Rebecca; especially when, as he neared the group, an excited
lady, wringing her hands, turned out to be Mrs. Peter Mescrve,
accompanied by Huldah, the Browns, Mrs. Milliken, Abijah Flagg,
and Miss Dearborn. "Do you know anything about the new flag,
Rebecca?" shrieked Mrs. Meserve, too agitated, for a moment, to
notice the child's companion.
"It's right here in my lap, all safe," responded Rebecca
joyously.
"You careless, meddlesome young one, to take it off my steps
where I left it just long enough to go round to the back and hunt
up my door-key! You've given me a fit of sickness with my weak
heart, and what business was it of yours? I believe you think you
own the flag! Hand it over to me this minute!"
Rebecca was climbing down during this torrent of language, but as
she turned she flashed one look of knowledge at the false
Simpson, a look that went through him from head to foot, as if it
were carried by electricity.
He saw that he had not deceived her after all, owing to the angry
chatter of Mrs. Meserve. He had been handcuffed twice in his
life, but no sheriff had ever discomfited him so thoroughly as
this child. Fury mounted to his brain, and as soon as she was
safely out from between the wheels he stood up in the wagon and
flung the flag out in the road in the midst of the excited group.
"Take it, you pious, stingy, scandal-talkin', flag-raisin' crew!"
he roared. "Rebecca never took the flag; I found it in the road,
I say!"
"You never, no such a thing!" exclaimed Mrs. Meserve. "You found
it on the doorsteps in my garden!"
"Mebbe 't was your garden, but it was so chock full o' weeds I
thought 't was the road," retorted Abner. "I vow I wouldn't 'a'