Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin (fun books to read for adults TXT) đ
- Author: Kate Douglas Wiggin
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âI sâpose you might call it a main street, anâ your aunt Sawyer lives on it, but there ainât no stores nor mills, anâ itâs an awful one-horse village! You have to go âcross the river anâ get on to our side if you want to see anything goinâ on.â
âIâm almost sorry,â she sighed, âbecause it would be so grand to drive down a real main street, sitting high up like this behind two splendid horses, with my pink sunshade up, and everybody in town wondering who the bunch of lilacs and the hair trunk belongs to. It would be just like the beautiful lady in the parade. Last summer the circus came to Temperance, and they had a procession in the morning. Mother let us all walk in and wheel Mira in the baby carriage, because we couldnât afford to go to the circus in the afternoon. And there were lovely horses and animals in cages, and clowns on horseback; and at the very end came a little red and gold chariot drawn by two ponies, and in it, sitting on a velvet cushion, was the snake charmer, all dressed in satin and spangles. She was so beautiful beyond compare, Mr. Cobb, that you had to swallow lumps in your throat when you looked at her, and little cold feelings crept up and down your back. Donât you know how I mean? Didnât you ever see anybody that made you feel like that?â
Mr. Cobb was more distinctly uncomfortable at this moment than he had been at any one time during the eventful morning, but he evaded the point dexterously by saying, âThere ainât no harm, as I can see, in our makinâ the grand entry in the biggest style we can. Iâll take the whip out, set up straight, anâ drive fast; you hold your boâquet in your lap, anâ open your little red parasol, anâ weâll jest make the natives stare!â
The childâs face was radiant for a moment, but the glow faded just as quickly as she said, âI forgotâ mother put me inside, and maybe sheâd want me to be there when I got to aunt Mirandyâs. Maybe Iâd be more genteel inside, and then I wouldnât have to be jumped down and my clothes fly up, but could open the door and step down like a lady passenger. Would you please stop a minute, Mr. Cobb, and let me change?â
The stage driver good-naturedly pulled up his horses, lifted the excited little creature down, opened the door, and helped her in, putting the lilacs and the pink sunshade beside her.
âWeâve had a great trip,â he said, âand weâve got real well acquainted, havenât we?âYou wonât forget about Milltown?â
âNever!â she exclaimed fervently; âand youâre sure you wonât, either?â
âNever! Cross my heart!â vowed Mr. Cobb solemnly, as he remounted his perch; and as the stage rumbled down the village street between the green maples, those who looked from their windows saw a little brown elf in buff calico sitting primly on the back seat holding a great bouquet tightly in one hand and a pink parasol in the other. Had they been farsighted enough they might have seen, when the stage turned into the side dooryard of the old brick house, a calico yoke rising and falling tempestuously over the beating heart beneath, the red color coming and going in two pale cheeks, and a mist of tears swimming in two brilliant dark eyes.
Rebeccaâs journey had ended.
âThereâs the stage turninâ into the Sawyer girlsâ dooryard,â said Mrs. Perkins to her husband. âThat must be the niece from up Temperance way. It seems they wrote to Aurelia and invited Hannah, the oldest, but Aurelia said she could spare Rebecca better, if ât was all the same to Mirandy ânâ Jane; so itâs Rebecca thatâs come. Sheâll be good compâny for our Emma Jane, but I donât believe theyâll keep her three months! She looks black as an Injun what I can see of her; black and kind of up-an-cominâ. They used to say that one oâ the Randalls married a Spanish woman, somebody that was teachinâ music and languages at a boardinâ school. Lorenzo was dark complected, you remember, and this child is, too. Well, I donât know as Spanish blood is any real disgrace, not if itâs a good ways back and the woman was respectable.â
IIREBECCAâS RELATIONS
They had been called the Sawyer girls when Miranda at eighteen, Jane at twelve, and Aurelia at eight participated in the various activities of village life; and when Riverboro fell into a habit of thought or speech, it saw no reason for falling out of it, at any rate in the same century. So although Miranda and Jane were between fifty and sixty at the time this story opens, Riverboro still called them the Sawyer girls. They were spinsters; but Aurelia, the youngest, had made what she called a romantic marriage and what her sisters termed a mighty poor speculation. âThereâs worse things than beinâ old maids,â they said; whether they thought so is quite another matter.
The element of romance in Aureliaâs marriage existed chiefly in the fact that Mr. L. D. M. Randall had a soul above farming or trading and was a votary of the Muses. He taught the weekly singing-school (then a feature of village life) in half a dozen neighboring towns, he played the violin and âcalled offâ at dances, or evoked rich harmonies from church melodeons on Sundays. He taught certain uncouth lads, when they were of an age to enter society, the intricacies of contra dances, or the steps of the schottische and mazurka, and he was a marked figure in all social assemblies, though conspicuously absent from town-meetings and the purely masculine gatherings at the store or tavern or bridge.
