Rebecca Mary's eyes blazed with pride at being a Plummer. This kind of courage was the Plummer kind. The child's lank little figure seemed to grow taller and straighter. She held up her head splendidly and exulted. She felt like going up on the minister's housetop and proclaiming: “She's my aunt Olivia! She's mine! She's mine—I'm a Plummer, too! All o' you listen, she's my aunt Olivia, and she's coming home!”
Suddenly the child flung out her arms towards the south where Aunt Olivia was. And though she stood quite still, something within her seemed to spring away and go hurrying through the clear air.
“I shouldn't suppose Aunt Olivia would ever forgive me, but she's Aunt Olivia and she will,” wrote Rebecca Mary that night, her small, dark face full of a solemn peace—it seemed so long since she had been full of peace before. She wrote on eagerly:
“When she gets home Ime going to hug her I can't help it if it wont be keeping right on.”
Article Seven
Rebecca Mary measured them. Against the woodshed wall, with chalk—it was not altogether an easy thing to do. The result startled her. With rather unsteady little fingers she measured from chalk mark to floor again, to make sure it was as bad as that. It was even a little worse.
“Oh,” sighed Rebecca Mary, “to think they belong to me—to think they're hitched on!” She gazed down at them with scorn and was ashamed of them. She tried to conceal their length with her brief skirts; but when she straightened up, there they were again, as long as ever. She sat down suddenly on the shed floor and drew them up underneath her. That was temporarily a relief. “If I sit here world without end nobody'll see 'em,” grimly smiled Rebecca Mary.
It was her legs Rebecca Mary measured against the woodshed wall. It was her legs she was ashamed of. No wonder the minister's wife had said to the minister going home from meeting, with Rebecca Mary behind them unawares,—no wonder she had said, “Robert, HAVE you noticed Rebecca Mary's legs?”
Rebecca Mary had not heard the reply of the minister, for of course she had gone away then. If she had stayed she would have heard him say, with exaggerated prudery, “Felicia! My dear! Were you alluding to Rebecca Mary's limbs?” for the minister wickedly remembered inadvertent occasions when he himself had called legs legs.