THE FLAG-RAISING(升旗)

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THE FLAG-RAISING

by KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN

THE FLAG-RAISING

A DIFFERENCE IN HEARTS

"I DON'know as I cal'lated to be the makin' of any child," Miranda had

said as she folded Aurelia's letter and laid it in the light- stand drawer. "I

s'posed of course Aurelia would send us the one we asked for, but it's just

like her to palm off that wild young one on somebody else." "You

remember we said that Rebecca, or even Jenny might come, in case

Hannah could n't," interposed Jane.

"I know we did, but we hadn't any notion it would turn out that way,"

grumbled Miranda. "She was a mite of a thing when we saw her three

years ago," ventured Jane; "she's had time to improve." "And time to grow

worse!" "Won't it be kind of a privilege to put her on the right track?"

asked Jane timidly. "I don' know about the privilege part; it'll be

considerable work, I guess. If her mother hasn't got her on the right track

by now, she won't take to it herself all of a sudden." This depressed and

depressing frame of mind had lasted until th

eventful day dawned on which Rebecca was to arrive.

"If she makes as much work after she comes as she has before, we

might as well give up hope of ever gettin' any rest," sighed Miranda as she

hung the dish towels on the barberry bushes at the side door. "But we

should have had to clean house, Rebecca or no Rebecca," urged Jane; "and

I can't see why you've scrubbed and washed and baked as you have for

that one child, nor why you've about bought out Watson's stock of dry

goods." "I know Aurelia if you don't," responded Miranda. "I've seen her

house, and I've seen that batch o' children, wearin' one another's clothes

and never carin' whether they had 'em on right side out or not; I know

what they've had to live and dress on, and so do you. That child will like

as not come here with a bundle o' things borrowed from the rest o' the

family. She'll have Hannah's shoes and John's undershirts and Mark's

socks most likely. I suppose she never had a thimble on her finger in her

life, but she'll know the feelin' o' one before she's been here many days.

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I've bought a piece of unbleached muslin and a piece o' brown gingham

for her to make up; that'll keep her busy. Of course she won't pick up

anything after herself; she probably never saw a duster, and she'll be as

hard to train into our ways as if she was a heathen." "She'll make a

dif'rence," acknowledged Jane, "but she may turn out more biddable than

we think." "She'll mind when she's spoken to, biddable or not," remarked

Miranda with a shake of the last towel. Miranda Sawyer had a heart, of

course, but she had never used it for any other purpose than the pumping

and circulating of blood. She was just, conscientious, economical,

industrious; a regular attendant at church and Sunday-school, and a

member of the State Missionary and Bible societies, but in the presence of

all these chilly virtues you longed for one warm little fault, or lacking that,

one likable failing, something to make you sure that she was thoroughly

alive. She had never had any education other than that of the

neighborhood district school, for her desires and ambitions had all pointed

to the management of the house, the farm, and the dairy. Jane, on the other

hand, had gone to an academy, and also to a boarding-school for young

ladies; so had Aurelia; and after all the years that had elapsed there was

still a slight difference in language and in manner between the elder and

the two younger sisters. Jane, too, had had the inestimable advantage of a

sorrow; not the natural grief at the loss of her aged father and mother, for

she had been resigned to let them go; but something far deeper. She was

engaged to marry young, Tom Carter, who had nothing to marry on, it is

true, but who was sure to have, some time or other. Then the war broke out.

Tom enlisted at the first call. Up to that time Jane had loved him with a

quiet, friendly sort of affection, and had given her country a mild emotion

of the same sort. But the strife, the danger, the anxiety of the time, set new

currents of feeling in motion. Life became something other than the three

meals a day, the round of cooking, washing, sewing, and churchgoing.

