The second look at her face convinced Aunt Olivia
that the cure would never work.
"You feed him, please, Aunt Olivia," Rebecca Mary said; "I--couldn't.
I'll stir the muffins up."
Nothing further was ever said about keeping the Tony Trumbull rooster.
He pecked about the place in unrestrained freedom until the morning
work was done, and then Aunt Olivia carried him home in her apron.
"I concluded not to keep him--he'd likely be homesick," she said,
with a qualm of conscience; for the big, white fellow had certainly
shown no signs of homesickness. But she could not explain and reveal
the secret places of Rebecca Mary's heart. Aunt Olivia, too, had her
ideas of loyalty.
In the diary there occurred brief mention of the episode: "The Tony
Trumbull rooster has been here. I could eat him--that's how I feel
about the Tony Trumbull rooster.
"I never could have eatten Tomas Jefferson but once and then it would
have broken my heart but I was starveing. Aunt Olivia took him back."
Thomas Jefferson's grave was kept green. Rebecca Mary took her stents
down into the orchard and sat beside it, sadly stitching. She kept it
heaped with wild flowers and poppies from her own rows. Aunt Olivia's
flowers she never touched. The bitterness of Aunt Olivia's not being
sorry--perhaps being glad--rankled in her sore little soul.
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