Chapter 3

“Oh, Thomas Jefferson,” she whispered down to the heap of soft feathers, “I'm going to smooth you this way all night for tomorrow you die!” Her voice even in a whisper had a solemn, inspired note. “There's no other way; you'll have to make up your mind to be willing. It's going to break my heart, and, oh, I'm afraid it will break yours! I'm afraid it will kill us both!”

Thomas Jefferson uttered a mournful little croaky sound that might have been “ET TU, BRUTE?” It pierced Rebecca Mary's breast. “There, hush, poor dear, poor dear, and rest. You'll need all your sleep,” she crooned softly and brokenly. “Tomorrow morning I'll give you some beautiful corn, and then—and then I'm going to take you to Mrs. Avery's boarder and tell her the worst. I'm going to give you up, Thomas Jefferson; and I'm the best friend you've got in the world! But I've got to, I've got to—I've got to! It's been revealed to me in a dream. There was a man once in the Bible, named Abraham, and there was his dearly beloved little boy named Isaac. And now here's me named Rebecca Mary, and dearly beloved you named Thomas Jefferson. Oh, I don't suppose you can understand; I suppose you're asleep. You'll never know how it feels to give up your dearly belovedest, but oh, oh, dear, you'll know how it feels to be given up! You'll be one o' the blessed martyrs, Thomas Jefferson—doesn't that comfort you a little speck? Oh, why don't you wake up and be comforted?

“The Lord excused Abraham, after all. But this isn't the Lord, it's Mrs. Avery's boarder. I'm afraid she isn't the Lord's kind—I'm afraid not, Thomas Jefferson. I don't dare to let you hope; I've got to prepare you for the worst.”

She caught up the big, white fellow with sudden, irresistible yearning and sat up with him and rocked him back and forth in her arms. She began a muffled, sad little tune like a wail. The words were terrible words.

“I'll hold you in my arms. I'll rock you—rock you—rock you. For tomorrow, oh, to-MOR-row you—must—die! Aber-a-ham offered Isaac, and I- MUST OFFER YOU.”

Over and over, then tenderly she lowered Thomas Jefferson to the shoe box again.

When Aunt Olivia came up in the morning, vaguely alarmed because it was so late and no Rebecca Mary stirring, she had news to tell. Someone going by had told her something.

“Well, that woman's found her 'di'mond-stone,'—how are you feeling this morning, child? It was in her pocket where she'd put her hand in and felt round! So all that fuss for noth—”

Suddenly Aunt Olivia stopped, for without warning, out of a box at the bedside stalked a great white rooster and flew to the foot board and “crew”:

“Cock-a-doodle-do-ooo! It was glass that glittered in the grass, And all the time I knew-oo-ooo!”

“My grief?” Aunt Olivia gasped.

The Cookbook Diary

Rebecca Mary decided to keep a diary. It was not an inspiration, though it was rather like one in its suddenness. Of course she had always known that Aunt Olivia kept a diary. When she was very small she had stretched a-tiptoe and with little pointing forefinger counted rows and rows of little black books that Aunt Olivia had “kept.” Each little black book had its year-label pasted neatly on the back. Rebecca Mary breathed deep breaths of awe, there were so many of them. There must be so much weather in those little black books—so many pleasant days, rainy days, storms, and snows!

It was Rebecca Mary who remembered that it was Tuesday, and that it had showered a little Wednesday—shone Thursday—showered again on Friday. Rebecca Mary was the jog to Aunt Olivia's memory. It gave her now, at the beginning of her own diary career, an experienced feeling, as if she knew already how to keep a diary. It made it seem a much simpler matter to begin.

And then, of course, the minister's littlest little boy—really it was the minister's littlest little boy who had started Rebecca Mary. He had volunteered a peep into his own diary, and made whispered explanations and suggestions. He let Rebecca Mary read some of the entries: “MUNDY, plesent and good. TUSDY, rany and bad. WENSDY, sum plesent and not good enuf to hirt. THIRSDY” but he had hastily withdrawn the book at “Thirsdy,” and a tidal-wave of warm red blood had flowed up over his little brown ears and in around all the little brown islands of his freckles. So Rebecca Mary had begun hastily to talk of other things. For the minister's littlest little boy had explained that the first Statement in each entry referred to the weather and the second to the deportment of the writer, and Rebecca Mary had remarked a sympathetic resemblance between the two statements. She had caught a fleeting glimpse of the weather part of “Thirsdy”—she could guess the rest. Better let the curtain fall on “Thirsdy.” On her way home Rebecca Mary decided to keep a diary herself. Her first day's record had been a good deal like the “Mundy” of the minister's littlest little boy, only there were more a's in the weather. After that, little by little, she branched out into a certain originality—the Rebecca Mary sort. If she had not been hampered by circumstances, it would have been easier to be original. The most hampering circumstance was the cookbook itself, which she was driven to use in her new undertaking. There was room on the blank leaves and above and below the recipes for cake and pudding and pie. The book was one Aunt Olivia had given her long ago to draw impossible pictures in.

