“And French—not FRENCH?”
“Likely.”
Rebecca Mary fell back on the pillows to grasp it. But she was presently up again.
“And that thing that tells about the air and—and gassy things? And the one that tells about your bones?”
Aunt Olivia did not recognize chemistry, but she knew bones. She sighed gently.
“Oh yes; I suppose you'll find out just how you're put together, and likely it'll scare you so you won't ever dare to breathe deep again. Maybe learning like that is important—I suppose the minister knows.”
“The minister knows everything,” Rebecca Mary said, solemnly. “If you let me go away to school, I'll try to learn to know as much as he does, Aunt Olivia. You don't—you don't think he'd mind, do you?”
In the dark Aunt Olivia smiled. The small person there on the pillows was, after all, a child. Rebecca Mary had not grown up, after all!
“He won't mind,” promised Aunt Olivia for the minister. She went away presently and cut out Rebecca Mary's new nightgowns. She sat and stitched them, far into the night, and stitched her sad little bodings in, one by one. Already desolation gripped Aunt Olivia's heart.
Rebecca Mary's dreams that night were marvelous ones. She dreamed she saw herself in a glass after she had learned all the things there were to learn, and she looked like the minister! When she spoke, her voice sounded deep and sweet like the minister's voice. Somewhere a voice like the minister's wife's seemed to be calling “Robert! Robert!”