Chapter III

Old Miss Roxanna Lyman lived half a mile up the river road and an eighth of a mile up a lane that led from it and stopped at her dooryard. Why the house was ever built there was a mystery. If you were a stranger in Riverboro and were walking up to play with the Simpson children and found everybody away from home, and had spied high-bush blueberries a little farther on, and chokecherry trees in full bearing in a green lane, that you had never noticed before, and had strayed along the grass-grown road that had known hardly a wagon wheel for years, you would finally have passed an obscuring clump of trees and come suddenly upon Miss Roxy's little black house.

At least that was what Rebecca did. The door was open, andsitting in a rocking-chair in the tiny entry was, as Rebecca reported to Miss Jane later, "the very most sorrowfullest old lady any one had ever seen." No one could have told her age. She was slight and spare; she was huddled in a gray shawl; the wrinkles in her face--wrinkles of pain, anxiety, grief, poverty, and foreboding--fairly made a lattice-work on the skin. You knew by looking at her that no one had gone out from the black house in the morning and no one was coming back to it at night.

Rebecca had heard of her and instantly asked: "Are you Miss Roxy Lyman? Please excuse me for stumbling right into your dooryard. I didn't see there was one till I was in it."

"Yes. I'm Roxy Lyman," said the old lady in a voice that trembled with surprise and suggested the rarity of callers. "Won't you set down a spell?"

Rebecca needed no second invitation to embark on a new experience. She sank down on the step, flung her hat on the grass and pushed the hair back from her warm forehead. "I'm Rebecca Rowena Randall," she explained fluently. "My home is at Sunnybrook Farm, up Temperance way, but I'm living with my two Aunt Sawyers at the brick house so's to get educated. There's no education in Temperance, just plain teaching, and only a few months a year. Sometimes we didn't have any lessons at all, because when there were big boys it took all teacher's time to make them behave. Down here Miss Dearborn can manage a big boy as easy as anything, so of course we have nothing to do but learn."

This was only the natural beginning of a cataract of conversation, and the acquaintance between Rebecca and Miss Roxy Lyman was now well started. Rebecca proceeded to open her mind on a dozen subjects of passionate interest to herself. Clasping her knees with her hands, she rippled on in a way never permitted at the brick house.

"I like the way your house is set," she said; "side end to the road, looking down over the fields and seeing the river flowing-ways. I think a black house with vines growing over it is nice too; a white one is always so stare-y. The river's splendid company, don't you think so?"

"It's all I have," was the reply. "I don't look at it much nowadays."

"I get tired of looking at the same old hat, but I never get used to the old river somehow; but perhaps it isn't quite enough company all by itself. Of course there's the trees."

"They ain't leaved out the year round," said Miss Roxy.

"No-o-o. But you're sure they _will_ 'leave out.'" All this time Rebecca had stolen little side glances at Miss Roxy. "I suppose you read when you're not doing house-work?" she ventured.

"I've read all my books over and over so I just set an' think!" And Miss Roxy's eyes wandered from Rebecca, as if she had already outlived the experience of meeting a new face and hearing a new voice.

"Well, all I was going to say is," said Rebecca, rising to her feet at this warning signal, "that there was a very sick lady, sick and lame and old, that lived half a mile from our farm, and mother always had me go over and tell her the news once or twice a week. Mother says everybody ought to know what's going on, or they get lonesome. I've come away from that lady so I think I'd better take you in her place if you'd like to have me. There's such a lot happens down our way--awfully interesting things, too--that I could reel it off by the yard this minute, only you seem tired. And I've got two books of my own to lend you, so I'll come soon again if Aunt Miranda'll let me. Shall I?"

Rebecca's demeanor and tone were modest and innocent, but Miss Roxy felt herself in the grip of a master hand and feebly assented. "I don't mind if you do," she said, making an effort, and bringing her eyes back to the quaint, vivid little creature standing in front of her on the greensward. "Mebbe you'd liven me up."

"Oh, I would!" And Rebecca's tone was full of confidence. "Aunt Miranda says I'd stir up a cemetery; but that isn't a compliment. She doesn't like being stirred up; but I'd be real careful with you, being a stranger and not very well! Good-bye!" And Rebecca flew down the lane, her long, dark braids flying out behind her; while Miss Roxy, in spite of herself, rose to her feet by the rocking-chair and watched the child out of sight.