In the beginning Rebecca Mary tried pasting pieces of “empty” paper over the pies and puddings and cakes, but the empty paper was too transparent. In rather startling places things were liable to show through.

As: “SUNDAY.—It rained a level teaspoonful. Aunt Olivia and I went to church. The text was thou shalt not steal 1 cups of sour milk—” Rebecca Mary got no farther than that. She was a little appalled at the result thus far, and hastily turned a page and began again in a blank space where no intrusive pudding could break through and corrupt. Thereafter she wrote above and below the recipes and pasted no more thin veils over them. It seemed safer.

Aunt Olivia, apparently oblivious to what was going on, yet saw and did not disapprove. It was to be expected that the child should come into her inheritance sometime, early or late. If early—well.

“It's the Plummer in her. All the Plummers have kept diaries,” Aunt Olivia mused, knitting stolidly on while the child stooped painfully to her self-imposed task. The quaint resemblance to herself at her own diary-writing did not escape her, and she smiled a little in the Aunt Olivia way that scarcely stirred her lips. Aunt Olivia smiled oftener now when she looked at the child. She was “failing” a little, Plummerly. Between the two of them, little Plummer and big, stretched of late a tie woven of sheets and a gorgeous quilt of a thousand bits. It was not very visible to the naked eye, but they were both rather shyly conscious that it was there. They would never be quite so far apart again.

Rebecca Mary took her diary out to the haunts of Thomas Jefferson and read aloud selections to him, with an odd, conscious little air, as though she were graduating. The great white fellow was a sympathetic auditor, if silence and extreme gravity count. Only once did he ever make comments, and Rebecca Mary could never quite make up her mind whether he laughed then or applauded. When a great white rooster elongates his neck, crooks it ridiculously, flaps his wings and crows, it's hard telling exactly what feeling prompts him. But Rebecca reasoned from past experience and her faith in him—he had never laughed at her before. It was applause. The especial entry which evoked it was the one that first mentioned an allowance.

“'THURSDAY.—I think I'm going to—'” read Rebecca Mary slowly; and it was significant that on this Thursday there was no weather. “'I havent desided—I don't KNOW, but I think I'm going to ask Aunt Olivia to pay me 5 cents a weak. Rhoda says you call it an alowance, and I supose she knows. She is the minnister's daughter. She has 10 cents a weak unless shes bad and then she pays the minnister an alowance. He charges her 1 cent a sin and he gives it to somebody who is indignant—I think Rhoda said indignant. Then I should think he would give it back to Rhoda. I shant only ask Aunt Olivia for 5 cents—I think she will be more likely. I havent desided but I THINK I shall ask her tomorrow after her knap. After knaps you are more rested and maybe things don't look just as they do before knaps.

“'FRIDAY.—I think Ide better wait untill tomorrow. Her knap was rather short. Ive desided to say you needent alow but 4 if 5 is too mutch. If she alows Im going to buy me some crimpers. Rhodas curls natchurally but she says you can crimp it if it doesent. I have begun to look at myself in the glass and it fritens me—I guess there ought to be a gh in that—to see how homebly I am. I wonder if it doesent kind of scare Aunt Olivia. Prehaps if I was pretty like Rhoda she would call me darling and dear instead of Rebecca Mary. I dont blame her mutch because I LOOK like Rebecca Mary.

“'SATURDAY.—I think Sunday will be the best time to ask her, just after she gets home from meeting and has rolled her bonnet strings up, espesialy if the minnister preaches on the Lord lovething a cheerful giver. I am hopeing he will. If I dont get the crimpers Ime going to give up looking in the glass. For I think Ime growing homeblyer right along. Theres something the matter with my nose. Rhodas doesent run up hill. I never thought about noses before. Aunt Olivias is a little quear too but I like it became its Aunt Olivias nose. I wish I knew if Aunt Olivia liked mine. I wish we were better akquainted.

