"Just me wouldn't make it full," objected Emma Jane.
"It takes precious few to make a house too full to please Mirandy Sawyer!" and Mrs. Perkins resumed her seat at the window overlooking the river. "You can keep an eye on the gate, an' if they let her ou'doors again to-night you can run over and scrape acquaintance, if you want to."
Now Rebecca's vivid little personality had been somewhat obscured in the big family of children at Sunnybrook Farm, but in Riverboro it had the effect of a Roman candle suddenly bursting among the lesser fireworks on a Fourth-of-July evening. She was extraordinarily gregarious and within a year knew everybody on both sides of the river. "Anybody'll do for Rebecca so long's it's folks!" grumbled her Aunt Miranda. "This street is gen'ally chock-full o' young ones nowadays, and Rebecca's always eggin' 'em on to somethin' new. When she asks me if she can borrer the silver call bell an' I see her makin' off with a lead pencil an' paper, I always suspicion she's organizin' somethin'."
Miranda was right. There had been a positive epidemic of organizations in Riverboro's "younger set" in the last few months. Most of them had died an early, though natural, death, while others had been put out of existence by unfeeling parents and guardians. Miss Dearborn, the village teacher, was really the inspiring force behind the first one. Feeling a lack of com- mon purpose in the district school, she had proposed a club for general improvement and public service of some sort. In order to develop initiative and executive ability, she asked the older girls and boys to meet alone to draft a constitution and choose a name. She was somewhat confused when they issued from their executive session quickly and firmly entitled The Jolly Jumpers, and learned that the officers were to be selected, not for intellectual or moral superiority, but according to the height that they were able to jump over a broomstick. This unintentionally athletic society still had its healthful and noisy meetings now and again, although it never fulfilled Miss Dearborn's ambitions.
The Guild of Ministering Sisters could not find anybody who desired its ministrations, but one or two secret societies were in a flourishing condition, notably The Bouncers. Mr. Perkins, the local blacksmith, had a way of saying to the young people, when they had interrupted his horse-shoeing long enough: "Now clear out, young ones, or I'll bounce ye!" The idea of this picturesquely named society was that, if any member should be caught cheating in games or lessons, fibbing or tale-bearing, or in other misdemeanors of equal magnitude, he—or she—would find a card on desk, or in hat, with this neatly printed phrase on it:
YOU ARE HEREBY BOUNCED
The shame and terror of this card oppressed the most callous boy, and, his mind reverting to the last sin that he had committed and wondering how it could have been found out, he promptly turned over a new leaf in order to be reinstated in good society.
The success of the month of June had been a club called The Pantry Rioters. Romeo Smith, a dimpled, wide-mouthed, freckle-faced boy was the founder, and the first members were all of the (then) superior sex. The girls, however, discovered the general intentions of the club, and Rebecca drafted such an engaging constitution and by-laws that the boys chivalrously widened the gates of membership. Rebecca, whose eligibility as an active member did not admit a shadow of doubt, was constrained to decline all but honorary connection with The Pantry Rioters; and those who knew the discipline of the brick house admitted the wisdom of her decision. "But oh, how I could riot if only I wasn't being fed and clothed and slept and schooled by Aunt Miranda!" thought Rebecca passionately, as she carefully copied the by-laws of The Pantry Rioters:
"1. No member shall riot in anybody's else pantry but his own.
"2. No member shall attack the swing-shelf or wire netting box in the cellar as being too easy and not risky enough, and not a pantry anyway.