to be met. She recalled an afternoon when he came home and surprised the whole school playing the Revolutionary War in his helter-skelter dooryard, and the way in which he had joined the British forces and impersonated General Burgoyne had greatly endeared him to her. The only difficulty was to find proper words for her delicate mission, for, of course, if Mr. Simpson’s anger were aroused, he would politely push her out of the wagon and drive away with the flag. Perhaps if she led the conversation in the right direction an opportunity would present itself. Clearing her throat nervously, she began:—
“Is it likely to be fair to-morrow?”
“Guess so; clear as a bell. What’s on foot; a picnic?”
“No; we’re to have a grand flag-raising!” (“That is,” she thought, “if we have any flag to raise!”)
“That so? Where?”
“The three villages are to club together and have a rally, and raise the flag at the Centre. There’ll be a brass band, and speakers, and the Mayor of Portland, and the man that will be governor if he’s elected, and a dinner in the Grange Hall, and we girls are chosen to raise the flag.”
“I want to know! That’ll be grand, won’t it?” (Still not a sign of consciousness on the part of Abner.)
“I hope Mrs. Fogg will take Clara Belle, for it will be splendid to look at! Mr. Cobb is going to be Uncle Sam and drive us on the stage. Miss Dearborn—Clara Belle’s old teacher, you know is going to be Columbia; the girls will be the States of the Union, and oh, Mr. Simpson, I am the one to be the State of Maine!” Mr. Simpson flourished the whipstock and gave a loud, hearty laugh. Then he turned in his seat and regarded Rebecca curiously.
“You’re kind o’ small, ain’t ye, for so big a state as this one?” he asked.
“Any of us would be too small,” replied Rebecca with dignity, “but the committee asked me, and I am going to try hard to do well.”
The tragic thought that there might be no occasion for anybody to do anything, well or ill, suddenly overcame her here, and putting her hand on Mr. Simpson’s sleeve, she attacked the subject practically and courageously.
“Oh, Mr. Simpson, dear Mr. Simpson, it’s such a mortifying subject I can’t bear to say anything about it, but please give us back our flag! Don’t, don’t take it over to Acreville, Mr. Simpson! We’ve worked so long to make it, and it was so hard getting the money for the bunting! Wait a minute, please; don’t be angry, and don’t say no just yet, till I explain more. It’ll be so dreadful for everybody to get there to-morrow morning and find no flag to raise, and the band and the mayor all disappointed, and the children crying, with their muslin dresses all bought for nothing! Oh, dear Mr. Simpson, please don’t take our flag away from us!”
The apparently astonished Abner pulled his mustaches and exclaimed: “But I don’t know what you’re drivin’ at! Who’s got yer flag? I hain’t!”
Could duplicity, deceit, and infamy go any further, Rebecca wondered, and her soul filling with righteous wrath, she cast discretion to the winds and spoke a little more plainly, bending her great swimming eyes on the now embarrassed Abner, who looked like an angle-worm wriggling on a pin.
“Mr. Simpson, how can you say that, when I saw the flag in the back of your wagon myself, when you stopped to water the horse? It’s wicked of you to take it, and I cannot bear it!” Her voice broke now, for a doubt of Mr. Simpson’s yielding suddenly darkened her mind. “If you keep it, you’ll have to keep me, for I won’t be parted from it! I can’t fight like the boys, but I can pinch and scratch, and I will scratch, just like a panther—I’ll lie right down on my star and not move, if I starve to death!” “Look here, hold your hosses ‘n’ don’t cry till you git something to cry for!” grumbled the outraged Abner, to whom a clue had just come; and leaning over the wagon-back he caught hold of a corner of white sheet and dragged up the bundle, scooping off Rebecca’s hat in the process, and almost burying her in bunting.
She caught the treasure passionately to her heart and stifled her sobs in it, while Abner exclaimed “I declare to man, if that hain’t a flag! Well, in that case you’re good ‘n’ welcome to it! Land! I seen that bundle lyin’ in the middle o’ the road and I says to myself, that’s somebody’s washin’ and I’d better pick it up and leave it at the post-office to be claimed; ‘n’ all the time it was a flag!”
This was a Simpsonian version of the matter, the fact being that a white-covered bundle lying on the Meserves’ front steps had attracted his practiced eye, and slipping in at the open gate he had swiftly and deftly removed it to his wagon on general principles; thinking if it were clean clothes it would be extremely useful, and in any event there was no good in passing by something flung into one’s very arms, so to speak. He had had no leisure to examine the bundle, and indeed took little interest in it. Probably he stole it simply from force of habit, and because there was nothing else in sight to steal, everybody’s premises being preternaturally tidy and empty, almost as if his visit had been expected! Rebecca was a practical child, and it seemed to her almost impossible that so heavy a bundle should fall out of Mrs. Meserve’s buggy and not be noticed; but she hoped that Mr. Simpson was telling the truth, and she was too glad and grateful to doubt any one at the moment.
“Thank you, thank you ever so much, Mr. Simpson. You’re the nicest, kindest, politest man I ever knew, and the girls will be so pleased you gave us back the flag, and so will the Dorcas Society; they’ll be sure to write you a letter of thanks; they always do.”
“Tell ‘em not to bother ‘bout any thanks,” said Simpson, beaming virtuously. “But land! I’m glad ‘t was me that happened to see that bundle in the road and take the trouble to pick it up.”
(“Jest to think of it’s bein’ a flag!” he thought; “if ever there was a pesky, wuthless thing to trade off, ‘t would be a great, gormin’ flag like that!”)
“Can I get out now, please?” asked Rebecca. “I want to go back, for Mrs. Meserve will be dreadfully nervous when she finds out she dropped the flag, and it hurts her health to be nervous.”
“No, you don’t,” objected Mr. Simpson gallantly, turning the horse. “Do you think I’d let a little creeter like you lug that great heavy bundle? I hain’t got time to go back to Meserve’s, but I’ll take you to the corner and dump you there, flag’n’ all, and you can get some o’ the men-folks to carry it the rest o’ the way. You’ll wear it out, huggin’ it so!”
“I helped make it and I adore it!” said Rebecca, who was in a grandiloquent mood. “Why don’t you like it? It’s your country’s flag.”
Simpson smiled an indulgent smile and looked a trifle bored at these appeals to his extremely rusty better feelings. “I don’ know’s I’ve got any particular int’rest in the country,” he remarked languidly. “I know I don’t owe nothin’ to it, nor own nothin’ in it!”
“You own a star on the flag, same as everybody,” argued Rebecca, who had been feeding on patriotism for a month; “and you own a state, too, like all the rest of us!”
“Land! I wish’t I did! or even a quarter section of one!” sighed Mr. Simpson, feeling somehow a little more poverty-stricken and discouraged than usual.
As they approached the corner and the watering-trough where four cross-roads met, the whole neighborhood seemed to be in evidence, and Mr. Simpson suddenly regretted his chivalrous escort of Rebecca; especially when, as he neared the group,
