—I guess there ought to be a gh in that—to see how homebly I am. I wonder if it doesent kind of scare Aunt Olivia. Prehaps if I was pretty like Rhoda she would call me darling and dear instead of Rebecca Mary. I dont blame her mutch because I LOOK like Rebecca Mary.

“'SATURDAY.—I think Sunday will be the best time to ask her, just after she gets home from meeting and has rolled her bonnet strings up, espesialy if the minnister preaches on the Lord lovething a cheerful giver. I am hopeing he will. If I dont get the crimpers Ime going to give up looking in the glass. For I think Ime growing homeblyer right along. Theres something the matter with my nose. Rhodas doesent run up hill. I never thought about noses before. Aunt Olivias is a little quear too but I like it became its Aunt Olivias nose. I wish I knew if Aunt Olivia liked mine. I wish we were better akquainted.

“'SUNDAY.—I wish the Lord had created mine curly because I dont dass to ask Aunt Olivia. I don't dass to, so there. It scares my throat. I supose its because aunts arnt mothers—seems as if youd dass to ask your MOTHER. I hate to be scart on acount of being a Plummer. Im afraid Im the only Plummer that ever was—'”

The reading suddenly stopped here. This was Sunday, and the last entry was fresh from Rebecca Mary's pencil.

“Thomas Jefferson!” stormed Rebecca Mary, in a little gust of passion, “don't you ever TELL I was scared! As long as you live!—cross your heart!—oh, I wish I hadn't read that part to you! You're a Plummer too, and you never were scared, and you can't understand—”

The diary was clutched to Rebecca Mary's little flat breast, and with a swirl of starched Sunday skirts the child was gone. She went straight to Aunt Olivia. Red spots of shame flamed in both sallow little cheeks; resolution sat astride her little uphill nose. She could not bear to go, but it was easier than being ashamed. The pointing fingers of all the Plummers pushed her on. Go she must, or be a coward. Long ago—it seemed long to Rebecca Mary—she had stood up straight and stanch and refused to make any more sheets. Was that little girl who had dared, THIS little girl who was afraid? Should that little girl be ashamed of this one?

“Aunt Olivia,” steadily, though Rebecca Mary's heart was pounding hard—“Aunt Olivia, are—are you well off?”

She had not meant to begin like that, but afterwards she was glad that she had.

“My grief!” Aunt Olivia ejaculated in her surprise. What would the child ask next? “Am I well off? If you mean rich, no, I ain't.”

“Oh! Then you're—why, I didn't think about your being poor! I shouldn't have thought of asking—that makes a great difference. I never thought of THAT!”

She was off before Aunt Olivia had fully recovered her breath, and the stumping of her heavy little shoes going upstairs was the only distinctly audible sound. In her own room Rebecca Mary stopped, panting.

“Oh, I'm glad I didn't get as far as ASKING!” she breathed aloud. “I never thought about her being poor—of course then I wouldn't ask!”

But she squared her shoulders and stood up, straight and unashamed. For she had vindicated herself. She had been ready to ask. She could look that other little girl of the sheets in the face. The Other Little Girl was there, coming to meet her as she advanced to the little looking glass above the table. But Rebecca Mary waved her back peremptorily.

“Go right back!” she said. “I only came to tell you I wasn't a coward—that's all. Good-bye. For I'm not coming any more. You're sorry I'm homely, and I'm sorry you are, but it doesn't do any good for us to look at each other and groan. It will make us unsatisfied. So I shall turn you back to the wall—good-bye.”

But for a very [long] instant they looked sadly into each other's little lean brown-yellow faces. It was a brief ceremony of farewell. “Good- bye,” smiled Rebecca Mary, bravely. And the lips of The Other Little Girl moved as though saying it too. The Other Little Girl smiled. And neither of them knew that just then she was beautiful.

Aunt Olivia was trying to meet her own courage test. She had been trying a good many days. Duty—stern, unswerving duty—bade her inspect Rebecca Mary's little cookbook diary. Should she not know—ought she not to know the thoughts that were brewing in the child's mind? How else could she bring her up properly?

“Read it,” Duty said, “find out. Are you afraid?”

“I'm ashamed,” groaned Aunt Olivia. “Do you think Rebecca Mary would read my diary?”

