Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin (the top 100 crime novels of all time .TXT) 📕

“`Quick was the little Maid’s reply, O master! we are seven!’

I learned it to speak in school, but the scholars were hateful and laughed. Hannah is the oldest, I come next, then John, then Jenny, then Mark, then Fanny, then Mira.”

“Well, that IS a big family!”

“Far too big, everybody says,” replied Rebecca with an unexpected and thoroughly grown-up candor that induced Mr. Cobb to murmur, “I swan!” and insert more tobacco in his left cheek.

“They’re dear, but such a bother, and cost so much to feed, you see,” she rippled on. “Hannah and I haven’t done anything but put babies to bed at night and take them up in the morning for years and years. But it’s finished, that’s one comfort, and we’ll have a lovely time when we’re all grown up and the mortgage is paid off.”

“All finished? Oh, you mean you’ve come away?”

“No, I mean they’re all over and done with; our family ‘s finished. Mother says so, and she always keeps her promises. There hasn’t been any since Mira, and she’s three. She was born the day father died Aunt Miranda wanted Hannah to come to Riverboro instead of me, but mother couldn’t spare her; she takes hold of housework better than I do, Hannah does. I told mother last night if there was likely to be any more children while I was away I’d have to be sent for, for when there’s a baby it always takes Hannah and me both, for mother has the cooking and the farm.”

“Oh, you live on a farm, do ye? Where is it? —near to where you got on?”

“Near? Why, it must be thousands of miles! We came from Temperance in the cars. Then we drove a long ways to cousin Ann’s and went to bed. Then we got up and drove ever so far to Maplewood, where the stage was. Our farm is away off from everywheres, but our school and meeting house is at Temperance, and that’s only two miles. Sitting up here with you is most as good as climbing the meeting-house steeple. I know a boy who’s been up on our steeple. He said the people and cows looked like flies. We haven’t met any people yet, but I’m KIND of disappointed in the cows;— they don’t look so little as I hoped they would; still (brightening) they don’t look quite as big as if we were down side of them, do they? Boys always do the nice splendid things, and girls can only do the nasty dull ones that get left over. They can’t climb so high, or go so far, or stay out so late, or run so fast, or anything.”

Mr. Cobb wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and gasped. He had a feeling that he was being hurried from peak to peak of a mountain range without time to take a good breath in between.

“I can’t seem to locate your farm,” he said, “though I’ve been to Temperance and used to live up that way. What’s your folks’ name?”

“Randall. My mother’s name is Aurelia Randall; our names are Hannah Lucy Randall, Rebecca Rowena Randall, John Halifax Randall, Jenny Lind Randall, Marquis Randall, Fanny Ellsler Randall, and Miranda Randall. Mother named half of us and father the other half, but we didn’t come out even, so they both thought it would be nice to name Mira after aunt Miranda in Riverboro; they hoped it might do some good, but it didn’t, and now we call her Mira. We are all named after somebody in particular. Hannah is Hannah at the Window Binding Shoes, and I am taken out of Ivanhoe; John Halifax was a gentleman in a book; Mark is after his uncle Marquis de Lafayette that died a twin. (Twins very often don’t live to grow up, and triplets almost never—did you know that, Mr. Cobb?) We don’t call him Marquis, only Mark. Jenny is named for a singer and Fanny for a beautiful dancer, but mother says they’re both misfits, for Jenny can’t carry a tune and Fanny’s kind of stiff-legged. Mother would like to call them Jane and Frances and give up their middle names, but she says it wouldn’t be fair to father. She says we must always stand up for father, because everything was against him, and he wouldn’t have died if he hadn’t had such bad luck. I think that’s all there is to tell about us,” she finished seriously.

“Land o’ Liberty! I should think it was enough,” ejaculated Mr. Cobb. “There wa’n’t many names left when your mother got through choosin’! You’ve got a powerful good memory! I guess it ain’t no trouble for you to learn your lessons, is it?”

“Not much; the trouble is to get the shoes to go and learn ‘em. These are spandy new I’ve got on, and they have to last six months. Mother always says to save my shoes. There don’t seem to be any way of saving shoes but taking ‘em off and going barefoot; but I can’t do that in Riverboro without shaming aunt Mirandy. I’m going to school right along now when I’m living with aunt Mirandy, and in two years I’m going to the seminary at Wareham; mother says it ought to be the making of me! I’m going to be a painter like Miss Ross when I get through school. At any rate, that’s what I think I’m going to be. Mother thinks I’d better teach.”

“Your farm ain’t the old Hobbs place, is it?”

“No, it’s just Randall’s Farm. At least that’s what mother calls it. I call it Sunnybrook Farm.”

“I guess it don’t make no difference what you call it so long as you know where it is,” remarked Mr. Cobb sententiously.

Rebecca turned the full light of her eyes upon him reproachfully, almost severely, as she answered:—

“Oh! don’t say that, and be like all the rest! It does make a difference what you call things. When I say Randall’s Farm, do you see how it looks?”

“No, I can’t say I do,” responded Mr. Cobb uneasily.

“Now when I say Sunnybrook Farm, what does it make you think of?”

