Kate Douglas Wiggin: Rebecca Of Sunnybrook Farm

7. VII. RIVERBORO SECRETS (continued)

The coral had partly served its purpose as a reconciling bond, when one afternoon Rebecca, who had stayed after school for her grammar lesson as usual, was returning home by way of the short cut. Far ahead, beyond the bars, she espied the Simpson children just entering the woodsy bit. Seesaw was not with them, so she hastened her steps in order to secure company on her homeward walk. They were speedily lost to view, but when she had almost overtaken them she heard, in the trees beyond, Minnie Smellie's voice lifted high in song, and the sound of a child's sobbing. Clara Belle, Susan, and the twins were running along the path, and Minnie was dancing up and down, shrieking:--

"`What made the sleigh love Simpson so?'
   The eager children cried;
`Why Simpson loved the sleigh, you know,'
    The teacher quick replied."

The last glimpse of the routed Simpson tribe, and the last Rutter of their tattered garments, disappeared in the dim distance. The fall of one small stone cast by the valiant Elijah, known as "the fighting twin," did break the stillness of the woods for a moment, but it did not come within a hundred yards of Minnie, who shouted "Jail Birds" at the top of her lungs and then turned, with an agreeable feeling of excitement, to meet Rebecca, standing perfectly still in the path, with a day of reckoning plainly set forth in her blazing eyes.

Minnie's face was not pleasant to see, for a coward detected at the moment of wrongdoing is not an object of delight.

"Minnie Smellie, if ever--I--catch--you-- singing--that--to the Simpsons again--do you know what I'll do?" asked Rebecca in a tone of concentrated rage.

"I don't know and I don't care," said Minnie jauntily, though her looks belied her.

"I'll take that piece of coral away from you, and I THINK I shall slap you besides!"

"You wouldn't darst," retorted Minnie. "If you do, I'll tell my mother and the teacher, so there!"