back our flag! Don't, don't take it over to Acreville, Mr.
Simpson! We've worked so long to make it, and it was so hard
getting the money for the bunting! Wait a minute, please; don't
be angry, and don't say no just yet, till I explain more. It'll
be so dreadful for everybody to get there to-morrow morning and
find no flag to raise, and the band and the mayor all
disappointed, and the children crying, with their muslin dresses
all bought for nothing! Oh, dear Mr. Simpson, please don't take
our flag away from us!
The apparently astonished Abner pulled his mustaches and
exclaimed: "But I don't know what you're drivin' at! Who's got
yer flag? I hain't!"
Could duplicity, deceit, and infamy go any further, Rebecca
wondered, and her soul filling with righteous wrath, she cast
discretion to the winds and spoke a little more plainly, bending
her great swimming eyes on the now embarrassed Abner, who looked
like an angle-worm wriggling on a pin.
"Mr. Simpson, how can you say that, when I saw the flag in the
back of your wagon myself, when you stopped to water the horse?
It's wicked of you to take it, and I cannot bear it! " (Her voice
broke now, for a doubt of Mr. Simpson's yielding suddenly
darkened her mind. "If you keep it, you'll have to keep me, for I
won't be parted from it! I can't fight like the boys, but I can
pinch and scratch, and I will scratch, just like a panther--I'll
lie right down on my star and not move, if I starve to death!"
"Look here, hold your hosses 'n' don't cry till you git something
to cry for!" grumbled the outraged Abner, to whom a clue had just
come; and leaning over the wagon-back he caught hold of a corner
of white sheet and dragged up the bundle, scooping off Rebecca's
hat in the process, and almost burying her in bunting.