and I take most all the care of him we thought perhaps you and Uncle Jerry would keep him just for a little while. You’ve got a cow and a turn-up bedstead, you know,” she hurried on insinuatingly, “and there’s hardly any pleasure as cheap as more babies where there’s ever been any before, for baby carriages and trundle beds and cradles don’t wear out, and there’s always clothes left over from the old baby to begin the new one on. Of course, we can collect enough things to start Jacky, so he won’t be much trouble or expense; and anyway, he’s past the most troublesome age and you won’t have to be up nights with him, and he isn’t afraid of anybody or anything, as you can see by his just sitting there laughing and sucking his thumb, though he doesn’t know what’s going to become of him. And he’s just seventeen months old like dear little Sarah Ellen in the graveyard, and we thought we ought to give you the refusal of him before he goes to the poor farm, and what do you think about it? Because it’s near my dinner time and Aunt Miranda will keep me in the whole afternoon if I’m late, and I’ve got to finish weeding the hollyhock bed before sundown.”
IV
Mrs. Cobb had enjoyed a considerable period of reflection during this monologue, and Jacky had not used the time unwisely, offering several unconscious arguments and suggestions to the matter under discussion; lurching over on the greensward and righting himself with a chuckle, kicking his bare feet about in delight at the sunshine and groping for his toes with arms too short to reach them, the movement involving an entire upsetting of equilibrium followed by more chuckles.
Coming down the last of the stone steps, Sarah Ellen’s mother regarded the baby with interest and sympathy.
“Poor little mite!” she said; “that doesn’t know what he’s lost and what’s going to happen to him. Seems to me we might keep him a spell till we’re sure his father’s deserted him for good. Want to come to Aunt Sarah, baby?”
Jack-o’-lantern turned from Rebecca and Emma Jane and regarded the kind face gravely; then he held out both his hands and Mrs. Cobb, stooping, gathered him like a harvest. Being lifted into her arms, he at once tore her spectacles from her nose and laughed aloud. Taking them from him gently, she put them on again, and set him in the cushioned rocking chair under the lilac bushes beside the steps. Then she took one of his soft hands in hers and patted it, and fluttered her fingers like birds before his eyes, and snapped them like castanets, remembering all the arts she had lavished upon “Sarah Ellen, aged seventeen months,” years and years ago.
Motherless baby and babyless mother,
Bring them together to love one another.
Rebecca knew nothing of this couplet, but she saw clearly enough that her case was won.
“The boy must be hungry; when was he fed last?” asked Mrs. Cobb. “Just stay a second longer while I get him some morning’s milk; then you run home to your dinners and I’ll speak to Mr. Cobb this afternoon. Of course, we can keep the baby for a week or two till we see what happens. Land! He ain’t goin’ to be any more trouble than a wax doll! I guess he ain’t been used to much attention, and that kind’s always the easiest to take care of.”
At six o’clock that evening Rebecca and Emma Jane flew up the hill and down the lane again, waving their hands to the dear old couple who were waiting for them in the usual place, the back piazza where they had sat so many summers in a blessed companionship never marred by an unloving word.
“Where’s Jacky?” called Rebecca breathlessly, her voice always outrunning her feet.
“Go up to my chamber, both of you, if you want to see,” smiled Mrs. Cobb, “only don’t wake him up.”
The girls went softly up the stairs into Aunt Sarah’s room. There, in the turn-up bedstead that had been so long empty, slept Jack-o’-lantern, in blissful unconsciousness of the doom he had so lately escaped. His nightgown and pillow case were clean and fragrant with lavender, but they were both as yellow as saffron, for they had belonged to Sarah Ellen.
“I wish his mother could see him!” whispered Emma Jane.
“You can’t tell; it’s all puzzly about heaven, and perhaps she does,” said Rebecca, as they turned reluctantly from the fascinating scene and stole down to the piazza.
It was a beautiful and a happy summer that year, and every day it was filled with blissful plays and still more blissful duties. On the Monday after Jack-o’-lantern’s arrival in Edgewood Rebecca founded the Riverboro Aunts Association. The Aunts were Rebecca, Emma Jane, Alice Robinson, and Minnie Smellie, and each of the first three promised to labor for and amuse the visiting baby for two days a week, Minnie Smellie, who lived at some distance from the Cobbs, making herself responsible for Saturday afternoons.
Minnie Smellie was not a general favorite among the Riverboro girls, and it was only in an unprecedented burst of magnanimity that they admitted her into the rites of fellowship, Rebecca hugging herself secretly at the thought, that as Minnie gave only the leisure time of one day a week, she could not be called a “full” Aunt. There had been long and bitter feuds between the two children during Rebecca’s first summer in Riverboro, but since Mrs. Smellie had told her daughter that one more quarrel would invite a punishment so terrible that it could only be hinted at vaguely, and Miss Miranda Sawyer had remarked that any niece of hers who couldn’t get along peaceable with the neighbors had better go back to the seclusion of a farm where there weren’t any, hostilities had been veiled, and a suave and diplomatic relationship had replaced the former one, which had been wholly primitive, direct, and barbaric. Still, whenever Minnie Smellie, flaxen-haired, pink-nosed, and ferret-eyed, indulged in fluent conversation, Rebecca, remembering the old fairy story, could always see toads hopping out of her mouth. It was really very unpleasant, because Minnie could never see them herself; and what was more amazing, Emma Jane perceived nothing of the sort, being almost as blind, too, to the diamonds that fell continually from Rebecca’s lips; but Emma Jane’s strong point was not her imagination.
A shaky perambulator was found in Mrs. Perkins’s wonderful attic; shoes and stockings were furnished by Mrs. Robinson; Miss Jane Sawyer knitted a blanket and some shirts; Thirza Meserve, though too young for an aunt, coaxed from her mother some dresses and nightgowns, and was presented with a green paper certificate allowing her to wheel Jacky up and down the road for an hour under the superintendence of a full Aunt. Each girl, under the constitution of the association, could call Jacky “hers” for two days in the week, and great, though friendly, was the rivalry between them, as they washed, ironed, and sewed for their adored nephew.
If Mrs. Cobb had not been the most amiable woman in the world she might have had difficulty in managing the aunts, but she always had Jacky to herself the earlier part of the day and after dusk at night.
Meanwhile Jack-o’-lantern grew healthier and heartier and jollier as the weeks slipped away. Uncle Jerry joined the little company of worshipers and slaves, and one fear alone stirred in all their hearts; not, as a sensible and practical person might imagine, the fear that the recreant father might never return to claim his child, but, on the contrary, that he MIGHT do so!
October came at length with its cheery days and frosty nights, its glory of crimson leaves and its golden harvest of pumpkins and ripened corn. Rebecca had been down by the Edgewood side of the river and had come up across the pastures for a good-night play with Jacky. Her literary labors had been somewhat interrupted by the joys and responsibilities of vice-motherhood, and the thought book was less frequently drawn from its hiding place under the old haymow in the barn chamber.
Mrs.
