酷兔英语

章节正文

been for her general advancement in the school curriculum.
Growing up in the solitude of a remote farm house, transplanted

to a tiny village where she lived with two elderly spinsters, she
was still the veriest child in all but the practical duties and

responsibilities of life; in those she had long been a woman.
It was Saturday afternoon; her lessons for Monday were all

learned and she burst into the brick house sitting-room with the
flushed face and embarrassed mien that always foreshadowed a

request. Requests were more commonly answered in the negative
than in the affirmative at the brick house, a fact that accounted

for the slight confusion in her demeanor.
"Aunt Miranda," she began, "the fishman says that Clara Belle

Simpson wants to see me very much, but Mrs. Fogg can't spare her
long at a time, you know, on account of the baby being no better;

but Clara Belle could walk a mile up, and I a mile down the road,
and we could meet at the pink house half way. Then we could rest

and talk an hour or so, and both be back in time for our suppers.
I've fed the cat; she had no appetite, as it's only two o'clock

and she had her dinner at noon, but she'll go back to her saucer,
and it's off my mind. I could go down cellar now and bring up the

cookies and the pie and doughnuts for supper before I start. Aunt
Jane saw no objection; but we thought I'd better ask you so as to

run no risks."
Miranda Sawyer, who had been patientlywaiting for the end of

this speech, laid down her knitting and raised her eyes with a
half-resigned expression that meant: Is there anything unusual in

heaven or earth or the waters under the earth that this child
does not want to do? Will she ever settle down to plain,

comprehensible Sawyer ways, or will she to the end make these
sudden and radical propositions, suggesting at every turn the

irresponsible Randall ancestry?
"You know well enough, Rebecca, that I don't like you to be

intimate with Abner Simpson's young ones," she said decisively.
"They ain't fit company for anybody that's got Sawyer blood in

their veins, if it's ever so little. I don't know, I'm sure, how
you're goin' to turn out! The fish peddler seems to be your best

friend, without it's Abijah Flagg that you're everlastingly
talkin' to lately. I should think you'd rather read some

improvin' book than to be chatterin' with Squire Bean's
chore-boy!"

"He isn't always going to be a chore-boy," explained Rebecca,
"and that's what we're considering. It's his career we talk

about, and he hasn't got any father or mother to advise him.
Besides, Clara Belle kind of belongs to the village now that she

lives with Mrs. Fogg; and she was always the best behaved of all
the girls, either in school or Sunday-school. Children can't help

having fathers!"
"Everybody says Abner is turning over a new leaf, and if so, the

family'd ought to be encouraged every possible way," said Miss
Jane, entering the room with her mending basket in hand.

"If Abner Simpson is turnin' over a leaf, or anythin' else in
creation, it's only to see what's on the under side!" remarked

Miss Miranda promptly. "Don't talk to me about new leaves! You
can't change that kind of a man; he is what he is, and you can't

make him no different!"
"The grace of God can do consid'rable," observed Jane piously.

"I ain't sayin' but it can if it sets out, but it has to begin
early and stay late on a man like Simpson."

"Now, Mirandy, Abner ain't more'n forty! I don't know what the
average age for repentance is in men-folks, but when you think of

what an awful sight of em leaves it to their deathbeds, forty
seems real kind of young. Not that I've heard Abner has

experienced religion, but everybody's surprised at the good way
he's conductin' this fall."

"They'll be surprised the other way round when they come to miss
their firewood and apples and potatoes again," affirmed Miranda.

"Clara Belle don't seem to have inherited from her father," Jane
ventured again timidly. "No wonder Mrs. Fogg sets such store by

the girl. If it hadn't been for her, the baby would have been
dead by now."

"Perhaps tryin' to save it was interferin' with the Lord's will,"
was Miranda's retort.

"Folks can't stop to figure out just what's the Lord's will when
a child has upset a kettle of scalding water on to himself," and

as she spoke Jane darned more excitedly. "Mrs. Fogg knows well
enough she hadn't ought to have left that baby alone in the

kitchen with the stove, even if she did see Clara Belle comin'
across lots. She'd ought to have waited before drivin' off; but

of course she was afraid of missing the train, and she's too good
a woman to be held accountable."

"The minister's wife says Clara Belle is a real--I can't think of
the word!" chimed in Rebecca. "What's the female of hero?

Whatever it is, that's what Mrs. Baxter called her!"
"Clara Belle's the female of Simpson; that's what she is," Miss

Miranda asserted; "but she's been brought up to use her wits, and
I ain't sayin' but she used em."

"I should say she did!" exclaimed Miss Jane; "to put that
screaming, suffering child in the baby-carriage and run all the

way to the doctor's when there wasn't a soul on hand to advise
her! Two or three more such actions would make the Simpson name

sound consid'rable sweeter in this neighborhood."
"Simpson will always sound like Simpson to me!" vouchsafed the

elder sister, "but we've talked enough about em an' to spare. You
can go along, Rebecca; but remember that a child is known by the

company she keeps."
"All right, Aunt Miranda; thank you!" cried Rebecca, leaping from

the chair on which she had been twisting nervously for five
minutes. "And how does this strike you? Would you be in favor of

my taking Clara Belle a company-tart?"
"Don't Mrs. Fogg feed the young one, now she's taken her right

into the family?"
"Oh, yes," Rebecca answered, "she has lovely things to eat, and

