“Rebecca Randall, stop! Somebody'll hear you!”
“No, they won't—they're making jelly in the kitchen, miles away.”
“'Alas!' said the youth, since tomorrow I go
To fight in a far distant land,
Your tears for my absence soon ceasing to flow,
Some other will court you, and you will bestow
On a wealthier suitor your hand.'”
“Rebecca, you can't THINK how your voice carries! I believe mother can hear it over to my house!”
“Then, if she can, I must sing the third verse, just to clear your reputation from the cloud cast upon it in the second,” laughed her tormentor, going on with the song:
“'Oh, hush these suspicions!' Fair Emmajane said, 'So hurtful to love and to me! For if you be living, or if you be dead, I swear, my Abijah, that none in your stead, Shall the husband of Emmajane be!'”
After ending the third verse Rebecca wheeled around on the piano stool and confronted her friend, who was carefully closing the parlor windows:—
“Emma Jane Perkins, it is an ordinary Thursday afternoon at four o'clock and you have on your new blue barege, although there is not even a church sociable in prospect this evening. What does this mean? Is Abijah the Brave coming at last?”
“I don't know certainly, but it will be some time this week.”
“And of course you'd rather be dressed up and not seen, than seen when not dressed up. Right, my Fair Emmajane; so would I. Not that it makes any difference to poor me, wearing my fourth best black and white calico and expecting nobody.