Jane, she said, preparing to read them aloud: "They're not good;
I was afraid your father'd come back before I finished, and the
first verse sounds exactly like the
funeral hymns in the church
book. I couldn't call her Sally Winslow; it didn't seem nice when
I didn't know her and she is dead, so I thought if I said friend'
it would show she had somebody to be sorry.
"This friend of ours has died and gone
From us to heaven to live.
If she has sinned against Thee, Lord,
We pray Thee, Lord, forgive.
"Her husband runneth far away
And knoweth not she's dead.
Oh, bring him back--ere tis too late--
To mourn beside her bed.
"And if
perchance it can't be so,
Be to the children kind;
The weeny one that goes with her,
The other left behind."
"I think that's
perfectly elegant!" exclaimed Emma Jane, kissing
Rebecca
fervently. "You are the smartest girl in the whole State
of Maine, and it sounds like a
minister's prayer. I wish we could
save up and buy a printing machine. Then I could learn to print
what you write and we'd be partners like father and Bill Moses.
Shall you sign it with your name like we do our school
compositions?"
"No," said Rebecca
soberly. "I certainly shan't sign it, not
knowing where it's going or who'll read it. I shall just hide it
in the flowers, and
whoever finds it will guess that there wasn't
any
minister or singing, or gravestone, or anything, so somebody
just did the best they could."
III
The tired mother with the "weeny baby" on her arm lay on a long
carpenter's bench, her
earthly journey over, and when Rebecca
stole in and placed the
flowerygarland all along the edge of the
rude bier, death suddenly took on a more
gracious and benign
aspect. It was only a child's
sympathy and intuition that
softened the rigors of the sad moment, but poor, wild Sal
Winslow, in her frame of daisies, looked as if she were missed a
little by an unfriendly world; while the weeny baby, whose heart
had fallen asleep almost as soon as it had
learned to beat, the
weeny baby, with Emma Jane's nosegay of buttercups in its tiny
wrinkled hand, smiled as if it might have been loved and longed
for and mourned.
"We've done all we can now without a
minister," whispered
Rebecca. "We could sing, God is ever good' out of the Sunday
school song book, but I'm afraid somebody would hear us and think
we were gay and happy. What's that?"
A strange sound broke the
stillness; a
gurgle, a yawn, a merry
little call. The two girls ran in the direction from which it
came, and there, on an old coat, in a clump of goldenrod bushes,
lay a child just waking from a
refreshing nap.
"It's the other baby that Lizy Ann Dennett told about!" cried
Emma Jane.
"Isn't he beautiful!" exclaimed Rebecca. "Come straight to me!"
and she stretched out her arms.
The child struggled to its feet, and tottered, wavering, toward
the warm
welcome of the voice and eyes. Rebecca was all mother,
and her
maternal instincts had been well developed in the large
family in which she was next to the
eldest. She had always
confessed that there were perhaps a
trifle too many babies at
Sunnybrook Farm, but,
nevertheless, had she ever heard it, she
would have stood loyally by the Japanese
proverb: "Whether
brought forth upon the mountain or in the field, it matters
nothing; more than a treasure of one thousand ryo a baby precious
is."
"You
darling thing!" she crooned, as she caught and lifted the
child. "You look just like a Jack-o'-lantern."
The boy was clad in a yellow cotton dress, very full and stiff.
His hair was of such a bright gold, and so sleek and shiny, that
he looked like a fair, smooth little
pumpkin. He had wide blue
eyes full of
laughter, a neat little
vertical nose, a neat little
horizontal mouth with his few neat little teeth showing very
plainly, and on the whole Rebecca's figure of speech was not so
wide of the mark.
"Oh, Emma Jane! Isn't he too lovely to go to the poor farm? If
only we were married we could keep him and say nothing and nobody
would know the difference! Now that the Simpsons have gone away
there isn't a single baby in Riverboro, and only one in Edgewood.
It's a perfect shame, but I can't do anything; you remember Aunt
Miranda wouldn't let me have the Simpson baby when I wanted to
borrow her just for one rainy Sunday."
"My mother won't keep him, so it's no use to ask her; she says
most every day she's glad we're grown up, and she thanks the Lord
there wasn't but two of us."
"And Mrs. Peter Meserve is too nervous," Rebecca went on, taking
the village houses in turn; "and Mrs. Robinson is too neat."
"People don't seem to like any but their own babies," observed
Emma Jane.
"Well, I can't understand it," Rebecca answered. "A baby's a
baby, I should think, whose ever it is! Miss Dearborn is coming
back Monday; I wonder if she'd like it? She has nothing to do out
of school, and we could borrow it all the time!"
"I don't think it would seem very
genteel for a young lady like
Miss Dearborn, who 'boards round,' to take a baby from place to
place," objected Emma Jane.
"Perhaps not," agreed Rebecca despondently, "but I think if we
haven't got any--any--PRIVATE babies in Riverboro we ought to
have one for the town, and all have a share in it. We've got a
town hall and a town lamp post and a town watering
trough. Things
are so uneven! One house like mine at Sunnybrook, brimful of
children, and the very next one empty! The only way to fix them
right would be to let all the babies that ever are belong to all
the
grown-up people that ever are,--just divide them up, you
know, if they'd go round. Oh, I have a thought! Don't you believe
Aunt Sarah Cobb would keep him? She carries flowers to the
graveyard every little while, and once she took me with her.