“Is Rebecca Mary bringing you up?”

Aunt Olivia sometimes thought so. The puzzle that she had begun to try to solve when Rebecca Mary's white, death-struck mother had laid her baby in Aunt Olivia's unaccustomed arms was getting a little more difficult every day. Some days Aunt Olivia wondered if she ought to give it up. Oh, this bringing up—this bringing up of little children!

“If I must,” groaned Aunt Olivia, and got as far as taking the little diary in her hands. But she got no farther. She laid it gently down again.

“I can't,” she said, firmly, but she could not look Duty in the face as she said it. She had always listened to Duty before.

“You know you ought to—”

“Yes, I know, but I can't! It seems a shameful thing to do. I'm sure I've tried often enough—you know I've tried—”

“I know—that was good practice. Now stop trying and read it!”

Aunt Olivia flamed up. “I tell you I won't! It's a shameful thing. If I found Rebecca Mary reading one of my diaries, I should send her to bed—”

“Read hers and go to bed yourself. It's your duty to read it. When you bring up a child—”

“I never will again!”

Aunt Olivia read it, with the relentless grip of Duty holding her to the task. But flame spots crept up through the sallow of her thin cheeks and made what atonement they could.

It did not take long, though some of the pages she read twice. The weatherless week, when Rebecca Mary had put off her “asking” from day to day, Aunt Olivia went back to the third time. When she closed the little book it was not a Plummer face she lifted it to and laid it against for the space of a breath—a Plummer face would not have been wet.

Then she Whirled upon Duty. “Well, I've done it—I hope you're satisfied!”

“It had to be done,” calm Duty responded. “If you think it will make you feel any better, you can send yourself to bed.”

“I'm going to,” sighed Aunt Olivia, slipping away to her room. A strange little yearning was upon her to hunt up Rebecca Mary and call her darling and dear. But in her heart she knew she should not have the courage to do it. Here was another Plummer coward!

“Why are some people made like me?” she thought—“so it kills 'em to say anything anyways tenderish. Seems to be too much for their vocal organs—they'd rather do a week's washing!”

Other thoughts came to Aunt Olivia as she lay on her bed, doing her whimsical penance for violating the sanctity of the little old cookbook. She was not comfortable. It was a hard bed—nothing was soft of Aunt Olivia's. She moved about on it uneasily.

“When they're dead, we're willing enough to say tenderish things to 'em,” her musings ran. “We wish we HAD then. I suppose if Rebecca Mary was—”

She got no farther for the sudden horror that was upon her—that sent her to her feet and to the door. But there she stopped in the blessed relief that drifted in to her on a child's laugh. Somewhere out there Rebecca Mary was laughing in her subdued, sweet way. A cracked, shrill crow followed—Thomas Jefferson was laughing too.

Rebecca Mary was not dead. There was time to say a “tenderish” thing to her before she lay—before that. Aunt Olivia shut her eyes resolutely to the vision that had intruded upon her musings. It was Rebecca Mary who was laughing somewhere out there that she wanted to see.

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 grass of the orchard.

“Oh, listen!” cried Rebecca Mary, her eyes unwontedly shining. “Listen to this, Thomas Jefferson!

“'SATURDAY.—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! Nobody 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 appetite. Even Aunt Olivia noticed it, but it did not worry her as it did Rebecca Mary.

“He's always had as many appetites 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 passed them by with a feeble peck or two. Bits of bread failed to tempt him, or even his favorite cooky crumbs. His eighth appetite 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 grasshoppers—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 passed 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 space one great, white rooster can leave behind him!

The yard and the orchard seemed full of blank spaces, 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 appetite over a dead rooster?”

“Thomas Jefferson?” breathed the minister's wife, softly.

“Yes—he's dead and buried, and she's mourning for him. I set three tarts on for dinner today, and I set three tarts AWAY after dinner. Rebecca Mary is fond of tarts. What should you do if it was Rhoda?”

“Oh—-Rhoda—why, I think I should get her another rooster, or a cat or something, to get her mind off. But Rhoda isn't Rebecca Mary—”

Aunt Olivia folded up her work. She got up briskly.

“They've got a white rooster down to the Trumbullses',” she said. “I guess I better go right down now; Tony Trumbull is liable to be at home just before supper. I'm very much obliged to you for your advice.”

