“She's gone to have a good time all to herself—and she might have taken me. She didn't, she didn't, and she might've. She wanted all the good time herself! She didn't want me to have any!”
“Rebecca Mary!—did you speak, dear?” It was the gentle voice of the minister's wife outside the door. Rebecca Mary's red little hands unwrung and dropped on the pink quilt.
“No'm, I did—I mean yes'm, I didn't—I mean—”
“You don't feel sick? There isn't anything the matter, dear?”
“No'm—oh, yes'm, yes'm!” for there was something the matter. It was Aunt Olivia. But she must not say it—must not cry—must keep right on being a Plummer.
“Robert, I didn't go in—I couldn't,” the minister's wife said, back in the cheery sitting room. “I suppose you think I'd have gone in and comforted her, taken her right in my arms and comforted her the Rhoda way, but I didn't.”
“No?” The minister's voice was a little vague on account of the sermon on his knees.
“I seemed to know—something told me right through that door—that she'd rather I wouldn't. Robert, if the child is homesick, it's a different kind of homesickness.”
“The Plummer kind,” he suggested. The minister was coming to.
“Yes, the Plummer kind, I suppose, Plummers are such—such PLUMMERY persons, Robert!”