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reskin’ your liberty ‘n’ reputation jest the same!—Countin’ the poor pickin’s ‘n’ the time I lose in jail I might most’s well be done with it ‘n’ work out by the day, as the folks want me to; I’d make ‘bout’s much, n’ I don’ know’s it would be any harder!”
He could see Rebecca stepping down from the platform, while his own red-headed little girl stood up on her bench, waving her hat with one hand, her handkerchief with the other, and stamping with both feet.
Now a man sitting beside the mayor rose from his chair and Abner heard him call:—
“Three cheers for the women who made the flag!”
“Hip, hip, hurrah!”
“Three cheers for the State of Maine!”
“Hip, hip, hurrah!”
“Three cheers for the girl who saved the flag from the hands of the enemy!”
“Hip, hip, hurrah!”
It was the Edgewood minister, whose full, vibrant voice was of the sort to move a crowd. His words rang out into the clear air and were carried from lip to lip. Hands clapped, feet stamped, hats swung, while the loud huzzahs might almost have wakened the echoes on old Mount Ossipee.
The tall, loose-jointed man sat down in the wagon suddenly and took up the reins.
“They’re gettin’ a little mite personal, and I guess it’s ‘bout time for you to be goin’, Simpson!”
The tone was jocular, but the red mustaches drooped, and the half-hearted cut he gave to start the white mare on her homeward journey showed that he was not in his usual reckless mood.
“It’s a lie!” he burst out in a vindictive undertone, as the mare swung into her long gait. “It’s a lie! I thought ‘t was somebody’s wash! I ain’t an enemy!”
While the crowd at the raising dispersed in happy family groups to their picnics in the woods; while the Goddess 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 did n’t expect to see me back to-night, did you?” he asked satirically; “leastwise not with this same horse? Well, I’m here! You need n’t be scairt to look under the wagon-seat, there ain’t nothin’ there, not even my supper, so I hope you’re suited for once! No, I guess I ain’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 ain’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 is 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.
Other Novels:
A SUMMER IN A CAÑON:
A California Story
III. Life in the Cañon—The Heir Apparent Loses Himself
I. From the Countess Paulina Olivera to Her Friend and Confidante, The Lady Elsie Howard
III. The Knight of the Spectacles Takes the Quill
V. The Camp Poetess Adds Her Store of Mental Riches to the General Fund
V. The Forest of Arden—Good News
VI. Queen Elsie Visits the Court
VII. Polly’s Birthday: First Half in Which She Rejoices at the Mere Fact of Her Existence
VIII. Polly’s Birthday: Second Half
Chapter I.
Preparation and Departure
‘One to make ready, and two to prepare.’
It was nine o’clock one sunny California morning, and Geoffrey Strong stood under the live-oak trees in Las Flores Cañon, with a pot of black paint in one hand and a huge brush in the other. He could have handled these implements to better purpose and with better grace had not his arms been firmly held by three laughing girls, who pulled not wisely, but too well. He was further incommoded by the presence of a small urchin who lay on the dusty ground beneath his feet, fastening an upward clutch on the legs of his trousers.
There were three large canvas tents directly in front of them, yet no one of these seemed to be the object of dissension, but rather a redwood board, some three feet in length, which was nailed on a tree near by.
‘Camp Frolic! Please let us name it Camp Frolic!’ cried Bell Winship, with a persuasive twitch of her cousin’s sleeve.
‘No,