“Did I advise her?” murmured the minister's wife, watching the resolute swing of Aunt Olivia's skirts as she strode away. “I was going to tell her that what would cure my Rhoda might not cure Rebecca Mary. Well, I hope it will work,” but she was sure it wouldn't. She had grown a little acquainted with Rebecca Mary.

It was the new, white rooster crowing, instead of the soul of Thomas Jefferson. Rebecca Mary found out after she had dressed and gone downstairs. Soon after that she appeared in the kitchen doorway with an armful of snowy feathers. Aunt Olivia, over her muffin pans, eyed her with secret delight. The cure was working sooner than she had dared to expect.

“This is the Tony Trumbullses' rooster; if I hurry I guess I can carry him back before breakfast,” Rebecca Mary said from the doorway. “I'll run, Aunt Olivia.”

“Carry him back!” Aunt Olivia's muffin spoon dropped into the bowl of creamy batter. One look at Rebecca Mary convinced her that the cure had not begun to work. Imperceptibly she stiffened. “He ain't anybody's but mine. I've bought him,” she explained, briefly. “You set him down and feed him with these crumbs—he ain't human if he don't like cloth-o'-gold cake.”

But the child in the doorway, after gently releasing the great fellow, drew away quietly. The second look at her face convinced Aunt Olivia that the cure would never work.

“You feed him, please, Aunt Olivia,” Rebecca Mary said; “I—couldn't. I'll stir the muffins up.”

Nothing further was ever said about keeping the Tony Trumbull rooster. He pecked about the place in unrestrained freedom until the morning work was done, and then Aunt Olivia carried him home in her apron.

“I concluded not to keep him—he'd likely be homesick,” she said, with a qualm of conscience; for the big, white fellow had certainly shown no signs of homesickness. But she could not explain and reveal the secret places of Rebecca Mary's heart. Aunt Olivia, too, had her ideas of loyalty.

In the diary there occurred brief mention of the episode: “The Tony Trumbull rooster has been here. I could eat him—that's how I feel about the Tony Trumbull rooster.

“I never could have eatten Tomas Jefferson but once and then it would have broken my heart but I was starveing. Aunt Olivia took him back.”

Thomas Jefferson's grave was kept green. Rebecca Mary took her stents down into the orchard and sat beside it, sadly stitching. She kept it heaped with wild flowers and poppies from her own rows. Aunt Olivia's flowers she never touched. The bitterness of Aunt Olivia's not being sorry—perhaps being glad—rankled in her sore little soul. It would have helped—oh yes, it would have helped.

Aunt Olivia worried on. It seemed to her that all Rebecca Mary's meals in one meal would not have kept a kitten alive—and that reminded her. She would try a kitten. The minister's wife had said a rooster or a cat. A white kitten, she decided, though she could scarcely have told why.

The kitten was better, but it was not a cure. Rebecca Mary took the little creature to her breast and told it her grief for Thomas Jefferson and cried her Thomas Jefferson tears into its soft, white fur. In that way, at any rate, it was a success.

“Maybe I shall love you some day,” she whispered, “but I can't yet, while Thomas Jefferson is fresh. He's all I have room for. He was my intimate friend—when your intimate friend is dead you can't love anybody else right away.” But she apologized to the little cat gently—she felt that an apology was due it.

“You see how it is, little, white cat,” she said. “I shall have to ask you to wait. But if I ever have a second love, I promise it will be you. You're a great DEAL comfortinger than that Tony Trumbull rooster! I could love you this minute if I had never loved Thomas Jefferson. Do you feel like waiting?”

The little, white cat waited. And Aunt Olivia waited. She made tempting dishes for Rebecca Mary's meals, and put a ruffle into her nightgown neck and sleeves—Rebecca Mary had always yearned for ruffles.

“I don't believe she sees 'em. She don't know they're there,” groaned Aunt Olivia, impotently. “She don't see anything but Thomas Jefferson, and I don't know as she ever will!”

