Children's Book Classics - Kate Douglas Wiggin Edition: 11 Novels & 120+ Short Stories for Children. Kate Douglas Wiggin
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the worst’s over, and you’ve borne up real good! I’ll be careful not to pull your hair nor scorch you, and oh, how I’d like to have Alice Robinson acrost my knee and a good slipper in my right hand! There, you’re all ironed out and your Aunt Jane can put on your white dress and braid your hair up again good and tight. Perhaps you won’t be the homeliest of the States, after all; but when I see you comin’ in to breakfast I said to myself: ‘I guess if Maine looked like that, it would n’t never ‘a’ been admitted into the Union!’”
When Uncle Sam and the stagecoach drew up to the brick house with a grand swing and a flourish, the Goddess of Liberty and most of the States were already in their places on the “harricane deck.” Words fail to describe the gallant bearing of the horses, their headstalls gayly trimmed and their harnesses dotted with little flags. The stage windows were hung in bunting, and from within beamed Columbia, looking out from the bright frame as if proud of her freight of loyal children. Patriotic streamers floated from whip, from dash-board and from rumble, and the effect of the whole was something to stimulate the most phlegmatic voter. Rebecca came out on the steps and Aunt Jane brought a chair to assist in the ascent. Miss Dearborn peeped from the window, and gave a despairing look at her favorite.
What had happened to her? Who had dressed her? Had her head been put through a wringing-machine? Why were her eyes red and swollen? Miss Dearborn determined to take her behind the trees in the pine grove and give her some finishing touches; touches that her skillful fingers fairly itched to bestow.
The stage started, and as the roadside pageant grew gayer and gayer, Rebecca began to brighten and look prettier, for most of her beautifying came from within. The people, walking, driving, or standing on their doorsteps, cheered Uncle Sam’s coach with its freight of gossamer-muslined, fluttering-ribboned girls, and just behind, the gorgeously decorated haycart, driven by Abijah Flagg, bearing the jolly but inharmonious fife and drum corps. Was ever such a golden day; such crystal air; such mellow sunshine; such a merry Uncle Sam!
The stage drew up at an appointed spot near a pine grove, and while the crowd was gathering, the children waited for the hour to arrive when they should march to the platform; the hour toward which they seemed to have been moving since the dawn of creation. As soon as possible Miss Dearborn whispered to Rebecca: “Come behind the trees with me; I want to make you prettier!”
Rebecca thought she had suffered enough from that process already during the last twelve hours, but she put out an obedient hand and the two withdrew.
Now Miss Dearborn was, I fear, a very indifferent teacher. Her stock in trade was small, her principal virtues being devotion to children and ability to gain their love, and a power of evolving a schoolroom order so natural, cheery, serene, and peaceful that it gave the beholder a certain sense of being in a district heaven. She was poor in arithmetic and weak in geometry, but if you gave her a rose, a bit of ribbon, and a seven-by-nine looking-glass she could make herself as pretty as a pink in two minutes.
Safely sheltered behind the pines, Miss Dearborn began to practice mysterious feminine arts. She flew at Rebecca’s tight braids, opened the strands and rebraided them loosely; bit and tore the red, white, and blue ribbon in two and tied the braids separately. Then with nimble fingers she pulled out little tendrils of hair behind the ears and around the nape of the neck. After a glance of acute disapproval directed at the stiff balloon skirt she knelt on the ground and gave a strenuous embrace to Rebecca’s knees, murmuring, between her hugs, “Starch must be cheap at the brick house!”
This particular line of beauty attained, there ensued great pinchings of ruffles; the fingers that could never hold a ferule nor snap children’s ears being incomparable fluting-irons. Next the sash was scornfully untied, and tightened to suggest something resembling a waist. The chastened bows that had been squat, dowdy, spiritless, were given tweaks, flirts, bracing little pokes and dabs, till, acknowledging a master hand, they stood up, piquant, pert, smart, alert!