“'SUNDAY.—I wish the Lord had created mine curly because I dont dass to ask Aunt Olivia. I don't dass to, so there. It scares my throat. I supose its because aunts arnt mothers—seems as if youd dass to ask your MOTHER. I hate to be scart on acount of being a Plummer. Im afraid Im the only Plummer that ever was—'”

The reading suddenly stopped here. This was Sunday, and the last entry was fresh from Rebecca Mary's pencil.

“Thomas Jefferson!” stormed Rebecca Mary, in a little gust of passion, “don't you ever TELL I was scared! As long as you live!—cross your heart!—oh, I wish I hadn't read that part to you! You're a Plummer too, and you never were scared, and you can't understand—”

The diary was clutched to Rebecca Mary's little flat breast, and with a swirl of starched Sunday skirts the child was gone. She went straight to Aunt Olivia. Red spots of shame flamed in both sallow little cheeks; resolution sat astride her little uphill nose. She could not bear to go, but it was easier than being ashamed. The pointing fingers of all the Plummers pushed her on. Go she must, or be a coward. Long ago—it seemed long to Rebecca Mary—she had stood up straight and stanch and refused to make any more sheets. Was that little girl who had dared, THIS little girl who was afraid? Should that little girl be ashamed of this one?

“Aunt Olivia,” steadily, though Rebecca Mary's heart was pounding hard—“Aunt Olivia, are—are you well off?”

She had not meant to begin like that, but afterwards she was glad that she had.

“My grief!” Aunt Olivia ejaculated in her surprise. What would the child ask next? “Am I well off? If you mean rich, no, I ain't.”

“Oh! Then you're—why, I didn't think about your being poor! I shouldn't have thought of asking—that makes a great difference. I never thought of THAT!”

She was off before Aunt Olivia had fully recovered her breath, and the stumping of her heavy little shoes going upstairs was the only distinctly audible sound. In her own room Rebecca Mary stopped, panting.

“Oh, I'm glad I didn't get as far as ASKING!” she breathed aloud. “I never thought about her being poor—of course then I wouldn't ask!”

But she squared her shoulders and stood up, straight and unashamed. For she had vindicated herself. She had been ready to ask. She could look that other little girl of the sheets in the face. The Other Little Girl was there, coming to meet her as she advanced to the little looking glass above the table. But Rebecca Mary waved her back peremptorily.

“Go right back!” she said. “I only came to tell you I wasn't a coward—that's all. Good-bye. For I'm not coming any more. You're sorry I'm homely, and I'm sorry you are, but it doesn't do any good for us to look at each other and groan. It will make us unsatisfied. So I shall turn you back to the wall—good-bye.”

But for a very [long] instant they looked sadly into each other's little lean brown-yellow faces. It was a brief ceremony of farewell. “Good- bye,” smiled Rebecca Mary, bravely. And the lips of The Other Little Girl moved as though saying it too. The Other Little Girl smiled. And neither of them knew that just then she was beautiful.

Aunt Olivia was trying to meet her own courage test. She had been trying a good many days. Duty—stern, unswerving duty—bade her inspect Rebecca Mary's little cookbook diary. Should she not know—ought she not to know the thoughts that were brewing in the child's mind? How else could she bring her up properly?

“Read it,” Duty said, “find out. Are you afraid?”

“I'm ashamed,” groaned Aunt Olivia. “Do you think Rebecca Mary would read my diary?”

“Is Rebecca Mary bringing you up?”

Aunt Olivia sometimes thought so. The puzzle that she had begun to try to solve when Rebecca Mary's white, death-struck mother had laid her baby in Aunt Olivia's unaccustomed arms was getting a little more difficult every day. Some days Aunt Olivia wondered if she ought to give it up. Oh, this bringing up—this bringing up of little children!

“If I must,” groaned Aunt Olivia, and got as far as taking the little diary in her hands. But she got no farther. She laid it gently down again.

“I can't,” she said, firmly, but she could not look Duty in the face as she said it. She had always listened to Duty before.

“You know you ought to—”

“Yes, I know, but I can't! It seems a shameful thing to do. I'm sure I've tried often enough—you know I've tried—”

“I know—that was good practice. Now stop trying and read it!”

Aunt Olivia flamed up. “I tell you I won't! It's a shameful thing. If I found Rebecca Mary reading one of my diaries, I should send her to bed—”

“Read hers and go to bed yourself. It's your duty to read it. When you bring up a child—”

“I never will again!”