But Rebecca Mary saw the ruffles and fluted them between her brown little fingers admiringly. She tried once or twice to go and thank Aunt Olivia, and got as far as her bedroom door. But the bitterness in her heart stayed her hand from turning the knob. If Aunt Olivia had only known that being sorry was the right thing to do! Strangely enough, though Rebecca Mary's view of the matter never occurred to Aunt Olivia, she came by and by to being sorry on her own account. Perhaps she had been all along, underneath her disquietude for Rebecca Mary's sorrow. Perhaps when she thought how quiet it had grown mornings, and what a good chance there was now for a supplementary nap, she was being sorry. When she remembered that she need not buy wheat now and yellow corn, and that the cookies would last longer—perhaps then she was sorry. But she did not know it. It seemed to come upon her with the nature of a surprise on one especial day. She had been working her un-“scrached,” untrampled flower-beds.

“My grief!” she ejaculated, suddenly, as if just aware of it. “I declare I believe I miss him, too! I believe to my soul I'd like to hear him crow—I wouldn't mind if he came strutting in here!” And “in here” was Aunt Olivia's beloved garden of flowers. Surely she was being sorry now!

It was the next day that Rebecca Mary's bitterness was sweetened—that she began to be cured. She and the little, white cat went down together to Thomas Jefferson's resting place. When they went home—and they went soon—Rebecca Mary got her diary and began to write in it with eager haste. Her sombre little face had lighted up with some inner gladness, like relief:

“Shes been there and put some lavvender on and pinks. I mean Aunt Olivia. And shes the very fondest of her pinks and lavvender. So she must have loved Tomas Jefferson. Shes sorry. Shes sorry. Shes sorry. And Ime so glad.”

Rebecca Mary caught up the little, white cat and cried her first tear of joy on its neck. Then she wrote again:

“Now there are two morners instead of one. Two morners seams so mutch lovinger than only one. I know he must feal better. I think he must have been hurt before and so was I. I wish I dass tell Aunt Olivia how glad I am shes sorry.”

But she told only the little, white cat. The Plummer mantle of reticence had fallen too heavily on her narrow little shoulders. What she longed to do she did not “dass.” But that evening in her little ruffled nightgown she went to Aunt Olivia's room and thanked her for the ruffles.

“They're beautiful,” she murmured, in a small agony of shyness. “I think it was very kind of you to ruffle me—I've always wanted to be. Thank you very much.” And then she had scurried away on her bare feet to the safe retreat of her own room under the eaves. Aunt Olivia, left behind, was unconsciously relieved at not having to respond. She was glad the child had discovered the ruffles and was pleased. It was a good sign.

“I'll mix up some pancakes in the morning,” Aunt Olivia said, complacently. “Pancakes may help along. Rebecca Mary is fond of 'em.”

The pinks and the fragrant lavender appeared to have established a certain unspoken comradeship between the two “morners” of Thomas Jefferson. Thereafter Rebecca Mary went about comforted, and Aunt Olivia relieved. The little, white cat purred about the skirts of one and the stubbed-out toes of the other in cheerful content.

“Well?” the minister's wife queried, in a moment of social intercourse after church. She and Aunt Olivia walked down the aisle together.

“She's getting over it—or beginning to,” nodded Aunt Olivia. “That other rooster didn't work, but I think the little cat is going to. She hugs it.”

“Good! But she still mourns Thomas Jef—”

“Of course!” Aunt Olivia interposed, rather crisply. “You couldn't expect her to get over it all in a minute. He was a remarkable rooster.”

“She misses him, herself,” inwardly smiled the minister's little wife. Whether by virtue of her relationship to the minister or by her own virtue, she had learned to read human nature with a degree of accuracy.

“I looked at myself in the glass tonight,” confessed Rebecca Mary's diary, “but it was on acount of the rufles. I think Ime not quite so homebly in rufles. I think Aunt Olivia was kind to rufle me. I should like to ware this night gown in the day time. I wish folks did.”

The pencil slipped out of Rebecca Mary's fingers and rolled on the floor, to the undoing of the little, white cat, who had gone to bed in his basket. Rebecca Mary caught him up as he darted after the pencil, and hugged him in an odd little ecstasy. She felt oddly happy.

“You little, white cat!” she cried, muffledly, her face in his thick coat, “you've waited and waited, but I think I'm going to love you now—you needn't wait any more.”

