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, an excited lady, wringing her hands, turned out to be Mrs. Peter Meserve, accompanied by Huldah, the Browns, Mrs. Milliken, Abijah Flagg, and Miss Dearborn. "Do you know anything about the new flag, Rebecca?" shrieked Mrs. Meserve, too agitated, for a moment, to notice the child's companion.
"It's right here in my lap, all safe," responded Rebecca joyously.
"You careless, meddlesome young one, to take it off my steps where I left it just long enough to go round to the back and hunt up my door-key! You've given me a fit of sickness with my weak heart, and what business was it of yours? I believe you think you own the flag! Hand it over to me this minute!"
Rebecca was climbing down during this torrent of language, but as she turned she flashed one look of knowledge at the false Simpson, a look that went through him from head to foot, as if it were carried by electricity.
He saw that he had not deceived her after all, owing to the angry chatter of Mrs. Meserve. He had been handcuffed twice in his life, but no sheriff had ever discomfited him so thoroughly as this child. Fury mounted to his brain, and as soon as she was safely out from between the wheels he stood up in the wagon and flung the flag out in the road in the midst of the excited group.
"Take it, you pious, stingy, scandal-talkin', flag-raisin' crew!" he roared. "Rebecca never took the flag; I found it in the road, I say!"
"You never, no such a thing!" exclaimed Mrs. Meserve. "You found it on the doorsteps in my garden!"
"Mebbe 't was your garden, but it was so chock full o' weeds I thought 't was the road," retorted Abner. "I vow I wouldn't 'a' given the old rag back to one o' you, not if you begged me on your knees! But Rebecca's a friend o' my folks and can do with her flag's she's a mind to, and the rest o' ye can do what ye like an' go where ye like, for all I care!"
So saying, he made a sharp turn, gave the gaunt white horse a lash and disappeared in a cloud of dust, before the astonished Mr. Brown, the only man in the party, had a thought of detaining him.
"I'm sorry I spoke so quick, Rebecca," said Mrs. Meserve, greatly mortified at the situation. "But don't you believe a word that lyin' critter said! He did steal it off my doorstep, and how did you come to be ridin' and consortin' with him? I believe it would kill your Aunt Miranda if she should hear about it!"
The little school-teacher put a sheltering arm round Rebecca as Mr. Brown picked up the flag and dusted and folded it.
"I'm willing she should hear about it," Rebecca answered. "I didn't do anything to be ashamed of! I saw the flag in the back of Mr. Simpson's wagon and I just followed it. There weren't any men or any Dorcas ladies to take care of it so it fell to me! You would n't have had me let it out of my sight, would you, and we going to raise it to-morrow morning?"
"Rebecca's perfectly right, Mrs. Meserve!" said Miss Dearborn proudly. "And it's lucky there was somebody quick-witted enough to 'ride and consort' with Mr. Simpson! I don't know what the village will think, but seems to me the town clerk might write down in his book, 'This day the State of Maine saved the flag!'"
V
THE STATE O' MAINE GIRL
THE foregoing episode, if narrated in a romance, would undoubtedly have been called "The Saving of the Colors," but at the nightly chats in Watson's store it was alluded to as the way little Becky Randall got the flag away from Slippery Simpson. Dramatic as it was, it passed into the crowd of half-forgotten things in Rebecca's mind, its brief importance submerged in the glories of the next day.
There was a painful prelude to these glories. Alice Robinson came to spend the night with Rebecca, and when the bedroom door closed upon the two girls, Alice announced her intention of "doing up" Rebecca's front hair in leads and rags, and braiding the back in six tight, wetted braids.
Rebecca demurred. Alice persisted.
"Your hair is so long and thick and dark and straight," she said, "that you'll look like an Injun!"
"I am the State of Maine; it all belonged to the Indians once," Rebecca remarked gloomily, for she was curiously shy about discussing her personal appearance.
"And your wreath of little pine-cones won't set decent without crimps," continued Alice.
Rebecca glanced in the cracked looking-glass and met what she considered an accusing lack of beauty, a sight that always either saddened or enraged her according to circumstances; then she sat down resignedly and began to help Alice in the philanthropic work of making the State of Maine fit to be seen at the raising.
Neither of the girls was an expert hairdresser, and at the end of an hour, when the sixth braid was tied, and Rebecca had given one last shuddering look in the mirror, both were ready to weep with fatigue.
The candle was blown out and Alice soon went to sleep, but Rebecca tossed on her pillow, its goose-feathered softness all dented by the cruel lead knobs and the knots of twisted rags. She slipped out of bed and walked to and fro, holding her aching head with both hands. Finally she leaned on the window-sill, watching the still weather-vane on Alice's barn and breathing in the fragrance of the ripening apples, until her restlessness subsided under the clear starry beauty of the night.
At six in the morning the girls were out of bed, for Alice could hardly wait until Rebecca's hair was taken down, she was so eager to see the result of her labors.
The leads and rags were painfully removed, together with much hair, the operation being punctuated by a series of squeaks, squeals, and shrieks on the part of Rebecca and a series of warnings from Alice, who wished the preliminaries to be kept secret from the aunts, that they might the more fully appreciate the radiant result.
Then came the unbraiding, and then—dramatic moment—the "combing out;" a difficult, not to say impossible process, in which the hairs that had resisted the earlier stages almost gave up the ghost.
The long front strands had been wound up from various angles and by various methods, so that, when released, they assumed the strangest, most obstinate, most unexpected attitudes. When the comb was dragged through the last braid, the wild, tortured, electric hairs following, and then rebounding from it in a bristling, snarling tangle, Massachusetts gave one encompassing glance at the State o' Maine's head, and announced her intention of going home to breakfast! Alice was deeply grieved at the result of her attempted beautifying, but she felt that meeting Miss Miranda Sawyer at the morning meal would not mend matters in the least, so slipping out of the side door, she ran up Guide-Board hill as fast as her feet could carry her.
