“It has often been so remarked, in different words,” agreed the minister.
“Mrs. Baxter said that each star was a state, and if each state did its
best we should have a splendid country. Then once she said that we ought
to be glad the war is over and the States are all at peace together; and
I thought Columbia must be glad, too, for Miss Dearborn says she's
the mother of all the States. So I'm going to have it end like this: I
didn't write it, I just sewed it while I was working on my star:
For it's your star, my star, all the stars together,
That make our country's flag so proud
To float in the bright fall weather.
Northern stars, Southern stars, stars of the East and West,
Side by side they lie at peace
On the dear flag's mother-breast.”
“'Oh! many are the poets that are sown by nature,'” thought the minister, quoting Wordsworth to himself. “And I wonder what becomes of them! That's a pretty idea, little Rebecca, and I don't know whether you or my wife ought to have the more praise. What made you think of the stars lying on the flag's mother-breast'? Where did you get that word?”
“Why” (and the young poet looked rather puzzled), “that's the way it is; the flag is the whole country—the mother—and the stars are the states. The stars had to lie somewhere: 'LAP' nor 'ARMS' wouldn't sound well with West,' so, of course, I said 'BREAST,'” Rebecca answered, with some surprise at the question; and the minister put his hand under her chin and kissed her softly on the forehead when he said good-by at the door.
IV
Rebecca walked rapidly along in the gathering twilight, thinking of the eventful morrow.
As she approached the turning on the left called the old Milltown road, she saw a white horse and wagon, driven by a man with a rakish, flapping, Panama hat, come rapidly around the turn and disappear over the long hills leading down to the falls. There was no mistaking him; there never was another Abner Simpson, with his lean height, his bushy reddish hair, the gay cock of his hat, and the long piratical, upturned mustaches, which the boys used to say were used as hat-racks by the Simpson children at night.. The old Milltown road ran past Mrs. Fogg's house, so he must have left Clara Belle there, and Rebecca's heart glowed to think that her poor little friend need not miss the raising.
She began to run now, fearful of being late for supper, and covered the ground to the falls in a brief time. As she crossed the bridge she again saw Abner Simpson's team, drawn up at the watering trough.
Coming a little nearer, with the view of inquiring for the family, her quick eye caught sight of something unexpected. A gust of wind blew up a corner of a linen lap-robe in the back of the wagon, and underneath it she distinctly saw the white-sheeted bundle that held the flag; the bundle with a tiny, tiny spot of red bunting peeping out at one corner. It is true she had eaten, slept, dreamed red, white, and blue for weeks, but there was no mistaking the evidence of her senses; the idolized flag, longed for, worked for, sewed for, that flag was in the back of Abner Simpson's wagon, and if so, what would become of the raising?
Acting on blind impulse, she ran toward the watering-trough, calling out in her clear treble: “Mr. Simpson! Oh, Mr. Simpson, will you let me ride a piece with you and hear all about Clara Belle? I'm going part way over to the Centre on an errand.” (So she was; a most important errand,—to recover the flag of her country at present in the hands of the foe!)