Chapter IV

There were many meetings after that. Sometimes Rebecca took one of the other girls and they carried a bouquet of wild flowers to put in a tumbler on the kitchen table, or some apples or berries or nuts that they had picked on the road; but it was easy to see that one caller at a time was all that Miss Roxy fancied. She had very little to eat and very little fuel, though she was known to receive ten dollars a month from a nephew in Salem, so that Riverboro was comfortably sure that she could not starve; and as for firewood, the same nephew had a load, all sawed and split, deposited in her shed twice a year. These mercies gave assurance of existence if not of luxury; and, anyway, Riverboro could not waste its time over an incurably sad, cold, strange, silent woman like Roxanna Lyman, even if her family had been one of the best in former years.

Once Rebecca had knocked at Miss Roxy's door without receiving any answer and, peeping into the window of the downstairs chamber where she slept, had seen her lying on her bed with the gray shawl round her shoulders and a man's military coat over her feet. Like lightning the thought flashed through the child's mind: "Why not make a quilt for Miss Roxy?"

Patchwork had to be sewed, day in and day out, as was the custom. There were never enough sheets to oversew, and needlework was a Christian duty; therefore, patchwork--in and out of season. It was cheap, too. Nobody would mind if she and the other girls did extra work, begged their own pieces, and gave away the result for a Thanksgiving or Christmas present. The matter had been put before mothers and aunts, accepted, and scraps already collected. It only remained to choose the design.

So far so good; but that was not why Rebecca had tied pink tape on one of her pigtails--not at all! The mere notion of the quilt, a secret from all the village save the families involved--this had enchanted the five girls from the beginning; but something else was unfolded in the pine-grove meeting.

"You see," said Rebecca, "I was up to Miss Roxy's last night and she'd been crying. She cries 'most every day."

"What for, I wonder? She lives alone, so there's nobody to be cross to her," said Alice Robinson, who had troubles of her own.

"I guess it's the things that have happened in bygone days." (Rebecca had an incurably literary style in conducting meetings, and indulged unconsciously in nights of sentiment and rhetoric.) "Her mother and father died and her brother embezzled and Aunt Jane thinks that a gentleman played with her feelings and she's never been the same since."

"'Played with her feelings!' What's that?" inquired the unsentimental Emma Jane Perkins.

"Gave her hopes and then married another without saying so much as 'Boo,'" explained Rebecca.

"And there was a sister that did something dreadful, I don't exactly know what," hinted Candace darkly; "but she lives out West and Miss Roxy writes and writes to her, but she never answers."

"And she was the one Miss Rosy loved best of all," added Rebecca with a tear in her voice. "I asked her yesterday why she didn't sit in the kitchen with a window open and not in the little front entry that'll hardly hold her rocking-chair. She said if anybody should come any time suddenly she could get down the steps quicker to meet them. She never comes down to any of us, and I know it's the sister she means. Oh, dear!"

"Mother's awful sorry for her," was Persis's comment. "But everybody's kind of lost sympathy for her because she lives so out of creation, and it's so much work to get there."

"Well"--and Rebecca leaned toward the group confidentially--"I was thinking about it night before last as I was leaning over the gate. Now look the other way, girls, and don't laugh while I explain. All of a sudden I thought the pieces of our quilt will be scraps of dresses; why not take those that we, and all the other people, have had the loveliest times in? We could put them everywhere but round the edges, everywhere they'd touch Miss Roxy, I mean--on her neck and shoulders and arms and waist and knees. It'd be a quilt of happiness then; that's my idea!" And Rebecca waited with flushing cheeks and downcast eyes for the verdict.

There was a breathless pause of half a minute. Emma Jane seldom moved her mind in the presence of Rebecca, feeling that competition was impossible; still she was the first to break the silence with her customary ejaculation: "I think it would be perfectly elegant!"

Alice Robinson nodded her curly head responsively and said: '"Quilt of Happiness!' It sounds lovely, if we don't have to tell anybody grown up who would say it's silly."

"But can happiness strike _into_ anybody?" inquired Candace, who, as the daughter of an Orthodox deacon, went to the foundation of things.

