“I have brought you a birthday gift, Rebby,” said Lucia, who had been looking forward all day to the moment when she could give her friend the small package that she now handed her.
Rebecca received it smilingly, and quickly unwound the white tissue paper in which it was wrapped, showing a flat white box. Inside this box lay a pair of white silk mitts.
Rebecca looked at them admiringly, and even Mrs. Weston declared that very few girls could hope for a daintier gift; while Anna and Luretta urged Rebecca to try them on at once, which she was quite ready to do. They fitted exactly, and Lucia was as proud and happy as Rebecca herself that her gift was so praised and appreciated.
“They came from France,” she said. “Look on the box, Rebby, and you will see ‘Paris, France.’ My father bought them of a Boston merchant, and I have a pair for myself.”69
“Are any more girls coming, Mother?” Rebecca asked as Mrs. Weston led the way to the living-room.
“No, my dear. And I only——” Mrs. Weston hesitated. She had started to say that she had only remembered Rebecca’s birthday a few moments earlier; but she stopped in time, knowing it would cloud the afternoon’s pleasure; and Rebecca, smiling and delighted with Lucia’s gift, and sure that her mother had some treat ready for them, exclaimed:
“I do not mind now so much that the Polly has not arrived; for I could have no gift finer than a pair of silk mitts.”
Anna had taken off her sunbonnet and was sitting on one of the low rush-bottomed chairs near a window. She was very quiet, reproaching herself in her thoughts that she had no gift for her sister. What could she give her? For little girls in revolutionary times, especially those in remote villages, had very few possessions of their own, and Anna had no valued treasure that might make a present. If she had remembered in time, she thought, she would have asked her mother to help her make a needle-book.
Suddenly she jumped up and ran across the70 room and kissed her sister, first on one cheek and then on the other, saying:
“If I had golden beads in strings, I’d give you these, and other things. But Rebby, dear, I’ve only this To give to-day: a birthday kiss.”
Lucia and Luretta were sure that Anna must have had her verse all ready to repeat; and even Rebecca, who knew that Anna rhymed words easily, thought that Anna had prepared this birthday greeting, and was very proud of her little sister. But at the words, “golden beads,” a great hope came into Rebecca’s heart. Perhaps that was what the Polly was bringing for her.
“I am to have a rabbit,” said Anna happily. “What shall I name it?”
Lucia did not seem much interested in anything so ordinary as a rabbit, and had no suggestion to offer, and while Anna and Luretta were deciding this question Lucia whispered to Rebecca: “When I go home be sure and walk a little way; I want to tell you something important.”
Rebby nodded smilingly. For the moment she had entirely forgotten the uncomfortable71 secret that Lucia had confided in her, and was thinking only that it was really a wonderful thing to have a fourteenth birthday.
While the four little girls were talking happily in the living-room, Mrs. Weston was trying to think up some sort of a birthday treat for them. There was no white sugar in the house, or, for that matter, in the entire settlement. But the Westons had a small store of maple sugar, made from the sap of the maple trees, and Mrs. Weston quickly decided that this should be used for Rebecca’s birthday celebration. She hurried to the pantry, and when an hour later she opened the door and called the girls to the kitchen they all exclaimed with delight.
The round table was covered with a shining white cloth, and Mrs. Weston had set it with her fine blue plates, that she had brought from Boston when she came to Machias, and that were seldom used.
By each plate stood a lustre mug filled with milk, and in the centre of the table was a heart-shaped cake frosted with maple sugar.
“Oh, Mother! This is my very best birthday!” Rebecca declared happily, and as the other girls seated themselves at the table she stood with72 bowed head to say the “grace” of thanks before cutting her birthday cake.
Anna wished to herself that Melvina Lyon might have been one of the guests, and shared the delicious cake. She wondered just how Melvina would behave on such an occasion; and was so careful with her crumbs, and so polite in her replies to the other girls that Lucia and Rebecca began to laugh, thinking Anna was making believe for their amusement.
Before the little girls left the table Mr. Weston appeared at the kitchen door, and was quite ready to taste the cake, and again remind Rebecca of the gift the Polly was bringing.
“Let me whisper, Father,” she responded, drawing his head down near her own. “It’s beads!” she whispered, and when her father laughed she was sure she was right, and almost as happy as if the longed-for gift was around her neck.
“Well, Paul and I found the liberty tree,” said Mr. Weston, “and I cut it down and trimmed it save for its green plume. Paul is towing it downstream now; and when we set it up ’twill be a credit to the town.”
Lucia rose quickly. “I must be going home,”73 she said, a little flush coming into her cheeks. “I have enjoyed the afternoon very much,” she added politely; for if Melvina Lyon was the smartest girl in the village no one could say that any of the other little girls ever forgot to be well-mannered.
Rebecca followed her friend to the door, and they walked down the path together, while Anna and Luretta questioned Mr. Weston eagerly as to Paul’s success in capturing a rabbit, and were made happy with the news that he had secured two young rabbits, and that they were safe in the canoe which Paul was now paddling down the river, towing the liberty tree behind him.
