"Will you help yourself to the bread? Won't you have another
cookie?" She left nothing out, and gradually the strangeness wore
away. It got gradually to be a good time. "How many tea parties,"
thought Rebecca Mary, "there might have been!"
Rebecca Mary was skipping, when the minister's wife came to call
on Aunt Olivia. It was the minister's wife who discovered it.
Aunt Olivia caught the indrawing of her breath and saw her face.
Then Aunt Olivia discovered it, and a delicate color overspread
her thin cheeks and rose to her temples. Now what was the child--
"Rhoda is a great skipper," the minister's wife said, hurriedly.
But it was the wrong thing--she knew it was the wrong thing.
"Rebecca Mary is having a--celebration," hurried Aunt Olivia; but
she wished she had not, for it seemed like trying to excuse
Rebecca Mary. She, too, had said the wrong thing.
"How pleasant it is out here!" tried again the minister's wife.
"Yes, it's cool," Aunt Olivia agreed, gratefully. After that the
things they said were right things. The fantastic little figure
down there in the orchard, skipping wildly, determinedly, was in
none of them. Both of them felt it to be safer. But the
minister's wife's gaze dwelt on the skipping figure and followed
it through its amazing mazes, in spite of the minister's wife.
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