New Chronicles of Rebecca Part 16

"Durn his skin!" he burst out in a vindictive undertone, as the mare swung into her long gait. "It's a lie! I thought twas somebody's wash! I hain't an enemy!"

While the crowd at the raising dispersed in happy family groups to their picnics in the woods; while the G.o.ddess of Liberty, Uncle Sam, Columbia, and the proud States lunched grandly in the Grange hall with distinguished guests and scarred veterans of two wars, the lonely man drove, and drove, and drove through silent woods and dull, sleepy villages, never alighting to replenish his wardrobe or his stock of swapping material.

At dusk he reached a miserable tumble-down house on the edge of a pond.

The faithful wife with the sad mouth and the habitual look of anxiety in her faded eyes came to the door at the sound of wheels and went doggedly to the horse-shed to help him unharness.

"You didn't expect to see me back tonight, did ye?" he asked satirically; "leastwise not with this same horse? Well, I'm here! You needn't be scairt to look under the wagon seat, there hain't nothin'

there, not even my supper, so I hope you're suited for once! No, I guess I hain't goin' to be an angel right away, neither. There wa'n't nothin'

but flags layin' roun' loose down Riverboro way, n' whatever they say, I hain't sech a hound as to steal a flag!"

It was natural that young Riverboro should have red, white, and blue dreams on the night after the new flag was raised. A stranger thing, perhaps, is the fact that Abner Simpson should lie down on his hard bed with the flutter of bunting before his eyes, and a whirl of unaccustomed words in his mind.

"For it's your star, my star, all our stars together."

"I'm sick of goin' it alone," he thought; "I guess I'll try the other road for a spell;" and with that he fell asleep.

Seventh Chronicle. THE LITTLE PROPHET

I

"I guess York County will never get red of that Simpson crew!" exclaimed Miranda Sawyer to Jane. "I thought when the family moved to Acreville we'd seen the last of em, but we ain't! The big, cross-eyed, stutterin'

boy has got a place at the mills in Maplewood; that's near enough to come over to Riverboro once in a while of a Sunday mornin' and set in the meetin' house starin' at Rebecca same as he used to do, only it's reskier now both of em are older. Then Mrs. Fogg must go and bring back the biggest girl to help her take care of her baby,--as if there wa'n't plenty of help nearer home! Now I hear say that the youngest twin has come to stop the summer with the Cames up to Edgewood Lower Corner."

"I thought two twins were always the same age," said Rebecca, reflectively, as she came into the kitchen with the milk pail.

"So they be," snapped Miranda, flushing and correcting herself. "But that pasty-faced Simpson twin looks younger and is smaller than the other one. He's meek as Moses and the other one is as bold as a bra.s.s kettle; I don't see how they come to be twins; they ain't a mite alike."

"Elijah was always called the fighting twin' at school," said Rebecca, "and Elisha's other name was Nimbi-Pamby; but I think he's a nice little boy, and I'm glad he has come back. He won't like living with Mr. Came, but he'll be almost next door to the minister's, and Mrs. Baxter is sure to let him play in her garden."

"I wonder why the boy's stayin' with Ca.s.sius Came," said Jane. "To be sure they haven't got any of their own, but the child's too young to be much use."

"I know why," remarked Rebecca promptly, "for I heard all about it over to Watson's when I was getting the milk. Mr. Came traded something with Mr. Simpson two years ago and got the best of the bargain, and Uncle Jerry says he's the only man that ever did, and he ought to have a monument put up to him. So Mr. Came owes Mr. Simpson money and won't pay it, and Mr. Simpson said he'd send over a child and board part of it out, and take the rest in stock--a pig or a calf or something."

"That's all stuff and nonsense," exclaimed Miranda; "nothin' in the world but store-talk. You git a clump o' men-folks settin' round Watson's stove, or out on the bench at the door, an' they'll make up stories as fast as their tongues can wag. The man don't live that's smart enough to cheat Abner Simpson in a trade, and who ever heard of anybody's owin' him money? Tain't supposable that a woman like Mrs. Came would allow her husband to be in debt to a man like Abner Simpson. It's a sight likelier that she heard that Mrs. Simpson was ailin' and sent for the boy so as to help the family along. She always had Mrs. Simpson to wash for her once a month, if you remember Jane?"

There are some facts so shrouded in obscurity that the most skillful and patient investigator cannot drag them into the light of day. There are also (but only occasionally) certain motives, acts, speeches, lines of conduct, that can never be wholly and satisfactorily explained, even in a village post-office or on the loafers' bench outside the tavern door.

Ca.s.sius Came was a close man, close of mouth and close of purse; and all that Riverboro ever knew as to the three months' visit of the Simpson twin was that it actually occurred. Elisha, otherwise Nimbi-Pamby, came; Nimbi-Pamby stayed; and Nimbi-Pamby, when he finally rejoined his own domestic circle, did not go empty-handed (so to speak), for he was accompanied on his homeward travels by a large, red, bony, somewhat truculent cow, who was tied on behind the wagon, and who made the journey a lively and eventful one by her total lack of desire to proceed over the road from Edgewood to Acreville. But that, the cow's tale, belongs to another time and place, and the coward's tale must come first; for Elisha Simpson was held to be sadly lacking in the manly quality of courage.