Aunt Olivia read it, with the relentless grip of Duty holding her to the task. But flame spots crept up through the sallow of her thin cheeks and made what atonement they could.

It did not take long, though some of the pages she read twice. The weatherless week, when Rebecca Mary had put off her “asking” from day to day, Aunt Olivia went back to the third time. When she closed the little book it was not a Plummer face she lifted it to and laid it against for the space of a breath—a Plummer face would not have been wet.

Then she Whirled upon Duty. “Well, I've done it—I hope you're satisfied!”

“It had to be done,” calm Duty responded. “If you think it will make you feel any better, you can send yourself to bed.”

“I'm going to,” sighed Aunt Olivia, slipping away to her room. A strange little yearning was upon her to hunt up Rebecca Mary and call her darling and dear. But in her heart she knew she should not have the courage to do it. Here was another Plummer coward!

“Why are some people made like me?” she thought—“so it kills 'em to say anything anyways tenderish. Seems to be too much for their vocal organs—they'd rather do a week's washing!”

Other thoughts came to Aunt Olivia as she lay on her bed, doing her whimsical penance for violating the sanctity of the little old cookbook. She was not comfortable. It was a hard bed—nothing was soft of Aunt Olivia's. She moved about on it uneasily.

“When they're dead, we're willing enough to say tenderish things to 'em,” her musings ran. “We wish we HAD then. I suppose if Rebecca Mary was—”

She got no farther for the sudden horror that was upon her—that sent her to her feet and to the door. But there she stopped in the blessed relief that drifted in to her on a child's laugh. Somewhere out there Rebecca Mary was laughing in her subdued, sweet way. A cracked, shrill crow followed—Thomas Jefferson was laughing too.

Rebecca Mary was not dead. There was time to say a “tenderish” thing to her before she lay—before that. Aunt Olivia shut her eyes resolutely to the vision that had intruded upon her musings. It was Rebecca Mary who was laughing somewhere out there that she wanted to see.

The next day was Sunday, and in the quiet of the long afternoon Rebecca Mary read aloud again to Thomas Jefferson. It was from the little cookbook diary. Thomas Jefferson was pecking about the long grass of the orchard.

“Oh, listen!” cried Rebecca Mary, her eyes unwontedly shining. “Listen to this, Thomas Jefferson!

“'SATURDAY.—Wind northwest by Mrs. Tupper's Weather vain. Something happened yesterday. Aunt Olivia didn't say it, but she most did. She came right out of her bedroom and I saw it in her face! “Dear”—“darling,”—they were both there, and she was looking at me! Nobody EVER looked “dear” “darling” at me before. I suppose my mother would have. If I hadent had another mother I think I should like to have had Aunt Olivia.

“'You feel that way more after you get akquainted. When I get VERY akquainted prehaps I shall tell Aunt Olivia. Its quear, I think, how it isent as easy to say some things as it is to think them. You can wright them easier too. I am glad Ime keeping a diary because I can wright about yesterday and what happenned. I shall read it to my grand children—to be continude.

“'SUNDAY'—that's today, Thomas Jefferson,—'SUNDAY.—This is yesterday continude, because there was too mutch for one day. Something else beutiful happenned. My Aunt Olivia said to me as folows, I have desided to pay you a weakly alowance of 10 cents a weak Rebecca Mary. And I never asked her to. And she never said anything about charging me for my sins. I was going to ask her but I found out she was poor. That was a mistake, she isent. She must be SOME well of I think for 10 cents seams a great deal to have of your own every weak. But I shant buy crimpers. Ime going to buy a present for Aunt Olivia byamby. Ime very happy. I wish I knew how to spell hooray.'”

Suddenly Rebecca Mary was on her feet, waving the cookbook jubilantly.

“Hoo-ray! Hoo-ray! Thomas Jefferson!” she shouted, surprising the gentle Sunday calm. She surprised Thomas Jefferson, too, but he was equal to the occasion—Thomas Jefferson was a gentleman.

“Hoo-ra-a-a-ay!” he crowed, splendidly, with a fine effect of clapping his hands.

This time there could be no doubt. This was applause.

The Bereavement

Thomas Jefferson was losing his appetite. Even Aunt Olivia noticed it, but it did not worry her as it did Rebecca Mary.

