“Milltown ain’t no great, neither,” replied Mr. Cobb, with the air of having visited all the cities of the earth and found them as naught. “Now you watch me heave this newspaper right onto Mis’ Brown’s doorstep.”
Piff! and the packet landed exactly as it was intended, on the corn husk mat in front of the screen door.
“Oh, how splendid that was!” cried Rebecca with enthusiasm. “Just like the knife thrower Mark saw at the circus. I wish there was a long, long row of houses each with a corn husk mat and a screen door in the middle, and a newspaper to throw on every one!”
“I might fail on some of ‘em, you know,” said Mr. Cobb, beaming with modest pride. “If your aunt Mirandy’ll let you, I’ll take you down to Milltown some day this summer when the stage ain’t full.”
A thrill of delicious excitement ran through Rebecca’s frame, from her new shoes up, up to the leghorn cap and down the black braid. She pressed Mr. Cobb’s knee ardently and said in a voice choking with tears of joy and astonishment, “Oh, it can’t be true, it can’t; to think I should see Milltown. It’s like having a fairy godmother who asks you your wish and then gives it to you! Did you ever read Cinderella, or The Yellow Dwarf, or The Enchanted Frog, or The Fair One with Golden Locks?”
“No,” said Mr. Cobb cautiously, after a moment’s reflection. “I don’t seem to think I ever did read jest those partic’lar ones. Where’d you get a chance at so much readin’?”
“Oh, I’ve read lots of books,” answered Rebecca casually. “Father’s and Miss Ross’s and all the dif’rent school teachers’, and all in the Sunday-school library. I’ve read The Lamplighter, and Scottish Chiefs, and Ivanhoe, and The Heir of Redclyffe, and Cora, the Doctor’s Wife, and David Copperfield, and The Gold of Chickaree, and Plutarch’s Lives, and Thaddeus of Warsaw, and Pilgrim’s Progress, and lots more.—What have you read?”
“I’ve never happened to read those partic’lar books; but land! I’ve read a sight in my time! Nowadays I’m so drove I get along with the Almanac, the Weekly Argus, and the Maine State Agriculturist.—There’s the river again; this is the last long hill, and when we get to the top of it we’ll see the chimbleys of Riverboro in the distance. ‘T ain’t fur. I live ‘bout half a mile beyond the brick house myself.”
Rebecca’s hand stirred nervously in her lap and she moved in her seat. “I didn’t think I was going to be afraid,” she said almost under her breath; “but I guess I am, just a little mite—when you say it’s coming so near.”
“Would you go back?” asked Mr. Cobb curiously.
She flashed him an intrepid look and then said proudly, “I’d never go back—I might be frightened, but I’d be ashamed to run. Going to aunt Mirandy’s is like going down cellar in the dark. There might be ogres and giants under the stairs,—but, as I tell Hannah, there MIGHT be elves and fairies and enchanted frogs!—Is there a main street to the village, like that in Wareham?”
“I s’pose you might call it a main street, an’ your aunt Sawyer lives on it, but there ain’t no stores nor mills, an’ it’s an awful one-horse village! You have to go ‘cross the river an’ get on to our side if you want to see anything goin’ on.”
“I’m almost sorry,” she sighed, “because it would be so grand to drive down a real main street, sitting high up like this behind two splendid horses, with my pink sunshade up, and everybody in town wondering who the bunch of lilacs and the hair trunk belongs to. It would be just like the beautiful lady in the parade. Last summer the circus came to Temperance, and they had a procession in the morning. Mother let us all walk in and wheel Mira in the baby carriage, because we couldn’t afford to go to the circus in the afternoon. And there were lovely horses and animals in cages, and clowns on horseback; and at the very end came a little red and gold chariot drawn by two ponies, and in it, sitting on a velvet cushion, was the snake charmer, all dressed in satin and spangles. She was so beautiful beyond compare, Mr. Cobb, that you had to swallow lumps in your throat when you looked at her, and little cold feelings crept up and down your back. Don’t you know how I mean? Didn’t you ever see anybody that made you feel like that?”
Mr. Cobb was more distinctly uncomfortable at this moment than he had been at any one time during the eventful morning, but he evaded the point dexterously by saying, “There ain’t no harm, as I can see, in our makin’ the grand entry in the biggest style we can. I’ll take the whip out, set up straight, an’ drive fast; you hold your bo’quet in your lap, an’ open your little red parasol, an’ we’ll jest make the natives stare!”
The child’s face was radiant for a moment, but the glow faded just as quickly as she said, “I forgot—mother put me inside, and maybe she’d want me to be there when I got to aunt Mirandy’s. Maybe I’d be more genteel inside, and then I wouldn’t have to be jumped down and my clothes fly up, but could open the door and step down like a lady passenger. Would you please stop a minute, Mr. Cobb, and let me change?”
The stage driver good-naturedly pulled up his horses, lifted the excited little creature down, opened the door, and helped her in, putting the lilacs and the pink sunshade beside her.
“We’ve had a great trip,” he said, “and we’ve got real well acquainted, haven’t we?—You won’t forget about Milltown?”
“Never!” she exclaimed fervently; “and you’re sure you won’t, either?”
“Never! Cross my heart!” vowed Mr. Cobb solemnly, as he remounted his perch; and as the stage rumbled down the village street between the green maples, those who looked from their windows saw a little brown elf in buff calico sitting primly on the back seat holding a great bouquet tightly in one hand and a pink parasol in the other. Had they been farsighted enough they might have seen, when the stage turned into the side dooryard of the old brick house, a calico yoke rising and falling tempestuously over the beating heart beneath, the red color coming and going in two pale cheeks, and a mist of tears swimming in two brilliant dark eyes.
Rebecca’s journey had ended.
“There’s the stage turnin’ into the Sawyer girls’ dooryard,” said Mrs. Perkins to her husband. “That must be the niece from up Temperance way. It seems they wrote to Aurelia and invited Hannah, the oldest, but Aurelia said she could spare Rebecca better, if ‘t was all the same to Mirandy ‘n’ Jane; so it’s Rebecca that’s come. She’ll be good comp’ny for our Emma Jane, but I don’t believe they’ll keep her three months! She looks black as an Injun what I can see of her; black and kind of up-an-comin’. They used to say that one o’ the Randalls married a Spanish woman, somebody that was teachin’ music and languages at a boardin’ school. Lorenzo was dark complected, you remember, and this child is, too. Well, I don’t know as Spanish blood is any real disgrace, not if it’s a good ways back and the woman was respectable.”
Chapter II.
Rebecca’s Relations
They had been called the Sawyer girls when Miranda at eighteen, Jane at twelve, and Aurelia at eight participated in the various activities of village life; and when Riverboro fell into a habit of thought or speech, it saw no reason for falling out of it, at any rate in the same century. So although Miranda and Jane were between fifty and sixty at the time this story opens, Riverboro still called them the Sawyer girls. They were spinsters; but Aurelia, the youngest, had made what she called a romantic marriage