Aunt Olivia read it, with the relentless grip of Duty holding her to the task. But flame spots crept up through the sallow of her thin cheeks and made what atonement they could.
It did not take long, though some of the pages she read twice. The weatherless week, when Rebecca Mary had put off her “asking” from day to day, Aunt Olivia went back to the third time. When she closed the little book it was not a Plummer face she lifted it to and laid it against for the space of a breath—a Plummer face would not have been wet.
Then she Whirled upon Duty. “Well, I've done it—I hope you're satisfied!”
“It had to be done,” calm Duty responded. “If you think it will make you feel any better, you can send yourself to bed.”
“I'm going to,” sighed Aunt Olivia, slipping away to her room. A strange little yearning was upon her to hunt up Rebecca Mary and call her darling and dear. But in her heart she knew she should not have the courage to do it. Here was another Plummer coward!
“Why are some people made like me?” she thought—“so it kills 'em to say anything anyways tenderish. Seems to be too much for their vocal organs—they'd rather do a week's washing!”
Other thoughts came to Aunt Olivia as she lay on her bed, doing her whimsical penance for violating the sanctity of the little old cookbook. She was not comfortable. It was a hard bed—nothing was soft of Aunt Olivia's. She moved about on it uneasily.
“When they're dead, we're willing enough to say tenderish things to 'em,” her musings ran. “We wish we HAD then. I suppose if Rebecca Mary was—”
She got no farther for the sudden horror that was upon her—that sent her to her feet and to the door. But there she stopped in the blessed relief that drifted in to her on a child's laugh. Somewhere out there Rebecca Mary was laughing in her subdued, sweet way. A cracked, shrill crow followed—Thomas Jefferson was laughing too.
Rebecca Mary was not dead. There was time to say a “tenderish” thing to her before she lay—before that. Aunt Olivia shut her eyes resolutely to the vision that had intruded upon her musings. It was Rebecca Mary who was laughing somewhere out there that she wanted to see.