Rebecca was inclined to evade the direct question, inasmuch as her cherished idea had no real basis save one of pure sentiment.

"I can't help feeling that if we just collect scraps of happiness," she said shyly, "and cut and stitch and tack happiness into the quilt, all in secret, that Miss Roxy'd feel warmer in it, though, of course, she'd never guess why."

"Well," answered Candace, a little unconvinced but generously approving, "I think it couldn't do any harm to try."

"And there's just one person we might tell, for she'd understand and help us get the right pieces without telling our secret, and that's teacher." This suggestion from Persis Watson.

Rebecca clapped her hands delightedly.

"Now here comes the greatest piece of news, and I've been saving it up till the end! I did tell Miss Dearborn, last evening. I couldn't help it, because I couldn't be sure my idea wasn't foolish till one other person had heard it--and what do you think she told me? She's engaged to be married! Miss Dearborn's engaged to be married!"

This was chanted joyously while Rebecca skipped over the pine-needle carpet in circles and waved her arms triumphantly.

A chorus of "Oh!" and "Ah!" and "Who to?" woke the echoes.

Rebecca sat down again cross-legged and proceeded to the telling of a tale which from the beginning of the world has evoked the keenest joy in the narrator and the most rapt attention from the audience.

"How did she happen to tell you first?" asked Persis with a spice of envy in her tone.

"Just because I was there almost at the very identical minute when He went away."

"Who? Her beau?" inquired Alice, blushing to the roots of her hair.

"Yes; and she'd never tell Mrs. Bangs a thing like _that_!" (Mrs. Bangs was a lady of difficult temper with whom Miss Dearborn boarded as painlessly as possible.) "Don't you know how you feel when you're full to bursting with splendid news? That's how Miss Dearborn was. Do you remember the tall gentleman that came from Hartford two Saturday nights and went to meeting with her next day?"

"Yes!" in chorus. "Was that him?" (Miss Dearborn spoke and taught good English; but there are some things that human beings are powerless to teach--or learn!)

"Yes. His name is Robert Hunt, and teacher says he's an ab-so-lute-ly glorious man!"

"I didn't know there was any glorious men," said Persis. "I wisht I'd looked at him harder in meetin'. When they goin' to be married?"

"Not till next summer, though he's pleaded for an early date. (That's what she said.) She wants to teach here till the spring term's over so's to buy her wedding clothes, and aren't you glad we'll have her one more winter? Now, why doesn't somebody ask me what my news is?"

"Gracious! Is there any more?" they cried.

"Of course! Or what has all this to do with our quilt? Miss Dearborn just loved the idea of its being a quilt of happiness. She kissed me lots of times, and then she got up and looked in the glass and twirled herself round and held up her skirt and danced, and she had on the dress we like best--the pink delaine with the moss rosebuds on it--and she said, thinking it out as she went along: 'Rebecca, I've had so much happiness to-day I must give part of it away! When Mr. Hunt asked me to marry him this afternoon, I had on this dress. The waist is nearly worn out, but the skirt is as good as new. It's got six breadths in it, and it'll make a beautiful lining for Miss Roxy's quilt!' Then I said: 'Oh, that'll be lovely if you can spare it; but, darling Miss Dearborn--excuse me for speaking of it--they say that long ago a gentleman from Boston played with Miss Roxy's feelings and that's partly the reason she's so unhappy, and oughtn't you to be perfectly sure that Mr. Hunt isn't playing with yours before you give away any clothes?"

"That was very thoughtful of you, Rebecca," commented Persis approvingly. "And what did she say?"

"Oh! She fell into her rocking-chair and laughed and laughed till the tears rolled down her cheeks. Then she stood up and took the dress right off her back and kissed the waist of it and--"

Emma Jane's china-blue eyes were popping out of her head. Her mind was hurrying to keep up with Rebecca's tale, but it seemed half a league behind as she ejaculated: "Kissed her waist? Wha' for?"

Rebecca looked embarrassed, both at the interruption at the high-water mark of her story and at the lack of comprehension. Also, it was a difficult action to explain in words; one whose meaning was to be felt with a blush and a heartbeat, but not dragged into the open and enlarged upon in bald speech.

