New Chronicles of Rebecca | Page 8

it's lucky you brought your crochet cotton and I my lead
pencil."
In fifteen or twenty minutes she returned with some lines written on a
scrap of brown wrapping paper. Standing soberly by Emma 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 flowery garland 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