Brown picked up the flag and dusted and folded it.
"I'm willing she should hear about it," Rebecca answered. "I
didn't do anything to be ashamed of! I saw the flag in the back
of Mr. Simpson's wagon and I just followed it. There weren't any
men or any Dorcas ladies to take care of it so it fell to me!
You would n't have had me let it out of my sight, would you, and
we going to raise it to-morrow morning?"
"Rebecca's perfectly right, Mrs. Meserve!" said Miss Dearborn
proudly. "And it's lucky there was somebody quick-witted enough
to 'ride and consort' with Mr. Simpson! I don't know what the
village will think, but seems to me the town clerk might write
down in his book, 'This day the State of Maine saved the flag!'"
V.
THE STATE O' MAINE GIRL
THE foregoing episode, if narrated in a romance, would
undoubtedly have been called "The Saving of the Colors," but at
the nightly chats in Watson's store it was alluded to as the way
little Becky Randall got the flag away from Slippery Simpson.
Dramatic as it was, it passed into the crowd of half-forgotten
things in Rebecca's mind, its brief importance submerged in the
glories of the next day.
There was a painful prelude to these glories. Alice Robinson came
to spend the night with Rebecca, and when the bedroom door closed
upon the two girls, Alice announced her intention of "doing up"
Rebecca's front hair in leads and rags, and braiding the back in
six tight, wetted braids.
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