But Aunt Olivia did not say it. One day and then another went by without her saying it, and then one morning Rebecca Mary knew by the plump, well-fed aspect of the valise that it was packed. Aunt Olivia had packed it in the night.
There was no one else in the room when Rebecca Mary made her disappointing little discovery. She went over to the plump valise and prodded it gently with her finger. But it is so difficult to tell in that way whether your own best dress, your own best hat, best shoes, best gloves, are in there. Rebecca Mary hurried upstairs and looked in her closet and in her “best” bureau drawer.
They were not there! In her relief she caught up the beautiful being and strained her hard, lifeless little body to her own warm breast. If she had not been Rebecca Mary, she would have danced about the room.
“Oh, I'm so relieved, Olivicia!” she laughed, softly. “If they're not up here, THEY'RE DOWN THERE. They've got to be somewhere. They're in that valise—valise—vali-i-ise!”
Rebecca Mary had never been to a city, and within her remembrance Aunt Olivia had never been. Curiosity was not a Plummer trait, hence Rebecca Mary had never asked many questions about the remote period before her own advent into Aunt Olivia's life. The same Plummer restraint kept her now from asking questions. There was nothing to do but wait, but the waiting was illumined by her joyous anticipations.
Oddly enough, Aunt Olivia seemed to have no anticipations—at least joyous ones. Her, thin, grave face may even have looked a little thinner and graver, IF Rebecca Mary had thought to notice.
The night the lean old valise took on plumpness, Aunt Olivia went often into Mary's little room. Many of the times she came out very shortly with the child's “best” things trailing from her arms, but once or twice she stayed rather long—long enough to stand beside a little white bed and look down on a flushed little face. A pair of wide-open eyes watched her smilingly from the pillows, but they were not Rebecca Mary's eyes, and Olivicia was altogether trustworthy.
An odd thing happened—but Olivicia never told. Why should she publish abroad that she had lain there and seen Aunt Olivia bend once—bend twice—over Rebecca Mary and kiss her?
Softly, patiently, very wearily, Aunt Olivia went in and out. The things she brought out in her arms she folded carefully and packed, but not in the lank old valise. She put them all with tender painstaking into a quaint little carpetbag. When the work was done she set the bag away out of sight, and went about packing her own things in the old valise.
The day before, she had been to see the minister and the minister's wife. She called for them both, and sat down gravely and made her proposition. It was startling only because of the few words it took to make it. Otherwise it was very pleasant, and the minister and the minister's wife received it with nods and smiles.