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 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, passimonious, cheese-parin', hair-splittin',
back-bitin', 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 twas your garden, but it was so chock full o' weeks I
THOUGHT twas 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 bended 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 go to
thunder-- n' stay there, 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 Dorcases to take care of it and so it fell to me! You
wouldn't have had me let it out of my sight, would you, and we
going to raise it tomorrow 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!'"
Sixth Chronicle
THE STATE O' MAINE GIRL
I
The
foregoingepisode, if narrated in a
romance, would
undoubtedly have been called "The Saving of the Colors," but at
the
nightly conversazione 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 limbo 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 here
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
intentionof going home to breakfast! She 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 legs 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. To "draw
fire" she whistled, a
forbidden joy, which only attracted more
attention, instead of diverting it. 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
consid'rable 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 eat enough run up and get your brush
and comb and meet us at the back door."
"I wouldn'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 strip o'
shingle 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 hombliest 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 wouldn'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
gallantbearing 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
roadsidepageant 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!"