The Feel Doll

The minister uttered a suppressed note of warning as solid little steps sounded in the hall. It was he who threw a hasty covering over the doll. The minister's wife sewed on undisturbedly. She did worse than that.

“Come here, Rhoda,” she called, “and tell me which you like better, three tucks or five in this petticoat?”

“Five,” promptly, upon inspection. Rhoda pulled away the concealing cover and regarded the stolid doll with tilted head. “She's 'nough like my Pharaoh's Daughter to be a blood relation,” she remarked. “She's got the Pharaoh complexion.”

“Spoken like MY daughter!” laughed the minister. “But I thought new dolls in this house were always surprises. And here's Mrs. Minister making doll petticoats out in the open!”

“This is Rebecca Mary's—I'm dressing a doll for Rebecca Mary, Robert. She's eleven years old and never had a doll! Rhoda's ten and has had—How many dolls have you had, Rhoda?”

“Gracious! Why, Pharaoh's Daughter, an' Caiapha, an' Esther the Beautiful Queen, an' the Children of Israel—five o' them—an' Mrs. Job, an'—”

“Never mind the rest, dear. You hear, Robert? Do you think Rhoda would be alive now if she'd never had a doll?”

The minister pondered the question. “Maybe not, maybe not,” he decided; “but possibly the dolls would have been.”

“Don't make me smile, Robert. I'm trying to make you cry. If Rebecca Mary were sixty instead of eleven I should dress her a doll.”

“Then why not one for Miss Olivia?”

“I may dress her one,” undauntedly, “if I find out she never had one in her life.”

“She never did.” The minister's voice was positive. “And for that reason, dear, aren't you afraid she would not approve of Rebecca Mary's having one? Isn't it rather a delicate mat—”

“Don't, Robert, don't discourage me. It's going to be such a beautiful doll! And you needn't tell me that poor little eleven-year-old woman- child won't hold out her empty arms for it. Robert, you're a minister; would it be wrong to give it to her STRAIGHT?”

“Straight, dear?”

“Yes; without saying anything to her aunt Olivia. Tell me. Rhoda's gone. Say it as—as liberally as you can.”

The minister for answer swept doll, petticoat, and minister's wife into his arms, and kissed them all impartially.

“Think if it were Rhoda,” she pleaded.

“And you were 'Aunt Olivia'? You ask me to think such hard things, dear! If I could stop being a minister long enough—”

“Stop?” she laughed; but she knew she meant keep on. With a sigh she burrowed a little deeper in his neck. “Then I'll ask Aunt Olivia first,” she said.

She went back to her tucking. Only once more did she mention Rebecca Mary. The once was after she had come downstairs from tucking the children into bed. She stood in the doorway with the look in her face that mothers have after doing things like that. The minister loved that look.

“Robert, nights when I kiss the children—you knew when you married me that I was foolish—I kiss little lone Rebecca Mary, too. I began the day Thomas Jefferson died—I went to the Rebecca-Mary-est window and threw her a kiss. I went tonight. Don't say a word; you knew when you married me.”

Aunt Olivia received the resplendent doll in silence. Plummer honesty and Plummer politeness were at variance. Plummer politeness said: “Thank her. For goodness' sake, aren't you going to thank the minister's wife?” But Plummer honesty, grim and yieldless, said, “You can't thank her, because you're not thankful.” So Aunt Olivia sat silent, with her resplendent doll across her knees.

“For Rebecca Mary,” the minister's wife was saying, in rather a halting way. “I dressed it for her. I thought perhaps she never—”

“She never,” said Aunt Olivia, briefly. Strange that at that particular instant she should remember a trifling incident in the child's far-off childhood. The incident had to do with a little, white nightgown rolled tightly and pinned together. She had found Rebecca Mary in her little waist and petticoat cuddling it in bed.

“It's a dollie. Please 'sh, Aunt Olivia, or you'll wake her up!” the child had whispered, in an agony. “Oh, you're not agoing to turn her back to a nightgown? Don't unpin her, Aunt Olivia—it will kill her! I'll name her after you if you'll let her stay.”

“Get up and take your clothes off.” Strange Aunt Olivia should remember at this particular instant; should remember, too, that the pin had been a little rusty and came out hard. Rebecca Mary had slid out of bed obediently, but there had been a look on her little brown face as of one bereaved. She had watched the pin come out, and the nightgown unroll, in stricken silence. When it hung released and limp over Aunt Olivia's arm she had given one little cry:

“She's dead!”

