carefully, so that they should not rain salt water on the finery that had been worn at such a price. She smoothed it out carefully, pinched up the white ruffle at the neck, and laid it away in a drawer with an extra little sob at the roughness of life. The withered pink rose fell on the floor. Rebecca looked at it and thought to herself, “Just like my happy day!” Nothing could show more clearly the kind of child she was than the fact that she instantly perceived the symbolism of the rose, and laid it in the drawer with the dress as if she were burying the whole episode with all its sad memories. It was a child’s poetic instinct with a dawning hint of woman’s sentiment in it.
She braided her hair in the two accustomed pig-tails, took off her best shoes (which had happily escaped notice), with all the while a fixed resolve growing in her mind, that of leaving the brick house and going back to the farm. She would not be received there with open arms,—there was no hope of that,—but she would help her mother about the house and send Hannah to Riverboro in her place. “I hope she’ll like it!” she thought in a momentary burst of vindictiveness. She sat by the window trying to make some sort of plan, watching the lightning play over the hilltop and the streams of rain chasing each other down the lightning rod. And this was the day that had dawned so joyfully! It had been a red sunrise, and she had leaned on the window sill studying her lesson and thinking what a lovely world it was. And what a golden morning! The changing of the bare, ugly little schoolroom into a bower of beauty; Miss Dearborn’s pleasure at her success with the Simpson twins’ recitation; the privilege of decorating the blackboard; the happy thought of drawing Columbia from the cigar box; the intoxicating moment when the school clapped her! And what an afternoon! How it went on from glory to glory, beginning with Emma Jane’s telling her, Rebecca Randall, that she was as “handsome as a picture.”
She lived through the exercises again in memory, especially her dialogue with Emma Jane and her inspiration of using the bough-covered stove as a mossy bank where the country girl could sit and watch her flocks. This gave Emma Jane a feeling of such ease that she never recited better; and how generous it was of her to lend the garnet ring to the city girl, fancying truly how it would flash as she furled her parasol and approached the awe-stricken shepherdess! She had thought aunt Miranda might be pleased that the niece invited down from the farm had succeeded so well at school; but no, there was no hope of pleasing her in that or in any other way. She would go to Maplewood on the stage next day with Mr. Cobb and get home somehow from cousin Ann’s. On second thoughts her aunts might not allow it. Very well, she would slip away now and see if she could stay all night with the Cobbs and be off next morning before breakfast.
Rebecca never stopped long to think, more ‘s the pity, so she put on her oldest dress and hat and jacket, then wrapped her nightdress, comb, and toothbrush in a bundle and dropped it softly out of the window. Her room was in the L and her window at no very dangerous distance from the ground, though had it been, nothing could have stopped her at that moment. Somebody who had gone on the roof to clean out the gutters had left a cleat nailed to the side of the house about halfway between the window and the top of the back porch. Rebecca heard the sound of the sewing machine in the dining-room and the chopping of meat in the kitchen; so knowing the whereabouts of both her aunts, she scrambled out of the window, caught hold of the lightning rod, slid down to the helpful cleat, jumped to the porch, used the woodbine trellis for a ladder, and was flying up the road in the storm before she had time to arrange any details of her future movements.
Jeremiah Cobb sat at his lonely supper at the table by the kitchen window. “Mother,” as he with his old-fashioned habits was in the habit of calling his wife, was nursing a sick neighbor. Mrs. Cobb was mother only to a little headstone in the churchyard, where reposed “Sarah Ann, beloved daughter of Jeremiah and Sarah Cobb, aged seventeen months;” but the name of mother was better than nothing, and served at any rate as a reminder of her woman’s crown of blessedness.
The rain still fell, and the heavens were dark, though it was scarcely five o’clock. Looking up from his “dish of tea,” the old man saw at the open door a very figure of woe. Rebecca’s face was so swollen with tears and so sharp with misery that for a moment he scarcely recognized her. Then when he heard her voice asking, “Please may I come in, Mr. Cobb?” he cried, “Well I vow! It’s my little lady passenger! Come to call on old uncle Jerry and pass the time o’ day, hev ye? Why, you’re wet as sops. Draw up to the stove. I made a fire, hot as it was, thinkin’ I wanted somethin’ warm for my supper, bein’ kind o’ lonesome without mother. She’s settin’ up with Seth Strout to-night. There, we’ll hang your soppy hat on the nail, put your jacket over the chair rail, an’ then you turn your back to the stove an’ dry yourself good.”
Uncle Jerry had never before said so many words at a time, but he had caught sight of the child’s red eyes and tear-stained cheeks, and his big heart went out to her in her trouble, quite regardless of any circumstances that might have caused it.
Rebecca stood still for a moment until uncle Jerry took his seat again at the table, and then, unable to contain herself longer, cried, “Oh, Mr. Cobb, I’ve run away from the brick house, and I want to go back to the farm. Will you keep me to-night and take me up to Maplewood in the stage? I haven’t got any money for my fare, but I’ll earn it somehow afterwards.”
“Well, I guess we won’t quarrel ‘bout money, you and me,” said the old man; “and we’ve never had our ride together, anyway, though we allers meant to go down river, not up.”
“I shall never see Milltown now!” sobbed Rebecca.
“Come over here side o’ me an’ tell me all about it,” coaxed uncle Jerry. “Jest set down on that there wooden cricket an’ out with the whole story.”
Rebecca leaned her aching head against Mr. Cobb’s homespun knee and recounted the history of her trouble. Tragic as that history seemed to her passionate and undisciplined mind, she told it truthfully and without exaggeration.
Chapter X.
Rainbow Bridges
Uncle Jerry coughed and stirred in his chair a good deal during Rebecca’s recital, but he carefully concealed any undue feeling of sympathy, just muttering, “Poor little soul! We’ll see what we can do for her!”
“You will take me to Maplewood, won’t you, Mr. Cobb?” begged Rebecca piteously.
“Don’t you fret a mite,” he answered, with a crafty little notion at the back of his mind; “I’ll see the lady passenger through somehow. Now take a bite o’ somethin’ to eat, child. Spread some o’ that tomato preserve on your bread; draw up to the table. How’d you like to set in mother’s place an’ pour me out another cup o’ hot tea?”
Mr. Jeremiah Cobb’s mental machinery was simple, and did not move very smoothly save when propelled by his affection or sympathy. In the present case these were both employed to his advantage, and mourning his stupidity and praying for some flash of inspiration to light his path, he blundered along, trusting to Providence.
Rebecca, comforted by the old man’s tone, and timidly enjoying the dignity of sitting in Mrs. Cobb’s seat and lifting the blue china teapot, smiled faintly, smoothed her hair, and dried her eyes.
“I suppose your mother’ll be turrible glad to see you back again?” queried Mr. Cobb.
A tiny fear—just a baby thing—in the bottom of Rebecca’s heart stirred and grew larger the moment it was touched with a question.
“She won’t like it that I ran away, I s’pose, and she’ll be sorry that
