"Cock-a-doodle-do--ooo, did-you-see-me-swoo-oo-OOP-it-up?" crowed
Thomas Jefferson, under the window. Rebecca Mary with her eyes
pillow-deep could see him stretching his neck and letting it out.
It seemed to her everybody could hear him--Aunt Olivia downstairs,
steeping camomile 'blows, and Mrs. Avery's boarder across the fields.
"Aunt Olivia," whispered Rebecca Mary, while she sipped her bitter
tea a little later, "how much - I suppose precious things cost a
great deal, don't they?"
"My grief!" Aunt Olivia set down the bowl and felt of Rebecca Mary's
temples, then of her wrists. The child was out of her head.
"Di'mond-stones like--like that boarder's--I suppose those cost a
great deal? As much as--how much as, Aunt Olivia?"
"My grief, don't you worry about any di'mond-stones! YOU haven't
lost any. What you'll lose will be your health, if you don't swallow
down the rest o' this tea and go right to sleep like a good girl!
No, no, I'm not going to answer any questions. Drink this; swallow
it down."
Rebecca Mary swallowed it down, but she did not go right to sleep
like a good girl. She lay on the hard little bed and thought of many
things, or of one thing many times. Over and over, wearily, drearily,
until the sin of Thomas Jefferson became her sin. She adopted it.
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