The minister's wife was talking hurriedly. Her voice seemed a good way off; it had the effect of coming nearer and growing louder as Aunt Olivia stepped back across the years.

“Of course you are to do as you think best about giving it to her,” the minister's wife said, unwillingly. This came of being a minister's wife! “But I think—I have always thought—that little girls ought—I mean Rhoda ought—to have dolls to cuddle. It seems part of their—her—inheritance.” This was hard work! If Miss Olivia would not sit there looking like that—.

“As if I'd done something unkind!” thought the gentle little mother, indignantly. She got up presently and went away. But Aunt Olivia, with the doll hanging unhealthily over her arm, followed her to the door. There was something the Plummer honesty insisted upon Aunt Olivia's saying. She said it reluctantly:

“I think I ought to tell you that I've never believed in dolls. I've always thought they were a waste of time and kept children from learning to do useful things. I've brought Rebecca Mary up according to my best light.”

“Worst darkness!” thought the minister's wife, hotly.

“She's never had a doll. I never had one. I got along. I could make butter when I was seven. So perhaps you'd better take the doll—”

“No, no! Please keep it, Miss Olivia, and if you should ever change your mind—I mean perhaps sometime—good-bye. It's a beautiful day, isn't it?”

Aunt Olivia took it up into the guest chamber and laid it in an empty bureau drawer. She closed the drawer hastily. She did not feel as duty- proof as she had once felt, before things had happened—softening things that had pulled at her heartstrings and weakened her. The quilt on the guest chamber bed was one of the things; she would not look at it now. And the sheets under the quilt—and the grave of Thomas Jefferson that she could see from the guest chamber window. Aunt Olivia was terribly beset with the temptation to take the doll out to Rebecca Mary in the garden.

“Are you going to do it?” demanded Duty, confronting her. “Are you going to give up all your convictions now? Rebecca Mary's in her twelfth year- pretty late to begin to humor her. I thought you didn't believe in humoring.”

“I unpinned the nightgown,” parried Aunt Olivia, on the defensive. “I never let her make another one.”

“But you're weakening now. You want to let her have THIS doll.”

“It seems like part of—of her inheritance.”

“Lock that drawer!”

Aunt Olivia turned the key unhappily. It was not that her “convictions” had changed—it was her heart.

She went up at odd times and looked at the doll the minister's wife had dressed. She had an unaccountable, uncomfortable feeling that it was lying there in its coffin—that Rebecca Mary would have said, “She's dead.”

It was a handsome doll. Aunt Olivia was not acquainted with dolls, but she acknowledged that. She admired it unwillingly. She liked its clothes—the minister's wife had not spared any pains. She had not stinted in tucks nor ruffles.

Once Aunt Olivia took it out and turned it over in her hands with critical intent, but there was nothing to criticise. It was a beautiful doll. She held it with a curious, shy tenderness. But that time she did not sit down with it. It was the next time.

The rocker was so near the bureau, and Aunt Olivia was tired—and the doll was already in her arms. She only sat down. For a minute she sat quite straight and unrelaxed, then she settled back a little—a little more. The doll lay heavily against her, its flaxen head touching her breast. After the manner of high-bred dolls, its eyes drooped sleepily.

Aunt Olivia began to rock—a gentle sway back and forth. She was sixty, but this was the first time she had ever rocked a chi—a doll. So she rocked for a little, scarcely knowing it. When she found out, a wave of soft pink dyed her face and flowed upward redly to her hair.

“Well!” Duty jibed, mocking her.

“Don't say a word!” cried poor Aunt Olivia. “I'll put her right back.”

“What good will that do?”

“I'll lock her in.”

“You've locked her in before.”

“I'll—I'll hide the key.”

“Where you can find it! Think again.”

Aunt Olivia thrust the doll back into its coffin with unsteady hands. The red in her face had faded to a faint, abiding pink. She locked the drawer and drew out the key. She strode to the window and flung it out with a wide sweep of her arm.

The minister's wife, ignorant of the results of her kind little experiment, resolved to question Rebecca Mary the next time she came on an errand. She would do it with extreme caution.