"Just think it over, Emma Jane, for I can't talk about it," she said. "If you'd only read 'Ivanhoe,' as I wanted you to, or even 'Cora, the Doctor's Wife' or 'The Pearl of Orr's Island,' you'd know lots more about things."

"I know!" cried Candace triumphantly. "She'd had on the dress when he asked her to marry him, and she loved it."

"I can see how she'd kiss him, but I'd never 'a' thought of her kissin' a waist!" murmured Emma Jane obstinately.

"Well, she did!" Rebecca went on with heightened color. "She kissed it more'n twenty times as quick as lightning and hung it up in the closet, and then she laughed and cried some more and said: 'Oh, Rebecca, if you only knew how sure I am that Mr. Hunt isn't playing with my feelings; but I must tell him about your warning! Here, dear,' she said, rolling the skirt into a bundle, 'you'll have to piece the breadths to make them long enough, but feather-stitching will cover the seams and, oh! I want to give it away right now when it's just warm with gladness and let it go to poor Miss Roxy, who hasn't got a splendid man to love her and take care of her like my Robert!'--that's what she called him." Rebecca's voice broke; her eyes glistened; her cheeks glowed.

Indeed, the little group of budding women all felt vague thumpings and stirrings of something on the left side that had heretofore been silent. "Well, I declare!" "How perfectly elegant!" "Isn't it sweet of her!" "And now we've got our lining that's worried us the most." "And it's just fallen from heaven like the manna in the Bible!"

"And how wonderful to have a happiness lining all ready to put in our happiness quilt, the first happiness quilt that ever was! It simply must make a little difference in Miss Roxy's feelings!"

"And to think that we're the only ones in Riverboro to know that teacher's engaged to be married! It'll be all over the village to-morrow, and we knew it first! Oh, Rebecca, it's been the most wonderful meeting we've ever had, and when we see a pink tape on your pigtail again we'll run harder than ever!"

These and a dozen other excited comments fell from the girls' lips as they made their way home from the pine-grove meeting.

The collecting of the happiness pieces did not turn out to be a task of insuperable difficulty. The children themselves furnished a goodly number. There were some scraps of Rebecca's pink gingham, her first dress of the color she adored but had never hitherto possessed, having worn out her sister Hannah's clothes ever since she was born. Emma Jane gave bits of her Scotch plaid poplin, called the handsomest dress ever worn in Riverboro's younger set. There were squares from frocks in which Persis and Candace had received school prizes and Alice Robinson had worn in tableaux. Alice was always in tableaux on account of her pink-and-white skin and golden hair, and was always cast for "the angel," although she had a most uncertain disposition.

The minister's wife, confidentially consulted, had contributed the full sleeves and shoulder cape of the dress she "appeared bride in" the Sunday after her wedding.

"I had to walk up the aisle and sit in my pew all alone that summer, Rebecca, and I was only seventeen," she said. "Sometimes I thought it would be nice to be married to just a man that belonged to me only, and have him sit beside me in meeting; but then I remembered how grateful I ought to be that my husband belonged to God."

Aunt Jane gave two squares of the cherry-colored glacé silk that she wore when she danced with the Governor of Maine at an inauguration ball at Augusta.

Aunt Miranda never knew that the quilt had any sentimental notions worked into it or she would have thrown cold water on the entire proposition; but in her ignorance she looked over her piece-bag one rainy afternoon with Rebecca. Suddenly she chanced upon a bit of dun-colored stuff that resembled hair-cloth in texture.

"There!" she exclaimed. "That was the best dress I ever had! It wore me like iron! I put two braids on the bottom of it the fourth year and new under-arm pieces the next spring, and I believe it lasted me nine seasons. I never had so much comfort out of anything as that dress! It's a pleasure to look back upon!"

"Did you look nice in it, Aunt Miranda?" Rebecca inquired with interest.

"I don' know's I ever noticed," her aunt replied absent-mindedly. "I know it covered me up, an' that's what dresses are for, I guess."

"Can I have a piece of it and one of your gray cashmere, too?" asked Rebecca; and as she put it in her sewing basket she thought: "I wonder if Aunt Miranda never came any closer to happiness than that!"