New Chronicles of Rebecca | Page 6

of a ramshackle hut was outlined against a background of young
birches, and a rough path made in hauling the logs to the main road led
directly to its door.

As they drew near the figure of a woman approached--Mrs. Lizy Ann
Dennett, in a gingham dress, with a calico apron over her head.
"Good morning, Mr. Perkins," said the woman, who looked tired and
irritable. "I'm real glad you come right over, for she took worse after I
sent you word, and she's dead."
Dead! The word struck heavily and mysteriously on the children's ears.
Dead! And their young lives, just begun, stretched on and on, all
decked, like hope, in living green. Dead! And all the rest of the world
reveling in strength. Dead! With all the daisies and buttercups waving
in the fields and the men heaping the mown grass into fragrant cocks or
tossing it into heavily laden carts. Dead! With the brooks tinkling after
the summer showers, with the potatoes and corn blossoming, the birds
singing for joy, and every little insect humming and chirping, adding its
note to the blithe chorus of warm, throbbing life.
"I was all alone with her. She passed away suddenly jest about break o'
day," said Lizy Ann Dennett.
"Her soul passed upward to its God Just at the break of day."
These words came suddenly into Rebecca's mind from a tiny chamber
where such things were wont to lie quietly until something brought
them to the surface. She could not remember whether she had heard
them at a funeral or read them in the hymn book or made them up "out
of her own head," but she was so thrilled with the idea of dying just as
the dawn was breaking that she scarcely heard Mrs. Dennett's
conversation.
"I sent for Aunt Beulah Day, an' she's be'n here an' laid her out,"
continued the long suffering Lizy Ann. "She ain't got any folks, an'
John Winslow ain't never had any as far back as I can remember. She
belongs to your town and you'll have to bury her and take care of
Jacky--that's the boy. He's seventeen months old, a bright little feller,
the image o' John, but I can't keep him another day. I'm all wore out;
my own baby's sick, mother's rheumatiz is extry bad, and my husband's
comin' home tonight from his week's work. If he finds a child o' John

Winslow's under his roof I can't say what would happen; you'll have to
take him back with you to the poor farm."
"I can't take him up there this afternoon," objected Mr. Perkins.
"Well, then, keep him over Sunday yourself; he's good as a kitten. John
Winslow'll hear o' Sal's death sooner or later, unless he's gone out of
the state altogether, an' when he knows the boy's at the poor farm, I
kind o' think he'll come and claim him. Could you drive me over to the
village to see about the coffin, and would you children be afraid to stay
here alone for a spell?" she asked, turning to the girls.
"Afraid?" they both echoed uncomprehendingly.
Lizy Ann and Mr. Perkins, perceiving that the fear of a dead presence
had not entered the minds of Rebecca or Emma Jane, said nothing, but
drove off together, counseling them not to stray far away from the
cabin and promising to be back in an hour.
There was not a house within sight, either looking up or down the
shady road, and the two girls stood hand in hand, watching the wagon
out of sight; then they sat down quietly under a tree, feeling all at once
a nameless depression hanging over their gay summer-morning spirits.
It was very still in the woods; just the chirp of a grasshopper now and
then, or the note of a bird, or the click of a far-distant mowing machine.
"We're WATCHING!" whispered Emma Jane. "They watched with
Gran'pa Perkins, and there was a great funeral and two ministers. He
left two thousand dollars in the bank and a store full of goods, and a
paper thing you could cut tickets off of twice a year, and they were just
like money."
"They watched with my little sister Mira, too," said Rebecca. "You
remember when she died, and I went home to Sunnybrook Farm? It
was winter time, but she was covered with evergreen and white pinks,
and there was singing."

"There won't be any funeral or ministers or singing here, will there?
Isn't that awful?"
"I s'pose not; and oh, Emma Jane, no flowers either. We might get
those for her if there's nobody else to do it."
"Would you dare put them on to her?" asked Emma Jane, in a hushed
voice.
"I don't know; I can't tell; it makes