“I'll just feel round,” she said. “I want to know if her aunt's given it to her. You think she must have, don't you, Robert? By this time? Why, it was six weeks ago I carried it over! It was such a nice, friendly little doll! By this time they would be such friends—if her aunt gave it to her. Robert, you think—”

“I think it's going to rain,” the minister said. But he kissed her to make it easier.

Rebecca Mary came over to bring Aunt Olivia's rule for parson-cake that the minister's wife had asked for.

“Come in, Rebecca Mary,” the minister's wife said, cordially. “Don't you want to see the new dress Rhoda's doll is going to have? I suppose you could make your doll's dress yourself?” It seemed a hard thing to say. Feeling round was not pleasant.

“P'haps I could, but she doesn't wear dresses,” Rebecca Mary answered, gravely.

“No?” This was puzzling. “Her clothes don't come off, I suppose?” Then it could not be the nice, friendly doll.

“No'm. Nor they don't go on, either. She isn't a feel doll.”

“A—what kind did you say, dear?” The minister's wife paused in her work interestedly. Distinctly, Miss Olivia had not given her THE doll; but this doll—“I don't think I quite understood, Rebecca Mary.”

“No'm; it's a little hard. She isn't a FEEL doll, I said. I never had a feel one. Mine hasn't any body, just a soul. But she's a great comfort.”

“Robert,” appealed the minister's wife, helplessly. This was a case for the minister—a case of souls.

“Tell us some more about her, Rebecca Mary,” the minister urged, gently. But there was helplessness, too, in his eyes.

“Why, that's all!” returned Rebecca Mary, in surprise. “Of course I can't dress her or undress her or take her out calling. But it's a great comfort to rock her soul to sleep.”

“Call Rhoda,” murmured the wife to the minister; but Rhoda was already there. She volunteered prompt explanation. There was no hesitation in Rhoda's face.

“She means a make believe doll. Don't you, Rebecca Mary?”

“Yes,” Rebecca Mary assented; “that's her other name, I suppose, but I never called her by it.”

“What did you call her?” demanded practical Rhoda. “What's her name mean?”

“Rhoda!”—hastily, from the minister's wife. This seemed like sacrilege. But Rhoda's clear, blue eyes were fixed upon Rebecca Mary; she had not heard her mother's warning little word.

A shy color spread thinly over the lean little face of Rebecca Mary. For the space of a breath or two she hesitated.

“Her name's—Felicia,” then, softly.

“Robert”—the children had gone out together; the minister's wife's eyes were unashamedly wet—“Robert, I wish you were a—a sheriff instead of a minister. Because I think I would make a better sheriff's wife. Do you know what I would make you do?”

The minister could guess.

“I'd make you ARREST that woman, Robert!”

“Felicia!” But she saw willingness to be a sheriff come into his own eyes and stop there briefly.

“Don't call me 'Felicia' while I feel as wicked as this! Oh, Robert, to think she named her little soul-doll after me!”

“It's a beautiful name.”

Suddenly the wickedness was over. She laughed unsteadily.

“It wouldn't be a good name for a sheriff's wife, would it?” she said. “So I'll stay by my own minister.”

One day close upon this time Aunt Olivia came abruptly upon Rebecca Mary in the grape arbor. She was sitting in her little rocking chair, swaying back and forth slowly. She did not see Aunt Olivia. What was she was crooning half under her breath?

“Oh, hush, oh, hush, my dollie; Don't worry any more, For Rebecca Mary 'n' the angels Are watching o'er, —-O'er 'n' o'er 'n' o'er.”

The same words over and over—growing perhaps a little softer and tenderer. Rebecca Mary's arm was crooked as though a little flaxen head lay in the bend of it. Rebecca Mary's brooding little face was gazing downward intently at her empty arm. Quite suddenly it came upon Aunt Olivia that she had seen the child rocking like this before—that she must have seen her often.

“Rebecca Mary 'n' the angels Are watching o'er,”

sang on the crooning little voice in Aunt Olivia's ears.

The doll in its coffin upstairs; down here Rebecca Mary rocking her empty arms. The two thoughts flashed into Aunt Olivia's mind and welded into one. All her vacillations and Duty's sharp reminders occurred to her clearly. She had thought that at last she was proof against temptation, but she had not thought of this. She was not prepared for Rebecca Mary, here in her little rocking chair, rocking her little soul- doll to sleep.

