第15章 V. THE STATE O' MAINE GIRL(1)

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.

Rebecca demurred. Alice persisted.

"Your hair is so long and thick and dark and straight," she said, "that you'll look like an Injun!"

"I am the State of Maine; it all belonged to the Indians once,"

Rebecca remarked gloomily, for she was curiously shy about discussing her personal appearance.

"And your wreath of little pine-cones won't set decent without crimps," continued Alice.

Rebecca glanced in the cracked looking-glass and met what she considered an accusing lack of beauty, a sight that always either saddened or enraged her according to circumstances; then she sat down resignedly and began to help Alice in the philanthropic work of making the State of Maine fit to be seen at the raising.

Neither of the girls was an expert hairdresser, and at the end of an hour, when the sixth braid was tied, and Rebecca had given one last shuddering look in the mirror, both were ready to weep with fatigue.

The candle was blown out and Alice soon went to sleep, but Rebecca tossed on her pillow, its goose-feathered softness all dented by the cruel lead knobs and the knots of twisted rags.

She slipped out of bed and walked to and fro, holding her aching head with both hands. Finally she leaned on the window-sill, watching the still weather-vane on Alice's barn and breathing in the fragrance of the ripening apples, until her restlessness subsided under the clear starry beauty of the night.

At six in the morning the girls were out of bed, for Alice could hardly wait until Rebecca's hair was taken down, she was so eager to see the result of her labors.

The leads and rags were painfully removed, together with much hair, the operation being punctuated by a series of squeaks, squeals, and shrieks on the part of Rebecca and a series of warnings from Alice, who wished the preliminaries to be kept secret from the aunts, that they might the more fully appreciate the radiant result.

Then came the unbraiding, and then--dramatic moment--the "comb-ing out;" a difficult, not to say impossible process, in which the hairs that had resisted the earlier stages almost gave up the ghost.

The long front strands had been wound up from various angles and by various methods, so that, when released, they assumed the strangest, most obstinate, most unexpected attitudes. When the comb was dragged through the last braid, the wild, tortured, electric hairs following, and then rebounding from it in a bristling, snarling tangle, Massachusetts gave one encompassing glance at the State o' Maine's head, and announced her intention of going home to breakfast! Alice was deeply grieved at the result of her attempted beautifying, but she felt that meeting Miss Miranda Sawyer at the morning meal would not mend matters in the least, so slipping out of the side door, she ran up Guide-Board hill as fast as her feet could carry her.

The State o' Maine, deserted and somewhat unnerved, sat down before the glass and attacked her hair doggedly and with set lips, working over it until Miss Jane called her to breakfast; then, with a boldness born of despair, she entered the dining-room, where her aunts were already seated at table. There was a moment of silence after the grotesque figure was fully taken in; then came a moan from Jane and a groan from Miranda.

"What have you done to yourself?" asked Miranda sternly.

"Made an effort to be beautiful and failed!" jauntily replied Rebecca, but she was too miserable to keep up the fiction. "Oh, Aunt Miranda, don't scold, I'm so unhappy! Alice and I rolled up my hair to curl it for the raising. She said it was so straight I looked like an Indian!"

"Mebbe you did," vigorously agreed Miranda, "but 't any rate you looked like a Christian Injun, 'n' now you look like a heathen Injun; that's all the difference I can see. What can we do with her, Jane, between this and nine o'clock?"

"We'll all go out to the pump just as soon as we're through breakfast," answered Jane soothingly. "We can accomplish considerable with water and force."

Rebecca nibbled her corn-cake, her tearful eyes cast on her plate and her chin quivering.

"Don't you cry and red your eyes up," chided Miranda quite kindly; "the minute you've eaten enough run up and get your brush and meet us at the back door."

"I would n't care myself how bad I looked," said Rebecca, "but I can't bear to be so homely that I shame the State of Maine!"

Oh, what an hour followed this plaint! Did any aspirant for literary or dramatic honors ever pass to fame through such an antechamber of horrors? Did poet of the day ever have his head so maltreated? To be dipped in the rain-water tub, soused again and again; to be held under the spout and pumped on; to be rubbed furiously with rough roller towels; to be dried with hot flannels! And is it not well-nigh incredible that at the close of such an hour the ends of the long hair should still stand out straight, the braids having been turned up two inches by Alice, and tied hard in that position with linen thread ?