IX. UN-PLUMMERED




The Hundred and Oneth



Rebecca Mary took another stitch. Then another. "Ninety-sevvun,
ninety-eight," she counted aloud, her little pointed face gravely
intent. She waited the briefest possible space before she took
ninety-nine. It was getting very close to the Time now. "At the
hundred an' oneth," Rebecca Mary whispered. "It's almost it."
Her breath came quicker under her tight little dress. Between her
thin, light eyebrows a crease deepened anxiously.

"Ninety--n-i-n-e," she counted, "one hun-der-ed"--it was so very
close now! The next stitch would be the hundred and oneth. Rebecca
Mary's face suddenly grew quite white.

"I'll wait a m-minute," she decided; "I'm just a little scared.
When you've been lookin' head to the hundred and oneth so LONG and
you get the very next door to it, it scares you a little. I'll wait
until--oh, until Thomas Jefferson crows, before I sew the hundred
and oneth."

Thomas Jefferson was prospecting under the currant bushes. Rebecca
Mary could see him distinctly, even with her nearsighted little