You are the last, though, and then we shall sew the stars and
stripes together, and Seth Strout will get the top ready for
hanging. Just think, it won't be many days before you children
will be pulling the rope with all your strength, the band will be
playing, the men will be cheering, and the new flag will go
higher and higher, till the red, white, and blue shows against
the sky!"
Rebecca's eyes fairly blazed. "Shall I 'hem on' my star, or
buttonhole it?" she asked.
"Look at all the others and make the most beautiful stitches you
can, that's all. It is your star, you know, and you can even
imagine it is your state, and try and have it the best of all.
If everybody else is trying to do the same thing with her state,
that will make a great country, won't it?"
Rebecca's eyes spoke glad confirmation of the idea. "My star, my
state! " she repeated joyously. "Oh, Mrs. Baxter, I'll make such
fine stitches you'll, think the white grew out of the blue!"
The new minister's wife looked pleased to see her spark kindle a
flame in the young heart. "You can sew so much of yourself into
your star," she went on in the glad voice that made her so win-
some, "that when you are an old lady you can put on your specs
and find it among all the others. Good-by! Come up to the
parsonage Saturday afternoon; Mr. Baxter wants to see you."
"Judson, help that dear little genius of a Rebecca all you can!"
she said that night. "I don't know what she may, or may not, come
to, some day; I only wish she were ours! If you could have seen
her clasp the flag tight in her arms and put her cheek against
it, and watched the tears of feeling start in her eyes when I
told her that her star was her state! I kept whispering to
myself, "'Covet not thy neighbor's child!