Personal gossip vanished from the village conversation. Big things took

the place of trifling ones, --sacred sorrows of wives and mothers, pangs of

fathers and husbands, self-denials, sympathies, new desire to bear one

another's burdens. Men and women grew fast in those days of the nation's

THE FLAG-RAISING

trouble and danger, and Jane awoke from the vague dull dream she had

hitherto called life to new hopes, new fears, new purposes. Then after a

year's anxiety, a year when one never looked in the newspaper without

dread and sickness of suspense, came the telegram saying that Tom was

wounded; and without so much as asking Miranda's leave, she packed her

trunk and started for the South. She was in time to hold Tom's hand

through hours of pain; to show him for once the heart of a prim New

England girl when it is ablaze with love and grief; to put her arms about

him so that he could have a home to die in, and that was all;-- all, but it

served. It carried her through weary months of nursing--nursing of other

soldiers for Tom's dear sake; it sent her home a better woman; and though

she had never left Riverboro in all the years that lay between, and had

grown into the counterfeit presentment of her sister and of all other thin,

spare, New England spinsters, it was something of a counterfeit, and

underneath was still the faint echo of that wild heartbeat of her girlhood.

Having learned the trick of beating and loving and suffering, the poor

faithful heart persisted, although it lived on memories and carried on its

sentimental operations mostly in secret. "You're soft, Jane," said Miranda

once; "you allers was soft, and you allers will be. If't wa'n't for me keeping

you stiffened up, I b'lieve you'd leak out o' the house into the dooryard." It

was already past the appointed hour for Mr. Cobb and his coach to be

lumbering down the street. "The stage ought to be here," said Miranda,

glancing nervously at the tall clock for the twentieth time. "I guess

everything's done. I've tacked up two thick towels back of her washstand

and put a mat under her slop-jar; but children are awful hard on furniture. I

expect we sha'n't know this house a year from now." Jane's frame of mind

was naturally depressed and timorous, having been affected by Miranda's

gloomy presages of evil to come. The only difference between the sisters

in this matter was that while Miranda only wondered how they could

endure Rebecca, Jane had flashes of inspiration in which she wondered

how Rebecca would endure them. It was in one of these flashes that she

ran up the back stairs to put a vase of apple blossoms and a red tomato-

pincushion on Rebecca's bureau. The stage rumbled to the side door of the

THE FLAG-RAISING

brick house, and Mr. Cobb handed Rebecca out like a real lady passenger.

She alighted with great circumspection, put a bunch of flowers in her aunt

Miranda's hand, and received her salute; it could hardly be called a kiss

without injuring the fair name of that commodity. "You need n't 'a'bothered

to bring flowers," remarked that gracious and tactful lady; "the garden's

always full of 'em here when it comes time." Jane then kissed Rebecca,

giving a somewhat better imitation of the real thing than her sister. "Put

the trunk in the entry, Jeremiah, and we'll get it carried upstairs this

afternoon," she said. "I'll take it up for ye now, if ye say the word, girls."

"No, no; don't leave the horses; somebody'll be comin' past, and we can

call 'em in." "Well, good-by, Rebecca; good-day, Mirandy'n'Jane. You've

got a lively little girl there. I guess she'll be a first-rate company keeper."

Miss Sawyer shuddered openly at the adjective "lively" as applied to a

child; her belief being that though children might be seen, if absolutely

necessary, they certainly should never be heard if she could help it. "We're

not much used to noise, Jane and me," she remarked acidly. Mr. Cobb saw

that he had spoken indiscreetly, but he was too unused to argument to

explain himself readily, so he drove away, trying to think by what safer

word than "lively" he might have described his interesting little passenger.

"I'll take you up and show you your room, Rebecca," Miss Miranda said.

"Shut the mosquito nettin' door tight behind you, so's to keep the flies out;

it ain't fly time yet, but I want you to start right; take your parcel along

with you and then you won't have to come down for it; always make your

head save your heels. Rub your feet on that braided rug; hang your hat and

cape in the entry as you go past." "It's my best hat," said Rebecca. "Take it

upstairs then and put it in the clothes-press; but I shouldn't 'a' thought

you'd 'a' worn your best hat on the stage." "It's my only hat," explained

Rebecca. "My every-day hat was n't good enough to bring. Sister Fanny's

going to finish it." "Lay your parasol in the entry closet."