There's a
marble cross, and it says: SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF
SARAH ELLEN, BELOVED CHILD OF SARAH AND JEREMIAH COBB, AGED 17
MONTHS. Why, that's another reason; Mrs. Dennett says this one is
seventeen months. There's five of us left at the farm without me,
but if we were only nearer to Riverboro, how quick mother would
let in one more!"
"We might see what father thinks, and that would settle it," said
Emma Jane. "Father doesn't think very sudden, but he thinks awful
strong. If we don't
bother him, and find a place ourselves for
the baby, perhaps he'll be
willing. He's coming now; I hear the
wheels."
Lizy Ann Dennett volunteered to stay and perform the last rites
with the undertaker, and Jack-o'-lantern, with his slender
wardrobe tied in a bandanna
handkerchief, was lifted into the
wagon by the
reluctant Mr. Perkins, and jubilantly held by
Rebecca in her lap. Mr. Perkins drove off as
speedily as
possible, being
heartily sick of the whole affair, and thinking
wisely that the little girls had already seen and heard more than
enough of the seamy side of life that morning.
Discussion
concerning Jack-o'-lantern's future was prudently
deferred for a quarter of an hour, and then Mr. Perkins was
mercilessly pelted with arguments against the choice of the poor
farm as a place of
residence for a baby.
"His father is sure to come back some time, Mr. Perkins," urged
Rebecca. "He couldn't leave this beautiful thing forever; and if
Emma Jane and I can
persuade Mrs. Cobb to keep him a little
while, would you care?"
No; on
reflection Mr. Perkins did not care. He merely wanted a
quiet life and enough time left over from the public service to
attend to his blacksmith's shop; so instead of going home over
the same road by which they came he crossed the
bridge into
Edgewood and dropped the children at the long lane which led to
the Cobb house.
Mrs. Cobb, "Aunt Sarah" to the whole village, sat by the window
looking for Uncle Jerry, who would soon be seen driving the noon
stage to the post office over the hill. She always had an eye out
for Rebecca, too, for ever since the child had been a passenger
on Mr. Cobb's stagecoach, making the eventful trip from her home
farm to the brick house in Riverboro in his company, she had been
a
constantvisitor and the joy of the quiet household. Emma Jane,
too, was a
well-known figure in the lane, but the strange baby
was in the nature of a surprise--a surprise somewhat modified by
the fact that Rebecca was a
dramaticpersonage and more
liable to
appear in
conjunction with curious outriders, comrades, and
retainers than the ordinary Riverboro child. She had run away
from the too stern
discipline of the brick house on one occasion,
and had been
persuaded to return by Uncle Jerry. She had escorted
a wandering organ grinder to their door and begged a
lodging for
him on a rainy night; so on the whole there was nothing amazing
about the coming procession.
The little party toiled up to the
hospitable door, and Mrs. Cobb
came out to meet them.
Rebecca was
spokesman. Emma Jane's
talent did not lie in eloquent
speech, but it would have been a
valiant and a fluent child
indeed who could have usurped Rebecca's privileges and tendencies
in this direction, language being her native element, and words
of assorted sizes springing spontaneously to her lips.
"Aunt Sarah, dear," she said, plumping Jack-o'-lantern down on
the grass as she pulled his dress over his feet and smoothed his
hair becomingly, "will you please not say a word till I get
through-- as it's very important you should know everything
before you answer yes or no? This is a baby named Jacky Winslow,
and I think he looks like a Jack-o'-lantern. His mother has just
died over to North Riverboro, all alone, excepting for Mrs. Lizy
Ann Dennett, and there was another little weeny baby that died
with her, and Emma Jane and I put flowers around them and did the
best we could. The father--that's John Winslow--quarreled with
the mother--that was Sal Perry on the Moderation Road--and ran
away and left her. So he doesn't know his wife and the weeny baby
are dead. And the town has got to bury them because they can't
find the father right off quick, and Jacky has got to go to the
poor farm this afternoon. And it seems an awful shame to take him
up to that
lonesome place with those old people that can't amuse
him, and if Emma Jane and Alice Robinson and I take most all the
care of him we thought perhaps you and Uncle Jerry would keep him
just for a little while. You've got a cow and a turn-up bedstead,
you know," she
hurried on insinuatingly, "and there's hardly any
pleasure as cheap as more babies where there's ever been any
before, for baby carriages and trundle beds and cradles don't
wear out, and there's always clothes left over from the old baby
to begin the new one on. Of course, we can collect enough things
to start Jacky, so he won't be much trouble or expense; and
anyway, he's past the most troublesome age and you won't have to
be up nights with him, and he isn't afraid of anybody or
anything, as you can see by his just sitting there laughing and
sucking his thumb, though he doesn't know what's going to become
of him. And he's just seventeen months old like dear little Sarah
Ellen in the graveyard, and we thought we ought to give you the
refusal of him before he goes to the poor farm, and what do you
think about it? Because it's near my dinner time and Aunt Miranda
will keep me in the whole afternoon if I'm late, and I've got to
finish weeding the hollyhock bed before sundown."
IV
Mrs. Cobb had enjoyed a
considerable period of
reflection during
this monologue, and Jacky had not used the time unwisely,