Children's Book Classics - Kate Douglas Wiggin Edition: 11 Novels & 120+ Short Stories for Children. Kate Douglas Wiggin
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Clara Belle kissed Rebecca fervently, and started on her homeward walk, while Rebecca waited at the top of the long hill, fluttering her handkerchief as a signal.
“Mr. Aladdin! Mr. Aladdin!” she cried, as the horse and wagon came nearer.
Adam Ladd drew up quickly at the sound of the eager young voice.
“Well, well; here is Rebecca Rowena fluttering along the highroad like a red-winged blackbird! Are you going to fly home, or drive with me?”
Rebecca clambered into the carriage, laughing and blushing with delight at his nonsense and with joy at seeing him again.
“Clara Belle and I were just talking about you this minute, and I’m so glad you came this way, for there’s something very important to ask you about,” she began, rather breathlessly.
“No doubt,” laughed Adam Ladd, who had become, in the course of his acquaintance with Rebecca, a sort of high court of appeals; “I hope the premium banquet lamp doesn’t smoke as it grows older?”
“Now, Mr. Aladdin, you WILL not remember nicely. Mr. Simpson swapped off the banquet lamp when he was moving the family to Acreville; it’s not the lamp at all, but once, when you were here last time, you said you’d make up your mind what you were going to give me for Christmas.”
“Well,” and “I do remember that much quite nicely.”
“Well, is it bought?”
“No, I never buy Christmas presents before Thanksgiving.”
“Then, DEAR Mr. Aladdin, would you buy me something different, something that I want to give away, and buy it a little sooner than Christmas?”
“That depends. I don’t relish having my Christmas presents given away. I like to have them kept forever in little girls’ bureau drawers, all wrapped in pink tissue paper; but explain the matter and perhaps I’ll change my mind. What is it you want?”
“I need a wedding ring dreadfully,” said Rebecca, “but it’s a sacred secret.”
Adam Ladd’s eyes flashed with surprise and he smiled to himself with pleasure. Had he on his list of acquaintances, he asked himself, a person of any age or sex so altogether irresistible and unique as this child? Then he turned to face her with the merry teasing look that made him so delightful to young people.
“I thought it was perfectly understood between us,” he said, “that if you could ever contrive to grow up and I were willing to wait, that I was to ride up to the brick house on my snow white”—
“Coal black,” corrected Rebecca, with a sparkling eye and a warning finger.
“Coal black charger; put a golden circlet on your lily white finger, draw you up behind me on my pillion”—
“And Emma Jane, too,” Rebecca interrupted.
“I think I didn’t mention Emma Jane,” argued Mr. Aladdin. “Three on a pillion is very uncomfortable. I think Emma Jane leaps on the back of a prancing chestnut, and we all go off to my castle in the forest.”
“Emma Jane never leaps, and she’d be afraid of a prancing chestnut,” objected Rebecca.
“Then she shall have a gentle cream-colored pony; but now, without any explanation, you ask me to buy you a wedding ring, which shows plainly that you are planning to ride off on a snow white—I mean coal black—charger with somebody else.”
Rebecca dimpled and laughed with joy at the nonsense. In her prosaic world no one but Adam Ladd played the game and answered the fool according to his folly. Nobody else talked delicious fairy-story twaddle but Mr. Aladdin.
“The ring isn’t for ME!” she explained carefully. “You know very well that Emma Jane nor I can’t be married till we’re through Quackenbos’s Grammar, Greenleaf’s Arithmetic, and big enough to wear long trails and run a sewing machine. The ring is for a friend.”
“Why doesn’t the groom give it to his bride himself?”
“Because he’s poor and kind of thoughtless, and anyway she isn’t a bride any more; she has three step and three other kind of children.”
Adam Ladd put the whip back in the socket thoughtfully, and then stooped to tuck in the rug over Rebecca’s feet and his own. When he raised his head again he asked: “Why not tell me a little more, Rebecca? I’m safe!”
Rebecca looked at him, feeling his wisdom and strength, and above all his sympathy. Then she said hesitatingly: “You remember I told you all about the Simpsons that day on your aunt’s porch when you bought the soap because I told you how the family were always in trouble and how much they needed a banquet lamp? Mr. Simpson, Clara Belle’s father, has always been very poor, and not always very good,—a little bit THIEVISH, you know—but oh, so pleasant and nice to talk to! And now he’s turning over a new leaf. And everybody in Riverboro liked Mrs. Simpson when she came here a stranger, because they were sorry for her and she was so patient, and such a hard worker, and so kind to the children. But where she lives now, though they used to know her when she was a girl, they’re not polite to her and don’t give her scrubbing and washing; and Clara belle heard our teacher say to Mrs. Fogg that the Acreville people were stiff, and despised her because she didn’t wear a wedding ring, like all the rest. And Clara Belle and I thought if they were so mean as that, we’d love to give her one, and then she’d be happier and have more work; and perhaps Mr. Simpson if he gets along better will buy her a breast-pin and earrings, and she’ll be fitted out like the others. I know Mrs. Peter Meserve is looked up to by everybody in Edgewood on account of her gold bracelets and moss agate necklace.”
Adam turned again to meet the luminous, innocent eyes that glowed under the delicate brows and long lashes, feeling as he had more than once felt before, as if his worldly-wise, grown-up thoughts had been bathed in some purifying spring.
“How shall you send the ring to Mrs. Simpson?” he asked, with interest.
“We haven’t settled yet; Clara Belle’s afraid to do it, and thinks I could manage better. Will the ring cost much? Because, of course, if it does, I must ask Aunt Jane first. There are things I have to ask Aunt Miranda, and others that belong to Aunt Jane.”
“It costs the merest trifle. I’ll buy one and bring it to you, and we’ll consult about it; but I think as you’re great friends with Mr. Simpson you’d better send it to him in a letter, letters being your strong point! It’s a present a man ought to give his own wife, but it’s worth trying, Rebecca. You and Clara Belle can manage it between you, and I’ll stay in the background where nobody will see me.”
Ninth Chronicle.
The Green Isle
Many a green isle needs must be
In the deep sea of misery,
Or the mariner, worn and wan,
Never thus could voyage on
Day and night and night and day,
Drifting on his weary way.
—Shelley
Meantime in these frosty autumn days life was crowded with events in the lonely Simpson house at Acreville.
The tumble-down dwelling stood on the edge of Pliney’s Pond; so called because old Colonel Richardson left his lands to be divided in five equal parts, each share to be chosen in turn by one of his five sons, Pliny, the eldest, having priority of choice.
Pliny Richardson, having little taste for farming, and being ardently fond of fishing, rowing, and swimming, acted up to his reputation of being “a little mite odd,” and took his whole twenty acres in water—hence Pliny’s Pond.
The eldest Simpson boy