"Do you mind if I keep it in my room, please? It always seems safer."

"There ain't any thieves hereabouts, and if there was, I guess they

wouldn't make for your sunshade; but come along. Remember to always

go up the back way; we don't use the front stairs on account o' the carpet;

THE FLAG-RAISING

take care o' the turn and don't ketch your foot; look to your right and go in.

When you've washed your face and hands and brushed your hair you can

come down, and by and by we'll unpack your trunk and get you settled

before supper. Ain't you got your dress on hind side foremost?" Rebecca

drew her chin down and looked at the row of smoked pearl buttons

running up and down the middle of her flat little chest. "Hind side

foremost? Oh, I see! No, that's all right. If you have seven children you

can't keep buttonin' and unbuttonin' 'em all the time--they have to do

themselves. We're always buttoned up in front at our house. Mira's only

three, but she's buttoned up in front, too." Miranda said nothing as she

closed the door, but her looks were more eloquent than words. Rebecca

stood perfectly still in the centre of the floor and looked about her. There

was a square of oilcloth in front of each article of furniture and a drawn-in

rug beside the single four poster, which was covered with a fringed white

dimity counterpane. Everything was as neat as wax, but the ceilings were

much higher than Rebecca was accustomed to. It was a north room, and

the window, which was long and narrow, looked out on the back buildings

and the barn. It was not the room, which was far more comfortable than

Rebecca's own at Sunnybrook Farm, nor the lack of view, nor yet the long

journey, for she was not conscious of weariness; it was not the fear of a

strange place, for she adored new places and new sensations; it was

because of some curious blending of uncomprehended emotions that

Rebecca stood her beloved pink sunshade in the corner, tore off her best

hat, flung it on the bureau with the porcupine quills on the under side, and

stripping down the dimity spread, precipitated herself into the middle of

the bed and pulled the counterpane over her head. In a moment the door

opened with a clatter of the latch. Knocking was a refinement quite

unknown in Riverboro, and if it had been heard of, it would never have

been wasted on a child. Miss Miranda entered, and as her eye wandered

about the vacant room, it fell upon a white and tempestuous ocean of

counterpane, an ocean breaking into strange movements of wave and crest

and billow. "Rebecca!" The tone in which the word was voiced gave it all

the effect of having been shouted from the housetops. A dark ruffled head

THE FLAG-RAISING

and two frightened eyes appeared above the dimity spread. "What are you

layin' on your good bed in the daytime for, messin' up the feathers, and

dirtyin' the comforter with your dusty boots?" Rebecca rose guiltily. There

seemed no excuse to make. Her offense was beyond explanation or

apology. "I'm sorry, Aunt Mirandy-something came over me; I don't know

what." "Well, if it comes over you very soon again we'll have to find out

what 't is. Spread your bed up smooth this minute, for 'Bijah Flagg's

bringin' your trunk upstairs, and I wouldn't let him see such a cluttered-up

room for anything; he'd tell it all over town." When Mr. Cobb had put up

his horses that night he carried a kitchen chair to the side of his wife, who

was sitting on the back porch.

"I brought a little Randall girl down on the stage from Maplewood to-

day, mother. She's related to the Sawyer girls an' is goin' to live with 'em,"

he said, as he sat down and began to whittle. "She's Aurelia's child, the

sister that ran away with Susan Randall's son just before we come here to

live."

"How old a child?"

"Bout ten, or somewhere along there, an' small for her age; but land!

she might be a hundred to hear her talk! She kept me jumpin' tryin' to

answer her! Of all the queer children I ever come across she's the queerest.