Mrs. Fogg won't even let her drink skim milk; but I always feel
that taking a present lets the person know you've been thinking

about them and are extra glad to see them. Besides, unless we
have company soon, those tarts will have to be eaten by the

family, and a new batch made; you remember the one I had when I
was rewarding myself last week? That was queer--but nice," she

added hastily.
"Mebbe you could think of something of your own you could give

away without taking my tarts!" responded Miranda tersely; the
joints of her armor having been pierced by the fatally keen

tongue of her niece, who had insinuated that company-tarts lasted
a long time in the brick house. This was a fact; indeed, the

company-tart was so named, not from any idea that it would ever
be eaten by guests, but because it was too good for every-day

use.
Rebecca's face crimsoned with shame that she had drifted into an

impolite and, what was worse, an apparently ungrateful speech.
"I didn't mean to say anything not nice, Aunt Miranda," she

stammered. "Truly the tart was splendid, but not exactly like
new, that's all. And oh! I know what I can take Clara Belle! A

few chocolate drops out of the box Mr. Ladd gave me on my
birthday."

"You go down cellar and get that tart, same as I told you,"
commanded Miranda, "and when you fill it don't uncover a new

tumbler of jelly; there's some dried-apple preserves open that'll
do. Wear your rubbers and your thick jacket. After runnin' all

the way down there--for your legs never seem to be rigged for
walkin' like other girls'--you'll set down on some damp stone or

other and ketch your death o' cold, an' your Aunt Jane n' I'll be
kep' up nights nursin' you and luggin' your meals upstairs to you

on a waiter."
Here Miranda leaned her head against the back of her rocking

chair, dropped her knitting and closed her eyes wearily, for when
the immovable body is opposed by the irresistible force there is

a certain amount of jar and disturbance involved in the
operation.

Rebecca moved toward the side door, shooting a questioning glance
at Aunt Jane as she passed. The look was full of mysterious

suggestion and was accompanied by an almost imperceptible
gesture. Miss Jane knew that certain articles were kept in the

entry closet, and by this time she had become sufficiently expert
in telegraphy to know that Rebecca's unspoken query meant: "COULD

YOU PERMIT THE HAT WITH THE RED WINGS, IT BEING SATURDAY, FINE
SETTLED WEATHER, AND A PLEASURE EXCURSION?"

These confidential requests, though fraught with embarrassment
when Miranda was in the room, gave Jane much secret joy; there

was something about them that stirred her spinster heart--they
were so gay, so appealing, so un-Sawyer-, un-Riverboro-like. The

longer Rebecca lived in the brick house the more her Aunt Jane
marveled at the child. What made her so different from everybody

else. Could it be that her graceless popinjay of a father,
Lorenzo de Medici Randall, had bequeathed her some strange

combination of gifts instead of fortune? Her eyes, her brows, the
color of her lips, the shape of her face, as well as her ways and

words, proclaimed her a changeling in the Sawyer tribe; but what
an enchanting changeling; bringing wit and nonsense and color and

delight into the gray monotony of the dragging years!
There was frost in the air, but a bright cheery sun, as Rebecca

walked decorously out of the brick house yard. Emma Jane Perkins
was away over Sunday on a visit to a cousin in Moderation; Alice

Robinson and Candace Milliken were having measles, and Riverboro
was very quiet. Still, life was seldom anything but a gay

adventure to Rebecca, and she started afresh every morning to its
conquest. She was not exacting; the Asmodean feat of spinning a

sand heap into twine was, poetically speaking, always in her
power, so the mile walk to the pink-house gate, and the tryst

with freckled, red-haired Clara Belle Simpson, whose face Miss
Miranda said looked like a raw pie in a brick oven, these

commonplace incidents were sufficiently exhilarating to brighten
her eye and quicken her step.

As the great bare horse-chestnut near the pink-house gate loomed
into view, the red linsey-woolsey speck going down the road spied

the blue linsey-woolsey speck coming up, and both specks flew
over the intervening distance and, meeting, embraced each other

ardently, somewhat to the injury of the company-tart.
"Didn't it come out splendidly?" exclaimed Rebecca. "I was so

afraid the fishman wouldn't tell you to start exactly at two, or
that one of us would walk faster than the other; but we met at

the very spot! It was a very uncommon idea, wasn't it? Almost
romantic!"

"And what do you think?" asked Clara Belle proudly. "Look at
this! Mrs. Fogg lent me her watch to come home by!"

"Oh, Clara Belle, how wonderful! Mrs. Fogg gets kinder and kinder
to you, doesn't she? You're not homesick any more, are you?"

"No-o; not really; only when I remember there's only little Susan
to manage the twins; though they're getting on real well without

me. But I kind of think, Rebecca, that I'm going to be given away
to the Foggs for good."

"Do you mean adopted?"
"Yes; I think father's going to sign papers. You see we can't

tell how many years it'll be before the poor baby outgrows its
burns, and Mrs. Fogg'll never be the same again, and she must

have somebody to help her."
"You'll be their real daughter, then, won't you, Clara Belle? And

Mr. Fogg is a deacon, and a selectman, and a road commissioner,
and everything splendid."

"Yes; I'll have board, and clothes, and school, and be named
Fogg, and "(here her voice sank to an awed whisper) "the upper

farm if I should ever get married; Miss Dearborn told me that


文章标签:名著  

章节正文