“He's always had as many appetites as a cat's got lives—he's got eight good ones left,” she said, calmly.

But Rebecca Mary was not calm. It seemed to her that Thomas Jefferson was getting thinner every day.

“Oh, I can feel your bones!” she cried, in distress. “Your bones are coming through, you poor, dear Thomas Jefferson! Won't you eat just one more kernel of corn—just this one for Rebecca Mary? I'd do it for you. Shut your eyes and swallow it right down and you'll never know it.”

That day Thomas Jefferson listened to pleading, but not the next day—nor the next. He went about dispiritedly, and the last few times that he crowed it made Rebecca Mary cry. Even Aunt Olivia shook her head.

“I could do it better than that myself,” she said, soberly.

Rebecca Mary hunted bugs and angleworms and arranged them temptingly in rows, but the big, white rooster passed them by with a feeble peck or two. Bits of bread failed to tempt him, or even his favorite cooky crumbs. His eighth appetite departed—his seventh, sixth, fifth, fourth.

“He lost his third one yesterday,” lamented Rebecca Mary, “and today he's lost his second. It's pretty bad when he hasn't only one left, Aunt Olivia.”

“Pretty bad,” nodded Aunt Olivia. She was stirring up a warm mush. When Rebecca Mary had gone upstairs she took it to Thomas Jefferson and commanded him to eat. He was beyond coaxing—perhaps he needed commanding.

Rebecca Mary thought Aunt Olivia did not care, and it added a new sting to her pain. There was that time that Aunt Olivia said she wished the Lord hadn't ever created roosters—Thomas Jefferson had just scratched up her pansy seeds. And the time when she wished Thomas Jefferson was dead; did she wish that now? Was she—was she glad he was going to be dead?

For Rebecca Mary had given up hope. She was not reconciled, but she was sure. She spent all her spare time with the big, gaunt, pitiful fellow, trying to make his last days easier. She knew he liked to have her with him.

“You do, don't you, dear?” she said. She had never called him “dear” before. She realized sadly that this was her last chance. “You do like to have me here, don't you? You'd rather? Don't try to crow—just nod your head a little if you do.” And the big, white fellow's head had nodded a little, she was sure. She put out her loving little brown hand and caressed it. “I knew you did, dear. Oh, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson, don't die! PLEASE don't—think of the good times we'll have if you won't! Think of the—the grasshoppers—the bugs, Thomas Jefferson—the cookies! Won't you think?—won't you try to be a little bit hungry?”

Rebecca Mary knew what it was to be hungry and not be able to eat, but to be able to eat and not be hungry—this was away and beyond her experience. The sad puzzle of it she could not solve.

One day the minister had a rather surprising summons to perform his priestly functions. The summoner was Rebecca Mary. She appeared like a sombre little shadow in his sunny sermon room. The minister's wife ushered her in, and in the brief instant of opening the door and announcing her name flashed him a warning glance. He had been acquainted so long with her glances that he was able to interpret this one with considerable accuracy. “All right,” he glanced back. No, he would not smile—yes, he would remember that it was Rebecca Mary.

“Do what she asks you,” flashed the minister's wife's glance.

“All right,” flashed the minister. Then the door closed.

“Thomas Jefferson is dying,” Rebecca Mary began, hurriedly. “I came to see if you'd come.”

In spite of himself the minister gasped. Then, as the situation dawned clearly upon him, his mouth corners began—in spite of themselves—to curve upward. But in time he remembered the minister's wife, and drew them back to their centres of gravity. He waited a little. It was safer.

“Aunt Olivia isn't at home and I'm glad. She doesn't care. Perhaps she would laugh. Oh, I know,” appealed Rebecca Mary, piteously, “I know he's a rooster! It isn't because I don't know—but he's FOLKS to me! You needn't do anything but just smooth his feathers a little and say the Lord bless you. I thought perhaps you'd come and do that. I could, but I wanted you to, because you're a minister. I thought—I thought perhaps you'd try and forget he's a rooster.”

“I will,” the minister said, gently. Now his lips were quite grave. He took Rebecca Mary's hand and went with her.

“He's a good man,” murmured the minister's wife, watching them go. She had known he would go.

“He was one of my parishioners,” the minister was saying for the comforting of Rebecca Mary. Unconsciously he used the past tense, as one speaks of those close to death. It was well enough, for already big, gaunt, white Thomas Jefferson was in the past tense.

Rebecca Mary chronicled the sad event in her diary: