Then sharply, "Rebecca Mary Plummer!" Her voice had thin cadences
of suspicion lurking in it against its will.
But there seemed really no doubt. One by one incriminating circum-
stances occurred to Aunt Olivia. Rebecca Mary had longed to go so
much; the Tony Trumbullses, one at a time or in a tumultuous body,
had urged her so often; she herself had more than once caught the
child gazing wistfully, in passing by, at the bewildering, deafening,
frolics of the little Tony Trumbullses. Once Rebecca Mary had asked
to go barefoot, as they went. Once she had let out the tight little
braids in her neck and rumpled her thin little hair. Once Aunt Olivia
had come upon her PLAYING. The remembrance of it now tightened the
lines around Aunt Olivia's lips. The child had been running wildly
about the yard, shouting in a strange, excited, ridiculous way.
When Aunt Olivia in stern displeasure had demanded explanations,
she had run on recklessly, calling back over her shoulder: "Don't
stop me! I'm a Tony Trumbull!"
"My land!" breathed Aunt Olivia, taking back the suspicion to her
breast. "After all my forbidding she's gone down there. She's BEEN
going down there dear knows how long. She's waited till I took my
naps an' then went. A PLUMMER!"
There was really nowhere else she could have gone.
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