Chapter II

School had been closed for two weeks now, and one afternoon Rebecca leaned over her gate and surveyed the landscape. Emma Jane Perkins was watching from her doorway, and Alice Robinson from hers, while several other girls were concealed behind board-piles or clumps of trees, waiting for the hour of play to arrive. Suddenly all hearts leaped with gladness, for Rebecca was seen to remove the brown ribbon from one of her braids and put it in her apron pocket, and to substitute a piece of bright pink, legal tape.

"What are you doing to your hair, Rebecca?" asked Aunt Jane, coming to the door unexpectedly.

"Changing one of my ribbons, Aunt Jane."

"What for, child?"

"Well, it's a secret, Aunt Jane, but I don't mind telling you a little bit: it's a signal. I can't fire a cannon or build a bonfire on the heights, so this is just a way of telling the girls I've got an idea."

"I should think they might guess that, any time, without your decking yourself out like a horse at a cattle fair," smiled Aunt Jane.

Rebecca laughed and shook her long braids. "But it's such a nice, ladylike, romantic way of signaling, Aunt Jane!"

"Well, maybe it is; but take it off before you come in the house, won't you?"

"As if I wouldn't, Aunt Jane? And, anyway, my idea is new, but it joins on to something you and Aunt Miranda know about already--Miss Roxy's quilt."

"Oh!" sighed Miss Jane comfortably. "If it's nothing worse than that I won't worry."

"It's a beautiful idea!" and Rebecca glowed. "The girls will love it, and Miss Dearborn, and the minister's wife; and you would, too, but I mustn't show partiality between you and Aunt Miranda. The mothers will think it's silly, so it's got to be kept secret."

"I don't know. They all approved of your making extra patchwork, and if you're any happier to put your work together so that it will amount to something, and if you want to give it away, why, it's all to your credit, and it doesn't cost any one family much. You'd better give up the notion of quilting it, Rebecca."

"Oh, why, Aunt Jane?"

"Because you five girls could never finish it by cold weather. I'll put it in the frame for you and teach you how to 'tack' it."

"We all know how to quilt," objected Rebecca.

"Yes, but you don't know what it is to take those thousands of little stitches all in even rows. You can't break your thread, or make knots, or pucker the quilt; and the part near the edges of the frame is very hard to do neatly. Have you chosen your pattern?"

"No, we'll choose the pattern this afternoon. We've looked at all the spare bedroom quilts there are in Riverboro. There's Mrs. Perkins's 'Goose Chase,' and Mrs. Robinson's 'Church Steps,' Mrs. Milliken's 'Rising Sun,' Mrs. Watson's 'Job's Troubles,' Mrs. Meserve's 'Duck's Foot in the Mud,' and--"

Miss Jane put her fingers in her ears. "Goodness gracious, Rebecca, how you do run on! I hope you don't forget your Aunt Miranda's 'Johnny Round the Corner'; but don't you girls fly too high or you'll come down heavy. You can get gay, pretty pieces and put four in a square and then join your squares corner to corner with plain ones in between. Perhaps Mrs. Perkins will have some new goods to help you out, and that'll set off the patchwork. Now, it's four o'clock and you can go and play, Rebecca."

Rebecca sped like an arrow shot from a bow, Emma Jane sped contemporaneously; Alice Robinson, Candace Milliken, and Persis Watson appeared as suddenly as if they had been concealed in woodchuck holes.

Miss Jane looked wistfully after the five slim little figures disappearing with arms about one another's waists and heads close together. "A child makes a wonderful difference," she thought. "I don't know what Aurelia's other children are like, but I can't think how she could part with Rebecca, even to get her educated! Anyhow it's put the sun back into the sky for me!"