Mr. Cobb felt like a fish removed from his native element and left panting on the sand; there was no evading the awful responsibility of a reply, for Rebecca’s eyes were searchlights, that pierced the fiction of his brain and perceived the bald spot on the back of his head.

“I s’pose there’s a brook somewheres near it,” he said timorously.

Rebecca looked disappointed but not quite dis-heartened. “That’s pretty good,” she said encouragingly. “You’re warm but not hot; there’s a brook, but not a common brook. It has young trees and baby bushes on each side of it, and it’s a shallow chattering little brook with a white sandy bottom and lots of little shiny pebbles. Whenever there’s a bit of sunshine the brook catches it, and it’s always full of sparkles the livelong day. Don’t your stomach feel hollow? Mine doest I was so ‘fraid I’d miss the stage I couldn’t eat any breakfast.”

“You’d better have your lunch, then. I don’t eat nothin’ till I get to Milltown; then I get a piece o’ pie and cup o’ coffee.”

“I wish I could see Milltown. I suppose it’s bigger and grander even than Wareham; more like Paris? Miss Ross told me about Paris; she bought my pink sunshade there and my bead purse. You see how it opens with a snap? I’ve twenty cents in it, and it’s got to last three months, for stamps and paper and ink. Mother says aunt Mirandy won’t want to buy things like those when she’s feeding and clothing me and paying for my school books.”

“Paris ain’t no great,” said Mr. Cobb disparagingly. “It’s the dullest place in the State o’ Maine. I’ve druv there many a time.”

Again Rebecca was obliged to reprove Mr. Cobb, tacitly and quietly, but none the less surely, though the reproof was dealt with one glance, quickly sent and as quickly withdrawn.

“Paris is the capital of France, and you have to go to it on a boat,” she said instructively. “It’s in my geography, and it says: `The French are a gay and polite people, fond of dancing and light wines.’ I asked the teacher what light wines were, and he thought it was something like new cider, or maybe ginger pop. I can see Paris as plain as day by just shutting my eyes. The beautiful ladies are always gayly dancing around with pink sunshades and bead purses, and the grand gentlemen are politely dancing and drinking ginger pop. But you can see Milltown most every day with your eyes wide open,” Rebecca said wistfully.

“Milltown ain’t no great, neither,” replied Mr. Cobb, with the air of having visited all the cities of the earth and found them as naught. “Now you watch me heave this newspaper right onto Mis’ Brown’s doorstep.”

Piff! and the packet landed exactly as it was intended, on the corn husk mat in front of the screen door.

“Oh, how splendid that was!” cried Rebecca with enthusiasm. “Just like the knife thrower Mark saw at the circus. I wish there was a long, long row of houses each with a corn husk mat and a screen door in the middle, and a newspaper to throw on every one!”

“I might fail on some of ‘em, you know,” said Mr. Cobb, beaming with modest pride. “If your aunt Mirandy’ll let you, I’ll take you down to Milltown some day this summer when the stage ain’t full.”

A thrill of delicious excitement ran through Rebecca’s frame, from her new shoes up, up to the leghorn cap and down the black braid. She pressed Mr. Cobb’s knee ardently and said in a voice choking with tears of joy and astonishment, “Oh, it can’t be true, it can’t; to think I should see Milltown. It’s like having a fairy godmother who asks you your wish and then gives it to you! Did you ever read Cinderella, or The Yellow Dwarf, or The Enchanted Frog, or The Fair One with Golden Locks?”

“No,” said Mr. Cobb cautiously, after a moment’s reflection. “I don’t seem to think I ever did read jest those partic’lar ones. Where’d you get a chance at so much readin’?”

“Oh, I’ve read lots of books,” answered Rebecca casually. “Father’s and Miss Ross’s and all the dif’rent school teachers’, and all in the Sunday-school library. I’ve read The Lamplighter, and Scottish Chiefs, and Ivanhoe, and The Heir of Redclyffe, and Cora, the Doctor’s Wife, and David Copperfield, and The Gold of Chickaree, and Plutarch’s Lives, and Thaddeus of Warsaw, and Pilgrim’s Progress, and lots more.—What have you read?”

“I’ve never happened to read those partic’lar books; but land! I’ve read a sight in my time! Nowadays I’m so drove I get along with the Almanac, the Weekly Argus, and the Maine State Agriculturist.—There’s the river again; this is the last long hill, and when we get to the top of it we’ll see the chimbleys of Riverboro in the distance. ‘T ain’t fur. I live ‘bout half a mile beyond the brick house myself.”

Rebecca’s hand stirred nervously in her lap and she moved in her seat. “I didn’t think I was going to be afraid,” she said almost under her breath; “but I guess I am, just a little mite—when you say it’s coming so near.”

“Would you go back?” asked Mr. Cobb curiously.

She flashed him an intrepid look and then said proudly, “I’d never go back—I might be frightened, but I’d be ashamed to run. Going to aunt Mirandy’s is like going down cellar in the dark. There might be ogres and giants under the stairs, —but, as I tell Hannah, there MIGHT be elves