The angels were used to watching o'er, but Aunt Olivia could not bear it. She went away with a strange, unaccustomed ache in her throat. The minister's wife would not have wanted her arrested then.

Aunt Olivia tiptoed away as though Rebecca Mary had said, “'Sh!” She was remembering, as she went, the brief, sweet moment when she had sat like that and rocked, with the doll the minister's wife dressed, in her arms. It seemed to establish a new link of kinship between her and Rebecca Mary.

She ran plump into Duty.

“Oh!” she gasped. She was a little stunned. Aunt Olivia's Duty was solid.

“I know where you've been. I tried get there in time.”

“You're too late,” Aunt Olivia said, firmly, “Don't stop me; there's something I must do before it gets too dark. It's six o'clock now.”

“Wait!” commanded Duty. “Are you crazy? You don't mean—”

“Go back there and look at that child—and hear what she's singing! Stay long enough to take it all in—don't hurry.”

But Duty barred her way, grim and stern.

Palely she put up both her hands and thrust it aside. She did not once look back at it.

Already it was dusky under the guest chamber window. She had to stoop and peer and feel in the long tangle of grass. She kept on patiently with the Plummer kind of patience that never gave up. She was eager and smiling, as though something pleasant were at the end of the peering and stooping and feeling.

Aunt Olivia was hunting for a key.

The Plummer Kind

The doll's name was Olivicia.

Rebecca Mary had evolved the name from her inner consciousness and her intense gratitude to Aunt Olivia and the minister's wife. She had put Aunt Olivia first with instinctive loyalty, though in the secret little closet of her soul she had longed to call the beautiful being Felicia, intact and sweet. She did not know the meaning of Felicia, but she knew that the doll, as it lay in the loving cradle of her arms, gazing upward with changeless placidity and graciousness, looked as one should look whose name was Felicia. Greater compliment than this Rebecca Mary could not have paid the minister's wife.

“Olivicia,” she had placed the being on the sill of the attic window, stood confronting, addressing it: “Olivicia, it's coming—it is very near to! Sit there and listen and smile—oh yes, smile, SMILE. I don't wonder! I would too, only I'm too glad. When you're TOO glad you can't smile. I've been waiting for it to come. Olivicia, seems as if I'd been waiting a thousan' years. You're so young, you've only lived such little while, of course I don't expect you understand the deep-downness inside o' me when I think—”

The address fluttered and came to a standstill here. Rebecca Mary was suddenly minded that Olivicia was in the dark; must be enlightened before she could smile understandingly.

“Why, you poor dear!—why, you don't know what it is that's coming and that's near to! It's the—city, Olivicia,” enlightened Rebecca Mary, gently, to insure against shock. “Aunt Olivia's going—to—the—city.”

In Rebecca Mary's dreamings it had always been THE city. It did not need local habitation and a name; enough that it had streets upon streets, houses upon houses upon houses, a dazzling swirl of men, women, and little children—noise, glitter, glory. In her dreamings the city was something so wondrous and grand that Heaven might have been its name. The streets upon streets were not paved with gold, of course—of course she knew they were not paved with gold! But in spite of herself she knew that she would be disappointed if they did not shine.

Aunt Olivia had said it that morning. At breakfast—quite matter-of- factly. Think of saying it matter-of-factly!

“I'm going to the city soon, Rebecca Mary,” she had said, between sips of her tea. “Perhaps by Friday week, but I haven't set the day, really. There's a good deal to do.”

Rebecca Mary had been helping do it all day. Now it was nearly time for the pageant of red and gold in the west that Rebecca Mary loved, and she had come up here with the beautiful being to watch it through the tiny panes of the attic window, but more to ease the aching rapture in her soul by speech. She must say it out loud. The city—the city—to the city of streets and houses and men and wonders upon wonders!

Olivicia had come in the capacity of calm listener; for nothing excited Olivicia.

“I,” Aunt Olivia had said, but Aunt Olivia usually said “I.” There was no discouragement in that to Rebecca Mary. It did not for a moment occur to her that “I” did not mean “we.”