His hair was a little longer, his hands a little whiter, his shoes a little thinner, his manner a trifle more polished, than that of his soberer mates; indeed the only department of life in which he failed to shine was the making of sufficient money to live upon. Luckily he had no responsibilities; his father and his twin brother had died when he was yet a boy, and his mother, whose only noteworthy achievement had been the naming of her twin sons Marquis de Lafayette and Lorenzo de Medici Randall, had supported herself and educated her child by making coats up to the very day of her death. She was wont to say plaintively, âIâm afraid the faculties was too much divided up between my twins. L. D. M. is awful talented, but I guess M. D. L. would âaâ ben the practical one if heâd âaâ lived.â
âL. D. M. was practical enough to get the richest girl in the village,â replied Mrs. Robinson.
âYes,â sighed his mother, âthere it is again; if the twins could âaâ married Aurelia Sawyer, ât would âaâ been all right. L. D. M. was talented ânough to GET Reelyâs money, but M. D. L. would âaâ ben practical ânough to have KEPâ it.â
Aureliaâs share of the modest Sawyer property had been put into one thing after another by the handsome and luckless Lorenzo de Medici. He had a graceful and poetic way of making an investment for each new son and daughter that blessed their union. âA birthday present for our child, Aurelia,â he would say,ââa little nest-egg for the future;â but Aurelia once remarked in a moment of bitterness that the hen never lived that could sit on those eggs and hatch anything out of them.
Miranda and Jane had virtually washed their hands of Aurelia when she married Lorenzo de Medici Randall. Having exhausted the resources of Riverboro and its immediate vicinity, the unfortunate couple had moved on and on in a steadily decreasing scale of prosperity until they had reached Temperance, where they had settled down and invited fate to do its worst, an invitation which was promptly accepted. The maiden sisters at home wrote to Aurelia two or three times a year, and sent modest but serviceable presents to the children at Christmas, but refused to assist L. D. M. with the regular expenses of his rapidly growing family. His last investment, made shortly before the birth of Miranda (named in a lively hope of favors which never came), was a small farm two miles from Temperance. Aurelia managed this herself, and so it proved a home at least, and a place for the unsuccessful Lorenzo to die and to be buried from, a duty somewhat too long deferred, many thought, which he performed on the day of Miraâs birth.
It was in this happy-go-lucky household that Rebecca had grown up. It was just an ordinary family; two or three of the children were handsome and the rest plain, three of them rather clever, two industrious, and two commonplace and dull. Rebecca had her fatherâs facility and had been his aptest pupil. She âcarriedâ the alto by ear, danced without being taught, played the melodeon without knowing the notes. Her love of books she inherited chiefly from her mother, who found it hard to sweep or cook or sew when there was a novel in the house. Fortunately books were scarce, or the children might sometimes have gone ragged and hungry.
But other forces had been at work in Rebecca, and the traits of unknown forbears had been wrought into her fibre. Lorenzo de Medici was flabby and boneless; Rebecca was a thing of fire and spirit: he lacked energy and courage; Rebecca was plucky at two and dauntless at five. Mrs. Randall and Hannah had no sense of humor; Rebecca possessed and showed it as soon as she could walk and talk.
She had not been able, however, to borrow her parentsâ virtues and those of other generous ancestors and escape all the weaknesses in the calendar. She had not her sister Hannahâs patience or her brother Johnâs sturdy staying power. Her will was sometimes willfulness, and the ease with which she did most things led her to be impatient of hard tasks or long ones. But whatever else there was or was not, there was freedom at Randallâs farm. The children grew, worked, fought, ate what and slept where they could; loved one another and their parents pretty well, but with no tropical passion; and educated themselves for nine months of the year, each one in his own way.
As a result of this method Hannah, who could only have been developed by forces applied from without, was painstaking, humdrum, and limited; while Rebecca, who apparently needed nothing but space to develop in, and a knowledge of terms in which to express herself, grew and grew and grew, always from within outward. Her forces of one sort and another had seemingly been set in motion when she was born; they needed no daily spur, but moved of their own accordâtowards what no one knew, least of all Rebecca herself. The field for the exhibition of her creative instinct was painfully small, and the only use she had made of it as yet was to leave eggs out of the corn bread one day and milk another, to see how it would turn out; to part Fannyâs hair sometimes in the middle, sometimes on the right, and sometimes on the left side; and to play all sorts of fantastic pranks with the children, occasionally bringing them to the table as fictitious or historical characters found in her favorite books. Rebecca amused her mother and her family generally, but she never was counted of serious importance, and though considered âsmartâ and old for her age, she was never thought superior in any way. Aureliaâs experience of genius, as exemplified in the deceased Lorenzo de Medici led her into a greater admiration of plain,
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