She ain't no beauty--her face is all eyes; but if she ever grows up to them

eyes an' fills out a little she'll make folks stare. Land, mother! I wish 't you

could 'a' heard her talk." "I don't see what she had to talk about, a child

like that, to a stranger," replied Mrs. Cobb. "Stranger or no stranger, 't

would n't make no difference to her. She'd talk to a pump or a grindstone;

she'd talk to herself ruther 'n keep still." "What did she talk about?

"Blamed if I can repeat any of it. She kept me so surprised I didn't have

my wits about me. She had a little pink sunshade--it kind o' looked like a

doll's umberella, 'n' she clung to it like a burr to a woolen stockin'. I

advised her to open it up--the sun was so hot; but she said no, 't would

fade, an' she tucked it under her dress. 'It's the dearest thing in life to

me,' says she, 'but it's a dreadful care.' Them's the very words, an' it's all

the words I remember. 'It's the dearest thing in life to me, but it's an

THE FLAG-RAISING

awful care!'"--here Mr.Cobb laughed aloud as he tipped his chair back

against the side of the house. "There was another thing, but I can't get it

right exactly. She was talkin' 'bout the circus parade an' the snake charmer

in a gold chariot, an' says she, 'She was so beautiful beyond compare, Mr.

Cobb, that it made you have lumps in your throat to look at her.' She'll be

comin' over to see you, mother, an' you can size her up for yourself, I don'

know how she'll git on with Mirandy Sawyer-- poor little soul!" This

doubt was more or less openly expressed in Riverboro, which, however,

had two opinions on the subject; one that it was a most generous thing in

the Sawyer girls to take one of Aurelia's children to educate, the other that

the education would be bought at a price wholly out of proportion to its

real value. Rebecca's first letters to her mother would seem to indicate that

she cordially coincided with the latter view of the situation,

THE FLAG-RAISING

REBECCA'S POINT OF VIEW

DEAR MOTHER,--I am safely here. My dress was not much tumbled

and Aunt Jane helped me press it out. I like Mr. Cobb very much. He

chews tobacco but throws newspapers straight up to the doors of the

houses. I rode outside with him a little while, but got inside before I got to

Aunt Miranda's house. I did not want to, but thought you would like it

better. Miranda is such a long word that I think I will say Aunt M. and

Aunt J. in my Sunday letters. Aunt J. has given me a dictionary to look up

all the hard words in. It takes a good deal of time and I am glad people can

talk without stoping to spell. It is much eesier to talk than write and much

more fun. The brick house looks just the same as you have told us. The

parler is splendid and gives YOU creeps and chills when you look in the

door. The furnature is ellergant too, and all the rooms but there are no

good sitting-down places exsept in the kitchen. The same cat is here but

they never save the kittens and the cat is too old to play with. Hannah told

me once you ran away to be married to father and I can see it would be

nice. If Aunt M. would run away I think I should like to live with Aunt J.

She does not hate me as bad as Aunt M. does. Tell Mark he can have my

paint box, but I should like him to keep the red cake in case I come home

again. I hope Hannah and John do mot get tired doing my work.

Your afectionate friend

REBECCA.

P. S. Please give the piece of poetry to John because he likes my

poetry even when it is not very good. This piece is not very good but it is

true but I hope you won't mind what is in it as you ran away.

This house is dark and dull and dreer No light doth shine from far or

near Its like the tomb.

And those of us who live herein Are almost as dead as serrafim

Though not as good.

My guardian angel is asleep At leest he doth not virgil keep Ah! Woe

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THEFLAG-RAISING1THEFLAG-RAISINGbyKATEDOUGLASWIGGINTHEFLAG-RAISING2IADIFFERENCEINHEARTS"IDON'knowasIcal'latedtobethemakin'ofanychild,"MirandahadsaidasshefoldedAurelia'sletterandlaiditinthelight-standdrawer."Is'posedofcourseAureliawouldsendustheoneweaskedfor,butit'sjustlikehertopalmoffthatwildyoungone...

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