A Little Maid of Old Maine

by Alice Turner Curtis

How long the afternoon seemed! Never before had Anna stayed indoors for the whole of a May afternoon. She felt tired and sleepy, and did not want to walk about the garden after supper—as Mrs. Lyon kindly suggested; and not until Mrs. Lyon said that Melvina, on every pleasant day, walked about the garden after supper, did Anna go slowly down the path. But she stood at the gate looking in the direction of her home with wistful eyes.

“Two weeks,” she whispered; it seemed so long a time could never pass. Then she remembered that the next day she would go home for the daily visit agreed upon.

If the days passed slowly with Anna, to Melvina they seemed only too short. She had quickly made friends with Rebecca, and the elder girl was astonished at the daring spirit of the minister’s daughter. Melvina would balance herself on the very edge of the bluff, when she and Rebby, often followed by a surprised and unhappy Luretta, went for a morning walk. Or on their trips to the lumber yard for chips Melvina would climb to the top of some pile of timber and dance about as if trying to make Rebby frightened lest she fall. She went wading along the shore, and brought home queerly shaped rocks and tiny mussel-shells; and, as her father had hoped, her cheeks grew rosy and her eyes bright.

The day set for the erection of the liberty pole was the last day of the “exchange visit” of the two little girls, and Anna was now sure that Mrs. Lyon must think her very much like Melvina, for she had learned her daily lessons obediently, and moved about the house as quietly as a mouse.

But when she awoke on the morning of the day upon which she was to return home she was sure it was the happiest day of her life. Mrs. Lyon had even called her a “quiet and careful child,” and the minister smiled upon her, and said that she “was a loyal little maid.” So she had great reason for being pleased; and the thought of being home again made her ready to dance with delight.

The day that the tree of liberty was planted was declared a holiday, and the inhabitants of the town gathered on the bluff where it was to be set. Melvina and Anna and Luretta were together, and the other children of the neighborhood were scattered about.

“Where is Rebby, Mother?” Anna asked, looking about for her sister.

“To be sure! She started off with Lucia Horton, but I do not see them,” responded Mrs. Weston, smiling happily to think that her own little Danna would no longer be absent from home.

There was great rejoicing among the people as the tree was raised, and citizen after citizen stepped forward and made solemn pledges to resist England’s injustice to the American colonies. Then, amid the shouts of the assembled inhabitants, the discharge of musketry, and the sound of fife and drum, Machias took its rightful place among the defenders of American liberty.

But Rebecca Weston and Lucia Horton, sitting in an upper window of the Horton house, looked out at the inspiring scene without wishing to be any nearer. Rebecca was ashamed when she remembered her own part in trying to prevent the erection of a liberty pole, for now she realized all it stood for; and she was no longer afraid of an attack upon the town by an English gunboat. To Rebecca it seemed that such an attack would bring its own punishment. Her thoughts were now filled by a great desire to do something, something difficult and even dangerous to her own safety, in order to make up for that evening when she had crept out in the darkness and helped Lucia send the tree adrift.