The State o' Maine, deserted and somewhat unnerved, sat down before the glass and attacked her hair doggedly and with set lips, working over it until Miss Jane called her to breakfast; then, with a boldness born of despair, she entered the dining-room, where her aunts were already seated at table. There was a moment of silence after the grotesque figure was fully taken in; then came a moan from Jane and a groan from Miranda.
"What have you done to yourself?" asked Miranda sternly.
"Made an effort to be beautiful and failed!" jauntily replied Rebecca, but she was too miserable to keep up the fiction. "Oh, Aunt Miranda, don't scold, I'm so unhappy! Alice and I rolled up my hair to curl it for the raising. She said it was so straight I looked like an Indian!"
"Mebbe you did," vigorously agreed Miranda, "but 't any rate you looked like a Christian Injun, 'n' now you look like a heathen Injun; that's all the difference I can see. What can we do with her, Jane, between this and nine o'clock?"
"We'll all go out to the pump just as soon as we're through breakfast," answered Jane soothingly. "We can accomplish considerable with water and force."
Rebecca nibbled her corn-cake, her tearful eyes cast on her plate and her chin quivering.
"Don't you cry and red your eyes up," chided Miranda quite kindly; "the minute you've eaten enough run up and get your brush and meet us at the back door."
"I would n't care myself how bad I looked," said Rebecca, "but I can't bear to be so homely that I shame the State of Maine!"
Oh, what an hour followed this plaint! Did any aspirant for literary or dramatic honors ever pass to fame through such an antechamber of horrors? Did poet of the day ever have his head so maltreated? To be dipped in the rain-water tub, soused again and again; to be held under the spout and pumped on; to be rubbed furiously with rough roller towels; to be dried with hot flannels! And is it not well-nigh incredible that at the close of such an hour the ends of the long hair should still stand out straight, the braids having been turned up two inches by Alice, and tied hard in that position with linen thread?
"Get out the skirt-board, Jane," cried Miranda, to whom opposition served as a tonic, "and move that flat-iron on to the front o' the stove. Rebecca, set down in that low chair beside the board, and, Jane, you spread out her hair on it and cover it up with brown paper. Don't cringe, Rebecca; the worst's over, and you've borne up real good! I'll be careful not to pull your hair nor scorch you, and oh, how I'd like to have Alice Robinson acrost my knee and a good slipper in my right hand! There, you're all ironed out and your Aunt Jane can put on your white dress and braid your hair up again good and tight. Perhaps you won't be the homeliest of the States, after all; but when I see you comin' in to breakfast I said to myself: 'I guess if Maine looked like that, it would n't never 'a' been admitted into the Union!'"
When Uncle Sam and the stagecoach drew up to the brick house with a grand swing and a flourish, the Goddess of Liberty and most of the States were already in their places on the "harricane deck." Words fail to describe the gallant bearing of the horses, their headstalls gayly trimmed and their harnesses dotted with little flags. The stage windows were hung in bunting, and from within beamed Columbia, looking out from the bright frame as if proud of her freight of loyal children. Patriotic streamers floated from whip, from dash-board and from rumble, and the effect of the whole was something to stimulate the most phlegmatic voter. Rebecca came out on the steps and Aunt Jane brought a chair to assist in the ascent. Miss Dearborn peeped from the window, and gave a despairing look at her favorite.
What had happened to her? Who had dressed her? Had her head been put through a wringing-machine? Why were her eyes red and swollen? Miss Dearborn determined to take her behind the trees in the pine grove and give her some finishing touches; touches that her skillful fingers fairly itched to bestow.
The stage started, and as the roadside pageant grew gayer and gayer, Rebecca began to brighten and look prettier, for most of her beautifying came from within. The people, walking, driving, or standing on their doorsteps, cheered Uncle Sam's coach with its freight of gossamer-muslined, fluttering-ribboned girls, and just behind, the gorgeously decorated haycart, driven by Abijah Flagg, bearing the jolly but inharmonious fife and drum corps. Was ever such a golden day; such crystal air; such mellow sunshine; such a merry Uncle Sam!
The stage drew up at an appointed spot near a pine grove, and while the crowd was gathering, the children waited for the hour to arrive when they should march to the platform; the hour toward which they seemed to have been moving since the dawn of creation. As soon as possible Miss Dearborn whispered to Rebecca: "Come behind the trees with me; I want to make you prettier!"
Rebecca thought she had suffered enough from that process already during the last twelve hours, but she put out an obedient hand and the two withdrew.
Now Miss Dearborn was, I fear, a very indifferent teacher. Her stock in trade was small, her principal virtues being devotion to children and ability to gain their love, and a power of evolving a schoolroom order so natural, cheery, serene, and peaceful that it gave the beholder a certain sense of being in a district heaven. She was poor in arithmetic and weak in geometry, but if you gave her a rose, a bit of ribbon, and a seven-by-nine looking-glass she could make herself as pretty as a pink in two minutes.
Safely sheltered behind the pines, Miss Dearborn began to practice mysterious feminine arts. She flew at Rebecca's tight braids, opened the strands and rebraided them loosely; bit and tore the red, white, and blue ribbon in two and tied the braids separately. Then with nimble fingers she pulled out little tendrils of hair behind the ears and around the nape of the neck. After a glance of acute disapproval directed at the stiff balloon skirt she knelt on the ground and gave a strenuous embrace to Rebecca's knees, murmuring, between her hugs, "Starch must be cheap at the brick house!"