Pride of bearing was now infused into the flattened lace at the neck, and a pin (removed at some sacrifice from her own toilette) was darned in at the back to prevent any cowardly lapsing. The short white cotton gloves that called attention to the tanned wrists and arms were stripped off and put in her own pocket. Then the wreath of pine-cones was adjusted at a heretofore unimagined angle, the hair was pulled softly into a fluffy frame, and finally, as she met Rebecca’s grateful eyes, she gave her two approving, triumphant kisses. In a second the sensitive face lighted into happiness; pleased dimples appeared in the cheeks, the kissed mouth was as red as a rose, and the little fright that had walked behind the pine-tree stepped out on the other side Rebecca, the lovely.
As to the relative value of Miss Dearborn’s accomplishments, the decision must be left to the gentle reader; but though it is certain that children should be properly grounded in mathematics, no heart of flesh could bear to hear Miss Dearborn’s methods vilified who had seen her patting, pulling, squeezing Rebecca from ugliness into beauty.
Now all was ready; the moment of fate was absolutely at hand; the fife and drum corps led the way and the States followed; but what actually happened Rebecca never knew; she lived through the hours in a waking dream. Every little detail was a facet of light that reflected sparkles, and among them all she was fairly dazzled. The brass band played inspiring strains; the mayor spoke eloquently on great themes; the people cheered; then the rope on which so much depended was put into the children’s hands, they applied superhuman strength to their task, and the flag mounted, mounted, smoothly and slowly, and slowly unwound and stretched itself until its splendid size and beauty were revealed against the maples and pines and blue New England sky.
Then after cheers upon cheers and after a patriotic chorus by the church choirs, the State of Maine mounted the platform, vaguely conscious that she was to recite a poem, though for the life of her she could not remember a single word.
“Speak up loud and clear, Rebecky,” whispered Uncle Sam in the front row, but she could scarcely hear her own voice when, tremblingly, she began her first line. After that she gathered strength, and the poem “said itself,” while the dream went on. She saw her friend Adam Ladd leaning against a tree; Aunt Jane and Aunt Miranda palpitating with nervousness; Clara Belle Simpson gazing cross-eyed but adoring from a seat on the side; and in the far, far distance, on the very outskirts of the crowd, a tall man standing in a wagon—a tall, loose-jointed man with red upturned mustaches, and a gaunt white horse whose head was turned toward the Acreville road.
Loud applause greeted the State of Maine, the slender little white-clad figure standing on the mossy boulder that had been used as the centre of the platform. The sun came up from behind a great maple and shone full on the star-spangled banner, making it more dazzling than ever, so that its beauty drew all eyes upward.
Abner Simpson lifted his vagrant shifting gaze to its softly fluttering folds and its splendid massing of colors, thinking:—
“I don’t know’s anybody’d ought to steal a flag, the thunderin’ idjuts seem to set such store by it, and what is it, anyway? Nothin’ but a sheet o’ buntin’!’”
Nothing but a sheet of bunting? He looked curiously at the rapt faces of the mothers, their babies asleep in their arms; the parted lips and shining eyes of the white-clad girls; at Cap’n Lord, who had been in Libby Prison, and Nat Strout, who had left an arm at Bull Run; at the friendly, jostling crowd of farmers, happy, eager, absorbed, their throats ready to burst with cheers. Then the breeze served, and he heard Rebecca’s clear voice saying:—
“For it’s your star, my star, all the stars together,
That make our country’s flag so proud
To float in the bright fall weather!”
“Talk about stars! She’s got a couple of ‘em right in her head,” thought Simpson. “If I ever seen a young one like that layin’ on anybody’s doorstep I’d hook her quicker’n a wink, though I’ve got plenty to home, the Lord knows! And I wouldn’t swap her off neither.—Spunky little creeter, too; settin’ up in the wagon lookin’ ‘bout’s big as a pint o’ cider, but keepin’ right after the flag!—I vow I’m ‘bout sick o’ my job! Never with the crowd, allers jest on the outside, ‘s if I wa’n’t