บทที่ บทที่ 24 · ALADDIN RUBS HIS LAMP

. ALADDIN RUBS HIS LAMP

ALADDIN RUBS HIS LAMP

"Your esteemed contribution entitled Wareham Wildflowers has been

accepted for The Pilot, Miss Perkins," said Rebecca, entering the room

where Emma Jane was darning the firm's stockings. "I stayed to tea with

Miss Maxwell, but came home early to tell you."

"You are joking, Becky!" faltered Emma Jane, looking up from her work.

"Not a bit; the senior editor read it and thought it highly

instructive; it appears in the next issue."

"Not in the same number with your poem about the golden gates that

close behind us when we leave school?"--and Emma Jane held her breath

as she awaited the reply.

"Even so, Miss Perkins."

"Rebecca," said Emma Jane, with the nearest approach to tragedy that

her nature would permit, "I don't know as I shall be able to bear it,

and if anything happens to me, I ask you solemnly to bury that number

of The Pilot with me."

Rebecca did not seem to think this the expression of an exaggerated

state of feeling, inasmuch as she replied, "I know; that's just the way

it seemed to me at first, and even now, whenever I'm alone and take out

the Pilot back numbers to read over my contributions, I almost burst

with pleasure; and it's not that they are good either, for they look

worse to me every time I read them."

"If you would only live with me in some little house when we get

older," mused Emma Jane, as with her darning needle poised in air she

regarded the opposite wall dreamily, "I would do the housework and

cooking, and copy all your poems and stories, and take them to the

post-office, and you needn't do anything but write. It would be

perfectly elergant!"

"I'd like nothing better, if I hadn't promised to keep house for John,"

replied Rebecca.

"He won't have a house for a good many years, will he?"

"No," sighed Rebecca ruefully, flinging herself down by the table and

resting her head on her hand. "Not unless we can contrive to pay off

that detestable mortgage. The day grows farther off instead of nearer

now that we haven't paid the interest this year."

She pulled a piece of paper towards her, and scribbling idly on it read

aloud in a moment or two:--

"Will you pay a little faster?" said the mortgage to the farm;

"I confess I'm very tired of this place."

"The weariness is mutual," Rebecca Randall cried;

"I would I'd never gazed upon your face!"

"A note has a 'face,'" observed Emma Jane, who was gifted in

arithmetic. "I didn't know that a mortgage had."

"Our mortgage has," said Rebecca revengefully. "I should know him if I

met him in the dark. Wait and I'll draw him for you. It will be good

for you to know how he looks, and then when you have a husband and

seven children, you won't allow him to come anywhere within a mile of

your farm."

The sketch when completed was of a sort to be shunned by a timid person

on the verge of slumber. There was a tiny house on the right, and a

weeping family gathered in front of it. The mortgage was depicted as a

cross between a fiend and an ogre, and held an axe uplifted in his red

right hand. A figure with streaming black locks was staying the blow,

and this, Rebecca explained complacently, was intended as a likeness of

herself, though she was rather vague as to the method she should use in

attaining her end.

"He's terrible," said Emma Jane, "but awfully wizened and small."

"It's only a twelve hundred dollar mortgage," said Rebecca, "and that's

called a small one. John saw a man once that was mortgaged for twelve

thousand."

"Shall you be a writer or an editor?" asked Emma Jane presently, as if

one had only to choose and the thing were done.

"I shall have to do what turns up first, I suppose."

"Why not go out as a missionary to Syria, as the Burches are always

coaxing you to? The Board would pay your expenses."

"I can't make up my mind to be a missionary," Rebecca answered. "I'm

not good enough in the first place, and I don't 'feel a call,' as Mr.

Burch says you must. I would like to do something for somebody and make

things move, somewhere, but I don't want to go thousands of miles away

teaching people how to live when I haven't learned myself. It isn't as

if the heathen really needed me; I'm sure they'll come out all right in

the end."

"I can't see how; if all the people who ought to go out to save them

stay at home as we do," argued Emma Jane.

"Why, whatever God is, and wherever He is, He must always be there,

ready and waiting. He can't move about and miss people. It may take the

heathen a little longer to find Him, but God will make allowances, of

course. He knows if they live in such hot climates it must make them

lazy and slow; and the parrots and tigers and snakes and bread-fruit

trees distract their minds; and having no books, they can't think as

well; but they'll find God somehow, some time."

"What if they die first?" asked Emma Jane.

"Oh, well, they can't be blamed for that; they don't die on purpose,"

said Rebecca, with a comfortable theology.

In these days Adam Ladd sometimes went to Temperance on business

connected with the proposed branch of the railroad familiarly known as

the "York and Yank 'em," and while there he gained an inkling of

Sunnybrook affairs. The building of the new road was not yet a

certainty, and there was a difference of opinion as to the best route

from Temperance to Plumville. In one event the way would lead directly

through Sunnybrook, from corner to corner, and Mrs. Randall would be

compensated; in the other, her interests would not be affected either

for good or ill, save as all land in the immediate neighborhood might

rise a little in value.

Coming from Temperance to Wareham one day, Adam had a long walk and

talk with Rebecca, whom he thought looking pale and thin, though she

was holding bravely to her self-imposed hours of work. She was wearing

a black cashmere dress that had been her aunt Jane's second best. We

are familiar with the heroine of romance whose foot is so exquisitely

shaped that the coarsest shoe cannot conceal its perfections, and one

always cherishes a doubt of the statement; yet it is true that

Rebecca's peculiar and individual charm seemed wholly independent of

accessories. The lines of her figure, the rare coloring of skin and

hair and eyes, triumphed over shabby clothing, though, had the

advantage of artistic apparel been given her, the little world of

Wareham would probably at once have dubbed her a beauty. The long black

braids were now disposed after a quaint fashion of her own. They were

crossed behind, carried up to the front, and crossed again, the

tapering ends finally brought down and hidden in the thicker part at

the neck. Then a purely feminine touch was given to the hair that waved

back from the face,--a touch that rescued little crests and wavelets

from bondage and set them free to take a new color in the sun.

