Children's Book Classics - Kate Douglas Wiggin Edition: 11 Novels & 120+ Short Stories for Children. Kate Douglas Wiggin
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Uncle Jerry and Mr. Aladdin and Miss Dearborn liked my compositions, and I thought I’d better be a writer, for I must be something the minute I’m seventeen, or how shall we ever get the mortgage off the farm? But even that hope is taken away from me now, for Uncle Jerry made fun of my story Lancelot Or The Parted Lovers and I have decided to be a teacher like Miss Dearborn.
The pathetic announcement of a change in the career and life purposes of Rebecca was brought about by her reading the grown-up story to Mr. and Mrs. Jeremiah Cobb after supper in the orchard. Uncle Jerry was the person who had maintained all along that Riverboro people would not make a story; and Lancelot or The Parted Lovers was intended to refute that assertion at once and forever; an assertion which Rebecca regarded (quite truly) as untenable, though why she certainly never could have explained. Unfortunately Lancelot was a poor missionary, quite unfitted for the high achievements to which he was destined by the youthful novelist, and Uncle Jerry, though a stage-driver and no reading man, at once perceived the flabbiness and transparency of the Parted Lovers the moment they were held up to his inspection.
“You see Riverboro people WILL make a story!” asserted Rebecca triumphantly as she finished her reading and folded the paper. “And it all came from my noticing the river drivers’ tracks by the roadside, and wondering about them; and wondering always makes stories; the minister says so.”
“Ye-es,” allowed Uncle Jerry reflectively, tipping his chair back against the apple tree and forcing his slow mind to violent and instantaneous action, for Rebecca was his pride and joy; a person, in his opinion, of superhuman talent, one therefore to be “whittled into shape” if occasion demanded.
“It’s a Riverboro story, sure enough, because you’ve got the river and the bridge and the hill and the drivers all right there in it; but there’s something awful queer bout it; the folks don’t act Riverboro, and don’t talk Riverboro, cordin’ to my notions. I call it a reg’lar book story.”
“But,” objected Rebecca, “the people in Cinderella didn’t act like us, and you thought that was a beautiful story when I told it to you.”
“I know,” replied Uncle Jerry, gaining eloquence in the heat of argument. “They didn’t act like us, but ‘t any rate they acted like ‘emselves! Somehow they was all of a piece. Cinderella was a little too good, mebbe, and the sisters was most too thunderin’ bad to live on the face o’ the earth, and that fayry old lady that kep’ the punkin’ coach up her sleeve—well, anyhow, you jest believe that punkin’ coach, rats, mice, and all, when you’re hearin’ bout it, fore ever you stop to think it ain’t so.
“I don’ know how tis, but the folks in that Cinderella story seem to match together somehow; they’re all pow’ful onlikely—the prince feller with the glass slipper, and the hull bunch; but jest the same you kind o’ gulp em all down in a lump. But land, Rebecky, nobody’d swaller that there village maiden o’ your’n, and as for what’s-his-name Littlefield, that come out o’ them bushes, such a feller never ‘d a’ be’n IN bushes! No, Rebecky, you’re the smartest little critter there is in this township, and you beat your Uncle Jerry all holler when it comes to usin’ a lead pencil, but I say that ain’t no true Riverboro story! Look at the way they talk! What was that’ bout being BETROTHED’?”
“Betrothed is a genteel word for engaged to be married,” explained the crushed and chastened author; and it was fortunate the doting old man did not notice her eyes in the twilight, or he might have known that tears were not far away.
“Well, that’s all right, then; I’m as ignorant as Cooper’s cow when it comes to the dictionary. How about what’s-his-name callin’ the girl ‘Naysweet’?”
“I thought myself that sounded foolish,:” confessed Rebecca; “but it’s what the Doctor calls Cora when he tries to persuade her not to quarrel with his mother who comes to live with them. I know they don’t say it in Riverboro or Temperance, but I thought perhaps it was Boston talk.”
“Well, it ain’t!” asserted Mr. Cobb decisively. “I’ve druv Boston men up in the stage from Milltown many’s the time, and none of em ever said Naysweet to me, nor nothin’like it. They talked like folks, every mother’s son of em! If I’d a’ had that what’s-his-name on the harricane deck’ o’ the stage and he tried any naysweetin’ on me, I’d a’ pitched him into the cornfield, side o’ the road. I guess you ain’t growed up enough for that kind of a story, Rebecky, for your poetry can’t be beat in York County, that’s sure, and your compositions are good enough to read out loud in town meetin’ any day!”
Rebecca brightened up a little and bade the old couple her usual affectionate good night, but she descended the hill in a saddened mood. When she reached the bridge the sun, a ball of red fire, was setting behind Squire Bean’s woods. As she looked, it shone full on the broad, still bosom of the river, and for one perfect instant the trees on the shores were reflected, all swimming in a sea of pink. Leaning over the rail, she watched the light fade from crimson to carmine, from carmine to rose, from rose to amber, and from amber to gray. Then withdrawing Lancelot or the Parted Lovers from her apron pocket, she tore the pages into bits and dropped them into the water below with a sigh.
“Uncle Jerry never said a word about the ending!” she thought; “and that was so nice!”
And she was right; but while Uncle Jerry was an illuminating critic when it came to the actions and language of his Riverboro neighbors, he had no power to direct the young mariner when she “followed the gleam,” and used her imagination.
OUR SECRET SOCIETY
November, 187—
Our Secret society has just had a splendid picnic in Candace Milliken’s barn.
Our name is the B.O.S.S., and not a single boy in the village has been able to guess it. It means Braid Over Shoulder Society, and that is the sign. All the members wear one of their braids over the right shoulder in front; the president’s tied with red ribbon (I am the president) and all the rest tied with blue.
To attract the attention of another member when in company or at a public place we take the braid between the thumb and little finger and stand carelessly on one leg. This is the Secret Signal and the password is Sobb (B.O.S.S. spelled backwards) which was my idea and is thought rather uncommon.
One of the rules of the B.O.S.S. is that any member may be required to tell her besetting sin at any meeting, if asked to do so by a majority of the members.
This was Candace Milliken’s idea and much opposed by everybody, but when it came to a vote so many of the girls were afraid of offending Candace that they agreed because there was nobody else’s father and mother who would let us picnic in their barn and use their plow, harrow, grindstone, sleigh, carryall, pung, sled, and wheelbarrow, which we did and injured hardly anything.
They asked me to tell my besetting sin at the very first meeting, and it nearly killed me to do it because it is such a common greedy one. It is that I can’t bear to call the other girls when I have found a thick spot when we are out berrying in the summer time.
After I confessed, which made me dreadfully ashamed, every one of the girls seemed surprised and said they had never noticed that one but had each thought of something very different that I would be sure to think was my besetting sin. Then Emma Jane said that rather than tell hers she would resign from the Society and miss the picnic. So it made so much trouble that Candace gave up. We struck out the rule from the constitution and I had told my sin for nothing.
The reason we named ourselves the B.O.S.S. is that Minnie Smellie has had her head shaved after scarlet fever and has no braid, so she can’t be a member.
I don’t want her for a member but I can’t be happy thinking she will feel slighted, and it takes away half the pleasure of belonging to the Society myself and being president.
That, I think, is the principal trouble about doing mean and unkind things; that you can’t do wrong and feel right, or be bad and feel good. If you only could you could