“LEGS,” the minister's wife repeated, calmly—“Rebecca Mary's are too long for limbs. Robert, that child will grow up one of these days!”
“They all do,” sighed the minister. “It's human nature, dear. You'll be telling me next that there's something the matter with Rhoda's—legs.”
The minister's wife gazed thoughtfully ahead at a little trio fast approaching the vanishing point. Her eyes grew a little wistful.
“There is now, perhaps, but I haven't noticed—I won't look!” she murmured. “And, anyway, Robert, Rhoda will give us a little time to get used to it in. But Rebecca Mary isn't the Rhoda kind—I don't believe Rebecca Mary will give us even three days of grace!”
“I always supposed Rebecca Mary was born that way—grown up,” the minister remarked, tucking a gloved hand comfortably close under his arm. “I wouldn't let it worry me, dear.”
“Oh, I don't—not worry, really,” she said, smiling—“only her legs startled me a little today. If she were mine, I should let her dresses down.”
“If she were Rhod—”
“She isn't, she's Rebecca Mary. Probably if I were Miss Olivia I would let Rhoda's down!” And she knew she would.
Rebecca Mary on the woodshed floor sat and thought “deep-down” thoughts. Her eyes were fixed dreamily on a big knothole before her, and the thoughts seemed to come out of it and stand before her, demanding imperiously to be thought. One after another—a relentless procession.
“Think me,” the first one had commanded. “I'm the Thought of Growing Up. I saw you measuring your legs, and I concluded it was time for me to introduce myself. I had to come some time, didn't I?”