Adam Ladd looked at her in a way that made her put her hands over her

face and laugh through them shyly as she said: "I know what you are

thinking, Mr. Aladdin,--that my dress is an inch longer than last year,

and my hair different; but I'm not nearly a young lady yet; truly I'm

not. Sixteen is a month off still, and you promised not to give me up

till my dress trails. If you don't like me to grow old, why don't you

grow young? Then we can meet in the halfway house and have nice times.

Now that I think about it," she continued, "that's just what you've

been doing all along. When you bought the soap, I thought you were

grandfather Sawyer's age; when you danced with me at the flag-raising,

you seemed like my father; but when you showed me your mother's

picture, I felt as if you were my John, because I was so sorry for you."

"That will do very well," smiled Adam; "unless you go so swiftly that

you become my grandmother before I really need one. You are studying

too hard, Miss Rebecca Rowena!"

"Just a little," she confessed. "But vacation comes soon, you know."

"And are you going to have a good rest and try to recover your dimples?

They are really worth preserving."

A shadow crept over Rebecca's face and her eyes suffused. "Don't be

kind, Mr. Aladdin, I can't bear it;--it's--it's not one of my dimply

days!" and she ran in at the seminary gate, and disappeared with a

farewell wave of her hand.

Adam Ladd wended his way to the principal's office in a thoughtful

mood. He had come to Wareham to unfold a plan that he had been

considering for several days. This year was the fiftieth anniversary of

the founding of the Wareham schools, and he meant to tell Mr. Morrison

that in addition to his gift of a hundred volumes to the reference

library, he intended to celebrate it by offering prizes in English

composition, a subject in which he was much interested. He wished the

boys and girls of the two upper classes to compete; the award to be

made to the writers of the two best essays. As to the nature of the

prizes he had not quite made up his mind, but they would be substantial

ones, either of money or of books.

This interview accomplished, he called upon Miss Maxwell, thinking as

he took the path through the woods, "Rose-Red-Snow-White needs the

help, and since there is no way of my giving it to her without causing

remark, she must earn it, poor little soul! I wonder if my money is

always to be useless where most I wish to spend it!"

He had scarcely greeted his hostess when he said: "Miss Maxwell,

doesn't it strike you that our friend Rebecca looks wretchedly tired?"

"She does indeed, and I am considering whether I can take her away with

me. I always go South for the spring vacation, traveling by sea to Old

Point Comfort, and rusticating in some quiet spot near by. I should

like nothing better than to have Rebecca for a companion."

"The very thing!" assented Adam heartily; "but why should you take the

whole responsibility? Why not let me help? I am greatly interested in

the child, and have been for some years."

"You needn't pretend you discovered her," interrupted Miss Maxwell

warmly, "for I did that myself."

"She was an intimate friend of mine long before you ever came to

Wareham," laughed Adam, and he told Miss Maxwell the circumstances of

his first meeting with Rebecca. "From the beginning I've tried to think

of a way I could be useful in her development, but no reasonable

solution seemed to offer itself."

"Luckily she attends to her own development," answered Miss Maxwell.

"In a sense she is independent of everything and everybody; she follows

her saint without being conscious of it. But she needs a hundred

practical things that money would buy for her, and alas! I have a

slender purse."

"Take mine, I beg, and let me act through you," pleaded Adam. "I could

not bear to see even a young tree trying its best to grow without light

or air,--how much less a gifted child! I interviewed her aunts a year

ago, hoping I might be permitted to give her a musical education. I

assured them it was a most ordinary occurrence, and that I was willing

to be repaid later on if they insisted, but it was no use. The elder

Miss Sawyer remarked that no member of her family ever had lived on

charity, and she guessed they wouldn't begin at this late day."

"I rather like that uncompromising New England grit," exclaimed Miss

Maxwell, "and so far, I don't regret one burden that Rebecca has borne

or one sorrow that she has shared. Necessity has only made her brave;

poverty has only made her daring and self-reliant. As to her present

needs, there are certain things only a woman ought to do for a girl,

and I should not like to have you do them for Rebecca; I should feel

that I was wounding her pride and self-respect, even though she were

ignorant; but there is no reason why I may not do them if necessary and

let you pay her traveling expenses. I would accept those for her

without the slightest embarrassment, but I agree that the matter would

better be kept private between us."

"You are a real fairy godmother!" exclaimed Adam, shaking her hand

warmly. "Would it be less trouble for you to invite her room-mate

too,--the pink-and-white inseparable?"

"No, thank you, I prefer to have Rebecca all to myself," said Miss

Maxwell.

"I can understand that," replied Adam absent-mindedly; "I mean, of

course, that one child is less trouble than two. There she is now."

Here Rebecca appeared in sight, walking down the quiet street with a

lad of sixteen. They were in animated conversation, and were apparently

reading something aloud to each other, for the black head and the curly

brown one were both bent over a sheet of letter paper. Rebecca kept

glancing up at her companion, her eyes sparkling with appreciation.

"Miss Maxwell," said Adam, "I am a trustee of this institution, but

upon my word I don't believe in coeducation!"

"I have my own occasional hours of doubt," she answered, "but surely

its disadvantages are reduced to a minimum with--children! That is a

very impressive sight which you are privileged to witness, Mr. Ladd.

The folk in Cambridge often gloated on the spectacle of Longfellow and

Lowell arm in arm. The little school world of Wareham palpitates with

excitement when it sees the senior and the junior editors of The Pilot

walking together!"