Rebecca and Lucia had gone but a few steps when Lucia whispered: “We mustn’t let them put up the liberty tree. Oh, Rebby, why didn’t you try to stop your father going after it?”
“How could I?” responded Rebecca. “And when I said: ‘Why must Machias have a liberty pole?’ he was ill pleased with me, and said I must be loyal to America’s rights. Oh, Lucia! are you sure that——”
But Lucia’s hand was held firmly over Rebby’s mouth. “Ssh. Don’t speak it aloud, Rebby. For ’twould make great trouble for my father, in74 any case, if people even guessed that he knew the plans of the British. But I could not help hearing what he said to Mother the day he sailed. But, Rebby, we must do something so the liberty pole will not be set up.”
“Can’t we tell my father?” suggested Rebecca hopefully.
“Oh, Rebecca Weston! If your father knew what I told you he would do his best to have the liberty pole put up at once,” declared Lucia.
“But I have a plan, and you must help me,” she continued. “Paul Foster will bring the sapling close in shore near his father’s shop, and it will rest there to-night; and when it is dark we must go down and cut it loose and push it out so that the current will take it downstream, and the tide will carry it out to sea. Then, before they can get another one, the Polly will come sailing in and all will be well.”
“Won’t the British ship come if we do not put up the liberty pole?” asked Rebecca.
“There! You have said it aloud, Rebby!” whispered Lucia reprovingly.
“Not all of it; but how can we go out of our houses in the night, Lucia?” replied Rebecca, who had begun to think that perhaps Lucia’s75 plan was the easiest way to save the village. For Lucia had told her friend that the Polly, of which Lucia’s father was captain, and the sloop Unity, owned and sailed by a Captain Jones of Boston, would be escorted to Machias by an armed British ship; and if a liberty pole was set up the British would fire upon the town. So it was no wonder that Rebecca was frightened and ready to listen to Lucia’s plan to avert the danger.
She did not know that her father and other men of the settlement were already beginning to doubt the loyalty of the two captains to America’s cause.
“It will be easy enough to slip out when everybody is asleep,” Lucia replied to Rebecca’s question. “We can meet at Mr. Foster’s shop. If I get there first I will wait, and if you get there before me you must wait. As near ten o’clock as we can. And then it won’t take us but a few minutes to push the sapling out into the current. Just think, Rebby, we will save the town, and nobody will ever know it but just us two.”
Rebby sighed. She wished that Lucia’s father had kept the secret to himself. Besides, she was not sure that it was right to prevent the liberty pole from being set up. But that the town76 should be fired upon by a British man-of-war, and everyone killed, as Lucia assured her, when it could be prevented by her pushing a pine sapling into the current of the river, made the little girl decide that she would do as Lucia had planned.
“All right. I will be there, at the blacksmith shop, when it strikes ten to-night,” she agreed, and the friends parted.
Rebecca walked slowly toward home, forgetting all the joy of the afternoon; forgetting even that it was her fourteenth birthday, and that a string of gold beads for her was probably on board the Polly.
Paul Foster towed the fine sapling to the very place that Lucia had mentioned, and his father came to the shore and looked at it admiringly as he helped Paul make it secure. “It is safely fastened and no harm can come to it,” Mr. Foster said after they had drawn the tree partly from the water. Paul drew his canoe up on the beach, and taking the rabbits in the stout canvas bag, started for home.
Anna and Luretta were both on the watch for him, and came running to meet him. Anna now wore her every-day dress of gingham, and in her77 eagerness to see the rabbits she had quite forgotten to try and behave like Melvina Lyon.
“Why, it is a pity to separate the little creatures,” Paul declared, when Luretta told him that she had promised one to Anna. “See how close they keep together. And this box is big enough for them both. And they are so young they must be fed very carefully for a time.”
“I know what we can do,” declared Anna; “my rabbit can live here until he is a little larger, and then my father will make a box for him and I can take him home.”
Paul said that would do very well, and that Anna could come each day and learn how to feed the little creatures, and what they liked best to eat.
“But which one is to be mine? They are exactly alike,” said Anna, a little anxiously. And indeed there was no way of telling the rabbits apart, so Anna and Luretta agreed that when the time came to separate them it would not matter which one Anna chose for her own.
At supper time Anna could talk of nothing but the rabbits, and had so much to say that her father and mother did not notice how silent Rebecca was.78
The little household retired early, and by eight o’clock Rebecca was in bed, but alert to every sound, and resolved not to go to sleep. The sisters slept together, and in a few minutes Anna was sound asleep. Rebecca heard the clock strike nine, then very quietly she got out of bed and dressed. Her moccasins made no noise as she stepped cautiously along the narrow passage, and down the steep stairway. She lifted the big bar that fastened the door and stood it against the wall, then she opened the door, closing it carefully behind her, and stepped out into the warm darkness of the spring night.