It was the new minister's wife who called Nimbi-Pamby the Little Prophet. His full name was Elisha Jeremiah Simpson, but one seldom heard it at full length, since, if he escaped the ignominy of Nimbi-Pamby, Lishe was quite enough for an urchin just in his first trousers and those a.s.sumed somewhat prematurely. He was "Lishe," therefore, to the village, but the Little Prophet to the young minister's wife.

Rebecca could see the Cames' brown farmhouse from Mrs. Baxter's sitting-room window. The little-traveled road with strips of tufted green between the wheel tracks curled dustily up to the very doorstep, and inside the screen door of pink mosquito netting was a wonderful drawn-in rug, shaped like a half pie, with "Welcome" in saffron letters on a green ground.

Rebecca liked Mrs. Ca.s.sius Came, who was a friend of her Aunt Miranda's and one of the few persons who exchanged calls with that somewhat unsociable lady. The Came farm was not a long walk from the brick house, for Rebecca could go across the fields when haying-time was over, and her delight at being sent on an errand in that direction could not be measured, now that the new minister and his wife had grown to be such a resource in her life. She liked to see Mrs. Came shake the Welcome rug, flinging the cheery word out into the summer sunshine like a bright greeting to the day. She liked to see her go to the screen door a dozen times in a morning, open it a crack and chase an imaginary fly from the sacred precincts within. She liked to see her come up the cellar steps into the side garden, appearing mysteriously as from the bowels of the earth, carrying a shining pan of milk in both hands, and disappearing through the beds of hollyhocks and sunflowers to the pig-pen or the hen-house.

Rebecca was not fond of Mr. Came, and neither was Mrs. Baxter, nor Elisha, for that matter; in fact Mr. Came was rather a difficult person to grow fond of, with his fiery red beard, his freckled skin, and his gruff way of speaking; for there were no children in the brown house to smooth the creases from his forehead or the roughness from his voice.

II

The new minister's wife was sitting under the shade of her great maple early one morning, when she first saw the Little Prophet. A tiny figure came down the gra.s.s-grown road leading a cow by a rope. If it had been a small boy and a small cow, a middle-sized boy and an ordinary cow, or a grown man and a big cow, she might not have noticed them; but it was the combination of an infinitesimal boy and a huge cow that attracted her attention. She could not guess the child's years, she only knew that he was small for his age, whatever it was.

The cow was a dark red beast with a crumpled horn, a white star on her forehead, and a large surprised sort of eye. She had, of course, two eyes, and both were surprised, but the left one had an added hint of amazement in it by virtue of a few white hairs lurking accidentally in the centre of the eyebrow.

The boy had a thin sensitive face and curtly brown hair, short trousers patched on both knees, and a ragged straw hat on the back of his head.

He pattered along behind the cow, sometimes holding the rope with both hands, and getting over the ground in a jerky way, as the animal left him no time to think of a smooth path for bare feet.

The Came pasture was a good half-mile distant, and the cow seemed in no hurry to reach it; accordingly she forsook the road now and then, and rambled in the hollows, where the gra.s.s was sweeter to her way of thinking. She started on one of these exploring expeditions just as she pa.s.sed the minister's great maple, and gave Mrs. Baxter time to call out to the little fellow, "Is that your cow?"

Elisha blushed and smiled, and tried to speak modestly, but there was a quiver of pride in his voice as he answered suggestively:

"It's--nearly my cow."

"How is that?" asked Mrs. Baxter.

"Why, Mr. Came says when I drive her twenty-nine more times to pasture thout her gettin' her foot over the rope or thout my bein' afraid, she's goin' to be my truly cow. Are you fraid of cows?"

"Ye-e-es," Mrs. Baxter confessed, "I am, just a little. You see, I am nothing but a woman, and boys can't understand how we feel about cows."

"I can! They're awful big things, aren't they?"

"Perfectly enormous! I've always thought a cow coming towards you one of the biggest things in the world."

"Yes; me, too. Don't let's think about it. Do they hook people so very often?"

"No indeed, in fact one scarcely ever hears of such a case."

"If they stepped on your bare foot they'd scrunch it, wouldn't they?"

"Yes, but you are the driver; you mustn't let them do that; you are a free-will boy, and they are nothing but cows."

"I know; but p'raps there is free-will cows, and if they just WOULD do it you couldn't help being scrunched, for you mustn't let go of the rope nor run, Mr. Came says.

"No, of course that would never do."

"Where you used to live did all the cows go down into the boggy places when you drove em to pasture, or did some walk in the road?"

"There weren't any cows or any pastures where I used to live; that's what makes me so foolish; why does your cow need a rope?"

"She don't like to go to pasture, Mr. Came says. Sometimes she'd druther stay to home, and so when she gets part way she turns round and comes backwards."

"Dear me!" thought Mrs. Baxter, "what becomes of this boy-mite if the cow has a spell of going backwards?--Do you like to drive her?" she asked.

"N-no, not erzackly; but you see, it'll be my cow if I drive her twenty-nine more times thout her gettin' her foot over the rope and thout my bein' afraid," and a beaming smile gave a transient brightness to his hara.s.sed little face. "Will she feed in the ditch much longer?"

he asked. "Shall I say Hurrap'? That's what Mr. Came says--HURRAP!' like that, and it means to hurry up."