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New Chronicles of Rebecca-Part25_Kate Douglas Wiggin(1856-1923)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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who had washed and cried and cried and washed was as radiant as

if the closed eye were beholdingheavenly visions.



"Something must have cured her!" thought Clara Belle, awed and

almost frightened by the whiteness and the silence.



She tiptoed across the floor to look more closely at the still,

smiling shape, and bending over it saw, under the shadow of the



caressing right hand, a narrow gold band gleaming on the

work-stained finger.



"Oh, the ring came, after all!" she said in a glad whisper, "and

perhaps it was that that made her better!"



She put her hand on her mother's gently. A terrified shiver, a

warning shudder, shook the girl from head to foot at the chilling



touch. A dread presence she had never met before suddenly took

shape. It filled the room; stifled the cry on her lips; froze her



steps to the floor, stopped the beating of her heart.

Just then the door opened.



"Oh, doctor! Come quick!" she sobbed, stretching out her hand for

help, and then covering her eyes. "Come close! Look at mother! Is



she better--or is she dead?"

The doctor put one hand on the shoulder of the shrinking child,



and touched the woman with the other.

"She is better!" he said gently, "and she is dead."



Tenth Chronicle

REBECCA'S REMINISCENCES



Rebecca was sitting by the window in her room at the Wareham

Female Seminary. She was alone, as her roommate, Emma Jane



Perkins, was reciting Latin down below in some academic vault of

the old brick building.



A new and most ardentpassion for the classics had been born in

Emma Jane's hitherto unfertile brain, for Abijah Flagg, who was



carrying off all the prizes at Limerick Academy, had written her

a letter in Latin, a letter which she had been unable to



translate for herself, even with the aid of a dictionary, and

which she had been apparentlyunwilling that Rebecca, her bosom



friend, confidant, and roommate, should render into English.

An old-fashioned Female Seminary, with its allotment of one



medium-sized room to two medium sized young females, gave small

opportunities for privacy by night or day, for neither the double



washstand, nor the thus far unimagined bathroom, nor even indeed

the humble and serviceable screen, had been realized, in these



dark ages of which I write. Accordingly, like the irrational

ostrich, which defends itself by the simple process of not



looking at its pursuers, Emma Jane had kept her Latin letter in

her closed hand, in her pocket, or in her open book, flattering



herself that no one had noticed her pleased bewilderment at its

only half-imagined contents.



All the fairies were not present at Rebecca's cradle. A goodly

number of them telegraphed that they were previously engaged or



unavoidably absent from town. The village of Temperance, Maine,

where Rebecca first saw the light, was hardly a place on its own



merits to attract large throngs of fairies. But one dear old

personage who keeps her pocket full of Merry Leaves from the



Laughing Tree, took a fancy to come to the little birthday party;

and seeing so few of her sister-fairies present, she dowered the



sleeping baby more richly than was her wont, because of its

apparent lack of wealth in other directions. So the child grew,



and the Merry Leaves from the Laughing Tree rustled where they

hung from the hood of her cradle, and, being fairy leaves, when



the cradle was given up they festooned themselves on the

cribside, and later on blew themselves up to the ceilings at



Sunnybook Farm and dangled there, making fun for everybody. They

never withered, even at the brick house in Riverboro, where the



air was particularly inimical to fairies, for Miss Miranda Sawyer

would have scared any ordinary elf out of her seventeen senses.



They followed Rebecca to Wareham, and during Abijah Flagg's Latin

correspondence with Emma Jane they fluttered about that young



person's head in such a manner that Rebecca was almost afraid

that she would discover them herself, although this is something,



as a matter of fact, that never does happen.

A week had gone by since the Latin missive had been taken from



the post-office by Emma Jane, and now, by means of much midnight

oil-burning, by much cautious questioning of Miss Maxwell, by



such scrutiny of the moods and tenses of Latin verbs as wellnigh

destroyed her brain tissue, she had mastered its romantic






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